O
livia and Violet sat in the back of a musty-smelling cab, bottlenecked at the entrance to Golden Gate Park. The wide avenues of the city dead-ended into a lush, dense forest, and in the distance Olivia could just make out the winding paths snaking in and out of exotic trees and plants.
“Enough,” Violet said as Olivia glanced anxiously from her watch to the window for the seventeenth time since they’d left the house. “Nobody gets to these things on time, anyway.”
Olivia nodded and began absentmindedly picking at the hem of her dress, which Posey had left in a familiar folded bag at the top of the Larsens’ stoop late the night before.
After the disastrous encounter at the shop with Calla, Olivia worried that Posey might not come through this time, or worse, lock her into wearing something heinous. But one glimpse inside the dusty garment bag had laid all of Olivia’s fears quietly to rest.
The dress couldn’t have been more different from the first gown Posey had made, although the effect was the same. For starters, it was short, much shorter than anything Olivia had ever worn before. And it was strapless. But the silver bodice was constructed from layers of bunched tulle and was busy enough to make Olivia feel like she wasn’t fully exposed, while still managing to be both sexy and understated.
“Damn,” Violet had said when Olivia first tried it on. “What that girl lacks in personality she certainly makes up for in style.”
Now, as Violet spotted Olivia anxiously tugging at the bottom of the clinging skirt, she swatted her sister’s hand away. “Cut that out,” she said. “The fastest way to ruin a great outfit is to fidget.”
Olivia folded her hands in her lap, successfully keeping them still for all of three seconds before she began anxiously picking at her fingernails.
“Relax!” Violet commanded. “What can we do to calm you down?”
Olivia shrugged and turned her attention back toward the window, where what looked like a sea of blurring brake lights stretched out ahead of them, red and pulsing as far as the eye could see.
“Maybe we should get out here and walk,” Olivia said, leaning forward through the glass divider as Violet held out an arm and forced her sister back into her seat. She had seen a sign for the Academy of Sciences a few yards back, and figured they couldn’t be far.
“I have a better idea,” Violet said slyly. “Let’s talk about what you’re going to wish for tonight.”
Olivia sighed heavily, settling back into the upholstered seat. She closed her eyes, just as the traffic started to move, picking up into a steady slide against the dark, wet pavement.
“You have something amazing here,” Violet continued. “I’ve been trying to stay quiet because I know you’re not exactly the wishing type. But think about it. Anything you want to happen can happen. You just have to decide what that is.”
Olivia squeezed her eyes tightly shut, searching the deepest crevices of her brain for inspiration.
Anything,
she thought.
I can have anything.
But still, her mind drew a big fat blank.
Before she’d known she could wish for things, she probably wouldn’t have had so much trouble at least coming up with ideas. And before Violet had come back, the only thing that she’d ever dreamed about was one more day with her sister. But now that Violet was here, right here beside her again, wishing for anything else seemed frivolous and fake. She had her sister back. What more could she want?
Olivia opened her eyes, just as a great lawn and pillared, domed structure came into view.
“Here you go,” the grumpy driver barked from the front seat as the cab slowed to a stop at the bottom of a long, wide staircase.
“Saved by the taxi,” Violet groaned as Olivia reached into her purse for her wallet.
She stepped out onto the damp grass and straightened the ruffled layers of her skirt, looking up at the modern building and sleek revolving doors. “How do I look?” Olivia asked quietly, turning back to her sister.
Violet smiled, already skipping up the stairs toward the door. “Like me,” she said. “Only better.”
“Is this thing even on?” Calla was standing on a square, raised platform, tapping a microphone against the palm of her hand and conferring with a scruffy-faced guy in a pin-striped suit, earlier introduced as iWIN’s cultural ambassador.
The Academy of Sciences, Olivia had decided, was basically a science museum on steroids. A glass-walled cafeteria enclosed in the middle of the atrium had been set up as a posh bar and buffet, and looking in from the other side gave the scene a sort of exhibition effect, as if the partygoers themselves, sipping champagne from flutes or nibbling on organic munchies, were part of a real-life diorama.
