Literally Page 2

  “Your mother and I have been doing some thinking,” my dad says. “About our life here. We think it may be time for a change.” He stops for a second, and I can see he is really struggling to get the words out. My mom jumps in.

  “We’d been mulling it over, and now with this article coming out, Dad talked to Aunt Sandy, and she said this is the perfect time.”

  I squint at them, trying to read them better. “What are you telling me exactly?”

  “They’re selling the house, AB,” Sam cuts in impatiently.

  My mom sighs, and my father puts a hand over his eyes. “Thank you, Sam,” he says.

  I shake my head. “Why would you do that? This is our home. And”—I jab a finger down on the Times article—“it’s famous! Why would you want to sell a house that is famous?”

  A strange silence falls over the entire table. Nobody is jumping in for anybody. Neither of my parents says a word. Not even Sam pipes up.

  “Aunt Sandy is a real estate agent in Florida,” I push. “What does she know?” Why does it feel like nobody is ever paying attention? Like I have to teach them how things work?

  “I told you this wasn’t the best time,” my father says softly. “I told you she would have more questions.”

  “Then when was, Ezra?” my mother asks curtly. “When two moving trucks pull up?”

  Now my father looks at her in a way I’ve actually never seen. Like he barely knows her. It scares me, and I get the feeling this is not about the house at all. There is something bigger happening here. Maybe it’s been something I’ve been feeling for a while.

  “Why would there be two moving trucks?” I ask, and it comes out in a whisper.

  My father clenches his jaw, and then he says it all in one breath: “Your mom and I have decided it would make sense to live apart for a while. We really didn’t want to tell you this part now. We wanted to tell you about the house, in case any real estate agents show up this week. It wasn’t supposed to go like this.”

  I look at Sam. “Did you know?”

  Sam won’t look at me. Instead, he looks angrily at my dad. “I told you guys I should tell her.” Then he looks down at his plate. “I didn’t want to keep this from you, AB.”

  I feel as though my world is spinning, the breakfast table tipping upside down, like I am falling down a rabbit hole. I put my hands over my eyes to steady myself. I don’t understand how this is happening. This is our family. This is our home. This is how it works.

  “I am sure you are very upset, but I promise you once you go off to Columbia, your life is going to change so much, you’ll hardly even be here,” my dad explains, as if I need reminding that soon I will be moving across the entire country for college, away from everything and everyone I know.

  “The point is that my life will change so much, and I will need this to come home to,” I say, my voice cracking as I struggle to hold back tears. I do not like this at all. I do not like being displaced. I do not like a disruption in the way things are.

  “Well, unfortunately, honey, you don’t get to decide,” my mother says. I hate when she uses that tone with me. Like she empathizes, when really she doesn’t. I hate it especially because she always uses it when she’s actually right. “This is for your father and I to decide, and believe me, it has been devastating. But this is what needs to happen. And you’re just going to have to try to understand.”

  I want to argue with her. To make some kind of threat, some ultimatum. But the scariest part is, I can’t. I don’t get to decide if they’re married or living together or whatever. There is nothing to say. And then my mother sniffs, and I realize she doesn’t want to fight about this any more than I do.

  “Um, hey,” a voice says quietly, and Elliot is there in the doorway. Why is he forever showing up when I don’t want him to? He gives a swift knock against the wall. “Sorry to interrupt… .”

  Sam sighs. “It’s okay, man. What’s up?”

  Elliot throws a quick glance over at me. “Um, I brought back that AUX cable you lent me last night for my car. Thought I’d drop it on my way to school.” He puts the cord on the table and starts to back away. “Sorry to interrupt,” he says again.

  I am staring at the article, clenching my teeth, when I hear my father say it.

  “Elliot,” he calls just as Elliot is almost at the door and swinging his car keys around his right hand, “would you mind taking Annabelle to school today?”

  “Sure.” Elliot looks confused as he glances back and forth between my dad and me.

  “We can talk more later,” my dad tells me, trying to put a hand over mine. But I pull away. To Elliot he says, “Thanks, E. And it looks like we’ve got an extra coffee from Electric Café, if you’re interested.”

