Forbidden Boy Page 15
“You didn’t betray us. I’m sorry for saying that. I’m sorry for thinking it. I don’t know where that came from and it was a whole lot of melodramatic guilt to throw at you. You were just trying to be true to yourself. And I’ve always loved that about you.” Chloe made her way down the kitchen counter until she was standing next to Jules and her father and let herself be swept into the family hug. “I am so sorry. I didn’t realize how irrational and cruel I was being,” Chloe continued, both Jules’s and Dad’s arms wrapped around her. “I guess the scientific black-or-white thing isn’t always the best way to approach emotional questions.”
Julianne practically burst with relief. “Well, if we’re being fair, I don’t think sneaking around the way I did was the best choice I’ve ever made. I guess I was just so afraid of what you would think that it never occurred to me to actually level with you.”
Chloe laughed. “Okay, this is getting a little too after-school special, even for me. I’m seriously going to start crying if we don’t ratchet down the heart-to-heart factor a little bit here.”
“Ooooh noooo,” Julianne warned. “I’m not done with you yet.” She pitched her voice up into a dramatic falsetto. “Oh, Chloe, how can you ever forgive me? You’re my best friend in the world—I would be lost without you. Chloe, just tell me what to do to make it up to you…anything.” Julianne widened her eyes earnestly, and batted her long eyelashes at her sister.
Chloe rolled her eyes. “Cue the made-for-TV music.”
Julianne sighed dramatically. “Fiiine. I guess you’ll never know the deeply heartfelt lessons I’ve learned from this whole growing process.”
Chloe smiled. “You know, I think I’ve got some ideas.” The look on her face said she completely understood.
Dad pulled the girls in close, and they all stared out over the ocean. They just stood there, close to one another.
“I really am sorry about what happened with your painting,” Chloe said seriously. “I know how hard you worked on it. And how much it meant to you to do that for Mom.”
Julianne shrugged, but she felt a lump forming at the back of her throat. “I just wanted to keep a little tiny piece of her alive, I guess.”
Dad spoke gently. “You know, girls, we don’t need a painting, or this house, or this beach to know what home feels like. Don’t you worry about Mom’s memory. No matter where we are, she’ll be with us.”
Julianne felt her mouth stretching into a grin, her eyes brimming with happy tears.
Chapter Twenty-three
Julianne was running down the beach at full speed, the sand flying under her sneakers, the sun racing to keep up with her. Since the flooding had mauled her painting, she had been running on the beach each day to clear her head. She usually didn’t run much outside of cross-country season, and she was pleasantly surprised by how much she enjoyed it. Her iPod was strapped to her arm with an athletic strap, and despite being pulled back with a blue stretchy headband, a handful of loose curls stuck to her neck. She could feel the music propelling her down the beach. She ran through Kelly Clarkson, Fergie, Beyoncé, and Missy Elliott, but when Gwen Stefani snuck into the shuffle, she felt herself launching ahead double-time over the uneven ground. Julianne briefly thought of running along the waterline where the waves and shifting tides had made the sand wet and smooth and packed flat, but decided against it. If she was going to run on the beach, she was going for the biggest challenge she could handle.
Since her talk with Dad and Chloe, life in the Kahn household had been warm, fun, and relatively uneventful once again—if somewhat bittersweet. Julianne and Chloe were closer than they’d ever been, but Julianne knew that their renewed bond was underscored by a sense of loss.
As she headed back down the beach for home, Julianne’s runner’s high was tainted by the realization that she’d have to run past the Moores’ place on her way home. The Moore property was expanding so rapidly that it would have been almost impossible to avoid it. Julianne took a deep breath, promising herself yet again that running past the massive construction site in no way compromised the campaign of avoidance she’d launched against Remi over the past weeks.