On either side of the building were two enormous biodomes, one an enclosed, living rain forest, with hanging vines and flowering plants pressed up against the glass, and the other a high-tech planetarium. Neither exhibit was open for the reception, but just being sandwiched between them made Olivia feel cultured and important.
“She even makes public speaking look fun,” Violet marveled from where she was sitting cross-legged on a table doubling as exhibition space. Olivia glanced at her smiling sister and felt a hard lump in her throat. Most of the time, it was easy to forget that Violet wasn’t actually there. But during moments like this, when the contrast against real life was so stark—the rest of the room in their elegant black-tie and Violet looking like she’d stepped off the beach in her ratty denim shorts, bare knees, and long, pale arms—it was too much to think about.
“Thanks everybody so much for coming,” Calla shouted into the now-working microphone to a round of warm applause. “I know my mom told you a little bit about the work we’ve been doing and how important your contributions are, and I just wanted to remind you that volunteering doesn’t have to be, you know, building houses or going all the way to Africa…”
The crowd laughed agreeably and Olivia looked around the room.
“In fact,” Calla went on, “some friends and I have been planning a project of our own at Golden Gate Prep, and you don’t have to look any further than your closet to help!”
Olivia heard Violet whistle and turned around. “Oh, hello there,” Violet cooed flirtatiously, waggling her eyebrows until Olivia followed her gaze. Standing by himself, just a few feet away from her and leaning over an EarthBox display, was Soren. His straw-colored hair was neatly combed, his face freshly shaven, and he looked endearingly uncomfortable in penguin shoes and a pressed steel gray suit. He glanced up and their eyes met for a moment before Olivia turned quickly back to face the stage.
“We’ve decided to start our very own thrift store,” Calla announced to the crowd, but Olivia was hardly paying attention. The fuzzy shape of Soren was getting closer in her periphery, and Olivia’s breath tangled in her lungs.
“All proceeds will go to charities like this one,” Calla went on. “We’ll be taking donations starting next week, and we’re planning a really exciting fundraiser…”
Calla’s voice faded out as Olivia turned to find Soren, now planted directly at her side. His hands were in his pockets and
one of his elbows was so close to her arm, she could almost feel the cool fabric of his coat against her skin.
“I put in a request for Beethoven,” Soren said, gesturing to a high school jazz trio in the corner of the room, quietly stumbling through African beats. “They said it wasn’t in their repertoire.”
Olivia smiled and held her shoulders back, straightening the clean, strapless line of her dress. “Amateurs,” she joked.
Soren’s fake-serious frown gave way to a goofy smile, the sides of his cheeks turning red. He gestured back to the exhibit behind them and cleared his throat.
“Did you read about the living roof?” he asked, taking a few steps back toward the display. Olivia followed and pretended to study a series of photographs detailing the Academy’s innovative rooftop garden. “It’s pretty awesome,” Soren continued, pointing at a pair of blue jeans hanging from a line on clothespins. “The whole building is insulated with denim instead of fiberglass.”
Olivia nodded, the way somebody who appreciated fiberglass might nod, but couldn’t stop noticing the adorable way that Soren kept tugging at his starched shirt collar, or accidentally dipping the sleeve of his open coat into the decorative mounds of dirt.
“There you are.” A crisp voice suddenly broke in from over Olivia’s shoulder. Olivia hadn’t even realized that Calla had left the stage, and suddenly there she was, holding a pair of champagne flutes and offering one to Olivia. “I was hoping you guys would get to meet tonight.”
Calla moved to Soren’s side, linking her arm inside the crook of his elbow. Her gown was pale green, to pick up the
emerald flecks in her hazel eyes, and made from sleek, slippery satin. On anyone else it would have looked like lingerie, but somehow, draped across her honey-colored skin, the dress looked sophisticated and elegant.
