Wish (15 page)

O
livia stood in her matching turquoise Gap Body bra and boy-shorts in front of the open closet door. Soren had left late the night before, barely missing her parents coming home, and Olivia had hurried to bed and pretended to be fast asleep, cradling her marine biology textbook, a wistful smile permanently fixed on her face.

In the flurry of events she’d forgotten to set her alarm, and had woken up with hardly enough time to shower before she was supposed to be at Calla’s house. The fashion show was less than two weeks away, and they still hadn’t decided on the entertainment. Today’s plan was to sift through the DJ samples they’d collected and finally book somebody for the show.

“What do you wear to audition DJs?” Olivia asked, arms crossed over her narrow, naked waist as she perused her hanging clothes for inspiration.

“I refuse to be of any assistance until you’ve given up the goods,” Violet sulked as she stared out the window. She had
been trying all night and morning long to get details of Olivia’s “alone time” with Soren, to very little avail.

“I told you,” Olivia said sternly. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

“Well, I
know
you kissed,” Violet scoffed. “It’s what happened after the kissing that I’m worried about.”

Olivia whipped a sweater across the room at her sister. “What kind of girl do you think I am?” she laughed, feigning modesty.

Violet groaned and hopped down from the window ledge. “That’s what I was afraid of,” she said, peering over Olivia’s shoulder into the closet.

“Here,” Violet said, reaching for a high-waisted jersey dress with a loud geometric print.

“Too festive,” Olivia vetoed, opting for an oversize, scoop-necked pearl-colored sweater, dark skinny jeans, and her beloved charcoal boots instead.

Violet shrugged and lowered herself to the floor, scrunching up against the edge of the bed. “So what’s on the agenda for us today?” she asked.

Olivia climbed into her jeans and pulled them up over her hips.

“I’m not really sure,” she answered vaguely, tugging the fuzzy sweater down over her head. “I think just listening to a bunch of cheesy wedding DJs. I’d stay home if I could.”

Olivia chewed the inside of her bottom lip and held her breath. She felt awful asking Violet not to come along, but it was getting increasingly difficult to keep all of her stories straight
without
having to pointedly ignore a chatty ghost while doing it. After all, it was publicly arguing with Violet that had gotten Olivia into this copilot mess in the first place.

“That was subtle,” Violet said, staring out the window. Olivia lifted her makeup bag from the top of her dresser and
fumbled around for her Kiehl’s grapefruit moisturizer. She squeezed a dollop of thick cream into her palm. “It’s not that I don’t want you there,” she hedged. “It’s just—”

“I get it,” Violet said, pulling herself to her feet and stalking back to the window. “But are you sure it’s a good idea to spend so much time with Calla? Now that things with Soren are so…” She trailed off.

Olivia froze, her hand cupping the bottom of one dry elbow. “You told me to go for Soren—”

“I know, I know,” Violet admitted. “But that was before you started hanging out with Calla every day.”

“I do not hang out with her every day,” Olivia argued. “But what am I supposed to do? Quit the committee? Stop seeing Soren?”

“I don’t have
all
the answers, O. I’m just trying to help,” Violet said, sulking against the window and pressing one side of her freckled face against the glass. She hugged her legs to her chest, her pale arms looking like fragile twigs wrapped around her bony, scraped knees.

Olivia looked at her sister and was slowly reminded of the little girl she used to watch climbing the craggy oak tree in their backyard. Violet would always manage to climb just a little too high, getting stuck in the tallest branches while Olivia barked orders from the ground.
Come down,
she’d insist, stomping a foot, arms crossed.
You’ll get hurt.

Olivia quietly screwed the cap on the tube of moisturizer and placed it back on her dresser. She sat down on the bed, stepping out of her boots and lining them against the wall.

“What are you doing?” Violet asked. “Aren’t you already late?”

Olivia shrugged as she slid back on the bed, crossing her legs and leaning against the headboard. “I think Calla can handle choosing a sound track without me,” Olivia said quietly. “And besides, I’d rather hang out with you.”

Violet suddenly laughed. “Oh, no,” she said from the window. “Not the pity hangout.”

“It’s not pity,” Olivia insisted. “I’d just rather be here.”

Violet looked at her sister long and hard before joining her on the bed.

“Well, guess what?” she asked lightly. “I’d rather have the afternoon off. What do you think about that?”

