I still haven’t seen Ash. I’m trying not to think about this. He’s probably busy, and seeing me is not at the top of his priorities list. He has a girlfriend. He has a life. I’m just the bored and boring girl from his hometown who has nothing better to do than think about him.
Except now I have Ivy. Now I have her text from last night inviting me on a day trip today. She called it an adventure. I called in sick to work. There are more important things than that fraction of a paycheck.
When Lily asked me how the party was, I told her it was just a few people from Ivy’s sober meditation group and we ordered pizza and played board games. I could tell she was thinking about not believing me, but luckily she still thinks I’m the most honest person she’s ever known.
I don’t know if I’m going to tell her about today’s outing. Maybe I want a secret.
Papa’s at work and Daddy’s volunteering somewhere, and I’ve been sitting on my front porch ready to go for nearly an hour. Ivy said she’d pick me up this morning. I don’t know what her idea of morning is, so I made sure I was ready early.
Daddy says the fruit trees are stressed. They talk to him. They tell him they need more water because it hasn’t rained in a long time. It’s only June and everything is already starting to feel dusty. He says when he was a kid this didn’t happen.
I hear her before I see her. The crunch of gravel beneath tires. The trees sway as they whisper her approach like a game of telephone up the road, and I am the last to know.
She’s in one of those new cars I’ve only seen in ads, in a mirror-like silver that reflects the forest around it. As far as I know, she’s the first person on the island to get one, which is saying a lot. People love their high-tech toys here, and they love people knowing they spent way too much money for them, though they’d never admit it.
The car stops and the driver’s-side door opens upward, like the hatch of a spaceship. Ivy’s head pops up over the top, her long brown hair in a messy bun and her face free of makeup, but still breathtaking, still the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.
“Hey!” She smiles and waves. “You ready?”
Of course I’m ready.
“It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” she says as I climb into the car. It’s all shiny chrome and flawless white leather inside, like the car version of Tami’s house, with buttons and displays and lights and mysterious gadgets I’ve never seen in a car before. “I don’t know what half these things do,” she says.
As soon as I close my door, a seat belt shoots out of somewhere and clicks silently into place. “The first time that happened, I screamed,” Ivy says. “My mom bought me this car. With my money. I don’t even like it.”
I don’t ask where we’re going. I don’t say, “Why’d you pick me?”
“Car, on,” Ivy says, and it starts purring.
“Would you like to engage automated driver assistance?” a robotic but mildly sexy voice says.
“Yes, please,” says Ivy.
Ivy Avila is the kind of person who says “please” to a robot.
“I’m supposed to be learning how to become comfortable with silence,” she says. “So I’m not going to turn on any music. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say, and then we don’t talk for a long time. But Ivy fidgets a lot, like she has to move her body extra now to make up for the lack of noise. She adjusts her seat, rubs her eyes, fusses with her hair, touches buttons and dials without actually pressing or turning them.
We drive north on Olympic Road, past all the gated waterfront mansions on the left and the forest on the right. The car makes no sound. Gravity doesn’t seem to exist as we turn corners. I feel like I’m strapped into a soft, unmoving bed. We could be going two hundred miles per hour and I wouldn’t even notice.
I hold my breath as we drive over the bridge to the peninsula, just like I’ve done since I was a little kid. It’s supposed to be good luck. You’re supposed to make a wish. My lungs are bigger than they were back then. I can hold my breath for a long time now.
I thought we were going to Seattle. I half expected we’d drive straight into the Sound and the car would turn into a submarine.
“I’m supposed to be relaxing,” Ivy says when we reach the other side of the bridge, and I realize I forgot to make a wish and now it’s too late.
We speed by the checkpoint that only cares if you’re driving onto the island, not off it, and I let out a big sigh.
I think I’m supposed to be doing the opposite of relaxing.
Papa said there used to be an Indian reservation here. Now it’s just miles and miles of subsidized housing for thousands of people who work in Seattle and on Commodore Island but can’t afford to live there. The street is lined with bus and shuttle stops, marked by signs listing different destinations, the sidewalk crowded with people on their way to work, private security guards stationed at the end of every block in little kiosks. Immigration cops patrol on foot, automatic rifles strapped to their backs.
