Only early June, but the heat feels like August. Eleanor and Shelby sit on the front steps of the old Victorian-style house in downtown Los Angeles, drinking homemade margaritas and watching the daylight drain away to dusk. Shelby slaps a mosquito away from her sweat-sticky thigh. She has long thin arms and skinny ankles and wire-straight hair that sometimes looks brown and sometimes looks auburn, depending on the light.<\/p>\n
\u201cDamn it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d Eleanor has full eyebrows and a tiny diamond stud in her left nostril. She favors sundresses and wears her hair pinned up with silver barrettes. In high school a boy told her that she had \u201cperfect breasts\u201d because they fit perfectly in his hands like two firm oranges. Now she thinks of him every time she eats an orange.<\/p>\n
\u201cI meant to stop at the 7-Eleven,\u201d Shelby says. \u201cI wanted to buy a lotto ticket.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eleanor checks her watch. \u201cYou\u2019d better hurry, if you want to get it before the drawing. It\u2019s almost six now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shelby swats at the air. \u201cNaw, it\u2019s okay. I don\u2019t feel like walking.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can drive you,\u201d Eleanor says.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t drive.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can drive.\u201d She holds up her margarita cup. \u201cThis is only my second.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fine. There\u2019s always next week,\u201d Shelby says, working her fingers through her hair to massage her scalp, searching for lumps. She is terrified of dying. So terrified that she sometimes thinks she might as well kill herself and get it over with.<\/p>\n
Eleanor gazes out at the pink smear of sunset caught between buildings. \u201cThere aren\u2019t really sunsets in L.A.,\u201d she says. \u201cDaylight just\u2026 slips away.\u201d She is thinking of Illinois. As a child she would sometimes grow anxious, gazing up at the full expanse of sky, trying to grasp where it ended. Illinois sky isn\u2019t like L.A. sky. Illinois sky doesn\u2019t end. It stretches at the horizons to a blurred uncertain line. So much sky. Two years ago, when she first moved to L.A., Eleanor would sometimes spend hours online, clicking through photographs of cornfields and rivers. But you can\u2019t capture the sky in a photograph, not truly. The sky is what she misses most.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I won the lottery,\u201d Shelby says, \u201cI would buy this house so we didn\u2019t have to pay rent all the time. Paying rent sucks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d buy this house?\u201d Eleanor asks. \u201cThis house of all houses?\u201d<\/p>\n
Shelby half-turns to gaze at the eaves, paint peeling like a bad sunburn. \u201cI\u2019ve grown fond of it, I guess,\u201d she says. \u201cI like this porch. And the music-note wallpaper in the hallway. And I like how the honeysuckle grows up under my window.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy window doesn\u2019t get honeysuckle,\u201d Eleanor says.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlus, if I bought it, it would be mine. That would be enough to make me love it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen you could live anywhere, is what you\u2019re saying. As long as you own the house you live in. You can love anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess so,\u201d Shelby says. She takes a pondering sip of margarita. Inside her room, on her bedside table, rests a bottle of pills and a glass of water. \u201cBut I do really like this house.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eleanor stretches her legs out in front of her. She hasn\u2019t shaved in a couple days and dark nubby hairs are visible on her knees and shins. The heat makes her legs itch. \u201cIf I won the lottery, I wouldn\u2019t live in L.A.,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019d buy a house somewhere far away.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know. A small town somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me guess: Illinois?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just saying, Shel. Someplace people actually know your name. Around here, you say hi and people look at you like you\u2019re crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut is it really like that in Illinois?\u201d Shelby asks. \u201cEveryone\u2019s friendly? Everyone bakes casseroles and apple pies?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mom makes green bean casserole.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo pie?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, sometimes, on holidays.