Loving Emily (12 page)

“Apologize!”

“NO!” I shouted. And I never did. A wall grew that day between me and my parents. And, until Michael died, I never spoke directly to the Westons again.

A
nother day passes without hearing from Chrissie, and I’m going nuts. There has to be someone at the tennis club who will give me her address. I do a mental run-through of possible targets and come up with Marge, who works in the Admin office. I smile to myself.
She’s perfect.

She’s the type who wallpapers her cubicle with postcards of celebrities and spends all her off hours standing in line for free tapings of TV reality shows. I usually avoid her because she bombards me with questions about my dad. My plan is to offer Marge something she wants in exchange for what I want.

My dad can get tickets to practically any event in town. I almost never ask for stuff like this, but today I will.

I stick my head into his office suite at our home to find Phyllis, his assistant, juggling three blinking phone lines. She shakes her head at me, but I say “Please? I only need a minute.”

Dad, in the office behind her, catches sight of me through the open door. “It’s okay, Phyllis,” he calls, waving me in.

I sit down across from him, noticing the surprise on his face. It’s been more than three years since I came to visit him in his office. It has taken this Chrissie problem to bring me back.

I used to spend hours here. When I was young, I read a lot of Dad’s scripts and gave him my notes on them, and he’d teach me stuff like how a story should be structured and how to write dialogue.

Dad still uses paper more than he does electronic gadgets. His desk is piled high with scripts, mail, and messages. His list of Things to Do, covering two typed pages, is in front of him, lying on a large month-at-a-glance calendar that’s black from all the inked in meetings, auditions, lunches, events, and other things he does with his life.

His eyes are red and tired, and the three lines are still blinking on his phone, all on hold, waiting for him. But there’s a pleased smile on his face. “What’s up?” he asks me, leaning back and putting his hands behind his head.

I’ll have to tell Dad some version of the truth; the man can detect bullshit from a distance of a thousand yards.

“I want give two tickets to someone at the tennis club. It’s kind of a thank you, cuz she’s been nice to me.”

His face goes expressionless when he realizes why I’m there. I know he’s disappointed, but he’ll do this favor for me. He should, after all the times he’s waltzed out of the house with Mom, leaving us kids behind.

He leans forward, putting his elbows on the desk. “Jared Abernathy’s new film comes out in two weeks.” Dad has just signed Jared to star in his next project,
Mystery Moon. “
You want tickets to the premiere and the party afterwards?”

“That’d be great! Thanks.” I stand up as the number of blinking lights increases to four.

He gives me a nod and picks up the phone as I leave.

The next day, I go to Marge and make her my offer. “All you have to do it get me some information, okay?”

Faced with the option to do her job right versus blowing it off to hang with Hollywood celebrities, Marge’s choice is clear. An hour later, she calls me with Chrissie’s home address and phone number.
Yes
.

I start to call Chrissie’s number, but then reconsider. I don’t want to scare her off. I decide to go pay her a visit instead. It’s now late in the afternoon, and I’ve got a date with Emily tonight. I’ll go up to Chrissie’s first thing tomorrow morning.

•   •   •

I justify my date with Emily by the fact that I’ve been working to find Michael’s baby. If Jonathan’s right, the good deed will cancel out the bad one on the karma worksheet. She and I are going to the Santa Monica Pier, and I want to have fun.

Ever since that kiss with Emily in the park, I’ve been a goner. I can no more resist her now than I could stop breathing or swallowing. And she seems to feel the same way: we have become the Make-out Maniacs.

On the Pier, we ride to the top of the Ferris wheel and exchange fantastic, face-sucking kisses. She’s a little freaked out, though, by being up so high. I distract her by telling jokes, then French kiss her through the last two cycles of the big wheel, until our little car finally shudders to a stop on the ground.

The ride over, I walk with her along the pier.

“I haven’t seen you since noon yesterday,” she says, putting her lower lip out in a cute way. For us, that’s a long time.

“That’s because you went home with your carpool,” I say. “You should let me drive you home every day.” She and I grab every chance we can get to be together.

