Ambrosia crosses her legs, slides the black pearl on her necklace back and forth on its thin gold chain. “Our topic should be theater.”
She is not someone you argue with, or question. On the top of a notebook page I write:
Topic: theater
. The letters roll out of the pen evenly, with style, elegant.
“But what exactly about theater?” she continues. “Let’s brainstorm. When I say ancient theater, the first thing that comes to your mind is…”
Alix stretches, makes a loud yawn. “Action. Write it down.”
Me: “Masks. Comedy and tragedy, happy, sad.”
Stephanie takes a sip from her stainless-steel water bottle. “Ancient plays are political. People stood up for what they believed back then.”
From Raymond: “Deus ex machina.” He watches me write it down, correcting the spelling. “It literally means
god from the machine
. There was an actual crane on stage. Sometimes the plot got so convoluted that an actor playing a god appeared out of the blue and helped a character get out of a jam.”
“Cool,” Alix says. “Everyone could use a god machine once in a while.”
“Definitely,” Raymond agrees. “It comes right down from the sky, a god who takes care of the problem. Stops a flood, drowns an army, rescues a baby—”
Ambrosia interrupts. “Kills off who needs to be killed off.” She pops the pearl into her mouth, runs it around her gums and cheeks, lets it fall back out like the dark pit of a fruit. “The best plays—those by Aeschylus, for example—are about revenge.”
Raymond nods. “True. What the ancients lacked in a fair and impartial justice system, they made up for in bloodthirsty feuds that decimated entire families for generations.”
“Huh?” Alix asks.
I translate: “Revenge is a big theme in the plays.”
Ambrosia presses her hands together by her chin, like she’s praying, and starts tapping the fingers in an increasingly fast rhythm. “Retribution. Payback. Getting even. Tit for tat. Eye for an eye. Tooth for a tooth. Settling a score.”
“A major theme!” I jolt at the voice from behind me. I hadn’t heard Ms. Pallas come up. She has this way of sneaking up on you that unnerves me. I twist around. She puts one hand on her hip; the other makes a fast sweep across the arc of her braided crown. “However, the plays also grapple with mankind’s glorious struggle for a moral and just civilization in the face of its darker, revengeful instincts.”
This interpretation immediately appeals to Stephanie. She nods enthusiastically, her head reminding me of a bell. Her long, dangling earrings make a clanging sound. “We must fight for justice. That topic is still important today. Look what the forces of darkness are doing to our planet.”
“Exactly!” Ms. Pallas says. There’s triumph in her voice.
“And I, too, agree.” Ambrosia directs this next statement to our teacher. “The past is definitely not old, dead business.”
This gives me an idea. I know it’s a good one, but my throat goes dry like it always does when I have to give my opinion in a group. “I have an…”
“Go on,” Ambrosia encourages.
“I have an idea. How about this as our topic: ‘Bad Blood in Great Theater.’”
Alix is chewing on her lower lip. “Topic after my own heart.”
Ambrosia rises. She passes in front of Ms. Pallas, a little too closely, close enough to bump her a little with her shoulder, close enough for me to know that it wasn’t an accident, even though she does offer the teacher a smile. Only it’s not a smile that’s an apology, but more of a sneer with challenge etched into it. I see that clearly. There
is
something going on between them. Does everyone else notice?
I try to catch Raymond’s eye, but Ambrosia positions herself in front of me, blocking the view, offering her full radiance. She takes both of my hands in hers and I feel myself sinking into the texture of her skin. It’s soft, but not like a baby’s, more soft and strong like well-worn leather. Her eyes lock onto mine and hold them there. No one has ever looked at me so deeply. I feel her presence in my knees, up my legs, my chest, my throat, at the point between my eyes. Her perfume isn’t a brand I recognize. I pick up hints of roses, mint, and damp, rich soil. It makes my head spin.
“You, Meg,” she says, “are a treasure. You are exactly what we need.”
