When You Were Here

Chapter Two

Jeremy is shooting aliens, Ethan is trying to convince Piper that an earthquake of 9.0 magnitude will hit Los Angeles in the next 365 days, and half the girls volleyball team is schooling half the guys baseball team in pool volleyball. My former teammates are in the deep end on the other side of the net, getting clobbered by the bikini-clad athletes.

I turn up the volume on the sound system because Retractable Eyes is up next on the playlist, and this band is awesome. But before the opening chords sound, I hear the beginning of "Great Balls of Fire."

On. The. Piano.

I turn to the living room, and the aliens must have extinguished Jeremy because now he's leaning over the piano and he's thinking he's Jerry Lee Lewis.

"Dude, don't touch that." I walk over and stand next to the keys.

He pauses. "Just let me play this one song."

I shake my head. He knows this is my one rule. "Don't."

He pounds on more notes, and he's about to hit the chorus and to sing it too, belt it out, and I'm so not okay with this on so many levels because this is my mom's piano. She wasn't some classical performer or piano teacher or anything. But she liked playing for fun, banging out a show tune now and then or a Cole Porter number. Crossword puzzles, gardening, and a few old standards on the piano—those were her little things in life, the little things she did, the little things that made her happy.

"Jer. Off."

Something in my voice stops him, so he backs off, holds up his hands. "Sorry, bud."

"Go get one of Laini's guitars if you want to play something," I say, easing up a bit on my best friend.

"I wish you'd let me have it. You know you're never going to use the piano."

Jeremy's been on this music kick in the last three years. He's convinced that learning to play piano, guitar, drums, whatever, is going to help him with the ladies. I've seen no evidence of improvement in his scorecard with the opposite sex, but he can play the chorus from pretty much any top-ten most-downloaded tune of the moment. Maybe someday that skill will amount to something. For now, it's entertainment. And for now, and for forever, the piano's not for sale. I remind him of that as he takes off for Laini's mausoleum of a room.

I survey the scene in my yard. Trevor, the lunking first baseman who I threw bunted balls to for the first three years of high school, smacks a volleyball in Cassie's direction. She tries to spike it back but hits air instead, and the ball skips out of the pool. She jumps out to grab it. She has the smallest bathing suit on, and she's also the weakest player on the team. Trina comes up behind me and whispers in my ear. "I see you watching her," Trina says as she runs a finger down my arm. What she doesn't say is, I see you watching her and I don't care, because, like me, there is little Trina actually cares about, least of all whether I check out other girls, even though I'm not checking out Cassie. If I were checking out girls, I'd only have eyes for one girl.

The incredible and vexing one who's not here, even though the lasagna she made me the other day is still in my fridge.

Trina trails her index finger across my palm, then adds, "Kicking in for you?"

"Starting to."

Trina brings me goodies too, only hers work better than food. She flashes a knowing grin, and I watch as she disappears into the kitchen, wearing low-rise jean shorts and a tank top that shows off her brown skin.

Jeremy returns with my sister's most expensive classical guitar. Laini played until eighth grade and was pretty damn good, so good my parents were thinking of sending her to some expert teacher at UCLA for lessons. But as with all things remotely American, Laini decided she wanted nothing to do with it. A guitar, even classical guitar, was the most American of all instruments, so she quit. A few years later she quit us too. Laini was never around when my mom became sick. Fine, Laini was in college already, had been for a year before the diagnosis, but she didn't even come home for the summer or for breaks, except for maybe one week a year. She was gone at the worst possible time, and as far as I'm concerned, that's the same as treating our mom like dirt. Suddenly I no longer want to hear her guitar. I want to destroy her guitar. I'm like a zombie, a living, breathing zombie who won't stop as I clunk toward Jeremy, who's jamming on my sister's handmade Tortorici guitar that my parents special-ordered for her twelfth birthday, and I yank it out of his hands right before he slides into a howling riff.

"I was just getting to the chorus."

"Go get another one and join me," I say, because Laini has more acoustic guitars in her unused room. "Are you in or out?"

"What are you talking about?"

I tip my head to the yard and mimic smashing a guitar.

He points to the Tortorici. "You know you can get a couple thousand on eBay for that."

I don't need the money. My mom saved well and invested well. We don't even have a mortgage anymore because she bought this house for cash when she sold off her last business a couple months before she was diagnosed. But not everyone is so lucky to have come into his parents' possessions at the tender age of eighteen. Or to have to figure out what to do with everything, from the property to the personal effects. Like her clothes. Her books. Her wigs.

I relent. "Take this one and do whatever you want with it. But get the others."

He thanks me, tucks the Tortorici under his arm, and races back up the stairs. Seconds later he's joining me in the yard, stumbling through the open sliding-glass door with a guitar in each hand, a pair of soon-to-be victims. He's followed by Ethan, Piper, and Trina, and we're all at the edge of the grass where a low rock wall hems in my yard.

