Tell Us Something True Read online

  “These are my friends. Beautiful, amazing Daphne, and River, who is sweet but full of shit.” He shot me a semiapologetic look. “Sorry. Bad Mason.” He slapped his own wrist. “And this…is my mommy.” He stood back, displaying her proudly. “You guys don’t mind sacrificing your anonymity to meet the greatest woman God ever created, do you?”

  Daphne and I shook our heads.

  “Well then, thank you for being a friend to my son,” she said. “For listening and being here each week. For doing what you do to help him become his best self. Now let’s go, honey.” She turned to Mason. “We don’t want to be late.”

  He linked his arm through hers. “Got a movie to catch,” he called over his shoulder as they walked down the street toward her car. “Later, people.”

  When Natalie was a baby, Mom and I had a standing Saturday-night movie date. We’d alternate the kinds of movies I liked—action or science fiction—with the kinds she liked—mostly stories of women on a journey of rediscovery after being disappointed by men. We’d share popcorn and a Milk Duds. We hadn’t been to a movie together in years.

  “I didn’t see that coming,” I said to Daphne after they disappeared. Without Christopher and his cigarettes, we had no excuse for loitering.

  “Whaddya mean?” she asked.

  “You know.” I made motions with my hands that indicated Mason’s large size and then his mother’s diminutiveness.

  “Oh.” She laughed. “She’s his foster mom. She didn’t, like, birth him or anything.”

  “That explains it.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’ve missed a lot. See, Mason spent most of his childhood moving around, home to home, bad to worse, until he wound up in Culver City with this mom. She’s the first person to love him, you know, like, no matter what. He’s been with her since he was thirteen. And she’s given him everything. Support. Stability. She even sends him to a fancy school. And yet…sometimes he still barfs into jars and hides them under his bed. Go figure.”

  I didn’t know much about bulimia, but I’d always assumed only girls had it. Blond, skinny, insecure girls, not big brutes like Mason. It was easy to forgive him being hard on me because he’d been through so much, and also because he was right. I was full of shit.

  “Do you wanna do something?” Daphne asked.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t feel like going home yet.”

  “And you want to do something with me?”

  “Jeez, River. I just wanted to know if you wanna, like, do something or eat something or just kill some time. I’m not trying to date you or anything.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.” Why was I always embarrassing myself in front of Daphne? “I meant, without Christopher around I just wasn’t sure you’d want to hang out.”

  “Christopher? I don’t like Christopher. Not like that anyway.”

  “You sure?”

  “Why do you care so much?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Christopher isn’t for me. He’s a rich kid with a club drug habit. Not my type.”

  “Duly noted.”

  “So let’s go somewhere. You got your car?”

  “Uh…I don’t have one.”

  “You don’t have a car? What kind of Westside boy are you, anyway?”

  “The kind without a car. Or a license.”

  “You don’t have a license?”

  “Nope. I don’t drive.”

  It occurred to me that the only reason Daphne had asked me to do something was probably because she wanted a ride home. I braced myself for a blowoff.

  She shrugged. “So I guess we’re gonna have to walk somewhere.”

  “That I know how to do.”

  —

  We walked south toward Venice Boulevard, where I’d remembered seeing a taco stand that drew a crowd. The picnic benches outside were filled, and when she spied two free seats she went to secure them. I got on line and brushed off her attempt to give me money.

  She put her hand on her hip and arched her eyebrows at me. “I told you this isn’t a date.”

  “I know. Chill out. I’m just buying you a taco.”

  “No, you’re buying me two tacos.”

  We sat for a while after we were done eating, sipping our Jarritos sodas—strawberry for her, mango for me. I could feel the cavities blooming.

  “So how do you get around, River? You already said you don’t take the bus because”—and here she put on a funny accent I knew was supposed to sound like a white person, but came off like an über-nerd—“Nobody takes the bus in LA.”

  “Promise you won’t judge me?”

  “I can’t promise that.”

  “My girlfriend drove me everywhere. We were together before we turned sixteen and she got her license first, so I never needed to get mine. And I have friends who drive too, so…”

  “That’s pathetic.”

  I’d been told this before. Lots of times. But it was the first time I saw the truth in it.

  “Do you have a license?”

  “Of course I do. I just don’t have a car.” She reached over and took my mango soda and took a sip of it without asking first. I looked at the bottle top for a trace of her pink lip gloss, but she didn’t leave any behind. “You know what I’m gonna do for you, River?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’m gonna teach you how to ride the bus.”

  “Thanks, but—”

  “No need to thank me. I like a charity case now and then. You’ll be like my community service project. I can put it on my college applications. I’ll be all: Volunteered time to help poor Westside white boy understand how to navigate the Los Angeles public transportation system.”

  “Ha.”

  “Ha.”

  Her arm rested on the table and I took a close look at her wrist tattoo. It was beautiful. I wanted to ask her about it but I didn’t.

  “So you’re going to college next year?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I—”

  “At some point, yeah, I’m going to go to college. But not next year. I don’t know what my parents would do without me. And I don’t have the money. And I haven’t figured out how to steal it.”

