Tyler’s car is parked diagonally across the sidewalk and parking strip, and I can’t help but wonder what sort of rage he was in when he pulled up like that. Perhaps it was similar to the mood he’s in right now. He throws open the door and then pauses to look at me. He just stares.
“What?” I ask as I near both him and the car.
“Well?” he prompts. Raising his eyebrows, he gives the vehicle a nod. I run my eyes over the white bodywork for anything significant, but there’s nothing of interest. “Do you even know what car this is?” He looks at me as though I’m stupid, like I don’t know what an airbag is or something, and to prove a point I walk around to the back of the vehicle and study its logo. Four interlinked metal circles.
“An Audi?” I guess.
“An Audi R8,” he finishes with an obnoxious smirk, his expression smug.
“Okay,” I say. “Do you want me to applaud you or something?”
He laughs as he places a hand on the top of his door. “Girls are clueless. You’d probably pass out if you saw the figures on this thing.”
“Get over yourself,” I murmur, shaking my head and reaching for the door. I carelessly slide inside to discover that there are only two seats, and everything is leather and metallic, and perhaps he is right about this car being expensive, and so I keep my mouth shut.
“Call Tiffani,” he says as he joins me inside, slamming the door behind him. With a sharp flick of his wrist, he tosses his phone onto my lap and starts the engine.
“You mean your girlfriend who you like to either be all over or completely ignore?”
The corner of his lips pull up into a smirk and my stomach churns in disgust. I have never in my entire life met someone with this many flaws, who thinks that everything is a joke.
“You’re an ass,” I mutter, gripping his phone in my hand and angling my body away from him. I stare out the window as he over-revs the engine and sends us flying down the avenue.
“Call her,” he says again. “I have no idea where we’re going.”
I heave a sigh and sit up, turning the device around in my hands and staring at the screen for a while. “Passcode?”
“4355.”
Quickly I type in the digits and unlock his phone. I pull up his contacts. “Is that your favorite number or does it stand for a word or—”
“It spells out hell,” he bluntly answers. But despite his monotone, he keeps his eyes on the road and tightens his grip on the wheel. “Call her.”
Obeying his request, which is more like a demand, I scroll through his list of contacts until I find Tiffani’s number. I take notice of the unbelievable amount of numbers he has saved, the majority of which are girls’. And then I call his girlfriend.
“Baby, what’s up?” Tiffani says once she picks up, and I scrunch up my nose at the use of the pet name.
“It’s Eden,” I tell her. “Tyler’s driving. Where are we all going tonight? Has it been decided yet?”
She speaks back within a heartbeat. “Hollywood Sign. We all agreed that we have to show you it. It’s amazing.” I bite down on my lower lip as excitement radiates through my body. I’ve always wanted to visit it, and although Venice sounds great too, I’m glad they’ve chosen the sign. “Have you guys left already?”
“Yeah.” My voice hitches when the car jerks roughly to one side, Tyler’s steering skills proving to be absolutely pathetic. I wonder how he even got his license to begin with.
“I’ll text everyone and see if they’re ready and we’ll all just meet you out there,” she says sharply. “Put me on speaker for a sec.” I move the phone away from my ear, doing as she asks, and then hold the device by Tyler.
“Yeah?” he says. He glances down at the screen for only a moment before slamming on the brakes when we approach a stop sign that he obviously hadn’t noticed.
“I haven’t spoken to you all day!” Tiffani’s voice loudly echoes through the speakers. I catch Tyler roll his eyes in complete disrespect. “Did your mom let you out of the house?”
He wrenches up the parking brake and fixes me with a firm glare, slowly shaking his head before saying, “No, I was stuck inside all day.”
“That sucks,” Tiffani says. Poor, poor girl. She’s totally oblivious. “I can’t wait to see you! We won’t be too long. Just wait for us by the Sunset Ranch.”
“Sure.”
“Love you.”
“Yeah,” he says, and then takes the phone from my hand to hang up the call. Yawning, he leans back in his seat and runs a hand through his hair.
I snort, widening my eyes in disbelief. Every day, every hour he gives me more and more reasons to detest him. “You’re unbelievable. Stuck inside all day?”
With a soft grunt, he releases the brake and lets the car roll across the intersection. “That’s what I’m going with.”
“You’re really going to lie to her like that?” I try to meet his eyes as he glances at me, but I’m also keeping my attention on the road, since he doesn’t seem to be doing it. “You were at the beach gambling and fighting and you’re just going to act like you were inside all day? I feel so bad for her.”
He laughs, his voice so deep that it gives me a momentary chill. “Yeah, you’re definitely Dave’s daughter. You gotta learn to mind your own business, kid.”
