Pasadena - Hardcover

Maggie always was a fucking train wreck. Leave it to her to end up facedown in a swimming pool on the hottest day of summer.

Caller ID shows Joey called five times. The sixth time, he left a message. I played it once, the phone close to my ear, then listened to the echo of my own breathing over the open line, waiting for his words to sink in. When they did, I hung up.

“I have to go home.”

“What?” Danielle says. We’re at a diner in Cape May on the Jersey Shore. My cousin shovels a handful of fried clam strips into her face. “We just got here,” she says, her mouth stuffed. It’s disgusting.

I turn and look out the window. Summer rain dots the plate glass, turning the trees along the side of the road into watercolor. Across the street, well-tended Victorian houses staunchly ignore the shower as tourists run by in flip-flops and canopied bicycle surreys.

It’s my first time back to see family since my mother and I moved out west. I thought I’d been missing the East Coast, but there’s a sour feeling in my stomach, one I haven’t felt since the last time I was here.

We’d gone to California to be new people, to have a fresh start. But bad things happen everywhere. Even in the land of sun and roses.

That’s why I left for the summer. And that’s why I’m going back again.

I shake my head, annoyed at Dani after the thunderclap of bad news. “Not your home. Mine.”

Dani’s dark lashes flutter and her eyes go wide. “Back to LA?”

My cousin loves the thought of it—Hollywood, Los Angeles. She resents me for being here when we could have both been back there for the summer. But I don’t live in LA, her fabled City of Angels. I live on the outskirts, in Pasadena.

I shut the phone in my hand, pressing it to my cheek like an ice pack that can stop the pounding in my head. “Maggie’s dead.”

Dani’s mouth forms a perfect O of stupidity. “Your BFF?” “That’s the one.”

Dani’s face turns a shade of gray. “Oh, Jude, that’s awful. What happened?”

I don’t answer because I don’t know.

Dani waits, clears her throat. Then she starts in on her French fries.

I unlock my phone and call the airline, avoiding the text messages in the open window, the ones that Maggie would never respond to now.

I turn back to the scene out the window, pressing but- tons in the voice mail tree to book my flight. The rain, the incessant greenery feels flamboyant next to my memory of California. Water streams down the window, tracing shadows on my skin like the promise of tears. Three hundred fifty dollars is the cost of changing my summer plans. The cover charge for the suicide of my best friend. I stifle a laugh, and feel a hole opening up inside me. Maggie’s gone.

But why?

There must be a reason.

That’s what I tell myself the entire ride to the airport.

Strung out on too much adult sympathy and not enough sleep, I try to drum logic into my head.

My aunt and cousin drop me at the terminal with its forced air and forced smiles. They don’t give gifts or linger. No cash in the palm, or saltwater taffy. I’ve tainted their perfect summer.

When I hand the airline rep my bereavement-rate ticket, he realizes I’m a minor traveling alone and I get special treatment. At seventeen, they don’t give me any cheap plastic wings. Just a seat against the bulkhead, where the flight attendants can keep an eye on me, and a Diet Coke before takeoff.

I tell myself that I haven’t had time to call Joey. Not between packing and travel. He would know what really happened. Joey’s good at that. Knowing. Except for when it comes to him and me. Besides, I don’t want to know just yet. Details are pedestrian when it comes to suicide— overdose, razor blade, gunshot, asphyxiation. There are only so many ways to off yourself. It’s not really the how that matters anyway, just the who, the what, and the why.

The who is Maggie. Drop-dead gorgeous Maggie Kim. The last time I saw her out by the pool, she was dressed like a movie star—black one-piece suit, strapless, the same thick ebony as her glossy bob of hair. Big round sunglasses that would have made me look like a bug, but looked elegant on her. She’d worn a sheer black robe over it all, and candy-apple-red patent leather mules that clacked loudly on the pebbled surface of the deck but matched the polish on her manicure and toes.

She’d held a cigarette between perfectly painted lips, one of those nasty little filterless things that she loved so much she’d order them online by the boxful. You’d have thought it was a brick of heroin, the way she clung to the box when the UPS delivery came.

I tried one once, when she wasn’t looking. Me, the Goody Two-shoes, the Sandra Dee. I didn’t even light it. The taste of tobacco on my lips was enough to make me puke.

She caught me hunched over the toilet and smiled with those professionally pearly whites, so striking against her red lips and almond-brown skin. “Don’t mess with Mommy’s candy,” she’d told me. Then she’d laughed and held my hair, even though it was already in a ponytail.

