Carry Me Home (11 page)

S
unny stayed in Nevada to deal with securing custody of her brothers. She and Mimsy decided it was better for no one to know the situation while the Feds built a case against Hoss and Delilah. Sunny texts friends back in California sometimes, that way no one worries or suspects too much. People are used to her running wild, doing her own thing. She’s so busy I’ve barely heard from her in a month. All I can do is hope that when she eventually returns to Santa Cruz, we move forward together.

I keep Sunny’s secret even when I run into Talia at the Westside Farmers’ Market and can’t say what’s going on, or ask too many questions on whether they’ve talked. Instead I use the chance to make peace. I’ve been doing that a lot these days.

And finally I make a call.

“Ford?” He never got in touch. Not sure how to take that. The dude never uses the phone, so it could be a blow off or just him being himself.

“Green, you cocksucker. How the hell are you?”

“I’ve left a few messages.”

“I know, I know, man. Hey, I’m in LA.”

“I heard. Your girl told me.”

“Yeah, cool. She and the kid are moving down here with me. I’ve found us a sweet pad in Santa Monica right near the beach.”

“A new place? I think I can help you get settled.”

“Help? What, you’re going to buy me a houseplant or pot holders? Get all Martha Stewart and shit?”

“No, man. The prize money. From the competition.”

He goes quiet. “What about it?”

“I want you to have it.”

“What?” He laughs. “Why?”

“It’s yours. You should have won the comp—would have won if I hadn’t—”

“Dude. Shut the fuck up.”

“Ford—”

He keeps on laughing. “You won that day fair and square. I was the dumbass.”

“I should never have egged you on.”

“That’s what we do though. That’s you and me.”

“You have a daughter now. I want you to be able to provide for her.”

“Me too, man. And I am. Turns out busting a few bones was the best thing that ever happened to me. You know how I’m always messing around with a camera, right?”

“Right.” I respond cautiously. Ford always records everyone, edits short films, and posts them on YouTube.

“A buddy of mine hooked me up with an extreme-sports video show on this new online site. The pay’s good, and the gig’s got a real chance to turn into regular work.”

“That’s awesome, man. Congratulations.”

“Thanks. For real. The fact you’d call and offer to help me like that? I’m not taking it, but you’re a stand-up guy, Green.”

We chat a few more minutes, and after we say our good-byes, I hang up and take a second. If Ford’s providing for his young family, that frees me up to use that money to help the one I’m building.

That’s what I consider Sunny, her brothers and Mimsy—family. The boys are going to require extensive therapy, and that won’t be cheap. They’ve also inspired me to think about my own future. Instead of going back on tour, I’m talking to a community foundation about establishing a skateboard camp for at-risk youth. This is a way I can use my success for something good. I like to help others, but more important, help others get the tools to help themselves.

I drive over to their place to finish my construction project. I’m fixing the dingy spare bedroom to be a place suited for the boys. I’m putting the finishing touches on their bunk bed, even made the ladder from old skateboard decks.

My phone goes off again and the ringtone plays “Heartbeats” by José González, Sunny’s song. I set down the hammer. “Hey you.”

“Green.” I hear the smile in her voice. It’s funny. The girl who never wanted to be tied down has signed up for the biggest responsibility of her life, and she seems happy, truly happy. “I have two surprises.”

“Okay. Go.”

“First, I mailed my portfolio to an agent in New York. She loves it and is working to pair me up with an author to do a picture book.”

“That’s amazing.”

She lets out a little shriek. “Can you believe I might get paid to do art?”

I grin. “I am so proud of you.”

“Ready for the second surprise?”

“What can top that?”

She giggles. “Go to the window.”

“What?”

“Do it! Walk to the window.”

My heart picks up speed. I cross the room and tug back the curtain. Sunny’s face is pressed against the glass. Her nose is squished. Her eyes are crossed. I’m out the door before my next breath, scooping her into my arms and twirling her around. “You’re here.” I can’t believe it.

