Little & Lion Page 6

  She pushes the necklace toward me, the pendant swinging in the air, but I put my hands up and step back. My throat hurts as I say, “I don’t want it.”

  “Oh, God. Are you really such a goody-goody? It’s just a necklace.” She shrugs, irritated. “It’s not my fault those girls are so bad at their job. I practically took it from right under their noses.”

  “Catie, you can’t…” I’ve never stolen anything in my life. “You have to take it back. They were so nice to us.”

  “They were nice to us because my mom spends a ton of money there. It’s not like they own the place.”

  Nothing Catie can say will make me feel better about her having stolen that necklace, and nothing I say will make her return it. She’s probably more pleased with herself the bigger a deal I make of it, so I stop talking about it. I refuse it one last time and say we should go meet Lionel, and I look away quickly from her downturned mouth.

  Mom loves the dress, and when she’s looking in the bag for the receipt, she says, “What’s this?”

  “What’s what?” I turn around just in time to see her pulling out something small that sparkles when it hits the light.

  The necklace.

  “Oh, this is beautiful, sweet pea.” She slowly untwists the chain and holds it up in front of her. “You bought it to go with the dress?”

  My stomach jumps up and down. I don’t know what to say. “I, um…”

  “I know I told you to only get the dress, but—well, it’s so pretty. And I want to see it on you.” She walks behind me and drapes it over my neck. I wonder if she can feel my heart pulsing too fast in my chest, or the heat of anxiety clinging to my skin. The pendant is cool and smooth against my sternum, and Mom gasps when she sees it with the dress, says the two were meant to be. “You have to wear it to the bat mitzvah.”

  I’m glad when she heads back to her office. My throat is too dry to speak, and even after I’ve taken off the necklace, I can feel it burning a line across my skin.

  Lionel is doing homework when I tell him we need a tree house meeting, but he puts down his pencil and follows me out to the backyard without another word.

  I kick off my flip-flops and climb up ahead of him. The floor is scattered with the remnants of the Monopoly game we abandoned without crowning a winner the last time we were here.

  I barely wait for him to get inside before I pull the necklace from my pocket and thrust it in his face. He frowns for a minute, looking back and forth from the jewelry to me, then shrugs. “It’s nice?”

  “Lion, it’s stolen.”

  His mouth drops open. “You…?”

  “Of course not. Catie.”

  “Damn.” He touches the purple stone. “Looks expensive.”

  “It probably is. Catie won’t take it back, and I guess she put it in my bag when we were eating, because I told her I didn’t want it.”

  I place it on the futon, next to the Monopoly box. I don’t want it in my hands anymore. The chain feels hot, like the dishonesty of its presence is searing my palm.

  “You could tell her parents,” Lionel muses. “Force her to take it back.”

  Sometimes I like it when he’s so practical, but not now. He knows Catie just as well as I do, and he’s not thinking about the consequences of getting her in trouble.

  “She’d make my life miserable. Not worth it.”

  “So take it back to the store yourself. Explain that your friend took it.”

  “They won’t believe me.” I sink onto the futon, glaring at the necklace. “They love Catie’s family. They’ll think I took it.”

  I don’t remember the first time Mom warned me about shopping while black, but I do remember the first time I noticed we were being followed around a store, even after we’d repeatedly told the sales associate we didn’t need any help. I remember the look on Mom’s face when we left the store. I’d never seen her so silently angry.

  Lionel runs a hand over his hair. “You could blame it on Nadine. Say she found it and threatened to ground you if you didn’t tell her the truth. She could be the one to tell Catie’s parents.”

  That’s not a bad idea, but Catie would still be pissed and ready for revenge.

  “I didn’t say anything when Mom found it. She’ll be mad if I tell her, and… what if she cancels my bat mitzvah? I know you think it’s corny… that it doesn’t really mean anything, but it’s important to me.”

  What I don’t say is that even though I’ve already converted, becoming a bat mitzvah feels, somehow, like it will bring me even closer to him and Saul. I know it doesn’t matter that we don’t look alike. I know that caring about each other is the most important part, but I like sharing something official with them.

