“Don’t sulk. Scully is a tough motherfucker.”
They don’t know.
Not about Via, and not about Penn.
Not about my sea glass necklace, and not about the green Hulk living inside me.
I flip my hair and smile, but I’m not there. Not really. Even when Knight drives me home under the beautiful starless sky, the color of the night so pure, my eyes sting. The moon looks as lonely and seductive as ever, and Penn is somewhere underneath it, digesting his new reality.
Knight kills the engine and gestures his chin to the entrance of my house. A Tuscan-style mansion with eight bedrooms, it has a two-story foyer, a wine cellar, a ballet studio, and a pool that looks like it bleeds into the cliff of the mountain in our in a gated community called El Dorado. My dad is in investments, and my mom…well, she invested in bagging the right man, I guess.
Her former high school student. But that’s a story for later.
Knight helps me to my door. He shoves his hand into my crocheted purse and fishes out my keys, kicks the door open, and punches in our security code.
“You look wasted, and I look inherently guilty. Please snap out of your bullshit meltdown before we hit the second floor,” he drones, throwing my arm over his shoulder and dragging me up the stairs of the darkened foyer. There’s a huge black and white picture of my mother arabesque-ing in ballerina attire, staring ahead, her elegance casting a regal vibe on the entire house.
It’s not that late, and chances are, my parents are still awake. If not, Melody will wake up when the clock hits midnight. She always sets her alarm to make sure I don’t break curfew.
I don’t remember Knight tucking me in bed, but he does. I’m still wearing my dress and makeup. Time doesn’t move. It just stands still in the room like heavy furniture.
Penn Scully is in trouble.
Big trouble. He just lost his mom and is about to be homeless. Just a few miles away, I’m tucked in my imported queen-size bed with designer Egyptian sheets wrapped around me and an entire aquarium wall filled with pink champagne staring back at me.
My actions are what got him into trouble.
If it weren’t for me, he’d still have his sister around. Maybe his mom wouldn’t have gotten addicted to crack or whatever. I squeeze my eyes shut and resist the urge to cry. He gave me the rarest thing in the world, and I gave him heartache. His mom died on his birthday. There’s some relief in this pain I’m feeling. It reminds me that despite my bitchy ways, I’m still capable of hurting for someone else.
The sound of bare feet padding across the hallway attacks my ears. I recognize Mel’s quiet pace and graceful movements. My door creaks open, and she tiptoes her way in. Normally, I pretend to be asleep to avoid conversation. I stopped calling her Mom and started calling her Mel shortly after Via disappeared, but I don’t even remember why. We’ve been growing apart since, and talking to each other, one on one, is kind of torture. But right now, I don’t know if I can pretend to be asleep.
Melody leans over and presses a kiss to my forehead, a gesture she has repeated every night since the day I was born. Lately, she’s been hovering over my face an extra second to smell my breath for alcohol. I’m sober tonight, though I wish I wasn’t.
“Good night, Lovebug. Did you have a good time at the movies?”
I momentarily forget the lie I told her before I left the house tonight.
I clear my throat, meaning to say yes, but the truth claws out like a scream.
“I saw Penn Scully.”
Her body stiffens, then she sinks down to sit on the edge of my bed. She is trying to school her expression, but her lower lip quivers, and I see it even in the dark.
“How…how is he?”
“His mom died today.”
I’m shocked at my own words. I haven’t spoken about him…ever. No one knows what happened with Via and him. I never came clean. When Melody pressed me about it, I vehemently denied knowing anything. And I guess, in a sense, I convinced myself it didn’t really happen. Until tonight.
She cups her mouth, looks down, and her shoulders begin to shudder. I scoot to a sitting position, pressing my back against my upholstered white satin headboard.
“It’s his birthday,” she says.
But of course, she remembers Via’s birthday.
“He fought tonight.”
She looks up at me. There’s so much agony in those pupils.
“At Peet’s?”
“The snake pit.” I roll my eyes. “Yeah.”
“Is he okay?” She doesn’t even scold me for going there.
“I don’t know. He’s not exactly my crowd,” I quip. I trust Vaughn not to walk away from Penn unless he’s sure he’s okay. Physically okay. Vaughn doesn’t do feelings. And Blythe? Even if he shows signs of wanting to talk about it, he’ll never make it. She’ll sit on his face before Scully can tell her how he feels.
“What happened to his mom?” Mel asks.
“They said overdose.” I fling my hair to one shoulder and start braiding it.
Her nostrils flare, but her mouth barely moves as she speaks. “That’s horrible.”
Isn’t Scully supposed to be loaded? Rich people usually don’t die from drugs. They go hug trees in fancy rehab centers in Palm Springs and come back thirty pounds heavier and thirty K poorer. Via was supposed to be swimming in it. I always thought Penn wore shitty clothes in the same way Vaughn does. To show the world he doesn’t give a crap about money.
“Anyway, I just thought you should know since you were so close to Via.”
Even after all these years, it still feels like death to say her name.
Melody stands and looks around my room, wanting to find something specific. Maybe she is looking for Penn. Picking up strays is not my forte. Luna, my neighbor, is the one who usually saves the injured birds, frogs, cats, stray dogs, and there was even a deer once. If someone were willing to smuggle Penn through a bedroom window, it’d be her. Knowing my luck, he’d end up falling in love with her, too.
“Are you, like, going to talk to him or whatever?” I ask. My heart is beating super-fast in my chest. Penn knows what I did. He could tell her, and she would hate me. She might never admit it, but she would. Hell, maybe she already does. When was the last time we talked? Really talked, like this?
Mom halts at my threshold, clutching the doorframe, her head bowed down. “I’ll do what I should have done when Via was around.”
I wake up late the next morning with the feeling of an impending calamity scratching at my skin with its pointy claws. Jumping out of bed, I race downstairs to get a glass of water. When I pass my parents’ bedroom door on the way back upstairs, I hear them whisper-shouting.
My parents are insanely in love, sometimes to the point of gross. Nothing’s more embarrassing than having your folks hit second base on the bleachers while they cheer you on during a pep rally. More so when your father used to be a student at All Saints High, and your mom taught his senior English lit class.
I know whatever they’re talking about is serious, so of course, I press my ear to their door without even considering giving them their privacy because—hello, I’m me.
“Just tell me why?” Mel growls.
“Because I was a teenage boy once, so I know firsthand how much I don’t want one under my goddamn roof, especially with two teenage girls around.”