Exile (20 page)

A picture of her at a high-school battle of the bands. Her band then was called File Under Tragedy.

Another where she’s standing with the cross-country team last fall, looking very un-Val-like in a powder-blue uniform.

And then something else.

A police log in the Princeton newspaper, from last Christmas:

And she’s been running ever since.

Val doesn’t go to Mission Viejo.

Val’s not even Val.

You might put your head on someone’s shoulder when you have no one else to turn to. You might crash somebody’s date when the alternative is sleeping . . . where? In her car? She wears the same clothes nearly all the time. I thought it was anti-fashion politics; it’s probably because she doesn’t have anything else. I realize that I’ve been basing all of my opinions about Val on the assumption that she’s another middle-class kid like the rest of us. But it’s not even close. Not that she’s let us in on any of that, except Caleb.

I think about texting him, but it’s late. Val is probably asleep, and now instead of imagining her sneaking into his room, I see her getting one of the only good nights of sleep she’s gotten since . . . when?

And it almost makes me love Caleb more that he’s the kind of person who can be there for her, while people like me are so quick to judge. Sure, the question of whether she’s
into him is still there, but it pales in comparison to what she needs. Friends. Safety. To hide. Oh, man. I know I couldn’t have known, but I feel like an idiot.

And yet . . . as I lie in bed turning all this over and over in my head, there is still one question that’s unanswered. If Val’s not from Mission Viejo, and her asshole dad is a lie, what exactly is she doing here?

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

MoonflowerAM
@catherinefornevr 5m
Saturday, I think I might just have to skip you.

Even though I don’t fall asleep until nearly four, I’m up far too early, whirring with anxious energy. I lie in bed, listening to my parents bustle, wondering what I’m going to do about Val, about San Francisco. At one point, the phone rings. I hear the murmur of conversation, then footsteps up the stairs, to my door . . . and away again. My dad saying, “She’s still asleep.”

I keep hoping that will be the case, just for a little while longer, but finally accept that sleep is not coming back. I get up and trudge downstairs to find Carlson Squared eating on the deck. It’s one of those warm, seasonless LA mornings, the sun scorching the patio, the nearby lemon tree fragrant.

“Hey, I made eggs,” says Dad. “And Aunt Jeanine
called about shopping. You should call her back.”

Aunt Jeanine has been taking me shopping since I was little. I’m the surrogate daughter she gets to dote on. It sounds like the perfect distraction for this morning.

I call her back, and down a bagel in my room while doing some basic band business. I post to our BandSpace forum about the Forecast: Sweaters! show. One fan, TooSexyForYourShirt, has a cousin in South San Francisco, and soon we are chatting about putting up posters. I contact SarahFromTheValley, who’s been doing the influence photo art, and ask if she can make a poster. I get Petunia to give us five free show passes to give away and then I start a contest on the band’s LiveBeat page.

When all that is done, I find myself back in Val’s world. A quick search, and I find Melanie Fowler’s Facebook page.

Since we’re not friends, all I can see are her basic stats and profile picture. She doesn’t have an employer listed. The picture is a self-portrait with a bad, bright flash. She’s smiling but it’s hazy, her eyelids kinda half asleep, dark circles beneath. It looks like a photo from the bleary end of a long night. There’s a dude in a cowboy hat grinning around a beer beside her, a cigarette in his fingers. He doesn’t look all there either.

She has her photos locked down for Friends Only, but I can see her Likes. I click there. Nothing remarkable. Bands, movies, restaurants—

And Candy Shell Records.

Their page has fifty thousand likes, but . . . it seems like an unlikely coincidence. I do a search for Melanie and Candy Shell.

A few pages in, I find results. Melanie Fowler worked for a publicity company called Ultra-Lozenge. And they ran some promotion for Allegiance to North. Candy Shell bought them up in 2000. All of this suddenly seems too coincidental.

I text Maya. Can you do me a secret detective favor?