After talking about it a lot with Dad and Chloe, Julianne had more or less acknowledged that Remi was an innocent bystander in his family’s expansion campaign, but she still couldn’t bring herself to talk to him. Fair or not, he was still tangled up in the messy web of the summer’s hurt and loss, and Julianne wasn’t ready to untangle that part just yet. She had too much else to deal with. She shifted her eyes away from the looming construction and focused instead on the gleaming, turquoise water. The ocean looked like an exact replica of Julianne’s painting, giving her a familiar pang of pride and loss. As Julianne stretched her long legs into a comfortable gait, she ran with her head slightly turned. She just couldn’t keep her eyes off the water. It felt a little too much like a sitcom setup. At any moment, Julianne thought, I’ll probably get bonked on the forehead by a stray Frisbee, or I’ll collide with another runner who had his eyes on the water, too. She was still laughing at her own imagination when the playlist shuffled to “SexyBack.” Julianne quickened her stride and let Justin steer her back toward home.
Arriving on the porch, her sound track still blaring in her ears, Julianne leaned down to stretch her calves before taking off her running shoes. Taking a little hop forward, she pulled her right heel behind her back and held it with her left hand. Every time she came back from a run, Julianne looked up at her bedroom balcony and promised herself that this wouldn’t be the last time she’d dash over the sand and return to the house she loved. She sighed and finished her stretch before kicking off her sneakers onto the porch and heading inside.
She padded into her bedroom in her white ankle socks with green and yellow pom-poms. When Julianne had first bought the socks, Chloe had laughed that they’d ruin her athletic cred. Julianne paused in front of her mirror, rolling her eyes at her red, sweaty face and her soggy curls. She turned to Chloe, who was sprawled out on Julianne’s bed reading Us Weekly.
“I look like Miss Piggy,” Julianne declared.
“No you don’t. You look sporty. Well, except for the socks.” Chloe giggled. Humming “Hollaback Girl” quietly to herself, Julianne headed over to her desk and plunked herself down in front of her computer. She was trying to decide between the online crossword and Perez Hilton when the blinking lights of her cell phone caught her eye. Julianne reached across her round Jackson Pollock mouse pad to grab her phone off the desk, but Chloe darted over from across the room and beat her to it.
“Hmm. I wonder who it could possibly be?” Chloe queried in a singsong voice. She looked at the blinking display, then passed the phone to Jules before returning to the Us Weekly on the bed.
Julianne let a few minutes pass and then reluctantly scrolled through her missed call log. 9:45 a.m.—Remi Moore. 10:56 a.m.—Remi Moore. 11:32 a.m.—Remi Moore. 12:19 p.m.—Remi Moore. She pitched the phone across the room, thankfully hitting an overstuffed pillow on her bed, rather than Chloe. She rubbed her hands roughly over her face, looking the very picture of lovelorn angst. Why won’t he stop calling? What part of “I can’t see you again” can’t he accept? How will I ever superglue my heart back together if Remi won’t leave me alone with the pieces? A tiny nagging voice in the back of Julianne’s brain occasionally reminded her that if Remi did finally stop calling and texting fifteen times a day, she’d be devastated. Beyond devastated. But Julianne couldn’t focus on her messy feelings for Remi right now—there was too much else left up in the air. She pushed herself up from the desk chair and crossed the room to her bed, completely ignoring Chloe, who was still settled in with her magazine. She picked up a stray pillow in a flowered pillowcase and tossed it on top of the cell phone. Then she strode out of the room toward a well-deserved shower, leaving Chloe exactly where she’d found her.
Julianne emerged from the shower forty-five minutes—and three encores of “Irreplaceable”—later, refreshed and ready to
take on the rest of her afternoon. She slipped on a pair of skinny jeans, a white tank top trimmed in hot pink lace—the result of a recent shopping trip with Chloe—and her cute, turquoise slip-ons. She futzed with the clasp of a necklace featuring a hammered metal star that she’d made in lapidary club during sophomore year. Julianne took a cursory glance in the mirror before sliding her oversize sunglasses up the bridge of her nose. The she grabbed her digital camera—complete with its new zoom lens, thanks to a summer of gainful employment—and headed out of her bedroom.
As she walked past Chloe’s room, she heard her sister call, “Jules, is that you?”
Jules walked in and plopped herself facedown on Chloe’s bed, next to Chloe’s hefty stack of surgery guides and diagrams. No wonder she comes to my room to read Us Weekly, Julianne thought.
