Sinner

Isabel —

f live: Wait, what’s Leon saying? Where are you?

I’d already left the interview behind. It took every bit of my willpower to drag my attention back to Martin’s questions.

cole st. clair: He’s advising against my plan. We’re on the 405. It’s okay. I’m in good shape. You wouldn’t believe the muscles we pick up in rehab. Leon, are you coming with me?

I had already unbuckled my seat belt. I dragged my backpack — the only thing I’d brought from Minnesota — to

my side of the car. Leon’s eyes opened wide. He couldn’t tell if I was serious, which was ridiculous, because I was always serious.

Isabel. Only a few miles away.

My heart was starting to tumble inside me. I knew I should contain it, because I still had a long way to go. But I couldn’t quite pull it off. This day had been so many weeks of planning and dreaming in the making.

f live: Are you trying to get Leon to abandon a car on the interstate?

cole st. clair: I’m trying to save his life before it’s too late.

Come with me, Leon. We shall walk away from this car, you and I. We shall find fro-yo and make the world better.

Leon held up a helpless hand. Only moments before it had been a jazz hand. How he was letting me down.

leon: I can’t. You shouldn’t. Traffic is bad now, but in a few minutes, it’ ll be over. Just wait — I clapped my hand on his shoulder.

cole st. clair: Okay, I’m out. Thanks for having me on the show, Martin.

f live: Is Leon coming with you?

cole st. clair: It doesn’t look that way. Next time, though. Leon, enjoy the track. The account’s all settled, right? Good.

f live: Cole St. Clair, former frontman of NARKOTIKA.

A pleasure, as always.

cole st. clair: Now, that I’ve heard before.

f live: The world’s glad to have you back, Cole.

cole st. clair: The world says that now. Okay. Gotta go.

Hanging up, I opened the door. The car behind us let out the softest of honks as I climbed out. The heat — oh, the heat.

It was an emotion. It owned me. The air smelled of forty million cars and forty million flowers. I felt a spasm of pure adrenaline, memory of everything I’d ever done in California and anticipation of everything that could be done.

Leon was staring out plaintively, so I leaned in swiftly. “It’s never too late to change,” I told him.

“I can’t change,” he replied. It crushed him.

I said, “Stab it and steer, Leon.”

I slung my backpack over my shoulder, walked in front of an idling black Mercedes, and headed toward the closest exit.

Someone shouted, “NARKOTIKA forever!”

I blew him a kiss and then I jumped over the concrete barrier.

When I landed, I was in California.

Chapter Two

· isabel ·

There was always room for more monsters in L.A.

“Isabel, beautiful. Time to work,” said Sierra.

I had been working, watering Sierra’s ridiculous plants.

.blush., the tiny, concrete-floored outlet for Sierra (no.last.

name’s) clothing line, always contained more plants than clothing.

Sierra loved the look of the ferns and palms and orchids, but she never wanted to put in the effort to make them flourish.

Her talent rested more with the torture of dead things and inanimate objects. Things that you could stick a needle in without it getting angry. Things you could hang on a rack without violating human rights.

“I am working,” I said, stabbing a fertilizer spike into potting soil. “I’m keeping your plants alive.”

Sierra inserted two dried palm fronds into her updo, which was several shades closer to white than my blond hair. The addition worked for her; most things worked for someone who looked like her. She was a former supermodel. Former meaning last year. That’s seven years in dog years or L.A. time.

“Plants live on sunshine, gorgeous.”

“Sierra,” I said, “did your parents ever explain photosynthesis to you? It’s like this: When a plant and the sun love each other very much —”

“Christina is on her way,” Sierra interrupted. “Please, Isabel.

Endless smooches. Thanks.”

Ah, Christina. The Christina. She was a very good spender when she was in the mood, and she liked to be waited on.

Well, really she liked to know that she could be waited on if she wanted it. She did not want to be hovered over. She did not want to be patronized. She didn’t want someone to hold a pair of leggings for her. She didn’t want to be asked if she wanted to see it in champagne. She wanted a selection of attendants to be present so she could make a point of not asking them for anything.

So Sierra sent us all out to lean on the five pieces of furniture and examine our nails and text our boyfriends. All of us blond little monsters. Bangs sliced jagged and frosty, eyes lined kohl-black-sinister, lips bubblegum or cherry, all of us kissable as a plane crash.

Although I had only been here a few weeks, I was very good at this job. It wasn’t that Sierra’s other monsters were bad at elegantly folding tunics or boredly adjusting tanks on hangers.

It was that they didn’t know that the secret to selling Sierra’s clothing was to lounge on the stool near the front, not giving a damn, demonstrating to every potential customer exactly what the clothing would look like if they were to buy it and not give a damn.

The other monsters weren’t good at this because they gave a damn.

I was mostly focused on opening my eyes in the morning and moving my legs and eating enough food to keep my eyes opening and my legs moving. That was enough. If I added anything else to my emotional workload, I got angry, and when I got angry, I broke perfectly nice things.

Christina arrived. Her hair was crimped this time.

“Is this a new plant?” she asked Sierra.

“Yes,” Sierra replied. “Isn’t it the lushest of lush?”

Christina touched a leaf with a manicured nail. “What is it?”

Sierra touched it, too, but in a way that told me she was thinking of how it would look in her hair. “Lovely.”

While Christina browsed around the store, I stretched over the stool on my belly, typing the names of famous neurosurgeons into Google image search on my phone. I wore two of Sierra’s low, see-through tanks and a low-slung sisal belt and my favorite pair of leggings. Metallic and shimmery-rainbowbeautiful until you looked close and saw all the skulls. They were not Sierra’s design. Not quite her thing in general. The leggings were a little ugly, once you got over how pretty they were.