Where It Began

Mind—please. I want more all the time. When Billy walks by in the library when I’m sitting there with Anita trying to figure out the workings of the periodic table and he bends down and blows just faintly on the top of my head and ruffles my bangs with the tips of his fingers, I have to bite my lower lip just so I won’t shiver with joy in too obvious a way.

XVI

IF I HADN’T BEEN SO CRAZED ABOUT MAKING SURE that Billy would keep liking me around the clock, it could have been completely fun.

It definitely eliminates any shred of boredom or dead time in my life because the thing about being with Billy is that you have to be made up and ready to roll 24/7. He likes to drive and he likes company.

“How is it you’ve lived in L.A. all your life and you’ve never been anywhere?” he says.

And he doesn’t mean chic places on Sunset with bouncers, where I also haven’t been. He means the best Pho 999 for Vietnamese noodles so far out on Sepulveda, it is almost at the far end of the Valley; he means hickory burgers on the red faux-leather stools at the counter at the Apple Pan on Pico; ribs with bikers who seem to have dropped in from a 1950s time warp at Dr. Hogly Wogly’s; Versailles for Cuban plantains and black beans in Culver City; and tacos at La Canasta, which is somewhere so far south and east of downtown that it looks like some whole other country. He means that field in Westchester where you can lie on the hood of the Beemer and watch the planes taking off from LAX at night and the Cajun place at the Fairfax Farmers’ Market that has homemade yam potato chips fried up and ready to eat by ten a.m.

I remember that perfectly: the taste of the yam chips and their crunchiness and the grease on my fingers, how you couldn’t get enough, and at the end, you dig the last little shards out of the corners of the little paper box they come in.

“How do you know all these places?” I say. “Do you just cut school and drive around Monterey Park looking for pork bao?”

“I get bored easily,” Billy says. “You want to roll?”

He likes to tell Agnes that Andy is helping him study for precalc. And then driving up to Santa Barbara for hotdogs and sauerkraut at the only dive on State Street open after midnight, then turning around and driving back. He likes telling Agnes that he is doing community service (Condition of Probation #17) at a fictional downtown homeless mission and then driving to San Juan Capistrano to listen to ska at a bar—only, he has to bribe the ticket guy because even though Billy has the excellent ID of an actual twenty-two-year-old guy named Lars from St. Cloud, Mi

He could have told Agnes he was going on an overnight NASA expedition to Mars and she would have bought it.

I, on the other hand, don’t have to make up anything. I just say, “Going with Billy. See ya.” Vivian couldn’t have cared less if I had my head in his lap all the way to San Diego on a school night, which I didn’t, just so long as the stick shift wouldn’t mess up my makeup and reveal the un-cute Old Me lurking underneath, thereby jeopardizing my girlfriendhood and metamorphosis into a kid she actually might want.

“How is it that you’ve never had a corn dog in Eagle Rock?” he’d say.

And I would say, “Beats me.”

And he would take down the rag roof of the Beemer and that would be our destination.

The other thing is sports. Endless sports. Obviously, I have to attend water polo matches near and far, which turns out to be a not un-fun game to watch, with a whole lot of splashing and yelling, and muscular boys in Speedos. It soon becomes apparent that Billy’s one area of school spirit involves sitting around at all Winston varsity events and patting his friends on the butt. Who knew that all varsity jock boys have a fixation that makes them watch all other varsity jock boys play all other sports except golf? This includes fencing, where they all pump fists for the other team’s guy by mistake half the time because they can’t figure out who made the touch.

“How is it that you go to Winston and you’ve never been to a home game?”

“I’m not that into sports, Nash. I mean, I like them now. I like watching you rule the pool and all. I just wasn’t that into it before you enlightened me.”

“Well, what are you into, Gardiner, other than eating international junk food and decorating things?”

“I’m into international junk food? Have you ever noticed who’s leading these fun expeditions to Rooster Shack to eat fries with the Crips?”

“That would be Americana,” he says. “Have I taught you nothing?”

“I’m into art,” I say. It kind of comes out of nowhere, but once it’s out, it’s out. Okay, I am into art.

And it seems like he can handle it because he says, “Well, I hope you’re very good at art, because you are currently hanging with the undisputed king of water polo.”

Apparently, this is not one of Billy’s more egregious exaggerations. On our late-night jaunts, sometimes we end up at Sam Deveraux’s fraternity house at USC, which seems to have a permanent, twenty-four-hour party going on, and where we are always welcome because Sam was the water polo equivalent of a linebacker back when he was a senior and Billy was a varsity starter in tenth grade.

“Yo, you gotta come here,” Sam Deveraux says, more than slightly drunk but dead serious. “Fight on! We’re number one!” His also more-than-slightly-drunk college water polo buddies stick up their index fingers in agreement. “We need you, man. Don’t you want to be number one?”

“Dude. Nothing would make me happier than staying in town,” Billy says. “But, man, I’ve gotta go to . . .” (drumroll drowning out even the permanent, twenty-four-hour party music) “Princeton. You know how it is.”

“Damn Agnes.” Sam drapes his arm around Billy as if Billy could somehow steady him, which, I can tell you from my vast experience with my dad lurching through the house beyond help, is by that point in the evening totally useless. Then he turns to me, which is slightly frightening since he is extremely large and I figure he could crush me if he fell on me, which seems like a strong possibility.

“Whadda bout you?” Sam says. “Don’t you wa

And you know, even though the thought of spending four years at Crazed School Spirit U and being a Theta (if I could have gotten in, which I couldn’t) kind of makes me want to go throw myself into a ditch, if Billy was going to be king of college at SC instead of Princeton, all hunkered down and happy in his dad’s old eating club, I totally would have signed right up.

Billy sticks his shoulder between me and Sam, which could have saved my life if so much as a slight breeze had hit Sam from behind, causing him to pitch forward. “She doesn’t do sorority chick crap,” Billy says. “She does art.”

Sam runs his hand up the wall as if he is looking for a handle. “Theta could do art,” he says. “She could. ’Member Becca French? Theta does product design. Tolja.”

“She doesn’t do that kind of art,” Billy says. “She does real art.”

Okay, so you would have to conclude that he does know something about me, right? And even though I am pretty sure it’s all about the incredibly expensive hair extensions and the perfect makeup and the gravity defying Wonderbra, something like this would give a reasonable person cause to think he actually did kind of like something about me that my mother didn’t spend the summer buying for me. Right?

Which is what makes it so hard to tell if the eucalyptus tree on Songbird Lane has done some actual damage to my chest, or if I am just some metaphorically heartsick, delusional bimbo in a hospital gown with no sense and, coincidentally, no boyfriend.