  “Daphne—”

  “Kidding. What about you, River? You going to college next year?”

  “My applications are in. I’ll hear in a few weeks. And I have the money. But I don’t want it. The money, I mean.”

  “Say what?”

  “It’s from my father. My mom and Leonard can’t afford it, but he can. That was the deal. He’ll pay for college. And I’ll go on about my life and occasionally stalk him on the Internet.”

  “You have to take his money, River. Not taking his money would be more stupid than trying to steal it.”

  “I know, it’s just—”

  “It’s just that you want to prove you don’t need him.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Here’s the thing. He owes you. Big-time. He owes you more than a college education.”

  “Should I ask him to buy me a pony?”

  “At least then you wouldn’t have to ride the bus.”

  Music played softly in the background, and multicolored Christmas lights hung over the picnic tables like a circus of stars. A celebration in the cosmos. She smiled at me, and for the first time since that day in the middle of Echo Park Lake, I felt happy enough to be sitting right here, not wondering what Penny was doing, where she was doing it and with whom.

  I wanted to tell Daphne that she needed to go to college too. That she was too smart to stay home playing babysitter to her siblings. That there had to be a way. But I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to. For the first time, I saw how lucky I was.

  “Do you want another taco?”

  “No.”

  “Another soda?” I wasn’t ready for the night to be over.

  “No.”

  She reached behind her for her purse. “Come on. Let
’s hit the bus stop. Your lesson starts now.”

  I sat with Maggie and Will in the gym watching Luke’s basketball game, sizing up Evan Lockwood.

  “He does have magnificent thighs,” Maggie sighed. “But he doesn’t have nearly as much going for him overall as you do, River. For one thing, he’s not as cute.”

  “River is cute?” Will cocked his head at me.

  “Duh. Look at him. Cute in that sensitive, vulnerable, pretty boy sort of way.”

  “I’d trade any one of those for magnificent thighs,” I said.

  “Jesus,” Will said. “Stop saying magnificent thighs.”

  Maggie gave him a shove. “Oh my god! That should be your band name! Will Parker and the Magnificent Thighs. I’m calling the booker at Largo!”

  If you’d been watching me on those bleachers, smiling and laughing, you’d never have known that on the inside I was like those antismoking photos they show you in health class: charred and sickly. How could Penny consider going anywhere with Evan Lockwood? With anyone but me?

  “I’m sorry she dumped you, River,” Maggie said. “But I’d be lying if I said that sorry is the only thing I felt.”

  “I know you guys didn’t like her.”

  “It’s not that we didn’t like her, it’s that we didn’t like you with her.”

  “Yeah,” Will added. “You were kind of a pussy.”

  “Hey! I was just a good boyfriend.”

  “No, you were pretty much a major pussy.”

  Maggie smacked Will on the back of the head. “That word is demeaning and stupid. And you’re better than that.” She turned to me. “But, River, you did do whatever Penny told you to. And the truth, which Will can’t properly express because he’s a Neanderthal, is that we missed you.”

  Just then, Evan Lockwood scored a three-point shot. The gym went berserk.

  “Wow. I really bollixed everything up, didn’t I?”

  “Sorta,” Will said.

  “It’s too bad there isn’t some girl you could ask to the dance. And I’m not suggesting me, because I’m obviously a pity date and that just looks sad and desperate. How about…” Maggie scanned the crowd and then pointed across the gym. “Her?”

  “Rachel Pomeroy? Uh…no thank you.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s mean. And scary.”

  “So?”

  “Well, mean and scary aren’t qualities I look for in a mate.”

  “Nobody said anything about mating. We said you need a date for the dance so that Penny can see you’re moving on. It’s time to remake your image. You need somebody a little intimidating. Someone who might knock Penny’s sense of superiority down a notch.”

  That was when Daphne came to me. In Day-Glo. She was perfect. Intimidating and beautiful with the added bonus of being unknown.

  But how to explain Daphne to my friends? How could I know someone from Boyle Heights when I didn’t even drive? How had I struck up a friendship with a Mexican girl who was raising her siblings because her parents worked three jobs around the clock?

  A friendship with Daphne challenged every presumption of the life I’d been leading for seventeen years. Everyone I knew was a different variation on the same Westside theme. We all went to schools with nice gyms and impressive college matriculation records. Some of us were richer (Penny), some were poorer (me), some were whiter (Maggie could trace her family back to the Mayflower) and some less so (Luke’s mother was a doctor from Mexico City).

  Nobody I knew was like Daphne…Crap. I didn’t even know her last name.

  This was going to be a tough one.

  Luke’s team lost the game and we went to our usual diner for a consolation sundae. It felt good to be a quadrangle again.

  “So I met this girl…online,” I said.

  “You what?”

  “I met this girl.”

  “Online.”

  “Yes.”

  Maggie looked at Will and then at Luke. They both stared back blankly, like: Don’t ask us, we’re just guys, we don’t understand anything. “River, I had no idea things had gotten that desperate,” she said.

  “I wasn’t, like, online dating or whatever.” My mind spun. How was I going to explain this?

  “So…how did you meet a girl?” Luke asked.