“Sorry, babe. I could only steal two,” Calla said to Soren’s profile, holding up her drink. Soren shrugged and glanced uncomfortably at the polished bamboo floor. “Have you tried one of these yet?” Calla asked Olivia.
“Um, no,” Olivia managed, trying to focus less on the frantic flutter in her stomach and more on her drink, which was light pink in color and gently carbonated. “What’s in it?”
Calla shrugged. “It’s like a Bellini, but stronger,” she said, taking a small sip and smiling.
Olivia nodded, going for a look that said,
Yes, Bellini, of course. My favorite!
when actually all the name conjured was a scrolling list of Italian film directors and executed Fascists.
Soren freed his arm from Calla’s grasp and pulled back his sleeve, as if searching for a watch that wasn’t there. “My parents want to introduce me to some musician guy they said was going to be here.” He gestured vaguely toward the buffet. “I should go find them.” He started across the room, briefly turning to Olivia as he passed. “It was nice meeting you,” he said, his voice oddly formal and precise.
Olivia nodded and smiled. “Me, too,” she said. “I mean…yeah.”
Olivia’s heart skipped as she prayed that Calla hadn’t noticed her blubbering fumble. But Calla was already following Soren away from the exhibition table, turning to smile at Olivia, and rolling her eyes as she passed. Olivia watched the
couple walk away, her heart twisting and her eyes glazing over as they disappeared into the well-dressed crowd.
“You’re drooling.” Violet laughed suddenly from over her shoulder.
Olivia abruptly turned her back to the room, pretending to be absorbed in an exhibit at a table in the corner, this one about solar ovens and sustainable yurts. “What are you talking about?”
Violet perched on the table and tossed her sister a knowing grin. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten the time last fall when you decided you were obsessed with a certain tennis-playing senior,” she recalled. “And I guessed it before you’d even been to a single match?”
Olivia shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said steadily under her breath, but she could hear the stubborn smile in her own voice.
Violet crossed her arms and tapped her long fingers slowly against her elbows.
“Even if I
was
…interested…in somebody here,” Olivia said quietly, “which I am absolutely not…it’s not like it would matter. He has a girlfriend. What’s the point?”
“What’s the
point
?” Violet repeated, her voice becoming gravelly and almost harsh. “You know, life doesn’t have to be something you watch happen to everybody else. You say you want things to change, but nothing’s going to change until you change it.”
Olivia looked quizzically at her sister. “I don’t know what you want me to do,” she whispered, glancing around her periphery for partygoers nearby. This was exactly what she
didn’t
want to happen tonight: Not only had she found herself,
as usual, standing all alone in the corner, but even worse, she was standing in the corner, arguing with a ghost.
Violet rooted herself firmly on the table and stared into her sister’s eyes. “What I want you to do is to admit that you really
want
something for once,” Violet said. “In a perfect world, it would be
you
with the guy.”
Violet tossed her hair toward the rear of the room, where Calla was leading Soren through the back door and into a lantern-strewn sculpture garden.
“And not just any guy.
That
guy,” Violet whispered. “Come on. Live a little,” she teased.
Olivia smiled sadly and rolled her eyes. “I wish you were right,” she said softly, her eyes blurring over. “But you know it’s not that easy.”
Violet linked her arm into Olivia’s and pulled her in for a long, suffocating hug.
“I don’t know…” Violet said, her voice low and plotting. “With a little help from me, it just might be.”
“F
armers are hot.”
Olivia and Violet were standing at the outskirts of a white sea of tents, trying to stay out of the way of bargain-hunting shoppers on a mission for the freshest produce Northern California had to offer.
The night before, as Olivia changed into her pajamas after the gala, Violet had insisted that they do some more sightseeing the next morning. Olivia had told her about the places Soren had mentioned on their run, laying casual emphasis on the Ferry Building market and secretly hoping Soren would be there.
“Seriously.” Violet was staring googly-eyed at a rugged-looking guy in overalls, refilling baskets of avocados from heavy crates in the back of a truck. “Why didn’t I know this before?”
