Literally Read online

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my brothers:

  occasional tormentors,

  often saviors,

  always heroes

  Contents

  Dedication

  1. Instinctual Response

  2. The Good Coffees

  3. Welcome!

  4. She Is Not Good with the Boy Stuff

  5. What’s Breaking Your Heart Tonight?

  6. Nope

  7. We Had a Slight Accident

  8. TK’s Steakhouse

  9. The Egtved Girl

  10. Where Warmth Begins

  11. You’re a Killer Emotional Support Pony

  12. Sorry I’m Late

  13. Because I’m with You

  14. Can We Take It All Back?

  15. Sorry!

  16. Is It That Kind of Book?

  17. You Think I’m Cute?

  18. What If I Don’t Know What I Want?

  19. That Was Sarcasm

  20. Animal Man

  21. Today Was a Good Day

  22. I’m Sorry You Had to See This

  23. Having Fun Yet?

  24. Would You Change Anything?

  25. In the Drawer

  26. I Am Elliot, and You Are Annabelle

  27. Thanks for Being a Part of My Story

  28. That’s Not What the Word Means

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ads

  About the Author

  Books by Lucy Keating

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  Instinctual Response

  IT’S 3:02 P.M. on Sunday afternoon, and I should be cleaning my room. Not because it’s particularly dirty—it never is. Not because my parents told me to—they never would. Because my calendar says so—in yellow. Errands and necessary “upkeep” are yellow; homework blue; exercise (running on the Boardwalk, surfing with my dad) purple; appointments (teeth cleaning, haircut at The Hive) are in hot pink; and events like dinner with Ava at Papa’s Poke Shop or Nisha’s birthday party in Malibu are a bright teal. I call that one my “Friends/Fun” section. There are other categories for other things, but I won’t bore you with the details. I’m a very visual person. I get that from my mother. I am also highly organized. I get that from absolutely nobody in my family.

  The problem with it being three P.M., when I should be cleaning my room, is that I am not. Instead I am lying on my stomach on the living room floor, staring into the eyes of Napoleon, who, from his place under the wheat-colored sofa, stares back at me with challenging eyes, a lone pair of my underpants hanging out of his mouth.

  “Don’t do it, Napoleon,” I warn.

  Napoleon growls.

  Ava told me the other day, after Napoleon growled at her, too, that she wasn’t offended, because it was an instinctual response. “Sometimes the body reacts in ways we can’t help, as a way of letting us know how we’re really feeling,” she told me. “Like how Nisha turns beet red whenever Ray Woods utters even a partial sentence to her. Or you always sweat in your armpits during exams. Or how I’ve barfed before almost every flight I’ve ever taken.”

  “My armpits don’t sweat during exams,” I protested, and Ava just smiled. It is very like Ava to say something like that. To dwell, not so much on the fact that something is happening, but rather why it is happening in the first place. She is good at trying to see the other side. For me, it’s not so complicated. Things happen or they don’t. You make them happen or not. And I consider an unexpected, instinctual response—blushing and sweating and growling—highly inconvenient.

  Slowly, I reach a hand toward Napoleon’s sofa cave, and his growl becomes a snarl. I withdraw my hand with an eye roll that I like to believe he can understand.

  Napoleon is my father’s dog. He is also my mortal enemy. It’s not that I don’t like dogs. Those golden retrievers you see lying by the fire in a soup commercial, for example, doing nothing but wagging their tails. Or that bulldog who rides a skateboard, wearing sunglasses, his tongue flapping in the wind. But Napoleon is different. My father found Napoleon in an alley with a dead rat when he was only a few months old. “Poor guy,” he said. “Living in conditions like that.” But I know the truth. I know that Napoleon challenged that rat to a fight to the death, and Napoleon won.