I lift an ordinary wooden guitar high over my head, then nod at Jeremy. He can play master of ceremonies better than I can.

"It's not the end of high school until someone smashes a guitar," he shouts, holding his arms up in a victory sign. "That's a very famous saying, you know." Then to me, "The floor is yours."

I proceed to whack the living daylights out of the guitar to the encouraging cheers of my fellow classmates. Jeremy and Ethan join in, and even Piper bashes an old, cheap acoustic against the rocks. Trina jumps into action, her hazel eyes alive with the prospect of destruction, because Trina was a wild child in high school, and a wilder child in college and medical school too, and an even wilder adult now that she is smack-dab in the middle of her residency.

As I look down at the destruction—wooden shards everywhere, strings popped loose and languishing—I feel a trickle of endorphins, not like I just struck out the side but like I lobbed one good curveball. It's a lift, a momentary, temporary lift, a rising above this hazy line I've been living on.

But the problem is it's not enough to blot this all out, to quiet the whole wide world. It's not enough to bring back the sounds of Cole Porter being played, or flowers being planted, or of requests for a five-letter word starting with A or T or C or anything. Nothing is ever enough. Except Holland, who's tattooed all over me, but who's not here where I want her. I walk away from the carnage and return to the house. Trina follows, all lithe and pantherlike as she pads across the hardwood floors in her bare feet.

"Let's go to your room," she whispers in my ear.

I nod, take her hand, and lead her up the stairs. I hear the noises from outside, the splashing and the laughing, the sounds of cans opening and voices rising in the celebratory din of the end of an era, and then it fades when I close my door, crank up some tunes, and turn off the lights, leaving on a lamp by the side of my bed. Trina already has her top off, and she's pulling off my T-shirt, and the room's feeling fuzzy and warm, just the way I like it, because Dr. Trina gave me some new pills to try tonight. They've kicked in for me, and maybe for her, and everything, everything, just feels better when you're doing it on PKs.

She's already pinned me, my arms stretched above my head, her hands on my wrists, her black hair falling all around my face. I'm never on top with Trina, but that's okay. She likes it this way, and it's easier, and she's never not hot. She's always ready, she's always racing, and she's always got her hands all over, and it's great, really, it's great.

Even though she's not Holland.

I curse silently.

I'd like to not think about Holland when I'm with someone else. I'd like to not picture Holland—her wavy blond hair, her sky-blue eyes, her lips tasting like strawberry, her smell—all girl, all pure, perfect, blond California girl.

But I can't not picture Holland.

So I close my eyes and go with it, imagining it's Holland holding me down. And it feels fantastic like that with imaginary Holland. It feels like I'm alive again, like I'm real again, like the earth is rotating around the sun again.

Then we're done, and Trina conks out in thirty seconds flat. Her face is pressed against my sheet; she doesn't even make it to a pillow. I watch her doze for a minute. Sometimes I think with every breath her brain is releasing all the X-rays and EKGs and patient reports she had to keep in her head all day. Sometimes I imagine her waking up next to a sea of warped, distorted readouts that have sort of melted out of her.

A strand of her long hair falls over her mouth. Her lips flutter while she's sleeping, trying to blow the hair away. I adjust her hair for her, tucking the strand behind her ear. Then I nod off too, not thinking about the people outside or the broken guitars. When I wake up in the middle of the night, my dog is wedged against me, and Trina is gone. But the good doctor has left something for me.

A fresh orange bottle of pills on my nightstand.

I'll need them to get through my graduation tomorrow. My mom was supposed to be in the front row.

Chapter Three

I always imagined that the morning before graduation would pass by in a blur of noise and barked orders. Did you remember this? Did you forget that? Fix your hair; it's a mess.

Like when Laini graduated. My dad grabbing his camera, my mom making sure Laini's cap was on right, me calculating how long I'd have to wear the striped polo shirt with the collar.

Now, as I pull on shorts and a T-shirt since it doesn't matter what you wear under the robe—because I refuse to call it a gown—the only sound I hear comes from Sandy Koufax, from her nails clicking against the floor as she switches locations, shifting from her early-morning yard patrol to her late-morning lounge-around-on-the-couch relaxation.

We didn't even have Sandy Koufax six years ago when we raced out of the house for Laini's graduation, the last time we were all together—my mom, my dad, my sister, and me. That evening we went out to dinner in Chinatown at a restaurant Laini had researched because it had the best traditional Chinese dumplings, she said. She had already started down the path of reconnecting with her roots, so she ordered for all of us in Chinese too because she'd been studying the language.

"That's my girl," my dad said, then planted a kiss on Laini's forehead. She pretended to be cool and aloof, but she leaned into him, then responded in Chinese, and he laughed, then said something back. He had learned Chinese over the years, had taken classes, listened to Chinese podcasts, and had all the Learn Mandarin CDs in his car. My mom and I didn't know a word.

