Chapter 3
I lie in bed for hours that night, thinking about Luke being here, which spirals into thinking about the show and Dad, and
then into doing calculations on my phone about how much money I need to save to even dream of going out of state for college.
Mom and I have already submitted my FAFSA form, but we won’t have any idea what sort of aid I’ll get—if any—for a while. I
google Pell Grants, poke around the Sallie Mae website, and research work-study jobs. The amount of information is overwhelming.
I spend twenty minutes watching “day in the life” videos of people in their early twenties hustling to repay their student
loans and try to imagine doing this myself. At two a.m., I fill out an online job application for an early-morning shift at
Java Hut, which is bikeable from our house. It won’t be pleasant come January, and neither will juggling three-ish jobs on
top of senior year, between babysitting and picking up shifts for Mom, but what other choice do I have?
It’s past three a.m. when I finally fall asleep.
The next day, school is . . . fine. As I suspected, people are talking about the movie and about Luke. But even though I’m
exhausted, I feel better. I always do in the daylight.
Realistically, there is no way I’m going to casually bump into Luke.
He’s not going to be running around town, looking for his old friend CeCe.
I doubt he even remembers I moved to Glenridge, let alone the state of Connecticut.
The crew will probably go out of their way to keep Luke sequestered in his trailer when filming anywhere public, and then he’ll spend whatever free time he has in New York.
That’s what I would do if I were him, anyway.
It’s Friday, so Evie comes home with me after school. We head straight for the den. Thisbe follows us in, wagging her tail
and nudging the backs of Evie’s legs for attention.
We throw ourselves down on either side of the sectional.
“Ah,” Evie says, like she just took a refreshing sip of something cold. “There we go.”
Mom bought the couch off Craigslist for, like, twenty bucks when we first moved here. She said it was just “temporary,” because
it’s so ugly and so brown, but Nicky and I agreed we’d stage a coup if she ever got rid of it. It’s the most comfortable piece
of furniture I’ve ever sat on. The seats are deep and springy, and it’s big enough for four or five people to lie on comfortably.
Evie and I have spent a good portion of our lives here, snuggled up under blankets, reading or watching movies.
Evie loves the big blockbusters, the hits, the spectacles.
I do, too, but I also love the arthouse movies, the sleeper indie hits, the quirkier the better.
I’ve gotten super into Samantha Briscoe, an actor-director whose directorial debut was done entirely in shades of pink.
The costumes, the sets, the color grading on the film itself.
She even hired a musician with synesthesia to compose a “pink score.” The story was both tender and funny, as was the acting.
“What do you want to watch?” I ask as her phone pings.
“I don’t care; you choose,” Evie says. She’s frowning now, texting furiously.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“No. I mean, yes. My parents are still on my case about going to this stupid fucking Reiki festival in Arizona over winter
break.”
I laugh. Both sets of Evie’s grandparents moved from Korea when Evie’s parents were little, and they had a very specific idea
about what they wanted their children to do. Evie’s dad is a doctor, and her mom is a lawyer who commutes to New York three
days a week.
Both Jun-woo and Janet have told me they didn’t want Evie to feel pressured to follow in their footsteps, so they’re always
trying to get her to experiment with the creative arts, usually against her will. She’s taken stained glass workshops, dance
seminars, watercolor lessons, slam poetry classes—if it exists, Evie’s tried it.
“Okay, I think my no was emphatic enough this time,” she says, putting her phone away. “Sorry. I’m ready.”
I click over to purchased movies and press play on Paddington 2. I’m happy when Evie doesn’t object. It’s the perfect movie: it’s cozy, it’s fun, and it’s a beautiful piece of art. I could write a term paper about the beauty of Paddington 2’s art direction.
Halfway through the movie, I’m sort of dozing when Mom comes in to let us know she’s heading to Stamford for a date with Todd.
“You girls have any plans tonight?” she asks.
I motion lazily at the TV with the remote.
“Take an eye break after the fifth hour,” she says. “Do a puzzle or a crossword to keep your brains from melting.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say. “We will.”
A half hour later, my phone buzzes.
Dad flashes on my screen. I pause the movie and stand up. “It’s my dad,” I tell Evie. “I’ll be right back.”
I take the stairs two at a time and answer the call once I’ve reached my bedroom.
“Dad?”
“Gus!” he says, using my silly childhood nickname. I can hear the whiz of traffic in the background. I try to imagine where
he might be—maybe West Hollywood, where we used to live in a bungalow covered with pink bougainvillea. Or maybe Encino, where
he got an apartment after Mom, Nicky, and I left. “Glad I caught you. Been a minute. I wanted to check in on my girl. How
are you?”
“I’m okay,” I say. “How are you?”