  The back door to the kitchen opens and in wanders my mother, iPad directly in front of her face as she walks, her bob of straight blond hair swinging along with her, followed by Jae, her new design intern. At least I assume it’s Jae. I can’t see his face behind the giant stack of rolled-up pieces of vellum paper, probably displaying the plans for another one of her beautiful Southern California homes. Mom’s specialty is remodeling old bungalows. She has a reputation for simplifying a house’s design, modernizing it just enough, but without losing the character of the place. With deep oak floors and heavy beams balanced by bright white walls and mid-century furniture, our house is one of her best advertisements. One of the exotic pillows she sourced from India is currently wedged under my elbows.

  “What are you doing on the floor?” my mom asks, still staring at her iPad as she sets down her bag and motions Jae to drop the plans on the counter. Then she grabs two seltzers from the fridge and hands one to him.

  “Napoleon has my underpants,” I explain.

  “What a little pervert,” she replies.

  Jae just smiles politely. “Hi, Annabelle.”

  “Hey, Jae,” I say, and then I sigh. I want to ask my mother if she could maybe refrain from calling our dog a pervert in front of her intern to whom I have never spoken more than four words on one individual occasion, but I know there’s no use. My mother is unconcerned with formalities.

  “How do you plan to get them back?” she asks now, finally setting the iPad down and looking over at me.

  “Murder him,” I say definitively, and she snorts. I glance back at Napoleon. He has not moved a muscle.

  “You’re a monster,” I whisper.

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” my father says as he strolls into the kitchen, his salt-and-pepper hair in its usual bed-head state, his jeans rolled round the ankles. Nobody ever hears him coming because he is consistently barefoot. “That’s the beauty of working from home,” he’ll say if you point this out.

  There’s a joke in there, if you know where to look. The joke is that my dad hasn’t “worked” in years. He was a TV writer in the late 1990s before selling a big ensemble comedy to a major network, and, after the finale in 2006, hasn’t been to an office since. He spends most mornings surfing, which he took up after retirement, and reading, which he’s always done. There’s a smaller guest house behind our house that my dad refers to as his “lair,” where he reads, screens movies, and takes an occasional meeting. Lately, he’s been spending more time out there than usual, and occasionally, I’ve noticed him coming out early in the morning. He must be onto a new idea.

  “Should we take a drive?” he asks the room. I notice how wrinkly his T-shirt is. “Head up to Topanga State Beach, maybe grab an early dinner and watch the sunset? What do you say, you?”

  The you is always directed to me. I know it’s kind of weird, like my own father can’t remember my name, but it’s actually the opposite. Something about the way he says it makes me feel like I am the only you there is. And that makes me feel good.

  “I have plans,” I explain. “Is that the T-shirt you were wearing yesterday?”

  “Forgive me!” my father exclaims, ignoring my question. “What’s on deck?”

  I steel myself for a moment, considering that maybe if I talk really fast, they won’t make fun of me, and we can be done with this conversation. “Well, I have to clean my room and then I have to take a run and—”

&
nbsp; My father shoots a glance at my mother, like How did we create this? “Maybe you should shake things up a little bit? Prove to yourself that the world isn’t going to end if you don’t clean your room this afternoon?”

  I frown, contemplating his suggestion.

  “What are you doing on the floor?” my brother, Sam, says as he bustles into the kitchen, grabbing an apple and taking a giant bite. “Did Napoleon steal your socks again?” he manages through muffled chews.

  “Underpants,” my mother explains.

  “You wanna go for a drive?” my father asks Sam. “Make a day of it? The whole family is coming.”

  “I’m not available,” I say loudly. Why is it so hard for them to understand that even though they prefer to thwart general structure in their own lives, that’s not the way I choose to live?

  “Right.” Sam rolls his eyes. “Maybe in between cleaning your room and taking a run you could find time to remove the giant stick from your—”

  “Sam,” my father warns. But you can tell he finds it funny.

  I am just about to lose my temper when Napoleon makes a break for it, his scraggly body darting out from under the couch and through the kitchen door, which Sam just left wide open.