“I used to live in places like this,” Ivy says. “The one in White Center when I was little. Then one in LA before I got The Fabulous Fandangos. Mom moved us out of there as soon as she got my first check.”
“What was it like?” I have only ever lived in the middle of the forest, with no neighbors. I wonder how it compares—being surrounded by strangers, versus being surrounded by trees.
She’s quiet for a while. “Crowded,” she says. “And loud. Even at night, you could still hear people moving around getting ready for night shifts. You could smell everybody’s food cooking. Mom was always yelling at some neighbor, like their lives were constantly in her way. Like she was better than them, even then, when we were nobody. Always talking about the day I’d make it and we’d get to move to Commodore Island like she always dreamed and we’d finally be happy.” She laughs. “And she’s still just as miserable. Except now instead of yelling at the neighbors, she yells at the cleaning ladies and gardeners. She even yells at the birds when she thinks they’re being too loud.”
“My dad says we’re lucky to still have birds around here,” I say.
As soon as we get to the other side of the sign that says “Leaving A-Corp Property,” the road is lined with people holding signs saying they’re available for work or asking for help, some of them sitting on folding chairs with coolers next to them, typing away on tablets like they’re at the office. We pass a large playground full of children with no adults in sight. People stare at us as we go by with a look on their faces I cannot read. It’s not scary, exactly. But it’s clear that no one is in charge here, like anything could happen at any moment and there’s no one around to stop it.
I think about Raine and Vaughn. Jordan and the others in Tami’s condo that night. I wonder how close they are to a bill they can’t pay or losing a job that could end them up here, like this. I know Tami and Ash never could. But what about me? What about Ivy? Even she probably doesn’t have the kind of money that never runs out. Does she know that?
“It wasn’t lonely,” Ivy says, and it takes me a second to remember what we were talking about. Living in the developments. Surrounded by the noise and smells and lives of strangers.
Outside the windows, trees and people fly by, but inside, it feels like we’re staying still. Lights illuminate the dashboard but I have no idea what they mean. We pass through the preserved, quaint main street of a historic small town—an attempt to lure the business of tourists—but I can see the sprawl of strip malls extending behind it.
Then, out of nowhere, Ivy says, “What do you think of me, Fern?”
“What?” I say.
“I know what people say. I know about all the rumors.” She looks at me for too long, like in the movies when you can tell it’s fake because if they were really driving they’d have crashed by now. “I don’t care what they all think,” she says. “But I care what you think. I want you to know the real me.”
Why aren’t we swerving into a ditch? Why is she looking at me like this? Why does she care what I think?
“I think you’re more than anyone knows,” I say. My breath is not mine. I have given it to her. I am a vacuum.
She smiles and finally looks back at the road. “Exhaustion is real,” she says. “People act like it’s this fake thing, but I had just finished shooting the fourth season of The Cousins, was on the European leg of my tour with the band, and my agent was sending me all these scripts to read and my mom was there the whole time, breathing down my neck. I slept less than five hours a night every night for three years. Some nights I’d just skip sleep altogether because I had so much to do, and all these appearances. Who wouldn’t get exhausted by that? People aren’t meant to work that much for that long. That’s what my therapist says. We’re physically not capable. But I just thought I had to work harder. That’s what they tell you. You miss one opportunity, and your career stalls. Your career fails. People forget who you are, and then you’re over. And there were all these pills to help me do it all, you know? It was survival. But then I couldn’t do anything without them. And that just made me more exhausted.”
“And now you’re not exhausted?”
“Now I don’t know what I am.”
“Do you miss it?”
“I’m not supposed to, but yeah. I do sometimes. I miss knowing what I’m supposed to do with myself. I miss feeling like I was good at something.”
We drive a little longer, past a line of old, boarded-up buildings and rusting cars without tires, shacks built around them from discarded parts, homes made out of hollowed-out buses with a few people sitting around like piles of rags and ashes, more broken than even the buildings. Most don’t raise their heads to watch us go by. They are not like the people sitting by the road just outside the housing development, probably with full-time jobs they still need to supplement in their off-hours.
“Don’t worry,” Ivy says. “This car is pretty, but it’s also built like a tank.”
We drive so fast, the people are nothing but a blur.
