Cloudburst

  How I wished it had been.

  “Well,” Jessica said. “I thought I should tell you what I found out. I can’t imagine what it must have been like at Ryder’s home when this all happened, how his parents took the news. Probably they were both afraid for their careers and still worry about it.”

  “Maybe they were afraid for their daughter, too,” I said.

  “Maybe,” she said, but not with any enthusiasm. I thought that was cold, but later I would come to believe that she was probably right.

  No matter what I did, I thought, I would never really fit into this world. The question was, would I get too deeply into it ever to get out?

  I told her I would talk to her later and went to do my homework. Mrs. Caro did make a wonderful lasagna for me. Jordan enjoyed it as much as I did, and at dinner, she was more buoyant, concentrating on her gala and how big and elegant it was going to be. She was confident that they would get Tony Castle to entertain. He had been very popular at one time and in dozens of films and on Broadway.

  “We need someone who can sing like Sinatra,” she said. “It fits with a black-tie affair.”

  The way she said it reminded me of people who buy paintings not for their own beauty but for how they will fit in with their decor. The artist would certainly be unhappy to have been reduced to a decorator’s coordination idea. I remember it being the same when my mother sold her calligraphy on the beach. Many of the people who bought one had talked about how it would fit this wall or that room and not about how beautiful and unique a work it was in and of itself. But still, we were grateful for every sale. It meant we’d eat.

  After dinner, I went up to finish my homework and start a paper I had to do for English, even though it wasn’t due for two weeks. It was on Hamlet, and rereading scenes to find the quotes I wanted reminded me of Ryder’s sharp answer in class and his sort of backhanded compliment of mine. Maybe he wanted to be friendly, I thought. Maybe he was simply afraid. Maybe how he acted was the only way he knew.

  Unable to concentrate, I rose and went to my closet to pick out what I would wear tomorrow. Although I wouldn’t come right out and say it even to myself, I knew in my heart that I wanted to look special, more special than ever, if that was possible. I toyed with my hair and thought about my makeup. While I was at my vanity table, Jordan came to the door, tapped gently, and entered.

  “Donald called,” she said. “He’s coming home tomorrow. He said he was able to get everything done faster than he had first thought.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “Yes,” she said. She looked so hopeful and pleased.

  She really does love him, I thought. If only Kiera could speak to her the way a daughter should speak with her mother, she would get the best guidance regarding Richard. I would have had that sort of relationship with my mother, for sure. Also, I felt a little guilty knowing what was going on around that engagement ring with Jordan not knowing. It would be a shock to both her and her husband if Kiera showed up wearing the ring.

  Were they destined to be forever disappointed with her?

  If Jessica’s stories were true, were Ryder’s parents destined to be forever disappointed with their daughter, Summer?

  I’m back to my mother’s belief, I thought, back to the question about our futures.

  Did we have any control, after all?

  I wondered what Ryder Garfield thought. Did he feel helpless trying to influence and control his sister? Did he hate having to do it or hate more that he would not succeed?

  Jordan was great and wonderful to me. How could I ask for any more out of anyone right now?

  But how I missed my mother. Even homeless, sitting lost and desperate together on a beach, she would hear more than my words, my questions. She would hear my heart, and she would know, the way anyone’s mother would know, what was best for me.

  I had lost so much that night in the rain.

  It was not possible for anyone to tell which drops on my cheek were tears and which were raindrops.

  I couldn’t even tell myself.

  Only a mother could do that, and not having her or anyone else who could do it left me so alone.

  Jordan kissed me good night and went to sleep feeling hopeful.

  I went to sleep listening for the voice I would never hear again.

  But when I closed my eyes, I saw Ryder Garfield’s face when I had first approached him outside. He looked as if he was listening for the same voice, as desperately as I was.

  When he realizes that, I thought, he won’t be afraid of me.

  5

  Getting to Know You

  Gary says you were a homeless person,” I heard, and turned around in the hallway on my way to our first class. Ryder Garfield was walking right behind me. When I left homeroom, I didn’t look back, so I didn’t know he was that close. I glanced at him, saw nothing warm and friendly in his face, and kept walking. He drew closer until his lips were practically touching my earlobe. “I guess that life-in-the-street stuff was a little bit of an exaggeration, huh?”

  I stopped so quickly he almost walked into me.

  “Whoa,” he said. “Can’t you signal?”

  “Can’t you watch where you’re going?”

  “Well?” he said, stepping up beside me now. “What’s the living-in-the-streets story?”

  “Why should you care?”

  “I can’t help it. I have a built-in fantasy detector and have to attack them whenever I hear or see them.”

  I looked at him. He was so positive about me, so smug in his assumptions. “My mother and I were evicted from our home when my father deserted us. We couldn’t keep up the cost of a hotel and eventually ended up living in the streets and on the beach in Santa Monica. You can’t even begin to imagine how much I would rather you were right and it was all exaggerated. This is one time your built-in fantasy detector malfunctioned. Add it to your list of things wrong with yourself,” I added, and continued walking, but a little faster. This time, he didn’t catch up, but when we sat in the classroom, he looked at me instead of looking forward. He was staring at me so long that I finally said, “What?”