Olivia smiled and shuffled slowly through the stalls, eyeing careful piles of plump oranges and wooden boxes of loose leafy greens with names she’d never heard of, like rainbow
chard. She was helping herself to a tasting sample of handchurned, herb-rolled cheeses when she heard a voice over her shoulder.
“I thought it was you.”
She recognized Soren’s skateboard first. Next, his belt. It looked like it must have belonged to his grandfather—the leather was worn and the silver buckle so tarnished that it was almost black.
“Hey.” She smiled, balling up the napkin she’d been given by the apron-wearing dairy girl behind the table.
Soren reached across to help himself to a piece of bread and cheese.
“This is so weird,” he said, shaking his head with a bemused little smile.
She looked away as he popped the crostini into his mouth. There was nothing more awkward than watching a guy you liked chew up close.
“What’s weird?” she asked, trying to sound casual.
Farmer’s market, rainbow chard, randomly running into each other in the dairy tent?
“Cheese?”
Soren smiled, searching for little crumbs at the corners of his lips with the back of one hand. “No,” he said, squeezing out of the way of a couple bickering in rapid-fire Chinese. “I just had a feeling I might see you here.”
Olivia felt a pull at the sleeve of the open white linen shirt Violet had insisted she wear over a denim wrap-dress and thick gray tights. Olivia thought the look was way too floppy and disheveled, but she was gradually realizing that her own fashion instincts were probably better off ignored.
Olivia shook her arm carefully loose and tried to do something
with her hair, something that looked casual and sexy and carefree, but most likely came off as some sort of tic.
“So what do you think?” Soren asked, bending down to lift his skateboard and tucking it under one arm. “Your very first farmer’s market, huh?”
“It’s awesome,” Olivia gushed. “I never knew there were so many different kinds of cheese.”
Violet might have tried not to laugh, but she failed. “Okay,” she managed, catching her breath as Olivia’s neck bloomed a thousand shades of red. “Let’s step away from the dairy.”
Luckily, Soren had a similar idea and turned toward the opposite end of one row.
“Have you hit up any of the prepared-food stands yet?” Once they had wedged their way through the crowd and back out onto the open sidewalk, he dropped his skateboard to the ground and started pushing it along slowly with one foot.
Olivia shook her head beside him. “No, we just—” She hiccupped. “I mean, I just got here a few minutes ago. I had trouble figuring out which bus to take.”
Which was a total lie, but it was something to say.
“Yeah, public transportation can be a disaster around here,” he allowed. “But you made it, so that’s cool.”
Olivia felt a heavy moment hanging between them, Soren pushing off on one navy blue Converse sneaker and rolling along. Olivia kept her eyes on the cracks of the sidewalk ahead.
“This used to be a really great skate spot,” he said, pointing to a section of the pier with waist-high cement structures and a shallow flight of stairs. “See how the ledges are all waxed up?” He pointed to an iron railing, covered in a maze of discolored stripes and scratches.
Olivia nodded. “How come you can’t skate here anymore?”
Soren shrugged, hopping up on a lower step, his board following like it was glued to the soles of his shoes, and gliding back down to the curb. “We got kicked out, like everywhere else.”
Olivia expected his face to be hard or bitter, but that perma-smile was still solidly in place. “Doesn’t that make you mad?” she asked. She didn’t know what it was, but something about his glass-half-full attitude felt almost like a challenge.
Soren stepped hard on one end of his board, grabbing the other end with an open palm. “Nah.” He laughed. “I kind of get it. It’s always crowded down here, full of tourists. I wouldn’t want a bunch of skate rats buzzing around and messing up my home movies, either.”
Violet, who had been lagging behind, shook her head in disbelief. “Really?” she said, standing next to Soren with her hands on her hips. “I mean, are you seriously this adorable?”
Olivia bit her lip, pulling back a smile as Soren gestured to a crowded pier at the end of the row of tents. “You’ve been to the pier already, right?” he asked. Olivia stared at him blankly, and his green eyes grew wide. “Seriously? You haven’t seen the sea lions?”