“So,” Chloe said authoritatively. “Does he always call you seventeen times a day?”
Julianne cast her eyes toward the floor. “On average.”
“He really likes you, Jules,” Chloe declared, her voice softer. “I mean, he really, really likes you.”
“I know,” Julianne admitted.
“Then why are you sitting around the house moping with me all the time?” Chloe asked, a smile crossing her face. “Go out there and get that boy back. Before he actually starts believing that you want nothing to do with him.”
“But—” Julianne began to protest.
“But nothing. You deserve to be happy. So go. Go and be happy with your boyfriend.” Chloe smiled and swatted Julianne’s arm. “I mean it—leave. I have a lot of celebrity gossip to catch up on.” Chloe slipped a copy of People out of her Guide to Cardiothoracic Surgery and opened it with a satisfied sigh. All Julianne could do was walk out of Chloe’s room, camera firmly in hand.
Moments later, Julianne found herself stalking around the side of the house like an incredibly obvious cat burglar. Just two months earlier, this kind of “casing the perimeter” would have meant that Jules was on the prowl with her super-spy hat on. Today it meant something entirely different to Julianne, though. Her digital camera was hanging from the ’60s-inspired strap around her neck, dangling at the ready. She was determined to photograph every angle, crevice, and shadow of the Kahn house before the Moores forced them out.
Even if she, Dad, and Chloe couldn’t hold on to their physical house, she was determined to create a photographic history of of it. She hadn’t decided whether she would frame each shot individually or piece them together in a mural. Dad had promised her free rein over the family room in their next house and, even though Chloe pointed out that it was slightly morbid, Julianne planned to erect a fitting tribute to their lifelong home.
The new school year was rapidly approaching, and Julianne was still trying to wrap her brain around all that had transpired this summer. So much had happened over the last three months that it seemed crazy to Julianne that she was about to just slide back into another September at Palisades High School—the September of her senior year. She was trying to re-acclimate her brain to academic life by reciting the names and capitals of all fifty states, while she snapped her pictures of the house. Then, when she stopped to adjust the light meter on her camera to catch some shadows poking up from the sea grass that surrounded the house, something occurred to her. Despite all the end-of-summer stress, at this exact moment, she was at peace. The sun was at her back. Her nose was filled with the salty air of an August afternoon in Southern California, and she was looking at her crazy life through the lens of a camera.
Even with the crushing loss of her home looming before her, Julianne was still able to create art. It was as easy as looking at life through her own eyes and being completely honest with her vision. Last week she’d taken three rolls of film—one black and white, one sepia toned, and one in eye-popping color—of the ocean view from the beach behind her house. It was the same landscape she had struggled to capture all summer. But viewed through the lens of her camera, the scene came together effortlessly.
Julianne worked her way methodically around the house, snapping pictures for the next three hours. She wanted to remember what the house looked like at every moment of every day—with every change of light. She was also determined not to let her last weeks in the house be a blur of crying and exhaustion. She planned to celebrate life in their little beach home until the Moores and their lawyers dragged her out the front door kicking, screaming, and snapping pictures of the whole mess.
Julianne was relieved to have wrapped everything up with her job at the site. Her courtyard mural had turned out fabulously, and she was thrilled to have such a great new piece to add to her portfolio. It was also a relief not to have to deal with questions from the guys on the crew about her and Remi.
As the sun slipped down behind the ocean, the sky did its slow-motion fade from brilliant navy blue to the cobalt-gray hybrid of a late summer night. Julianne walked down to the beachfront, her camera tapping against her sternum in time with her heartbeat.
Floating in the haze of her thoughts about her photography, the house, and the arrival of fall, Julianne was only half-aware that she was heading onto the Moores’ property. Beyond the jurisdiction of the orange trespassing signs, Julianne’s immediate instinct was to plop down on the sand at the bottom of the construction dunes. She snuggled down at the base of the dune and pulled her legs up in front of her.
