Flower(5)

I wince, glancing ahead at Sophie, hoping she’s out of earshot. Carlos may be comfortable talking about my sex life—or my lack thereof—in public, but me...not so much. “Not eternal,” I correct softly. “I’m just waiting until after college—at least.”

“So basically until the end of time?”

“Stop,” I say, shaking my head even as I grin despite myself.

“You’re some kind of saint, Charlotte Reed. And like I said, I love that about you, I do.”

We push out into the daylight through the heavy double doors, the midday sun blinking down bright and hot.

“But someday,” Carlos adds, lifting a hand to shield his eyes as we survey the front lawn, which is dotted with clusters of students sitting on the brown sunbaked grass or on the  faded blue benches.

“Someday what?”

“You’ll fall madly in love and I won’t be able to tear you away from some primo male specimen with abs like a Spartan god.”

“I think that’s your dream guy,” I shoot back, squeezing his arm. There is no dream guy fluttering around inside my head.

He winks down at me and pulls me across the lawn to our usual lunch spot. “You’ll see, my pure, uncorrupted Charlotte. One day you’ll meet someone who will turn your perfect world upside down.”





THREE

OUR TINY, SINGLE-LEVEL HOUSE ON Harper sits tucked back from the street between two towering and slowly dying palm trees. A rusted Buick rests up on blocks in the neighbor’s yard. A dog yips from behind a chain-link fence two houses up, and a siren screams down a side street. Yet a mere five blocks away, tourists converge on Sunset Boulevard; after snapping photos of gold stars sealed into the pavement, they ride tour buses to see the homes of rock stars and movie stars and reality stars up in the Hollywood Hills. So close, nearly tangible, yet a world away from the dilapidated, paint-peeling, sun-scorched neighborhood where I live.

The house is quiet when I step inside. I unwrap the bouquet of flowers over the kitchen sink, tearing away the clear cellophane and arranging them in a vase with lukewarm water. They’re even prettier here at home, the soft petals like a breath of springtime against the dingy yellow walls.

“Who gave you those?” My sister’s voice rises from the archway separating the kitchen from the living room. The house is a claustrophobic rectangle of three narrow bedrooms, a combination kitchen/living room and one impossibly tiny bathroom. When I shave my legs in the morning before school, I’m forced to stick one leg out through the shower curtain and prop my foot up on the edge of the sink for balance.

“No one,” I answer quickly, positioning the vase in the center of the kitchen table.

Baby Leo is balanced on Mia’s hip and his little fingers clutch the fabric of her white shirt, stained from some sort of baby goo. She moves across the linoleum, and I tickle his chin. “They’re nicer than the leftovers you usually bring home from the shop,” Mia says.

“They were a special order that no one ever picked up.” The lie slips out easily, surprising me. I never lie; I never have reason to. I wait for Mia to see through it, to grill me on why I’m bringing leftovers home before I’ve even gone to work for the day. But she’s fussing with Leo’s dandelion-fuzz hair, the roses already forgotten.

Mia lifts Leo away from her hip and his blue eyes turn to me, a gummy smile forming on his lips. I take him from her arms and watch as Mia runs her hands through her wavy hair, an exhausted motion, like she hasn’t had a moment all day without Leo in her arms. Her sunken eyes betray a lack of sleep, and for a moment I feel like I’m looking at my own reflection. Mia is two years older than me, and even though we don’t share the same father, we could almost be twins with our green eyes and caramel-colored hair.

“I don’t know why you still wear that thing,” she says, walking to the refrigerator.

“What?” I ask, bouncing Leo a little, smiling as he gives a gurgling laugh. Pressing my nose to his neck, I inhale his sweet baby scent—formula and talcum powder. At nearly eight months, he’s more active and playful than he was just a few months back—his hands reaching out to snag a strand of my hair, legs wriggling in delight. He’ll cry like a demon when he needs a nap, filling the house with his outraged wails; even Carlos has been known to preach the wisdom of abstinence whenever we babysit Leo. But even when I see how much having a baby has derailed my sister’s life, I can’t imagine our house without him. He is bright rosy cheeks and sticky fingers and giggles when he’s seated in his high chair eating breakfast. I adore him more than I can say.

“Mom’s ring.” Popping the lid on a Diet Coke, Mia nods down at my left hand where the turquoise ring has slid slightly off-center. My father gave it to our mom when they first started dating, and she gave it to me once I was old enough not to lose it.

“It reminds me of her,” I say, although that’s not the whole story, and Mia knows it. It’s a reminder of how she ended up—crashing into love again and again, the rest of her life burning in the rearview mirror—and how I want to be different.

“Hi, girls,” Grandma says, stepping through the front door with two grocery sacks balanced in her arms. She kisses the top of Leo’s head, earning a drooly grin. “There’s my little man. Lovely flowers, Charlotte,” she adds, stopping to breathe them in as she passes the table. I tense, braced for questions, but she’s moved to the counter, unpacking the contents of the green-and-white reusable bags with her usual efficiency.