“Yeah. Mimsy stopped at the beach to show the boys the ocean.”

“Are they talking more?” I ask concernedly.

“A little bit, but Gauge especially is still withdrawn. Their social worker says it’s normal after suffering emotional trauma.” She sets her jaw, but not from stress. That look is pure Sunny determination. “Their nightmares have subsided though, and Colt’s physical outbursts are tapering off. It will take time, but they are moving in the right direction.” She glances at the skate ramp over my shoulder, filling half the backyard, and her eyes widen. “Wow. You built that?”

“Think the boys will like it? I want them to have a place that feels like home.”

“Thank you.” She looks at me with shining eyes, a pure brilliant blue, like a sky without a touch of clouds. “Thank you for everything.”

“Happy is a good look on you,” I murmur, kissing her forehead.

She touches my cheek. “Want to know a secret?”

“Okay.”

“It’s about you,” she says with a mischievous smile.

“Now I’m doubly curious.”

She lifts her finger and crooks it twice, beckoning me closer, then rises on her toes, setting her lips against my ear. “This is my home.” She presses a hand over my heart. “Right inside here.”

I cover her heart in kind. “And this is mine.”

“Everywhere I go I carry you with me,” she whispers.

“Same.” Her heartbeat is strong against my palm, vital, just like the rest of her.

“Fair warning. I might have a little competition. Mimsy loves you too. She thinks you walk on clouds.”

I bury my face in the top of her head. The unruly red waves tickle my cheek. “What about you? What do you think?”

Her arms lock around my shoulders. “I’d rather have you down here, next to me.”

“Thought you liked me better on the side?” I tease.

“Never. You’re front and center.” Her beautiful mouth curls into a seductive smile. “But I might take you on top later.”

I bend and give her a soft kiss. “I’m counting on it.”

Lia Riley writes offbeat New Adult and Contemporary Adult romance. After studying at the University of Montana–Missoula, she scoured the world armed only with a backpack, overconfidence, and a terrible sense of direction. She counts shooting vodka with a Ukrainian mechanic in Antarctica, sipping yerba maté with gauchos in Chile, and swilling Fourex with station hands in outback Australia among her accomplishments.

A British literature fanatic at heart, Lia considers Mr. Darcy and Edward Rochester her fictional boyfriends. Her very patient husband doesn’t mind. Much. When not torturing heroes (because, c’mon, who doesn’t love a good tortured hero?), Lia herds unruly chickens, camps, beachcombs, daydreams about future books, wades through a mile-high TBR pile, and schemes yet another trip. Right now Icelandic hot springs and Scottish castles sound mighty fine.

She and her family live mostly in Northern California.

Visit the Off the Map series Tumblr page: OfftheMapLiaRiley.tumblr.com

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I
breathe on my bedroom window and smear a spy hole in the condensation. Not much going on this morning. A lone crow dips over California bungalow roofs while in the distance Monterey Bay is shrouded in mist. I’m a Santa Cruz girl to the bone, love that fog like it’s a childhood blanket.

The downstairs phone rings and Dad turns off NPR. He’s a sucker for
Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!
Once I get on the plane this afternoon, the only noise in the house will be that frigging radio. Guilt grabs me with two cold fists, right in the gut. I should be plopped beside him on the couch, trying to kid around, but I’m not even sure he wants my company.

My sister, Pippa, would know what to do. She was the expert in easy affection. She’d blow through the kitchen on a Friday night, swig a sip of Dad’s beer, sling an arm around his neck, and torture him with wet cheek kisses. I’ve never been a hugger. My role was easy, the joke-cracking sidekick. But there’s no work for a sidekick without a hero. These days, if I wander into a room, Dad’s gaze automatically slides to the empty space beside me. Somehow, despite everything, I’m the ghost child. I don’t want to haunt him, so I keep to my room.

My
room
.

Not ours. No one’s slept in the other bed in a year and a half. My sister’s one-eyed sock monkey, Seymour, reclines in the middle of her calico pillowcase, wearing an evil expression.
I know your secrets
, he seems to say.
What you keep hidden.
I give the monkey the finger and instantly feel worse.

