American Girls(70)
I woke up a little but didn’t open my eyes.
“I know Mom owes you an apology, and I know the two things aren’t comparable, but”—she paused, trying to be careful, I guess—“did you ever apologize to her? It’s not that easy waiting on a couch all night for someone, even if you are furious at said person.”
I didn’t say anything and she started to hum again, but I couldn’t fall back asleep.
“I’m not trying to be a jerk,” she said.
“I know,” I whispered.
20
My sister claims that I fell asleep again, but all I remember is sitting on her couch one minute, and the next finding myself in her car with my bags packed, looking out the window as I said good-bye to her apartment, to the summer, to Los Angeles.
On the way to the airport, my phone twitched. A one-word text appeared from a number that I didn’t know: “THNX,” followed by a picture of a tiny pink rabbit waving a sparkling wand dancing next to the letters. I scrolled through my address book when it hit me. Paige Parker had written me back. I won’t lie, I’d hoped that it was Jeremy, but at the same time, those four stupid letters and bunny made me feel ridiculously okay. The universe seemed to be saying: Thumbs-up, Anna, you don’t suck all the time!
“Good news?” Delia asked, raising her eyebrow like it had to be from a guy.
I rolled my eyes back at her and then she parked and walked me through the airport all the way to security. Delia hugged me and then handed me off to an airline official whose name tag read “Michelle.” Michelle made small talk as she escorted me to my flight like a low-security prisoner. After I was safely buckled in my seat, she left to shuffle another kid from one place to the next. The walk from security to the gate had felt like a walk in a dream, slow and almost underwater. By the time I boarded, I was completely exhausted and yet too awake to sleep at the same time. The summer was really over.
I started my paper on the way home. The plane circled a wide arc around the city as it rose, the early evening’s pink glow warming the hills of Hollywood. Farther off, the occasionally broken darkness of the ocean loomed, and Los Angeles seemed like something perched on the edge of the earth, beautiful and always slightly in danger of being swallowed whole.
Somewhere, my sister was telling or not telling Dex the whole truth of what she’d done the night before, and Jeremy was sitting in a meeting asking for the serenity to face another day. The plane might even have flown over the jail where Leslie Van Houten was doing life, guilty as much as anything of choosing the wrong friends. There were beautiful homes full of boxes and dog shit, the kinds of things that didn’t make the gossip sites or glossy magazines.
Jeremy had texted me twice to wish me a safe trip home, but he hadn’t called and neither had I. Part of me was sad, the kind of sad you get at the end of a really beautiful and tragic book. Gatsby sad. My evening with Jeremy was one night and it was messy and perfect, and it was probably best just to leave it alone, to accept that anything that freakishly awesome should probably just be sealed in the amber of memory and left undisturbed. That was poor Jay Gatsby’s mistake—he had one great night with Daisy and tried to turn it into a whole lifetime. Then again, how could he not?
The lights in the cabin dimmed and I pulled down the shade of the window so that the woman next to me could sleep. She had on earphones and a face mask, and within minutes her head was tilted back taking in choked, openmouthed breaths. I put on my own earphones and read the second part of my assignment from Mr. Haygood: What’s so great about Los Angeles?
Probably because I am a professional procrastinator, I pulled out the magazine that someone had left behind. Right underneath “What NOT to Say to Make Him STAY,” in gummy pink letters, was “My Shopping Diet: Olivia Taylor Learns to Live Lean and Love It.” The article was a page and a half, about how hard it had been for her to stop shopping at first, and how many other things she’d started doing once she got used to it. Allegedly, she’d started writing “nice notes” to her friends every day. But the craziest part was that there were pictures of the inside of her house, and it looked like an actual house. Someone had cleaned it out before the photo shoot, or they had the most advanced computer in the universe erasing every bag from every corner and hallway. The picture featured Olivia, Mr. Peabody, and Iggy, and she looked like the kind of girl you’d want to be in the kind of house you’d like to own. I closed the magazine and put it back in the mesh pocket.
It was almost too easy to hate on Los Angeles. The city was a kind of apocalyptic tar pit, a freak show of broken hearts and half-fulfilled dreams, full of artists, liars, parasites, and roadkill, all of whom had just a touch of violence in their hearts. Even today, it was Manson territory without the Manson. But those hills and canyons were beautiful as well. Anyone could see how easy it was to write off the glitter, the fake boobs and hair, the way that the dumbest and worst seemed to rise to the top, that at the end of the day it was probably all just a big lie, but I still couldn’t do it myself. I may not have wanted to stay, but I sure liked to visit. Maybe Los Angeles was like Gatsby’s dream of Daisy, but for all of America. Instead of sitting on a pier and gazing at a green light across the water, now people just sat in their living rooms and watched the wide-screen, 3-D version of some life that was out there for the taking, if only they could get off the couch.