The yellow bus that drove across Topanga Canyon to the Pacific Coast Highway was almost empty. I felt a weight lift off my chest as we started climbing into the mountain. The Valley clouds cleared, pierced by oblique strands of sunlight that illuminated grasslands where sheep grazed. Deva put her feet up in front of her and looked out the window, biting her fingernails. They were painted black, but the polish had scraped off. She had a small cast around her elbow. She told me she fell in the woods. At her feet was a duffel bag filled with the clothes her father had thrown out—washed, ironed, and folded in neat stacks.
“You didn’t lose them,” I told her when I handed them over during lunch that day. I’d waited two weeks to see her again. She hadn’t been in school. I rehearsed the line at home and imagined a series of responses, but Deva smiled as soon as she saw me. From the expression on her face I could have sworn she was also counting the days before seeing me again. She hugged me and invited me to Topanga in the afternoon. Her bones were thin like a chicken’s. I was afraid they would snap. When I hugged her back I looked at the school grounds behind her—the courtyard and cafeteria, the corner with the small magnolia tree where I sunbathed, the cheerleader squad practicing for the pep rally on the football field. Everything seemed suddenly distant and shapeless. Students were dark figurines moving on the horizon. Harmless.
We stepped off the bus in front of the canyon’s country store. It had rained. The weather system was different in Topanga. I filled my lungs with the cool, clean air. On the store’s corkboard, local announcements and psychedelic-themed flyers promoting energy healings and crystal clearings flapped in the wind. A surfer dude bought us a six-pack of Mickey’s malt liquor. We didn’t have a plan, but we had a whole afternoon ahead of us. The canyon’s oaks, walnut trees, and callistemons muffled the traffic noise that rose from the bottom of the mountain. They trapped it inside invisible sacs and distributed it across the hills. They were the guardians of that stillness. Things were kept safe in this remote cocoon—secrets, sounds, people. The outside world would not trickle in.
I followed Deva down a winding country road lined with crumbling cottages. We crossed an ascending dirt path through a patch of oak trees. The sun penetrated openings in the woods. It wasn’t the usual Los Angeles sun, that overbearing pinnacle of light and heat that took everything in. It was different. It seemed to originate from the earth and moved up tree branches like scattered paint. We were part of a new ecosystem with its own rules.
The road dried out as we moved past the forested area. The earth beneath our feet turned golden red. Deva kept walking ahead of me and did not say a word. I followed diligently, going back and forth in my mind about whether I would seem cooler if I spoke or remained quiet. I chose silence. Deva did not appear to be thinking at all. She moved up the hill with an unfocused gaze. She probably didn’t even realize we were quiet, that it might be awkward, that if we were to try and become friends, there were rules. We were supposed to talk about bands and experiences, boys, families, parties, other friends. But none of those things came to her mind and I held back from bringing in my own stories. I focused on her lips, trying to gauge if they were on the verge of emitting sound, but she used them only to taste a piece of pine pitch she’d scraped off a tree. She sucked on it, then handed me some.
“Try. It’s like syrup.” She smiled.
I put the chunk of dried sap in my mouth. It tasted like caramel. We walked farther on the dirt path and the landscape cleared. Trees became sparse, leaving space for desert plants—dry shrubs and wild sage bushes. Red rocks and boulders climbed to the top of a mountain. We were in a canyon within another canyon. A rocky desert rose in the middle of the hills and suddenly Los Angeles became visible from all sides: the dreamy, distant ocean; the valleys, hills, and desert plains as far as the eye could see. The rustic farmhouses in the area were unfenced and unlocked, their yards continuations of the canyon’s soil. It was more like a communal garden. Open gates, open doors, open windows. Chickens running onto the dirt path. Lazy dogs on strolls without leashes. I was happy to be there.
“Should we buy some pot?” Deva asked as we ventured toward a cluster of multicolored trailer homes and cabins stacked next to one another. A purple Victorian manor towered above them. We were in a commune. A tanned gray-haired woman with bloodshot eyes and messy hair came out from the manor.
“Are you here for the scream therapy session?” She greeted us with a foreign accent and a sarcastic smirk.
“Hi, Heide. No. We just want to say hi to Bob,” Deva replied.
“You are here for root chakra unblocking session?” the woman asked, sneering.
“We’re here to visit Bob,” Deva stated again.
Heide took a swig from an iron flask and growled, “What do you want from him?”
“We are just here to say a quick hello—”
“The last time a girl came for a ‘quick hello’ he got her pregnant.”
“I’m sorry.” Deva frowned. “But it wasn’t me.”
“Bob’s in the yoga room,” the woman finally said. “If you find him tell him he’s an asshole. Tell him I didn’t bring Brunhilda to school today because it was his turn.”
She staggered away cussing in Dutch.
A barefoot man with a roll of toilet paper in his hand came out of an outdoor toilet and smiled at us.
“Right on, sisters,” he said, and walked away.
The commune’s sewers were open air and there was no escaping the smell. Deva took my hand and led me through the property. Some of the sheds had multicolored tin roofs. Hoses were linked to one another, creating an extended watering system for a few dying plants. Deva’s hand was small inside mine. It was hard to imagine she could guide me through anything.
“Very peace and love, that Heide, right?”
I giggled.
“She smokes too much pot and gets paranoid.”
The yoga cottage had a bamboo ceiling and a dirt floor with mats rolled out next to a gong and a broken beehive. A man in ragged patchwork overalls and long dreadlocks that were desperately hanging on to his balding skull lay on the ground in a fetal position—hands tucked under his belly.
“Fuck you, Mom! Fuck you, Mom! Fuck you, Mom! You’re not my mom! You are not my mom! You are not my mom!” he screamed.
Deva glanced over and whispered in my ear, “He was adopted.”
She turned to him and cleared her throat so he would notice us. “Hi Bob. Is this a bad time?”
Bob rolled out of his fetal position and looked up. His face was bright red and he was drenched in sweat. Snot poured out his nose. He seemed happy to see us.
“Deva!”