I was shaking, my hands trembling so badly, I didn’t even dare take the glass of water Suzanne poured for me. What just happened? Had I dreamt it? The way he had looked at me … it was the same way I looked ata tub of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food, like I was going to devour the whole thing and savour every mouthful.
‘You saw Ren then?’ Suze asked.
‘I’m so confused,’ I said, nodding and sliding down the door until my bum hit the floor. ‘I hate being confused. I’ve worked really hard to get confusion out of my life. I stopped watchingDoctor Whobecause I couldn’t work out what was going on any more. All I want is straightforward and simple and happy.’
‘Then that settles it,’ she said, putting the water down on the counter. ‘There’s only one place we can go.’
‘To a small dark cave a hundred miles away from the nearest living thing?’
She threw down her tea towel and picked up her handbag. ‘I’m taking you to the happiest place on earth.’
‘A small dark cave a hundred miles away from the nearest living thing?’
‘Shut up and get in the car,’ she said, clipping me gently around the back of the head. ‘You’ll see when we get there.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
‘I cannot believe we’re at Disneyland,’ I said as we wandered down Main Street USA, Suze wearing a Minnie Mouse varsity jacket and me, living my best life in a ‘first time visitor’ badge and a pair of sparkly silver Mickey ears. ‘This is so much better than a dark cave. You really are pitching for sister of the year, aren’t you?’
‘You mean I’m not a shoo-in?’ she replied with mock surprise. ‘I paid for the Lightning Lane tickets and everything.’
Staring around with the wide-eyed wonder of a sugar-cracked seven-year-old, the strange moment outside Ren’s house felt like it had happened a million years ago instead of a few hours earlier. And if I pushed it right back into the darkest corner of my mind and concentrated on literally anything else, I could easily go for three minutes without thinking about him. Five if I had a snack. Even though I could tell she was itching to ask about it, Suzanne wasn’t pushing the conversation, and for that, I was grateful.
‘This must be the tenth time I’ve asked since I got here,’ I said, taking in the masses of people all around us. ‘But how does anyone get anything done in this town?’
‘It’s a reward for having to put up with all the hot people,’ Suzanne explained. ‘Yes, I have to see the most beautiful women in the world every time I go out to buy milk, but I can also be eating Mickey beignets in under forty minutes should the mood strike.’
Biting into delicious, overpriced churro, I considered the trade-off. It was fair.
‘Never had you pegged as a Disney person,’ I said.
‘There are only two kinds of people in this world.’ She raised her hand to give Donald Duck a nonchalant wave. ‘Disney people, and people who don’t know they’re Disney people. I used to turn my nose up at it as well, but that was before I had one too manyStar Wars-themed cocktails at eight in the morning and spent the entire day riding The Haunted Mansion drunk.’
‘Reflection and growth is such an important part of the human experience,’ I said wisely. ‘Still, I can’t believe we just turned up in the middle of the afternoon. I honestly thought you weren’t allowed in a theme park unless you left your house while it was still dark and no one was talking to each other by the time you arrived.’
She shook her head. ‘No, turns out you can arrive at any time. Not only that, you can leave whenever you want as well, you don’t have to be here for fifteen hours then crawl back to the car tired, emotional and piss-wet through from the log flume.’
‘It never was a proper day out unless someone cried in the car on the way back, was it?’ I sniffed, misty-eyed with nostalgia. ‘Gran threatening to turn the car aroundand Mum climbing in the back to separate us while we were going eighty down the motorway.’
‘Happy days,’ she replied. ‘And the fact we believe that probably explains more about us as adults than we realize.’
Suzanne stopped in front of the statue of Walt and Mickey, chomping an ear off her Mickey-shaped ice cream while I listened in on a bespectacled man lecturing his girlfriend as to why Disney as a whole was very problematic and they shouldn’t really be here at all but since they were, he had to get some blue milk and make his own lightsaber. My mind wandered, each thought drifting into another until I ended up somewhere I didn’t want to be. Was everything going to plan with Myrna’s party? What would she wear? What would Bel wear? Ren in his grandfather’s tux, Ren in the doorway of his house, Ren looking at me across the garden and the kiss, the kiss, the kiss.
‘I really miss Gran,’ Suzanne said.
I was so shocked, I nearly dropped my churro.
‘You do?’
A distressed-looking dad, covered in an assortment of children, cleared the bench beside us and Suzanne promptly plopped down, beating a gaggle of teenagers who stalked off with dark looks on their beautiful faces.
‘Of course I do. Just because I don’t talk about something all the time doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about it.’
I sat down on the bench, not sure what to say next. I’d got so good at keeping my feelings under control, it was difficult to let them loose even when I really wanted to. Instead I watched my sister while she watched theworld go by, the same happy glossiness to her that I’d noticed when I first arrived. The little lines in her forehead were smoother than usual, her limbs seemed looser in their sockets, and she’d traded her resting thinking face for an uncomplicated grin.
‘You really love it here, don’t you?’ I said.
She nodded. ‘I do. Out of everywhere I’ve lived, there’s something special about LA. Just one thing missing though.’
