The Fortunes of Indigo Skye (33 page)

I survey my options. Well, I have the car key
in my pocket. I could just leave. If I'm going to try to like this new place,
I'd better get to know it better, find a beach that isn't your worst mall
nightmare, only with everyone basically naked. Not everyone around here is like
this, I'm sure. So I could just sneak away while Mel's vision is blocked by the
bulk of Glenn's body in front of her. She could get a ride home from Glenn
himself, something she might even thank me for. Or I could sit here and wait
until... nah.

Then again, driving off without her might make
Mel slightly pissed, and given the fact that Mel is currently my only friend
here and that she is providing the roof over my head, making Mel pissed is
probably not in my best interests.

I can feel my skin ripple with heat and sunburn
and skin cancer. I'm going to go through a lot of sun protection
factor

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forty-five while I'm here, I realize. Maybe
it's because I'm starving, but I'm getting that edgy feeling that is just this
side of enraged, and I want out of here. I look around for ideas, and as I whip
my head back toward the volleyball game, I feel a tiny little spin, brought on
only by sudden movement and lack of food, but it makes me remember fainting in
Carrera's, and, yes, what a brilliant idea.

Faking a faint is a little trickier than I
thought. Should I keel over like a fence post, or crumple like a delicate woman
in an old movie? I stand in a very obvious location, right at the sidelines of
the volleyball "court," at the point where the net post is stuck into the sand.
I make what I hope is a fainting sound, some sort of combo of Ah! and Oh! and
give my best crumple.

At first it seems no one notices. Shit. Should
I stand up and do it again? Glenn yells, "Our serve!" and there is the splat
sound of a ball landing against waiting palms. I consider peeking or giving some
sort of groan, but it turns out to be unnecessary.

"Oh, God!" some girl screams. "She passed
out!"

"Too much fucking beer," some guy
says.

"Indigo? Indigo! Are you all right?"
Melanie.

"Maybe we better call 911," a girl
says.

This, I do not want. I pop open my eyes at the
very moment someone pours their water bottle over my head. Peachy.

"Heat stroke." A guy with brown hair streaked
blond crouches beside me. His breath smells like corn chips. He holds an empty
water bottle. "I was a lifeguard. Saw it all the time. Are you all
right?"

"I don't know what happened," I say.

"Too much fucking beer," the other guy says
again.

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"Maybe you'd better get out of the sun for a
while," the former lifeguard says.

"We'll do that," Melanie says. Now things are
rolling. I sit up. My hair is drenched, and my bathing suit and shorts, too. I
could have done without the bottle of water dumped over my head, but oh well.
Now that the shock is over, it's really quite refreshing.

"God, that freaked me out," a girl in a white
bikini says. "I need a beer."

"Just remember it was our serve," Glenn
says.

"Are you sure you're okay to drive?" Melanie
says.

"I'm feeling much better now," I say. "A
hundred percent."

"Let's get something to eat," Melanie says. "If
you're positive you don't need a doctor or something. We could call Dad
..."

"A cheeseburger would help more than any
doctor. And a shake. Low blood sugar ..."

Melanie and I finally eat real food, and when
she sees I'm not dying, she suggests we go shopping. At least stores are
air-conditioned, she says.

I feel like it's my secret duty to make it up
to her, so I park the car and we walk to a street of stores. These, too, are
different from home. There is no True Value here, with the owner's stuffed dog
out front. These are all small, expensive shops, you can tell, with names
written on awnings. The first place is quiet, and the racks along the walls have
maybe eight or ten things hanging on them. The two tables in front have maybe
four or five items of clothing laid out.

"Are they going out of business?" I joke.
"There's nothing here." I think I'm pretty funny, but Melanie's jaw clenches.
"Indigo, can we just look around nicely?" she says.

