In Real Life (6 page)

He slides two envelopes through the window to Lo, and a lovely pot smoke odor comes along with them. “This is the best I could come up with based on what Carlos sent me.” He looks us up and down again. “I think they'll do just fine.”

My pulse races, and I shoot a desperate look at Lo. I wish she'd tell me what was going on here and why we're standing in a creepy parking lot in Fontana with a strange guy who has a picture of a high-speed chase painted on the side of his van.

I don't do well with surprises, and I'm fighting the urge to run.

Lo elbows me in the ribs and hands me one of the envelopes, jerking her chin at me. “Check it out.”

Inside the envelope, I find six California driver's licenses, all belonging to Asian girls. I look over at Lo and see she's holding the same thing, but all with Hispanic-looking girls. “What—?”

“Pick out the one you think is the best,” Max says. “Then it's thirty bucks each. That's a special deal, since Carlos is like familia
.
”

“We're getting fake IDs?” I hiss into Lo's ear.

“Isn't it awesome?” she whispers back.

No, it isn't awesome. It's really, really illegal.

I have a promise with myself, and with my parents: keep my eyes on the prize during high school. Boyfriends are fine, as long as they don't negatively impact my grades. No drugs, no drinking, no partying. No rule breaking. Then after high school, I can do what I want, as long as what I want involves a four-year university. I'd kept that promise and gotten into UCLA, my first-choice school, like my sister. Since that's set, I feel justified in going on this secret weekend romp to Las Vegas and getting a little wild. But not “fake ID” wild. Not “illicit parking lot purchase from a creeper in a van” wild.

But then I look back to the car and see Grace grinning at me like I'm opening a Christmas gift she picked out special for me, the red in her hair glinting in the sunlight.

I sigh.

“It's time to let loose a little, Hannah,” Lo says. “College is right around the corner. Stop being such a control freak, and let's get some party practice in.” I don't like her calling me a control freak like it's a bad thing, so I kick her in the shin. She doesn't care, though. She knows she'll eventually get me to do what she wants.

“Can you guys hurry up?” Max crinkles his eyebrows at us. “I'm missing
Ellen.
It's a makeover special today.”

“Fine,” I say to Lo, “I'll get a fake ID. But I don't have to use it. Just getting one is breaking enough laws for me right now.”

Lo pats my shoulder. “Good girl. Now, pick.”

I shuffle through the IDs in my hand. None of them look all that much like me. “How do I choose?”

“Check out the height,” Max grumbles. “That never changes. You don't want one that says you are five-seven when you are clearly five-two.” He obviously knows the ins and outs of this business.

“Where did you even get these?” I ask him.

He narrows his eyes. “Don't ask questions. Hurry up.”

I look again at my options:

Tran Nguyen isn't even Korean, and she's five feet tall and looks like a man, so she's out.

Kristy Chang is way prettier than me, but she has a round face like I do and even has my dimples. And we're the same height and weight. Perfect.

I hold Kristy's ID up next to my face. “Do I look like Kristy Chang from Riverside? Can I pass for twenty-three?”

“You look beautiful, dah-ling.” Lo has chosen Sarah Kingston, a Pisces whose address is not too far from our school.

“That chick isn't even Mexican.”

“I know, but she looks way more like me than these other girls. Look at this one's eyebrows. Like I would ever.”

“You girls all set?” Max asks, clearly annoyed with our indecision.

Lo hands back the envelopes. “We're ready for Vegas, baby!”

He stares at us.

“What is he staring at?” I whisper to Lo. In those few seconds, I imagine Max, who seems nice enough despite the pot smell and the whole van situation, turning all Mr. Hyde and pulling us into his van, speeding off, and leaving Grace screaming and shaking her fist at the heavens in the parking lot.

“My money,” he says, snapping me back to reality. “This ain't free, you know.”

“Oh yeah.” Lo digs around in her purse and pulls out an envelope of cash. “My treat, Hannah. As long as you promise to use it. I don't want my investment to go to waste.”