Aunt Jeanine picks me up at ten thirty and we head for Bloomingdales and its surrounding mall. Her little vanilla-colored Pomeranian, ironically named Cocoa Bean (or maybe a subtle hint from Aunt Jeanine to the world that someone’s appearance does not necessarily dictate who they are inside) yips from her shoulder bag/kennel in the back-seat. Aunt Jeanine works for a clean water nonprofit, and travels to West Africa a few times a year to manage well projects. I take care of Cocoa Bean when she’s gone. I call the dog “the weasel,” but it loves me.

“
Sanu ki
,” says Jeanine as I get in the car. “
Ina aiki
?”

“
Aiki da godia
,” I say, humoring her with the one phrase of Hausa she’s taught me. It always feels forced, these greetings, as they’re so different than how Carlson Squared operates, and yet I do think it’s cool that Aunt Jeanine has this solo, world-traveling life, even if it leads one to get a weasel dog instead of a proper canine.

I ask Jeanine about work so she’ll talk and I can just gaze out the window, answering her questions in
mmm
s and one-word replies. It’s all Val in my mind, and as Jeanine goes on about next month’s trip to Niger, I try to make sense of what I know:

Val, formerly Cassie, runs away from New Jersey on Christmas and goes to Ithaca. She must have had someone to stay with. And after being there for six months, she comes here. I wonder if her mom tracked her down in New York state. But even if that’s the case, why come here? Why Caleb? Is that coincidence? Did she just happen to know someone out here and then wanted a band to play in? But then why not change her name again? And, is it also a coincidence that she shows up and auditions for Caleb’s band right around the time that Caleb is finding out about these hidden songs? But it’s ridiculous to think she could have known about that, isn’t it? Except her mother has old ties to Candy Shell and Allegiance to North . . . and something about all that makes her purpose in the band potentially . . . what? Sinister? Could she be after the songs? It seems
unlikely. How could she have even known about them?

I need more information, but it’s going to be a long wait for Maya to get back to her internship and get the gossip. Despite the suspicious mom connection, at least I now half believe Val’s story last night: her home life is more than a mess; she has no home. And no matter what wild plots I might suspect, I have to try to remember it’s innocent until proven guilty. I can’t let my own issues with Val get in the way.

Also, the fact that Val’s mom was arrested and Val ran off isn’t something I can discount. There was a real police report. Real danger. Real pain. I can’t let my snooping lead to Val’s mom finding out where she is.

“Brunch first?” asks Jeanine as we park. “I’m starving.”

We go to the outdoor café and both order Belgian waffles. As we are digging in, Aunt Jeanine says, “So, your dad tells me you’re going on a college trip next weekend.”

Crap. “Yeah.”

“Let me guess: that lack of enthusiasm is because you don’t actually want to do law and he’s totally jumped on it?”

“I don’t know that I wouldn’t want to do law someday, but yes, that’s part of it.”

Aunt Jeanine smiles. “Your father has always been like that. And is your lack of enthusiasm also because you have plans to go to San Fran?”

I swallow a rush of anxious energy. “How did you know about that?” I wonder if she, too, is following my
movements on Twitter. I keep all this stuff off Facebook, because I know most of my family is there. I thought Twitter was a family-free zone.

“Actually, I saw the listing in the
SF Weekly
,” she says. “I wasn’t looking for it, I just happened to be reading the last bit of an article and there were gig listings on the facing page, and there was Dangerheart.”

“There we are. . . .” I feel myself deflating. At least obsessing about Val had kept my mind off this. “I don’t know what I’m going to do about it.”

Jeanine nods. “Donald is probably not going to go for the idea of you trading college visits for a band gig. He still pictures you as the twelve-year-old with braces who hangs on her father’s every word. He’s not quite ready for you to be your own person.”

“Especially if that person isn’t the one he was picturing.”

“I’m assuming that you plan on there being other gigs,” says Aunt Jeanine. “Is this one really so important? Couldn’t you just miss it and be at the next one?”

“It’s kinda the opposite,” I say. “This gig is more important than any future ones.”