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The woman behind the counter--now this is
getting weird. She has blond hair in an upsweep, obvious cheekbones, and an
air-conditioned demeanor. I swear to God, she looks just like the woman at the
makeup counter, and just like the flight attendant in first class. I squinch at
her in a
Hey, do we know each other
look, but she only lowers her
eyebrows disapprovingly.

Melanie scrapes the hangers of the three skirts
and two blouses and one shirt against the rack. "This is cute," she says. She
holds up the T-shirt. I conduct the first order of business required after the
uttering of the words "This is cute." I flip over the price tag. I've learned
this from Mom, or perhaps it's an action that came down the genetic line, same
as that tongue curling trick that we can all do but Trevor can't.

"Seventy-five dollars!" I say.

"Indigo, shhh, for God's sake." Melanie
sneak-peeks at the blond woman.

"No, you're kidding me, right? That's
seventy-five dollars for a T-shirt. It looks like any T-shirt. It looks like any
and all T-shirts."

"It's not any and all. It's a really nice
T-shirt. A very good quality T-shirt," Melanie says.

I rub the fabric between my fingers, prompting
the blond woman to say too loudly, "Is there something I can help you
with?"

"We're just looking," Melanie says.

Now, the blond chick and I and Melanie all know
that "We're just looking" means Melanie's supposed to put the hanger back on the
rack and that I am supposed to remove my pinching, soiled fingers from the fine
fabric. The sense that I'd better do this is edging through my nervous system,
but reaches some stop sign in my

254

brain that makes me remember that I've got two
and a half million dollars and can buy every item of clothing in this sparse,
icy, over-air-conditioned store from this over-air-conditioned woman.

If I want to. And I don't want to. I want to
argue with Melanie about a T-shirt being seventy-five dollars.

"Mel, this is ridiculous. This is not some fine
fabric. One hundred percent cotton, okay? The same one hundred percent cotton
that's in every other T-shirt."

"I can tell you're not a shopper. They are not
the same."

"If I put on that T-shirt and one that cost ten
bucks, you would not know the difference."

"You might not, but other people would,"
Melanie says.

"You know what? That's just insulting. No one
could tell the difference. And the reason they can charge that is because you're
insecure enough to worry that people
can
tell the difference. The T-shirt
isn't just about being a T-shirt. It's about being a seventy-five-dollar
T-shirt. It's about giving you a false sense of superiority. Remember, Mel, you
cut the price tag
off--no
one's gonna see it."

"That's ridiculous," Melanie says, but she puts
it back on the rack. "You have to pay more, Indigo, for better-quality things.
It's the way they're
made."

"Aspirin is aspirin and laundry soap is laundry
soap and one hundred percent cotton is one hundred percent cotton."

"What about Egyptian cotton?" Melanie
says.

"Does this say Egyptian cotton?" I flip the
tags around and point. "'Made in Sri Lanka.' I can't honestly believe I'm
standing here arguing about cotton."

"Let's just go," Melanie says.

"Have a good afternoon, ladies," the saleswoman
says. Her breath shoots a blast of arctic air at our backs.

255

***

Back at home by the pool, Mel moves her bathing
suit straps up, down, over, untied, tied, down again to avoid tan
lines.

"I cannot believe you don't like shopping,
Indigo," she says. "What is wrong with you? You're the wrong person to give two
million dollars to." She leans over to pick up her glass of lemonade from the
table, holding her top with one hand. She takes a drink, then has to rearrange
all the straps again.

I'm on the diving board. "Not all shopping.
Just not that shopping today. God, those stores. That beach ... ," I say, then
leap. I like the
thwacka-thwacka-thwacka
noise it makes when I jump off.
It sounds like I've done some fantastic dive, even though I can't dive worth
shit. I feel the delicious, sudden swoosh of descent into a watery world. An
impressive, bubbly display of bubbles bubble around me. This is the most fun
I've had all day. It's vacation fun. I can't quite get it to feel like real-life
fun.

I pop my head up, paddle to the pool edge, hold
on to the curve of concrete with my fingertips.