Seymour and I go way back. To those days after Pippa died and my room was a safe place to shatter. He saw me research phantom medical symptoms until four in the morning, curl beneath my bed wrapped in the comforter so Dad never heard me weep, watched as I knelt in the dormer window seat and counted cars, closing my eyes if I ever spotted a red one because red was bad.

It meant blood.

Death.

Seymour the Sock Monkey knows me for who I am.

The leftover daughter.

“Sorry, Pippa,” I mutter. Like my sister gives two shits about my relationship with her fucking stuffed animal. If she can see me from wherever she is, and that’s highly suspect, I’ve given her far greater cause for displeasure.

Seymour’s frayed mouth seems to sneer. We’re in agreement on that point.

There’s a knock on the bedroom door. “Hang on a sec!” I slip on my T-shirt and tighten the bath towel around my waist. My computer is open on the desk. WebMD calls my name, softly seductive, like Maleficent to Princess Aurora. In this case, I’m not offered a spinning wheel spindle but reassurance that I’m not going to die. Dr. Halloway urged me to block access to any health-related sites, but in the shower, the freckle on my right foot looked bigger. Bob Marley died from a melanoma on his toe, so I’m not 100 percent mentally unhinged—more like 85 percent on a bad day.

Despite my best efforts, I can’t stop obsessing over what-ifs. What if I have early-stage skin cancer? What if this headache is a tumor? My mind is a bowl of water that I compulsively stir. I want my brain to be still and serene, but for the love of Sweet Baby Jesus, I can’t quit agitating it.

There’s another knock. More insistent.

“Seriously, I’m changing.”

“Your mother’s called to say good-bye,” Dad says through the door. His voice is tense, pleading, like he holds something unpleasant, an old man’s jockstrap, rather than the phone.

I turn the knob and stick my hand out to grab the receiver. “Thanks.” I take my time putting it to my ear, humming the soundtrack to
Jaws
under my breath. “Hey, Mom.”

“Alooooha.” Wow, a perfect extension on the long
o
followed by a short, sharp
ha
. She’s been practicing.

I mime a silent gag. “What’s up?”

“Your cell went to voice mail.” She doesn’t like calling the landline. “You know I prefer not to talk to him.”

I push up my glasses and roll my eyes. “Such an inconvenience.” By
him
she means my dad, Scott Stolfi, the man she was married to for twenty-two years. She can’t even say, “May I speak to Talia,” without turning it into a thing. He was her high school sweetheart. They had one of those classic love stories, rich girl meets working-class boy. Now, a two-second conversation with the guy yanks her chain.

“You don’t understand.”

“And you say we never agree on anything.” I bend and struggle with the zip to my overstuffed suitcase.

I bet two coconuts that Mom’s sprawled by the infinity pool on the cliffside deck overlooking the Pacific. She’s been holed up on my grandparents’ estate on Kauai’s north shore since she bailed last year. After they took Pippa off life support, Mom locked herself in the guest room for two days while Dad tackled an endless series of home repairs. When she finally emerged, he was mending the backyard fence. “You can’t fix everything!” she’d screamed. Next thing we knew, she’d bought a one-way ticket to Hawaii. In lieu of a cheesy postcard, she sent Dad divorce papers from the law offices of William C. Kaleolani, Esq.

“Australia is just so far away. You’ve always talked about doing the Peace Corps one day, but to know you’re all grown up…” Her gusty sigh is dramatic. This phone call is her pretending to care, a big show, part of the game she still plays called “Being a Mom.” In all fairness, I shouldn’t snark, because guess who’s bankrolling my trip down under? As much as I hate to ask her for anything, I need this escape.

Mom comes from old Carmel money earned when my great-great-grandfather decimated two-thousand-year-old redwood groves. Environmental pillage made him filthy rich, but the money lost its stink over time, transformed into sustainable energy start-ups and progressive philanthropic causes.

