“Who?” Vanessa asked.
“Michael, of course. Was he asking about me?”
“Michael asked Vanessa to go out with him,” Catty informed her smugly.
Morgan seemed upset, but only for a moment. She smiled and pulled the yellow shades back on her perfect nose. “So you’re going out with Michael.”
“Yes.” Vanessa felt a little embarrassed.
“Be careful.”
“Be careful of what?”
“You know, he conquers the land and leaves it desolate.”
“Translation?” Catty’s eyebrows raised.
“He makes like he’s all vulnerable and sensitive so you start trusting him and then he takes advantage,” Morgan responded knowingly.
“How can he take advantage if you don’t let him?” Catty demanded.
“Guys have their way. Sometimes they think it’s their due.”
“Michael doesn’t seem—”
“That’s my point exactly,” Morgan continued. “That’s how he gets away with it. And I bet you haven’t even kissed.”
“So what?” Catty was exasperated.
“You’ll see,” Morgan warned.
“I didn’t know you liked him,” Vanessa said.
“Please,” Morgan snorted. “I call every good-looking guy my hottie. He’s nothing special.”
Vanessa sensed that Morgan was upset, maybe even jealous, but before she could say more, Morgan’s radar picked up someone else.
“There’s Serena,” Morgan said. “She’s such a freaky dresser.”
Serena Killingsworth walked toward them, carrying her cello in a brown case. Her short hair, currently colored Crayola-red, was twisted into bobby-pin curls. A nose ring glistened on the side of her nose. She wore purple lipstick, red-brown shadow around her green eyes, and a smile that seemed to hold a secret. She was new at school. Vanessa liked her look and especially admired the way she seemed so oblivious to what other people thought about her.
“Hey, Morgan.” Serena set down the cello. Her chartreuse fingernails worked the combination on her locker.
“She’s such a walking rummage sale,” Morgan whispered disapprovingly.
“I like it,” Vanessa said.
“I like it, too,” Catty agreed.
Morgan sighed. “Okay, she has her moments. But she’s got a bad addiction to the bizarre.”
“How could you know that? She’s only been in school a few weeks,” Vanessa argued. “I heard her family moved here from Long Beach so she could take classes at UCLA along with her high school classes.”
“Having brains doesn’t mean you’re not weird,” Morgan said, casting a sly glance at Catty. “Her best friend is on probation, some gang girl from East L.A.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.” Irritation buzzed inside Vanessa.
“I hear they stay out all night. I bet they’re into some kinky stuff.”
Serena opened her locker and cast an amused look at Morgan.
Morgan pulled peach hand lotion from her purse and spread it over her arms. “Too bad her brother’s such a surf nazi. What a loss. He’s the kind of guy you’d like to spend the night with. But the only thing he’s looking for are waves. What is it with this town, anyway? Do all the gorgeous guys just wake up one morning and decide they’re too good for women?”
“Don’t you think there are other things to worry about?” Catty was losing her patience.
Vanessa gave her a quick look. She wasn’t in the mood to referee another fight between Catty and Morgan.
Morgan didn’t seem to hear her. “Collin is as cute as Michael,” she continued. “Almost. I don’t know how he got such a freaky sister. Hey, why don’t you ask Serena about Michael if you don’t believe me?”
“Has she dated him?” Vanessa asked.
Morgan laughed dismissively. “I can’t believe you don’t know.”
“What?” Catty and Vanessa said together.
Morgan leaned in closer. “She’s a fortune-teller. She can answer your questions about guys. She charges twenty dollars a pop. But I swear it’s worth fifty.”
“How did you find out so much so quickly?” Catty was amazed.
“I ask,” Morgan nodded wisely. “She’s read my fortune twice already.”
“She probably just tells you what you want to hear,” Vanessa scoffed.
Morgan shook her head. “It’s spooky. I swear. With her tarot cards, it’s like she knows things no one can know. Don’t ask her anything you’re afraid to find out because you might not like the answer. And you have to go alone. That’s her only rule. You need to go see her, Vanessa.”