  “You don’t look like someone who lived on the streets.”

  “Oh, you would know? You really look at them?”

  “Enough to know you don’t.”

  “Well, I don’t live there now, and I haven’t for three years. I don’t have any visible scars from it, if that’s what you mean. The scars I carry are inside.”

  He nodded.

  “Nothing else nasty to say?”

  “I’ll think of something,” he replied, and then he gave me a real smile. I felt the rage dissipate in my body and laughed, but I turned serious quickly when the bell rang. I wasn’t going to be caught not paying attention in any class today, and especially not because of him again.

  As the class began, he looked somewhat more involved in the work as well and did take notes this time. When he was called on, he answered the question quickly. After the bell to end class rang, he didn’t jump up to rush out. He took his time, obviously waiting for me to get started, and then he joined me before anyone else could.

  “I’d like to hear about all that,” he said.

  “Hear about all what?”

  “Your life in the streets. What else? Certainly not chemistry.”

  “Why is it so important to you?”

  “Something tells me it’s head and shoulders over the droll garbage most of the other girls in this place would spew if I lent an ear to it. You know, Mark Antony’s speech in Julius Caesar: ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen. Lend me your ears.’ Only here it’s ‘I want to talk about myself and make myself sound so wonderful you’ll be grateful for five minutes of my attention.’ ”

  That made me laugh. He was so right on about that. “That’s not quite Shakespeare,” I said.

  “You get the drift. Well?”

  “I don’t like talking about that time in my my life.”

  “You don’t have to be ashamed with
me,” he said.

  I stopped walking and turned on him sharply. “I’m not ashamed. Even though we were very poor and these people here are very rich, they were never and are not now any better than me. I’m just not happy about bringing back some of the ugliest memories of my life.”

  He nodded. He didn’t say anything else for a moment, so I thought that was it. He was finished with me. He’d spin off and be gone. But he stood there, shrugged indifferently, and said, “Okay, when you’re ready to talk, I’m ready to listen.”

  “What makes you think I’d want you to listen or it would matter to me if you did?”

  He smiled confidently. My indignation caught fire again. I could feel my blood start to boil.

  “You don’t appear to be deaf, and you don’t look stupid,” I said. “So I guess it’s that, like everyone else here, you’re just used to getting what you want.”

  Before he could respond with any smart reply, I joined the Hassler twins, Vera and Mary. They were the sweetest, most unassuming girls in our class and without a doubt the most unattractive because of their unfortunate heavy hips and plain faces, with mouths a little too small and eyes too beady. They wore their hair too short, making their chubbiness more pronounced. Their parents were divorced, and they lived with their mother in what the girls here called a really middle-class house. From the disparaging way the other girls described it, someone would think they lived in a slum. The story was that their mother made their father pay the high tuition for Pacifica as part of her revenge. I supposed all that was why they were the shiest in our class and usually spent most of their time together. I tried to bring them into anything I could, but it never translated into other girls being friendly to them or inviting them to any parties or outings.

  Right now, I felt as if going to them was retreating to a safe haven. I was sure Ryder was surprised at how easily I could walk away from him. I couldn’t help but be a bit like Kiera and make Ryder work hard now for any friendly smile or soft words from me, but as it turned out, even the Hassler twins were fascinated with Ryder Garfield. It was becoming almost impossible to go anywhere in this school to get away from him.

  “We saw you talking to Ryder Garfield. He talks to you more than he talks to any other girl here,” Vera said, watching him walk away from us.

  “Most of the boys talk to Sasha more than the other girls,” Mary pointed out. She was the sharper and sterner of the two. “Do you like him?” she asked me.

  “I haven’t formed an opinion of him, but I can tell you that he’s not easy to like,” I said.

  “He would be easy for me,” Vera said.

  “Freddy Krueger would be easy for you,” Mary told her.

  “Shut up. He would not.”

  “Whether Ryder Garfield is easy or not, he’s not worth you two arguing about,” I said. “Did you get the paper done for Mr. Leshner’s class?”

  “It took us so long to find all those references,” Vera said.

  “Didn’t you use your computer?”

  “Mary said we shouldn’t. Mr. Leshner might not like that.”

  “He never said you couldn’t.”

  “She’s not telling you the truth. We couldn’t use our computer because there’s something wrong with our computer, and my father hasn’t sent anyone over to fix it, and my mother won’t spend the money. She says it’s his responsibility,” Mary revealed. Vera looked embarrassed.

  “Why don’t you tell your mother to have it fixed and send him the bill?” I asked.

  “That’s a good idea,” Vera said, but Mary shook her head.

  “He’ll procrastinate just to aggravate her, and all we’ll hear from our mother is why did we tell her to do that.”

