Once Upon a Page is Wes’s first job. It’s his only job, so far.
He stares into the store’s display window. Someone forgot to turn off the BOOKS sign. Its pink neon light illuminates the New Releases display, a tower of books whose covers show dragons and blood and flowers and breathtaking colors.
In the reflection, Wes swears he sees a small boy with out-of-control curly hair and large eyes bouncing in anticipation of getting his sticky fingers on the newest issue of Green Lantern with John Stewart on the cover. A boy who huddled in a corner of the bookstore for hours, reading. A boy who had to be escorted home more than a few times by Mrs. Rossi, the bookstore’s owner, because he missed dinner or had homework to finish.
Wes isn’t that boy anymore.
“Let’s talk priorities,” says Ella as she stands next to him. “Like hauling your luggage upstairs. Taking a shower because, while I love you, you’re foul from being on an airplane for half a day.”
“I don’t stink,” Wes replies with a curled lip.
He doesn’t. After disembarking the plane, he very discreetly took a whiff under both armpits and, as a precaution, applied a thin layer of deodorant in a tiny restroom stall. Gym class and an awkward puberty had taught Wes many valuable lessons about hygiene.
“Fine, you don’t.” Ella sighs dramatically. “Are you gonna go inside?”
He could. Unlike the rest of the teen staff, Wes has a set of store keys. “No.” He shakes his head. “Tomorrow.”
“I’m going upstairs.” Ella elbows his hip. “I have a date to get ready for. Don’t hump the glass while you’re down here.”
“Gross. I’d never do that,” Wes says, but Ella’s already turning the corner, headed for the side entrance. He stands there for another second, smiling at his reflection. Then he remembers what she said. “Wait! You have a date?”
“Are you eating, Wes? You look frail.”
Wes refrains from exhaling loudly through his nose when he looks at his mom on FaceTime. He flops backward onto his bed. “Mom, I just left you like twenty hours ago.”
“You look like you’re losing weight,” his mom comments.
Wes shrugs lazily. Maybe sixteen hours on a plane snacking on salt and vinegar chips and pretzels have left him starved and gaunt. Or maybe his mom is a natural worrier.
Probably the latter.
“Why are you up so early?” he asks, glancing at the time in the top corner of his phone. 9:01 p.m. “What time’s it there?”
“Just after six.”
In the screen’s background, Wes can spot the rising sun leaving the sky a bleeding pink. She must be outside the house his parents are renting for the summer. Savannah is wide-eyed, her graying brown hair is tied in a messy ponytail, her lips stretch into that smile he loves.
“I had to get an early start on this next book,” she says, as though he should already know. As if Wes hasn’t watched his mom wake up early, for as long as he remembers, to sip coffee and stare blankly at a laptop screen until words magically appear. “I couldn’t disappoint my five-a.m. writers’ club.”
“That’s just a social media hashtag, Mom. It’s not really a thing.”
“It is!” Her giggle crackles in his phone’s speaker. “I’m already at ten thousand words.”
Savannah doesn’t call anything she writes an official book until she’s pecked out at least ten thousand words on her ancient laptop.
“Hashtag ‘amwriting’ and killing it,” Savannah adds.
Wes can’t remember the last time he thought of her as Jordan Hudson, her real name. Since he was old enough to squeak out words, it’s either been Mom or Savannah. She says it’s for confidentiality, to protect their family from invasive social media predators or overzealous fans. But Wes thinks she simply loves to lead the life of someone else, like her book characters.
While his mom drones on and on about her next book’s plot, he scans his bedroom. Wes loved the house in Italy—he loved everything about Italy, especially the boys and the ocean and, well, mainly the boys—but this room is a comfort he couldn’t find in Siena.
His graduation cap and gown hang on the back of his computer chair. Hanging above his desk are a UCLA pennant and his dad’s old basketball jersey. A standing lamp shines a beam on his shelf of Funko Pop superhero figures. The walls are covered in posters: Wonder Woman with her magic lasso; Nightwing in a battle stance; a Kim Possible he should probably take down.
Then again, he sleeps on Green Lantern bedsheets and has a pair of adult Spider-Man PJ’s, so maybe that poster isn’t the most embarrassing thing about his room.
“Has Ella settled in well?” Savannah asks, drawing Wes’s attention back to his phone.
Judging by the mounds of clothes spread across his mom’s favorite, ugly, green sofa in the living area and the tower of unwashed dishes, Wes would say Ella’s settled in quite nicely.
“She’s all good.”
“Have you talked to her parents? Do I need to call them?”
“Nah. They’re fine.”
At least, Wes thinks they are.
Unlike Wes’s relationship with his parents, Ella’s communication with her own parents is best served minimal and lukewarm. Her dad’s an investor who spends more time “investing” in young, surgically enhanced twenty-somethings around their Corona del Mar city limits. Her mom dines on red wine and prefers consuming Netflix documentaries to being actively involved in Ella’s decisions. Their only interaction is her constant commentary on Ella’s body. Neither of them seem to care that Ella has spent the summer living in the Hudsons’ loft-studio apartment hybrid.
Wes can fully admit his family’s pad is dope as hell. Located above the bookstore, it has the ultimate view of the pier and Santa Monica Beach. It’s a floor of former office spaces, gutted and renovated into a one-floor living space. Though it wasn’t always the ideal space for a family of four, they made it work: three bedrooms and two bathrooms, a gnarly kitchen that’s fully equipped thanks to Calvin. Neither Wes nor Leo have any cooking talent. Unfortunately, the Hudson boys are known for three meals: cereal, Pop Tarts, and microwaveable burritos.
“You two stay out of trouble,” Savannah warns, but she’s never mastered that authoritative voice his dad has. It’s stern-ish at best.
“No problem, Mom,” Wes replies, saluting her.
“No parties.”
As if Wes is that high on the cool people chain.
Also, per his agreement with his parents to crib-sit for the summer, Wes has to deal with Leo making unannounced visits to check on him. That’s just what Wes needs—more time with Leo.