The Year of the Great Seventh (12 page)

We took the service stairs and crossed the East and South Pavilions through the basement passage until we got to a steel gate that led to the South Promontory service entrance. The gate displayed a big “No Public Access” sign, and without thinking twice, I pushed the door open.

The South Promontory gardens were a recreation of a desert landscape. These gardens weren’t accessible to the public, as the promontory had no fence around it and there was a fifty-foot drop off the edge. This was only to be viewed from the South Pavilion. But the promontory overlooked the skyline of Los Angeles, and it was one of my favorite places in the world.

We walked along the verge of the garden until we got to the promontory itself. We sat at the edge, our feet dangling in the air, both in silence. The view was truly spectacular. Thousands of lights sparkled on the horizon like a glitter collage. I’d seen the L.A. skyline before, but there was something special about this location. The view was so clear that it seemed I could grab one of the glittering lights.

The wind waved my hair, and the ocean breeze filled my nostrils. My hopes and fears, my life memories ran through my mind like a fast-forwarding movie.

Now that I was going over the facts, I realized maybe I’d forced the pieces to fit the puzzle. I’d broken our agreement, and I owed Nate an apology. He had every right to be mad with me.

“I’m sorry. I was only trying to…”

“This is beautiful,” Nate cut me off, observing the horizon and hinting that he didn’t want to talk about the subject anymore.

“Yeah, I love this place, too. I used to come sit here every day after work,” I explained. A police siren echoed in the distance.

“I wouldn’t mind if this was the only memory I could take with me,” Nate said quietly.

I didn’t really understand what he meant, and trying to lighten the conversation, I said, “I worked here last summer. I know most of the people here.”

“I figured. You seemed to know the basement passages quite well.” Nate’s lips lifted into a light smile.

“What do you want to study at college?” Nate asked, surprising me with such a change of topic.

I didn’t know why Nate was still here with me. Maybe he felt guilty to see what I was going through. Maybe he wanted to make sure I was okay before he left.

“I’d like to study history, like my Dad. I’d like to go to New York University,” I said, glancing at him from the corner of my eye. “Mom really wants me to try acting, but I absolutely hate it. Mom works in the industry and did some acting when she was younger. She would be absolutely thrilled if one day I woke up and said, ‘Mom, I want to be an actress.’” I pictured Mom’s face in my mind. “What about you?” I asked carefully. I wondered if someone with such a bleak future could dream of tomorrow.

Nate paused before speaking, his eyes fixed on the horizon. “Dad wants me to be an architect, but I’m not that interested. I don’t even think I want to go to college. I always wanted to travel the world. I’d like to visit Europe and Asia. I don’t know… I’d like to discover who I am before I decide what I want to do with my life. I’m especially interested in Spain. I heard women in Spain are quite beautiful,” Nate said with a straight face.

I automatically nudged him in the side.

“I’m joking.” Nate chortled.

Despite my concerned reason for bringing him here, the awkwardness between us seemed to have vanished. Nate seemed relaxed. For some reason this place wasn’t magic only for me. Nate hurled a pebble down the cliff and we heard it ricochet twice.

“I guess Dad would be happy if I went into politics, like my cousin Preston. He’s running for the California senate seat.”

“Preston Gorringe is your cousin!” My eyes almost popped out of my head. Preston Gorringe was a high-profile politician who appeared constantly on TV. In fact, at only thirty years old, he was going to be the youngest person ever in the state of California to run for the senate.

I already suspected that I was playing out of my league, but it was worse than I expected. Not only was Nate’s family filthy rich; they also had political power.

“Don’t worry! I couldn’t care less about politics. I think it’s a waste of time.” Nate rolled his eyes, making me laugh. He had a way of making me feel close to him, even though our worlds were millions of miles apart. “Anyway, my cousin Cameron—he’s only thirteen—he seems to want to follow in Preston’s footsteps.”

I wanted to know more about Nate. This could be my last chance. In the last few days, I discovered appearances could be deceiving, and my head was still full of questions.

“What’s with your friends? You only hang out with popular people. You don’t appear so superficial now that I know you a bit better.” I joked.

Nate half-smiled. “I wouldn’t call them ‘my friends.’ They hang out with me for the things I have, not for who I am. In high school, people choose for you who they want you to be. It’s not really your choice.”

I was shocked at Nate’s words. They could’ve easily come out of my own mouth. Maybe we weren’t as different as I thought.

Now that I was on a roll, I decided to keep trying my luck. “So if you say they aren’t your friends, why don’t you try to make new ones?”

Nate inhaled, and turning to face me, he continued. “Well, the popular people only care about themselves. They aren’t really interested in knowing anything about you, and that’s exactly what works for me.”

Nate hurled another pebble and this time we heard it bounce three times. He spoke with resentment in his voice. “Sometimes I wish I could stop playing this stupid game with everyone, including my parents. I wish I could just be myself… I wish I could break free.”

He flicked his arm in the air, hurling a pebble down the cliff. This time we didn’t hear the sound of the pebble bouncing against the hill. It was as if it had disintegrated.

“Your turn,” Nate suggested.

“My turn?” I asked nervously.

“Would you change anything about your life?” Nate asked, intrigued.

I could feel the blood rushing to my face. I hadn’t anticipated that my curiosity was going to turn against me.

Nate seemed to be waiting for my answer. I guess it was fair enough for him to expect me to confess my dreams. He’d trusted me with his unspeakable secret. “It would be great if I could fast-forward through my high school years and wake up tomorrow in an NYU dorm. Sometimes I feel I’m living someone else’s life, as if I was living in a play that someone else wrote for me. I wish I could also break free and be myself without fearing the consequences at school.”