\u201d Eleanor leans back on her elbows. She knows Shelby is making fun of her, but she takes the bait anyway. \u201cPecan pie. My Aunt Susan makes the best pecan pie. She won a ribbon at the country fair.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe country fair!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with the country fair?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing\u2019s wrong,\u201d Shelby says. \u201cIt just sounds … quaint.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cL.A. has a fair, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot a quaint little country fair, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eleanor wrenches a pack of Marlboros from her jeans pocket. Shelby watches Eleanor search her other pockets for her lighter. There are so many ways to die. Lung cancer. Skin cancer. Fire. Car crash. So many uncontrollable ways. Shelby exhales a drawn-out sigh that turns into a yawn. \u201cGod,\u201d she says. \u201cI hate paying rent. I feel like all my money goes towards rent. I mean, all<\/em> my money.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s for sure.\u201d Eleanor, lighter found, tips her pack and daintily pulls out a cigarette with the tips of two fingers. \u201cDo you mind?\u201d she asks Shelby.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course not,\u201d Shelby says. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to ask.\u201d<\/p>\n Eleanor smokes when she\u2019s stressed and when she drinks. Tonight, she is both stressed and drinking. This afternoon brought yet another no-call-back in a long string of call-backs she hasn\u2019t gotten. She didn\u2019t expect it to be this hard. Everyone said it would take time, and yes, she expected it to take some time \u2013 but two years<\/em>? Two years and nothing more than a handful of student films and background bit parts and one shitty half-line (\u201cMmm, cinnamon\u201d) in a gum commercial? Sometimes the embarrassment felt so big it eclipsed everything else. Her identity nothing more than a tired clich\u00e9: the small-town Midwest girl who moves to L.A. to become an actress, squeezing in auditions between her double-shifts as a waitress. Everyone was tired of that story. Especially Eleanor. If I don\u2019t land something in the next three months,<\/em> she thinks now, I\u2019m moving back home and getting a real job. <\/em>She turns her face to blow the smoke away from Shelby. She knows cigarette smoke gives Shelby a headache, even though Shelby, a jubilant martyr, makes a point not to complain.<\/p>\n Shelby gulps her margarita. She shifts her body slightly away from Eleanor\u2019s but doesn\u2019t say anything, trying not to think about the secondhand smoke wafting into her lungs. She believes friends make sacrifices for each other. She believes sacrifices are what make friendships stronger. Like a bird culling thread and twigs to build a nest, but in reverse. Casting away in order to build.<\/p>\n Eleanor takes a drag of her cigarette, thinking of her high school friend Bella, who taught her to smoke. They haven\u2019t talked in six years. Eleanor believes friendships are a matter of convenience and circumstance. Eventually, she or Shelby will move away. Drift apart. Get sick of each other. And then this, all of this \u2013 the margaritas, the lotto tickets, the lazy spirals of conversation \u2013 will end. It is inevitable. None of Eleanor\u2019s friendships have lasted as long as she had wanted them to. Eleanor is careful to turn her face away from Shelby when she exhales, so as not to speed up the decline.<\/p>\n \u201cHey Eleanor?\u201d Shelby says suddenly. \u201cIf I buy a lotto ticket and it\u2019s a winner, I want to split some of the money with you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThanks, Shel. That\u2019s sweet.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, seriously. Listen. If I die or something, like before I get the winnings, make sure you get some, okay? Don\u2019t let my parents take all the money.\u201d<\/p>\n Eleanor leans back on her elbows. The clouds, limned with purple, look bruised. All the ice in her margarita has melted. \u201cOkay, Shel,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNothing.\u201d Last week, Shelby took the bottle of painkillers from her medicine cabinet and placed them on her bedside table. Every morning when she wakes up, the pills are the first thing she sees. When she drives home from work in the evening, she considers how easy it would be to turn the wheel ever so slightly, to lean into oncoming traffic like lovers lean towards each other at a cocktail party.<\/p>\n \u201cCome on,\u201d Eleanor says.<\/p>\n Shelby sighs. Her fingers thread through her hair and massage her scalp. \u201cI think,\u201d she says, \u201cthat I\u2019m gonna die soon.