  And then, just like that, my own father hands Elliot Apfel my latte.

  “If you’re going to drive these beautiful cars, you should really make more of an effort to keep them clean,” I observe, crossing one white jean leg over the other and brushing all the sand off the sides. Elliot’s dad owns a vintage mechanic shop over on Lincoln Boulevard, where all the big movie prop designers go when they’re hired on a period drama. If he doesn’t have it, he can get it, is what he always says.

  Elliot and I are cruising along Lincoln Boulevard on our way from Venice to school in Santa Monica. I know I’m in a foul mood. My world is being turned upside down. I keep thinking about what my dad said about “living apart.” What does that really mean? It sounds temporary. But selling The House? That sounds so … final. I sigh out the window, and Elliot doesn’t respond; he just keeps driving, a serene look stitched to his face. I have no idea why he’s being so calm, but I feel bad, so I mumble, “I love this song.”

  “Hot pink?” is all Elliot says back, and I regret being nice immediately.

  “Mention my underwear again and I will take a baseball bat to your windshield,” I say coolly, examining my hair in the passenger mirror. “And on a BMW this rare, it’ll cost you upward of two grand.”

  Elliot snorts. “It’s so weird how you care so much about cars.”

  “Why is it weird?” I ask, rearranging some things in my book bag. Everything in its proper place.

  “Because you guys drive your cars into the ground. My dad’s always having to pick up one of your parents stranded on the road when whatever beat-up car they’re driving finally bites the dust. He says they couldn’t tell the difference between a Mazda and a Mercedes.”

  “And what’s your point?”

  “My point is, where did you come from?” Elliot asks.

  I shrug. “Cars are beautiful. A perfect mix of form and function. When done right, which they haven’t been since, like, the 1980s.”

  Elliot’s father’s shop has everything from a 1960s VW Beetle to a 1972 Volvo hatchback. And when a car has been sitting around a little too long, like the sparkling white convertible we’re currently sitting in, Elliot gets to drive it. As long as when he stops to park it, he puts a little FOR SALE sign on the dash. Like at school, or in front of the coffee shop he hits every morning on his way back from surfing.

  “So wait a minute, back it up. You like Paper Girl?” Elliot asks, referring to the music coming out of his speakers, and his whole expression changes from smug to utter surprise. “You. Like Paper Girl?” He has one hand on the wheel and an elbow propped up on the window. He angles his head down and toward me like it takes that much effort to believe what I’m saying.

  “I can like Paper Girl,” I say. “You aren’t the only one who is allowed to like them. You don’t need a membership card to Slackers Anonymous to appreciate good music.” On the east side of Lincoln, we pass our sixth donut shop thus far. I always keep count. LA has more seedy donut shops than it has gas stations. Sam says they are probably drug fronts, but what does he know?

  “You’re a real piece of work this morning,” Elliot observes, eyes still on the road.

  “You always are,” I shoot back.

  We pull up next to a woman in a s
parkling black Lexus coup. In the passenger seat, a white cotton ball with two beady eyes and a pink bow in its hair has its paws up on the window, and it stares at Elliot intently.

  “What’s wrong, Bellybutton?” Elliot coos. Bellybutton is a name he came up with for me when we were younger, and he insists on continuing to use it as a means of torture. “You get a ninety-nine point five out of one hundred on something?”

  I laugh, because absolutely not. “For your information, I do have problems. My parents are probably getting divorced, and they are selling The House.” I lean down and pick at the seam of my jeans. “And the sand in your car is ruining my outfit.”

  “That’s rough,” Elliot says, turning into the school parking lot. “Sam told me last night. I love your parents. They’re more my parents than … my parents. And that’s definitely true of your house.”

  Elliot and his dad live in an apartment closer to the beach. It’s not shabby; it just lacks a certain warmth to it, since neither of them are ever home. More often than not Elliot can be found making breakfast in our kitchen, or playing drums in the garage. Or just lying on the couch in my room uninvited when my brother is late getting home, telling stupid stories when I’m trying to finish a problem set, getting Cheeto dust everywhere.

