Chapter 2 #2
I’d tell him he was wrong. But he wasn’t. He rarely was about me.
“If we both go”—I pause to clear my throat—“who will feed Diana?”
Max’s lips pucker. She’s unconvinced.
“Next time, right?” Junie says. He knows how this goes too.
Whenever the staff invites me out, I always say next time.
Next time I’ll go bowling. Next time I’ll come to the beach. Next time I’ll be there.
The truth is, I won’t. Letting new people in is dangerous. It’s the allure of a glowing fire that’ll burn when you get too close. A cold, empty darkness when that flame finally dies out.
That’s how it felt after London. How it always feels.
“Next time,” I whisper as Max, Junie, and Tonia walk out the door.
After another thirty minutes, I leave too. Not before cleaning the restrooms again. Angela thanks me with a large box of leftover pizza.
I take my time walking to the bus stop.
It’s long after sunset. State Street Promenade stretches like an artery through downtown Santa Barbara.
Ten blocks of Spanish Revival architecture.
Red clay tile roofs and ornate wrought iron and stucco walls white as teeth.
At this hour, everything is warm and gold, like light poured through a honeycomb.
My favorite time of day.
One by one, shops are closing. Sugar and salt hang heavy on the breeze.
From the mouths of an Irish pub and a British one just across the street, people stumble drunkenly onto the sidewalks, their bellies full, laughter echoing.
Sharp spices from Max’s favorite Indian kitchen gather in my nose, heating the back of my throat.
I smile fondly.
This is the city I grew up with. Tucked between the shadows of the Santa Ynez Mountains and the sleepy Pacific. I’m at home among the insomniacs and stay-up-until-sunrise types. I never feel strange. Or out of place.
Here, being invisible is easy. There’s too much to look at. No one notices the boy going through the motions.
Holding on by the barest thread.
The night exhales noises from every direction. I listen closely.
Since I was little, I’ve loved to hum. Pull random tunes from thin air.
By the time I turned thirteen, my dad decided to enroll me in piano lessons.
I took them for a year, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as when I’d sit down to write lyrics to the songs in my head.
There was something about a blank page that drew my attention more than learning scales or memorizing chords or playing “Heart and Soul.”
I can still kind of read sheet music, identify basic notes, but I prefer to turn the constant looping melodies I hear in my head into my own songs.
At least, I used to.
I’d only ever share my lyrics with four people: my parents, Max, and London.
You should major in music, London would say with tender enthusiasm.
Now I squeeze my fingers into a fist. I silence the tune circling my brain before it becomes a tide of more memories I don’t want to face.
On my left, the door of a gelato shop swings open. A boy emerges. He’s backlit by the shop’s amber light. For a second, I think it’s London. Tall and wiry.
But when the boy steps onto the sidewalk, streetlamps illuminating him, I realize it’s not London.
This boy is dressed in all black, head to toe, instead of in a navy hoodie with loose board shorts and slides with socks.
His tar-black hair falls gracelessly over his brow instead of in beachy waves swept off his face.
He’s pasty white, unlike London, whose skin always drank in the sun.
It’s not him. It never will be again.
I was just imagining it. Just like everyone thinks I imagined Cary in the alley. How could he have gotten there that fast? And what was he doing? Did he try to help Hal or just watch him die?
“You okay, man?”
I flinch at the not-London boy’s question.
“Y-yeah,” I stammer. “I’m good.”
His plain brown eyes roam over me. “Do I know you?” He looks a year or two older than me. Did he go to my high school? Does he know what happened?
“No,” I whisper.
Before he can say anything else, I jog away.
On the bus, I pop in my earbuds. My head leans against the cool window as my phone loads up Netflix. I do my best to lose myself in a paranormal comedy series.
Did my grief make me see Cary in the alley, the same way I see London everywhere too?
“Fuck,” I mutter.
An elderly woman in front of me jerks around to squint, annoyed.
I half apologize with a thin smile.
Max and I share a third-floor apartment.
It used to be her sister Vivienne’s. Since most of its students are local, SB State doesn’t have any on-campus living restrictions for freshmen.
Max’s parents had no issues with her moving into the two-bedroom that’s not far from campus. I can’t say the same for mine.
High school wasn’t the only echo chamber I was desperate to escape after graduation. It was my house too.
Memories were embedded into the rooms and halls. A tomb of moments spent with London that ate at me daily.
But I couldn’t tell my parents that. They were fine.
They didn’t remember the lemon-bright mug in our cupboard London used to slurp coffee from.
That the designer sunglasses on the living room bookcase were his.
Or his favorite hoodie still hanging in my closet.
His lip balm on my bathroom sink. The subtle scent of honey and chocolate that lingers in my room.
They didn’t sleep in the bed where we kissed and talked and planned.
Their world was changed but continued to spin. Mine was shattered, broken pieces cutting into me every day.
The minute Max asked me to move in with her, I collected what I needed. Left the rest in a house that didn’t quite feel like mine anymore.
Inside our apartment, I reheat the leftover pizza. Diana’s nowhere in sight. Still, I leave an open tin of wet cat food for her.
When I walk into my bedroom, I leave the lights off. A secondhand mattress sits on the floor. No frame or headboard. I found it online. Max complained endlessly while helping me carry it up three flights of stairs.
Silvery beams pour through my half-cracked blinds. The walls are bare. No Polaroids of trips to the beach. No notebooks filled with my lyrics, mostly about him, cover the floor. No extra pair of sandals next to my sneakers. The room smells more of dust and emptiness than anything else.
There’s not a single trace of August from Before.
I’m halfway through my second slice of pizza when a familiar head nudges my door open. Diana slinks inside. In the slices of moonlight, her black fur shimmers. She’s an American shorthair, a rescue. Max decided we needed her a week after moving in.
Under Diana’s big, expressive gold eyes is a patch of white fur. It’s shaped like a crescent moon tipped on its back.
We have to name her Diana, Max demanded that first day.
“Goddess of the moon,” I say now, smiling in the dark while tossing her a pepperoni.
She sniffs, then eats it.
After, she climbs onto a pile of clothes I need to wash in a corner of the room. She turns away from me. Rules were established between us when she first arrived. We both prefer to be ignored by the world. Unless food is involved, in her case.
Within seconds, she’s asleep.
Hot adrenaline surges in my blood as my phone starts to vibrate. I’m afraid to look at the screen. What if it’s Detective Rosado? What if she found more information on Cary? Or worse, she’s decided I am a suspect in Hal’s death?
Instead, it’s a message from Max. A photo of her squeezed between a grinning Junie and Tonia. The image is poorly lit from whatever bar they managed to sneak Max into.
Miss you, it says underneath.
I search for words that are good enough to reply with. None come to me. I simply like the photo, then lock my phone.
Exhaustion weighs against my body. Quietly, I hope for nothingness rather than dreams and nightmares.
Every night is the same. Stardusted scenes of London’s warm face. Our first kiss. His hand in mine, then ripped away. The waking terror of the crash splintering my sleep like the windshield of London’s dad’s car after impact.
Next comes the shouting. I can never tell from who. The paramedics or the emergency room doctors or me.
But it always comes, constant and full.
I trace my fingers over the blue-and-yellow bracelet.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper to the threads.
My eyes grow heavy. I wonder if, instead of London, I’ll see Hal tonight. Dead in an alley. Or a boy with gold-flecked black eyes. With sharp features on a marble-smooth face and a cruel mouth.
I stare at the wall, counting my heartbeats. When sleep finally arrives, Cary is all I see dancing in the shadows.