Owning It Page 2

  I reach into my purse, retrieve my iPhone, and silence the sensei. Then I grab my license and registration and head back to the curb. I hand the documents to the police officer and sit back down on the curb. The policeman walks over to his cruiser, opens the door, slides inside, and begins typing on a dashboard-mounted keyboard.

  I stare at the oily river streaming out from under my Mini Cooper and pooling on the icy pavement, and my head begins to throb; my stomach roils. The car was a graduation gift from my grandpa.

  “You have a lot of dreams, baby,” he had said, handing me the keys. “I hope this little buggy will help you chase them.”

  Gramps. My eyes well with tears as I think of the one person in my life who always encourages my dreams. He never judges me, never hits me with, “Now, Laney, isn’t it time you gave up your prepubescent diversions and acted like an adult?”

  What will Gramps say when he finds out I totaled my little buggy?

  Tears spill down my cheeks. I have grown accustomed to disappointing my parents. I have even grown accustomed to disappointing myself. But I don’t think I could grow accustomed to disappointing Gramps.

  The police officer returns.

  “I ran your license and am happy to report there are no warrants for Delaney Lavender Brooks or Lunaria Unicorn,” he says, squatting down beside me.

  He hands back my license and registration.

  “Thanks,” I sniffle.

  “I know things seem bleak, but someday you will look back on this incident and laugh.”

  “I seriously doubt that.”

  He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handkerchief.

  “If it makes you feel any better”—he hands me the hankie, and I use it to wipe the snot dripping from my nose—“I am issuing you a traffic citation finding you liable for this accident, but I am not going to charge you with reckless driving, which could have resulted in imprisonment or the revocation of your license.”

  “Thank you, officer.”

  The ambulance finally arrives, and a gorge paramedic gets out.

  “Seriously?”

  “Excuse me?” the officer frowns.

  I shake my head.

  After everything I have been through in the last hour, the universe couldn’t have sent me a hairy, slightly mannish female paramedic? It had to send me a six-foot-three, tanned, muscular Henry Cavill lookalike.

  Harsh!

  The paramedic pierces me with his sexy, blue-eyed gaze but addresses the police officer.

  “Did she lose consciousness?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long?”

  “Less than two minutes.”

  Solo squats down in front of me and shines a flashlight in my right eye.

  “Hello, beautiful,” he says, shifting the beam to my other eye. “My name is Dylan. I am an EMT, and I am going to take a look at you. What’s your name?”

  My mind goes blank. My tongue freezes to the roof of my mouth. All I can do is stare at the dimple on his chin.

  “Do you know your name?”

  “Lunaria . . .” I look away, my cheeks flushing with heat. “I mean, Laney. Delaney Brooks. My friends call me Laney.”

  “Okay, Laney,” he says, motioning for his partner. “Do you remember if you hit your head during the crash?”

  I shake my head.

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I don’t think I banged my head.”

  “Do you feel dizzy?”

  “A little.”

  But I am pretty sure my equilibrium would return if you would stop staring into my eyes with that baby-making gaze.

  “Nauseous?”

  I nod my head.

  The other paramedic arrives, pushing a gurney.

  “Possible C-spine injury,” Dylan says to his partner. “Let’s board and collar her.”

  While Dylan peppers me with questions about my symptoms, medical history, and allergies, his partner tries to put a plastic brace around my neck.

  “It won’t fit,” he says. “We need to get her costume off.”

  “I am fine, really,” I cry, pushing the collar away. “I don’t need to be boarded and collared.”

  My panic is legit. I would rather die of a massive brain hemorrhage than let Solo see what I am wearing beneath my costume: a pair of skimpy boy shorts and my Normal Is Boring tank, sans bra. (Have you ever worn a unicorn costume? Ten minutes of singing and dancing and you are covered in sweat.)

  “Laney,” he says, putting his broad, tanned hand on my arm. “Everything is going to be okay. I promise. There’s a chance you obtained an injury to your spine during the accident. We need to put this collar around your neck to keep you from further injuring yourself. If we don’t, I could be in big trouble. You don’t want me to lose my job, do you?”