I doubt the stumps rotting in the forest care.

“Has Logan’s cookbook arrived?” Mom dials up the rainbow cheer. She’s got to be grinding out that forced smile, the one that makes her teeth look like they’re breaking. “His tour starts next week, LA and San Francisco. You could have joined us at the Esalen Institute.”

The idea of soaking naked in a hippie retreat spa with Logan, Mom’s hump buddy/Hawaiian spirit animal, is the stuff of nightmares. To date, I’ve successfully avoided an encounter with the Wunderchimp. In her photographs, he sports a mean chest ’fro. He’s a personal macrobiotic chef to the stars and wannabe guru. His book,
Eating from Within
, recently released and she mailed me a personal signed copy like I give a one-eyed donkey.

I jam the phone between my ear and shoulder to shimmy into my skinny jeans. “What about the breatharian section? Like, was he serious about gulping air for sustenance?”

“The detoxifying effects are incredible.”

Whatever. I’ll wager my own enlightenment that she’s dying for one of Dad’s famous cheeseburgers.

“I’ve lost five pounds since we got involved.” There is a faint noise on the other end of the line, suspiciously like a wine bottle uncorking.

Hawaii is three hours behind.

Please don’t let her be drinking before noon.

“Hey, um, are you—”

“Sunny put a new photo of you on Facebook.” Mom’s a ninja at deflection as well as a social media junkie. She posts daily emo statuses about self-discovery alongside whimsical shots of waterfalls, out-of-focus sunsets, and dolphins. “Are those new shorts? I swear your thighs come straight from your father’s side.” She makes it sound like my genes sport cankles and triple chins, but she’s got a point. I did sprout from Dad’s southern Italian roots: Mediterranean curves, brown eyes, and olive skin.

I slip on my shoes, turn sideways in the mirror, and pooch my stomach. “Had a physical last week with Dr. Halloway. Still well within normal range.”

“Aren’t they stretching those numbers to make big girls feel better?”

Mom is a size 2. To her, everyone is a big girl.

Pippa was Mom’s doppelganger. They shared hummingbird-boned bodies and perpetually surprised blue eyes. I shove away the quick-fire anguish, slam my lids shut, and count to ten. The number nine feels wrong, so I do it once more for good measure.

“Talia? I need a little advice.” Mom hushes to a “just us girls” level.

“What?” She’s going to bash me and then get all buddy-buddy? Who replaced my real mother with this selfish hag?

“Male advice.”

“Um, wait, you’re joking, right?” This is above my pay grade.

“I just read online how pineapple juice improves semen flavor. Any tips for how to raise the subject with Logan?”

I open my mouth in a silent scream.

“He claims he doesn’t enjoy the fruit. But what about me? My needs? He tastes like—”

“Enough.” I flop beside my bed, grab a skullcap, shove it on, and yank the brim tight over my eyes in a futile attempt to hide. “You have got to be—”

“I come from a land down under, where women glow and men plunder.” Sunny bursts into my room in a whirlwind of sandalwood essential oil and peasant skirts. Beth follows behind wearing the same hand-painted silk sheath gracing the cover of the latest Anthropologie catalogue.

“Hey, I gotta jam. Beth and Sunny arrived to say good-bye.”
My mom
, I mouth, pretending to stab the receiver.

They roll their eyes.

“
A hui hou
, Ladybug. Australia waits. Discover your bliss.” When Mom gets philosophical, her voice takes on a theatrically British accent for no reason.

“Bye, Mom.” I toss the phone on my dresser and fake a seizure.

“Sounds like Mrs. S was in fine form.” Sunny tugs off my cap.

Beth’s jaw slackens. “OMG, Talia, what did you do to your hair?” She runs her fingers through her own dark flat-ironed locks as if trying to reassure herself of their continued flawlessness.

I skim my hand over the top of my head. “Box dye. Sunflower blond. You hate it, don’t you?”

