Lola and the Boy Next Door

“Please.” I let out a laugh. “You used to brag about it all the time.”

“Things change.” His blue eyes widen as if he’s joking, but there’s something flat behind his expression. It’s uncomfortable. Cricket was always proud of his family name. As an inventor, just like his great-great-great- grandfather, it was impossible for him not to be.

Abruptly, he lurches backward into the shadows of his room. “I should catch the train. School tomorrow.”

The action startles me. “Oh.”

And then he bounds forward again, and his face is illuminated by pink and white twinkle lights. His difficult equation face. “See you around?”

What else can I say? I gesture at my window. “I’ll be here.”

chapter five

Max picks his black shirt off his apartment floor and pulls it on. I’m already dressed again. Today I’m a strawberry. A sweet red dress from the fifties, a long necklace of tiny black beads, and a dark green wig cut into a severe Louise Brooks bob. My boyfriend playfully bites my arm, which smells of sweat and berry lotion.

“You okay?” he asks. He doesn’t mean the bite.

I nod. And it was better. “Let’s get burritos. I’m craving guacamole and pintos.” I don’t mention that I also want to leave before his roommate, Amphetamine’s drummer, comes home. Johnny’s a decent guy, but sometimes I feel out of my depth when Max’s friends are around. I like it when it’s just the two of us.

Max grabs his wallet. “You got it, Lo-li-ta,” he sings.

I smack his shoulder, and he gives me his signature, suggestive half grin. He knows I hate that nickname. No one is allowed to call me Lolita, not even my boyfriend, not even in private. I am not some gross old man’s obsession. Max isn’t Humbert Humbert, and I am not his nymphet.

“That’s your last warning,” I say. “And you just bought my burrito.”

“Extra guacamole.” He seals his promise with a deep kiss as my phone rings. Andy.

My face flushes. “Sorry.”

He turns away in frustration but says softly, “Don’t be.”

I tell Andy we’re already at the restaurant, and we’ve just been walking around. I’m pretty sure he buys it. The mood killed, Max and I choose a place only a block away. It has plastic green saguaro lights in the windows and papier-mâché parrots hanging from the ceiling. Max lives in the Mission, the neighborhood beside mine, which has no shortage of amazing Mexican restaurants.

The waiter brings us salty chips and extra-hot salsa, and I tell Max about school, which starts again in three days. I’m so over it. I’m ready for college, ready to begin my career. I want to design costumes for movies and the stage. Someday I’ll walk the red carpets in something never seen before, like Lizzy Gardiner when she accepted her Oscar for The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in a dress made out of golden credit cards. Only mine will be made out of something new and different.

Like strips of photo-booth pictures or chains of white roses or Mexican lotería cards. Or maybe I’ll wear a great pair of swashbuckling boots and a plumed hat. And I’ll swagger to the stage with a saber on my belt and a heavy pistol in my holster, and I’ll thank my parents for showing me Gone with the Wind when I had the flu in second grade, because it taught me everything I needed to know about hoop skirts.

Mainly, that I needed one. And badly.

Max asks about the Bell family. I flinch. Their name is an electric shock.

“You haven’t mentioned them all week. Have you seen . . . Calliope again?” He pauses on her name. He’s checking for accuracy, but, for one wild moment, I think he knows about Cricket.

Which would be impossible, as I have not yet told him.

“Only through windows.” I trace the cold rim of my mandarin Jarritos soda. “Thank goodness. I’m starting to believe it’ll be possible to live next door and not be forced into actual face-to-face conversation.”

“You can’t avoid your problems forever.” He frowns and tugs on one of his earrings. “No one can.”

I burst into laughter. “Oh, that’s funny coming from someone whose last album had three songs about running away.”

Max gives a small, amused smile back. “I’ve never claimed I’m not a hypocrite.”

I’m not sure why I haven’t told him about Cricket. The timing just hasn’t felt right. I haven’t seen him again, but I’m still a mess of emotions about it. Our meeting wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but it was . . . unsettling. Cricket’s uncharacteristic ease compared to my uncharacteristic unease combined with the knowledge that I’ll be seeing him again. Soon.

He didn’t even mention the last time we saw each other. As if it didn’t matter. More likely, it didn’t affect him. I’ve spent so many dark nights trying to forget about Cricket. It doesn’t feel fair that he could have forgotten about me.

It’s too much to explain to Max.

And I don’t want him to think Cricket Bell means something to me that he doesn’t. That chapter of my life is over. 

It’s over, unlike my conversation with Lindsey the next day, the same one we have every time we talk now. “I like Max,” I say. “He likes me. What’s wrong with that?”

“The law,” she says.

It’s the last Friday of our summer break, and we’re squished together on my tiny front porch. I’m spray- painting a pair of thrift-store boots, and she’s scoping out the lavender Victorian. Lindsey supports my relationship for the most part, but she’s relentless when it comes to this one sticking point.

“He’s a good guy,” I say. “And our relationship is what it is.”

“I’m not saying he isn’t a good guy, I’m merely reminding you that there could be consequences to dating him.” Her voice is calm and rational as her eyes perform a quick scan of the neighborhood before returning to the Bell house.

Lindsey never stops examining her surroundings. It’s what she does.

My best friend is pretty, bordering on plain. She wears practical clothing and keeps her appearance clean. She’s short, has braces, and has had the same haircut since the day we met. Black, shoulder length, tidy bangs. The only thing that might seem out of place is her well-worn, well-loved pair of red Chuck Taylors. Lindsey was wearing them the day she tripped a suspect being chased by the police on Market Street, and they’ve since become a permanent wardrobe fixture.

I laugh. Sometimes it’s the only option with her. “Consequences. Like happiness? Or love? You’re right, who’d want a thing like tha—”

“There he is,” she says.

“Max?” I swivel mid-spray, barely missing her sneakers in my excitement.

“Watch it, Ned.” She slides aside. “Not everyone wants shoes the color of a school bus.”

But she’s not talking about my boyfriend. My heart plummets to discover Cricket Bell waiting to cross the street.

“Oh, man.You got it on the porch.”

“What?” My attention jerks back. Sure enough, there’s an unsightly splotch of yellow beside the newspaper I’d spread out to protect the wood. I grab the wet rag I brought outside, for this very purpose, and scrub. I groan. “Nathan’s gonna kill me.”

“Still hasn’t forgiven you for dyeing the grout in his bathroom black?”

The splotch smears and grows larger. “What do you think?”

She’s staring at Cricket again. “Why didn’t you tell me he was so . . .”

“Tall?” I scour harder. “Unwanted?”

“. . . colorful.”