Poor Maggie. I failed her.

Between the complimentary drink service and the meal cart, I finally break down and cry.

Chapter 2

California rises up to meet me. The jet wheels hit the tarmac with a 2.5 Richter rumble.

Home. It’s so bright out here, so the opposite of my green summer getaway.

I dig into my bag for sunglasses and come up empty. In a flash, I can see them, three thousand miles away, lying on my borrowed bed. Figures. I squint and make my way to the cabstand.

When the 101 Freeway gives way to the 134, my pulse quickens. We speed through Glendale and Eagle Rock, the smudgy soup bowl of Downtown LA spread out to my right. The hillside on my left is blasted, the golden-brown grass singed to a blackened streak of a cigarette-caused wildfire that probably shut down traffic for most of rush hour. I lower my window and try to smell the smoke, but it’s long gone, eradicated by LA’s finest. I close the window. It’s almost good to be home.

Almost.

And then we’re at Orange Grove, peeling off the free- way to the south, and a lump the size of a lemon hits my throat. “Stop here,” I say as we reach Colorado Boulevard and the stretch of stores crowding the street with tourists and locals alike. I pay the man and find a store with a sunglass stand for the unprepared. Sunblock and hats fill the back of the rack. In February, it’ll be ponchos and umbrellas.

I buy two pairs of cheap glasses. Not fashionable, but at least they hide my red eyes.

Big girls don’t cry, Maggie used to say. They get even.

Joey answers his phone before the first ring ends. “Joe, I’m back. I’m at the Coffee Bean on Fair Oaks. Come get me?”

I didn’t even have to ask. I heard his car keys the minute he said hello. He’s got a special ringtone for me. Everyone used to tease me about it. A song from an old movie. Supposed to be romantic, but I’ve never seen it.

“Welcome back,” Joey says, bumping into an empty chair in his rush to greet me.

I’m in the back of the coffeehouse, away from the picture windows and the summer crowds, at a small wooden table for two. I take my feet off the extra chair, put down my iced coffee, and let him pull me into a hug. It’s awkward and lasts too long for my comfort, but I figure he needs it. He deserves it. Joey’s the one who found Maggie’s body.

He wraps his arms around my bare shoulders and clings to me, smelling of fabric softener and boy sweat.

“Jude, it was awful. I—”

That lump in my throat is getting bigger. “Not here, Joey. Not yet.” My eyes ache. It would be a mistake to cry in front of him. A cliché, one he’d be quick to embrace. I shake my head, my voice barely a whisper. “In the car, okay?”

“Sorry,” he says, pulling away. His fingers leave my skin reluctantly. I shrug and take in his gangly figure, shredded jeans, and the ever-present unbuttoned shirt over a plain white tee. This is Joey’s uniform. Only the state of the jeans and the color of the shirt changes. It’s reliable, like him.

“Thanks for coming to get me.”

“Sure, no problem.” Suddenly, he’s all elbows and shy glances, no longer looking at me directly. He’s gotten taller since school ended. Not a great development for a kid who already looked like a young giraffe.

“This your bag?” he asks, reaching for my pink-and- purple duffel. I don’t answer, just grab my matching back- pack and follow him out the door.

“Did you want a drink or something?” I ask belatedly. “My treat.”

“Not now, thanks. I just hit Jamba Juice before you called.” He pats his nonexistent stomach and swings my bag over his shoulder.

“Sorry I’m parked so far away,” he says as we head south, away from the shopping area. “The lot was full and parking is a bitch around here on a Sunday.”

“Yeah.” I suck the last of my drink dry and roll the sweating plastic cup against my cheek. It’s oven-hot today, and the city smells like a dozen little grass fires waiting to happen.

“Here we are,” Joey says, tweaking the unlock button on his car key. A silver ZX convertible bleats in response. The top is down to protect it from being sliced by stereo thieves. Radios are cheap. Soft tops are not. Joey tosses my bag in the back and we climb in.

I kick off my clogs and put my feet on the dashboard. Joey pulls an old paperback out of my way and drops it in the backseat.

Maggie used to do this—take her shoes off in the car. Even in winter. She drove barefoot too. Said she could feel the road better that way.

I feel five hours of airplane cramps and a knot in my stomach.

There are reasons I went away for the summer. But now I’m back. Still, there’s no need to head home. Not just yet.

“Can we go to Maggie’s?” I ask. “I should see her parents.”

“Sure,” Joey says. And like the good boy he is, he drives in silence, radio off, and lets me gather my thoughts.

