Pasadena by Sherri L. Smith Page A

way out the door. “Let’s show them how it’s really done.”
    It took me a second to follow. When I did, my clothes stayed on.
    Blue House after midnight. Out in the yard, kids are drunk and dancing, or slipping off to make out. I go splash some water on my face in the suddenly empty bathroom, and wander back outside.
    I want to go to sleep, but not here, and not at home. The thought of calling my mother to come get me is repugnant, so I return to my perch overlooking the city and wish I had a vice. Ice water and memories do not an Irish wake make.
    But Maggie was my vice. All my bad habits and rash decisions balled up into one beautiful girl. She would have danced around the fire, and I would have watched her, laughing. She would have taken a hit from Shasta’s little glass pipe, still cold from the freezer, and not even coughed. She would have walked up to Joey and put her arms around him from behind and said, “Take me away from here,” and he would have seen it as a seduction, a rescue. An apology.
    But I’m not like Maggie. I never was.
    I pull out my phone, and dial home.

10
    I ’m not good for much the next day. I wake up with a headache pounding the back of my skull, and a scream in my throat. I miss my life before this weekend. I miss Maggie. Her death hangs in front of me like a weighted curtain I’m powerless to lift.
    It’s early, my mom and Roy are still asleep. It was a big night for her, picking me up from an actual party. The house is quiet.
    I lie in bed and stare Death in the face. A tear streaks down to my pillow. My hands clench.
    I’m sick with anger, with the need to turn back the clock, to erase eternity. Orpheus went to the underworld tosnatch back Eurydice. Superman flew backward around the earth to resurrect Lois Lane.
    Me, I sit up, slide my legs out from under the covers, put one foot on the floor, then the other, and will myself to stand.
    I pull some clothes from my dresser, and shuffle down the hall to the bathroom. I turn on the shower and take a long hot piss while the water warms up. When I flush, the water pressure from the showerhead dips. This is wildfire season and our plumbing is sympathetic to the needs of the fire department.
    I step into the shower, head still beating like a drum, and feel the water on my face like tepid tears. I turn it up as hot and strong as it can go, hoping to scour the pain away, to feel something on the outside instead of this burning futility within, but as I said, it’s fire season. The water sputters rather than blasts, and gets no hotter than a cup of vending-machine coffee.
    Maggie’s funeral is tomorrow. I need caffeine and something black to wear. That means the mall, or Maggie’s closet.
    Mrs. Kim said I could have anything. The pearls are already around Edina’s undeserving neck. But there’s a certain dress and hat that might still be waiting for me.
    I climb out of the shower. Pull on my shorts and a tank. Grab a Diet Coke from the fridge for breakfast.
    Fortified, I head out the front door, my spare set of Maggie’s pool house keys in hand.
    â€œI think it’s sexy.”
    â€œI think you look like a widow in a bad movie,” I told her.
    Maggie stuck her tongue out at me from behind the black birdcage veil she was wearing. “Tally and I picked it up in NoHo.”
    God knew there were enough thrift stores and costume resale places around this city for the two of them to play dress up for the rest of their lives. “Tally’s a poser. She dresses like a Connecticut housewife.”
    Maggie turned to me and vamped, hips thrust out at an angle, one hand thrown back in a casual fake laugh. The black sheath and pumps made her look like Jackie O, complete with pearl choker.
    â€œI think she’s got style,” she said. “Tally’s traditional. She’s just growing into it.”
    â€œSo, in another twenty years, the twinsets and pearls will make