Laguna Cove (4 page)

“Let me make you some eggs and toast,” her grandmother offered, smoothing her shapeless floral cotton dress as she rose from her seat.

“
Abuela,
please. I don’t want eggs. Besides, Ellie will be here any second,” she said, glancing at the clock and hurriedly finishing her Cheerios.

“Nonsense. You hardly ate any breakfast. You’re too thin,” she said, eyeing her tiny granddaughter with disapproval. “You’ll never find a husband looking like that.”

“Well, considering that I’m still in high school, that’s probably a good thing,” Lola said, getting up from the table and placing her bowl in the dishwasher.

Abuela
was her father’s mother, who, after
Abuelo’
s passing just over a year ago, had reluctantly moved from Mexico City to live with them, bringing nothing more than two trunks full of cotton housedresses and all of her old-school beliefs—actively disapproving of just about everything in her new life in Laguna Beach. If it was up to her, Lola’s mother would stay home all day preparing meals for her family, and Lola would be twenty pounds heavier, dressed in her first communion garb, and engaged to be married to a nice Mexican boy from a good family the day after her high-school graduation. The only thing
Abuela
seemed to approve of was her son. Lola’s father could do no wrong.

“Lola, don’t forget you have cotillion practice this evening,” her mother said, striding into the room and bending down to briefly kiss
Abuela
on the cheek.

What a contrast they are,
Lola thought, looking at
Abuela’s
short, round body clothed in one of her numerous tent dresses and her mother’s tall, sleek, elegant form perfectly turned out in one of her designer suits.
I got Grandma’s lack of height and major stubbornness, but thankfully my mom’s slim build and straight dark hair,
Lola thought. It’s her eyes that were like her dad’s, shiny, dark, and deep like onyx.

“Mom, I’ll try to make it but I can’t promise anything. It’s the first day of school and all.”

“No ‘and all,’ Lola. Say ‘It’s the first day of school,’ period.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lola said, bending down to kiss
Abuela
just as Ellie pulled into the driveway and honked.

“Is that Ellie?”
Abuela
asked.

“
Sí
,
Abuela.
I’ll see you later,” she said, grabbing her bag and heading toward the door.

“Can you please inform her, once again, that it is impolite to honk?”

Lola shook her head, put her hands on her hips, and breathed an exasperated sigh. “No, I cannot. Because she’s doing me a big favor by driving me to school. And if your son and daughter-in-law would just buy me a car, once and for all, then I could drive myself and you’d be spared the honking,” she said.

“What did she say?”
Abuela
asked, looking to her daughter-in-law for help with the translation. But Lola knew better.
Abuela
’s perfect English always seemed to fail in the most convenient moments.

Lola’s mom shook her head. “Get your grades up, and we’ll talk.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Lola slung her book bag over her shoulder and walked out the door. She’d gotten only one B in an all-A lineup, but that had been enough for her overly strict parents to refuse her a car. True, the deal had been all A’s gets the wheels,
but still.
Lola had done her very best, and just because she got four wrong answers on that chemistry test (
Chemistry!
It’s not like she wanted to be a scientist!), she was relegated to another semester of being chauffeured to school by her friends. And it was really getting old.

Usually she didn’t mind being driven everywhere, but in the last few weeks she’d found a very good reason to get her own car and a little more privacy. So now she was very motivated to get straight A’s and not screw up.

“Hey, El.” Lola opened the passenger door of Ellie’s new jetblack Mini Cooper convertible and plopped down onto the seat next to her. “Are we picking up Jade?”

“No, she’s meeting us there,” Ellie said, turning onto the street as Lola released her long, dark hair from its tight ponytail and removed her high-necked sweater to reveal the tight little T-shirt underneath. Her family may call her Lola, but her friends, knowing the real Lola was only revealed when her parents weren’t looking, often called her Lolita. “You missed some good waves this morning,” Ellie said, taking in her friend’s transformation.

“I just can’t wake up that early anymore. I don’t know how you do it.” Lola applied shiny peach lip gloss while checking out the cute guy in the black Jeep Wrangler right next to them.

“Discipline, that’s how I do it.”

“Yeah, discipline and no social life,” Lola said, smiling at the guy with her newly shiny lips.

