American Girls(67)

“I know.”

He took his phone out and messaged me a number that he said never changed, in case I needed to get ahold of him and his cell didn’t work anymore.

“Look me up next time you visit your sister. This is going to be my last season on Chips Ahoy! I haven’t told Josh, but I can’t do it anymore.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think I’m going to apply to colleges next year, see if I’m good at anything.” Then he smiled again and looked me dead in the eyes. “Or maybe I’ll just do more of this?” Then he leaned his body into mine and kissed me again.

If those were his future plans, they were fine by me.





19

Jeremy dropped me back at my sister’s house the next morning. I’d only stayed up all night once, when I was in summer camp, to watch the sun rise, but never with a boy and definitely not with Jeremy Taylor. He offered to drive me to the airport, but I needed to pack, to have a minute to sit and let the evening sink in, to make it real for myself before time or having to tell it to another person screwed up the moment, pushed it a little further away.

“If you change your mind about the ride,” he said, “just call.”

“I will,” I said, waving as I stood outside my sister’s apartment.

As he drove off, I tried to take a mental snapshot of the moment, the orange of the flowers blooming by my sister’s doorway, the electric hum underneath my skin. Dawn shaded the sky a dusty pink, the same color the sky had been when the cab dropped me off by the set the night before.

Day and night had no real meaning in Los Angeles. Where last night ended and today began was anyone’s guess. Morning was pinker and smelled fresher, but it didn’t really signal the start of anything. I imagined that could be as disorienting as it was wonderful, that in LA life always just seemed there for the taking, even as it was passing you by. Every week you looked up and there was another blonde with a gun on the billboard—another pair of green eyes staring into space, begging to be noticed, then disappearing as mysteriously as they had appeared. Another night meant another club opening. Another grisly murder. Another love story.

And then I went to unlock my sister’s door and realized that it was already ajar. My stomach dropped. Delia was careless, but not careless enough to leave a door open.

“Delia,” I said, trying not to sound scared. Then louder, “Delia?”

No answer.

I pushed the door open and stepped back. The inside of my sister’s apartment was trashed. Black-and-white photographs of what looked like naked bodies were on the floor. I still hadn’t seen my sister.

“Delia!”

Something moved.

“I’m calling the police,” I yelled, and tried to steady my hands to find my phone.

“Don’t,” a voice whispered. My sister’s voice.

“Delia! Are you okay? What happened?”

My sister was in the middle of her couch, cocooned in blankets and staring at the wall. She shifted, rubbed her eyes, and continued to look intently at absolutely nothing.

“You scared me to death,” I said. “You’re kind of scaring me now.”

She held an oversize cup of coffee between her knees, and she looked tired.

“What happened?” I asked. “That lady. Did she come back?”

“You could say that,” Delia said.

“Where’s Roger? Or Dex. Should I call Dex?”

“We broke up,” Delia said.

“Oh, crap. Did you tell him about Roger?”

My sister laughed, that laugh that crazy people do in the movies before they sink their teeth into the flesh of the living.

“Nope, not Roger.”

“Then why?” I asked.

“Look around,” my sister said. “Take a wild and crazy guess.”

By my feet was half of an eight-by-ten photograph that had been ripped in half. The part that I picked up showed the torso and bare thigh of a woman, wrapped around a man’s very unsexy, pale, and hairy torso. The thigh had a small cursive D tattooed in the center. My sister’s thigh. And the torso? Not Dex’s.

“What happened?” I asked.

My sister closed her eyes like the question itself gave her a headache. “Dex and I went to the wrap party. Then we went out. Then we came home and that crazy bitch had plastered my whole door with pictures.”

I felt scared and embarrassed for my sister.

She kept her eyes closed while she talked. “I would say that it took about two minutes for Dex to go from really worried to really, really pissed. We had an extra-super-shitty fight. Things were said, pictures were ripped, glasses were thrown.” She gestured around her apartment as she talked, like she was directing the scene. “And now he’s gone.”

“You need to call the cops,” I said. “She’s dangerous.”

“I’m going to move,” Delia said. “I’ll change my number. I called her * husband, again, and he’s changed his number, so it’s in the air. She’s already wrecked my life, the ten percent that Roger didn’t get. That’s what she wanted.”

I shook my head back and forth the whole time she talked. “That’s not enough, Delia. What if she’s violent?”