  I don’t look up because I don’t want to see him smirking or rolling his eyes, but Lion just nods. “I won’t say anything, okay?”

  I was hoping he’d come up with another solution. I can’t think of a way to fix this that won’t make someone mad. My only option is to shove the necklace into the bottom of my jewelry box and hope Mom forgets about it on the day of the party.

  But I don’t feel quite as yucky as I did before we came up to the tree house, knowing Lionel is aware of the secret now, too.

  The morning of my bat mitzvah, I wake up to find a small black box on my nightstand. I’m still half asleep when I open it, but my eyes widen immediately once I see the silver Magen David lying on velvet.

  I fumble with the clasp for a few minutes before I give up and run downstairs to Lionel’s room for help. He’s reading in bed like he does on the weekends; today, it’s The Shining.

  “Look at what Saul and Mom got me,” I say, dangling the necklace in front of him. “I’ll just wear this instead of the purple one. Problem solved, right?”

  “Yeah, probably.” He shrugs. “No one’s going to ask why you’re wearing a Star of David at your bat mitzvah.”

  “Will you help me put it on?”

  He snaps the clasp together and I rush over to the mirror on his closet door to look. It’s perfect.

  I have my hand on the knob, ready to run downstairs and show Mom and Saul, when Lionel mumbles, “I got it for you.”

  I turn around to stare at him, fingering the edges of the star. “What?”

  “I didn’t want you to have to wear that stupid necklace or even think about it, and this one seemed like something you might be into or whatever, so…” He shrugs again and looks down at his book, but I know he’s not reading. “I took care of that other necklace, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

  “What’d you do with it?” I ask, nervous that he found some way to involve Catie.

  “I put it in an envelope and took it to the store and dropped it on the counter when they weren’t looking,” he says, like returning stolen goods is the easiest thing in the world.

  “They really didn’t see you?”

  “Nobody said anything if they did. I walked out and went to the bookstore.”

  “Lion…” I pause because I feel a little bit like I’m going to cry, and he’ll tease me if I cry, especially over something he did for me. “This is really nice. The necklace and… everything. Thank you.”

  “It’s no big deal.” He looks at his feet, sticking up beneath the covers. “You’re my sister.”

  I know that’s what he’s saying every time he calls me Little—acknowledging that we’re siblings, even if we’re not related by blood. But I like hearing him say it so plainly. It makes me think there’ll never be a time when we question our bond.

  six.

  Saul makes good on that museum promise and we head out to LACMA after a late breakfast, determined to see as many exhibits as we can cram into our day.

  “Your mom and I were talking about going on a family vacation this summer,” he says as he backs the army-green station wagon out of the driveway. “Any suggestions?”

  “Paris,” I say immediately. It’s my mother’s favorite city in Europe. She’s talked about it so often and with such lov
e that I think I should see it, too.

  “I like where your head’s at, kiddo, but we were thinking about something closer to home. Yosemite, if we’re all up to it. Or Joshua Tree.”

  “Maybe we should go to Nevada so you can relive your Burning Man days,” I say with a straight face.

  “It was one time.” Saul shakes his head, laughing. “And you weren’t even alive yet. My Burning Man days are long behind me.”

  “If we go to Yosemite, we might as well drive up and see Daphne.” I grin.

  “Your mother would love that.”

  He’s not wrong. Daphne is Lionel’s mother. She lives up in Humboldt County and knits these special wool blankets that sell for, like, a thousand dollars. She and my mom do get along, so well that anytime Daphne’s in town, she makes a point to see my mother, too. They don’t have a whole lot in common besides being overly proud of their Seven Sisters connection; Lionel’s mom was majoring in gender studies at Mount Holyoke while mine was firmly entrenched in the English department at Wellesley. I think Saul is weirded out that they act like long-lost college friends, but Daphne scoffs when he gets awkward about it. “We were terrible together,” she always says. “Honestly, we should’ve gotten a prize for signing divorce papers before we completely screwed up our kid.”

