LAUREN
Emerson came out of her bedroom, securing simple silver hoops in her ears, but nothing else she had on was simple. “Okay? For real?” she accused. “You’ve been moping around all day. You’re not really gonna stay here all night too, are you? Get your ass up and come out with us.”
“I’m just not up for it tonight. Besides, I’m not exactly dressed for . . .” I cast a meaningful glance at my worn sweatpants. “. . . well, anything.”
Em, on the other hand, would easily fit in with the rest of the crowd at The Dunes in her body-hugging neon pink dress and strappy heels.
“Mm-hmm. I see that.” She assessed me with a skeptical eye. “You got this whole bag lady vibe goin’ on. What up with that? I think a night out might be exactly what you need.”
“I’m just tired is all.” Tired. That was my excuse when I came home from the pool club yesterday and all I wanted to do was watch Gilmore Girls and eat cookie dough straight from the tube. Tired was what I told her again today when she asked me to go to the beach with her.
I didn’t want her to know what was really wrong with me: that Will had fired me as a student.
“You’re so fucking lame I can’t even believe we’re friends.” Em rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
But her eye-roll was a dead giveaway. She so wasn’t mad at me. I grinned. “You love me and you know it. Besides, I’ll try to do better, I swear.”
Her mood buoyed at my promise. She took my hands and squeezed them, shrugging like she could barely contain herself. “Good, because Lucas has a roommate. And he’s hot. And since you won’t go out tonight, you owe me. So you know what that means . . .” She raised her perfectly tweezed brows at me.
Perfect, I thought, realizing I’d just managed to get myself roped into a double date of some kind. Em was always setting me up with friends of the guys she was either hooking up with, or trying to hook up with. Worked out great for her, but for me it was nothing short of painful. Most of the guys were harmless, if not a little on the boring side.
But sometimes things turned crazy and I ended up with some douchebag who couldn’t imagine there was a girl on this planet who wasn’t falling all over herself to jump into bed with him. Yet, there I was, wanting to go home all by my lonesome. Go figure.
Still, this was Em I was talking about. Em, who’d agreed to spend the summer here with me, practically on no notice at all, simply because I’d asked.
A small smile found my lips, not an answer exactly, but Emerson understood.
“Yes?” she asked, her voice rising hopefully.
I shrugged. “Yeah, fine, whatever.”
Emerson squealed and threw her arms around me, rocking me back and forth in one of her famous scream-hugs, her high-pitched words bleeding together, “Youarethebest!” She planted a big, glossy kiss on my forehead. “And I swear you won’t regret it!” She stepped back then and wrinkled her nose, giving me an ooh! you’re not gonna like this look. “I almost forgot to tell you. Your mom called my cell today.” She clenched her jaw, revealing her lower teeth with a hiss. “You seriously need to stop avoiding her. At least call her back and tell her you’re alive. I have no idea what her message said.” Her eyes widened. “She used The Spanish. I thought you said she never did that.”
I cringed. Emerson was right. Growing up, it had been an unspoken rule of my mom’s: All English, all the time. I was surprised my mom had even bothered leaving a message in Spanish at all. She knew my knowledge was limited to Señor Diablo’s second-year high school class.
Basically, I could ask where the bathroom was. Not useful.
If my mom was breaking her own rule, she was either super pissed or super freaked out.
“I’ll call her.” I wasn’t sure if I was lying or not, because I didn’t think I’d ever be ready to tell my parents that I’d up and moved to California the way I had.
In typical Em fashion, she immediately forgot all about her brush with The Spanish as she plucked her sparkly purse from the counter and blew an air kiss at me from the door. “Don’t wait up. If I’m lucky, I’ll be getting lucky,” she gushed.
“Be safe, tramp!” I shouted at the open door.
“Be reckless, virgin!” Em fired back, using her favorite insult, and then we both giggled as Emerson slammed the door behind her. I waited until I heard her heels clicking against the sidewalk, followed by the sound of Lucas joining her as their voices tangled together, rising and falling until they were indistinguishable, and eventually, faded into oblivion.
Making my way to the sofa, I pulled out my cell and counted the number of missed calls from both of my parents. Seventeen, and that was only since yesterday. I was glad I’d severed myself from their cell plan the moment I’d started earning my own money. I wasn’t a child anymore; I didn’t need them tracking my whereabouts.
I shouldn’t complain. My folks were the best, really. They were as supportive as they came, almost to a fault. But my mom never could understand why I couldn’t give up my childhood dreams of wanting to live near the ocean. In her eyes, I might as well have waved a red flag and announced I planned to be a bullfighter.
I braced myself for the inevitable and dialed.
When I heard her voice on the other end, I plastered on my fakest smile. “Mama?” I said cheerfully, and then waited until the angry woman on the other end was forced to breathe. “Everything’s great,” I finally got the chance to say, when she’d chewed me up one side and down the other for not answering my phone. “I’m sorry. I’ve just been busy.” And then, I out and out lied to her. “Yeah, it’s hot here. You know, Arizona in the summertime . . .”
By the time I got off the phone, I felt like I needed a do-over of this entire day. Maybe even of this entire week.
But I’d also figured out what I had to do.
I texted Emerson: Meet you at The Dunes in 20!
I waited until I got the YAY!!! back from her, and then dragged a chair to the almost-unnoticeable opening in the ceiling so I could pull down my duffle bag. It only took a minute to count out the money I’d need, and to tally how much I still had left—somewhere in the neighborhood of $43,000, only some of which was actually money I’d saved from stripping online.
The rest . . . well, the rest was the reason my heart pounded so hard every time I had to dip into it.
When I was finished, I zipped the bag closed and hoisted it back to its hiding place. And even after it was safely tucked away I had to take several long breaths just to calm myself.
I might not be ready to tell my parents the truth about where I was, but I wasn’t ready to let my dream die yet either.
And now I had a plan.