  I look at the grayish flecks in his dark blue eyes, perfectly framed by thick, black eyelashes, and shake my head.

  Before I even know what is happening, Dylan reaches around and unzips my costume. Cold air nips at my exposed skin. I don’t need to look down to know my nipples are as hard as headlights. Dylan pretends not to notice my erect nips as he wraps the arms of my costume around my waist. His partner velcros the brace around my neck and they help me onto the gurney. I hug the unicorn head, now resting on my stomach, as they load me onto the ambulance.

  Dylan climbs in after me and is about to close the ambulance doors when the police officer appears. He is holding my Betsey Johnson kitschy panda-head purse. He hands it to me.

  “Thank you,” I mumble. “This ridiculous scene would not have been complete without you handing me my furry panda purse.”

  When did my life turn into a slapstick comedy? I feel as if I am starring in a Three Stooges movie. Except I am in this farce alone, and so far, nobody is laughing.

  Chapter 2

  Laney’s Life Playlist

  “Oops! . . . I Did It Again” by Britney Spears

  “Smile” by Nat King Cole

  “Here’s to Never Growing Up” by Avril Lavigne

  Ninety minutes later, I am dressed in a hospital gown and lying on a gurney in a curtained ER alcove, my unicorn costume draped over me like a strange security blanket, when my parents arrive.

  If you are playing a scene in your head wherein my mother rushes to my bedside, throws her arms around my neck, and wails, “Thank God you are alive, my darling daughter,” now would be a good time to push pause.

  My parents aren’t those kinds of parents. They aren’t mushy-gushy affectionate. They aren’t hovering helicopter parents, ready to swoop in and rescue their only child from impending disaster. They aren’t lovey-dovey Lifetime movie parents baking endless trays of cookies and dispensing wisdom with a hug. They’re more like Sheldon and Amy from The Big Bang Theory, emotionally reserved, driven by logic, and blunt to the point of being tactless.

  There is no conversational give and take with us. They talk (and talk) and I listen. My parents are prone to long-winded, one-sided conversations. They’re professors at the University of Colorado, so I suppose the lecturing thing is normal for them. Often, when they’re in the middle of one of their monologues, I imagine them standing behind a lectern in a classroom filled with expressionless automatons. I have to resist the temptation to make robotic movements with my arms while saying, “Does not compute. Does not compute.”

  My father stands beside my bed, his hands clasped behind his back. My mother stands beside him.

  “We came as soon as we got your message,” he says, his voice flat. “You said you were in an accident. Were you driving?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you at fault?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was the other driver injured?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “Is your car drivable?”

  “No.” The tears that filled my eyes the second my parents stepped through the curtains into my ER space spill down my cheeks. “It’s totaled.”

  My father reache
s out and pats my shoulder two times. It’s the awkward, cold response one might expect from a pointy-eared Vulcan. I am waiting for him to furrow his brow, tilt his head, and say, “I find your constant display of emotions illogical and highly irritating.”

  Please don’t get me wrong. I love my parents. They’re intelligent, worldly, sophisticated, hardworking, ambitious, and generous. They have instilled in me a hunger for knowledge and a burning desire to broaden my horizons beyond the narrow borders of Boulder, Colorado. But sometimes I just wish . . .

  “Have you been paying your auto insurance premiums?” Mom asks.

  . . . they would give me the cookie and the hug. I could really go for a snickerdoodle and a good squeeze.

  I close my eyes, exhale, and flop back against the hard gurney.

  “Oh, Laney,” my mom cries, “please, please tell me you didn’t let your policy lapse?”

  “I’ve been paying my insurance premiums, Mom.”

  She doesn’t say “Thank God” because she is an agnostic, but I can almost hear it in her sigh. “Thank God my unmotivated, unintelligent, unfocused daughter remembered to pay her insurance premium and didn’t spend it on ukulele strings, spiritual growth crystals, sunglasses, or records of obscure French artists.”