  “So that’s it?” I ask. “That’s all you’ve got? My entire childhood existence is circling around the drain, and that’s rough?”

  Elliot pulls into a spot and turns, his syrupy-brown eyes boring into me. “Life is rough sometimes, Bellybutton. Not for you, usually, but for the rest of us.”

  “Oh, please,” I say.

  His tone is patronizing, like he’s messing around, but there’s truth behind it. Elliot’s parents got divorced when he was young, and then his dad threw himself into his business. To spend any time with him at all, Elliot works part-time at the shop, while his mom lives on some artists’ commune in Hawaii. My mom says that’s why he’s so volatile. Life hasn’t been fair to him.

  But right now I don’t want to think about Elliot’s problems. I have my own.

  “Whatever. Thanks for the ride, I guess.” I smooth my hair and go to put my hand on the door.

  “Hey, Annabelle?” Elliot says, and when I turn back he’s not looking at me, he’s leaning down to grab his phone from under the dash. “Don’t worry about the sand. Trust me.” I am just about to turn away again, but the next thing he says stops me. “In those jeans, nobody’s looking at the sand.” He glances up, his eyes meeting mine, and holds it. Elliot has this way of smiling even when he’s not, giving the impression that he’s all mischief all the time. He uses it on female authority figures, on waitresses, on girls he’s hitting on … and on me right now.

  I wrinkle my nose. Because he’s kidding, right? Elliot doesn’t compliment my jeans. Elliot grabs the apple off my tray at lunch and keeps walking without a thank-you. He borrows my books because he never buys a copy of his own, and won’t return them until I steal the keys to his car. But the longer we sit there, the longer I realize he’s not kidding. Then he breaks into a slow smirk, and I can’t sit here any longer.

  “You’re gross,” I say, getting out and shutting the door behind me, taking deliberate steps. And I don’t look back.

  3

  Welcome!

  SENIOR ARTS Elective is a requirement only a school as hippie-dippie as Cedar Spring would have. Before you graduate you have to pass three classes that challenge the creative mind specifically. I took pottery one year, and made a ton of mugs and plates. At least those were useful, utilitarian. Then I did an outdoor sculpture class taught by a visiting teacher where everyone got an easy A. And now I’m stuck with Fiction.

  There is more irony in my hatred of creative writing beyond the fact that my father is a successful TV writer. It’s that I am actually not that bad at writing, either. I joined the school paper freshman year, and they made me editor in chief by my junior spring. Tell me you want one thousand words on potential bias on the school disciplinary committee, I’m your lady. I can have that for you in three hours. Or I can turn in a piece on what students really think about the new head of school. Or I can go more nuanced, on the pressure of getting in to the right college. I can do words when they are already there, waiting to be grabbed. I can’t do words when the story doesn’t already exist.

  I tried, on the first assignment, to fake it. We were told to write one scene from four different perspectives, and I wrote about having breakfast with my family. But on the page, it was as if all the characters were just robots, staring at one another over their eggs, asking someone to pass the orange juice. I just couldn’t imagine the scene from so many angles. How could four people experience one thing that differently?

  Miss Epstein suggested that I was hitting too close to home. “Nobody finds our lives more interesting than we do,” she said. “Next time, as an exercise, I want you to imagine a story that has nothing to do with your own life. A different character. A different age. A different part of the world. Try your hand at that.”

  So I tried. And I still did not succeed.

  Epstein plows into the classroom now, sheets of paper flying out of her arms, apologizing yet again for being late. A few students who have begun to bank on the extra ten minutes sneak in behind her, and Epstein doesn’t even see them. I clasp my hands tightly in my lap, bracing myself for what she’ll ask us to do today. A group assignment or, worse, an invitation to read aloud?

  Instead, Epstein throws all her papers down on her desk, stabilizing her body with both arms as she leans across it, beaming at us.