“Why?”
“She’ll tell you just how bad your broken heart will be; some girls never recover from Michael Saratoga.”
Vanessa didn’t think that sounded like Michael. He was polite and sweet, and she liked his gentle humor. He never told raunchy jokes, or made vulgar comments like so many of the guys at school did.
Serena picked up her cello and walked over to them. “Were you one of those girls, Morgan?”
“What girls?”
“You know, one of the girls who never recovered from a broken heart?” There was a sparkle in Serena’s green eyes.
“Damn,” Morgan’s eyes narrowed. “See what I mean?”
“How did you know what we were talking about?” Vanessa asked.
“I have acute hearing,” Serena said.
Morgan gave her a dirty look.
Serena stuck out her pierced tongue, showing off the stainless-steel barbell.
“Cool.” Catty had already pierced her belly button. Vanessa wanted to but hadn’t had gotten up the nerve yet.
Morgan wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Germ central.” She walked away, but she kept casting backward glances as if she were afraid Serena was going to put a curse on her.
“Here.” Serena handed Vanessa and Catty each a piece of paper. “My home address. Come by any time you want your fortune read. And come alone.” She picked up her cello and started toward the bus stop. “Catch you later.”
Catty tossed her paper on the ground. “Too endlessly weird. On a scale of one to infinity, she gets infinity plus a billion. I don’t believe anyone can see into the future.”
“That sounds strange coming from you.” Vanessa glanced at her watch. “We’re supposed to meet my mother, and with your insane time travel we’re going to be late.”
“I’ll just take us back an hour,” Catty started.
“No.” Vanessa stopped her. “We’re going to do it the old-fashioned way. We’re going to walk and I’m going to get yelled at for being late.”
Vanessa stared at the paper Serena had given her as she and Catty walked up La Brea Avenue toward Melrose. Was what Morgan had said about Michael true? She tucked the paper in her pocket.
CHAPTER SIX
FRIDAY AFTERNOON, campus security roamed the hallways and parking lot at La Brea High School, trying to stop surfers, skaters, gangsters, and ravers from cutting the rest of the school day and starting an early weekend.
“Come on,” Catty called. “They’ll never catch us if we sneak off campus through the back field. I’ve done it a million times.”
Vanessa hesitated. “But we’ll get suspended if they catch us.”
Catty giggled and pulled Vanessa forward. “Whoever thought of suspending students for cutting classes? It’s exactly what they wanted in the first place.”
“It goes on your permanent record.”
“Don’t you want to ask my mother if she knows what those words mean, the ones you said the other night?” Catty smiled persuasively.
“I can wait till after school.”
“I told you she’s busy tonight. Now’s your only chance.”
“All right.” Vanessa sighed.
“Great,” Catty said. “Let’s hurry.”
They ran down the narrow weed-filled corridor between the gym and music building. Grasshoppers and moths scattered in front of their feet. A tril
l of flutes and the honk of a tuba came from inside the music room.
At the end of the buildings, they stopped and scanned the football field. It was empty.
“Walk slowly,” Catty warned. “If security calls us, just turn back and pretend we didn’t hear the bell. Or . . .”
“Or?” Vanessa said.
“Or just make us invisible.”
“Right,” Vanessa mumbled sarcastically, and glanced behind them. Her heart thumped against her chest. Catty was always talking her into doing things she knew were wrong, like staying out late, cutting classes, and making prank calls.
They squeezed under the wire mesh fence and hurried down a side street to La Brea.
“There, see? Not so hard.” Catty grinned as they headed down La Brea Avenue toward Third.
The Darma Bookstore was between Polka Dots and Moonbeams Dress Shop and Who’s on Third? café. Brass bells on long leather cords tingled in harmony when they pushed through the door. Smoky incense curled sinuously around them and filled the air with a pungent scent.
“Hi, Mom,” Catty called.