\u201d But Eleanor is Eleanor. She tips ash from her cigarette into the rosebushes and asks, \u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n Shelby stretches out her legs, almost knocking over her empty plastic cup. \u201cI\u2019ve just been thinking about it a lot lately. Death. It\u2019s always … there. At the back of my mind. It didn\u2019t used to be there. I mean, it was there sometimes, I guess, but not that often. Not always like it is now.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s changed?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Shelby says. She didn\u2019t expect it to be like this. Everyone said she would be a good teacher. She thought she could actually make a difference, even a small difference, even to just one kid. But she is a failure. Her students all hate her. When she turns to write on the whiteboard they whisper and titter to each other, and when she poses questions for discussion they stare at her blankly. No one raises a hand. Middle school kids are supposed to like their teachers. English is supposed to be a subject the kids look forward to. There are no wrong answers in English class. If you don\u2019t have something to say you can make something up. It\u2019s not like she has been assigning much homework, either \u2013 just the typical vocabulary exercises and a book report every other month.<\/p>\n \u201cDid I ever tell you about my Death Dream?\u201d Eleanor asks.<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d Shelby says.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was in seventh grade, I had a recurring dream that I drowned. There was this pond by my house that I used to swim in a lot. I loved it there. But in my dream, this whirlpool started in the center of the pond, and no matter how hard I swam for the shore, I felt myself being pulled under the water.\u201d Eleanor remembers the fear that gripped her chest and limbs as her dream-lungs filled with water. She hadn\u2019t felt calm like everyone says you feel right before you die. She felt panicked and scared.<\/p>\n \u201cI was terrified to go to sleep because I died every night in my dream,\u201d Eleanor continues. \u201cFinally my parents took me to a shrink.\u201d<\/p>\n Shelby frowns. \u201cI thought you couldn\u2019t die in a dream. I read somewhere that if you die in your dream, then you actually die for real in your sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no way they could know that,\u201d Eleanor says. \u201cYou can\u2019t know what someone was dreaming when they died.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just saying, I read it somewhere. In a magazine.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell, I died in my dream.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo what happened?\u201d Shelby asks. \u201cDid you go to Heaven?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, it was just dark. Dark and quiet. And then I\u2019d wake up.\u201d Eleanor stubs out her cigarette. She drops the butt into her empty plastic cup. \u201cAnyway, it stopped after a couple months. The shrink said it was tied to my parents\u2019 divorce.\u201d<\/p>\n A fly hovers around their sticky cups. Shelby swats it away. \u201cSee, that makes sense,\u201d she says. \u201cPart of what scares me is I can\u2019t think of a trigger. There\u2019s no reason I should be obsessing about death.\u201d<\/p>\n Eleanor sits quietly. She is the type of person who can keep eye contact for a long time. Shelby is the type of person who gets uncomfortable and looks away.<\/p>\n Shelby looks away. \u201cI figure it means I\u2019m gonna die soon,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a premonition.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe it\u2019s the opposite,\u201d Eleanor says. \u201cLike how a watched pot never boils.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHuh.\u201d With her index finger, Shelby lightly traces around the small scar on her thigh she got from climbing a chain-link fence in grade school. There were no trees, so Shelby climbed fences. \u201cYou mean, I won\u2019t die if I\u2019m too busy thinking about dying.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I guess.\u201d Eleanor smiles like a lady in an old painting. Her lips aren\u2019t really smiling, but her eyes are.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat?\u201d Shelby says. \u201cWhat are you thinking about?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNothing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAre you laughing at me? You\u2019re laughing at me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, Shel,\u201d Eleanor says.\u00a0\u201cI was just thinking of my shrink.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYour shrink?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOf what my shrink would say.