6
After school
it’s raining again, a sudden storm that wasn’t in the forecast. I tell Raymond that I want to skip the bus despite the weather and walk home. That’s one of the ways we definitely aren’t alike. He doesn’t get why I like the rain and fog so much, how bad weather makes me feel in tune with the world as I know it. Raymond’s more of a sunshine and clear skies person, but he’s willing to humor me. We zip our jackets. His face peers out of his hood. He’s stuck on the same subject that’s obsessed him from third period on. Can’t blame him. I’m right there with him.
“You
have
to go there,” he says again.
“As if I wouldn’t.”
“I don’t know anyone who’s been inside. Sneak photos with your cell phone, okay? Take notes with your
elegant
handwriting. Promise? You can’t say no. Tell me exactly how Ambrosia invited you.”
“Again?”
“Every detail. Let me relive the thrilling moment with you.”
“Like I said before, she was holding my hands. You saw that. Weird, night? Then she leaned in and whispered, ‘You’ll come to my house. Tomorrow after school.’”
“That’s so Ambrosia. She didn’t ask. She ordered. Nobody ever says no to her. I wonder what she wants from you.”
“Why do you think she wants something?”
“Of course, she wants something! Meg, under Ambrosia’s flawless patina of impeccable mystery beats a core of pure emotional manipulation. Surely you’ve noticed that.”
“Maybe she…” I pause a second, remind myself of the pull of her perfume, the tickle of her breath whispering in my ear. I take a leap over Raymond’s logic. “I don’t know, maybe she wants to hang out with me. Maybe we”—I struggle to find the right word for what happened between us—“clicked.”
I immediately catch myself. Saying this might hurt his feelings because of the special Meg-Raymond bond that we’re both so protective and proud of. “Not click like you and I click. You know I don’t mean that.”
He extends his pinkie and I hook it to mine, and at the same time we say “Pinkie Pull of Trust.”
I go on. “But maybe she, you know, likes me.”
He lifts an eyebrow suggestively.
“Not that way! Maybe she thinks I’m cool.”
“Ambrosia? Don’t be ridiculous!”
Ouch. That hurts. The word
ridiculous
seems to echo in the damp air. At the corner we wait for a car to turn and then cross the street. At the curb there’s a big puddle that Raymond leaps over and easily clears with his long legs. I jump, too, and wind up soaking the cuffs of my jeans.
Ridiculous.
He talks on, either ignoring or not noticing the impact of that word on me.
“Earth to Meg. You spy with your sharp little eye the type Ambrosia surrounds herself with. Those girls date college guys. Not community college, four-year college. Sophomores. I’ve taken the time to look beneath your surface to discover and appreciate your core of pure wondrousness. But Ambrosia? Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not in her league.”
A knot in my throat tightens, twists. Things get quiet after that, and it’s not the comfortable silence between two close friends who agree on everything. With each step down the street, I flip between two feelings that shouldn’t even exist at the same time in the same mind together: I’m pathetic. (
Of course he’s right about me not being in Ambrosia’s league. Nobody is really in her league. How stupid can I be?
) I’m pissed off! (
But Raymond didn’t feel what I felt. It happened! Ambrosia felt it, too. Raymond must be jealous of her. I bet that’s it! She didn’t call
him
a treasure.
)
The next block is where we split off in different directions, and I’m more than ready to go. But Raymond holds me back by wrapping his arm around my shoulder. I start to push it off, but instead stand rigid to show him that I am not returning the hug.
“Meg-o-mania, don’t be mad at me. You know how my mouth works. I can’t help myself sometimes. When I said that you’re not in Ambrosia’s league, I meant it as a compliment. Take it that way. There’s something so cold and calculating about her, and you’re … you’re so warm and
not
calculating.”
I shrug, won’t meet his eye.
“Come on! Don’t be stubborn.”
I shrug again. I’m sure I’ll get over the sting of his insult eventually. That’s me. I always get over anything. Forgive and forget. Turn the other cheek. But right now, I don’t want to. I don’t feel like it. I’m glad that we live on opposite sides of town. He gives me his pleading puppy-dog look, and in return I lift my hand in a quick half-wave, show him my back, and walk away. I hope that motion says to him:
I get to be mad sometimes, too.