The store always gave Vanessa a feeling of peace and security. Water bubbled from fountains set in stone planters near the door and the chanting of Tibetan monks flowed from speakers set in the wall. Books, packages of candles, incense, prayer beads, crystals, and essence oils lined white shelves in neat arrays.
Catty’s mother, Kendra, pushed through the blue curtains separating the back room from the store.
“You got out of school early,” she said with a smile and winked. She was tall and bony, with a narrow face and long brown hair streaked with gray. She wore a stunning purple dress that flowed around her when she walked. The sleeves were long and touched the tips of her fingers. A pair of red-framed reading glasses dangled on a chain around her neck and clicked against the rose crystals she wore. She believed in the healing energy stored in crystals. Today she also wore the pouch given to her by a traditional doctor on one of her trips to Botswana.
She hugged Catty, and then put both hands around Vanessa’s face and kissed her. She smelled of sesame oil, camphor, cardamom, and cinnamon. She rubbed the spicy concoction into her temples several times during the day to stimulate her senses.
She looked at Vanessa a long time. Vanessa always had the feeling that Catty’s mother was trying to detect something different about her.
“I was just making ginger tea. Let’s go in the back. It’ll help detoxify your body and digestive system.”
Catty rolled her eyes. “Mom, don’t you have anything that regular people like?”
“I just grated the ginger and the milk is warm,” Kendra went on as if she hadn’t heard Catty’s complaint. “You’ll love it.”
They followed her through the bookcases to a small kitchen in the back of the store and sat down at the oak table. Pictures of UFO sightings and a huge poster of deep space taken from the Hubble telescope hung on the walls.
“Did you girls have a good day at school?” Kendra asked, and started to pour them each a cup of milky ginger tea.
Catty put her hand over the top of the cup. “Don’t you have any cocoa mix?”
“The ginger tea is better for you.”
Catty rolled her eyes.
Vanessa smiled. She liked Catty’s mom.
Kendra sighed. “All right.” Then she looked at Vanessa. “I suppose you want hot chocolate, too?”
“Yes, please.” Vanessa studied the picture of a fuzzy flying saucer hovering over the desert in Arizona.
Kendra reheated the milk in the microwave, then spooned cocoa into two mugs. She poured milk over the cocoa and brought the mugs back to the table and sat down.
Vanessa opened her messenger bag and pulled out a piece of paper on which she had carefully written the words she had spoken on the night she was being chased. She handed the paper to Kendra. “I was wondering if you knew what this meant.”
Kendra put on her reading glasses. Her lips moved as she read the words to herself.
“These words just came to you?”
Vanessa nodded.
Kendra examined the words closely. “The words are misspelled, but even so, I know it’s Latin. It appears you were praying to the moon to protect you.” She smoothed the paper and ran her index finger under the words as she read, “O Mother Moon, Queen of the night, help me now.”
Vanessa put down her cocoa, unable to speak. She lifted her moon amulet with trembling fingers and stared at it.
“Mother Moon,” she repeated, then she looked at Catty and saw she was reacting the same way.
“Freaky,” Catty said.
“Oh, it’s not so strange.” Nothing ever seemed to surprise Kendra. “You and Catty have always had a connection to the moon. I suppose you could have seen this prayer in a book a long time back, memorized it, forgot it, and then said it in panic. Now if the moon had helped you, that would be strange.”
Vanessa nodded, but she was sure she had not read this prayer before. She stared at the words she had written on the folded piece of paper. Why had she prayed to the moon to protect her?
CHAPTER SEVEN
SATURDAY, VANESSA waited impatiently outside her house for Michael. She wore a pale green sundress and sandals that she had bought with her mother in a boutique on Robertson Boulevard. Her mother had been thrilled she had wanted to shop with her. Now Vanessa worried the dress looked too desperate, with its thin straps, bare back, and short skirt.
Too bad, she decided. Why was she so worried, anyway? She enjoyed the silky run of material over her skin.
