Chapter 14: Sunset Strip

Once I had coughed up all the saltwater out of my lungs, we dried off and changed back into our clothes. Jo's blouse was wet now, but she put it on anyway, saying it gave her a beachy look. We hauled back to the parking lot when Jo said, "Everybody pile in. I'm hungry."

"Jo, how the hell are we all gonna fit?" Johnny remarked.

"Becca can sit in front—"

"Why does she get to sit in front?!"

"She's our guest, idiot. I don't know, you guys better find a way to seat yourselves in the back because I'm about to take off."

I hopped in the front seat with Jo as the three guys squeezed into the backseat, leaving Delores standing outside the car. "What the hell?" she groaned before she climbed over the guys, laying over their laps with her feet hanging out the side. "Keep your hands to yourselves, boys," she said as she slid her sunglasses on and leaned on the side of the car.

I giggled as Jo zoomed out of the parking lot and back onto the main road.

"Jo, where we goin'?" Tony asked from the backseat over the torrent wind.

"The burger joint!"

"Which burger joint?!"

"Sunset!"

"Oh, Lord."

I had heard of Sunset Strip from some of the movies I had seen before, and the reminder that I was in the city where those movies were made brought a tingle of excitement in my stomach. For half an hour, we drove through Los Angeles until we made it to Sunset Strip. Palm trees lined the street as other nice cars and convertibles flooded the road. There were so many clubs and restaurants and tall buildings and people that I couldn't help but feel glee swell inside me.

"Woooooh!" Jo yelled as she pressed harder on the gas, flying us down the road. "Put your hands up, Becca!"

"What?!"

"Put your hands up!" She took one hand off the wheel to grab my hand and lift it in the air, and I looked back to see the others were holding their arms up in the air and yelling. So I raised my other arm and laughed as we blew through the strip like an ambulance.

Finally, Jo swerved the car in front of a burger place that had a rotating sign in the shape of a burger on the roof. "Best grease in all of America," Jo commented as we all hopped out of her car and made our way into the joint.

"Not you again!" a greasy man with a towel over his shoulder yelled as Jo led the way inside. He looked like both the chef and the owner of the place.

"Always happy to see you, chief," she said, raising her eyebrows over her sunglasses as she led us to a table near the back. It was a large booth that could hold three of us on each side, and I squeezed in between Bobby and Johnny. The booths were red and squishy, and the table was metal. The large window we sat beside showed the Sunset Strip and all the cars zooming by.

The man who greeted us walked over to our booth. "The usual?"

"Yes, sir!" Jo enthusiastically said, slapping the tabletop.

"Oh, your cult has a new follower!" the man said, pointing a chubby finger at me. "Young and pretty, just how you like them, Jo."

I looked to Jo with a confused smile.

"She's just visiting," Jo said with a tight smile, tapping her hands on the table.

"Yeah, right," Delores said beside Jo, casting an arm over the back of the booth. "That's what I thought when I first met her, too."

"I wouldn't mind if she stuck around a while," Johnny said, looking at me up and down. He had stolen a toothpick from the holder beside the napkins, wiggling it between his teeth.

"You kids kill me," the man said with a mighty laugh before he walked away, yelling at someone in the kitchen. "The usual for Jo's gang! Make it six!"

"What's the usual?" I asked, trying to deflect Johnny's gaze on me.

"Double cheeseburger, fries, and chocolate milkshake," Bobby said, and I realized that he was still shirtless, only wearing a pair of jeans.

"We're all gonna have heart attacks by 30," Tony said with a sigh.

"Well, if you're gonna die young, you better live young," Jo said as she pulled her pack of Marlboros out of her pocket and lit one.

"Hey, share," Delores said, slinking over Jo's shoulder. Without looking, Jo took a drag and then handed it to Delores who took a drag from it too.

"So, you don't smoke?" Johnny asked me as he took his own pack out of his pocket and slapped it against the table.

"No," I answered, trying to get comfortable between Bobby's big shoulders and Johnny's bony ones.

"What, you really are a prude? Don't tell me you're a virgin, too?"

Delores chuckled behind her cigarette, and Jo rolled her eyes.

"Uh..." I trailed, and behind my mind flashed to the night with Georgia. That was the closest I had ever gotten to intimacy with another person. Just a kiss and a bruise on my neck.

"Don't answer him," Jo said as she snatched the cigarette back from Delores and hit it. "He's a pervert."

"You're a pervert, too," Johnny said back to her. "Can't get jealous if you didn't call dibs first."

The table went quiet. I looked over at Jo who was staring at Johnny now with one of her piercing looks. Tony blew air out of his mouth and scratched his head, and Delores was staring at me.

"What?" I asked with a nervous chuckle.

"Nothing," Jo snapped. "He's out of his mind, aren't you, Johnny?"

"Still had it until I met you."

Everyone kind of chuckled, and tension in the air dissipated. I was still hung up on what he meant by calling dibs, but before I would press it, a waitress came out with two big trays.