“The thing about being a performer,” Ivy says, “is that you’re always performing, even when you’re by yourself. After a bunch of years of that, you forget who you are. Fame becomes its own addiction, maybe even more than the pills and booze. I don’t know if I’m okay unless other people think I’m okay. Ever since I was little, I’ve defined myself by the jobs I get, the interviews, the fans, how much people want me. If they don’t want me, I don’t know who I am.”
She has asked me nothing about myself. Daddy would say that’s bad manners. Papa would say it’s the sign of a narcissist. But I’m almost relieved. This way she doesn’t have to find out how little I have to say.
“I thought I knew who I was once,” she says. “For a little while, a couple of weeks, I thought I knew exactly who I was. But I’ll tell you about that later.” She smiles now, lost in some veiled memory. A billboard for a new housing development flashes by—a suburb of a suburb of a suburb.
“Maybe you just need some rest,” I say. “Then you can figure all this stuff out.”
“Yeah. That’s what my therapist says. All I want to do is sleep, but I can’t. I have this anxiety and insomnia, and I’m getting acupuncture and doing all these herbal tinctures that taste like shit, because my doctor won’t let me have anything resembling a sleeping pill. And I’m supposed to be taking a break from work for a while, or A-Corp is never going to hire me again. They can even sue me. So I’m always awake, without anything to do but think, because I’m not working. I’m not doing anything. I don’t know how you all do that.”
“Do what?”
“Not you. You’re different. You have a job. But the rest of them. They just . . . do nothing while their parents are off who knows where working their asses off. How amazing that must be. To be so sure of your own worth that you don’t think you have to earn it. It’s like they’re incapable of feeling shame.”
“Have you heard of this drug called Freedom?” I say. “My friend Tami does it. It’s supposed to take away shame.”
“I don’t want to talk about drugs,” she snaps. “Or Tami.”
“Have you met Tami?” I say. “She came to your last party.”
Ivy says nothing. There’s a new tension in the car, like the electricity went sideways. Neither of us says anything for a while. All I see are trees and more trees.
“There’s a fine line between shame and having a conscience,” Ivy finally says.
“She’s kind of awful,” I say. “Tami.”
“I know.”
The car is quiet for a long time.
“Oh, I’ve heard about this place,” I say as we approach a huge gated compound with a sign that says “Ray of Light Ministries.”
“What’s this one about?” Ivy says.
“I think it’s the one about no procreation. The men and women live on separate sides of the compound and have no contact.”
“Sounds nice.” Ivy laughs. “I totally get it. All these people giving up everything they have to go live somewhere where they don’t have to think for themselves anymore. Where all their choices are made for them. They’re just giving up one kind of freedom for another. I dated this girl for a while—Lorelei Simmons? She was in that movie Cold Heat?”
It takes me a moment to realize Ivy’s asking me a question. I’ve gotten used to her talking without needing much participation from me. “It sort of rings a bell,” I say.
“One day she just disappeared. I called her agent and he told me she decided to join that big cult outside of Santa Cruz, the one with that guru with the gold teeth and neck tattoos who used to be a drug addict and claims to be a reincarnation of the original Buddha. Lorelei just emptied her bank account and handed it over. No one’s heard from her since.”
“Is that the one where they all have sex with him?”
“Probably. All cults end up like that. As soon as someone calls themselves a guru, it’s over. It’s so weird when you think about it. All the rich people with their protected, sparkling sci-fi lives trying to leave the cities and live off the grid and go back in time. And all the poor people trying to do exactly the opposite, all those people in places without electricity or internet or clean water or food. That’s what going back in time is really like. It’s not camping. But the rich people think it’s some vacation, and they can just go back home when they’ve had enough.” She grips the steering wheel. “Because they can.”
For someone who’s supposed to be cultivating silence, Ivy sure does talk a lot.
“I think part of me wanted to die,” Ivy says. I don’t know how she got to this statement, how the map of her mind led her here, but it’s a ride I think I’m starting to get the feel of.
A sign on the side of the road says 45, and I see the number 73 on the dashboard. But whoever designed this car made it drive so smooth, you can’t even feel danger.
