In the Desert

Chapter Two

Brighton spent the better part of the rest of the day sleeping. The dull repetition of her phone vibrating its way across the glass table beside her bed woke her.

A text from Brendan came through. We still on for tonight? Just wanted to make sure you weren’t drexting.

Brighton let out a hoarse laugh. “Well, I was drunk, and I did text,” she said aloud as she typed the same words in reply. She added, Do you think any less of me?

He’d done the same in the past and was probably on his way to a night much like hers when they’d met on the street in front of Venture. She wasn’t in any state to go out and have another night that would surely result in imbibing some form of liquor, but she almost couldn’t resist playing the game she and Brendan had played for several years, even after he’d claimed he needed to end it if she wasn’t interested in becoming serious. He’d once compared her to Kryptonite, true to his endearingly dorky, comic-reading ways.

She tossed her phone on the bed, rolling over. She still had planning and packing to do. Plus, getting the car ready. Going out with Brendan was probably a bad idea. However, she knew, as well as anyone else, that she was full of those.

Still in bed, she sighed, hoping her mother didn’t make good on the threat to redo her room one of the summers she was gone. The posters of hotrods peeled from the wall, the rickrack of ephemera from years gone by and the stack of her father’s dusty old records were all like a hug. The photo collage of her with friends, including Brendan, and ticket stubs, playbills, even drawings from when she was little, covered nearly every inch of space. She liked the messy tangle of clothes spilling from the closet, the way the light filtered in through the blinds casting glowing panels across the mirrors, reminding her of sunrise. It was her only oasis in the middle of her mother’s upper-class world.

The half of her that consisted of El Holmes, her late father—and guitar-rock-god—always felt out of place amidst the finery, the dinners, and the swaths of fabric and sketches that populated the fashion designer’s life. She loved her mother. They had a great relationship, but Brighton was the jaded, girl-next door type who’d decided she’d drive and drive and drive until she found a place where she belonged.

Her phone buzzed.

You’ll need to do better than that to get me to think less of you.

She could practically hear the lilt in Brendan’s laugh as he wrote his response. Her stomach rumbled, finally deciding food would be ok. She wrote back. Noodles. Seven. I’ll be the one with the red hair.

After showering, Brighton followed her mother’s tinkling voice, chatting with Ian and Kira, to the sitting room.

“Oh good. You’re alive,” Claire said with a smile. “Tea?” Without waiting for her daughter’s response, she poured a cup and splashed milk in, the way Brighton liked it. “Hang on a sec,” she said, scurrying to the kitchen.

“You feel ok?” Brighton asked Kira.

“I’ll recover. Thankfully, we’re heading out to Long Island for a couple days to visit with friends and their baby and surf; that’ll set me straight.” She tried a laugh, but looked like she might throw up.

“You’ll be back for Brighton’s going away party, right?” Claire said, reappearing with a plate of food.

“Wouldn’t miss it. Then, we head north,” Ian said with what looked like relief.

“I told you, Mom, you don’t need to have a going-away party for me every time I leave for school. I’m going away, but I’m coming back.” She said her well-rehearsed lines every time they had that conversation. However, each year, she wasn’t entirely sure those words were true. That apartment and the City itself, never truly felt like home, maybe except her bedroom. She’d tried staying in there for weeks on end, but after a while, it felt claustrophobic. She wanted to find that place where the moment she set foot on the ground, she knew she’d want to put down roots and stay awhile: to discover a spot where she heard music in the hills or in the tumble of the waves. Somewhere in the world, there existed a place that would feel like her native habitat—where a wild, red-haired, film student, who missed her dad more than she ever dare say, would feel peace in her restless heart. She’d keep driving until she found it.