Pasadena Read online

  “What’s wrong with just love?” I asked.

  Maggie snorted. “God, you sound like a virgin. Seriously.” She shook her head.

  I tucked my knees back beneath my chin. Maggie looked at me over the rims of her starlet sunglasses. “Seriously?” she repeated. “You’re a virgin?”

  I shrugged, embarrassed, but I didn’t answer. She laughed, which hurt, but then she clapped me on the shoulder, which didn’t. “What’s that like?” she asked, as if she’d never been a virgin, a born Venus, unable to relate.

  I pulled my legs closer and sniffed at her.

  She laughed again and hugged me. “Don’t let the bastards touch you,” she said. “You’re too good for them.”

  It was my turn to laugh, a tightly held little snort. I wanted to hug her back.

  I slap my hand against the wall and come awake, sweating. My phone is ringing, buzzing from my backpack. Someone is knocking on my door.

  “Honey? Are you in there?”

  I ignore the door and grab the phone. It goes to voice mail as I slide it open.

  A text appears. Joey is parked outside. “Shit.” I comb my hair out of my face and wipe my sweat onto my pillow.

  It’s not dark yet, but a breeze has picked up. I feel it filtering through my window. My room is small at the best of times, enough space for a twin bed, a closet, and a dresser that doubles as a desk. In summertime, the bed is like a coffin and the window seems to shrink down to a pinhole, for all the air it lets in.

  I get up, change into jeans and a new top. I grab a hoodie and open the door.

  “Hi, Mom,” I say. “Gotta run.”

  She blinks at me with the same eyes I see in the mirror every day. Daddy might be long gone, but there’s no hiding who my mother is.

  “Oh. So soon?” she asks. “I thought Roy and I could take you to dinner.” She reaches a hand out to touch my shoulder. “You know, talk.” Her voice is soft with velvet empathy. God, how I hate that tone.

  “Can’t,” I say. “Joey’s here. We’re having a wake.”

  “A wake? Oh . . . well, then we’ll go with you. You know I loved Maggie like a daughter.”

  I smile. As her real daughter, I know exactly what that’s worth. Way too little, far too late.

  “Honey, that face looks ghastly. But you’re grieving.” My mother criticizes and reverses with economic speed. “Come on, I’ll take you and maybe Roy can join us.”

  Her hand is on my shoulder like a small, persistent hug. I shake my head. “Joey’s already here. Kids only.”

  My mother sighs like she’s just finished the dishes and I’m piling more into the sink. She lets go of my shoulder. “All right, then. Do you need money?”

  Before I can answer, she’s dug into her purse and is peeling off bills. She shoves two twenties at me, then adds another, the way some parents might add a kiss on the forehead—firmly pressed and dry against the skin. I flee through the front door, barely registering the empty sofa or the fallen can drained of beer.

  “Let’s go,” I say, but Joey’s a good getaway man. He’s already starting the car. I pull the door closed behind me.

  His eyes flick off the road for a second. “Everything all right?” I shrug and burrow into my seat. Joey looks at me. “Jude?”

  “What?”

  He turns his attention back toward the road. Here it comes, the unsaid question. The chance to explain myself. If only I could. But Joey skips the heart of the problem and goes for the jugular instead.

  “Maggie said your mom’s boyfriend is a dick. That’s why you and I . . . why we . . . That’s why you went back east this summer.” He stumbles over the politics of us. The same line we’d been stumbling over since the spring. “If he’s still being a dick, I want to know.”

  My stomach takes a dive. I laugh and shake my head. Seven lousy weeks and Maggie couldn’t keep her mouth shut. I want to tell Joey to fuck off. Ask about us, sure, about what went wrong. But this Roy crap is none of his business. If Maggie meant to protect me, she should’ve stuck around, not blabbed about it.

  How much did she tell him? Enough for him to worry about me. But is it also enough for him to understand me too?

  I let go of the breath I’ve been holding. Poor Joey. I’m angry at Maggie, but she’s gone, and he’s right here. Hurting him won’t punish her.