  Can I help it if I dream about living in an Edith Piaf song? Who wouldn’t want to escape this technologically frantic, social media driven, uninspired, impersonal society to live in a place where roses bloom and angels sing from above? I would sacrifice my entire collection of vintage jewelry and sunglasses to live in Edith’s world, where everyday words magically turn into love songs. To be measured by the uniqueness of my soul, not my ability to fit in with the Fakebook crowd, that’s my idea of heaven.

  Hot, fat tears squeeze between my closed eyelids and slide over my temples, soaking my hairline, pooling in my ears. My father shifts his weight from one foot to the other (my eyes are still closed, but I hear his Italian leather loafers squeak) and clears his throat.

  “Laney, dear,” my mother says, perching herself on the edge of the gurney and resting her hand on my arm. “Obviously, it is terribly disappointing to learn you crashed the car your grandfather generously gifted you, but with steady employment with a legitimate company, it will be possible to extricate yourself from this unfortunate situation.”

  In Chinese philosophy, yin and yang are words that describe how opposite or contrary forces are actually interconnected and thus working together. Light and dark. Fire and water. The yin of my personality is sweet, agreeable, eager to please, always seeking peace. Right now, the lesser yang is staging a coup—the infinitesimally small part of me that can be contrary, rebellious, churlish, and childish (though usually only to my parents). My yin is trying to keep my yang from speaking, but . . .

  “So, I guess now would be a bad time to tell you that I’m being evicted?” I sit up and fix my mom with a falsely bright smile. “I had planned on living in my Mini Cooper until I could sort things out, but now it looks like I am going to be one of the many indigents lining up outside Bridge House for a mug of watery vegetable soup.”

  My mother pulls her hand away and stands up. She steps between the curtains and continues walking, her high heels making angry tap-tap-tapping noises against the glossy linoleum floor. Her silence cuts me deeper than any hissy fit she might have thrown.

  My father stares at the slit in the curtain, as if mentally willing my mother’s return. Several seconds pass, marked by the loud click-click of the second hand of the clock on the wall behind my gurney, before my father clears his throat.

  “Well,” he says, looking from the curtains to the clock to his loafers—looking anywhere but at me. “I assume your declaration that you planned on living in your car was expressed merely for dramatic purposes, with the intent of rankling your mother.” He finally pierces me with his unnerving, professor-like gaze. “Would that be correct, Delaney Lavender?”

  “Yes,” I mumble, dropping my chin to my chest.

  He sighs and shakes his head. “Intentionally needling or upsetting someone who loves you and wishes only the best for you is simply . . .”

  “Illogical?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Pops,” I smile, fresh tears blurring my vision, “my entire life is illogical.”

  Two days later, the universe gives me another opportunity to prove to my parents just how illogical my very existence is.

  Chapter 3

  Laney’s Life Playlist

  “My Own Worst Enemy” by Lit

  “Don’t Cry, Baby” by Madeleine Peyroux

  Whiplash is, like, a wicked pain in the neck. My sore muscles, tingling fingers, and headaches have made it difficult for me to focus on finding a new car, apartment, job, life. The ER doctor gave me a prescription for painkillers, but I prefer a more holistic approach to pain management.

  OK, for reals? I have always been a little afraid of narcotics. I knew a girl in high school who overdosed at a pharm party—it’s like a BYOB party, only people bring prescription pills instead of booze. The pilfered OxyContin, Adderall, Xanax, Percocet, Wellbutrin—whatever could be pinched from their parents’ medicine cabinets—were thrown into a big bowl; then everyone grabbed handfuls and popped them like they were Skittles. Only they weren’t Skittles. Audra Lang didn’t just taste the rainbow; she swallowed a toxic mix of benzodiazepines and opiates.

  Pill-popping junkies, like the two who broke into Fanny’s hotel room and stole her overpriced designer luggage, freak me the hell out (Fanny and I became super-tight when we were volunteering in Sitka, Alaska. She’s super copacetic!).

  I have been gutting through the pain—while wearing a neck brace that makes me look like Joan Cusack when she played Geek Girl #1 in Sixteen Candles. I’m not being harsh to Joan: she’s actually listed in the credits as Geek Girl #1.

