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“Where do you want to go?” Aislin asks. She picks up E.V.’s computer and her latte. “Anywhere you want.”
E.V. considers. “The cemetery.”
Aislin wraps her arm around E.V.’s shoulder. “You are some kind of fun, girl. Bob doesn’t know what he’s missing.”
* * *
At 5:34 P.M., Antonio parks his mother’s boyfriend’s Honda in the Ocean View Cemetery parking lot. As E.V. leaves the car, he is already unbuttoning Aislin’s blouse.
“Guys. Seriously?” E.V. inquires, slamming the door. “Um … cemetery? Dead people? Respect?”
“Sorry, E.V.,” Aislin says, possibly chastened.
E.V. hasn’t been here in a year, but her father’s grave is easy to pick out. He was a sculptor, and his headstone is one of his own works, a smooth, round granite piece riven by a deep fissure.
E.V. sits on the damp grass. He’d died in a car crash, one of those awful, late-night-knock-at-the-door moments in life. She’s over it, as over it as anyone can be.
He was a fine artist and a good man, probably flawed, because apparently everyone is. E.V. likes to draw, and that came from him most likely, along with the belligerent hair and the unpredictable temper. He loved her a lot, probably even loved her mother.
E.V. looks past the neat path of graves to a line of eucalyptus trees. A guy about her age is standing between two small gravestones. A blond, surfer type, shorts, black T-shirt, muscular. He drops two flowers—nothing fancy, just roadside weeds—one for each grave, and then walks away.
E.V. watches him go. Something about the way he moves, deliberately, purposefully, makes her stare. Maybe it’s the way he strides past the gravestones without looking at them.
Maybe it’s the way he pauses to take in the trees, the ocean, perhaps even her.
Two seconds pass, maybe three. A blip, and then he vanishes.
E.V. starts to cry. After a while, she collects herself. She feels a little better, lighter. Crying always helps.
She is climbing into the backseat of Antonio’s car when she sees a black sedan driven by her mother’s chauffeur, Joe.
Joe pulls into the lot and parks, then walks over to her father’s grave and places a white rose on the round headstone.
E.V. can just make out Terra through the darkly tinted windows.
Antonio takes a right out of the cemetery. They pass the surfer guy walking on the side of the road.
“Nice,” Aislin murmurs.
“Bitch,” says Antonio affectionately.
In two days, Eve will forget all about the surfer guy.
In one year, seven months, and sixteen days, she will encounter him again.
He will not be perfect, and he will not be a blip.
* * *
At 6:40 P.M. E.V. returns to her bedroom. She marks the moon landing on her time line. She labels the very end of the line “Right Now.”
E.V. examines her work. It’s thorough. Not perfect, but close. Leach will probably give it an A-, but she’s pretty ruthless, so you never know.
E.V. opens her e-mail and clicks on Bob’s note. For eleven seconds, she stares at it.
Four months from now, E.V. will not remember Bob’s name when she passes him in the lunchroom.
One year and eight months from now, she will realize that the head-butt incident makes a great first-date anecdote.