  “It’s fine,” I say, and I hear my voice crack. I clear my throat and buckle my seat belt. It is fine, truth be told. I lock my door when I’m here, and stay away when I can. Given my mom’s track record with men, I’ll outlast Roy no problem. No problem at all.

  “Just drive, please.” My voice is solid again.

  Joey drives, but he’s got one eye on me, taking it all in. I feel naked and I don’t like it, so I put on my sunglasses and crank his iPod up as loud as it will go.

  4

  The restaurant of choice is a small Mediterranean place in one of those squat brick storefronts on Colorado Boulevard. Swathed in pricey chain boutiques and chock-full of tourists from LA proper.

  Joey parks with the valet. I stand there, shivering from the chill of a sudden easterly wind. The tops of the San Gabriel Mountains are growing angry with clouds. It’ll pass. Just like the rest of it.

  We go inside. Dane and Tallulah are sitting in a back room at a round table for eight. Tallulah waves us over. She and Dane are the closest things to parents in the motley family of friends gathering tonight. They’ve been dating since freshman year. I’d vote them most likely to be married before college. After that, maybe most likely to split. Higher education isn’t for the faint of heart or for those who fall in love too young.

  Still, they’re stable right now, when it counts. Tally probably made the reservation for this thing. She’s the sort to even call in and up the count by one to fit me.

  Half the seats are still empty. No-shows? I wonder. Or kids who think dinner parties and wakes are the sort of things you cruise by on the way to better plans? It’s still summer after all. The dead can wait forever.

  “You’re here,” Tallulah says, holding her hands out to me. Her charm bracelets slide down her thin wrists with a cymbal-like clash, bruising the tops of my fingers. She squeezes tight and pulls me in for a double-cheeked kiss and another meaningful squeeze. Tallulah’s got pale, perfect skin and brown eyes like hot-fudge sundaes—warm and sweet, with an ice-cold center. She hugs Joey and steers us toward two empty seats.

  Tallulah is funeral-ready. She’s already wearing black—all black hose and a matching miniskirt peering out from the hem of a man’s pin-striped blazer, sleeves artfully rolled up to give her bracelets free rein. Dane wears black jeans and a black button-down shirt. All business, but he still looks casual. I feel underdressed. But then the rest of the group trickles in and we’re all just as patched together as ever.

  Hank and Eppie arrive in what can only be described as hippie surfer chic—woven Guatemalan pullovers with kangaroo pouches across the front, cutoff jeans, and flip-flops. Hank’s got highlights in his blond shag. Eppie’s hair is buzzed a short, spiky black. Her peeling manicure matches in length and color. She plops down next to me, smelling of limes, salt, and beer.

  “Hey, sweets,” she says, and gives me a hair ruffle of sympathy. And then Edina Rodriguez wafts in like a whiff of cheap perfume.

  Edina was Maggie’s other best friend. Maggie used to joke that she’d never seen the two of us in the same room together because we were the same person. Truth is, we can’t stand each other. Maggie loved me, told me her secrets. Edina wanted in but never got it.

  She shoots daggers at me from across the table and I see her eyes are red—from pot or crying. When she sees me looking, she smiles and tosses her dark brown hair. She’s wearing a short choker strand of pearls, and she makes sure I see them. Those were Maggie’s pearls, part of her polished-debutante collection—Maggie dressed like a Barbie doll, never
in clothes, always in costumes. What Edina is doing with them on her thick little neck, I couldn’t guess, but if Maggie shared her pearls, she might have also shared something else. Like the name of the boy in her bed.

  I stare Edina down and she blinks first. She looks away, clutching at the necklace, and begins to cry in silent, shuddering tears. I let her. Dane offers her his napkin and leans over to kiss her forehead. Lucky for me, contestant number eight has arrived.

  Luke Liu, aka Lukey Loo, pulls up the last chair. Luke is one of those not-quite-first-generation Chinese kids who pointedly avoids all things Chinese, including other people. The fact that he ran in a circle with any other Asians at all would be a mystery if the Asian in question hadn’t been Maggie.

  Luke has been in love with Maggie since the first grade, when he came to the States and still spoke mostly Chinese. Maggie didn’t speak Mandarin, of course, but she apparently spoke “little boy” back then just as well as she spoke “grown man” later. He was wrapped around her finger in an instant. Luke lost his accent for Maggie. And gained his nickname from ogling her as they grew up.

