Notes from the Backseat. Jody Gehrman

hate everything about it, but when he smokes that pipe it just pushes every anachronistic, sentimental button I’ve got—and you know I’ve got a lot of those. I mean, how many guys under the age of eighty smoke one of these babies? Every time he lights it, I feel like we’re in an Ingmar Bergman film.

      “Dannika’s not what she seems to be,” he said. I snuck a quick glance at him; he was squinting at the horizon, a serious look on his face. He puffed on the pipe a few more times to get it going. “When I met her freshman year she was skinny and awkward and painfully shy. Her teeth were all crooked back then and she was always holding a hand up over her mouth when she laughed or ate.”

      “You mean she wasn’t always so…beautiful?”

      He shook his head and took another drag from his pipe, blowing the smoke away from me. It smelled like chocolate. “She had a really messed up childhood. I won’t go into the details—she’d hate me if I did—but when her dad died he left her some money and she spent it all on her looks. She got braces and a boob job. It’s like she went away one summer and she came back a totally different girl. She even changed her name.”

      “Really? What was she called before?”

      He tried not to smile. “Donna Horney.”

      I winced. “Yikes. No wonder.”

      He nodded. “She totally transformed herself—I mean, top to bottom. Now she pretends none of it ever happened. According to her, Donna’s dead. End of story.” He reached down and grabbed a handful of sand, let it pour out of his fist like a grey waterfall. “People meet her and assume she’s Miss Enlightened, but the truth is, she’s still Donna Horney inside.”

      I had to fight a huge giggle. I wanted to leap into the air and do a dance in the sand, but I sat there perfectly still. Dannika Winters was a phony! I knew at least some part of me should feel sorry for her, but all my body produced was a giddy surge of relief. My nemesis was a total fake. She couldn’t possibly harm me. I was real; she was just smoke and mirrors.

      Coop turned to me and this time I couldn’t avoid his eyes. “What are you thinking?” His brow was furrowed.

      “Um…” I hesitated. It hardly seemed fitting to blurt out Ding-dong the witch is dead! “I’m just surprised, I guess. That’s really sad.” I could feel a huge, satisfied grin threatening to spread across my face, but I covered it in time with a concerned frown.

      “I’m telling you because I know from past experience that she can be really…” he searched for the right word “…intimidating.”

      “Sure. I can see that.”

      “But she’s super private, okay, so don’t mention any of this. I mean Phil and Joni know, of course, but we’re the only ones. She’d seriously kill me if she knew I’d told you.”

      I zipped my lips with my fingers. “Mum’s the word.” I squeezed his hand. “Thanks for trusting me. I’ve been kind of nervous about meeting your friends. It helps that I’m not completely in the dark.”

      He set his pipe down on a rock, leaned over and kissed me. He tasted of salt and smoke—the sweetest flavor in the world.

      I guess you probably don’t need the gory details of every minute we spent in that cave. All I know is, most the buttons on my suit were undone and even when the fog started reaching toward the beach with long white fingers, I didn’t feel the slightest bit cold. God, Marla, he’s such a crazy-good kisser. I swear I could live on nothing but the taste of his mouth.

      We were pretty caught up in the moment when I heard someone saying, “Oops, sorry.”

      I looked up and Dannika was walking away from us, her perfect little butt still swathed in nothing but a bikini.

      Coop gave me a sheepish look as we both made the necessary adjustments to our clothing. When we were presentable again he kissed me one last time, tapped out his pipe, and we followed Dannika back down the beach toward the car. The tide was going out, I guess, because it was easier getting around the point this time. We waited until Dannika was dressed and sitting in the driver’s seat of the Mercury before Coop gave me a piggyback ride up the path.

      “I can’t believe you didn’t come out there,” she told Coop as we climbed back into the car. There was a pouty note to her voice. Looking at her profile, I thought I could see the ghost of the gangly girl she’d once been. “It was like double overhead, dude.”

      “Did you have fun?” He tousled her wet hair affectionately and it didn’t even bother me at all.

      “It was a blast.” She definitely didn’t sound happy. “You totally missed out.”

      He shrugged. “I was busy.”

      I couldn’t help giggling a little, and Dannika shot me a look over her shoulder. “Whatever.” She jabbed the key into the ignition violently and the car roared to life. “Your loss.”

      She drives even worse when she’s pissed.

      Every ten miles or so I have to clench my jaw and cling to my seat belt as she passes another RV on a blind curve. To add to my discomfort, her surfboard’s dripping little salt water drops onto my shoulder and the fog is making me shiver. All the same, I’m smiling as I write this.

      I’m pretty sure I won’t need this notebook anymore. Coop’s provided me with an infallible cure to my jealousy. From now on I’ll be the picture of sisterly sweetness. If I feel myself slipping, all I need are those two magic words: Donna Horney.

      Anyway, thanks for suggesting I write all this down. If I hadn’t, who knows how this trip would have turned out? You could be reading about me in the papers: Jackie O Strangles Yoga Diva. Now I can safely say my petty insecurities are behind me.

      Hugs and Kisses from a New and Improved Gwen

      Thursday, September 18

      10:10 p.m.

      

      Dear Marla,

      You’re absolutely not going to believe this, but I’m writing from MY MOM’S HOUSE.

      Oh, horrors.

      How did this happen? you ask. Gwen hardly ever visits her parents. She finds her stepfather inane, her mother loud and the dogs deeply depressing.

      Precisely my point. Yet here I am, at my mother’s house in western Sebastopol, with my leopard-print car coat covered from collar to hem in dog hair. The parakeets are screeching off-key and Carrie, the Irish wolfhound, is drooling on my shoes. This is not my idea of a romantic weekend away.

      You want to know how this happened? I’ll tell you how it happened. Dannika Winters, that’s how.

      There we were, cruising up Highway 1, shivering in the fog. Shouldn’t we take the shortcut on 101 from San Luis Obispo to Salinas, I asked. Dannika was horrified at the mere suggestion; of course we couldn’t, that would mean missing Big Sur, the most dramatic, remote, beautiful stretch of coastline in California. Did she also mention the most deadly? At one point she was messing with her CD player, heading for a cliff that dropped at least two hundred feet straight down to the sea. After Coop saved us by grabbing the wheel just in time, he waited a discreet three or four minutes before suggesting she must be tired of driving by now. I doubt she was tired, since she never gave the road more than seven percent of her attention, but I found her driving exhausting. I had to keep slamming the brakes on in the backseat and my thigh muscles were beginning to cramp.

      I’m sure if it was anyone but Coop, Dannika would have bristled at the suggestion, but he seems to have a magical, almost narcotic effect on her. He makes her laugh. As much as I hate to admit it, I can see why they’ve been friends for so long. I guess it’s just that irresistible tension of opposites. Marla, you know how you and I are so different, yet somehow we work, like sweet and sour, or tulle with taffeta? You’re sloppy, I’m structured; you’re go-with-the-flow, I’m paint-by-numbers? Well, that’s how Dannika and Coop are,