“Excuse me? I have a social life. For your information, I’m planning on yet another year as your class president, yearbook committee, Surf Club president …”

“I mean a social life that takes place after the final bell,” Lola said, interrupting her friend and laughing.

“Not all of us stay out all night, Lolita!” Ellie said, looking over at her and smiling. “Oh my God, are you flirting with that guy?” She stared in disbelief.

“Maybe.”

“Oh my God, he’s like,
old.
”

“No, he’s not. He’s probably twenty-five, twenty-six tops. And he’s sooo cute,” Lola said, rolling down her window to get a better look.

“He’s probably married, with three kids, and a wife at home who’s gonna come after you when she hears about this,” Ellie said, half joking and half worrying it could be true.

“I never flirt if they’re wearing a ring, or a girlfriend is present. I’m very old-fashioned that way,” Lola said, all her attention focused on the cute driver of the black Jeep.

“Well, could you please stop? The last thing I need is to have some pervert following us to school,” Ellie said, sounding more than a little uptight.

“Relax; it’s over. He’s turning right. Well, it was good while it lasted,” Lola said, waving at the back of his Jeep. “Hey, can you drop me off at the corner up there?”

“What? Why?” Ellie looked at her.

“I’m meeting someone,” she said, running her fingers through her long dark hair and double-checking her lip gloss in the mirrored visor.

“Do you want me to wait for you?” Ellie asked, slowing to a stop.

“No. I’ll see you at school.”

Ellie gave her a suspicious look.

“Really, I’ll catch up with you later.”

“If I didn’t know you better, I’d swear you were either a drug dealer or a special agent.”

“Who, me?” Lola asked, grabbing her books and slipping quickly out of the car.

chapter six

Jade saw Ellie the second she pulled into the parking lot. And she would have run over to greet her friend, if that hadn’t happened to be the exact same moment that Ben had picked her up, thrown her over his shoulder, and headed toward the quad with her.

“Ellie!” Jade called, hanging over Ben’s shoulder, laughing and waving, determined to ignore the “Ellie look” her friend had plastered across her face. Jade was all too familiar with that look, as Ellie seemed to direct it at her more and more these days. It said something like,
I’m disappointed in you, but I still love you, even though I worry about you.
But Jade forgave her. Because Jade forgave just about everyone. After all, not everyone subscribed to her “live and let live” credo,
especially
Ellie.

Still, they’d been friends forever. Long before pancreatic cancer took Ellie’s mother’s life. Long before Ellie’s dad, angry and wracked with grief, began putting enormous pressure on her to succeed at absolutely everything. Long before Ellie, suffering from the huge emotional void left by her mother’s passing, started putting even more pressure on herself than her dad did.

Jade understood just how much Ellie had changed in the past few years. And Jade worried about Ellie just as much as she knew Ellie worried about her. But she loved Ellie enough to tolerate her constant disapproval. Well, most of the time.

“Ellie!” Jade yelled again, kicking Ben in the ribs until he finally set her down. “Great sweater,” she said, her smile exposing that one slightly crooked front tooth that looked like it was determined to overlap the next one, as she pushed her long, dark, out-of-control ringlets away from her face.

“Thanks,” Ellie said, rubbing her hand absently over the new kelly-green cashmere cardigan she’d bought the day before with her dad’s credit card. “Who is that guy?” Ellie asked, watching Ben joke with some people a few feet away.

“Ben Parker. He just transferred from Sage Hill,” Jade said, wishing her friend would lighten up just a little.

“Why would someone transfer here from there? Did he mess up?”

“No. His parents split and his mom couldn’t afford the tuition anymore. Cut him some slack, okay? He’s a really nice guy.”

“How do you know him?” Ellie asked.

“I met him last week at that barbecue at Salt Creek Beach. The one you didn’t go to.”

“Is he one of the ones that got busted for drinking?”

Jade shook her head. “Listen, I’m taking the Fifth on that one, because it has nothing to do with me,
or you
.” Jade was probably the only girl in school that took those yearly anti-gossip vows seriously. “Now come on, our old friend Chris is right over there and I swear he’s even yummier this year than last, if you can believe it. And I don’t even go for blonds.” She laughed.