“The exhaustion,” Ivy says, and she takes both hands off the wheel to do air quotes around “exhaustion” and we swerve, but the car corrects itself on its own. The car says, “Autopilot engaged.”
“I’d do a bunch of one thing to keep me awake and a bunch of another thing to calm me down,” she says. “And then it’d be time for a party and I’d do a bunch of whatever was there. I’d just keep doing it until I couldn’t anymore, until some manager would intervene or I’d pass out, or whoever I was dating at the time thought they could save me and tried a few times but gave up after they realized they couldn’t and figured out I was way more trouble than I was worth.”
After a pause, she says, “But I have a strong constitution. Just like my mom. That’s what she says. I’m a survivor. Whether I want to be or not.”
That’s when I see the police lights pulsing in the side mirror.
“Damn,” Ivy says, and for a moment she just looks ahead and doesn’t slow down, like she’s thinking about just driving until she finds a cliff to fly off of, and she would do it without thinking about me, without even asking if I want to go down with her.
But then she sighs and slows the car down, pulls over to the side of the road. “Shit,” she says. “Shit, shit, shit.” I pick her purse up off the floor and hand it to her. Then we sit in silence and wait.
After a couple minutes of him doing whatever he’s doing in his car, the trooper gets out and walks slowly toward us. Ivy rolls down her window when he arrives and hands him her ID before he even asks. He inspects it for a moment, then crouches down for a better look at her face, and his eyes light up.
“You’re Ivy Avila!” he says.
“Yes, sir.”
“Quite a car you have here. Haven’t seen one in person yet.”
“Thank you.”
“Did you know you were speeding, darling?”
I cringe at “darling,” but Ivy is all smiles.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I guess I forgot to turn on the speed limit sensor. I always turn it on. I don’t know what happened.” She is playing dumb and cute.
“Well,” he says, putting his hand on her arm, which I am positive is against protocol. “Promise me you’ll be more careful next time, okay?”
“Yes, officer.”
“And one more thing.” He hands Ivy his little notebook and pen. “An autograph. For my daughter.”
“Of course.”
Before he walks away, the officer takes one last lingering glance, peering into the car and resting for a moment on Ivy’s lap, at the place where her thighs meet the fabric of her short skirt. We are out here in the middle of nowhere, two girls alone on the road, and he has all the power. You hear stories about things like this. Stories about his word against hers.
“Be good” is the last thing he says, his voice low, hungry.
He is walking away. He is feet crunching on gravel, the ghost of a lingering stare, his eyes going places no one invited him to.
As we drive away, Ivy says, “Middle-aged men love me,” with a hardness that makes me lose my breath, and for a split second I see her turn into stone, into something impermeable and solid and forged by fire, flying through the sky at 73 mph, capable of doing serious damage and not caring who it touches.
I realize I am breathing fast and shallow, that fear has lodged itself in my chest. Not fear of getting arrested for speeding, not fear of crashing, but something else that I cannot name. I look at Ivy and she is holding some other kind of feeling. Maybe I’m afraid because she is not.
I look out the window, at the trees lining the road, one after another after another, creating a kind of rhythm as we pass by. It’s a hypnotic pulse of green and brown, but then occasionally a flash of some other color deep inside the layers, the weathered blue or red or orange of a tent or tarp of the people living out here in the forest because they have nowhere else to go.
“Ah!” Ivy says after a few more minutes of driving. A carved wooden sign on the side of the road reads “Shoji Japanese Spa.” The car turns into a heavily guarded driveway and Ivy scans her wrist under a sensor that opens the locked gate. Two armed security guards nod as we pass through. “Here we are.” Her voice is light now, as if forcing cheerfulness will make it real.
We drive along a river for a while, then turn uphill on a windy road surrounded by rhododendron bushes and towering evergreens until we get to a small wooden building that resembles a Japanese pagoda, with bamboo and ornamental maples and flowers all around. A pretty blond woman with thick-lined eyes wearing a black kimono-like dress comes out to greet us. “Nice to see you again, Miss Avila,” she says, and leads us inside.
“What is that smell?” I whisper to Ivy.
“Sulfur,” she says. “From the hot springs. You’ll get used to it.”