“Oh, you know, same old. Just went to get new headshots taken. The rates these days are criminal.”
“You going on auditions again?”
“Sure am.” He laughs. “Not that anyone wants a washed-up, middle-aged schmuck like me. My golden years are behind me.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and say nothing. I know he doesn’t intend for the unspoken words to be because I gave up my dream so you could chase yours, but that’s what I hear anyway.
“Well,” he says, “I didn’t call just to complain about how saggy my jowls look on my self-tapes. You know who called out of
the blue and asked for your number? Elaine Wierkowski. Has she reached out to you?”
“Elaine? No. Did she say what it was about?”
Elaine was Luke’s old manager. She was wonderful, her manner warm and soft like that of a favorite grandparent. If Dad hadn’t
stopped acting to become my manager, I would have loved to work with her. But it’s my understanding that Luke has had a whole
new team for years. I have no idea why she’d be calling.
“She didn’t. She just wanted an updated contact for you.” He pauses. “You looking to get back in the biz?”
“God, no,” I say.
There’s a long pause. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that so harshly.
“Right, well, don’t let me keep you. I was just curious,” he says. “But hey, what do you think about coming out to visit soon?
I’d love to have you. Nicky, too, if he wanted to come.”
“That would be great,” I say, although we both know it won’t happen until our next conversation and he asks again. It’s a dance we do every time we talk.
“Don’t be a stranger, Gus. Love you.”
“Love you, too,” I say.
“How’d that go?” Evie asks when I come back into the den.
Evie knows the general outline of my relationship with my dad but nowhere near the whole of it. She knows my parents’ divorce
was bad enough that Mom got full custody and that he’s only visited us once in Connecticut, an unmitigated disaster that didn’t
bear repeating. It was two years ago, and of the three of us, I was the only one who agreed to see him. Nicky was furious
at me for weeks that I “caved.”
I can tell it kills her not to know the full story. It was the biggest fight of our friendship when I didn’t let her meet
him.
“Fine. He asked me to come visit. As usual.”
“Do you think you will?”
“No, probably not.” I grab the remote. “Sorry, I don’t really want to get into it. Can we just watch the movie?”
“Okay, sure.” Evie says it gently, kindly, which annoys me even more.
We finish the movie and agree to take a break for take-out ramen before watching anything else. Sometimes Evie and I can get
into movie marathons or Netflix wormholes for ten straight hours. In the winter, sometimes days.
We go back into the den after we eat and put on Hocus Pocus, which Evie and I like to watch at least twice in the lead-up to Halloween, with a bowl of popcorn and M&M’S.
Ten minutes in, Evie’s phone buzzes. She looks at her screen and sits up so fast she startles Thisbe, who rolls off the couch with a grunt.
“Oh my God,” she says.
I push up to my elbows. Whenever anyone responds like that to a text message, I always worry it’s terrible news. “What? What
is it?”
“Eddie just texted me.” Her thumbs fly as she texts him back. “Lucas Cordova is at Chelsea Adler’s party.” She jumps up from
the couch. “We have to go. Now.”
The worry transforms into something cold and snakelike, slithering through my veins.
“No. I’m not going.”
“What?” Evie cries. “Of course we’re going. We have to go!”
I shake my head. “It doesn’t make any sense. Why would Luke—Lucas Cordova go to a random high school party?”
Evie stares at me like I’m missing half my brain. “Um, because he’s our age and he himself is in high school?”
“He’s a year older than us. And he’s not like us, Evie. He probably had a private tutor and never set foot on a high school
campus.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” she says, although I absolutely do. “Come on. We can be ready in fifteen if we hustle.”
“Chelsea doesn’t like me.”
She hasn’t since Ben Wilson and I kissed this summer when they were broken up.
It was nice, more than nice, and Ben and I texted for about two weeks after.
But then Evie said Chelsea was hell-bent on trying to get back together with him, so I pulled back on responding as much as I had been.
I still feel a twinge of disappointment when I think about it, but at the time, it didn’t feel worth creating more of an enemy in Chelsea Adler.
“She can’t still be mad at you. Your thing with Ben was in, what, June? They’ve gotten back together and broken up again since.”
They broke up a little more than a month ago, but I don’t want to admit to Evie that I’ve been paying attention. “I’m pretty
sure they’re still hooking up.”
“Whatever. I’m telling you, it’s water under the bridge!” She grabs my hand and pulls me up from the couch. “I’m calling best
friendship on this one. I want to see Lucas Cordova, and you’re coming with me. It’s final.”
Maybe Evie’s right. Maybe we should go. If he is there (which I still don’t believe), maybe it would give me a chance to do some damage control. If he even remembers
this is the town I moved to.