Olivia squinted at her sister carefully. “Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure,” Violet said. “You can’t hang out with a ghost all day. And really, you have no choice. You have to go. You’re a cochair, that’s what cochairs do: co-go.”

Violet pointed to Olivia’s boots that were slumping against the wall.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” Olivia asked.

Violet scoffed. “And be stuck inside, listening to bad party techno all afternoon?” she asked. “I think I’ll pass.”

Olivia smiled gratefully at her sister and pushed off the bed. As she reached out to tuck the closet door closed, her eyes caught her own reflection in the hanging mirror. Her hair was falling in loose, copper curls down past her shoulders, her skin looked creamy and fresh, and for once, she didn’t hate the confetti freckles across the bridge of her nose.

“You look beautiful,” Violet said softly from the bed. And for the first time, Olivia believed her.

“Is this a human or a robot?” Eve asked from the middle of Calla’s canopied king-size bed. Eve, Lark, and Calla were all huddled on top of the sea-foam down comforter, weeding through a stack of CDs and discarding ones with weird names or questionable cover art.

“Maybe both?” Calla suggested, raising an eyebrow and smiling as she saw Olivia at the door. “You made it!”

“Sorry I’m late,” Olivia said, settling into a studded plush armchair by the window. She was worried that she’d left the lower half of her jaw at the bottom of the massive marble staircase she’d just climbed from the grand foyer below. Calla’s room was on the third floor of a stately, pillared Victorian that seemed to occupy much of a full block in Pacific Heights.

“No problem,” Calla said, scooping up a pile of pens from a cup on her bedside table and passing them out to the group.

It was strange to see her in her natural habitat. Every article of clothing was neatly tucked into a glass-windowed, knob-footed armoire; the pillows rose from the headboard as if they had been freshly fluffed; and the ivory rug was plush and without a single stain or marking. It looked more like a room you’d pay to see from behind a velvet rope than one you’d have a sleepover in. Even
Calla
seemed a little out of place.

“Okay,” Calla began, separating the CDs into smaller piles. “Remember, we’re looking for something cool but not intimidating. We know our parents, and we know they like to think they’re still as hip as we are, but secretly they’re just hoping for a lot of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell.”

“I love Bob Dylan,” Eve pouted.

“Yeah, well, so does everybody,” Calla teased, “but nobody wants to listen to him whining while they’re trying to get drunk.” She stood and crossed the room to where Olivia was sitting. “And, as Graham so eloquently pointed out, the drunker people get,” she went on, “the bigger the checks they’ll be writing for the thrift shop, right?”

Olivia nodded as Calla handed over a grouping of discs and promotional materials.

“Madonna, you’re too far away,” she said flatly as she settled back on the bed. “Come on the bed with us. We don’t bite.” Calla’s hair was wet and looked heavy as she piled it on top of her head and smiled. She stretched the long, slender line of her neck from side to side, reminding Olivia of an exotic bird or sleek jungle cat.

“Lark might,” Eve added, and she and Calla erupted into a fit of caustic laughter. Lark flipped her pen at Eve’s knee as Olivia slowly made her way over to the showroom-style bed, settling gingerly into one corner.

“Progress.” Calla smiled, turning to her bedside table, where a Bose alarm clock and CD player stood proudly at the center of a semicircle of framed photos.

Olivia squinted to better see the people in the pictures as Eve bent forward to pick one up.

“What is this?” Eve asked dryly. Her dark eyes narrowed, the corners of her pouty lips turned down.

As she brought the picture into her lap, Olivia could see that it was a black-and-white shot of Calla and Soren, sitting against one of the stone benches in the courtyard at school. Calla was leaning into Soren’s lap, and Soren’s chin was resting
in the nook of her shoulder. She was midlaugh, her skin smooth and flawless, her eyes sparkling. His smile was quieter, but undeniably happy—the calm smile of somebody comfortably, assuredly in love.

Olivia’s fingers tingled and the back of her neck grew hot.

“Oh, no,” Lark said, grabbing the frame and opening the top drawer of the nightstand. “This
cannot
be on display.”

Calla intercepted the frame and replaced it next to the speakers. “What’s the big deal?” she said defensively. “Just because we’re taking a break doesn’t mean we’re not still friends. I don’t have to pretend he’s dead or anything.”