The sun’s last fiery rays dusted the tops of the palm trees with gold as a Volkswagen bus painted with psychedelic pink-and-orange flowers like an old hippie van turned onto her street. The headlights came on, and the van drove slowly toward her. The van stopped in front of her and Michael leaned out the window.
“Hi,” he said with a slow, lazy smile. She felt herself getting lost in that smile, those eyes and lips.
“Hi.” Her molecules buzzed slow and easy.
He turned off the engine, crawled out, and walked around to the passenger side door.
“You like the van? My dad couldn’t part with it, so he saved it for me,” he said and opened the van door.
“Nice.” She admired it, but her thoughts were not on the van.
She climbed in and settled nicely, her bare back pressed against the warm seat. Inside smelled of spicy foods and beach tar. His surfboard lay on wadded towels in the back.
He hesitated before he closed the door.
“You look pretty.” But his eyes said she looked more than pretty. He took her hand and kissed the fingers, still gazing at her.
Waves of energy rushed through her, stirring her molecules into a risky dance. Her hands and neck tingled. She took a slow easy breath. “Thank you.”
The van door slammed.
The thought of being alone with him made an indolent smile cross her face. Her stomach muscles tensed, skin tight. Her nervous fingers were unable to stay still. She grabbed the sides of the seat to steady herself as he got in the van.
“I want to take you to the Hollywood Bowl. Do you like music?”
She nodded and watched him look at her. His eyes said he wanted to devour her. Good, she thought, and pushed Morgan’s warning away.
“L.A. Philharmonic,” she said as the van pulled away from the curb. She let the wind rush through her hair.
A purple crystal hung from a black satin string draped over the rearview mirror. Vanessa touched it. It felt oddly smooth and then it almost seemed to move in her hand. She pulled her hand back.
“It feels alive, doesn’t it?”
She nodded.
“It was a gift from my grandfather,” he said, and seemed pleased she had noticed it. “It’s for courage and patience. A patient heart needs courage to endure.”
“I wish I’d known my grandfather,” Vanessa commented. “It’s just my mother and me. My father died when I was five.”
&nbs
p; “What happened?” He spoke softly.
“He was a stunt coordinator on a movie,” she explained. “Something went wrong and one of the helicopters crashed. I remember seeing it on the news, but I was too young to understand it was real. I thought he was just making another movie. I mean, he had taken me to so many movies where he had rolled a car or jumped off a building. And he was always okay. But this time, he never came home.”
He waited a moment to speak as if he were imagining what life would be like without his own father.
“My family’s a big mess of people,” Michael said finally. “Cherokees and Lebanese. You’ll have to come to one of our family get-togethers.”
Was he planning their future?
“Grandpa tells great stories. You’ll really like him. He gets frustrated with me, though, because I don’t believe all his stories. They’re just ancient legends, but he acts like they’re fact.”
She wondered if his grandfather knew any stories about invisible girls.
Michael turned left and followed a narrow winding road into the Hollywood Hills. At the crest of the hill the houses no longer had yards. Front doors opened onto the corkscrew street. He parked the van in front of a sprawling house perched next to the curb and jumped out.
Disappointment blossomed inside her. He wasn’t taking her to someone’s home, was he? A party? He had definitely said the Bowl. She wanted to be alone with him, not competing with a crowd.
He opened her door and took her hand.
“I thought you said we were going to the Hollywood Bowl?” she asked.
“It’s a surprise,” he answered. “I hope you don’t mind a walk.”
She looked down at her beaded sandals.
“No,” she lied, and hated that she hadn’t worn oxfords.
He took the picnic basket from the back of the van, then holding her hand led her down a tight cement walk between two houses. They squeezed around a line of palm trees and a Doberman panting behind a chain-link fence.
“Be careful,” Michael took a step down a rugged ridge, then turned and helped her off the cement slab and into the underbrush. They walked through dense shrubs. Leaves and grass scraped her legs. They continued downhill under houses built on stilts. Then the houses gave way to chaparral and fire road. He ignored the sign that read NO PUBLIC ADMITTANCE.