Cloudburst

  But I wasn’t interested in Ryder just to be defiant or prove I was master of my own fate and captain of my own soul. I was drawn to him for so many better reasons, the most important of which was kinship. I sensed we were alike. We did have similar pain and were haunted by some of the same demons. My curiosity about his parents didn’t come from the glamour and entertainment magazines. I wasn’t thinking of them as being celebrities. I was thinking of them as being his parents, and failed parents at that.

  Maybe he was as excited about school today as I was and for the same reasons. When I pulled into the parking lot, I saw that he was already there. His sister had gone in before him. He was waiting for me. There was something about the way he had dressed and brushed his hair that looked different, too. He simply looked sharper and, dare I think it, happier.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.”

  He reached for my hand, and we started toward the entrance. Other students driving in glanced our way. Some gaped. Mona Kirland nearly drove into another car.

  “So, can you come over to my house after school, or is that going to create a March earthquake?”

  “No problem,” I said. “It’s educational.”

  “Educational?”

  “An arts-and-crafts exhibit.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your model planes, ships, and cars.”

  “Oh.” He laughed as we entered the school and went to our lockers.

  “I can’t believe there are no locks on these lockers,” he said.

  “You didn’t read your contract when you entered.”

  “No,” he said, laughing. “I don’t think I did. Why?”

  “First, you should know that no one steals from anyone here. If anyone wants something someone else has, he or she just tells his or her parents, and they get it.”

  He laughed.

  “But more important, the school wants the students to know that the staff can go into your locker at any time and search for drugs or cigarettes. Cigarettes are not permitted on campus.”

  “I guess I’ll leave my porn magazines at home, too, then.”

  Our laughter drew even more attention, but neither of us cared.

  Because of the rules about cell phones, I couldn’t use mine until lunch. I called Jordan then, but she was already at lunch with some of her friends. When I confirmed that I’d be going to Ryder’s house, I thought she said a strange thing.

  “I’ll have to tell Donald,” she said.

  She hadn’t ever said that to me before, whether I asked if I could go or told her I was going to a party or to another friend’s house. I wanted to ask her why, but I didn’t.

  “Be careful” was the only other thing she said.

  I guess my deep thinking about it was written on my face. When I joined Ryder at the table, he immediately asked me what was wrong. Of course, he followed that with, “What, they don’t want you to go to my house now?”

  “No, chill,” I said. “Everything’s not about you.”

  “Well, it should be,” he said, trying to joke about his hair trigger. “So what’s the problem?”

  “Look, here’s the problem I live with,” I began. “Because their older daughter was equivalent to a time bomb, they measure everything I do now against what she did. They look for resemblances.”

  “Are there any?”

  “I hope nothing like the things they’re looking for,” I said.

  “You don’t sound so sure.”

  “I’m sure, Ryder. Damn.”

  He stared at me. I thought his lips actually trembled. Now I was the one with the hair trigger. We were really alike, and maybe because he saw something more of himself in me, it bothered him. He already knew what he was capable of doing and not doing.

  “Okay. Let’s drop it. I’ve got to warn you, my parents will probably be home.”

  “Why do you have to warn me?”

  “You’ll see for yourself,” he said.

  After he said that, I couldn’t help being nervous the remainder of the school day. When I looked at him in class, I thought he looked nervous, too. Now that the shoe was on the other foot, I realized how much he had been worried about what the Marches thought of him. Maybe that was why he had been antagonistic with Donald almost immediately. I was sure Ryder had brought other girls home. Perhaps none of them was good enough for him in his parents’ eyes, or maybe his parents were just too protective of their own celebrity reputations. Whatever, I was concerned about what they would think of me. Had he told them anything about me? Did his sister know he was bringing me to their home today? Did she learn anything about me, and was she telling her parents things? I worked myself into such a mental knot about it all that I almost decided to cancel.

  His house was in Beverly Hills, off Sunset Boulevard. He gave me the address to put in my GPS in case we were separated by traffic, but the plan was simply for me to follow him. As we walked out of our last class, I asked him if he had told his sister he was bringing me to their house.

  “Tell her? Why?”

  “I just wondered.”

  Instead of saying any more about it, he simply grimaced. If he hadn’t told her, I assumed he would after we had left the parking lot. Fortunately, I was able to follow him closely and not lose him. If I had, I might have used it as an excuse to avoid going. I was that nervous.

  Fifteen minutes later, we turned off Sunset and then turned into the driveway of a palatial Beverly Hills home. It wasn’t an estate, but it was an impressive-looking Italian villa, a Tuscan residence, also gated. It was then, I imagined, that Summer realized I had been following them. She turned back to look at me waiting right behind them for the gate to open, and then she asked Ryder something. Whatever he said made her turn back to look at me again, and then she turned away. Even from where I was, I could see from her posture that she was upset. I imagined that any boyfriends were off-limits to her for now, and she was jealous of him.

  We approached the house over a cobblestone motor court. There was a black Mercedes sedan parked beside a Lexus convertible with the top down. Ryder pulled up alongside the convertible, and I pulled up beside him. Summer practically leaped out of his car and headed toward the front entrance before I could say hello. He got out slowly.

