But I couldn’t help myself. I turned my head away from the mall and the parking lot back toward the damp earth of Topanga Canyon. No guns, no cars would ever drive across these eucalyptus trees and I knew I wanted to stay here.
I turned my back to Chris and closed my eyes, lulled, unafraid to slip into unconsciousness. When I opened them again it was because someone was screaming in the house below. Chris wasn’t in the hammock anymore. Through the back windows I could see into the living room. A long, warm copper ponytail passed by, swinging back and forth. I recognized the motion immediately. I knew who it was: the pale ghost I’d seen move through school doors and hallways, hopping over fences, the girl who taught me to look at the sun and never look back. Seeing her inside a house with nothing to jump over seemed odd. Even now when she stood leaning on the kitchen counter, I felt like some part of her still swayed.
The male voice kept yelling at Chris.
I saw him cower. A slightly hunchbacked man with a long graying beard, a red cap—scrawny ponytail escaping behind it like a rat’s tail—entered the picture, hands in the air waving in discontent.
The girl, I now realized, was the twin sister Chris had been talking about. I scanned his face back in my mind to find similarities. He had no freckles, no striking green eyes. They didn’t have the same life pulse inside them. She leaned in and touched the man’s arm while he screamed. She wore elegant black pants and a tuxedo shirt. She looked different from how she did in school. The man interrupted his screaming to look at her. He pulled her toward him by her white shirt and kissed her cheek, giving her some sort of last-minute instruction I could not hear. She nodded at him and walked out.
I slid off the hammock and snuck back down the hill, following the girl at a safe distance. She darted ahead of me, floating down the driveway and over bushes. She crossed the main canyon road and ventured down a trail that led toward a creek, stooping over a few times to remove the wild thorns that kept clinging to her elegant trousers. When she did this, her swinging ponytail came undone and flopped against her back like a golden bridal veil. She reached the creek, sat on a rock in the middle of the water by a lavender bush, and lit a cigarette. I stayed behind on the trail, careful not to make the leaves crackle under my feet. Ribbons of smoke circled in and out of her auburn locks as the sun hit her face. Her freckles sparkled, part of the canyon’s landscape. Her hair changed hue with every glimmer of light, reflecting the tones of the earth. I stayed there for the duration of her cigarette, so close I could hear every inhalation. I remained silent, immersed in the miraculous feeling of having found a treasure. If I picked a single ruby out of the chest, a pirate would come and snatch it all away. A car passed on the road above us and the girl turned her face up and saw me.
“Hey…” Her eyes softened. “What are you doing up here?”
I removed the last thorns from my shirt and reached her.
“I guess I was visiting your brother.”
She rolled her eyes like she’d heard that line before.
I sat on the bank of the stream and lit a cigarette. I could not keep my eyes off her face.
“So did you figure it out?” she asked.
“What?”
“How to skip the broken fence?”
“I did. I practiced what you showed me.”
“Good,” she smiled. “I’ve seen you do it a few times, actually. With that guy.”
“Thanks for teaching me the art of skipping,” I said quickly, not wanting to imagine Arash’s climbing feet.
“That’s what I do.” She exhaled in my face. “I skip out.”
She leaned her head against her shoulder and examined me. Her freckled cheeks caught a ray of sun and turned red. She closed her eyes and rubbed her lips with a bay leaf she’d ripped from a wild strand growing by the water.
“If you’re ever in trouble for drinking or smoking, these take the smell away. They are my remedy. What’s yours?” she asked, propping herself up.
“I’m from Italy…Everyone drinks and smokes there.”
“Everybody drinks and smokes here in Topanga also. I guess that’s what my father is worried about.”
“I saw him with your brother earlier, I think.”
“Yes.” She turned quiet. “That’s what happens when we don’t mop the house. Can you believe it? Who mops? Nobody mops. Do you mop?”
“No, I don’t mop.”
We both laughed.
“It’s my dad’s thing.” She sighed. “He’s a single parent so he treats us like housekeepers sometimes. He grew up in Montana. They really teach you to pull your own weight there. Sometimes I hate my mother for leaving just because of all the chores she left us with. Fucking raking leaves.”
“Where is your mother?”
“She moved to Utah with a creep.”
“Sorry.”
“They funded a Christian café in their town. It’s called the Holy Grail.”
I laughed.
“Coffee beans from heaven,” she added sarcastically, blowing out smoke. “She really lost it. I never want to visit her because she forces us to go to church. I hate church. I even got de-baptized last year. My mom doesn’t know. She’d take it super personally.”
“De-baptized?”
“Yes, I even have a certificate. You would have done the same thing if you were me. You probably don’t get it if you’re from Italy.”
“I do come from the cradle of Christianity.”
The girl put her cigarette out on the rock and stood up, blocking the sun, glazing over me with a bright but absent smile. She put a hand in the pocket of her pants and took a roll of cash out.
“I can’t buy smokes in Topanga. My father checks in on me and knows the store’s owner, so could you get me a pack before school?”
“That’s too much for a pack of cigarettes,” I replied.
“I make lots of money as a waitress. Half of it I give to my dad, the other half I never have time to spend. My brother and I are basically not allowed out of the house except for school and work. I’m going to the restaurant now. Hence the ridiculous clothes.”
She pointed to her tuxedo shirt and patted her black pants. I put the shriveled money back in her palm.
“Save it for when you do get out. I’ll be happy to buy you cigarettes.”
We walked up the river as the afternoon sunlight filtered through the trees. She hopped from rock to rock and I followed in her footsteps until we reached the foundations of a brightly lit restaurant overlooking the creek. She took out a small mirror and put lipstick on.
“Good for tips.” She winked and straightened out her elegant trousers. We climbed up to the side of the restaurant. The humid terrain slipped under our feet, but she was agile and fast. Those minutes with her in that stream felt like shapes fitting into slots, like a giant game of Tetris placing us perfectly in each other’s company.
New Age harp music played from loudspeakers on the restaurant’s terrace, strings of round lightbulbs hung from tree branches creating a warm glow—a quiet, health-food atmosphere. The restaurant was being made ready for the evening.
The girl turned to me and extended her hand. Her name was Deva.
“Do you party?” she asked with a liquid sparkle in her eyes.