“I’ve already seen him,” Ellie said, trying to sound casual, but failing miserably

“Oh, yeah? Do tell.”

“I saw him surfing yesterday morning. When I was waiting for you, I might add.” Ellie looked at her.

“About that. Listen, I know you’re probably really disappointed in me, but it was the last day of summer so I slept in and I just can’t apologize for that because getting up at o’ dark thirty just goes against the laws of nature.” She smiled. “So where’s Lola?”

“I dropped Lolita off on the corner. Apparently she had a date.” Ellie couldn’t refrain from rolling her eyes

But Jade had the opposite opinion. “Wow, talk about good time management! Leave it to Lolita to sneak a date in right before the school day has even begun. Oh, how I do admire that girl. Now come on, El, let’s go drool over Chris,” Jade said, smiling and pulling Ellie in his direction.

But Ellie was having none of it. “I can’t. I need to stop by the office,” she said.

“What for? It’s the first day! What meeting could you possibly have already lined up?” Jade stared at her friend, eyes narrowed, arms folded across her chest. She knew Ellie was lying.

“I need to drop off some papers. But I’ll see you at break, okay?”

“Fine. Your loss,” Jade said, watching Ellie head toward the office on some sad, made-up mission.
Anything to avoid Chris
, she thought, knowing that she was the only one who knew the truth about Ellie and Chris. Heck, she probably knew it even better than Ellie did, since Ellie was a master at self-deception.

Jade, Ellie, Lola, and Chris went way back. Jade was the first to arrive in Laguna Cove
and,
as she liked to point out, was the only true native, having actually been born at home, under the watchful eyes of the midwife, her dad, her two older sisters Ruby and Sapphire, her worried and disapproving grandparents (who begged their daughter to come to her senses and go to a nice, sterile hospital with real doctors and nurses), and, of course, her mother.

But it was because of those very same disapproving grandparents that Jade got to live there in the first place. Jade’s mother had come from a wealthy family who did not approve of Jade’s father. Their daughter was beautiful and smart and had numerous doctors and lawyers to choose from. So why would she marry an artist? What future was there in that?

But marry they did, flying off to Hawaii the day after college graduation. And by the time they returned, her parents—resigned to the situation—had presented them with their summer home as a wedding gift. It was the least they could do to ensure their future grandkids would be raised properly, and not in some artists’ commune or small apartment in Costa Mesa, like they feared.

And now, after several years of moderate success, the demand for her father’s paintings had slumped. And with her grandparents now deceased and their debts spiking as her mother’s trust fund quickly dwindled, the “ecologically correct” home remodeling that they’d been enduring for the past year was put on indefinite hold, making certain areas of the house resemble an abandoned construction site.

But Jade wasn’t bothered. It was easy enough to step around the unfinished areas, and if they all had to share the same bathroom, well, so what? She knew her dad would succeed again, it was just a matter of time. Besides, she was used to living in chaos; since she had grown up with two older sisters and very social parents who believed in an open door policy, there were always all kinds of people drifting in and out of her life. You never knew who you’d find sleeping on the couch on a Sunday morning, and Jade always assumed that’s how she became so accepting. She had learned early on that if you just looked hard enough, you’d see that even the most annoying person had something good in them.

By the time she was old enough to walk she was building sand castles on the beach with Ellie, and it was the two of them that had taught Lola how to dive under waves when she first moved to Laguna Cove from Mexico City when she was eight. By the time they were in fourth grade Chris was on the scene, and sharing after-school jaunts to the beach and a love of surfing, he easily became the fourth in their tight little group.

In junior high they were able to maintain their easy, casual friendship, not caring if Chris saw them in their pajamas, or with their faces covered in zit cream. But by ninth grade things started to change. They were all still friends, but it was almost like Chris had shown up that first day of high school suddenly looking like someone who, they all agreed, was really quite gorgeous. They knew him too well to ever think of him
like that
, but just because they felt that way didn’t mean anyone else did, and before they knew it flocks of girls were trying to befriend them just to get to Chris. And Jade, Ellie, and Lola were forced to watch as he slowly pulled away from them, drifting from the novelty of one new girlfriend to another (usually a blonde, sometimes smart, but not always nice), until they hardly said more than a quick “hey” to each other as they passed in the halls.