You can miss him—it’s okay to miss him, Julianne told herself. She pulled her legs in close to her chest—careful not to disturb her camera—and looked out onto the empty ocean. After a few minutes of listening to the echo of the crashing waves, Julianne realized she was shivering slightly. She stood up, dusted the sand off the bottom of her jeans, and readied herself to head home. She had only gone two steps toward her house when she saw light coming from one of the stark, minimalist rooms of the Moores’ glass house. Julianne peered up the hill and saw Remi backlit against the August night.
Even from her perch frozen at the bottom of the dune, Julianne could tell that Remi was arguing with someone. A moment more of peering into the massive glass mansion revealed the designer-suit-clad silhouette of Remi’s father. Remi’s face was twisted into a determined grimace, and he was gesticulating wildly with what appeared to be a roll of paper. His father’s arms were crossed tightly over his double-breasted suit and tie. Julianne instantly remembered that Remi had told her his father only wore imported silk ties, and she rolled her eyes in spite of herself. Remi kept pointing to the paper tube in his hand, the very picture of an agitated, passionate fighter.
Julianne squinted. What the hell? Are they actually fighting over wallpaper samples? She didn’t want to stick around to find out. Clearly, despite his calls and text messages, Remi’s life was complicated enough without her. She shot a last departing look up the dunes at the feuding Moores before turning around. Then she walked back down the beach toward home, humming mournfully to herself the entire way.
Chapter Twenty-four
The next day, Julianne and Chloe were sitting in the living room reading while their father worked in his studio. Dangling one leg over the side of an overstuffed armchair, Julianne asked Chloe, “So, wait, where does he go to school?”
Chloe popped a pale green grape into her mouth before answering. “Stanford.”
“And what’s his name again?” Julianne pressed.
“Aaron.” Chloe tossed another grape into the air and caught it in her mouth.
“And you met him on rotation at work?” After her own dating drama, Julianne found herself relishing Chloe’s postdate recap.
“Yep. He’s premed, too, but he’s going to be a junior.” Chloe’s cheeks were glowing a radiant pink. Her date two days ago had been such a success that Julianne thoroughly enjoyed hearing Chloe repeat all the details. She loved the way her sister’s face glowed when she was this happy.
“And he took you out for Greek food?” Julianne continued.
“Yup. Definite points for that,” Chloe chirped. “I am getting sick to
death of first dates with checkered tablecloths and drippy candles. So overplayed.” She giggled.
Julianne rolled her eyes playfully. “Okay, final question, but this one is the ultimate test: Did he ever, at any point in the evening, use the word ‘chicks’ or the delightful phrase ‘smart for a girl’ in any context?”
Chloe shut her eyes and let out a dramatic shudder at Julianne’s reference to her disastrous first/last date with Michael at the beginning of the summer. The sisters laughed wickedly at the memory. “No and no!” Chloe declared victoriously. “There was absolutely no chauvinistic ickiness whatsoever. He was a complete and total rock star.”
Julianne arched one eyebrow to let Chloe know that she was appropriately impressed. “Well, then, ladies and gents, I think we have a winner!”
“I hope so,” Chloe remarked. “Have you given any thought to art school applications yet?”
“Not so much,” Julianne admitted. “Although I was thinking that the courtyard mural I did this summer might give me an edge. Not many people do outdoor art.”
“And don’t forget the pictures of our house! The sepia ones you took have ‘professional artist’ written all over them,” Chloe added excitedly.
“Well, I’ll clearly know who to call when I need a manager.”
“I thought you’d never ask,” Chloe shot back gleefully. “Do you want to hear my short-term educational plan for you, or the five-year business plan?” Just as Chloe was opening her mouth to share her (inevitably alphabetized and color-coded) strategies with her sister, the doorbell rang.
“Ooh, saved by the bell! You got lucky this time, Jules.” Chloe jumped up and ran to the door.
Julianne heard her sister scamper into the hallway and throw open the door without even pausing to look out the peephole. She heard the opening whoosh, but then nothing else. After a few seconds of total silence, Julianne ambled over to her sister and was struck dumb. Standing on the stoop were Mr. and Mrs. Moore, dressed to the nines. At their side, Remi bounced slightly, like a runner getting ready to burst from the starting block.