“You’ll be easy to find in the dark.” Sunny waggles her eyebrows in pervy innuendo. Nothing fazes this girl. I could tattoo a third eye on my forehead and she’d chat about opening root chakras. That’s why I love her.

Beth halfway sits before realizing my bed’s buried beneath an avalanche of travel guides, bikinis, underwear, power adaptors, and multicolored Australian currency. She never touches Pippa’s bed. They were best friends. Beth had been riding shotgun in her Prius when the tweaker ran a stop sign and plowed through the driver’s side door. She never talks about that day. Neither of us do. We’ve been too deeply hurt.

For a long time after the accident we remained optimistic. Pippa’s brain showed limited signs of activity, but eventually, hope devoured the heart of my family until nothing remained but ashes and bone. Dad finds solace in warm beer and cold pizza and my mom in baby men. Me? I’m still digging out of the wreckage.

“Earth to Talia.” Sunny presses a matcha green tea latte into my hand with a wink. “We picked up your favorite swamp water.”

“Hey, thanks.” I fake a sip, not having the heart to reveal I cut off caffeine and the accompanying hamster-wheel jitters. It’s part of the Talia reboot. Talia 1.0 is outdated and it’s time for a new model. Talia 2.0 isn’t an anxious freak and is more than Pippa’s tragic sister. She didn’t lose her virginity to Tanner, her dead sister’s long-term boyfriend after the BBQ held to commemorate the one-year anniversary of her passing, and she doesn’t count precisely ninety-nine Cheerios into her bowl at breakfast to feel “right.” And she certainly isn’t going to focus on the fact that she’s not graduating in six months—a secret that no one, not her parents or even her best friends, knows.

Old Talia may have royally screwed her GPA. New Talia is focused strictly on the future. A shiny tomorrow. A new-car-smelling do-over.

These girls are everything to me, but they don’t have a clue how far I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole. I’m already one big sad story. Do I really want to be like
Hey, how about my freaky compulsions?

Pretending to be a normal, functioning member of society is exhausting stuff.

“You’re wearing that on the plane?” Beth inventories my jeans, purple Chuck Taylors, and Pippa’s favorite tee.

“What?” I glance at the red-stenciled words crossing my chest—
HOLDEN CAULFIELD IS MY HOMEBOY.

“There’s no way you’re getting upgraded,” Beth says.

“It’s a full flight. Besides, I needed to…” A shrug is my best explanation. The night before Pippa was removed from life support, I pinky-swore my beautiful, brain-dead sister that I’d live enough life for two. This shirt helps remind me of my promise.

Fortunately, Sunny is the resident expert in deciphering vague Talia gestures. “You want to be close to Pippa. I get it.” She toys with her feather hair extension and shoots Beth a “let it go” death stare.

“There’s an X Games competition in the city next weekend, so Tanner’s back in town.” Beth’s tone is controlled, far too even to be natural. “Did he stop by?” She gazes at me like an implacable jury forewoman, about to pronounce a verdict of guilt.

“Nope.”

The ensuing silence makes me want to curl into a catatonic ball and stare as dust motes filter through the air.

I don’t mention watching Tanner land heel kicks and pop shuvits while walking past Derby Skate Park last night. Or how he stared right through me. He’d been in love with Pippa since she was twelve. She and I had been walking home from Mission Hill Middle School when a classmate cornered the two of us on Bay Street with rape threats. Tanner spotted the encounter from the front stoop of his trailer, marched over, and clocked the kid over the head with his skateboard. When Pippa told Mom what happened, she took Tanner out to Marianne’s Ice Cream parlor for sundaes. By ninth grade, he and Pippa were going steady and that was that, until the year anniversary of my sister’s death.

Tanner will never forgive either of us for the night we got trashed, and then naked, under the Santa Cruz Wharf. I’m sure he guilty-conscience confessed the whole sordid story to Beth, but she never called me on it, a form of punishment in itself.

“What’s up, girls?” Dad appears in the hall dressed in well-worn board shorts and a ratty surf competition T-shirt. He looks more like a beach bum than a coastal geologist.