I also called Alo to apologize, but he didn’t want to speak to me. He said he never wanted to see me again and to throw away his phone number.
Deva didn’t return to school after it reopened three weeks later. News spread about an outbreak of something known as Valley fever—a respiratory disease caused by airborne fungus spores carried by seismically triggered dust clouds. Valley fever: I imagined that was the reason she wasn’t back—a post-earthquake refusal to return to the vapidity of our high school. Newspapers said the condition manifested itself with heavy chest pains. I felt those. Perhaps we’d both developed a San Fernando Valley allergy. Except I didn’t have anywhere else to go now that she was out of my life.
Days turned into weeks. I still looked for her swinging ponytail and kept my ears open for her laughter, but the school hallways echoed with her absence. I began to lose hope. It turned out Valley fever cases had been limited to Ventura County. If anyone had contracted the disease it was Alo, as if the cancer and broken throat weren’t enough.
I bumped into Azar as she came out of a bathroom stall one day. Her hair had grown down to her shoulders, parted by two sparkly butterfly barrettes. It made her head look slightly less huge. She had on a short dress and white tennis shoes with wedges to make her taller. She walked to the mirror with a purple compact and started powdering her nose.
“I almost didn’t recognize you,” I said, smiling.
She turned to me, uninterested, and narrowed her big eyes like she was trying to remember who I was.
“It’s been a while,” she answered. She turned back to the mirror and painted her lips with strawberry gloss. The black hair had disappeared from her arms and her mustache was also gone. She tweezed her brows now, like all the other girls in school.
“Remember when you made me believe you’d protect me after Arash died? You made me think you’d help me,” she said.
“I remember our hug on the field.”
“Well, you never helped. I had to figure it out on my own.”
I looked at her skinny olive legs and didn’t know what to say.
“I like your dress.”
It had daisies printed over a burgundy background. Floral dresses were in style. She fit right in. Unlike me, she had found her place.
“Thanks,” she said.
“If you ever feel like hanging out…” I began, but she clicked her compact shut and raised an eyebrow at me. She walked out of the bathroom.
It was like the first day of school all over. On the football field I looked up at the speakers and thought that maybe Deva was gone for good and the principal would announce it with his crackling voice like he’d announced Arash’s death. I swiped my hands on the fence around the school’s perimeter. I waited for her by the one in front of the side doors, fingering the pieces of wire that replaced the holes that used to be there, our portals to the other side. She never came.
Mrs. Perks told me she’d take me on in her Honors English class for my senior year. She said that was an important year because it was when I had to apply for college. I thought I would feel victorious or proud of myself when that day came, but I didn’t feel anything.
After school at the bus stop, a scrawny guy came up to me. I’d seen him with Chris before, playing hacky sack in the parking lot. He went by the nickname Brain Dead. He had a green Mohawk, pants almost falling off his hips, and safety pins in his ears. His backpack was wider than his back, like a baby gorilla propped on his shoulders, suffocating his entire frame. His face was freckled and the rosy spots on his cheeks matched his mucusy-rimmed eye sockets, pinkish like those of a lab rat.
“I heard you’re looking for Chris,” he said as he sat next to me.
“Deva, really. Do you have news?”
“They’re, like, gone or something,” he replied in a faint voice.
“What?”
“They’re both in continuation school. Chris’s dad put them there until the move.”
“What move?”
“Montana. My stepmom knows their dad through music stuff. She said he built a big recording studio out there. He’s going to go with the kids. It’s cheaper and stuff there.”
“He didn’t build the studio, his children built it,” I replied defensively.
He got up. His bus was approaching. “Whatever.” He shrugged his shoulders at me.
He got on and turned to me as he waited his turn to insert the coins in the slot by the driver. “See ya.”
I crossed the street and started walking in the opposite direction, toward the canyon.
—
The bay-leaf shrubs in Deva’s driveway were overgrown. I thrust my fingers against them like we always did when we came back to her place, except this time I didn’t have to hide the smell of smoke from anyone. The shrubs whipped back at my arms like green armored shields protecting the crooked house—a fortress guarded by unfriendly plants. I pushed them back and kept walking up. The field of oak trees beneath the terrace hummed with the melody of Deva’s laughter. It was the first thing I heard when I approached the house. My heart raced. I was back in that yard. The air smelled of woody eucalyptus, the familiar scent of all the good places I loved. For a moment it made me think maybe we could still take it all back.
Folk music played. Through the front window I saw her father sitting at his desk. His crutches leaned against the wall. Deva stood over him, hair up in a bun, a pen squeezed between her fingers. She was taking notes about something. Her father’s music awards had come off the walls and the house was bare and full of scattered boxes. I couldn’t tell if it was post-earthquake chaos or the looming presence of the move. Her father pulled her to him and sat her on his lap playfully as they picked out a selection of pictures that were displayed on the desk. Deva pushed him back, yanking his shirt with the deliberate gesture of a woman, yet there was something unfeminine about her or maybe it wasn’t the femininity I’d known. Deva the girl was gone, leaving space for a baritone woman. And it was as if my thoughts were audible because she lifted her eyes the moment I conjured her, meeting my gaze through the window. She looked down then tapped her father’s shoulder.
He let her go. Didn’t look up, had nothing to fear now.
Deva came out and let her hair down as she walked to me. It flopped against her back creating the same golden veil she’d had the first time I followed her down to the river.
“What are you doing? You can’t come back here anymore,” she said.
“Is it true you’re moving?”
“My father is filing a restraining order against you. I’m trying to convince him not to. If he sees you—”
“Are you? Are you moving to Montana? Really?” I glanced up at the main house.
“It’s for his work. He got a manager there. Plus a great studio. We’re going in a few weeks. LA is not good for his music anymore.”
“You don’t have to go. You could stay with me once you turn eighteen.”
“I’m never going back to the Valley.”