* * *
• • •
I should be at work selling more fake antique watering cans to tourists. But I quit that job, and those watering cans are just for decoration. We’re in a drought and not supposed to be watering anything.
* * *
• • •
Ivy has a story to try to salvage. I wrote the introduction, but I am no storyteller.
She is trying to make a fairy tale out of parched skies and scorched earth. She is trying to breathe life back into something dormant and almost dead.
* * *
• • •
There is a fine line between brave and foolish.
* * *
• • •
The paparazzi sit outside in their cars, seats reclined, windows open, breathing in the salt air, drowsy from their afternoon drink, waiting for the gates to open, waiting for a glimpse of the star, the waif, the junkie, the lunatic.
* * *
• • •
How do you make something real out of a secret?
* * *
• • •
I pick up my phone to text Ivy. I type a million things and erase them. There is no right thing to say.
* * *
• • •
I settle into my yearning and turn it into a prayer.
* * *
• • •
The paparazzi don’t know about Ash’s running trails through the forest, his feet as silent as a deer’s. They do not know his stealthy, hidden path to Ivy’s house, do not see him as he leaps across the road into the patch of trees that separates her property from the neighbors’, as he scales the wall into her compound.
* * *
• • •
The forest fires in the north have spread, and now there are new ones popping up in the Cascades two hundred miles to the east. The sun hangs a sickly, bloody red in the hazy sky.
* * *
• • •
Lily keeps calling but I don’t call her back.
* * *
• • •
If Ash is a deer, what does that make Ivy? What does that make her mom?
* * *
• • •
Tami keeps texting.
I tell her I am busy. I do not tell her that her boyfriend is a deer. That he has wandered through the forest away from home.
* * *
• • •
Hunting is forbidden on Commodore Island.
* * *
• • •
I sit at home at night, binge-watching The Fabulous Fandangos, binge-watching The Cousins. I listen to This Is Me on headphones while I wash the dishes. It is Ivy but it is not Ivy.
I try to see what everyone else sees, from the outside—first the precocious little girl, then the beautiful and mysterious teen, then the slightly edgy pop star still wholesome enough to fit the A-Corp brand.
The story of Ivy Avila, according to the world. But it is the wrong story.
* * *
• • •
Papa gives Daddy a look that says, “I’m not sure this is healthy.”
What I want to say is, “If your friend wrote a book, you’d read it, right? What’s the difference?” It is a sound argument.
If Ash recorded an album, I’d listen to it.
* * *
• • •
There is an episode of The Cousins where Ivy’s character plays a game at a party where she’s supposed to make out in the closet with a boy who turns out to be gay. The Coming Out Episode. That’s the season the show won all those Emmys. Every award-winning show has to have a Coming Out Episode.
* * *
• • •
I wake up in the forest in the middle of the day. My eyes open to the canopy of leaves and pine needles, the mottled light seeping through. I do not know how I got here.
* * *
• • •
Tami texts, Come with me to the city tonight to see Vaughn. It won’t be as weird as last time. I promise.
She wants me to be a witness to her secret. She wants me to make it real.
But I climb my tree instead. I am an eagle. I can see miles and miles and miles. Through the trees, on display behind glass walls, I watch the silhouettes of Ivy and Ash become a single shadowed thing, and I fly through the air to meet them.
20
I thought it might be cooler outside, but I was wrong. It’s late afternoon, and the greens and squash leaves are wilting, curling in on themselves. The only plants people are allowed to water during the drought are food plants, nothing decorative, and only then after the sun’s gone down. I helped Daddy pack the garden with thick mulch to help the moisture stay in throughout the day, but it can only do so much.
The house is stifling hot, even with all the windows open and the fans on. Daddy did not think to add air-conditioning to the old church when he rebuilt the insides. Even though it’s been decades since it was true, old-school Seattleites still think they don’t need air-conditioning. Living without it is their weird version of macho.
I don’t hear any footsteps, but somehow I know Ivy is behind me, even before she says, “What are you doing?”
“Looking at dying plants.”
“Sounds fun.”
“How’d you get here without being seen?”
“I have my ways.”
“Huh.” I pretend to be looking at the plants some more, but mostly I’m waiting for Ivy to ask me if I’m mad at her. Papa would say I’m being passive-aggressive. Daddy would say something about honesty and practicing wise communication. Lily would say something about how Ivy’s not even worth it.
Ash is out of town visiting his dad in rehab, so that means Ivy has time for me again. I’m the leftovers.
“Want to come over for a swim?” she says. “The air’s clear today. Who knows how long that’ll last?”
I don’t say anything. I am looking at dying plants.
“I need your help with something,” she says. “Are you still my assistant?”
I turn around and look at her, and for a second she seems so normal—beautiful, but normal—with her long dark hair around her bare shoulders, her black tank top, her cutoff shorts, her sandals, her face raw and free of makeup or pretense, maybe with even a hint of loneliness. When no one else is looking, maybe she is more like me than anyone thinks.