“It also happens when you’re concentrating hard. Or sometimes when I kissed you.…”
My heart lurched in my throat. Why was he suddenly talking to me like this? I looked around, waiting for Betsy Brill to show up and link her arm around his. It was the first time I had seen them apart since they started dating, officially that is.
“What were you humming?”
I didn’t know which song it was, the one from my playlist or the one in my head, so I shrugged. “It’s just something Annie gave me. I don’t know what it’s called.”
“You’re becoming such a rocker chick.” He leaned against the water fountain and stared me up and down. With his short, close-cropped politician hair and his steady, unwavering expression, he almost seemed like a stranger, not the boy I had spent the last two years obsessing about.
“I don’t know about that.” I ran my hands along the outer,
gauzy layer of my new sundress. I had paired it with a faded denim jacket, one of the few items from my old wardrobe I could salvage. I had swapped out my usual flip-flops for a pair of silver ballet flats. “Can I have it back?” I asked, motioning to the cord Derek had wrapped around his finger.
“What’s the rush? Betsy’s at cheer practice,” he said, as if that was the only reason I felt uncomfortable. “Look, I really need to talk to you, Ollie.”
His voice got soft, the way it did after a fight or when we were fooling around, and I felt something inside me soften too. I was just about to respond when my heart started beating a million times per minute. It had nothing to do with Derek or Betsy or whatever it was he needed to say. It was Nick. And the fact that his beat-up old Jag was pulling up the school driveway. There was no mistaking the car, or Nick, as he got out.
“I have to go, okay?” I quickly unraveled the earbud from Derek’s finger. I had never spoken to him like that, so dismissively, but I suddenly felt that I had no choice.
I looked back over my shoulder only once as I cut across the grass toward Nick. Derek was still standing where I left him, watching me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked when I reached Nick’s car.
“Is this a bad time? I can go if you’re busy.” He reached for the door.
“No, stay,” I said, with less edge this time. “I’m just surprised to see you.”
“Good surprised I hope?” He looked at me with his clear, gray eyes. They were even brighter under the sunlight. I realized this was the first time we had seen each other during the day.
“Yes, a great surprise,” I said, getting used to the fact that he was really here, that he wasn’t just a figment of my imagination.
“Seeing as I don’t have your number and
someone
never texted me, I had no choice but to ambush you.”
My face flushed. It had been three days since I’d seen him. I’d been dying to call and had pulled up his number at least a dozen times before chickening out because I didn’t want to seem desperate. I knew where desperation could lead, and it wasn’t to a good place. “Wow, I’ve never had a stalker before.”
“I find that hard to believe.” I bit my lip as his gaze shifted toward the water fountain. It took everything in my willpower not to turn around.
“Here you are.” Annie came huffing over with all her bags hanging off her small frame. “I thought we were meeting by the lockers.”
“Need a hand?” Nick said.
“No, I’m good.” Annie snapped her head around at the sound of his accent. “Wait, are you Nick?”
That was Annie. Miss Subtle. I waited for that tiny ball of nerves to form in my stomach like it did every time she and Derek interacted, but it didn’t. I wasn’t nervous about what Nick thought about her, or the other way around.
“Indeed I am,” he said.
“This is Annie. She’s my best friend,” I said. “Also known as the Bag Lady.”
“Camera equipment,” Annie explained, tilting her head toward the bags weighing her down.
“Ah, another photographer,” Nick said, extending his hand. “Very pleased to meet you.”
“I’m not going to need a lift,” I said, quickly changing the subject. I wasn’t even sure Annie picked up on Nick’s comment, but I hadn’t told her about taking the camera yet.
“Yeah, I figured,” she said, eyeing the Jaguar. “Nice ride.”
“It gets the job done.” Nick walked around and opened the passenger door. “Shall we?”
We said goodbye to Annie and I climbed into the car. She gave me a big thumbs up when Nick’s back was turned. She also mouthed something along the lines of “he’s hot” but I pretended not to notice. We could have a debriefing session later, when Nick wasn’t three feet away.
“It just occurred to me that you’re the one who should be driving,” Nick said as he turned the key in the ignition. “This is your territory, after all. Switch?”