  “Catch him!” I cry, but nobody even pretends to move. I scramble out after Napoleon and into the yard, but I’ve lost his trail. I am just kneeling down to look under a hydrangea bush, insincerely cooing his name, when I hear it.

  “Looking for these?” a voice says, all crackly with just a hint of smirk. I cringe, knowing to whom the voice belongs, then turn slowly to find Elliot Apfel standing in the middle of my lawn, a paper-thin T-shirt falling over his sinewy shoulders, an unreadable expression on his lightly freckled face, my thankfully clean underpants dangling between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. In his left, squirming like a mutant piglet, is Napoleon.

  “Yes,” I mutter, feeling myself blush as I snatch them away, and getting more frustrated when I remember what Ava said. Then I think, if there was literally one person on this entire planet I would hope to never be standing on my front lawn holding my underpants, it’s Elliot. He will never let me live this down.

  “Hot pink?” I hear him say behind me as I turn back to the house.

  “Must you comment?” I call out without stopping.

  “Did you really expect me not to?” I hear him call back.

  Elliot is my brother’s best friend. He used to be mine, too, back when we were little. We’re the same age. Our moms went to art school together, before they diverged into photography and architecture. But then Elliot hit puberty and started acting weird and also, frankly, rude. And then he got a girlfriend and then another … and then another. Elliot has had more girlfriends than I have organizational colors on my calendar, which has always totally boggled my mind, since I don’t think he’s ever even heard of shampoo.

  Now he has Clara, and she has lasted longer than most. Clara is the lead singer of Look at Me, Look at Me, the band that Elliot and Sam started together, the reason Sam states for why he decided to postpone college. I’m nearly one hundred percent certain the real reason is surfing, and I wonder if my parents know this, too. I wonder if, like me, they know it’s unlikely that Sam will go to college at all.

  Back in the kitchen, my family is still standing around chatting, more like roommates than humans who share genes.

  “Elliot!” My dad points a finger enthusiastically. “I bet you wanna go for a drive.”

  “We can’t actually, Dad,” Sam cuts in. “We have rehearsal. I totally forgot.” He turns to Elliot. “Sorry.”

  Elliot shoves his hands in his pockets. “We’re gonna have to postpone rehearsal for a while, actually … considering Clara quit the band this afternoon.” He purses his lips.

  To know Clara Bernard is to know her Instagram. The entirety of my knowledge of her I’ve gleaned from there. Since she’s usually taking selfies or keeping her lips suctioned to Elliot’s face, it’s difficult to glean her true essence. But her Instagram is well curated. Lots of well-lit, California-girl pictures of her on the beach, or leaning against one of the vintage cars at Elliot’s dad’s shop, her dark brown hair falling out of some floppy brimmed hat, or writing lyrics moodily in a notebook. The only thing Clara loves more than her Instagram is her boyfriend. At least that’s what I always thought.

  “She quit?” Sam asks, his eyes wide.

  Elliot shrugs. “Apparently, the girl half of He/She got laryngitis and they asked her to fill in.”

  “Well, she’ll be back,” Sam says a little frantically, running a hand through his thick hair. Sam has my dad’s hair, dark brown and prone to sticking out in wild directions, and I have my mom’s. So blonde it’s not even California; it’s more like snow queen. “I mean, we’re all in this together.” Sam’s voice is slowly increasing in tone and volume as he waits for Elliot to reply. “That’s the plan. And she has you.” He motions to Elliot, and the you is an actual squeak. “She’d never give up on you.”

  For a split second, a shadow flashes across Elliot’s unreadable expression. Then he swallows. “Clara and I broke up,” he says.

  Nobody seems to know how to respond to this statement. Everyone just watches Elliot as he nods his head repeatedly, as it to say Yes, it’s true to our unspoken questions. Even if I can’t stand him, even if he did knock a glass of water onto my laptop while skateboarding through our house a month ago, and call me an embarrassing nickname in front of the captain of the water polo team last Thursday, I have to admit I feel the tiniest bit bad for him. He may never wash his Tshirts and Clara may have the depth of a wading pool, but somehow they worked. Not to mention they’re an unnervingly good-looking couple. Were. Past tense.