“I see.” Aunt Jeanine feeds a chunk of waffle through the top of her bag to Cocoa Bean’s snapping jaws. Then she places her purse on the table. It’s a woven bag from Niger. It’s gorgeous but the leather was cured in camel urine, a very distinctive smell that tends to linger. She shuffles
through the contents and produces a thin red envelope.

“What’s this?” I ask.

“Somebody’s favorite aunt happens to be going to San Francisco this weekend. She’s going to see an opera. Puccini’s
Tosca
. And she has an extra ticket.”

I kind of gape at her. “You . . .”

“Are providing the perfect alibi, yes.”

I slip open the envelope. “These are two-hundred dollar seats,” I say.

“Yes, and I have the perfect date to take.”

“Um,” I say, trying to keep up, “but I’d be at the show . . .”

“Not you,” says Jeanine, batting her hand playfully at me. “I have a long-time ‘what-if’ in Berkeley. She and I have been on four well-installation trips together. And on this last one we realized our shared love of
Tosca
, among other things.”

“Oh,” I say. I smile, wanting to add something about this news, about this
life
that Jeanine has kept completely under wraps during all family get-togethers ever.

Jeanine seems to read my mind. “Something else that Donald isn’t ready for, despite the changing times.”

“This is . . . amazing.” I’m nearly crying with relief. “Thank you.”

“You just do your thing, and we’ll educate your father at another time. But, keep my cell at the ready, in case we need to coordinate. We’ll tell them that you’re coming to
my place the minute school ends Friday, and that we’re grabbing the five-p.m. shuttle from Burbank.”

“Sounds good.”

“And, now that that’s settled, you have to humor me and let me buy you something to wear to the opera.”

When we enter Bloomingdales, we are greeted by Franca, Aunt Jeanine’s personal shopper. She’s a stout, peppy little thing in a black sales suit, her red-dyed hair back in a severe bun, exposing her gray roots. “Ahh, there you are, and oh . . .” She smiles tenderly and rubs my forearm. “You brought my Vivien.”

“Hi, Franca,” I say. Franca says I look like Vivien Leigh, an actress from the golden age who was in
Gone with the Wind
. I’d say the resemblance is a stretch but I haven’t spent much time comparing the finer points of our features. And I haven’t ever yearned to be one of those movie stars with the soft filter around them.

“Me first,” says Jeanine, “and then Summer needs something for the opera.”

I spend some time hating everything I try on: jeans, boots, sweaters. The world is fitting wrong today, despite the good news about San Fran. Maybe I don’t like looking in the mirror and seeing the girl who jealously stormed out last night. Of course it’s not my fault I didn’t know the whole story. I still feel like my anger was valid. Maybe I’m just exhausted.

By the time we meet back up, I’ve managed to pick one cardigan that I can live with. It disappoints Aunt Jeanine if I don’t find something. She’s chosen a very classy sweater and skirt combo and some killer black boots for her date.

“And now, Vivien’s turn.” Franca takes my arm with her ring-covered fingers and leads me toward the escalator. “We will make you look so elegant.”

I have to talk Franca down from getups with no back and no shoulders and all kinds of frills, eventually settling on a black thing that’s formfitting, with a shimmer but still seems like me. Not that I’m even going to wear it, but still . . . Franca seems satisfied. She says it’s a great brand.

“You would of course want to perm your hair,” says Franca.

Has anyone gotten a perm in thirty years? “Maybe I’ll just put it up,” I say, piling it atop my head and flashing a stylish pose at the triple mirrors. I do look pretty good. I think for a moment that I could do this, be a dressed-up classy girl, but would everyone still see me? Or would they automatically assume the Catherine? Maybe, on occasion, I’d like to be both. You should be able to be both, but it never quite feels like an option.

Still, mugging in this thousand-dollar dress makes me wonder: last year, Ethan and I shunned all things prom. But what about this year? With Caleb . . . Except I’m still wounded from last night.

“Okay, this will work,” I say.

“Of course it will, but you must let me dress you up in some more things, Vivien.”

I smile. “Fine.” Some more time before Caleb and I see each other is probably best anyway. I text him that I can’t make practice, and then for the next two hours allow the ridiculous pleasure of shopping to take over.