"She's like red velvet cake in human form."
Calabasas, California is the 21st century Camelot. It's the home of Drake, Bieber, Miley, Britney, Selena, various and sundry Kardashians, plus two less-familiar names: high school sophomores Colinda Quarl...
People don't really live in Calabasas, they hide in Calabasas. Going home means to scurry up the hill, past the trees, and slip inside a gate so you can forget the rest of the world even exists.
Housing subdivisions are the glazed cherries in the Calabasas fruitcake. And many of them are gated to keep the undesirables. As the students of Las Virgenes High left school that day, you could determine the status of their family simply by seeing the gates of the communities they were headed back to.
Colinda put on her air filter-like helmet and biked back to Cloud Vista. The name implies tall frilly gates attached to columns adorned by giant gleaming pearls, with harp-playing angels skipping to and fro, but that was far from the case. They're not ugly, mind you. Two chest-high slats of wrought iron that open and close with the input of a code, at the end of a cobblestone driveway, flanked by brick retaining walls on which hung cursive lettering that read CLOUD VISTA. It would be extravagantly luxurious in most places, but most places aren't Calabasas.
Jaxon Self waved to the guard as the gates pushed inward at Yuba Blanca at the Cove. A basic dividing line for wealth and status in this town is whether your gated community has a guard or not. The guard shack isn't exactly impressive: a small stucco building with a pointed roof and a covered bay for vehicles to drive through. You wouldn't be surprised if someone turned in there thinking it was a drive-in coffee shop. The gate is nice, though: black, polished and arch-shaped, with a nifty YB monogram in the center.
The shack that Holden Fickler and Templynn Treat drove past on their way to The Sycamores of Calabasas would be a cool place to live by itself. About twenty feet tall, made of molded sandstone, it boasts that other Calabasas staple: a fountain. Fountains bubble everywhere. Strip malls have fountains. Hotels, dentists' offices. The library has a fountain.
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The Sycamores is considered the elite gated community in Calabasas; name a random young celeb, and the chances are strong that they live there. Even if you're just visiting, to be seen going through that gate marks you as someone important.
But to get to Templynn's house, Holden had to drive through a second set of gates. This is the entrance to The Retreat at The Sycamores of Calabasas. Yes—a gated community within a gated community. There are no guard shacks here, but none are necessary. Only fools would dare approach the Retreat gate without permission, and no fools live at The Sycamores. There are rumors about some poor sap who touched the gate without permission and fell over dead like he touched the Ark of the Covenant—not serious rumors, but most people would believe it anyway.
And Darius? His grandmother drove him to Wrenbrook, and its gate...
It doesn't have a gate.
It's a handsome neighborhood all the same, built in the 1960s in a Mid-Century Modern style. That was something Darius was happy about when his mother told him they were moving into his grandmother's house. He wasn't so happy about the name of the street she lived on : Woodswallow Drive (the other streets are named Wren, Sunbird, Chickadee, Kinglet; obviously whoever chose Woodswallow was someone who was a bird trivia enthusiast and had a naughty sense of humor).
