Lola and the Boy Next Door

When my room finally grows too dark, I’m forced to rise from the floor and plug in my twinkle lights. I stretch my sore muscles and stare at my window.

Will he come home this weekend?

The idea fills me with unease. I don’t understand why he’s been asking Andy and St. Clair questions about me. There are only three possible solutions, each more improbable than the last.

Maybe he’s not making friends at school and, for some twisted reason, has decided I’d make a decent pall again. I mean, he’s come home for the last two weekends. Obviously no one is interesting enough to keep him in Berkeley. Or maybe he feels bad about how things ended between us, and he’s trying to make up for it. Clear his conscience.

Or . . . maybe . . . he likes me. In that other way.

I was fine before he came back, perfectly happy without this complication. It would’ve been better if he’d ignored me.

Calliope and I haven’t talked yet; there’s no reason why Cricket and I should have to either. I drift toward my window, and I’m surprised to discover striped curtains hanging in his room.

And then his light turns on.

I yank my curtains closed. My heart pounds as I back against the wall. Through the gap between curtain fabrics, I watch a silhouette that is undeniably Cricket Bell toss two bags to his floor—one shoulder bag and one laundry bag. He moves toward our windows, and dread lurches inside of me. What if he calls my name?

There’s a sudden brightness as he pulls back his own curtains.

His body changes from a dark shadow into a fully fleshed human. I slink back farther. He pauses there, and then startles as another figure enters his room. I can barely hear the sound of a girl talking. Calliope.

I can’t hide forever. My curtains are thick, and I need to trust them. I take a deep breath and step away, but I trip backward over my project and tear a pattern. I curse. Laughter comes from next door, and for one panicked second, I think they’ve witnessed my clumsy maneuver. But it’s

paranoia talking. Whatever they’re laughing about has nothing to do with me. I hate that they can still get to me like that.

I know what I need. I call him, and he picks up just before his voice mail.

“HEY,” Max says.

“Hi! How is it tonight? When are you guys going on?” The club is loud, and I can’t hear his response. “What?”

“[MUFFLE MUFFLE] AFTER ELEVEN [MUFFLE].”

“Oh. Okay.” I don’t have anything to add. “I miss you.”

“[MUFFLE MUFFLE MUFFLE. MUFFLE.]”

“What? I’m sorry, I can’t hear you!”

“[MUFFLE MUFFLE] BAD TIME [MUFFLE].”

I assume he’s saying he has to go. “Okay! I’ll see you tomorrow! Bye!” A click on the other end, and he’s gone. I should have texted him. But I don’t want to now, because I don’t want to bother him. He doesn’t like talking before shows.

The call leaves me feeling more cold than comforted. The laughter continues next door, and I resist the urge to throw my sewing shears at Cricket’s window to make them shut up. My phone rings, and I answer eagerly. “Max!”

“I need you to tell Nathan to come get me.”

Not Max.

“Where are you?” I’m already hustling downstairs. Nathan is crashed in front of the television, eyes half closed, watching Antiques Roadshow with Heavens to Betsy. “Why can’t you tell him yourself?”

“Because he’s gonna be pissed, and I can’t deal with pissed right now.” The voice is cranky and exhausted.

I stop dead in my tracks. “Not again.”

“Landlord changed my locks, so I was forced to break into my apartment. My own apartment. They’re calling it an incident.”

“Incident?” I ask, and Dad’s eyes pop open. I thrust out my phone to him without waiting for a response, disgusted. “Norah needs you to bail her out.”

Nathan swears and grabs my cell. “Where are you? What happened?” He pulls answers from her as he collects his car keys and throws on his shoes. “I’m taking your phone, okay?” he says to me. “Tell Andy where I’m going.” And he’s out the door.

This is not the first time my birth mother has called us from a police station. Norah has a long record, and it’s always for stupid things like shoplifting organic frozen enchiladas or refusing to pay fines from the transit authority. When I was young, the charges were usually public intoxication or disorderly conduct. And believe me, a person has to be pretty darn intoxicated or disorderly to get arrested in this city.

Andy takes the news silently. Our relationship with Norah is hard on everyone, but perhaps it’s hardest on him. She’s neither his sister nor his mother. I know a part of him wishes we could ditch her entirely. A part of me wishes that, too.

When I was little, the Bell twins asked me why I didn’t have a mom. I told them that she was the princess of Pakistan—I’d overheard the name on the news and thought it sounded pretty

—and she gave me to my parents, because I was a secret baby with the palace gardener, and her husband,

the evil prince, would kill us if he knew I existed.

“So you’re a princess?” Calliope asked.

“No. My mom is a princess.”

“That means you’re a princess, too,” Cricket said, awed.

Calliope narrowed her eyes. “She’s not a princess. There’s no such thing as evil princes or Pakistan.”