  “I know we usually spend this time creating, critiquing, editing,” she says, straightening up, her right wrist moving in a circular motion as though she’s painting her thoughts for us. “But I thought we’d take a little break from that so I could introduce a friend of mine. She’s a well-known author in the young adult genre and she’s come in today to talk about process, about publishing, and about making a career out of this temperamental beast we call writing. Class, please welcome my dear friend and MFA classmate, Lucy Keating.”

  A woman appears in the doorway. She’s on the taller side, with long, wavy brown hair, red lipstick, and glasses with thick black frames. She’s in an immaculate white silk collared shirt tucked into some boyfriend jeans and chic black booties. Over her shoulder is a pale blue leather tote, and she drops it by the desk when she walks in, then turns to look at all of us with an easy smile.

  “Hi.” Lucy gives a small wave. “I’ll keep my intro brief because usually people like to ask questions. I’m Lucy Keating, and I’ve written six contemporary young adult novels; all but one have been New York Times bestsellers. I majored in English at Brown before getting a job at a publisher in New York, writing at night, and eventually convincing them to publish my first novel, Maybe in Another Life. Then I did an MFA at Columbia where I met the incredible Ruth Epstein”—she pauses to smile at our teacher—“and I recently moved to LA from New York with a couple of scraggly dogs. I am loving the sunshine, but missing all the mean people.” Lucy gives a wry smile and I can see that beneath the charm there is a seriousness about her.

  “Looks like we have a question already?” Lucy chuckles, then points to Maya Davis, whose hand is so high up in the air it’s like she’s trying to touch the ceiling.

  “Do you plan on writing a sequel to Maybe in Another Life?” Maya asks. She’s blushing and stumbling over her words, and I realize: Maya is a fan. And now I remember from where I know Lucy’s name. Lucy is the one who writes all those sad, romantic books that always leave my best friend, Ava, in a puddle of tears. A girl and boy who fall hopelessly in love the summer before he’s deployed. A boy from the wrong side of the tracks who falls for an unattainable girl, even when her father gets in their way. More movies than I can count on one hand have been made from her books. The posters always show a couple in some kind of dramatic embrace, and usually someone is crying. I find them totally unrealistic and completely ridiculous.

  “Ma
ybe some day,” Lucy replies, and though her tone is upbeat, I detect a strain in her voice. “I did love those characters, but I got kind of tired of writing those stories. So much sadness.” Lucy looks off for a moment, distracted, then blinks. “Let’s just say I only want to write Happy Endings these days. I think my characters deserve that for a change.” She casts a glance my way, and a weird feeling takes over my body, but just like that it’s gone.

  “Can you tell us what you’re working on now?” Maya says, leaning forward eagerly over her desk.

  Lucy nods, and I start tuning out, staring out the window onto the quad, where Elliot is chatting up some girls during their free period. I would bet two hundred dollars that Elliot does not have a free period, though. My thoughts wander back to this morning and his weird comment about my jeans when I hear Lucy start to answer Maya’s question.

  “I’ve actually become pretty inspired by my time in LA,” she says. “Right now I’m working on a story about a girl who lives in Venice Beach with her parents and older brother.”

  I find myself turning back toward the room again. This gets my attention.

  “Oh, and of course, their weird little dog, who is always causing trouble.” Lucy laughs.

  The whole class laughs, too, except for me. Wait …

  Lucy continues. “Her life is pretty perfect, everything is very within her control, but she begins to grow up and learn life isn’t so simple. For example, not everything is as smooth at home as she thinks.”

  Now I am leaning over my desk a little bit, too, and squinting at her. My throat feels a little dry.

  Lucy sits on the desk and places her hands on her knees. “And speaking of home, her parents are separating—maybe even getting divorced—and they’ve decided to sell their house. It’s a really special place, on one of the walk streets. And she’s lived there her whole life, so she’s pretty upset about it.”

  A series of murmurs and thoughtful Mmmms rise up from my classmates, while my heart starts to pound in my chest. I look around, frowning. “Is this a joke?” I finally ask out loud.