  “Well, at least Lionel will get to go to Europe next summer.” I look at Saul out of the corner of my eye.

  It’s a promise they made to us when we started high school—as long as our college plans are set for the autumn after our graduation, they’ll send us on a European trip for a month with one of our friends. I want it for Lionel. He needs that trip next year. Something to look forward to.

  Saul is quiet. Too quiet, and I think he’s doing that thing where he pretends to be preoccupied with traffic when he doesn’t know what to say. But then he sighs. “That’s on hold for now, Suzette.”

  “On hold? But it’s a year from now. You don’t think—”

  Saul’s cell phone rings then, sitting in the console, and his relief at not having to continue the conversation is palpable. Which I hate. He said he’d be honest with me about Lionel, but he still doesn’t want to answer my questions.

  He asks me to look at the screen for him.

  “Ora?” I say, squinting at the last name.

  “I’d better get that. The guys just delivered to her this morning.” I pick up the call and put it on speaker while Saul gets his client voice ready. “Ora! How’s that table working out? Beautiful, right? Looks perfect in the space?”

  The woman who called sounds as if she’s wringing her hands. Like so many people in L.A., she has a slight accent, a lyrical way of saying certain words that makes me think she grew up speaking Spanish, too. Saul pulls over to the side of the road, across from the lake, as he listens to her describe a strange patch on the table he made. We aren’t anywhere close to LACMA and I don’t think we will be anytime soon, which is confirmed when Saul offers to swing by and take a look.

  “Sorry,” he says once Ora has hung up the phone. “Slight detour. You into flower shops?”

  “I’m not not into them.” But people who are into flower shops seem like the people who would buy or receive flowers often, and I fall into neither category. Flowers seem inherently romantic, and I’m still a novice in that area. “Flowers are just so… temporary.”

  “Ah, you are your mother’s daughter,” he says as he does a clean U-turn to reroute us. “The first time I bought her roses she said she hoped they weren’t a metaphor for our relationship because they’d be dead in a week.”

  “Ouch.”

  “She’s a tough sell, kiddo,” he says with a shrug.

  The flower shop is a couple of miles away, in Silver Lake, near Emil’s house. Like most of the shops in that area of Sunset Boulevard, it’s part of a strip mall, linked to an upscale coffee shop on one side and a denim boutique on the other. The sign on the storefront is white with green script, advertising CASTILLO FLOWERS. A flash of orange in the front window catches my eye and I look over to see a fat ginger cat sunning himself, his stomach stretched out in all its fluffy glory.

  A bell rings over the glass door as we walk in, and the first thing I notice is how cramped the shop is. Nearly every surface is bursting with rows of flowering bushes and potted plants and tropical flowers. The air is perfumed with a variety of scents that should conflict with each other but blend seamlessly into a fresh, clean fragrance.

  What I notice next is the girl sitting behind the counter. I recognize the curves of ink that wind around her arm, and the black curls that fall just below her shoulders. And, of course, her purple lips. Rafaela. My stomach flips.

  She hops off her stool when we walk in, but her expression is neutral, no recognition present. Her eyes only briefly sweep over my face before she looks at Saul and smiles. “You’re here about the table, right?”

  “Indeed.”

  He’s barely gotten the word out of his mouth before a woman comes bounding through the swinging wooden door that separates the shop from the back room. She’s wearing an apron over denim overalls, and her black hair is pulled into a messy, silver-streaked bun. She comes right over to Saul with arms outstretched and squeezes his forearms in a detached sort of hug.

  “Thank you for coming. I realized I never said I love the table—I do love it, but it’s just that patch…”

  “Ora, I’m glad to take a look at it.” Saul pats her shoulder when she lets go of him. “The shop was on our way, right, Suzette?”

  Both Ora’s and Rafaela’s eyes shift toward me. I nod.

  “This is your daughter?” I wait for Ora to ask all sorts of personal questions or make an inappropriate comment about how our skin colors don’t match, but she simply beams. Does that weird non-hug thing to me, too, and says, “Well, he never told me you were so beautiful.”