“Yeah, I promise.” I have zero intention of using it, but I'm also not going to tell Lo she'd be better off taking her money, walking up to the roulette table, and slamming it down on red. I'll go along with this, but I don't drink and we'd agreed on no clubs. Plus, Grace triple-checked that the show at House of Blues tonight is all-ages.

“I would've given you my old ID to use,” Grace says once we're back in the car. “But since we're going out together, I couldn't exactly have you using mine while I was using it, too. We couldn't both be the same Grace Cho walking into the same place.”

And just like that, we are out of Fontana and back on the long road to Vegas.

*   *   *

“We're almost there,” Grace says.

I don't know how she can tell. We took a bathroom break in Barstow at the infamous train-car McDonald's, and since then, it has been all desert, all the time. The landscape has looked exactly the same since we left Baker, home of—no joke—the World's Tallest Thermometer. These are the kinds of thrilling attractions you have to look forward to when you're driving through the desert: dirt, piles of dirt, an abandoned water park, a place that sells something called Alien Jerky, a freeway exit called Zzyzx Road, and a ridiculously large temperature device.

The initial thrill I'd felt about this trip slowly died during the course of the long and boring drive through the middle of nowhere. I tried texting with a few friends, but most of them were off with real spring break plans, so I mostly passed the time by telling Grace and Lo stories about Nick from the past four years. Even that got old after a while, though, and Lo pretty much begged me to shut up after the tenth word-for-word reading of one of Nick's inside-joke-riddled text conversations with me.

“The California state line is coming up here in a bit.” Grace fumbles around in the center console for her water bottle, but she drank the last sip about forty miles ago and doesn't seem to remember, so I hand her mine. “Then we'll officially be in Nevada, and Vegas is not far from the state line at all.”

“Is that it?” Lo points ahead at a small cluster of color. As we get closer, I notice it's casinos we're approaching—right in the middle of desert, desert, and more desert.

“They get you in a casino the minute it's legal, don't they?” I say. “Who comes here? Why don't people keep on driving to Vegas if we're so close?”

“Desperate to gamble? Hiding out from the mob?” Lo suggests. “Who knows, but I'm glad this isn't our stop. It looks like the place hope goes to die.”

We all cheer as we cross out of California and into Primm, Nevada, and I peer out the window at what's waiting for us in this new state. Outlet mall, those three hotel casinos that look semi-impressive—because they're out in the middle of nowhere and are surrounded by tumbleweeds—but probably pale in comparison to what is waiting for us in Vegas, and—

“Oh my God,” says Lo. “Look at that huge roller coaster.”

The second casino on our right side—named Buffalo Bill's, according to the large neon sign with a buffalo wearing a feather headdress—has an enormous yellow roller coaster track wrapping its way around the entire property.

Grace laughs. “Should I stop so you can ride the roller coaster, Hannah?”

“You want to torture me?”

Grace jerks the steering wheel and the car to the right. “You know you're dying to.”

“It doesn't even look like it's running.” We all watch the track, but we don't see a single car zoom by. “It's probably broken. Or condemned because it is a total death trap. This random roller coaster in the middle of the desert has probably killed innocent kids, and someone's on their way right now to tear it down for the good of Primm.”

“Settle down, settle down.” Lo leans forward and pats my shoulder. “No one's making you ride the roller coaster. Look, it's behind us.”

I hate that she talks to me like I'm a baby she's dropping off at day care, but Lo has been with me on a couple of ill-fated Disneyland trips, so she knows firsthand how much even the idea of roller coasters sends me into a panic spiral.

Truth be told, I've never actually been on one, but I have no desire to even try. It's the out-of-control feeling, the free-falling. I know some people love it. But some people also jump out of planes for grins and giggles. Some people are insane.

With the death trap safely behind us, we drive on the final stretch of the 15 freeway to Vegas. I'm relieved this is the last leg of the trip. We've been in the car since McDonald's, and that stop was almost two hours ago. My legs feel tight, my shoulders beg for a good stretch, and I'm about five minutes from making Grace pull over so I can pee behind some rocks. I hate to be the annoying little sister, but I feel like I can hardly sit still any longer.

