I messaged her that we were all next door. I even made her a plate. Heavy on salad, light on Sunday Slop. I thought about holding her fork to my mouth before placing it on her napkin.
She pushes open the door with enough force to send the doorknob through the wall, but somehow she keeps it from making contact. She whirls around to close the door, but not in a way that would make anyone else call it whirling around. It’s all part of one motion, and it’s still going as she drops her stuff and waves hello and flings her hair behind her shoulders. And it ends as soon as she drops down next to me. Bam. Applause.
Lilia stares at her as though Victoria has done all this while spitting, or carrying snakes, or wearing a garbage bag, or whatever else Lilia might find bizarre and obscene. I almost want to swoop in and help Vic, grab her by the sleeve of her purple dress and pull her closer to me, but this seems more dangerous than what’s happening here. She’s Vic: worldly and self-sufficient. Maybe I’m the one who needs the intervention. I lock eyes with Angela, and I think we both have the feeling of things being askew, of Rex’s half of the house being less a vacation and more a version of our home where the doorknobs and bathrooms are not in the places we expect. Where dinner is two feet lower than it should be. Where the fans click as they turn, and the lights burn orange, and where we have this new neighbor. And I feel like if I leave and come back, she might not be here at all.
The blue-and-orange painting gives me no answers (not that it was ever going to). Lilia connected to it, though. She really did. And I’m not going to spoil that moment by saying something ridiculous.
I watch Victoria, who’s good about living in the real world.
“Hello,” she says to her silent critic. “I’m Victoria.”
“Lilia Solis,” Lilia says, going back to her dinner.
“I slept in the girl’s mom’s bed at a sleepover once,” Victoria says from the bathroom. “It was so late, and I was so tired, and the other girls were taking pictures of their feet. I started crying out of frustration, and the other girls got super concerned, especially when I insisted that I wasn’t crying. They decided I was allergic to the family cats, and I slept curled up at the edge of the mom’s bed. A lot like a cat, now that I think about it.”
She pokes her head out. She’s been washing her face and sniffing some of Mom’s vast perfume collection. “What about you?”
“Nah, I was always the one the mom was sorry got invited in the first place.”
“Aww, that can’t be true. You know my parents love you.”
“Well, they’re the first. Trust me.”
“Can we watch something else, or is your delightful new neighbor going to call the police if she hears a peep after eleven p.m.?”
“I don’t know what’s up with her.” And I mean this in the truest way. Vic probably thinks I’m dismissing Lilia, but I’m not. As much as I want to be with Vic, I also want to peer into Rex’s house at the moment that Lilia begins working on her art, to be her silent apprentice.
“She reminds me of this awful girl from my ballet company in Brooklyn. I can never forget her evil stare. Ugh, chills.”
“Rex told me she’s a painter.” I peek out the window to see if any lights from the other half of the house are beaming into the backyard. Nothing.
“Probably of, like, creepy religious murals or something,” Vic says.
“Hmm, who knows.”
I wish that even one of Vic’s T-shirts from the American Ballet Theatre’s youth summer program would get shrunk by the dryer or stained into oblivion by a wayward pair of black underwear. Do I have to be reminded that last summer’s took place in Alabama (the home of Firing Squad!) and lasted from June 9 until July 31? Does she realize what a damned long time that is, especially when one’s summer consists of stirring the egg salad at the deli, driving one’s sister back and forth to tennis day camp, and taking a weekly painting course at Ringling College that one did not expect to be full of people older than Abuela?
Vic’s wearing the stupid shirt with a pair of red cotton shorts with triangle-shaped slits up both sides.
Why does she have to be so ridiculous?
She flips off the bathroom light and gets into bed. Beside me. Well, not really beside me. She always sleeps curled up, so far to the edge of the bed that a hand dangles over. Her back faces me. The stars fell on Alabama! American Ballet Theatre Summer Intensive.
“When you go back to Alabama this summer, I’m coming with you. There’s this band Tall Jon played for me the other night—they’re from there. I’m going to come with you and see one of their shows.”
“Hmm, your dream vacation is Alabama, huh? You’re funny.”
“Yep. We’ll bust that place up.” I don’t know what busting a place up actually entails, but I’m sure Victoria and I can figure it out.
“I’m not going back, though.”
“You’re not?” I sit up in bed. Victoria’s still lying down. The streetlight or moonlight slices through the curtains and settles on her cheek.
“No. There’s no way. I liked it, but there’s no way. I’ve got to get to New York as soon as possible after graduation.” She’s in that murky place between wake and sleep. I’d like to think that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but for me, that’s always the place where my ideas are the clearest. “I don’t care if Juilliard accepts me or not. I’m leaving. Like, a few weeks after graduation. I’m just leaving.”
“When did you decide this?”
“I don’t think I ever really did.” Vic rolls over so that she could look at the ceiling fan if her eyes weren’t closed. “It was always there, you know?”
I could tell her that I’ll go with her, but it would be about as real as claiming that Food Poisoning #2 is going to be finished anytime soon. For all Vic sounds like she’s dreaming, she actually has big, sturdy Reasons lined up for this move: money and talent and parental support. A birth certificate naming a Manhattan hospital. An aunt and uncle living in Brooklyn. The ability to hum the approximate musical notes made by a subway leaving the 42nd Street station. And her very specific aspiration to be not a Juilliard graduate, but a Juilliard dropout (one or two years there, max, she says, and then she wants to be working on Broadway).
My only reason is Vic herself. And would she be enough? Would she let herself be enough for me?
She’s asleep now, her breaths long and steady. Not me. I’m all charged up, like how my teeth feel before a thunderstorm.
“I could go with you,” I whisper, just to know that I have said it.
Light on my eyelids. Orange. Red. It’s the time of day and the time of year that sunlight hits the back of the house harshly enough to have texture and sound.
Wait, no—that’s a different sound, coming from the living room.