“She made us, Will. I’m her main character. You’re her heartthrob. I can feel this in my bones. I can’t tell you the street or the number, but it’s in here.” I tap my skull. “I just have to follow my instincts.”
“Okay, I trust you I guess,” Will agrees. “As long as I make it to nine A.M. calculus tomorrow at school.”
I wince. “Still working hard at that bad boy thing, huh?” I ask him as I start the ignition.
Will shrugs, taking a sip of coffee. “I am as Lucy made me,” he says.
The roads are nice and clear so early in the morning, a miracle by LA standards, and I actually do have a general idea where I’m headed. Somewhere up in Laurel Canyon Lucy is waiting for us. I can feel it. Everything is going according to plan.
But then, just as I’m about to take a right on Sunset Boulevard, waiting for the light to turn green, it turns yellow instead.
“That’s weird,” I say. “Lights don’t go yellow once they turn red.”
“It must be broken,” Will tells me. “Just go anyway and take it slowly. It’s still proceed with caution, even if it’s not coming after green, and nobody is out here anyway.”
But just as I’m inching the car forward, the light changes again. And this time it’s blue.
“What the hell?” Will says as I stop the car altogether. “Blue isn’t even a color traffic lights have.”
And then, just like that, the blue flicks to purple. And then it starts flashing like a light show at a roller rink, blinking all the colors of the rainbow. We both take a beat.
“She woke up,” I say. Will puts his head in his hands. “And she’s torturing us.”
“Okay, screw it,” Will says, looking up with renewed determination. “She’s doing this to us because we play by the rules. She knows we are the only two people who could sit at a multicolored traffic light and not just go because it’s not green. Prove her wrong, Annabelle,” he says.
I hesitate.
“Annabelle!” Will urges me. “You can do this.”
And so I do, taking a right onto Melrose beneath the techno lights as Will lets out a cheer.
“But you know what this means,” I tell Will.
“What?” he asks, suddenly nervous again.
“It’s only going to get harder from here.”
And Lucy makes sure of that. We spend four impossible hours detouring all around LA, stopped by everything from construction workers who come out of nowhere to street signs that aren’t even the right shape, let alone saying the right thing. One pink stop sign actually says HI THERE, and a sign for the 10 on-ramp just reads HAVING FUN YET?
Eventually, when we go to take Crescent Heights Boulevard up north up to the Hollywood Hills, the street simply isn’t there.
I mean actually, it doesn’t exist.
“Okay, no,” I say. “That’s ridiculous. She cannot just eliminate the existence of geography, of historical landmarks in the city of Los Angeles. She’s not that kind of writer. She wouldn’t do that to her story.”
And, as though somewhere Lucy is stubbornly agreeing with me, the brick wall to my left disappears, and Crescent Heights is right where it’s supposed to be, stretching all the way up to the canyons.
Ten minutes later, Will and I are driving through what has to be the longest sunrise humanly possible. I was feeling tired, so he took over. The sky above us has been deep pink for about twenty minutes now.
“She’s trying to butter us up,” I say from the passenger seat. “Set the stage for romance.”
Will keeps driving, a look of calm on his face. He drives beautifully, smoothly, no starts and stops, weaving expertly around other cars. “I’m not complaining,” he says. “It’s pretty gorgeous.”
“Most people think LA sunsets are so pretty because of the smog,” I tell him. “But that’s actually not the case.”
“Explain,” Will says as he takes a right onto Fountain Avenue.
“Well, when the sun is high in the sky, we see all the wavelengths evenly—red, orange, yellow, blue, violet. But as the sun moves across the sky, it’s farther away, and the atmosphere scatters the blue and violet wavelengths more, so we see more of the red, orange, and yellow.”
I glance over at Will and can tell he’s listening intently. I like this fact about him. He’s not bored and already looking for something else to do. He wants to discuss.
“Anyway, when the sun is setting, it’s the farthest distance from the Earth. Blue and violet are scattered almost completely, leaving the warmer tones.”
“So what does this have to do with smog?” Will asks.
“People think that the gases in smog scatter the shorter wavelengths even more, creating the pinker sunsets,” I say. “The truth is, though, that while natural gases do scatter wavelengths, all our man-made smog does is block everything. So the warm tones you are seeing have nothing to do with us.”
When Will doesn’t say anything, I look over at him again, worried he’s now asleep at the wheel. Instead, he’s smiling.
“I’m a nerd,” I acknowledge.
“You’re awesome,” Will says, and he reaches over and rests his hand at the base of my neck. When I tense up under his touch, he removes it.
Will sighs. “Annabelle—”
But he’s distracted when the gas light on our dashboard turns on. He rolls his eyes. “You filled this three hours ago,” he said. “We’ve barely used two gallons.”
I groan, and roll down the window to yell at the sky. “Do your worst! You can’t stop us!” To the right, two little old ladies in a gold Mercedes stare at me.
“Good luck, honey,” one of them calls out. “I’ve been talking to God for years. Hasn’t listened yet.”
I roll the window up, my eyes wide, and both Will and I start laughing.
“She’s right, you know. I have been acting like Lucy Keating is God,” I admit.
“She’s playing God,” Will says. “That’s not you; that’s all on her.”
Once we find a gas station, I decide to run across the street to grab us some bagels at a local deli. I’m just crossing a completely empty street on my way back when I hear Will cry out my name and out of nowhere a scooter is whizzing toward me at full speed, ready to plow me down. Before I know it Will has pulled me from the street and has me wrapped tightly to his chest.
I look up at him slowly, his warmth and cedar smell enveloping me like some kind of drug.
“You okay?” he asks in a low voice, but I pull away.
“We should get going,” I tell him, without looking into his gorgeous eyes, and hop back in the car.
We drive in silence for a while, up through the picturesque West Hollywood streets. Suddenly, it’s incredibly cold in the car, even though the heat is on. I shiver.
“Want my sweater?” Will asks, pulling it over his head and offering it to me. I stare at it like it’s on fire.
“What?” he asks.
“I can’t,” I say.
“Why not? It’s just a sweater, Annabelle, not a wedding ring,” he says.
I look out the window for a moment.
“What is it?” Will demands.
“It smells too good,” I admit.