We smiled at each other, realizing that whether we liked it or not, we were stuck in our high school lives for almost another two years.

CHAPTER VII

SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO do things you don’t want to do, but you know it’s best for you in the long run. I guess that’s the process of growing up, accepting the difficult road. After all, Nate was right; his life was too complicated, and I couldn’t allow myself to lose control of mine. I needed to study hard for the next two years and get a NYU scholarship. Nate was certainly a distraction, and his health problem only added more weight. I had to do it. I had to move on and focus on my future.

Being around Nate wasn’t really an option anyway, as there was no way his popular friends would’ve welcomed me into their entourage with open arms. And there was also Dad’s warning. Even if Nate had been kind to me all this time, how could I know he wouldn’t turn against me in one of his episodes? Just the thought of it made me shiver.

It was clear I was making the right decision by staying away from him. I was mature enough to know what was best for me. As adults like to say, it isn’t always easy to do the right thing.

Before Nate appeared in my life, I thought it couldn’t be more monotonous. Sadly, I’d been wrong all along. Now I was a corpse, shifting from home to school and back again. The days went by, and I couldn’t tell them apart. My body moved by instinct.

I saw Nate often at school, but since the day at the Getty, we hadn’t spoken a word. I stayed true to my promise of making his life and mine as easy as possible. Nate seemed quite happy with the distance. He spent his lunch breaks playing basketball with his friends, as he always did, and apparently he was dealing with his fate well.

To make matters worse, Stacey White was completely obsessed with him. She was his shadow. Wherever Nate went, there she followed with her two annoying friends.

My life was so boring I even began to lose interest in studying. I found it almost impossible to focus. The moment the teacher began a lecture, my mind wandered away to my perfect world, where Nate was cured. Sometimes I discreetly watched him from a distance to see if I could spot any sign he was aware of my presence, but to my disappointment there was none.

I needed to pull myself together because my grades were beginning to suffer, and playing with my school record was playing with my ticket out of L.A. I was trying to block my thoughts about Nate, but it was almost impossible. When I thought I was doing better, I would bump into him, and I’d be back to square one.

One morning I was feeling quite cheerful and had a gut feeling that today was the first day of my new life, until the bus arrived at school. I surveyed the parking lot before getting out, and to my dismay, Nate’s car was parked right next to it. To make matters worse, Nate was talking to Stacey White and two friends who were sitting on the hood of his car.

Nate and Stacey were standing awkwardly close to each other, or maybe they weren’t that close. But I agreed with Megan that there was something about Stacey that deeply irritated me. Maybe it was her blond hair falling loosely over her shoulders, or maybe it was the way she twisted a lock of hair while she giggled at whatever Nate was telling her. I wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but she was just too much in love with herself.

Every time I saw Nate around, it was a reality check that life was not a fairy tale. You could become a victim of destiny even at age sixteen. Why him? Why at such a young age? I needed to pluck up the courage to accept fate and get the old Sophie back, and my A’s with it.

“Are you planning to stay here all day?” the bus driver shouted from the door.

The bus was empty. I was the last one left. I was tired of feeling sorry for myself. I grabbed my backpack and stepped out of the bus with confidence, walking literally through Stacey and Nate.

I thought I had my emotions under control, but I was wrong. I’d never in my life felt so sad. It was a strange sensation of emptiness that was new for me. The more days went by, the more it grew. That evening at the Getty had been the most magical of my life. It was incredible that someone so different from me on the surface could be so similar on the inside. More proof that high school clichés were just a facade for people to hide behind.

In the cafeteria a few days later, I began to worry about my mental health. My obsession with Nate had reached the point that I was beginning to think I was the one losing my mind. I was sitting at a table with Tyson and Emma. Tyson’s older brother was the lead singer of a rock band, and Tyson and Emma were listening to one of his songs on his MP3 player. They shared one headphone each. I was reading over my biology assignment because, even though I’d read it the night before, I was struggling with biology this year.

Nate and some friends were getting their food at the counter. They were noisy; two of his friends were wrestling each other in line, and the woman serving the food was telling them to cool it.

Covering my face with both hands, I accepted that this wasn’t going to work. As long as Nate was around, I wasn’t going to get over him. I realized I needed to start thinking of a real solution. The one that had the highest chance of success was transferring to another school. I needed to accept what Nate had obviously accepted. I was wasting my life away feeling sorry for myself or Nate. Time was slipping through my fingers, and I had to move on.

Okay. Changing schools wasn’t really going to work. I would never leave my partners in crime behind. Alienating myself from my friends by changing schools wouldn’t help my situation in any way. I found myself deliberating on how to fix my dysfunctional life, staring blankly at the cafeteria’s wall. You would think at sixteen, life should be moderately straightforward, but mine just kept getting more and more tangled up. I really believed it was impossible for anything else to go wrong, but I didn’t want to tempt fate.

Suddenly, something hit me in the back of my head, bringing me back to the real world. I looked to the floor to find a piece of pink pencil eraser. Without thinking twice, I turned to the right to see who the culprit was, and to my surprise, the only table to my right was Nate’s. Tyson and Emma were still listening to the music, unaware of what was going on. Emma was humming along.

I scrutinized the people at that table, but everyone was passionately absorbed in the conversation, including Nate. No one seemed mildly suspicious. Picking up the tiny piece of pencil eraser from the floor, I analyzed the weapon. It’d probably come from a different direction. I didn’t actually care, as it was just a simple piece of rubber, so I decided to get back to my homework. Seconds later, another piece hit me on the head. Automatically, I turned toward Nate’s table and everyone seemed to be talking normally, but this time I could see a hint of a smile on Nate’s face. What was he doing? Why was he throwing stuff at me?