  The kid had foresight. Maggie was worth ogling, as it turned out. I couldn’t help but wonder if, the night she died, Lukey Loo was watching her too.

  “Pictures. Full-sized freaking photographs,” Maggie said over the phone one night. I was sprawled on my bed writing a term paper on Virginia Woolf. She was in her pool house sipping champagne and burning cigarettes.

  “Like black-and-white?” I asked. “Surveillance should always be in grainy black-and-white.”

  “Black-and-white, full-color, freaking infrared—you name it. He’d give me the creeps if he wasn’t so harmless. I think of him as rape prevention. If anything ever goes wrong on a date, Luke’s got his eye out for me.”

  I could hear her flipping through the portfolio of photographs Luke had accidentally left behind in the band room. He’d been mooning over it all day, so naturally Maggie had gotten curious. And light-fingered.

  “Jesus,” she said. “He’s my psychotic little guardian angel.” She inhaled and sighed. “Doesn’t make me look half bad either.”

  Lukey Loo smiles at me from across the table. Fate or irony has placed him next to Edina. I nod and he drops the smile, as if only just remembering someone has died. Then I see why. Joey has dragged another chair over and is trying to wedge it in between his seat and Tallulah’s.

  I scootch over to make way for it.

  A disinterested busboy dresses the table with an extra setting. Joey nods at him and places the knife and fork in an X over the empty plate. He returns to his own chair, warming the space beside me. The new seat stays empty and cold as the void.

  “Way to sober up a room, Joey,” Dane says resentfully. I give Dane a once-over while the busboy returns with ice water all around.

  Joey raises his glass, cubes already melting. “To Maggie.”

  The glasses rise and fall like a broken concertina. Tallulah’s comes up last, regret clear on her face that the toast hadn’t been her idea. Joey tips his glass against Maggie’s empty one. He’s just shown more class than any of us.

  Under the table, I scratch his leg affectionately. He nods and grabs my hand in a brief grip.

  We sit, the eight of us, swaddled in the moment, each grieving in our own way. And I can feel it, that sinking undertow, like being swallowed whole.

  So I shatter the mood.

  “Anybody know who Maggie fucked the night she died?”

  Edina inhales her water and coughs it out explosively. Hank and Eppie burst out laughing. Luke has turned pale and is looking anywhere but at me. Dane has another sip of water, cool as a breeze. Tallulah bangs the table with her fist, her charm bracelets making a racket that turns heads at other tables.

  “That—” she says. And the waiter arrives.

  “Do you need more time?” he asks in that chirpy superior/subservient tone only actors can perfect. I smile up at him. We all need more time, especially Maggie. “Just a touch,” I say.

  “I could order,” Hank offers.

  “Lamb shank,” Joey says.

  You don’t have to try hard to imagine what dinners are like at Hank’s or Joey’s house. Don’t let a little drama hold you up—a boy’s got to eat.

  The rest of the table places their orders either in embarrassed mumbles or deep, meditational sighs.

  “Just water,” I say. I’m hungrier for an answer than anything on the menu just yet.

  The waiter scowls at me—can’t expect a tip on a glass of water—and leaves. My leg is shaking under the table, pumping an invisible gas pedal, driving me on. One of these sycophants might know who killed Maggie.

  I survey the table and smile. “Well?”

  Silence and the clink of distant forks reply.

  “Did I embarrass someone? Was it one of you? I won’t tell. Just . . .” I wave my hand in the air. “Close your eyes and raise your thumbs.” Like a game of Seven Up. No one would need to know but me. And maybe the cops.

  “Jesus, you are one crazy jealous bitch,” Tally says. I raise an eyebrow and direct my gaze toward Dane.

  “Takes one . . . ,” I counter. She exhales in frustration.

  “Dudes,” Eppie says. “We’re all hurting here. Can’t we just, you know, toast our friend and let it be?”

  “Sure, Eppie.” I nod. “My bad. Everyone”—I raise my water glass in salute—“pretend I’m drunk. Now, carry on.”