  Elliot exhales then, and I look down, realizing I’m still holding my underpants.

  2

  The Good Coffees

  I OPEN my eyes, like I do every morning, to the impression that palm trees are spying on me. They lean toward the second floor of our house, all gangly and awkward, big, bushy heads tipped as though they are peering into my room.

  When people think of Los Angeles, they think sprawl, and they think traffic. Or mansions in Beverly Hills, hidden by ivy-colored walls and accented with sparkling black sports cars in the driveways.

  That’s usually because they’ve never been to where we live: Venice. Not the one in Italy, with the canals and the drowning palazzos. My Venice has sweet little bungalows, fences lined with brightly colored bushes, vintage cars that have survived in the easy California weather, and guys riding bikes with surfboards clutched under one arm. I haven’t been everywhere, but I’m pretty sure there aren’t many places like this, and I love it here. I’ve been told on more than one occasion that I can be a little uptight, and I like to think that Venice balances me out.

  Our house, though, is particularly special. It’s an original Craftsman from the days when the neighborhood was just being built. But it’s two stories, which is rare, my mom says. It’s a corner lot, making it a real presence on our street. My room is right on a corner, so I get all the magic morning light.

  My parents bought the place twenty years ago, when Venice was mostly made up of artists and bohemians and a lot of people who lived out of their vans. There’s a campaign around these days called Keep Venice Weird. Old shacks are being turned into three-million-dollar moderns. An incense shop on Abbot Kinney was just turned into an artisanal donut bakery. You can’t find a coffee for under five dollars. People are afraid we’re losing our edge.

  When I come downstairs for breakfast, my family is crowded around the dining room table, leaning over the Arts section of the Los Angeles Times. Someone has picked up coffee from the expensive new place on Electric Avenue, which means we are either celebrating good news or receiving bad. When I get a closer look at the paper, I see a picture of our house, smack in the middle of the front page.

  “I didn’t know it would be on the front page!” I exclaim.

  “Of course it’s o
n the front page,” my dad says, putting a hand somewhere between my mom’s shoulder and the lower part of her neck. “It’s exactly where it should be.” My mom gives a tight smile, and a funny feeling bubbles up through my chest. They used to act this way all the time. A hand on a shoulder, someone’s feet propped on someone else’s lap while they watched a movie. But I haven’t seen it in a while.

  A couple months ago a woman named Mathilda Forsythe showed up at our front door. Mathilda was doing an article on The House, my mom explained, for the LA Times. She spent the afternoon trolling the floors and examining all the surfaces, asking details about where things were sourced and what was sustainable, jotting notes down in a Moleskine. Then she returned the next day with a beefy, man-bunned photographer named Silas who took a few shots of the family on the deep-blue couch in the living room, and one with my mother out on the porch, her arm resting along the railing, a smile on her face that said, Yeah, I got this.

  “This is so cool,” I say now. “We have to get it framed! So meta to have an article of your house in your house.” I’m making a joke, the kind of joke we usually like, but nobody laughs, and immediately, I catch a look between my parents. My brother, too, seems to be in on whatever I am missing.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Here,” my dad says, pushing the coffee cup in my direction across the table. “I got your favorite; I even remembered to add the cinnamon.”

  I do not make one move toward the coffee, even though it smells amazing. I now understand that these coffees are not good-news coffees. They are deceitful ones. “What’s going on?” I ask again.

  “Maybe now isn’t the best time,” my father starts, but my mother stops him, her voice low but still perfectly clear to me.

  “We have to, Ezra. She will hate us more later if we don’t tell her now.”

  I do hate secrets. I hate ambiguity. I don’t like to wonder; I need to know. I consider reminding them of this, but the fear creeping up my throat is preventing me from doing very much.