“Stop calling me kid,” I warn. “You’re only a year older than me and you’ve got fewer brain cells.”
“Alright, kid,” he says, but he’s smirking. “Your dad’s an asshole.”
“At least that’s one thing we can agree on.” I sigh heavily, filling the silence. There was once a time when I could tolerate my dad. Back when I was younger, I thought he was great. But then I guess he got bored of Mom and bored of me and bored of his life with the two of us, and so he walked out and never came back. And now he’s just some loser with a temper and wrinkles and graying hair. “I don’t even know what his problem is. I get that you must be super annoying to live with, but it’s like he looks for reasons to yell at you.”
Tyler taps the steering wheel impatiently. “Tell me about it.”
“My mom’s better off without him,” I muse, and then instantly backpedal. “Not that it’s unfortunate for your mom or anything like that. What about you? Where’s your dad?”
Out of nowhere, he slams on the brakes. “What the fuck?”
I blink, stunned by his aggressive reaction and unable to muster up a reply. I try to babble an apology, but my words only come out ragged and uneven. “Sorry—I—”
Clenching his jaw and revving up the engine, he steps on the gas and the car accelerates so fast that my body is thrown back against the seat. “Don’t talk,” he spits.
“I didn’t mean to offend you—” I try, my pulse racing as guilt consumes me. Maybe his dad has passed, I think. And I’ve just reminded him of it.
“Shut the hell up,” he growls through gritted teeth, and I decide then that I’m not going to say anything more. I fear that if I do, he’ll just continue to speed up.
Folding my arms and keeping my eyes away from him, I pay attention to the Los Angeles scenery as we leave Santa Monica on the freeway. I don’t mind not talking. Every time I do, he either gives me a cocky answer, a sarcastic reply, or an unnecessary insult. He increases the volume of the music, a selection of R&B songs from his phone, and leaves it blaring loudly for the entire journey, profanities drilling into my ears. The silent tension between us is so awkward, like we should be talking but can’t bring ourselves to do so. We’re stepsiblings yet it feels as though we’re arch-enemies, and I know it shouldn’t be this way.
“We’re almost there,” he mutters an hour of reckless driving later. The lengthy silence is so unbearable by now that I can’t even look at him. I’ve just spent the time trying not to think about the fact that we haven’t said a word to each other in over sixty minutes, focusing my thoughts instead on how pretty our surroundings are.
We pull onto a long street named North Beachwood Drive, and before me the Hollywood Sign stands tall on the mountains, overlooking the city in the evening sun. I bite my lip and close the sun visor to get a better look, and I feel almost nervous as I stare at the global icon that I have only ever seen in movies. Seeing it in real life is a completely different experience.
Continuing straight ahead, the road changes from a residential street to a narrow canyon road running along the bottom of the mountain. We pass a sign for the Sunset Ranch that Tiffani mentioned, and shortly after, we pull into a small parking area by the side of the road. Everyone’s already there, and I have no idea how they beat us.
“You took the freeway, didn’t you?” Meghan asks when we get out of the car, and Tiffani immediately prances over to throw her arms around Tyler.
With his attention being fought for, he somehow manages to reply, “Yeah, did you guys go through Beverly Hills?” Tiffani’s pressing her body to his and drawing his lips to hers, but Tyler doesn’t seem that interested. Not quite smiling, he leans down and kisses her for the briefest of moments before drawing away and stepping back. I think I’m the only one who’s paying attention to them, and when he notices me watching, he lowers his head and stares at the ground.
Jake steps forward while locking his car. “Easiest way to speed and not get caught. We didn’t want to keep you waiting for an hour.”
“It’s incredible,” I murmur, shaking my head as I stare up at the bold letters. I squint to avoid the sun. “Thanks for showing me it.”
All six of them laugh at once, including Tyler. I receive a few eye-rolls too.
“We haven’t shown you it yet,” Rachael says. She’s holding a few bottles of water in her hands. “We’re taking you all the way up.”
“Up?” I glance up the mountain again, wondering how steep it is. It looks like hard work.
“Yeah, up,” Dean says. There are even more bottles of water in his hands. “We better get moving if you want to see it before the sun goes down. It takes about an hour to get up there. And it’s hot. So here.” He hands me a bottle, passes one to Meghan, and a third to Jake.
“Who remembers the route?” Rachael asks as she hands Tyler and Tiffani some water.
Tyler snorts, dropping his hand to Tiffani’s waist as he points to the trail behind us. “It’s not that damn hard, Rach. Sharp left and then right.”
I notice a sign for the Hollyridge Trail, and I figure this is the path we’ll be taking. Tyler and Tiffani stay at the front, with Jake, Dean, Meghan, Rachael and me behind them, and we begin our ascent. The trail is wide and decorated with the wonderful blessing that is horseshit.
