Held A New Adult Romance(7)
She leaps away from me like I’m on fire. I hold my hands up where she can see them.
Amber draws in another couple of shuddering breaths, closes her mouth. The effort of breathing through her nose makes her nostrils flare.
“I’m sorry,” she says, swallowing. “I’m so sorry. I get these...um...it’s...ah....panic attacks.”
“Oh. Sorry. Those can be nasty, right?”
Amber nods. She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t need to. Her eyes say ‘No shit, Sherlock’.
“Is there anything I can do?” I ask.
For a moment she shakes her head, her long hair swaying, but then there’s a different light in her eyes, a kind of calculation, maybe. “This is gonna sound so stupid,” she says, and I realize why I couldn’t place her accent. I was expecting her to sound British like her Dad, but she’s all-American. “Could you get me some cigarettes?” she asks.
Huh. I’m sure I heard somewhere that nicotine increased the heart rate. Last thing you’d need during a panic attack, surely? “Do they...help?” I ask.
She looks at me in weary desperation for a long moment. “I’m crazy,” she says, like it explains everything from the Big Bang onwards. “Crazy people love cigarettes.”
Chapter Three
Amber
I never meant to study in California. When I applied for colleges I'd barely grown out of my 'L.A. Sucks' phase. I thought it was a shithole, a whiny enclave of self-regarding morons who pissed away their money on flotation tanks and plastic tits and terrible movies about dogs.
From the age of about twelve I was enrolled in an exclusive private school, where we were allowed to wear our own clothes and curse and cut classes in the interests of 'free expression'. We were encouraged to learn, but only about things that interested us, which meant there were a lot of classes devoted to that one girl's erotic My Chemical Romance fanfiction, or weepy teenage poetry about black-winged angels and unfathomable pain.
"I know it's not like people like us will ever have to work for a living," Everglade once said during one of these 'sessions' (that's what we called them – ‘classes’ smacked too much of structure) "But do you have to be so committed to turning us into morons?"
That earned her a positive report for challenging authority, and pissed her off twice as much. Rebellion is no fun when it’s listed as an extra-curricular activity.
She was one of the reasons why I chose to stay in California. The other was a shady but substantial impression that I might not be able to hack it anywhere else. Everglade got that. Her mother, once one of the original riot girls and the voice of the anti-establishment, was now so Hollywood that even Everglade called her Kiersten. The first time I met Kiersten she offered me a cigar and then told me - no holds barred - about Everglade's conception, in Paris on an iron-framed bed, with a now dead junkie boyfriend who was 'trying out the Jim Morrison thing'.
"He killed himself when I told him I was pregnant," she said. "Or that's what the coroner's report said - suicide. They wanted to make it less embarrassing for his family; it was actually auto-erotic asphyxiation gone wrong."
"Amazingly they managed to keep that secret for all of about four weeks," said Everglade. "Which is like some kind of record for Kiersten."
"I'm a very open person, baby. You know I like to share."
"Yeah - the trouble is you share everyone's shit and not just your own. Most times without asking permission." She jerked her head towards the door and I got up from the garden table where I'd been sitting. "Sorry, Amber. I guess now you not only know my dead Dad wasn't circumcised but that he also had a Prince Albert, right?"
I followed her back into the house where the college prospectuses waited. "Is she always like that?" I asked.
Everglade pulled a face and yanked open the fridge. "Nope. Sometimes she's worse. You want OJ, milk or a beer? 'Cause Kiersten doesn't give a shit."
We pored over the prospectuses for hours, learning where to get the best kimchi in San Francisco or where to find the best thrift shops in Portland. Nothing much further east than Nevada - but Everglade said if we wanted to go to Vegas we could just go. No point signing up for four years then discovering that it sucked. Everywhere else we looked at was within shaking range of the San Andreas; it was like we were rooted to the crack in the earth we called home.
"San Diego," she said. "Wasn't that where they filmed that old movie - back when men were men and vampires were vampires?"
"What movie?" I said, pushing aside a UCLA prospectus. They had some interesting electives but I knew if I looked into it I'd never get out of the house. I wanted to live on campus. I wanted the real world experience, outside of the celebrity bubble I'd lived in my whole life.