Olivia smiled shyly and shook her head. “I told you,” she said. “I’m new.”
Soren rolled his eyes and took a few steps toward the fountain at the beginning of the long wooden dock. “All right, new girl,” he teased. “If you’re going to be a tourist, you might as well do it right.”
Olivia hung back, scuffing the tops of her metallic flats against the curb.
“Aren’t you coming?” he called back, pausing when he realized she hadn’t moved.
Olivia stalled. Should she say she had somewhere else to be? What if somebody saw them?
Violet turned to Olivia, her head tilted sideways, just a hint of impatience brewing in her smiling blue eyes.
“Sea lions?” Violet repeated. “Come on. What’s cuter than that?” And with one swift motion, she shoved her sister into the crowd.
“Is this your car?”
After a full hour of gawking at groups of slippery sea lions rolling around the dock, and tasting everything at the market from braised tempeh to rice paper patties, Soren had convinced Olivia to go for a ride. They had left the bustling strip of the Embarcadero (and Violet, who had opted to continue her farmer-prowl) and walked up a narrow side street, until Soren stopped in front of an electric blue Toyota Prius.
“Welcome to the space egg,” he gestured, unlocking her door and pulling it open for her to crouch inside. The front and back bumpers were plastered with recycling logos and all of the other earth-loving sentiments a person would expect to find advertised on a hybrid vehicle.
“It was my sister’s,” he admitted as he squeezed in behind the wheel, looking ridiculously lanky in the cramped, curved space. “She went to NYU last year and didn’t need a car. Just another hand-me-down.”
Olivia smiled as he pulled out into traffic, expertly navigating
a sharp turn and steering them straight up a gravity-defying hill.
“Not that I’m complaining,” he clarified. “It does get really good mileage.”
Olivia clasped and unclasped her fingers in her lap, suddenly hyperaware of the fact that she was enclosed in such a small space with a boy, let alone a boy who had the potential to melt her into the folds of the fabric upholstery with one sideways look.
“Did I just say that out loud?” he asked, shaking his head. “’Really good mileage’?”
Olivia laughed and felt her shoulders relax, like a marionette suddenly snipped free of its strings.
“I’m sorry,” Soren said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel like I can’t stop talking, and every time I open my mouth the most ridiculous things are coming out of it. Does that ever happen to you?”
Olivia laughed, a real, Violet-type laugh that she didn’t have time to censor. “Um, yeah,” she managed. “All the time.”
Soren turned quickly to look at her, a tamer version of his usual goofy grin twitching at the corners of his lips.
“Cool.” He sighed, then inhaled and exhaled slowly, as if he had forced a pause on himself and was dealing with the consequences. His non-driving knee was jumping furiously against the inside of the door, and he would occasionally tap it with one hand, as if weren’t a part of his body he was able to otherwise control.
Olivia glanced at Soren curiously from the corner of her eye. He cleared his throat as he pulled the car over to the side of a narrow street, high in the hills above downtown.
“What’s this?” she asked, peeking through the rounded window. They were parked in front of what looked like somebody’s front stoop.
“You’ll see,” Soren said, unlocking the doors and stepping out onto the street.
The closer Olivia got to the bottom of the steps, the more of them she could see, hundreds of tiny little stairs built into the hillside, disappearing high above the rooftops where the trees met the sky. This was definitely more than just somebody’s front stoop.
“I thought we might want to walk off some of that rice paper,” Soren suggested, taking the first steps two at a time.
Olivia followed suit, and soon found herself surrounded by hanging wildflowers creeping out of cozy backyards. Chatty birds called out, as if beckoning the slowly departing late-afternoon sun to stay just a while longer. It was as if they’d left the busy city and suddenly entered a tropical paradise.
“There’s a documentary about these birds,” Soren said, pointing to what looked like a chubby parrot, perched on a branch overhead. “There’s a dude in one of these houses who feeds them. He gives them names and everything, like Romeo and Juliet or Brad and Angelina. I guess they mate for life, like penguins.”