"Indigo, this isn't like home here. You're just
going to have to relax and go with it."

"Go with the flow. Hang loose. When in Rome,
roam," I say.

"You want to experience all the things your
money can buy? Here it is."

"Here it is. Huh," I say.

"Indigo, come on. You're going to get out of it
what you put into it. You didn't even try to meet anyone at the beach. I know
you just broke up with Trevor after a really long time, but it was
Trevor."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

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"You know what I mean. Just look at all your
less-limited options here."

I feel pissed-offness hovering, but then again,
what's so wrong with what she said? Isn't that what I felt too? Isn't that part
of why I left Trevor, and everyone else?

Melanie's head is back against the lounge
chair. Her eyes are closed. She's lying still to keep the pieces of clothing in
place. "You know, you could have stayed home, but you didn't want to be
home."

"I
don't
want to be home." I say this
and the words sound brave, but inside they feel like a large ornate door that
hides an empty room. I want to be beyond missing home, beyond my family and
Trevor. I want to be big as two and a half million dollars, but I can't help
wonder about all the things--all the people, all the places--that make me
me.

I duck down under again, pop up so that my hair
is sleeked back on my head. "God, those people at the beach, though," I say. "I
thought the kids at our school were bad."

"They're rich; they're not
bad.
Just
because they have money, they're not bad."

"I know that." I did know that. "Richard
Howards had money, and look at him. You have money."

"Not like this. Not nearly like this. Not like
you even have," Melanie says.

"Maybe it's just
the way
they have
money."

"The way they have money."

"Maybe that it makes them smaller, when it
should make them bigger," I say. "I don't know. I'm still figuring it
out."

"Well, stop thinking so much," Melanie says.
She twists, releases the lounge chair so that it lies flat, and rolls onto her
stomach. "This all, right here--this is what everyone's after."

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257

16

The next day I call Mom when she's at work. I
leave a message, and don't answer when she calls back, doing that
oops-we-missed-each-other lie that cell phones are so handy for. If I talk to
her, I'm afraid I'll feel too much. Too guilty, too sad, too lonely, all the
pulls of
old
that can keep you from
new.
My
two-and-a-half-million-dollar self expects more from me. There are no more
messages from Trevor. I check again. Still no messages. I want there to be
messages and I don't want there to be messages. I feel these small shots of
hollowness that I refuse to label as missing him. They're just the leftover
echoes of routine, old habits; they're just my own fear, looking for a safe
place to hide.

Melanie and I go back to the beach, and I take
off my shorts and talk to the streaky blond-haired guy whose name is Jason
Lindstrom. Jason surfs. No, he actually
surfs,
like in the movies. He has
this thing on his car to attach his board to and everything. He shows me the
lines on his ankle from where the umbilical cord that attaches him to his board
cut into his skin. It looks like a suicide attempt by a very ignorant
person.

We take a walk down the beach and Jason tells
me about his grandmother who has Alzheimer's and how every time they see her she
thinks it's his birthday and she gives him money. He tells me his favorite
cereal is Cheerios, because he likes how the sugar falls between all the little
holes and gathers in a sloopy splotch of syrup in the bottom of the bowl. I like
this. I'm glad to find someone here I like besides Melanie.

258

That night, Allen comes home, the first time
we've seen him since the airport. We are in the "media room" (it's actually
called that, which seemed obnoxiously self-congratulatory) when he pops his head
in the doorway. My liquor knowledge is spotty, so I don't know exactly what he
smells like, only that he smells fumey, like little wavy alcohol lines are
coming off of him. It's the odor of one of the brown alcohols, poured into short
glasses over ice. He would give the glass a spin in his hand before sipping, I
imagine, so the ice didn't collide with his nose. He smells like cocktail
napkins filled with hors d'oeuvres, like the cling of cigarette smoke on jackets
and gazes both too intent and glazey from false interest.