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat shrink?\u201d Shelby leans forward, elbows on knees. \u201cYou don\u2019t go to a shrink.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy old shrink, the one my parents sent me to. Because of my Death dream.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh,\u201d Shelby says. \u201cWhat would he say?\u201d The sky is steadily losing color. Above them, the moon is an orange.<\/p>\n Eleanor lights another cigarette. The moon is a perfect breast. \u201cShe would say, the question becomes: if you\u2019re constantly worried about death, are you really living?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo.\u201d Shelby rubs her eyes. \u201cThat\u2019s the answer, right? \u2018No, so I should stop worrying and start living!\u2019 Right?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no answer. It\u2019s just what my shrink would say.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo you think she\u2019s right?\u201d Shelby asks. \u201cIs that the answer?\u201d<\/p>\n Eleanor exhales, a perfect trail of gray smoke. She doesn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n Her recurring dream wasn\u2019t really because of her parents\u2019 divorce. Her parents had been fighting bitterly for months. The divorce wasn\u2019t much of a surprise.<\/p>\n Eleanor first dreamt of drowning on a Wednesday in late November. That day, her best friend Mariah Quinn inexplicably untangled herself from Eleanor and retangled herself with Veronica Cross. \u201cSorry, Eleanor,\u201d she said. \u201cBus seats only hold two.\u201d Seventh-grade Eleanor walked numbly to the back of the bus and slumped down in her seat, hiding behind her backpack, crying tears into her lunch bag. She and Mariah had been best friends since kindergarten, when they both caught the chicken pox at the same time. They sat next to each other on the bus, ate lunch together, had slumber parties on the weekends. How quickly everything could be swept away.<\/p>\n Eleanor leans sideways against the porch railing. Between the clamor of buildings, a few stars press through the smoggy night sky. Suddenly, she points. \u201cHey, Shel. Make a wish.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI thought you only wish on shooting stars,\u201d Shelby says, thinking of Bobby Meyers, the lanky blonde boy her teenage self wished for and wished for.<\/p>\n \u201cIn L.A., you should wish on any star you can find,\u201d Eleanor says.<\/p>\n Shelby tilts her face up to the sky. In ninth grade, she wore the same blue polka-dotted headband for two months because she was wearing it when Bobby Meyers asked for her phone number, and some part of her thought he would only call if she kept wearing it. The white polka-dots gradually turned gray, and then the cloth at the ends of the headband began to fray and unravel from the plastic. Shelby stopped wearing it. Bobby Meyers never called. Still, Shelby knows she will keep the bottle of pills and the glass of water on her bedside table, a comfort, a superstition, like the dreamcatcher hanging above Eleanor\u2019s bed across the hall.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do too have stars in L.A.,\u201d Shelby says, pointing. \u201cLook! Right there.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThose aren\u2019t real stars,\u201d Eleanor says. \u201cNot like Illinois. You should see the stars in Illinois.\u201d<\/p>\n The night before she left for L.A. to become a famous actress, Eleanor slept outside in the bed of her dad\u2019s pickup truck. She found the Big Dipper and Orion\u2019s Belt and searched the sky for shooting stars. None came. Or perhaps the sky was too big, and she missed them.<\/p>\n Only early June, but the heat feels like August. Eleanor and Shelby sit on the front steps of the old Victorian-style house in downtown Los Angeles, drinking homemade margaritas and watching the daylight drain away to dusk. Shelby slaps a mosquito away from her sweat-sticky thigh. She has long thin arms and skinny ankles and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[20],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-1mR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5261"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10462,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5261\/revisions\/10462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIf Eleanor were not Eleanor but someone else, she might laugh uncomfortably and change the subject. Or she might think Shelby is being purposefully melodramatic and try to brush it away with facts: she is only twenty-two, she eats healthy greens, she wears her seatbelt. If Eleanor were Shelby\u2019s mother, she would jump straight to alarm and ask what\u2019s wrong, is she depressed, is she eating enough?<\/p>\nDallas Woodburn<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"