“There is, too! And I am!” But I still remember the hot rush of blood I felt when they came back later that afternoon, and I realized I’d been caught.

Calliope crossed her arms. “We know the truth. Our parents told us.”

“Does your mom really not have a house?” Cricket asked. “Is that why you can’t live with her?”

It was one of the most shameful moments of my childhood. So when my classmates began asking, I kept it simple: “I don’t know who she is. I’ve never met her.” I became a regular adoption story, a boring one. Having two fathers isn’t an issue here. But a few years ago, Cricket and I were watching television when he turned to me and unexpectedly asked, “Why do you pretend like you don’t have a mom?”

I squirmed. “Huh?”

Cricket was messing with a paper clip, bending it into a complicated shape. “I mean, she’s okay now. Right?” He meant sober, and she had been for a year. But she was still Norah.

I just looked at him.

And I could see him remembering the past. The Bells had heard my screaming birth mother for years, whenever she’d show up wasted and unannounced.

He lowered his eyes and dropped the subject.

I’m grateful that my genetics don’t bother Max. His father is a mean drunk who lives in a dangerous neighborhood of Oakland, and he doesn’t even know where his mother lives. If anything, Norah makes my relationship with Max stronger. We understand each other.

I leave Andy and head back upstairs. Through my window, I notice Calliope has left Cricket’s bedroom. He’s pacing. My torn pattern mocks me. The sumptuous, pale blue fabrics stacked on my sewing table have lost their luster. I touch them gently. They’re still soft. They still hold the promise of something better.

I’m determined to make up for last night. “Today is all about sparkling.”

Heavens to Betsy cocks her head, listening but not understanding. I place a rhinestone barrette in my pale pink wig.

I’m also wearing a sequined

prom gown that I’ve altered into a minidress, a jean jacket covered in David Bowie pins, and glittery false eyelashes. I scratch behind Betsy’s ears, and then she trots behind me out of my room. We run into Andy on the stairs, carrying up a basket of clean laundry.

“My eyes!” he says. “The glare!”

“Très funny.”

“You look like a disco ball.”

I smile and push past. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“When is Max bringing you home?”

“Later!”

Nathan is waiting at the bottom. “When, Dolores? A specific time would be helpful.”

“Your hair is doing the swoopy thing.” I set down my purse to fix it. Nathan and I have the same hair—thick, medium brown, and with a strange wave in the front that never behaves. No one ever doubts that Nathan and I are related. We also share the same wide brown eyes and childish grin.

When we allow ourselves to grin. Andy is more slender than Nathan and keeps his prematurely gray hair cropped short. Still, despite his hair and despite his additional nine years on this planet, everyone thinks Andy is younger because he’s the one who’s always smiling. And he wears funny T- shirts.

“When?” Nathan repeats.

“Um, four hours?”

“That’s five-thirty. I’ll expect you home no later.” I sigh. “Yes, Dad.”

“And three phone-call check-ins.”

“Yes, Dad.” I don’t know what I did to deserve the world’s strictest parents. I must have been seriously hardcore evil in a past life. It’s not like I’m Norah. Nathan didn’t get home until after midnight. Apparently, her lock was changed because she hasn’t been paying rent, and she caused a scene by smashing in her front window with a neighbor’s deck chair to get back inside. Nathan is going to visit her landlord today to discuss back payments. And that whole broken window situation.

“All right, then.” He nods. “Have a good time. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

I hear Andy as I’m walking out the front door. “Honey, that threat doesn’t work when you’re gay.”

I laugh all the way down to the sidewalk. My heavy boots, tattooed with swirls of pink glitter to match my wig, leave a trail of fairy dust as I tramp.

“You’re like a shooting star,” a voice calls from the porch next door. “Sparkly.”

My cheer is immediately rendered null and void.

Cricket leaps down his stairs and joins me on the sidewalk.

“Going somewhere special?” he asks. “You look nice. Sparkly. I already said that, didn’t I?”

“You did, thanks. And I’m just going out for a few hours.” It’s not like he’s earned full truths or explanations. Of course, now I feel ashamed for thinking that, so I add with a shrug, “I might hit up Amoeba Records later.”

Why does he make me feel guilty? I’m not doing anything wrong. I don’t owe him anything. I shake my head—more at myself than at him—and move toward the bus stop. “See ya,” I say. I’m meeting Max in the Upper Haight. He can’t take me, because he’s picking up a surprise first. A surprise. I have no idea what it is; it could be a gumball for all I care. The fact that I have a boyfriend who brings me surprises is enough.

I feel Cricket’s stare. A pressure against the back of my neck.

Truthfully, I wonder why he’s not following me. I turn around.

“What are you doing today?”

He closes the distance between us in three steps. “I’m not doing anything.”