  “Well, I didn’t meet a girl. I mean…I don’t like her. We’re just friends.”

  “Okay. So how did you meet this girl you don’t like online?” Will asked.

  “On Instagram.”

  “Wait. Hold on.” Maggie pushed up her sleeves. “You have an Instagram account?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you hate Instagram. In fact, you hate all social media.”

  “I know. But I suddenly have more time on my hands without Penny and I decided to check out Instagram.”

  Maggie whipped out her phone. “What’s your user name?”

  “I’m not going to tell you that.”

  “River,” she said, putting down her phone. “Let me explain how Instagram works. You tell your friends what your user name is so that they can follow you so that you can get more followers so that you aren’t alone out there in the wilds of the Internet.”

  “Yeah…but…” I was treading water. “This is, like, a new thing for me. Something separate from my normal life. I’m trying to take more risks. To be less…predictable.”

  “So what’s your deal? Like, do you have a thing?”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, do you have some sort of Instagram identity? Something that sets you apart? Are you posting pictures of anything in particular or just your dull, boring life as a heartbroken loser? Because that’s, you know, pretty predictable.”

  For some reason Daphne’s tattoo popped into my mind, the roses on the vine that wound around her wrist.

  “Tattoos.”

  “Tattoos?”

  “Yeah. I post pictures of tattoos.”

  “River.” Now Maggie pulled down the sleeves she’d just pushed up. “Do I need to state the obvious? That you don’t have a tattoo?”

  “I know I don’t have a tattoo, but I like them. I think they’re…beautiful. And I take pictures of other people’s tattoos and post them on Instagram.”

  Maggie looked at Will and Luke. They shrugged.

  “I can’t escape the feeling,” she said, glancing at the ceiling since the guys weren’t offering any help, “that I’ve stepped into an alternate universe. Someplace where River Dean takes artsy pictures of strangers’ tattoos and posts them online.”

  “Dude,” Luke said. “That’s kinda awesome.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So you met this girl…” Maggie gave me the go on motion.

  “Yeah, I met this girl. And she likes my pictures. And she has a tattoo of roses on a vine that wind around her wrist.”

  “Sexy,” Will said.

  I nodded noncommittally. “She’s cool. Her name’s Daphne. I think maybe I should invite her to the dance, you know, as a friend.”

  “Where does she go to school?” Luke asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Maggie frowned. “Are you sure she’s not some forty-three-year-old perv masquerading as a high school girl with a cool tattoo?”

  “Nah, I’ve hung out with her.”

  “When?”

  “Just a couple of times. Listen, should I ask her or would it be awkward?”

  “We’ll go as a group. That’ll kill the awkward.”

  Suddenly Will perked up. “What do you mean by we?”

  “I mean you and me and River and tattoo girl will go to the dance together. And Luke too if he wants to.”

  Luke put his hands up. “I don’t want to.”

  “Neither do I,” said Will.

  “That’s too bad.” Maggie threw an arm around Will. “Because we’re going. And you’re driving.”

  —

  That night I texted Daphne.

  ME: Hey

  HER: Hey

  ME: What R U doing? />
  HER: Texting U

  ME: Duh

  HER: So?

  ME: So do U wanna go to a dance w/me Fri?

  HER:

  ME: Well do U?

  HER:

  ME: Hello?

  HER: Hi

  ME: Is that a no?

  HER: R U really asking me to a dance in a text?

  —

  She answered before I even heard her phone ring.

  “This is Daphne.”

  “Hi, Daphne. It’s River.”

  “River who? I know several Rivers.”

  “River Dean.”

  “Oh, that River. Hi, River Dean.”

  “Hi, Daphne…”

  “Vargas.”

  “Hi, Daphne Vargas. This is River Dean calling. I was wondering if by any chance you’d want to come with me to a dance at my school this Friday night.”

  A long pause. Long enough for nerves I didn’t even know I had to kick in.

  “I just thought…I don’t know. Maybe it would be sort of fun. In a stupid way. It doesn’t have to be a real date or anything.”

  “Is that code for you want me to go with you to make your ex-girlfriend jealous?”

  “No…”

  “That’s okay. I don’t mind.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Nah. I like the challenge.”

  “Cool. Is that a yes?”

  The line went quiet.

  “If it helps you make up your mind, the theme is Purple Rain.”

  “I don’t understand what that means.”

  “I don’t really either.”

  Another pause. “I’m not sure this is such a good idea, River.”

  “Why?”

  “Well…I take what happens at our meetings seriously. And you know, there are rules about this sort of stuff. Did you ever read that yellow pamphlet?”

  “Yeah…but…it’s not a date. Why is it any different than going for a French dip? Or Jarritos and tacos?”

  She was silent. Then, “I guess it’s not.”

  “So that’s a yes?”

  “It’s a sure. Why not.”

  “Cool. I’ll pick you up.”

  “You don’t drive, remember? You like to walk.”

  “My friend Will drives. And…there’s more.”

  “What more could there be than a Purple Rain theme?”

  “Well, my friends don’t know about A Second Chance. That’s a secret. So I told them we met online.”