“Hey!” She smiles and waves. “You ready?”
Of course I’m ready.
“It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” she says as I climb into the car. It’s all shiny chrome and flawless white leather inside, like the car version of Tami’s house, with buttons and displays and lights and mysterious gadgets I’ve never seen in a car before. “I don’t know what half these things do,” she says.
As soon as I close my door, a seat belt shoots out of somewhere and clicks silently into place. “The first time that happened, I screamed,” Ivy says. “My mom bought me this car. With my money. I don’t even like it.”
I don’t ask where we’re going. I don’t say, “Why’d you pick me?”
“Car, on,” Ivy says, and it starts purring.
“Would you like to engage automated driver assistance?” a robotic but mildly sexy voice says.
“Yes, please,” says Ivy.
Ivy Avila is the kind of person who says “please” to a robot.
“I’m supposed to be learning how to become comfortable with silence,” she says. “So I’m not going to turn on any music. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say, and then we don’t talk for a long time. But Ivy fidgets a lot, like she has to move her body extra now to make up for the lack of noise. She adjusts her seat, rubs her eyes, fusses with her hair, touches buttons and dials without actually pressing or turning them.
We drive north on Olympic Road, past all the gated waterfront mansions on the left and the forest on the right. The car makes no sound. Gravity doesn’t seem to exist as we turn corners. I feel like I’m strapped into a soft, unmoving bed. We could be going two hundred miles per hour and I wouldn’t even notice.
I hold my breath as we drive over the bridge to the peninsula, just like I’ve done since I was a little kid. It’s supposed to be good luck. You’re supposed to make a wish. My lungs are bigger than they were back then. I can hold my breath for a long time now.
I thought we were going to Seattle. I half expected we’d drive straight into the Sound and the car would turn into a submarine.
“I’m supposed to be relaxing,” Ivy says when we reach the other side of the bridge, and I realize I forgot to make a wish and now it’s too late.
We speed by the checkpoint that only cares if you’re driving onto the island, not off it, and I let out a big sigh.
I think I’m supposed to be doing the opposite of relaxing.
Papa said there used to be an Indian reservation here. Now it’s just miles and miles of subsidized housing for thousands of people who work in Seattle and on Commodore Island but can’t afford to live there. The street is lined with bus and shuttle stops, marked by signs listing different destinations, the sidewalk crowded with people on their way to work, private security guards stationed at the end of every block in little kiosks. Immigration cops patrol on foot, automatic rifles strapped to their backs.
“I used to live in places like this,” Ivy says. “The one in White Center when I was little. Then one in LA before I got The Fabulous Fandangos. Mom moved us out of there as soon as she got my first check.”
“What was it like?” I have only ever lived in the middle of the forest, with no neighbors. I wonder how it compares—being surrounded by strangers, versus being surrounded by trees.
She’s quiet for a while. “Crowded,” she says. “And loud. Even at night, you could still hear people moving around getting ready for night shifts. You could smell everybody’s food cooking. Mom was always yelling at some neighbor, like their lives were constantly in her way. Like she was better than them, even then, when we were nobody. Always talking about the day I’d make it and we’d get to move to Commodore Island like she always dreamed and we’d finally be happy.” She laughs. “And she’s still just as miserable. Except now instead of yelling at the neighbors, she yells at the cleaning ladies and gardeners. She even yells at the birds when she thinks they’re being too loud.”
“My dad says we’re lucky to still have birds around here,” I say.
As soon as we get to the other side of the sign that says “Leaving A-Corp Property,” the road is lined with people holding signs saying they’re available for work or asking for help, some of them sitting on folding chairs with coolers next to them, typing away on tablets like they’re at the office. We pass a large playground full of children with no adults in sight. People stare at us as we go by with a look on their faces I cannot read. It’s not scary, exactly. But it’s clear that no one is in charge here, like anything could happen at any moment and there’s no one around to stop it.
I think about Raine and Vaughn. Jordan and the others in Tami’s condo that night. I wonder how close they are to a bill they can’t pay or losing a job that could end them up here, like this. I know Tami and Ash never could. But what about me? What about Ivy? Even she probably doesn’t have the kind of money that never runs out. Does she know that?
“It wasn’t lonely,” Ivy says, and it takes me a second to remember what we were talking about. Living in the developments. Surrounded by the noise and smells and lives of strangers.
Outside the windows, trees and people fly by, but inside, it feels like we’re staying still. Lights illuminate the dashboard but I have no idea what they mean. We pass through the preserved, quaint main street of a historic small town—an attempt to lure the business of tourists—but I can see the sprawl of strip malls extending behind it.
Then, out of nowhere, Ivy says, “What do you think of me, Fern?”
“What?” I say.
“I know what people say. I know about all the rumors.” She looks at me for too long, like in the movies when you can tell it’s fake because if they were really driving they’d have crashed by now. “I don’t care what they all think,” she says. “But I care what you think. I want you to know the real me.”
Why aren’t we swerving into a ditch? Why is she looking at me like this? Why does she care what I think?
“I think you’re more than anyone knows,” I say. My breath is not mine. I have given it to her. I am a vacuum.
She smiles and finally looks back at the road. “Exhaustion is real,” she says. “People act like it’s this fake thing, but I had just finished shooting the fourth season of The Cousins, was on the European leg of my tour with the band, and my agent was sending me all these scripts to read and my mom was there the whole time, breathing down my neck. I slept less than five hours a night every night for three years. Some nights I’d just skip sleep altogether because I had so much to do, and all these appearances. Who wouldn’t get exhausted by that? People aren’t meant to work that much for that long. That’s what my therapist says. We’re physically not capable. But I just thought I had to work harder. That’s what they tell you. You miss one opportunity, and your career stalls. Your career fails. People forget who you are, and then you’re over. And there were all these pills to help me do it all, you know? It was survival. But then I couldn’t do anything without them. And that just made me more exhausted.”