I’m definitely in no rush to get back to the Land of the Leech, so I take the long way. I have a lot to think about besides Raymond. Something is going on. Ambrosia. Ms. Pallas. How do they fit together? Alix is part of this something, too. I feel it. And what is Stephanie’s place? Is she part of it? I weave west through some neighborhoods and eventually wind up on the single-lane walkway that borders the cliff along the coast. Being here clears my head a little. I can never get enough of the kelpy, salty smell and the cold fog on my face and in my hair.
I head north, my left hand tingling cold from the wind off the ocean. Ahead of me, I spot the town’s famous surfer statue that stands on a pedestal on a spit of land that protrudes above the water. The statue’s a little corny—a thick-haired stereotypical surfer dude, his chest broad and expansive as he grips his board behind his back, his chiseled profile contemplating the ocean for the next wave to catch. I get a kick out of how people decorate it according to the season: in December there’s usually a Santa hat on that head of metallic hair, and in the summer a baseball cap.
As I get closer, I make out a carved jack-o’-lantern with a broad, leering grin sitting at the statue’s bare feet, near the plaque:
Prince of the Waves
. The statue was dedicated to the community a long time ago, and there’s something familiar about the shape of the surfer’s head and the set of his mouth. Up close, you see a tension in the surfer’s jaw, and this makes me certain that he’s more than a fantasy archetype. He’s human with human feelings. My guess is that the sculptor based him on a real person.
I wrap my hands around the metal railing that separates me from the steep twenty-foot cliff and the ocean below. I bend back my head to follow a V-shaped flock of pelicans that are struggling against strong headwinds.
Who was this Prince of the Waves?
I bet that just like me, in weather just like this, he stood on this spot, the edge of an entire continent, the point where land ends and there’s nothing left, nowhere to go that’s solid. I wonder if he, too, imagined how these waves started far away. Something big and dangerous—an earthquake or hurricane—set them in motion, and they traveled through space and time, gathering strength and eventually meeting their end here.
A crash on the rocks below my feet.
I’m sure a science teacher like Mr. H could explain exactly how the shape of the cliff, the direction and pull of the current, and the force of the wind all come together to make this one of the most famous surfing spots in California. On most days, the waves roll in steadily and evenly shaped, musical like a poem. But right now they remind me of an argument, yelling and screaming, starting in one direction and suddenly veering into another, breaking apart, colliding and unpredictable.
I squint through the fog and light rain, and I can’t believe what I’m seeing. There’s actually someone, a surfer, in the water. A wave slams hard, burying the figure and tossing around the board like it’s nothing but a toothpick. There’s so much churned-up water, it looks like angry milk. Not even the Plagues would be out there today. You have to be crazy. Or you have to be someone who doesn’t care about getting hurt. Or you have to be obsessed. Or part fish. Or someone who’s a match for these waves, as fierce as the ocean itself.
I loosen the string of my jacket hood, let it drop back, then remove the clip from my hair. I shake my head. Each strand swells with moisture, turning my hair even wilder than it usually is, as coarse and tangled as a steel-wool pad.
What would it be like to be that surfer? To kick my legs and pound my arms, to punch my whole body through thick walls of water. To yell and scream and charge. To have nothing to lose. To have that much anger and not be afraid of using it.
All along the cliff, there are signs—
DANGEROUS. UNPREDICTABLE SURF. STAY BACK
—but right now instead of warning me, they tempt me. I lean forward on the rail and bend way over, far enough to see the cliff from a whole different angle, the way the surfer sees it.
Smash.
The waves crash again on the rocks below. I breathe in, feel the power of each wave unleashing its force on the ground beneath me.
My eyes follow the surfer, who is now paddling toward the cliff, following some invisible diagonal line to where I’m standing. I begin making out individual features that confirm what I already know. I don’t know how I know, but I do.
Alix hoists herself out of the surf at the base of the cliff, like she’s been coughed up by the sea. Her hands tear away at the brown mass of kelp, skinny strands like mermaid’s hair, or witch’s hair, that’s wrapped itself around her ankles and the board. She shakes water from each ear. She turns to squint at me.
I want her to wave. I want her to recognize me as the girl who hates everyone, too.
But no, she glares at me and spits on the ground. With her board under her arm, she walks in the opposite direction.