I caught a quick glimpse of Derek through the side mirror. He was still by the water fountain where I had left him. Betsy was now with him, dressed in her cheerleading uniform. Only he wasn’t paying any attention to her, or the fact that she was trying to kiss him. He was too busy staring straight ahead at Nick’s car. At me. The back of my head began to throb. “No, you drive.”
“So, who is he?” Nick said when we were a few blocks from school. We hadn’t yet spoken, aside from my telling him which way to go from the pick-up/drop-off lane.
“Who?” I asked, even though I knew exactly who he meant.
“The one who’s got you all rattled.”
My heart sank. Was it that obvious? Derek had already ruined my life once. He was better left buried in the rubble of my past, no matter what he wanted to tell me. “Nobody important.”
“IT’S A LOVELY
neighborhood,” Nick said. We had been driving aimlessly for the last twenty minutes and were just coming up on Vista Boulevard. “Must be a nice place to grow up.”
“You can’t be serious.” I threw Nick a sideways glance. And it wasn’t because he used the word “lovely.” With his accent, he could pull off words like that without sounding pompous—or like my mom. It was that judging by the places he gravitated to—sketchy Hollywood streets, Skid Row, burnt-out deserts—Vista Valley hardly seemed like it would rate high on his list of favorite destinations. But then again, I knew he’d already been here before. I just didn’t know why.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he said as we headed down the town’s main drag. “It seems to have everything. Green spaces, well-maintained homes, and even a quaint main street. It’s picture-perfect. Like a postcard.”
“You forgot boring,” I said, gesturing to the whitewashed arches and shops lining the street, all in the same Spanish mission, colonnade style. “And fake.”
“How so?” he asked, looking up. He seemed to really be interested. I still didn’t know where Nick lived except that it was on the west side of the city. I assumed it was someplace fancy based on his car and his accent, his gold watch, and how comfortable he seemed in that crowd at Disney Hall, eating caviar like he had it every day. And then there was the whole boarding school thing. Wasn’t that for rich kids?
“I don’t know. Everyone here’s the same. They all look the same, act the same, and go to the same school. Then they grow up, get married, and start the same cycle all over again. Vista Valley’s like quicksand that traps you and pulls you under.”
We stopped at a crosswalk in front of Maggiano’s to let a group of freshmen girls I recognized from school pass. The girls looked like a younger version of the Ponytail Clones, as if they appeared simply to prove my point. “Nobody ever thinks or talks about the stuff that really matters. They just care about how things look on the surface.”
“But you’re from here so it can’t be all bad.” The way he said it took my breath away. If I weren’t already seated, I was sure my knees would have given out on me. “And you don’t look or act like anyone I’ve ever met.”
You didn’t know me before
, I thought, but I held back, careful not to reveal too much of my past. That was one of the reasons I felt so comfortable with him. He didn’t know anything about me except for the limited amount he’d experienced for himself. I could decide who I was as I went along—and he’d accept it.
With the big block letters of the Maggiano’s sign looming so close, my mind flashed to Derek. The more I thought about
what happened by the water fountain, the more uneasy I felt. It was something I hadn’t felt in a while, but something I easily recognized: it was the feeling I got whenever there was something wrong with Derek. I’d detected a sadness in his voice and it stayed with me. I couldn’t help but feel bad for him, despite everything that had happened. Looking down the rest of the block, at all the places I couldn’t separate from my life with Derek, the feeling only intensified. It barely mattered that Nick was sitting right next to me.
Once the road was clear, I leaned over and yanked hard on the wheel. “Make a right here.”
“Whoa. What was that?”
“That was me taking control,” I said. Now that we were no longer driving down Vista, I felt I could relax again.
As we rounded the bend up Del Canto Canyon, Nick threw me a look and smiled. “Are you sure you don’t want to drive? You seem to be on a mission.”
The patchy brown hills peaked in the distance, a stark contrast to the lush gardens that surrounded us. We were just three short blocks away from Hyacinth Circle, where my old life had come to an end.
“Sure,” I finally said as the new lyrics and melody took over, like his voice, whoever he was, was guiding me. What did I have to lose anyway? “I’ll drive.”