Lark stared pointedly at Eve for a long moment, her arms crossed against her chest. “Well?” Lark asked coolly. “Are you going to tell her?”

Eve pulled the sleeves of her polka-dot wrap shirt down over her thumbs and fidgeted with the fraying seams.

“Tell me what?” Calla asked, her eyes darting from one girl to the other.

Olivia’s heart dropped to the bottom of her stomach. Had Eve seen her that day on the street? Was she going to give her up now, in front of everyone?

“What’s going on, guys?” Calla asked, soft and slow and in a way that made it clear she didn’t really want to know the answer.

“Nothing,” Eve muttered, glaring at Lark before turning to lay a comforting hand on Calla’s knee. “It’s just, well, Graham said that Soren told him something at band practice last weekend, and I’ve been trying to decide if I should tell you or not, because I didn’t know if you were—”

“He’s seeing someone else!” Lark interrupted, exploding
like a popped balloon. She exhaled heavily and turned to Calla. “I’m really sorry, Cal. But I thought you should know.”

Calla’s eyes hadn’t moved from the pile of CDs in her lap. For a long, loooooong moment, nobody said anything, and Olivia uncomfortably shifted her weight from one arm to the other. Was that all Graham had said?

“Well,” Calla said, stacking the CD cases so that the edges lined up. She looked up at the three of them and smiled, a tiny, heartbreaking, helpless smile that made Olivia want to bury her face in one of the super-fluffy pillows and smother herself to death.

“What you need is a distraction,” Eve said abruptly, climbing up to her knees. “Maybe it
is
just a break with Soren, but you can’t just sit here moping while he’s running around having fun.”

“Who’s moping?” Calla asked, but even Olivia wasn’t completely fooled by her bravado.

“Oh, my God!” Lark shrieked, lunging off the bed and reaching for her iPhone in the outside pocket of her leather hobo satchel. “I completely forgot. Remember my cousin Farley, the poet?”

“The one who used to write sonnets and give dramatic readings at your holiday parties?” Eve asked, rolling her almond-shaped eyes.

“Yes,” Lark said impatiently, “but that was during his angsty high school phase. He goes to Berkeley now, and we ran into him at that coffee shop out there—remember, Calla?”

“Sure.” Calla nodded, busily rifling through the CDs and removing one at random from its case. “He was pretty cute, right?”

Lark scoffed. “I mean, he’s my cousin,” she said, with a thin layer of fake disgust. “But yes. He is ridiculous. Like, in that quiet, scholarly-but-not-geeky-smart-and-still-totally-hilarious kind of way. Plus, he does crew, so his body is insane.”

“How do you know?” Eve asked suspiciously. “Does he do his readings shirtless these days?”

Lark threw a pillow at her and Eve pretended to fall backward off the bed. “Anyway,” Lark went on, “he’s asked about you maybe seventeen times since that day you met, and let’s just say he was
very
interested to learn about your breakup.”

“Break,” Calla corrected, popping a disc into the stereo and closing the lid. “Not breakup.”

Eve and Lark shared a quick, charged look. Olivia realized it had been a while since she’d filled her own lungs, and searched Calla’s hardened face with desperate eyes.

Calla pressed a button and a sudden burst of halting, loud electronic music blared from the speakers. She quickly stabbed at the stereo’s center console and an abrupt silence fell around them.

Calla raised her dark, full brows and turned to Lark, exhaling a thin stream of air.

“Well?” she asked, a wry smile settling into the corners of her lips. “Did you give him my number or what?”

Lark and Eve smiled, and Olivia felt a shift in the room, as if a window had opened and the air had changed.

“Consider it done,” Lark said. “Maybe I could even convince him to come up to the beach house next weekend.”

Calla shrugged as Eve passed her another CD and snapped open the case. “Yeah,” she agreed vaguely. “Maybe.” She stuck a finger in the hole of the plastic disc and held it over the stereo
before turning abruptly to face Olivia at the foot of the bed. “Madonna, I almost forgot. Next weekend a bunch of us are going to help Lark open her house at Stinson Beach. You should totally come.”

Olivia felt her stomach squirming and tried to plaster on a smile as Eve jumped in to continue.

“We do it every year,” she said, tucking back a section of her layered black hair with a silver bobby pin. “It’s such a blast.”

Olivia nodded and swallowed. She felt like a thousand tiny hands were pulling her in different directions.