“That was the worst hour of my life,” I hiss quietly to Rachael as we tag along slightly behind the rest of the group. “Remind me never to go in a car with Tyler ever again.”
She laughs, her feet scuffing the dirt as we head upward. “What happened?”
“He almost killed us because I asked where his dad was,” I admit. My eyes find their way to him. He’s leading us up the trail with Tiffani behind him. “Is his dad, like . . . dead?”
Rachael almost chokes on her water as she takes a sip, and then she stops walking for a moment to fix me with a horrified look. “God, Eden, no. Mentioning his dad around him is like stepping in front of a loaded gun. You’re asking to be killed.”
We start walking again. “Why?”
“He’s in jail for car theft or something,” Rachael tells me, her voice lowered. She keeps constantly glancing up to check that no one can hear us. “Tyler’s super sensitive about it.”
My eyes drift back up to him. Somewhere deep inside of me, I feel a little bad for him. Maybe he was close with his dad and now he’s no longer in the picture. That must be tough. And a divorce on top of that must be even harder.
It doesn’t take us long to reach the sharp left turn that he rudely reminded Rachael of. The trail also goes straight ahead, but we make an almost complete turn around to the left and keep going up. The horseshit disappears after this point.
Dean was right about it being hot, and I’m thankful for the water he gave me. But despite the heat, I don’t mind the hike. It’s good exercise, and the views of Los Angeles are totally worth it. We stop every so often for a breather, and to just stare out over the city, taking in the sheer size of it and how beautiful it looks from above. It’s so peaceful up here.
Eventually we come to a fork in the trail that opens up into two concrete roads, and we take the right.
“Shouldn’t we have gone left?” I ask, noticing how we’re walking away from the sign rather than toward it. It makes me wonder if they’re planning on playing a cruel joke on me.
“No,” Jake says. He slows down and matches his pace to mine, hovering by my side as everyone else ignores me. “Going left takes you back down. You go right and you walk around the back of the sign.”
I take a long swig of my water and then point my bottle to the road ahead. “Isn’t this illegal?”
“Drinking water?” Jake says. “Not that I know of.”
I roll my eyes, laughing a little as I watch Meghan pull Rachael up a steeper part of the road. “Is it or isn’t?”
“It’s only illegal if you cross the fence,” he tells me. “You can get pretty close from behind it.” He tilts his head back to the sky for a few seconds, and when he glances back down he meets my gaze. “Sorry about how lame I was on Saturday. I lose all conversation skills after a couple beers.”
I smile a little. I’m surprised he even remembers talking to me, and I’m blushing slightly that he’s apologizing for it. “You weren’t lame. Your questions were.”
“Let’s just start again,” he says, and then holds out his hand. “I’m Jake. You must be that cute girl who’s here for the summer. Eden, right?”
I feel my cheeks growing even hotter. I anxiously bite my lip and tilt my head so that he doesn’t notice. I still manage to shake his hand. His palms feel warm against mine. “Nice to meet you, Jake.”
“So,” he says, “how’s Los Angeles treating you?”
“It’s amazing.” I notice that either everyone else is speeding up or Jake and I are slowing down, because the gap between us and the rest of the group is increasing. I catch Tyler throwing a disapproving glance back at us. I scrunch up my nose and glare after him for a moment. What’s his problem? I try not to let it get to me. “I love it.”
Jake’s eyes smolder as a wide grin plays on his lips. “Is your boyfriend waiting for you back in Portland?”
“No,” I say, and I glance sideways at him. “If you’re trying to be subtle here, it’s really not working.”
“Dammit,” he mutters. He lets out a hearty laugh. “Subtlety and conversations aren’t really my strong points. But I do have some other strong points. Let me take you out some night and I’ll show you them.”
He looks confident as he quirks up an eyebrow and waits for a reply, but I’m not sure how to be as smooth as him. I’m not someone who gets asked out by guys a lot. The closest situation I can think of is the one time a guy from algebra class asked me if I would help him understand the basic foundation of quadratic equations back in freshman year. Even then I said no, because he was known for his excessive sneezing. His name was Scott. Behind his back, it was Snotty Scotty.
“Maybe,” is the cop-out answer I give Jake. Maybe I’d agree if we’d said more than a few sentences to each other, but right now he’s still a stranger to me. Maybe another time. Maybe later.
“I can deal with a maybe,” he says. “Hey, look, we’re almost there.”
My eyes move to the road ahead and I notice how it winds to the left, where a tall wire fence begins. Tiffani skips ahead to the bend, grabbing Tyler’s hand and pulling him along behind her. “Eden, come see this!” she calls, and Jake nudges me forward.