Olivia smiled and tried to respond, but with every step up, steady breathing was becoming more and more of a challenge. Despite his sluggish laps at the lake, Soren proved to be completely comfortable as they trudged up the endless hill of stairs.
“Here we are,” he announced as they approached a clearing. Olivia craned her neck up toward the sky and saw that they were at the base of an enormous stone tower.
“Coit Tower,” Soren explained. “It’s famous. There’s a museum inside, from the Depression, and you can go up to the top. But that’s not why we’re here.”
Soren circled her wrist with one strong hand and pulled her up the last remaining steps. Trying to concentrate on her footing and
not
on the fact that they were holding hands (or wrists, but
still
), Olivia followed him to a low brick wall bordering the tower’s semicircular grounds.
“This,” he said, gesturing his arms wide in a panoramic swipe around him, “is why we’re here.”
Olivia turned and felt her rib cage swell.
It was the most spectacular view of the city and bay she had seen yet. A deep purple haze lit up the fog and fell dramatically over the Bay Bridge and the little islands just off the coast. The lights of downtown were just starting to twinkle, and the headlights of cars winding up and down Lombard Street looked like ornaments on the zigzagging low branches of a Christmas tree.
“Oh, my God,” she gasped, as Soren swung one leg and then the other over the wall, gesturing for her to take a seat. “It’s beautiful.”
Soren nodded as she settled in beside him, feeling the warmth of his body against hers. Out of the corner of one eye she could see his profile, the clean line of his jaw and soft slope of his nose, the delicate blinking of his long, dark lashes.
The sounds of the city below them blended together like a sort of urban weather, and they sat so quietly and for so long that Olivia found herself wondering if either of them was ever going to speak again.
“Did you have fun at the gala last night?” Soren finally
asked, stuffing his fists into the pockets of his brown leather bomber jacket. Like the belt, the coat looked like it had a story to tell, with worn, buttery patches at the elbows and a missing button on one sleeve.
“Yeah,” Olivia said, swallowing a mouthful of air to steady her nerves. The whole afternoon had felt like it was happening in some alternate universe, where it was just the two of them in their own private world. Remembering the party brought Olivia back to reality, where she was just the new girl in town, and Soren was…Soren.
She looked up at him and realized that he was staring at the inside soles of his shoes, his eyes lost and far away.
“What about you?” she asked softly. “Did you have a good time?”
Soren shrugged, scrunching his nose. “Not really,” he admitted. “I mean, I guess the party itself was okay, but…” He flattened his palms onto his knees, rubbing them up and down against the fabric of his light-washed jeans. It reminded Olivia of one of those toy cars you have to wheel back and forth a bunch of times before it takes off across the floor. He was gaining speed.
“But what?” she prompted.
“Calla and I broke up,” he said. His voice came out in a burst of sound, breathy and full. His hands stopped moving and his shoulders fell, and for a minute Olivia was nervous that he was going to do something terrible…like cry.
Olivia’s insides were flopping around like a barrel of half-dead fish. She couldn’t even begin to untangle the mixed emotions she was feeling. She should be happy, right? But how could she be happy when he looked so sad?
“I’m so sorry,” she said, and was surprised by how genuine it sounded. She really
was
sorry. Sorry he was upset, which he certainly seemed to be. Sorry Calla was upset, if she was.
“Did you…” The question forced its way out before she could take it back completely. “I mean, was it, like…a mutual thing?” Olivia flinched, as if a question so moronic might actually come back and punch her in the face.
But Soren just shrugged. “Not really,” he said. “I mean, as much as it could be. Nothing’s ever mutual, I don’t think. But I knew it had to end. I think she did, too.”
“Yeah.” Olivia nodded, as if she had any idea. As if she’d ever been in anything that could pass for a relationship, let alone been responsible for ending one.
Soren took a deep breath and folded his hands together, pushing them away from his body and cracking his knuckles all at once. The sound was jarring, but somehow had the effect of starting over, clearing the slate.