Nick is so close.

“How much longer?”

“Wait a few minutes,” Grace says. “I'll show you something cool.”

My knee bounces up and down and my fingers drum on my thigh as we continue through the desert. I can't imagine what she could possibly have to show us, and I am in no mood for a pit stop in some ghost town or run-down casino.

“Here we are.” Grace lifts a hand from the steering wheel and points ahead.

“It's mountains,” Lo says. “That's all we've been looking at for four hours now. What's the big deal?”

But the words are barely out of Lo's mouth when we round a small corner and the hills on either side of us open up. Now, instead of mountains, in front of us is this unbelievable view. It's not even dark out, but I can still see the sparkling lights of the casinos and the hotels and the buildings that make up what I assume is the Las Vegas Strip.

“Wow,” I say. It's like straight out of a movie or a postcard or something. I can't believe all those lights are real.

It definitely looks like the sort of place where amazing things happen. I can see why it's a place people go with their dreams. And how fitting that I'm coming here, to this home of big dreams, to meet my best friend at last. Dusty, boring Barstow and that weird McDonald's wouldn't have been the place for us. Our friendship needs lights and sparkles and music and surprises. This is our place. I can feel it.

The lights come closer, and I'm mesmerized by them, until a noise from the center console catches my attention. My text alert.

DON'T KNOW IF WE ARE READY FOR THIS SHOW TONIGHT. YOU SHOULD SEE OSCAR'S HAIR. OMG. I THINK HE TOOK A TIME WARP TO 1983.

“You're smiling,” Grace says. “That must be Nick. What'd he say?”

“Nothing.”

I reply:

I WISH I COULD SEE THAT.

About thirty seconds go by before I get his answer.

ME TOO, GHOST. I WISH YOU COULD SEE IT ALL.

 

CHAPTER

6

Las Vegas Boulevard is even more of an assault on the senses than I imagined. Enormous hotel casinos line the Strip, lights sparkling and signs flashing.
POKER TOURNAMENT! PRIME RIB SPECIAL!
And, ew,
LOOSEST SLOTS!
The sidewalks are crowded with tourists of every age, shape, and style; cars and cabs pack the streets; and the three of us press our faces to the windows as we drive, trying to make sense of all the dazzling chaos.

It doesn't take long to find the massive Planet Hollywood hotel. The huge white building, plain except for the red sign on the top of the rows upon rows of windows and the waves of shiny silver bubbles at the street level, is toward the south end of the Strip, so we don't have to drive too far. Grace pulls into the parking garage and we walk through the attached mall with our bags, window-shopping as we find our way to the sparkly check-in area.

“It's like the DMV in here,” Lo says. “I swear, I've seen every single walk of life.”

Every walk of life includes, but is not limited to, an overweight couple sporting matching Mickey Mouse T-shirts and slushie drinks in giant plastic Eiffel Towers, three bikini-clad girls in sky-high stilettos with only sheer caftans covering them, and a busload's-worth of tourists taking endless photos of the gift store across from the check-in desk. Three kids chase each other in circles, and I pray someone is actually in charge of them. But not the bikini girls, God willing.

Then there's us: two Asians and a Mexican. Seventeen, eighteen, and twenty-one. Grace in all black with a beanie, Lo with wavy brown hair pulled high in a topknot and wearing a floral sundress with motorcycle boots, and me, with my skinny jeans, black cami, and stick-straight hair, looking like the most plain and boring person in this entire city.

The check-in line is long, and as we wait, my mind runs through every way this too-good-to-be-true hotel thing is going to crash and burn. But the room is waiting for us, just like Grace's editor said, and as the three of us ride the elevator up to our floor, I can't help but hope the name-dropping of
Rocker
earned us some ridiculous
Hangover
suite or something.

But it's a normal room. No suite, just two beds, a chair, a small table, and a killer view of the Strip.

“What's
Empire Records
?” Lo asks. Every room at Planet Hollywood is decorated with memorabilia from some movie or another, I guess. We got some film I'd never heard of.