Del Canto was one of the few roads in the neighborhood that didn’t have any sidewalks. Nick drove up a little further until we came to a clearing wide enough to pull over. Without exchanging a word, we unbuckled our seat belts, got out of the
car, and switched places. Stretching my legs out to the pedals, I slid the seat forward until my right foot rested comfortably on the brake (or was it the gas pedal? How quickly I forgot), leaving a slight bend in my leg. Next, I adjusted the mirrors so that I could see in all directions and placed my hands in the ten and two positions on the wheel. That’s what Bob, my driver’s ed instructor, had taught me was the ideal placement. In many ways, this felt like my first time driving. I was taking all the precautions I hadn’t the last time I got behind the wheel.
“Have you driven a stick before?” Nick asked.
“It’s how I learned,” I said, trying to find the clutch with my foot. “But not since I got my license, and that was almost two years ago.”
“It’s just like riding a bike. And besides, what’s a few more dents in this puppy,” he said, smacking the dashboard with a chuckle.
I was too nervous to laugh. Of all the adventurous things I’d done recently, this felt like the most daring. “I can’t even remember how to put it in first,” I said, fumbling around the gear shift.
“You can do it,” he said, softer this time, like he knew what had happened, why I was afraid. Had he also crashed his car? Is that why he understood so well? Is that why he could calm me in a way no one else could, with the sound of his voice alone? He took hold of my hand and gently guided it to the right place. “I’m right here with you.”
I focused on his voice as I attempted to shift out of neutral. The car stalled on the first couple of tries, but with Nick’s
encouragement, I didn’t give up. Pretty soon, we were moving, even if it was only at fifteen miles an hour.
“There you go,” Nick said. “You’re doing great.”
Picking up speed, I shifted into third and kept climbing up Del Canto until it snaked back down on the far side of the golf course.
The golf course.
I knew Nick had been here before. The question was how many times? And why wasn’t he showing any hint of recognition? I followed the road until we reached an intersection. Going straight would take us back to Vista. Turning left led to Hyacinth Circle. And the entrance to the club was down the road on the right.
There was only one real choice. I turned right onto Flores Drive.
“Where does this go?” Nick asked.
I also knew that he had driven down this same street before, because it was the only way to get to the course parking lot. “The Vista Valley Country Club.”
“Sounds impressive. Are you a member?”
I tried to detect some clue in his voice, but it remained calm and even. “Yes…well my family is.”
“How about a tour?”
Was this really why he came to see me? So that he could find his way back to the club? It suddenly occurred to me that maybe I had gotten it all wrong and that Nick wasn’t some royal aristocrat. His gold watch was broken after all, and his car, despite its luxury brand, was all banged up, one dent away from the
junkyard. Maybe he only had access to country clubs and fancy benefits by sneaking in. The reason he appeared to belong anywhere, in any crowd, was that he didn’t care what anyone else thought of him. Still, none of that explained why he had been here before or why he wanted to come back.
“Sure,” I said, pulling up to the front gates.
The main clubhouse was empty. It was only four o’clock, before most members got off work. No one would be here except for the diehards who left the office early, or the rich diehards, as my dad called them, who didn’t work at all and spent all day on the course. I knew what my dad meant, but now that I thought about it, it seemed like a pointless distinction because everyone who could afford to be a member here was rich—some were just richer than others. In fact pretty much everyone I knew had money, except for some of the teachers at school, or Lydia, who cleaned our house on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It was like a prerequisite for living in Vista Valley. There weren’t any poor people, and certainly no one was homeless. I always thought it was because we took care of our own so that no one went hungry, but I was beginning to realize how naive I’d been to think that. There weren’t any homeless in Vista Valley because they weren’t welcome here.
“This is where the locker rooms, dining room, and snack bar are,” I said as we walked down the corridor. I sounded like one of those ladies who worked in membership. I’d see them giving a tour sometimes when I used to come after school with Derek to “do homework,” which always translated into going behind the cabanas to fool around. “The pool’s out there,” I
said, pointing toward some double doors. “And the course is on the other side.” But Nick already knew that.