“You’re practically already doing it! My afternoon carpool has barely seen me in two weeks.”

“Quit it. I’ll take you home in the afternoons.”

“What about on Wednesdays?” Emily stays late for Songbirds rehearsal that day, but her friend Chloe, who stays after for debate, takes her home.

“I can wait for you on Wednesdays. Tell your carpool and Chloe that you’ve got a new ride.”

I put my arm around her as we lean against the railing and look down into the water. Her warm body presses up against mine.

Although I know it’s wrong to be with Emily after what I did to Michael, I sometimes think he would have understood in his own way. As he would have put it,
Never pass up a chance for some booty.

In my case, it’s a little different. I’m not getting any actual booty from Emily, although I fantasize about that nonstop. But I
am
completely, gonzo, out-of-control in love.

“Ryan?”

I come back to earth. Emily’s next to me, her hair flying and cheeks red from the wind. She has this amazing way of knowing exactly the right thing to do for me. She stands there, calm, saying nothing, waiting for me to come back to her. Mentally, I mean.

“Michael and I used to come to this beach all the time,” I tell her. “We’d bring my dog Jasper and play Frisbee.”

“How long did you have him?”

“For eight years, starting when I was six. He was the coolest dog.”

I start to tell Emily a story. “You want to know the best thing Jasper ever did? He ate my homework once. It was awesome, to be able to say to a teacher ‘The dog ate my homework’.”

“He did? He really ate it?”

“Swear to God,” I say. “It was in Mr. Randall’s algebra class. He was such a dick. I had to tear the assignment up into tiny pieces and mix it with canned food. But Jasper ate it all. And I went to school, told Randall the dog had eaten my homework, and I got detention. But it was totally worth it.”

“You
fed
your homework to the dog?” Emily’s eyes are warm as she rests her chin on my chest and looks up at me. “What am I going to do with you, Ryan?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “What
are
you going to do with me?” We exchange a long, steamy look.

“I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.” Her voice strokes the words.

By now, we are facing each other, and Emily’s leaning against my chest. Right here is one form of going to heaven, holding Emily in a full frontal body press. But I am having a male problem. I’m growing a boner, and it’s probably my biggest ever. I mean, I could hit a home run with this boner or whack a hockey puck the entire length of an ice rink. I am making small, but relevant body adjustments, hoping Emily will not notice there are now three of us in our little huddle.

Leaning her body against mine, she says, “I can feel your heart.” After recovering from the shock of what I
thought
she was going to say, I think to myself,
no wonder.
My heart’s beating like a jungle drum. Damn. I’ve been trying to maintain my aura of coolness, yet now my heart has betrayed me, with its wild, passionate pounding for Emily.

She suddenly straightens up and moves away from me. There we go. She has finally become aware of my trusty appendage. Caught, I give Emily a guilty look.

“I’m a guy. I can’t help it.” Given the crowds around us and the bulge in my pants, I’m glad we’ve turned toward the railing again. I am a ship, with my mast facing out to sea.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I was being a tease, wasn’t I? I’ll stand two feet away from now on.”

“No, be a tease! I’d rather get a little action than none.”

Emily’s giggling. “Ryan, do you ever, you know, screen your words before you speak?”

I think about it. “Not really. It’s unfortunate.” I pause. “And now, I’ve got to walk to the car like this.”

“Walk behind me,” she says, and that’s what I do.

•   •   •

That night I dream I am riding on the Ferris wheel, but somehow it’s really a roller coaster. I am jammed into a little car with Michael and Chrissie. Michael is trying to hold this baby and come on to Chrissie at the same time. But the baby keeps making weird noises. My whole family—Mom, Dad, and the girls—are in cars behind me, and I want to crawl back to them, but I’m too scared. So instead I move forward on the roller coaster, and it turns out my new seat partner’s Mr. Randall, my eighth grade math teacher, who gave out detentions like they were sticks of gum.

Then, Mr. Randall grabs my arm, with this creepy expression he always got when doling out punishment, and says “Soldier Rock!”