  I smile back at her and try not to glance over at Rafaela.

  Ora looks at her. “Help Suzette pick out something—anything she wants.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” I start to protest. “I mean, that’s very nice, but I—”

  “Beautiful girls should have beautiful flowers,” she says as if that’s the end.

  And it is. She leads Saul to the back of the shop, babbling about the table as they disappear behind the swinging door.

  “Beautiful girls should have beautiful flowers,” Rafaela mutters from her post. I don’t know if she’s mocking Ora or the fact that she said it about me, but then Rafaela catches my eye and smiles.

  I hope she can’t see how embarrassed I am. “She’s just being nice because of my… Saul.”

  “Your Saul?”

  “He’s with my mom but they’re not married, so he’s not really my stepdad,” I say in one breath. It’s easier to have some answers prepared.

  “Oh. Well, my aunt Ora doesn’t just tell people things they want to hear.” She strides over to the cat lying in the window, and I remember how she said she dated Grace, and I wonder, with an intensity that only makes my face hotter, if she endorses her aunt’s statement. “So, you just disappeared at that party, huh?”

  She does remember me. I move to the display of tropical flowers and examine their vibrant petals. “I… Sorry. It was my first night seeing everyone, and I got dragged away…”

  The truth is that I practically ran into Tommy Ng’s arms when he wandered by us. I couldn’t tell if Rafaela was flirting with me or if it was going to go there eventually, and I’m not used to doing that—liking a girl in public. Everything with Iris was behind our dorm room door, or in town when we were sure none of the girls from our hall would see us. And even then, we weren’t careful enough.

  “Well, you heard about the drama?” Rafaela picks up the cat, who meows with his eyes closed and doesn’t complain when she holds him like a baby, rubbing her cheek against his fur. “This dude I dated for, like, two seconds showed up wasted, acting like a complete asshole.”

  “That was about you?” We’d all had a few drinks by then
and that part of the night was a little hazy, but I vaguely remember DeeDee proudly stating she’d kicked out some randoms. And I guess I’m surprised to know that Rafaela used to date guys, too.

  “Yeah, some jerk from the Palisades. I thought we were just having fun, nothing serious… but he’s taking this thing to stalker levels.” Rafaela shakes her head.

  I wander around the small shop, hesitant to open my mouth for fear of sounding stupid. Wishing I’d worn something a little nicer than my mustard-yellow shorts. Wondering if she can tell how nervous I am, and why.

  She smooshes her lips into the cat’s fur and sets him back on the window ledge, where he curls into a velvety orange ball in the corner, near a display of succulents. I look above him to where a sign is taped, and read, in letters that bleed through to the back of the sign, HELP WANTED.

  I point to it. “You’re looking for help?”

  Her green-gold eyes follow my finger. “Oh, yeah. My aunt wants someone in here a couple of days a week so she can take some time to herself. Summers get kind of crazy with weddings and she always ends up working herself to exhaustion. She basically breathes this store—took it over from her mom, so she’s super passionate about it.” She looks at me. “Why? You interested?”

  I shrug. “Maybe.” This is the first summer I’m old enough to have a part-time job, but Mom and Saul aren’t big on the idea. They’re of the “kids should be kids” thinking and would rather we concentrate on school and enjoy our summers than spend our free time working for minimum wage. It’s nice of them, but it would also be nice to earn my own money and have someplace to go a few times a week.

  And to see Rafaela a few times a week, too, if I’m being honest.

  “Well, it pays nothing,” she says. “But I’d be your boss, so it’d be low-stress.”

  I look around at the green life surrounding us. “I don’t know anything about flowers.”

  “They’re not such a mystery.” She beckons me over to a cooler full of pastel blooms, the petals bunched up to create a tight circle. Even among all the mingling scents of the flowers, up close I notice how good Rafaela smells. “These are peonies. We get a lot of orders for bridal bouquets made out of these. People freak out because they’re not available year-round—but they’re perennials, so if you plant them they’ll come back every year.”