When the food arrived, my mom held up her glass and offered a toast. "To my daughter. I couldn't be more proud."

Then my dad. "To more education, which is Latin for… more bills."

"Sorry I didn't get a scholarship," Laini said, and my dad immediately corrected himself. He never wanted Laini to feel bad about anything—fight with a friend, crummy grade, crappy haircut. Whatever it was, he'd save the day for her, even if he was the one who'd been sarcastic.

"I'm just kidding," he said. "Of course we've got the money."

"I'll go to state school," I offered, my contribution to the conversation.

"You're such a suck-up," Laini said to me.

My mom held out her hands. "Enough. Can we just have a nice dinner out?"

"How about a redo?" my dad said, and held up his glass. "To Laini Kellerman, who we are happily sending to college."

"Much better," my mom said, and nodded.

Laini held up her Coke and offered a toast. "To the end of an era."

Laini turned out to be a fortune-teller. A month later my dad was killed when he was hit by a truck in Kyoto. A year later my mom was diagnosed with cancer. Six years later, Laini doesn't even send me a graduation card.

My doorbell rings, and Sandy Koufax erupts in a flurry of barks from her post on the couch. When I answer the door, Holland's there. I tell myself to be stoic, especially since she's still wearing that star ring I gave her last summer. I hunted it down for her at a funky little clothing store on Melrose Avenue, since I knew that's where Holland liked to shop, where she loved to pick up cheap, little plastic bracelets and other jewelry.

"What?" She puts her hands on her hips and gives me a playful look as if I should have remembered she was going to be here. Fact is, I'm pretty sure she did tell me she was coming by. Maybe I didn't want to believe it. Maybe I made myself forget, even though she's been around the house a few times since she finished up her freshman year at the University of California at San Diego. She stopped by with Kate a week ago and brought me that homemade lasagna that she'd cooked herself, since Holland has a magic touch with pasta. "You didn't think I was going to let you get ready for graduation all by yourself, did you?"

"Pretty sure I can get ready by myself."

"Well, it's not like I brought makeup or five different outfits for you to choose from," she says, and lets herself in. It's just us alone in my house. I could shut the door and pull the blinds and watch movies on the couch with her all day. We could hole up here and never leave, just Holland and the dog and me. Order Chinese takeout from Captain Wong's around the corner for every meal. Yes, this is how I could get through an endless summer on a lonely planet.

Holland peers down the hall. "Where's you-know-who?"

"Who would that be?"

She waves a hand dismissively. I know she means Trina. I just want her to say it. I want to know she's bothered by the hot doctor who hangs out at my house.

"Dr. Asvati," Holland says, drawing out the name, like it's an insult. Maybe it is to her.

"Trina."

"Trina," Holland repeats, the word heavy in her mouth. She's jealous. She has to be jealous. This is excellent. I would like her to be jealous.

"She's not here."

"She's not coming to your graduation?"

I shake my head. Trina and I don't have that kind of relationship.

Holland walks to the living room and sits down next to my dog. She pets Sandy Koufax's ears and talks to my dog in a high-pitched voice, telling her she is the cutest dog in the whole wide world. Sandy Koufax rolls over and lets Holland pet her belly. Seeing the two of them like that, the girl who likes the dog, and the dog who likes the girl, makes me want to blurt out the invitation: Let's shack up here all summer and not leave until August. Maybe she'd feel sorry enough for me to say yes, to stay, to say leaving me last fall was the dumbest thing she ever did and will you please take me back?

Why yes, Holland, I think I would take you back. Even though I don't have a single clue as to the secret of why you left me in the first place.

Holland points to my cap on the coffee table. "This cap thing. Pretty sure it's supposed to go on your head."

"That's what all the graduation how-to books say."

She grabs the cap and walks back to me. She hands me the mortarboard and I put it on, far back on my head.

"That's all wrong." Holland laughs, shakes her head, as if this is normal, as if she can just slide into the way we used to be good buds before last summer, before everything else. "It's supposed to sit on your forehead." She mimics pulling a mortarboard down on her forehead, pointing to this spot right above her eyes where the cap is supposed to rest.

"Fix it," I say, and it comes out raspy, like a croak. I know I should say please fix it or can you fix it? but this is all I can manage, this two-word admission, as I do everything not to sound hungry for her.

"See! You did need me to get ready," she says, then looks at me, half-nervous, like she's waiting for an answer, waiting for me to admit I needed her.

I just point to the cap. She nods, then wiggles the cap farther down my forehead. Her fingers brush against my face. My heart pounds a tick louder at her touch, but I look away, because the ache is too much. She pulls my cap down for a final tug, then stops to consider a strand of my brown hair. "I can't believe my mom didn't make you get a haircut for your graduation."

"Yeah, oddly enough she doesn't really control my hair."