The waiting room is all tatami mats and cushions and watercolor paintings of cherry blossoms. Soft flute music plays behind the gentle trickle of an indoor fountain. A wall of shelves displays merchandise for sale. At first I think the place is old, maybe a preserved relic from the turn of the last century when pockets of Japanese settlers dotted the areas around Seattle. But on closer inspection, I realize everything is brand-new, freshly painted and then distressed with meticulous detail to look authentic. If Lily were here, she’d say something like, “How is this a Japanese spa if there are no Japanese people running it?” then she’d give me a speech about cultural appropriation and I’d tune it out even though I know she’s right. Lily’s always right about everything.
Ivy picks up a tiny porcelain teacup from a shelf. “All these tea sets are imported. My mom bought like five and they’re sitting in boxes she’ll never open.”
After we change into slippers and robes, the woman leads us down a wooden boardwalk along the side of the mountain hundreds of feet above the river rushing below, which periodically splits off to other trails that lead to small bamboo huts. Cloudy, steaming streams flow under the boardwalk, the rocks and soil beneath them multicolored from various minerals. Our guide tells us a rehearsed speech in hushed tones about how there are seven natural hot springs of varying temperatures and sizes, and how we have the largest one on top of the hill. I don’t know how much Ivy’s paying for this, but I’m guessing it’s not cheap.
“Apparently all these pools used to be just out here wild in the middle of the forest, free for anyone to use,” Ivy says. “Can you imagine? It must have been a mess.”
I’m used to seeing security guards everywhere, but they seem particularly out of place here, in the middle of this oasis that’s supposed to be so peaceful. They are scattered around the property, patrolling with guns strapped to their backs.
“Why does a spa need security guards with guns?” I whisper.
“There’s so many people living in the forest. There was a problem with people jumping the fence at night and using the pools.”
“So they need to be shot?” I say.
“People do all kinds of crazy shit when they don’t want to share.”
The woman leads us to our own little hut, and another woman brings a tray with tea. The door closes behind them, and I am left alone with Ivy, surrounded by three thin bamboo walls and an open view off the side of the mountain. Birds chirp and the river rushes below. To the side is our hot spring—a pool the size of a couple extra-large hot tubs stuck together, in the earth, surrounded by large rocks. Steam rises off the opaque chalky water, and the smell of rotten eggs is overpowering. It’s beautiful, but something feels off. Like we are not supposed to be here. Like we’re intruding.
“So we just, like, get in?” I say.
Ivy smiles, amused. “I thought you were a nature girl,” she says. “This is nature.”
“But how deep is it?” I say. “Is the bottom just mud? There must be all kinds of bacteria in there.”
“The water’s medicinal or something. The pools are self-cleaning because the springs pump fresh water in all day. They put smooth rocks on the bottom, and there are all those boulders you can sit on. Any more questions?”
I don’t say, “And we’re supposed to be naked?”
I don’t say, “Why did you take me here?”
Ivy unties her robe and I look away before she takes it off. I pour us tea and the smell of jasmine sweetens the stench of the water.
I feel her watching me as I get in backward, as I try to cover my breasts with my arms in a way that looks like I’m not trying to cover them up.
Ivy laughs. “No need to be modest around me. Relax, Fern. This is supposed to be relaxing.”
I step into the water and quickly sit so I’m covered with the gray-white water up to my shoulders. It feels like a hot, smelly, silty bath.
“Are you relaxed yet?” Ivy teases.
“Don’t rush me,” I say.
She smiles, closes her eyes, and leans back against her boulder, so I decide to do the same. I have to admit, it does feel good, and I can feel the tension in my body let go a little. Maybe my body will convince my brain to relax too.
When I open my eyes, Ivy’s staring at me. I don’t know how long she’s been looking, or how long my eyes were closed. She smiles, and I think she’s going to ask me if I’m relaxed yet again, but instead she says, “So I have something to tell you. Remember how I told you I have a kind of favor to ask?”
I am the person people tell things to. I am the person people ask for favors.
I sit up on my rock a little taller, but my nipples poke out over the water, so I slouch back down again.
“We have a mutual friend, you and I.” Ivy sits up straighter now, her breasts fully exposed, and I try not to stare. I don’t understand how she can be so comfortable in her own body.
“Who?” I say. Everywhere I look there is bamboo and rocks and moss and water the color of dirty milk.