  Vera looked at me, perhaps hoping I could come up with some other solution.

  “Then one of you call him yourself and complain.”

  “Yeah, right,” Mary said. “That always works with my father. He has what are known as very holy ears.”

  “Holy ears? What’s that?”

  “Ears with holes in them for requests he doesn’t like or care to fulfill,” she said. “It’s my mother’s description, but it fits.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  The more I talked with most of these girls in Pacifica and heard about their family lives, the more I wondered if any of them was ever any better off than I was.

  We entered the classroom.

  “I have a copy of Flicks magazines in my bag,” Vera told me in a whisper, and nodded at Ryder. “His father is on the cover.”

  “Vera,” I said, “unless he’s a fireman, he puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like your father. Stop thinking of him as anything more.”

  I left both her and Mary looking a little stunned and took my seat.

  “All right,” Ryder Garfield said before the class began. I looked up at him. “You’re right.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? For what?”

  “For being a nasty bastard,” he said.

  We stared at each other, and then I smiled. “Okay. Now that you have reached the point where you can admit it, you can join the NBA.”

  “The NBA? Basketball?”

  “No, Nasty Bastards Anonymous. It works the same way Alcoholics Anonymous works. The first meeting is today at lunch.”

  He laughed. “Are you in it, too?”

  “Sometimes. Especially around here,” I said. “It is like an addiction.”

  His smile widened. “I’ll be there,” he said.

  Damn you, Kiera, I thought, your techniques with boys really are infallible. Maybe I had taken on many of Kiera’s traits, I thought, but what of it? They weren’t bad so far and certainly weren’t bad for me, someone who had once been too shy and embarrassed to look at herself in a mirror.

  Later, when I walked outside with my lunch and stepped away from the girls, Jessica practically leaped out of her seat. “Where are you sitting?”

  I nodded at the table where Ryder was sitting alone.

  “Did he ask you to sit with him?”

  Everyone paused to hear my response. “Since he joined the NBA, I thought I would give him another chance,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  I laughed to myself as I headed for Ryder’s table. He looked up, and then, to my surprise and I’m sure that of just about the rest of the student body who were watching, he stood up before I sat. Won’t Kiera be interested in that? I thought. She thought Richard was the only proper gentleman.

  “Is that all you eat for lunch?” he asked me, nodding at my salad.

  “I could live on salad, cheese, and bread.”

  He sat and stared guiltily at his hamburger and fries. “My parents are neurotic when it comes to food, too.”

  “I’m far from neurotic, Ryder. I just think about what I eat. Why are your parents neurotic?”

  “Are you kidding? My mother claims the camera puts anywhere from five to ten pounds on her, and my father, although he pretends not to, thinks the same way. It’s not who you are and what you can do in this world. It’s what you look like. Don’t you know that?”

  I shrugged. “Not to me. I must be from another planet.”

  He nodded and began to eat his hamburger. “So, am I permitted to ask how you came to be living here and attending one of the most expensive private high schools in California, if not the whole country?”

  “Gary seems to have told you everything else. He didn’t tell you that?”

  “Maybe he thought I wasn’t interested enough.”

  “Maybe you led him to believe you weren’t.”

  “Maybe I wasn’t,” he replied sharply. “Maybe I am now, okay?”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you interested now?”

  He looked away. I could see the frustration in his face from the way his neck strained and tightened his cheeks and jaw.

  “I don’t want you to strain yourself thinking of a good answ
er, Ryder,” I said. “Forget it.”

  “You are a tough nut to crack,” he said, turning back to me.

  “You’re not exactly soft yogurt.”

  He laughed. “No, I guess I’m not.”

  He looked up, and then his eyes narrowed and the humor left his face. I saw that he was looking past me, and I turned to see his sister sitting between two boys. I kept eating and tried to ignore the new rage I could see building in his face.

  “So, tell me,” I said, “why are you interested in learning about me now?”

  “You want the truth?” he asked, sounding and looking so upset that I thought he was going to start shouting or something. But I wasn’t going to back down.

  “Yes, I’d like that for a change. It’s like taking a shower or a bath here.”

  “You’re the first girl I’ve met in a while who is at least vaguely interesting to me.”

  “Vaguely? Well, I guess that’s sort of a compliment,” I said. “Maybe that’s the best you can do.”

  “Maybe it is.”

  “Okay.” I shrugged. “Next time I see you, I’ll bring along a magnifying glass so I don’t miss anything nice.”

  He stared at me a moment and then he sat back, smiling and shaking his head. “What is your name?”

  “You don’t know my name?”

  “I heard our teachers call you Sasha, but what’s your whole name?”

  “Gary didn’t tell you that, either?”

  “I didn’t really feel like talking about you with Gary,” he admitted. “You show the slightest interest in someone, and the whole school has you practically married.”

  “Sasha Fawne Porter. What’s yours?”

  “Ryder Martin Garfield.”

  I put my fork down, wiped my hand with my napkin, and then extended it.