We drive down along the arroyo, big houses looking confused at the passing of the century. Craftsman mansions and stone monoliths that look like scattered university buildings rather than private homes. Oaks and magnolias shade the curving boulevards with names like characters from Fitzgerald novels. I read them as they go by.

The magnolia trees are in bloom and the air is alive with the thick scent of flowers and pollen. Joey’s car is dusted in yellow granules that blow past us as we drive. I take a deep breath, drawing summer into my lungs. “Okay,” I say. “Tell me.”

Joey wipes his nose, clears his throat, and sniffs. He keeps one hand on the wheel and his eyes on the road. “I don’t know. I just. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of days, but we were supposed to catch a matinee. We had talked about it at Dane’s birthday party. I took the side gate, came around the corner of the house, and there she was. Floating. But not facedown like in the movies. She was looking up, with the sun on her face. I thought she was swimming, but she didn’t move, she didn’t answer when I said her name. I jumped in, pulled her out, tried to get her breathing, but it didn’t help. I screamed until her father came to the back door. He called 9-1-1.”

I listen to Joey recount the details of my best friend’s death, how she looked, how the pool was cold. How her lips were tinged with blue.

I revise the image in my mind: Maggie, faceup, staring at the sky. Estimated time of death: 11:00 p.m. He tells me the paramedics called the coroner’s office. How there was an autopsy, rushed because the coroner knew the family. Mr. Kim is a somebody in Pasadena.

It’s likely the Kims panicked out of concern for their son, Parker. He “isn’t well,” as the understatement goes. The slightest hint of danger to his health, and he gets whisked away to a roomful of doctors. If Maggie had died of anything contagious, they’d want to know. Their little boy has been dying slowly for so long, heaven forbid something like swine flu come along and kill him overnight.

But it wasn’t swine flu.

We reach Maggie’s street, a wide treeless avenue except for a few ridiculously tall palms, the kind that are deadly in high winds with their razor-blade sheaves flying like weighted boomerangs. No fruit, no flowers, and not a lick of shade. They’re wealthy trees, arrogant and useless. They remind me of Maggie’s parents.

“It was an accident,” I say as we make the turn. The block is silent except for the ticking heat-click of air con- ditioners and the hum of the car. Maggie had called me before, threatening to kill herself. That’s how I know she would never follow through. She loved the drama, and drama needs an audience. “It was an accident,” I say again.

Joey doesn’t look at me. “The coroner said suicide.” I take a deep breath. “Why? What did he find?”

He stays silent a moment. “They’re still running tests.” I lean forward, as if I can intimidate him into answering me. “Tests. On what?”

Joey shakes his head, as if he still can’t believe it. “A bellyful of drugs.”

“Violetta,” I say by way of greeting when the home health aide answers the door. Parker must be back home from wheelchair camp if Violetta’s here. Maggie’s inoperable- tumor-filled brother is smart as a whip. He bites like one too. I used to think he was cute, when I was young enough to mistake sarcasm for flirting. I outgrew it.

“Mrs. Kim is in the garden,” Violetta says. She holds the door open for me and Joey, then runs back upstairs. There’s an elevator in the kitchen, but I guess that’s for private use only. They treat Violetta like a butler, but she draws some of her own lines.

The house is hot. The Kims are rich enough to be stingy about things like climate control. Mr. Kim drives a ten-year-old imported sedan. The house is as formal on the inside as it is out front, if a little better preserved. Where the shutters are fading on the facade, the interior reads like a page from Architectural Digest circa 1992. Pale peach walls and pooled drapery abound.

Joey and I make our way through the sunken living room, not bothering to take off our shoes. French doors off a stiff, plastic-covered chintz family room lead to the upper terrace of the backyard. I pause with one hand on the door.

Mrs. Kim is kneeling in front of an explosion of Da- vid Austin roses like a nun at the altar. A giant hat that matches the floral living room drapes protects her pale perfect skin from the sun. For a moment, she looks like Maggie and I can almost pretend.

But then she rocks back on her heels and I see the expression on her face. Peaceful, in a way Maggie never was.

In a way that’s out of place for a woman whose only daughter died yesterday.

“Mrs. Kim?”

She jumps, a gardening glove flung to her throat.

“Oh, you startled me,” she says in her softly accented English. I think Mrs. Kim wanted to be an actress—she has the feel of a starlet playing at being a Korean-American housewife. Old-world gentility and Western wiles. At least I know where Maggie got the idea.

“Sorry to scare you,” I say.

Joey clears his throat, shifts nervously behind me. “Hi, M...