Finally I decide to take a walk.
I’m dressed in jeans and my black Graveside Lobotomy T-shirt. Graveside Lobotomy is one of my favorite bands. Their song “Let’s Switch Brains” kills me. I’ve gone light on the Goth makeup, maybe just because the black gets hot and kinda melty in the sun here. That doesn’t really happen when you’re hanging out in the mall like I do back home, but it does here in Ocean Park on the bright sidewalks and at the beach.
I walk down the hill, staying under the shade of trees on Ocean Park Boulevard as much as I can. I stop at the next block down and consider the street sign with the number that should not be spoken.
It doesn’t jump at me, the street itself doesn’t crack open and swallow me up. Above, a swarm of hummingbirds dart among the blossoms in a strange plant that has towering stalks with flowers two stories high, like something drawn by Dr. Seuss. It’s exactly the scene Summer described yesterday when I went through it with my eyes closed, coming and going.
Instead of crossing the street, I turn around and go back up the hill. I only wanted to see the hummingbirds anyway. I play the idea in my mind until I practically believe it. But I remember the list in the drawer in the cottage, and I turn around from the top of the hill.
“I’m not afraid of you!” I shout down the hill to the sign. “Number three. Say it three times. Three three three.”
A guy on a bike rides by and smiles. I feel my embarrassment glowing in my face. I turn down Fourth Street and think of Mistress Scarfia. She’s really just a sad old woman with warts on her nose who eats pretzels from Softee’s every day for lunch.
There’s not as much to do on Fourth Street as there is at the bottom of the hill on Main Street and beyond. But I stop at the little market and get an Orange Sunshine soda—not my usual flavor—then take it to the park on the top of the hill, which has a big expanse of grass and tall, shady trees, and a view of the ocean in the distance. If there were a tsunami, this park would be a good place to be, high above sea level. From here I could see it all, see the destruction unfold from a safe distance. I think of this and wonder what you do after you witness the destruction of everything but aren’t a part of it.
Fern and I spend a lot of time talking about the end of the world, and what it will be like. At the mall we talk about what would happen to the stores and everything in them, depending on whether the end comes from asteroids or zombies or plague, and which stores we’d loot, since everyone would be freaking out and not paying for anything.
Mom thinks it isn’t normal to spend so much time thinking about the end of the world, and she thinks Fern brings it out in me. She thinks I’ve become obsessed with the apocalypse because I don’t want to think about the fact that my dad left us and ruined our lives, but his leaving proves that things do fall apart. It’s just a matter of what’s gonna fall apart next. Or maybe everything is gonna fall apart at once. And even though nothing particularly bad has happened to Fern, she still understands that it’s only a matter of time.
All of that seems a world away as I sit on the cool green and examine tiny white flowers that grow scattered above the grass. Then I notice a homeless man lying on the ground. He props himself up on his elbows, not even a hundred feet from me. He’s shoeless, and even from this distance I can see that the soles of his feet are black with street tar.
He catches me staring at him and grins. More like a half grin, because he’s missing half his teeth. I quickly look away. Then I feel bad about looking away, like he’s got bubonic plague and I can catch it from staring at him or whatever. Or that what he is can rub off on me. I look back so I can smile at him, like Isn’t this a lovely day sir, but he’s lain back down. A couple of moms and a dad are having a playgroup with toddlers nearby, but they don’t seem bothered by the homeless man at all. They don’t seem to notice him a bit.
I watch as the dad in the playgroup lifts his toddler daughter to the sky. She laughs down at him. Then he turns her around and puts her on his shoulders. I feel a twinge of pain in my heart, thinking of my dad and everything he used to do with me. Rides on his shoulders. Lifting me into trees to inspect the newly budding leaves. Teaching me to ice-skate, reading stories to me at bedtime. Sitting in the front row at my piano recitals, beaming. Holding my hand whenever I was afraid. Holding my hand so I was never afraid.
Dad is the reason I play the piano. It was his ambition as a kid, but then he chose medical school over music, because his parents wanted him to be practical. He still plays, and he plays really well, but he’s laid his ambition at my feet. Now that he’s gone, every time I see a piano, or hear the notes coming from it, my heart hurts.
I look away from the playgroup. The breeze moves through my hair. My phone buzzes, and I take it from my back pocket to check it.
It’s a text from Fern.
Why does your mom hate me? I miss you. The mall isn’t the same without you.
She used to text me constantly. But the longer it’s been since Mom forbade me communicating with Fern, the less often she does. It’s like I’m seeing her give up on me in slow motion. Her texts and her lonely words make me feel guilty, because the reason we can’t see each other is totally my fault. So I lie on the grass and try to think of something else.
Instead I think of the times we spent together.
Once we were at the mall, sitting in the food court, eating soft pretzels and watching boys.
“You know, the music they play here has messages in it to make you buy more stuff.” She tore a bit off a soft pretzel and dipped it in the spicy mustard.
“Really?”
“Yeah. The words are backward but your brain can figure it out without you even knowing.”
I tried to imagine what buy more stuff would sound like backward. Futs rom yub?
“It’s all science.” She took a sip of lemonade. “Come on! It’s too noisy in the food court. But if we sit directly under a speaker in a quiet part of the mall I bet we’ll be able to hear it.”
She pulled me away from the table. I grabbed my lemonade and followed her. We passed the Athlete’s Foot, the shoe store where the cute guy at the register wears the referee uniform, and the music store where the grim man in the suit plays the organ at the store entrance. I wondered if maybe the grim man playing the organ was in on the hidden-message thing, too.
Finally Fern stopped at a couch surrounded by fake plants with a speaker overhead.
“Now we sit with our eyes closed and listen.”
At the park in Santa Monica, I close my eyes and listen, remembering the day at the mall with Fern. At the mall there were no birds singing. There wasn’t the sound of the breeze moving through the trees. Just fake light and fake air, and music she said would make us want to buy things.
After fifteen minutes, Fern said she had an urge to buy a family-size set of luggage, but I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t feel anything at all. So Fern insisted we stay and listen another fifteen minutes. By then I was late for piano practice, and Mom was not happy.
Being late for piano practice wasn’t why I was banned from seeing or speaking to Fern. Mom put an end to my friendship with Fern because of a lie I told. Mom doesn’t even know it was a lie, and if I had told the truth—or if I told the truth now—I could still be friends with Fern. But I don’t want to tell the truth, or even think about it, even from this distance, in a beautiful park high above the apocalypse.