She pauses for a moment, like she’s thinking about changing her mind, like uttering the name will start something she can’t undo.
“Ash Kye,” she finally says.
My chest constricts. The smell of sulfur seems to get stronger.
“He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” I say. “We’ve known each other for years. Our fathers used to golf together. I didn’t know he knew you. He never said anything.” But when was the last time I even talked to him? When was the last time he told me anything?
“No,” she says. “He wouldn’t have. I guess I’m kind of a secret.” This seems to make her sad, and I wonder what that would feel like—being someone’s secret.
“We met on vacation a year and a half ago,” she says. “On this A-Corp island in Brazil that’s a big vacation spot for the rich and annoying. He was there with his family. I was there with my mom. It was supposed to be my relaxing vacation before shooting the last season of The Cousins, but going anywhere with my mom is not relaxing. She was off chasing pool boys or something when I met him on the beach. He was trying to avoid his family. His dad was drinking too much and embarrassing him. His sister was on the phone the whole time and his mom was on her laptop working. We were both lonely and needed someone to talk to, I guess. So that’s what we did.” She smiles a private, inward smile not meant for me. “It was like we knew we were soul mates within ten minutes of meeting each other. I told him things that first day on the beach that I never told anyone.”
I cringe at “soul mates.” But maybe that’s what happens when people fall in love—they have no choice but to turn into clichés.
I wonder for a moment if I should say something, if I should interject, ask a question. What kind of a conversation is this? Is it one where I just let Ivy talk for as long as it takes to tell her story, until she’s emptied out? Is this a monologue? Am I her audience?
Ivy is somewhere inside her head, sifting through her memories. She has no use for me in there. So I decide to say nothing. I decide to just let her talk. It’s like I’m not even here.
I am strangely not jealous. Somehow sharing Ash with Ivy does not feel wrong the way Tami having him does.
Sharing Ash. How ridiculous. He’s not even mine to share.
“We were together there for two weeks,” she continues. “They were the best days of my life. We spent every possible moment we could together, every single night. He told me how much he hated boarding school and doing what everyone expected of him, how he felt so much pressure to fit inside a box. We told each other about our childhoods, about who we were before the world started eating us up. And it’s like we got to be those people together. Like we got to be innocent again. This one night, I remember it was a full moon, we talked until the sun came up. About running away, all these elaborate scenarios of the life we’d have away from everyone who wanted something from us. When the sun rose it felt like the beginning of a new world, like we had just created a new world. We were going to be free. Together.”
I am starting to feel too hot, but I don’t know what to do with my body. Ivy seems like she’s in a trance, like she’s channeling something, like she has no idea where she really is.
“I thought it was a plan,” she says. “A real plan.” There is a sad, almost desperate, tinge to her voice now. “He said tomorrow, we’re doing it tomorrow. We talked about starting over as brand-new people, getting an apartment somewhere, reinventing ourselves, building lives besides the ones everyone else has already figured out for us. He wouldn’t have to follow his mom and dad into some executive A-Corp career, and I could take the money I made and invest it smart and we could live off it for a long time, maybe forever. And he could write songs, and I could sing them. We would have real lives. So the next night I packed my suitcase and brought it to our meeting place on the beach. Just rolled it out there on the sand. Can you imagine? I was ready to leave. I was ready to run off with him.” It’s then that Ivy looks me in the eyes. “And he laughed. He said he was kidding. He looked at me like I was crazy.”
I want to go to her. I want to reach across the water. She is so small on the other side of the pool. But I don’t know what kind of friend I’m supposed to be. One who just listens to her monologues, or one who touches her?
“Is that what you want?” I say. “To leave your career and everything behind?”
“No,” Ivy says. “I don’t think so. My career is all I have.” She pauses, and for a moment I catch a glimpse of her as a child, lonely and shattered and needing something no one can give her. “I just want him.”
We both want the same boy who’s already taken.
She tries to make herself bigger, tries to paint confidence on her face. “I don’t blame him. I was a mess when I met him. I was exhausted and I wanted out. I wanted to run away from everything. From my mom. My contract with A-Corp. Everything. I was crazy for thinking he would do that with me. We had just met. And he has nothing to run away from.”