  I slouch back into my seat and everyone does carry on for a moment or two. The edge of tension is blunted. I shrug back into my hoodie and lower my eyelids to half-mast. Maybe I should apologize. This wake is for Maggie, after all. We’re all here for Maggie.

  I start to speak.

  “She had just told me she’d gotten into Brown,” Edina says suddenly. My breath hitches and I raise an eyebrow. Everyone knew Maggie wanted to go to Brown more than anything. But I thought I was the only one who knew she’d applied early. I guess Maggie didn’t tell me all her secrets. Clearly, she’d been spreading them around.

  “Really?” Eppie says. “Awesome surf in Rhode Island. I would have visited her.”

  “Yeah.” Edina beams, sounding pleased to have had the scoop on something for once. She looks to me for corroboration. I give her a Mona Lisa smile and turn my head before looking away.

  My napkin twists in my hands. Maggie’s dreams had been just over the horizon. Whoever took them from her is going to pay.

  “Anyone know when the funeral is?” Luke asks. I imagine he’ll want to have his cameras all cleaned and ready by then.

  “Thursday,” Joey says.

  “Do you guys remember when Maggie said she was too pretty to be buried and wanted a glass coffin like Snow White?” Luke continues. “Do you think they’ll do that?”

  “She killed herself,” Tally snaps. “You don’t have open caskets for suicides.”

  I glare laser beams. “It wasn’t suicide.”

  Tally all but sticks her tongue out at me, daring me to make another scene.

  “Either way, she drowned facedown in a swimming pool,” Hank says. Joey and I don’t bother to correct him. He shakes his head. “Closed casket for sure.”

  “Oh,” Luke says, and falls silent again, his dream photo op gone.

  “How’s Parker taking it? I’d hate to be him right now,” Hank says.

  “No kidding,” Luke adds. “Like it’s not hard enough being the only son.” Luke’s in the same boat as Parker, with one sister in tow. Only, in Luke’s case, he’s also the oldest, which must come with some privileges. Like more free time for stalking.

  “Parker’s holding up,” Joey says noncommittally.

  I haven’t seen him myself, but knowing how the Kims baby him, Parker’s probably right as rain.

  “Why did you say that?” Edina asks me. I debate ignoring her, but she as
ks again. “Why don’t you think it was a suicide?”

  “Because I know Maggie,” I say slowly, to make myself clear. “She wouldn’t do that.”

  Edina frowns. “And you think she had sex with somebody? Why? Did the cops find something?”

  I shrug. I haven’t spoken to the cops. They might have found a yeti for all I know.

  I sit up. “Call it intuition.” And an unmade bed. “Hey, you were best buds, right, Eddie?” I say, using Maggie’s nickname for her. My eyes fall on the pearl necklace—a gift Maggie would have never bestowed willingly. “Don’t you know?”

  Edina unconsciously fingers her pearls, no point to make this time. She looks pained. So I guess she didn’t know either. She glances up and her eyes confirm it.

  Joey puts a warning hand on my leg, like a dad trying to keep a little kid from running into the street.

  The waiter shows up just then with a busboy and a tray full of dinner. While the rest of them stare at their food, I sigh and look around the room again.

  Tallulah is sulking with her wrists folded across her chest, bracelets forming a protective shield. Dane idly plays with her hair, sipping on his water like it’s scotch. He smacks his lips and gives me a wolf’s smile. I give him the finger. He smiles even wider.

  Maggie always laughed at Dane’s signature bad-boy look. But I’ve never been one for male entitlement, so I take a different approach.

  “Hey, Dane, how’s the gonorrhea?”

  He frowns and looks away.

  Tallulah pulls back from him. “You son of a bitch. You told?”

  I try not to laugh, but a smile makes it to the surface anyway. Rumors make good arrows. Sometimes they strike true.

  “Have you heard?” Maggie leaned into me, breathless with news.

  It was after school in March, the beginning of the end of our junior year. I was sitting on the hill overlooking the campus parking lot, watching the kids lucky enough to have cars head home. I was carless and carefree in the midst of a homework picnic, textbooks and notebooks arrayed around me, when Maggie appeared and plopped down, crushing my geometry homework.