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This was the first time that I’d seen people smoke pot, and also the first time I’d heard you sing. Your voice whispered into me, exploding slowly. And Kristen sang along, her eyes closed and the neon lights broken by the window on her cheeks.
I got nervous that she or Tristan would pass me the pipe, and I wasn’t sure what I would do. I was studying them in case I needed to know the right way to use it.
But when Tristan leaned into the backseat, Kristen took it out of his hand and said, “Don’t corrupt her.”
Tristan said, “What? It’s part of her education, right, babe?”
Kristen hit him on the shoulder and said, “Let’s keep it musical.”
Tristan looked at me and shrugged and said, “Sorry, Buttercup. Can’t cross the missus.”
But I think that I might have gotten kind of high from them smoking it in the car, anyway. Because the way you and Kristen sang “Summertime,” it felt like I was so far inside of the song. There was nothing else around. You made me feel what summertime really is. Underneath what’s bright, you knew the hot dark rasp of it. The other thing is, it was like a goodbye, and I could feel that, too. It’s fall now. September’s nearly over.
And then what happened is this. I asked them, trying to sound real casual about it, if they knew Sky. Since I ran into him in the hallway that day, I’ve been hoping for it to happen again, but it hasn’t yet. He did wave to me at lunch the other day, when he caught me looking at him. I thought Kristen and Tristan might know something about him. I tried to sound like I was asking for no reason. But of course my cheeks burned and a giggle burst out of me, and they guessed immediately. Tristan started sing-songing, “Buttercup’s in love!”
Kristen told me that the rumor is Sky transferred because he got kicked out of his old school. She said that he doesn’t talk to anyone about that stuff, so no one knows for sure what happened. She also said that he stands around with the stoners, as if he was one, except he doesn’t even smoke cigarettes. “But,” she said, “he’s cool, definitely. Capital C. I mean, everyone agrees on that.”
Tristan decided we should drive by his house so I could see it. He looked up Sky’s last name—Sheppard—on Kristen’s phone and found a listing. Kristen said we were being creepy, but Tristan laughed and said it was fun. And secretly, I was really excited to see it. We were out of the high school area, in a neighborhood where the houses are smaller and either adobe or tin-sided. Most of the yards were messy, full of sunflowers whose stems were scrambled together, parts of old cars, or trees that somebody cut at the trunk and never hauled away. But at Sky’s address, everything was perfect. The tin siding on the house looked shinier than the rest, as if someone had polished it. And there were rows and rows of perfect marigolds in the front yard in two long flower beds. A welcome mat and a fall wreath on the door, and two same-sized pumpkins on either side, though they were early for Halloween. I saw there was someone outside. A woman, in her bathrobe, watering the flowers with a bright green watering can. It was two a.m. Just as we were driving away, I saw someone else open the door, and when I turned back, it looked like Sky.
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Judy Garland,
I’m in English right now, not paying attention in class and writing this letter instead, which is sort of ironic because technically this whole thing started as an assignment for English that I never turned in.
After I got off the phone with Mom last night, I went on Google Earth and tried to see if I could find where she is. California was colored in blocky splotches of gray and brown and green, like all the other states. I knew the ranch is close to Los Angeles, but I didn’t know where exactly. I sca
Finally, instead I typed in the address of where you used to live in the desert town of Lancaster, California. It looked like a normal neighborhood, one that I could imagine walking in. My mom told us how before you were Judy Garland, you were Frances Ethel Gumm, “Baby” they called you, from Grand Rapids, Mi
My sister was a bit like you were as a little girl. She was the bright spark of the family, the one who everyone relied on to shine, the one who tried to keep everyone from fighting. I think because of Mom’s story about how May brought our family together, she felt like it was her job to keep it that way.
When we’d be at the di
But once in a while, there were times when Mom was having a “bad night,” and no matter how many handsprings May did, or songs she sang, or jokes she told, she couldn’t make Mom snap out of it. Mom would put her hand on May’s forehead and say, “I’m sorry, honey, but I’m having a bad night.” Mom would say she was too tired for a bedtime story. She’d tuck us in early and disappear into her room. Dad would follow her in and try to calm her down. Sometimes, if it didn’t work, we’d hear him leave the house.
We’d be in bed, May and I, both of us pretending to be asleep but still wide awake, and we’d hear Mom cry through the wall. I didn’t realize it then, but maybe she was thinking of her own mom who drank too much, or her dad who died, or the life she thought she’d have when she wanted to move to California to be an actress, and everything that didn’t come true. Those were the nights when May and I weren’t enough. And even though we couldn’t say it, or even think it, somehow I think we both knew it.
It was one of those nights, one of Mom’s bad nights, when May taught me magic. I guess I was maybe five. I whispered from the bottom bunk of the bed we used to share, before we got our own rooms as teenagers, “May? I’m scared.”
She climbed down her ladder and lay next to me. “What are you scared of?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I know what it is,” May said. “You’re scared of the witches. The bad witches are here, but it’s okay, we can beat them. We have magic.”
“We do?” I asked.
“I’ve been waiting to tell you until you were old enough. But I think you’re ready.”
The sound of Mom crying had faded away with the rest of the world. All that mattered was May and the secret that she was about to tell me. I leaned in, waiting. “What?” I asked eagerly.