American Girls(3)

Dramatic, my sister. But at least she makes money for it.

“And don’t change the subject. You could have gotten nabbed by some pervert. Mom was scared to death. Oh yeah, roll your eyes and make me another mean, mean grown-up, but you’re lucky you got here. What if I had been on location somewhere?”

“I’m fifteen, it’s not like I’m twelve.”

“And it’s not like you’re forty-two, either. People are disgusting, or have you forgotten?”

“How could I?”

My sister put on music and I checked to see what she was playing: Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here. Lonesome music that seemed like it could only belong on the West Coast. My sister only thinks music is good if it’s a thousand years old. I sent her some music by the band that Doon and I love best, Freekmonkee, and she told me that it sounded like bad Nirvana covers, which proves she didn’t even listen to it. They’re British but just relocated to LA. Doon had a shrine on her computer for the lead singer, Karl Marx, and I was mildly obsessed with the guitarist, Leo Spark. When I first got on the plane, I actually checked first class to see if any members of Freekmonkee were on board, but no luck.

My sister and mom always thought that something awful was going to happen to me—they acted like the only option for running away was winding up in pieces in some stranger’s freezer. My family was clearly the place where optimism went to die. What about the hope that something amazing might happen? Half the time I wondered if they weren’t wishing for the worst, then they could turn me into a sad story they told their friends instead of having to deal with me as an actual life-form who shared their DNA.

“What if the taxi driver had been a serial killer?” I said. “What if terrorists hijacked the plane? I did get here. I’m fine. I’d like to know how long it took her to notice I was gone.”

“You laugh, but stranger things have happened. Did you know they found a severed head in Griffith Park last week? I jog there, or at least I did. And as to your second question, not long.” My sister sipped the grass-shake. “Lynette’s credit card company called a few hours afterward about a suspicious charge.”

Lynette’s bank called. I’ll bet they did. Before my mom decided she was a lesbian, I thought lesbians were all these really nice, earthy, crunchy, let’s smother you with our twenty extra pounds of lady love and fight the power people. But Lynette wasn’t like that at all. She was thin and smart and mean, and probably slept with her cell phone to get bank alerts like that.

“So it’s really their money they’re worried about,” I said.

“That’s not what I said at all. That’s how they found out. Are you depressed or something?”

I didn’t shake my head either way. I hadn’t really thought about it.

“I’m not taking sides on this one. Cora’s clearly lost her mind and I regret that you’re living the crazy, but you can’t just steal people’s credit cards. You can’t. Okay?” She ran her finger inside the glass to get the last of the sludge while I reopened the refrigerator door to see if anything with refined flour or sugar had materialized. No luck.

But it wasn’t really theft. It wasn’t.

One thing I didn’t tell my sister, and I wouldn’t tell my mom or dad, or anyone, really, because it’s the kind of thing that just makes you look sad when you’re supposed to be having a good time, but when I charged the ticket I imagined that when I got on the plane I’d try to order a wine, or see if they’d upgrade me to first class, or at least spend some money on the snacks they make you pay for. Traveling with parents meant sad dried fruit and chewy popcorn in Ziploc bags. I was going to have Pringles! I thought it would be my reward for talking my way through security, but the crazy thing was that after I flashed my passport (stamped once from a horrible weekend “getting to know” Lynette in the Bahamas), they let me through security like a fifteen-year-old traveling alone was the most normal thing in the world. Maybe it was, but I’d never done it. They didn’t even find the mini can of mace attached to my key chain. By the time I got on the plane, I felt even more invisible than I had at home, and I munched my sad peanuts like there were no other options. I had become the human equivalent of one of those balloons we used to send into the air with our name and address on the string in the hope that someone might mail it back, but no one ever did.

Maybe my sister was onto something, and I was depressed. A normal person would have at least bought an in-flight snack box. The thought did cross my mind that once I landed in LA, I could take a taxi to Disneyland, or hightail it to the Hollywood sign, or get one of those maps of the stars’ houses and maybe even become the youngest member of the paparazzi and get accidentally famous for my pictures in a straight-to-Pay-Per-View-movie kind of way. I thought those were optimistic ideas, but maybe they were really depressing.

When we landed, my sister was waiting right outside the gate, inside security, plastered to her cell phone.

“Yes,” she’d said. “She’s here. I see her now. She looks fine. I know. Okay. Love you too.”

“What are you doing here?” I thought about hugging Delia, but her hands were crossed over her chest and she didn’t make a move in that direction.

“What am I doing here? Have you completely lost your mind?”

“No.”