“So you don’t want to run away anymore?”
She sits up a little straighter. “I know what’s real. I know how the world works, how people work. I’m not going to ask anyone to change for me. I just want to know him again.”
My skin is starting to get pruney, and I’m feeling a little nauseated from the heat and smell. I wonder how long we’re supposed to stay in here to get the supposed medicinal effects, how long it takes to get to prime relaxation, if there’s some magical equation for us to get Ivy’s money’s worth. I wonder what it was like here before it got turned into this place with bamboo walls and imported tea sets and white women in geisha dresses and security guards with guns, if it was just mud and rocks the way nature intended. Maybe if it was still like that, I wouldn’t feel such a strong impulse to leave.
I count back in my head a year and a half, to the winter Ash got back from his trip to Brazil. I remember he seemed shaken, quieter than usual, drinking and smoking more. He confided in me at one party that he was thinking about breaking up with Tami. He said she didn’t understand him. But then he arrived at the next party with a split lip and he wouldn’t tell anyone where it came from. Tami was overly affectionate with him that night, by his side the whole time, offering to get him things, holding his hand like she was someone who liked holding hands instead of who she really was—someone who makes fun of those kinds of couples. Her eyes burned with something that did not quite look like love. He looked at her like someone possessed. The look on his face did not look like love either.
Later that night, I saw them in the shadows, Tami in his lap, straddling him, moving slowly, whispering something into his ear, and I remember it struck me that I was witnessing something like magic being performed, an incantation, a powerful spell being cast, and I wondered how people learn to do these things. Where do they get that kind of power? How does Tami just know what it takes to control him? His eyes were shut tight and her whispers were conjuring him into being. She was making him. He was hers.
She reclaimed him from Ivy, and he has belonged to her ever since.
“So that’s why you moved to Commodore Island?” I say. “For Ash?”
I don’t say, “But what if he doesn’t want you? What if you’re wasting your time? Why are you planning your life around a boy you knew for two weeks? What if there’s nothing for you here? What if Tami is more powerful than all of us?”
“It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? My mom has been obsessed with moving to Commodore ever since she was a little kid. She’d hang out inside the ferry terminal in Seattle, waiting for her mom to get off work, watching all the people getting on and off the boat, and she thought they had everything she didn’t, and she’s been fixated on it ever since. She knew that spot where I met Ash was where a lot of Commodore’s most important families own vacation homes. Her idea of making it was to find someone to take care of her and own a big house on the water on Commodore Island and never have to work again.”
“And she got her wish,” I say. Ivy is that someone. Ivy is the one who has to take care of her.
“Yeah, I guess so. Sometimes I don’t know where her dreams stop and mine start.”
“Is she happy?”
Ivy laughs. “Of course not. She’s fucking miserable.”
“Maybe she was wishing for the wrong thing.”
“She wants me to be with Ash too. For her own reasons. No matter how much money I make, it’s never enough. She won’t be happy until we have old A-Corp money. She wants to be part of a dynasty.” I do not know how to read the look on Ivy’s face. I do not know the secret language of hating a parent.
I decide I can’t stand it anymore. I’m too hot. I lift myself out of the water, and Ivy does too, like a mirror image of me on the side of the pool, and now here we are, naked, dripping wet, sitting on rocks, staring at each other, and I do not look away.
“I need your help,” she says, throwing me a towel. “I need you to organize a meeting at your place. With me and Ash.”
“Why can’t you do it?”
“I can’t just invite him over. Can you imagine what Tami would think of that? And you know how this island gossips. You two are already friends. It makes more sense if people think we meet through you. Plus, I want you to be there.”
“Why?”
“I trust you. I trust myself when I’m with you.”
I don’t say, “But you don’t even know me.”
“I don’t have his new number,” I say. “Tami will think it’s weird if I ask her for it.”
Ivy looks at me, a war of yearning and disappointment on her face.
“Yes,” I say. “Okay, yes. I’ll figure something out. I promise. I will.”
AshandIvy. IvyandAsh.
She drops her towel and I try to burn into memory the perfect back of her body before she puts on her robe.
Maybe what Ash needs is a love like Ivy’s.
Maybe what I need is to be the glue that binds them.