  “Your sister looks upset,” I said when I got out and looked after her.

  “She was born upset. Forget about her. Well, here it is. Home sweet home,” he said.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “A famous Hollywood producer was the original owner. The previous owner was from Saudi Arabia. My mother had the place totally redone. She might have it redone again in two weeks. She has ADD when it comes to decor, fashions, and cars. As far as I know, not men, though. Now, as for my father, I won’t swear the same,” he added as we walked slowly toward the front door.

  I didn’t say anything. He glanced at me, I think to see if I was spooked by the things he said. I already knew that he could say something just to get a reaction out of me.

  He opened the door and stepped back. I entered a very large foyer. The house had vaulted ceilings with wood beams.

  “These are Brazilian cherry-wood floors,” he said. “We’re ordered to tell anyone we bring here that immediately.”

  “It’s beautiful, Ryder. How big is this house?”

  The house had a wide-open look, so I could see into the kitchen as well.

  “Ten thousand, with seven bedrooms and ten bathrooms. Everything is in the rear—the tennis court, the pool, an outdoor grill. There’s even a small putting green. Neither of my parents swims very much. My mother doesn’t play tennis at all. We never grilled at any of our other homes, and my father plays golf maybe twice a year, but usually only at celebrity events when he is invited and all expenses are paid. But we have to have it all!” Ryder said, his eyes exaggeratedly wide.

  “Have all of what?” we heard. “What tall tales are you telling now, Ryder?”

  A woman who was obviously Ryder’s mother, Beverly R
ansome, stepped out of the very large living room. She looked as if she had just this moment finished a modeling shoot. I wondered if she spent her whole day this put together. Like most models, she was tall, probably between five foot ten and five foot eleven. Her facial features were exquisite. The features of her face were so perfect, in fact, that I wondered if she could possibly have been born that way. Again, like most very successful models, her eyes captured attention first. They were cobalt blue and just almond-shaped enough to give her something of an unusual, alluring look. It wasn’t hard to imagine why she was photogenic. She could probably make an amateur head-shot photographer look like some of the most famous professionals.

  When she stepped more into the light that streamed through a skylight above us, her light brown hair meticulously styled into a basic French twist seemed to take on a slightly copper shade. She wore an A-line, V-neck chiffon lace dress that reminded me of something Jordan would wear to one of her elegant charity events, but it wasn’t even three-thirty in the afternoon. My gaze went from her face to the heart-shaped diamond pendant on a necklace of white gold.

  “Well, this is a surprise, Ryder,” she said. “Why didn’t you warn us that you were bringing someone home today?”

  “Warn you?” he replied.

  She glanced at him, but her eyes were all over me. “You know what I mean,” she said. “We might have prepared something special.”

  “There’s something special here every day,” he said, both to her and to me.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

  “If you give me a chance,” he said. “Mother, this is Sasha Fawne Porter. She lives in that shack the Marches own, the one that made Architectural Digest a while back, the one you ooh’ed and ah’ed over.”

  “Oh. I’m happy to meet you, Sasha. Your home looks truly magnificent.” I was about to tell her it wasn’t really my home, when she added, “What I meant by something special is we would have planned to be here. My husband and I agreed to attend a publicity event for a new Warner Brothers film.”

  “That explains the uniform,” Ryder said.

  “Uniform?” both his mother and I said simultaneously. She laughed.

  “I take it you attend Pacifica, Sasha.”

  “We didn’t meet on the street,” Ryder said. When he looked at me, I could see he was sorrier for me that he had blurted that than he was for his response to his mother.

  The moment we had entered and she had appeared, I could feel the tension in the air.

  “I’m not being critical, Ryder. All I’m saying is it would have been nicer if you had told us you were having a guest so I wouldn’t have had to hear it from your sister as she ran by.” She smiled at me. “My son has a ways to go when it comes to social etiquette. You’re more than welcome,” she continued. “I just hate meeting someone for the first time and then having to run out.”

  “Be fashionably late,” Ryder suggested.

  “We already will be that,” she said, and laughed. She looked at her watch. “Your father takes longer than I do to get ready, which would shock most people.”

  “No one who knows him,” Ryder said.

  Her lips tightened.

  “What a beautiful watch,” I said, hoping to break the tension.

  “Yes, it was a gift from a European count. It’s a Harry Winston.”

  “I thought it was a watch,” Ryder said.

  “Ha, ha. My son is determined to give me some stress wrinkles.”

  “That way, whenever you look into a mirror, you’ll think of me, Mother,” Ryder said. He smiled and turned to me. “She’ll be thinking of me almost all day.”

  “Ryder, you’re not funny,” she snapped. She turned sharply to me. “You must have quite the thick skin to be friends with him,” she said, and then smiled the smile that surely put her in the top ten. “I love your hair.”

  “Thank you.”

  We heard footsteps from the left. I took a deep breath. If there was such tension between Ryder and his mother, what would there be between him and his father?