"Usual for the Jo gang," she said with a smile as she started handing out burger plates and milkshakes.

"We've decided to call ourselves Jo-sters," Jo said as she immediately started eating her shoestring fries.

"I thought we agreed on Jo-minites," Delores argued.

The waitress slid a plate and a milkshake over to me, and the smell that hit my nostrils was incredible. I waited politely until everyone had their food, although Bobby and Jo were already scarfing theirs down, and then dug in.

They all talked with their mouths full while we ate, and even after we had finished our milkshakes, which was the best milkshake I had ever had in my life, they still kept talking and smoking.

"You said you're from New Orleans, right, Becca?" Johnny asked me as he cast his arm over the booth behind me, his hand grazing my shoulder. "I heard everywhere's haunted there. You believe in ghosts?"

"No, I don't. Although there was one time..." I thought about Mr. Bubbly at Café Lafitte, but I had never really chalked it up to a ghost encounter, and I didn't particularly feel like telling the five pairs of eyes on me that I got my behind pinched by a frisky ghost. "But I think it wasn't anything."

"So, you know how to French?" he asked, and suddenly everyone at the table snorted. I wasn't dumb enough to not know what he meant.

"I speak French," I corrected him.

"Must have a flexible tongue, then?"

"Johnny!" everyone groaned, looking away in disgust. Jo was only staring straight at him, making no expression.

"What?!" he asked, throwing his hand up with the cigarette between his fingers. "Have you guys heard the French? It sounds like they're just gagging."

"Don't be a bigot, Johnny," Delores said.

"Or a creep," Tony added.

Somehow, I felt safer leaning to shirtless Bobby than to Johnny.

"Alright, sorry, sorry," he said, smirking up at Jo's deadly stare.

As fun as the group was, they were a little exhausting. I was too socially fatigued to press it further, to ask why Jo was glaring at him, or to try and defend myself from his lascivious comments.

The conversation diverted quickly. Tony said, "So are we going to London Fog tonight?"

"You wanna come?" Johnny immediately asked me.

"No," Jo answered for me. "I was asked to take her out today, not tonight."

Her eyes cut through me, and my illusions of being part of this friend group shattered inside me. I remembered that Jo was forced to do this, that she told me before we left that I was not her friend, and that I did not belong here. I was an outsider, and she said it with her vermilion glare.

"Damn, Jo," Johnny said, but he didn't really press it further. It seemed that Jo was the leader of this group, and that what she said, went. It was quiet at the table for a few moments, and I started to feel bad. I felt like a burden again, and I remembered that I was not socially adapt. I was not cool like them. I was a little nobody from Louisiana who never had any friends, and the only friend I had died, and I had kissed a girl in college, and I didn't like boys, and my Mama hated me, and my Daddy was dead, and the only thing I was good for was having tea parties with a six-year-old girl and her stuffed animals.

"We should go home," Jo said, putting her cigarette out on the ashtray on the windowsill.

"What? The day just got started," Bobby interjected.

"Okay, then I'll take you guys back to the beach and take her home. I'll meet back up with you later." She gave Tony a little push so that he would get up and let her out of the booth, and everyone followed suit. My throat was clogging up now, and it felt like the remaining sea water in my body was stinging at my eyes.

The drive back to the beach wasn't tense. Jo ignored me, talking in giggly conversation with her friends in the backseat while I sat quietly beside her. She dropped them off at their car on the beach, and then headed back to the house. The drive was quiet then.

She screeched the car in front of the door of the house, not even bothering to get out. She tapped the steering wheel and stared straight ahead, wiggling a cigarette between her teeth as her sunglasses hid her eyes.

I stared at her. Why was she being so cruel? What had I done to piss her off, to make her act coldly to me all of a sudden? The way she was casually wiggling her cigarette brought hot anger inside me. She wouldn't even look at me.

"What's your problem?" I blurted, my voice shaky. My eyes were hot, and I desperately hoped that they weren't red so she wouldn't know I was on the verge of crying like a child.

She turned to me slowly. "My problem? What problem?"

"You acted like a jerk," I snapped.

Jo laughed despicably, turning her head away and running a hand through her perfect blonde hair. Her canines were sharp and her teeth pristine white, and her skin was so clear, and her lips a natural reddish pink.

"Look, Becca, I took you out today because Dad made me. I told you before we left that we aren't friends, okay? You're just another worker for my family. This would be like if I took Neil out to the beach and to dinner, and he got all emotional on me like you are. It's weird. You're weird."

She looked back at me, and her grin faded. I watched her throat flex as she gulped, but she didn't take it back or apologize. She just pursed her lips and sucked the inside of her cheek, covering up whatever momentary regret she felt when she saw the damaged look on my face.

I didn't say anything because the rock in my throat was about to puncture my own esophagus. I got out of the car and slammed the door shut, storming up the front steps. Not even a millisecond passed before I heard her car rev and screech out of the driveway.