  Finally, early this morning, I popped a painkiller, chasing it with a shot of Sunny D. I know Sunny D is like the hazardous waste of fruity beverage drinks, jam-packed full of high-fructose corn syrup and ADHD-causing dyes, but the tangerine-orange-lime-grapefruit taste is old-school. It reminds me of rainy days at Sunflower Preschool, sitting cross-legged on my carpet square, munching on Graham Crackers, while Miss Beasley (totally her real name) read aloud from The Rainbow Fish.

  Don’t judge. I’m unemployed and shackin’ with my parents. I need comfort.

  My temples are throb-throb-throbbing, and my neck feels like I pulled a serious Heisman. It’s been a few hours since my first painkiller and it doesn’t seem to be doing a thing for the pain, so I pop another pill in my mouth and chase it down with the last of my Sunny D before padding into my bathroom to take a long, hot bath. I sprinkle some Epsom salts in the tub and add a few caps of my fave organic Moroccan Salvia bath gel. It fills the tub with fat, juicy bubblegum-scented bubbles. It’s my adult shout-out to Mister Bubble!

  Before slipping into the tub, I open iTunes and queue up my alpha waves playlist. Music with alpha waves has been proven to promote deep mental and physical relaxation, increase creativity, and improve the immune system. I am hoping the waves and the pills will work their magic and chase the pain away.

  I step into the tub slowly, gingerly easing my body under the hot water. When I am up to my chin in bubbles, I close my eyes and try not to reflect on the last year of my life. Since returning from my volunteer stint with Teach Them to Fish in Sitka, I have been stagnating big-time. My love life. My career. My art. My life has become a stinky, mosquito-infested swamp.

  It’s outré. It’s not like I came home from my year in Alaska, flopped on the couch, and watched Big Bang Theory reruns or crap reality TV. I have really been trying to circulate the waters. I hooked up with my old band, and we have been playing gigs from Fort Collins to Flagler. I have applied for at least a dozen non-suit jobs. I have finished three canvases, all of which are hanging in a gallery here in Boulder.

  Lately, I have been inspired by the pop art movement and the way the artists of that epoch mock
ed society’s obsession with commercialism, while flipping the bird at the established art world. I think I captured that irreverence with my ironic Begging for Biscuits, an homage to Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, featuring smartly dressed Denverites lined up outside the Denver Biscuit Company truck, waiting to shell out their copious cash for an infamous mile-high biscuit sandwich, while indigent men and women crawl on their knees to catch a crumb.

  I even went on two blind dates. Nothing epic. Just no love connection. I am looking, but I still haven’t found a smoking-hot lumbersexual to keep me warm on the cold Boulder nights. Truthfully, I don’t even think I want a brawny, bearded lumbersexual. The pumped pecs and worn flannel shirts are sexy, but I really want a sapiosexual, a Scoville-scale hot man who values intellect over cup size. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not interested in a Sheldon. I don’t want an egghead sitting across the table from me each morning, but I would like someone who digs intellectual over physical pursuits, gets my art, and challenges me to think outside my quirky box.

  Fanny snagged herself a Scoville-hot guy. Calder MacFarlane is cultured and rugged, a hybrid of a sapiosexual and an ammosexual. He’s a search and rescue helicopter pilot with HM Coastguard who appreciates fine whisky and collects black-and-white photos. The perfect mix of brawn and brains.

  Fanny’s best friend, Vivia, snagged herself a brawny brain, too. Her husband, Jean-Luc, is a French aristocrat and literature professor at the University of Montpellier. He’s also a competitive cyclist. Tall, dark, and hella hot.

  I love Fanny and Calder.

  I love Vivia and Jean-Luc, too.

  I lift my arm out of the water. My skin looks like a California grape, wrinkled and puckered.

  I love California, and I love grapes.

  The warm bath and alpha waves must be working because I am feeling no pain. In fact, I feel warm, content, and . . . well, full of love. I pull the plug to drain the tub and step out onto my thick chenille bathmat. Chenille feels so nice on bare tootsies, doesn’t it?