I wake up with a tight feeling in my chest, gasping for air.

It’s so unfair that Michael will never see the ocean again, will never kiss another girl.

“Soldier Rock,” he had said in the stairwell that night. I’m the only person in the world who he would have said that to, who would have known what he meant.

I tell myself that wherever Michael is now, he can kiss as many girls as he wants. But I don’t believe it. I know he’s just rotting in the ground.

I lie in bed and stare at my shutters until finally the night is over and cracks of daylight are filling up the room.

C
hrissie lives in a crummy walk-up apartment in this armpit of a neighborhood in the Valley. I pull up at ten o’clock the next morning in my impossible-to-miss red sports car and look out on the dead grass and peeling paint of her apartment building. So much for traveling under the radar. Chrissie’s probably already spotted my car and is making her escape out a back window at this very moment.

The building’s designed like a truck-stop motel, with each apartment door visible and facing the street. To get to the second and third floor apartments, you climb stairs and use exterior walkways that run along the face of the building. I reach Apartment 206 and see that the door has a peephole, which I try to look through. But it’s made only for looking out, not in. I ring the bell and wait.

No answer. I ring the bell again, leaning on it a little, while the hairs rise up on the back of my neck. I have the strangest feeling I’m being watched. But there’s total silence on the other side of the door.

“May I help you?” Two guys holding full grocery bags have just walked up. They’re older, like maybe in their early twenties. Their eyes are raking me over from head to foot.

“Do you live in this building?” I ask.

“Yeah. What do you need?” The guy talking has a goatee and small wire-rimmed glasses. His friend’s wearing a pink button-down shirt.

“I’m looking for a girl named Chrissie. I know her from the Palisades Tennis Club.”

The goatee guy is still looking me over. “She moved out of the building.”

I freak. “Moved out! When?”

“Just recently.” He shifts the grocery bag in the crook of his arm.

“That’s right,” the second guy says. “She moved out really recently!”

“Do you have a forwarding address for her?” I move my shoulders around as nervous tension floods my body.

“No. She left in a hurry.”

Why? What is she so afraid of?
“What about a phone number?”

“Sorry.” With an annoyed expression, the goatee guy glances down at the bags in his arms, full of cans and wine bottles.

Flipping out, I find a piece of paper and scribble my name and phone number on it. “If she calls you, or if you get any information, would you let me know? It’s really important.”

“No problem.”

I follow the walkway to the stairs, go down to the ground floor, then look up over my shoulder, to see them continuing along the second floor walkway with their grocery bags. I hop into my car and sit there, wanting to smack my head against the steering wheel.

I can’t believe this.
That one conversation with me drove her into hiding? My car peels out of its parking space with a squeal of tires. The whole way home, my mind turns this way and that, but keeps hitting dead ends. I don’t know anyone else who knows her. She’s from the South, but where? She never said.

Then I have an idea. She’s an actress. Maybe she’s a member of SAG or AFTRA, one of the acting unions. She would probably send them any new address or phone number she had.

Hah! I’m on it. I’ll track her down. I’ll make sure of it.

•   •   •

As I walk down the hall at school with Jonathan, we run into Derek Masters. He is striding along with a couple of other guys from the basketball team. They’re shouting and high fiving each other, putting on a masculine display for all of the females lucky enough to be in the area.

When he sees us, Derek stops. “Takahara! I’ve gotta get with you about that history project.”

“I know—I’ll call you,” Jonathan says.

We walk on. “You have history with him?” I ask, getting a sinking feeling. That would be Hellman’s European History. The one Emily’s in.

“Yeah, he’s in all those classes.”

“You mean the AP classes?” I ask, although I know that’s exactly what he means. English, math and history. “He’s in there with you and Emily?”

Jonathan nods.

I can’t stop myself from asking, “Does he talk to Emily a lot?”

He nods again. “Affirmative.”

“Do you think he’s after her?”

Jonathan hesitates. “Affirmative.”

I knew it.
I knew Derek was on the prowl for Emily. But I didn’t know that he was a star student sharing numerous AP classes with the Girl I Love.