Under the Bridge

Aurora had wanted to forget who she was, so she’d changed her name. She had wanted to forget the people who reminded her of her childhood, so she’d left without seeing Leanne and Larry or Del. She had wanted to forget the people who reminded her of Cyrus, so she’d written goodbye letters to Jody and Joe, for they’d suffered, too, and went to see Ted for only an hour. “Don’t be a stranger,” he’d said. But she was already a stranger.

She wanted to forget her home, so she’d put the shack up for sale, packed her books and clothes and candle-and-candy-making supplies, brought Dog and Yard, and left the desert for Los Angeles.

She had not even been able to bring herself to stay for Cyrus’s funeral.

The first week in LA, Aurora found a couch to crash on in a dilapidated, communal Craftsman house by the freeway, enrolled at UCLA, and landed a massage therapy job at a spa. On her days off, she drove to West Hollywood and Hollywood and Echo Park and Silver Lake and Westwood and Santa Monica. She drove through the canyons—Laurel, Topanga, Rustic, Beachwood, Beverly Glen. She drove to the San Fernando Valley—Studio City, North Hollywood, Shadow Hills. She repeated the words, the names of the streets and plants and trees aloud like a mantra: Melrose, Sunset, Jasmine, Rose; jacaranda, eucalyptus, magnolia, belladonna, bougainvillea, agapanthus, hydrangea, plumeria, oleander. One day she drove up into the hills below the Hollywood sign, hiked around the reservoir and found the bridge carved with the mournful heads of grizzly bears. She went to Venice and walked among the skaters and beach babes and tourists, listened to the drummers, and tried on straw hats and cheap sunglasses in the stalls. A pale-eyed, bearded man in a turban zipped by, playing discordant sounds on his electric guitar and the sound buzzed in her teeth.

She took off her shoes and walked down to the water, feeling her toes sink into the wet like sand crabs. She and Cyrus had gone there, too, late at night, after the concert. You’ll do massage and I’ll work construction while we go to school, and we’ll save up and eventually get a little house. Hike and read on our days off. Go to libraries and estate sales and clubs. Learn to surf.

She walked into the waves and stood, now, feeling the cold water eddying around her ankles. Desert child to the bone, she thought. And I will always be.

Aurora imagined for a moment walking out into the sea. But she had a home now, she had school and a job, she had a purpose.

All these things helped Aurora forget her half-brother and lover; their half-sister who had carried his child; and their other brother who had been arrested for murder. Helped her forget Larry and Leanne. Aurora tried to forget Sky, too.