  “Bonjour, bonjour,” he cried, walking with a spry step. As Jessica would say if she were beside me, Bradley Garfield was “drop-dead gorgeous.” I had seen a number of movie stars from a distance and a few close up, but never in one’s own home. I had always thought Donald was a handsome man, but he was right when he told me that Bradley Garfield had an indescribable cinematic quality. It was like watching an actor walk off the screen.

  He wore a white sport jacket and black slacks with a turquoise shirt, the collar slightly up and the shirt’s top two buttons unfastened. Except for a wedding ring and a gold and diamond pinkie ring, he wore no other jewelry. His watch looked just as expensive as hers. Maybe the count had given them both presents.

  “So, who do we have here?” he asked.

  “Whom,” Ryder corrected.

  I saw a flash of anger in Bradley Garfield’s eyes before he smiled and corrected himself. “My son the scholar. And you are?”

  “I’m Sasha,” I said, stepping forward. He smiled the smile that sent thousands of girls pressing their thighs together and hyperventilating. He took my hand and looked at Ryder.

  “Well, this is the top of a skyscraper up from the last few girls you brought home for us to meet.”

  Ryder looked away.

  “We didn’t know he was having company today,” he told me. “Or we would have—”

  “Baked a cake,” Ryder finished for him. “Ma mère has already told her.”

  “Oh. Okay. I do hope we’ll see you again, Sasha, when we can spend a little more time with you.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Shall we go, my dear?” he asked his wife. “I don’t want Summer leaving the house, Ryder,” she told him.

  “We’re not leaving the house, Mother. Sasha came to spend some time here.”

  “Good. Martha’s preparing one of your favorite dinners, lobster fra diavolo. I wish we could stay.”

  “You could,” Ryder said.

  “Yes, well, it’s not that easy. We’ll be back before eleven,” she said. “So long, Sasha. See if you can civilize my son a little for us.”

  “Call me if there’s any problem,” his mother told him.

  Ryder kept his gaze on the floor. I could feel the agitation in his body. The tightness in his neck and his mouth and the way he clenched his fists actually frightened me. His mother brushed his cheek with what was more like an air kiss, and then she and his father walked out. It was as if air returned. Ryder relaxed and shrugged.

  “Good ol’ Mom and Dad,” he said. “C’mon, I’ll show you my room first, and then we can look at the rest of it.”

  “Where’s Summer?”

  “Locked in her closet by now. She usually comes home and goes right on the phone or the computer. When we came here, my parents assigned her the bedroom closest to theirs. It was a symbolic move to impress her with how much more they’ll care about her, but the truth is, nothing much has changed, except I’ve been given more responsibility. It’s like I’m the one being punished for the things she did.”

  “She is your sister.”

  “That’s what they tell me,” he said. “I’ve demanded DNA confirmation.”

  We walked down the tile hallway. There was beautiful statuary in niches all along the way. His bedroom was the first on the left. He was right. It was barely a third of the size of mine but by any measure still quite large. His bed was a beautiful hardwood headboard and frame, an Italian style with a pecan veneer. It had matching dressers and an armoire. Even his desk matched. The other side of the suite was cluttered with model planes and cars.

  “Wow. You weren’t kidding,” I said, looking at them.

  “My mother hates that I have it all in my bedroom. She wanted me to take over another bedroom for it, but I refused. It’s practically the only thing in this house that’s mine, really mine. She picked out everything else I have, including most of my clothes. It’s the same for Summer. I s
uppose I should call this Beverly’s room, just like yours is called Alena’s.”

  I walked over to look at his model planes and cars, and some ships in bottles. The work was very intricate. I looked at the one he was currently doing.

  “That’s actually a replica of Columbus’s Santa Maria, ” he said.

  “How do you get the ship into a bottle?”

  “Pure magic.”

  “No, really.”

  “There are a few different ways. The secret is the masts. You turn them down and use a thread to pull them back up. They have hinges. Then you cut away the thread.”

  “It must take a great deal of patience and concentration.”

  “Which is why I do it. I escape into the bottle with the ship,” he said.

  I thought he was only half kidding, if that much. I looked at the other models, and whenever I touched one, he would identify it, rattling off its history.

  “You can learn a great deal from this hobby,” I said.

  “It’s more than a hobby. It really is therapy,” he said.

  I dropped my pretense. I couldn’t keep ignoring what was gnawing at me. “Why is there such tension between you and your parents, Ryder? I can understand the strain between them and Summer after what happened, but why between you and them? It can’t be that they blame you completely for what she did.”

  He fingered one of his model cars. I thought he was just going to ignore me and go on to talk about another, but he pulled his fingers away from the one he was handling and turned to me with such pain in his eyes I thought I would lose my breath.

  “They blame me for my mother’s miscarriage with their third child,” he said.

  10

  Passion

  I left that little detail out of the movie I was describing at your lake. My parents base everything they do around their careers,” Ryder continued.

  We were sitting on his bed. He leaned back on a pillow and put his hands behind his head as he looked up at the ceiling and began to talk as if he were in his therapist’s office. I had yet to say anything. My silence spoke for itself. I could see it in the way he glanced at me before he lay back. He was waiting for a sign of disapproval, something in my face that told him I was uncomfortable. I wasn’t judging him, but at the moment, I regretted asking him anything personal.