Rachael reaches back for my elbow and hauls me up the final part of the route with her, half skipping, half jogging. We’ve made it to the sign in fifty minutes. The fence follows the path around, and when she pulls me around the corner it hits me all at once that I am standing behind the Hollywood Sign above Los Angeles.
My breath catches in my throat, the silence around me allowing me to focus on the moment. I press my hands to the fence, my eyes wide, my pulse racing. From behind, the view is breathtaking. The letters are absolutely huge, standing above the city. They’re much bigger than you think they are.
“Worth the hike?” Dean asks beside me. It pulls me out of my trance. The only thing I can do is slowly nod, my eyes never leaving the view in front of me.
“It’s so beautiful,” I say quietly.
“We haven’t come up here in about a year,” Meghan muses as she runs her hands along the wires. “Feels longer.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Tyler reaching up to the top of the fence and gripping it firmly. I also notice the number of cameras around us. “What are you guys waiting for?” he asks, and then pulls himself up and over in one swift movement. He lands softly on the other side. “C’mon.”
I stare at the cameras for a while, and then the row of signs clearly stating that access to the sign is restricted, and then Tyler. He’s staring back at me, his smile lopsided and his eyes narrowed.
“We have, like, ten minutes before they send out the helicopter,” Tiffani says as she begins to climb. “Eden, touch the sign and then we’ll get out of here.”
I stare doubtfully at the two of them. Helicopter? “Really, it’s okay. I don’t need to touch the—”
“Just touch the fucking sign,” Tyler snaps, locking his eyes on me. Tiffani lands on the restricted side of the fence beside him. She places a hand on his chest and pushes him away from the rest of us.
“We won’t get caught,” Rachael reassures me quietly just before she climbs over with Meghan and Dean. “We do this all the time.”
“Don’t worry,” Jake adds. “If we get caught, we’ll all go down together.” He reaches for my hand and places it on the wire. “But we gotta be quick.”
Succumbing to the type of peer pressure that my fifth grade teacher used to warn me about, I reach up to the top of the fence and somehow swing my body over it. I lose my balance slightly on the landing, and I only realize then just how steep the mountain truly is. The others have already started making their way down to the sign, but I wait for Jake and he shows me a way down that won’t break my neck.
“I love this place,” Dean says as he lingers by the first “O.” “I wonder how many people around the world would kill for the opportunity to do this. We’re lucky.”
“Dude, stop getting all sentimental, it’s just letters on a mountain,” Tyler mutters. “This city is stupid as hell and so is this sign.”
“You’re so negative,” Tiffani murmurs.
Ignoring them, I follow Jake up to the “H.” He steps back and nods, a warm smile on his lips. “You first.”
I feel nervous for some reason. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m about to do something that so many people dream of, or perhaps it’s because I could fall to my death any second. I take a deep breath and step forward, and then I touch the white-painted metal of the “H” of the famous Hollywood Sign.
And I feel the exact same way as I did two seconds ago. “Oh,” I say. It occurs to me then that we are all so infatuated by nothing more than pieces of metal on poles.
Jake places his hand next to mine. “How about that date then?”
I might have said yes at this point, simply because we’re literally standing underneath the Hollywood Sign and it’s the perfect place to accept a date, but Tyler is yelling, “What the hell, man?” before I even get the chance to open my mouth.
“What?” Jake pulls an irritated face, stepping back from the sign to meet Tyler’s eyes as he approaches us with his hands balled into fists.
“What the hell did you just say to her?” Tyler’s expression is hard, jaw clenched, eyes dark. He steps closely in front of Jake, his forehead tilted down as he narrows his eyes into tiny slits.
“Tension,” Rachael mouths when I glance at her for help. I do vaguely remember her saying something about there being this unspoken tension between the pair. Right now, it no longer seems unspoken.
“Bro, get outta my face,” Jake mutters. He retreats and shrugs, throwing up his hands and turning to the side.
“No,” Tyler objects, shaking his head as he takes a step around Jake, straightening up in front of him again and jabbing a finger into his chest. “You two are not happening. I’ll kick your ass if you even think about it.”
“Tyler, baby, chill,” Tiffani says, and she forces her body in between the two of them. With her hands on Tyler’s chest, she tries to push him back, but his eyes are still locked on Jake. “Don’t be an asshole. Stop trying to start a fight.”
Dean joins in, stepping in front of Jake and shaking his head in disapproval. “C’mon, guys. Quit it.”
Then my attention is torn away from the potential fight to the faint drill and the pumping of motors and the whirling of blades, and as the sound grows louder, I find myself glancing up to the sky.
And it is then that I find myself under the eye of an LAPD helicopter.
