CHAPTER ONE

The screaming roar of a jet engine thundered overhead as Southwest Airlines flight one-fifteen made its way to Lindbergh Field on a sunny weekday morning in America's Finest City. Some four hundred feet directly below, a semiconscious young woman was jolted back to life by the unbearable noise.

Most days Hilary Sample slept right through the first ten or so takeoffs and landings. She considered living under the flight path of a busy international airport a fair tradeoff for being able to wake up every morning right across the street from the beach for just five hundred dollars a month.

A quick glance at the fluffy white clouds she had painted on her sky blue ceiling assured Hilary she was in her own bedroom. She tried to remember who had brought her there this time. She was all alone in her bed now, except for Charley, the plush frog that had somehow managed to become wedged overnight between her mattress and the lime green, glitter-splattered wall.

Fuck, she thought to herself, that was scary. Charley's bug eyes stared at her, as if to ask her what was wrong.

The noise from the plane had broken the serenity of a really weird dream. Hilary was happy. She was married to the most perfect man in the world. She lived in a glorious mansion on Sunset Cliffs, about a mile and a half down the coast from her shitty, real-life rat box of an apartment. All her friends were there, but they looked different than they normally do. They wore expensive, new clothes and their teeth shone brighter than the Osmonds'. They were outside barbecuing in the most luxurious backyard Hilary could imagine, neatly enclosed by the proverbial white picket fence. A golden retriever played on the well-manicured lawn with an adorable toddler who looked up at Hilary and called her Mommy.

For anybody else, it was the idyllic American dream. For Hilary Sample, it was her worst fucking nightmare. It was sickening how happy everyone was. She reached for the cigarette pack on her nightstand. One smoke left. She couldn't light it fast enough. She took a deep, soothing drag.

"Look who's up?"

The snarky, disheveled man crossed the threshold of Hilary's bedroom door with the comfortable ease of someone who had spent the night there.

What was his name? She decided not to embarrass him by asking.

"Hey," she greeted him lazily, spotting her jeans on the floor. She slipped out of bed to slide them over her neon pink thong underwear, then, just as casually, reached for the glass of orange juice the male stranger had helped himself to. She took a big gulp and immediately spat it out all over the Eminem screen saver that was bouncing across the pink-framed computer monitor she always left on. The drink tasted rancid to her. "God, that's nasty. What's in it?" she asked.

"I dunno," the stranger said. "Found it in your fridge. I assumed it was orange juice."

That explains it. Orange juice, with nothing else in it. What a freak. Hilary found an open bottle of vodka on her dresser and added a shot and a half to the boring nectar. She looked around for something to stir it with -- her toothbrush would suffice. Her new friend just stared at her, much like Charley, not knowing what to say.

She closed her eyes as the more familiar taste slid down her throat. When she opened them again, she noticed the time. She grabbed her backpack and looked in the mirror, debating whether she had enough time to put on some makeup. She didn't. She tried to smooth out her dirty blonde hair with her hand, then grabbed her guest's arm and led him out of her room.

"Let's go, dude. I got a test. You're driving me to school," she demanded, feeling well within her rights to do so. After all, she had given the guy a place to crash. She was not about to let him consider a protest.

As they walked the five blocks back toward the bar on Newport Avenue, Hilary wondered how long she could get away with calling him, "Hey, you." Not addressing him by name, however, was turning out to be easier than she would have guessed. So far, he hadn't seemed to notice.

"You doing anything tonight?" was all he wanted to know.

"I won't be dead, I hope. So whatever I'm doing, it'll be something, won't it?" Hilary liked to act twelve years old sometimes. In this case, though, her smart aleck remark was intended as a hint. Even if she liked this guy, she would never go on a date with him, which is what she assumed he was getting at. She used to watch couples on first dates at the steakhouse where she had worked as a waitress up until last year. They would always talk to each other like they were on a job interview. She always felt sorry for them.

"Here we are," the man with no name said as he dug his keys out of his pocket. "You said State, right?" By that, he meant San Diego State University, Hilary knew. The party school. A natural assumption.

"The other one, where the smart people go," she answered, with a hint of boastful pride and not an ounce of give-a-shit if La Jolla was out of his way.

Hilary watched Nameless walk past the blue Volkswagen she assumed he was about to unlock. Turns out, she needn't have bothered fixing her hair a few minutes earlier. She encased her golden tresses in the brain bucket he offered her before hopping on the black Kawasaki Ninja parked in front of the Bug.

She wasn't fond of motorcycles and was thankful the dude had at least been chivalrous enough to sacrifice his own safety to allow her to don his musty helmet. Her head swam around in it even after she fastened the strap under her chin. Once they were both in place, her feet in position on the guest pegs, Hilary convinced her driver to take the scenic route, thus keeping them off the freeway.

The stranger revved the engine twice. The loud rumble sent Hilary's arms clinging tight around his waist. As they roared away from the curb, he grinned to himself and thanked his Maker for making hot babes such scaredy cats.

Hilary was feeling more comfortable by the time they sailed across the bay over the Ingraham Street bridge. To her left, she could see the Big Dipper roller coaster rise out of the sea at Belmont Park in the distance. The I-5 kept pace with them on their right until they cut through Pacific Beach.

The bike made a left turn that Hilary wasn't expecting, taking them through La Jolla Shores. She was glad they were on a vehicle that made conversation impossible or she would have felt the need to blurt out that her mother lived here and then would have wished she hadn't given him that much information.

The view of the tiny surfers gliding the blue-green waves toward the blanket of sand was exhilarating as the bike climbed the snaking road up the cliff and right onto the campus of UC San Diego.

Hilary was able to point directions to her driver to end up in front of Peterson Hall. She dismounted and gave the man his helmet back. Grateful to have gotten there in one piece, she threw out to him, "Stop by the Shine tonight if you're not doing anything. I'm sure I'll end up there. I always do."

"Okay," he answered. "See ya there."

Hilary immediately regretted her semi-invitation. What if he showed up every night? What if he became a stalker? No, this guy would be cool, she tried to convince herself.

"Or I'm sure I'll run into you some time," she decided to throw in, just to be vague.

He looked at her like he was waiting for a signal from her that it was okay to kiss her.

"My test!" she remembered out loud, backing away from him.

Signal received. As the random rode away, unkissed, she realized he hadn't asked her for her phone number. That could only mean one thing. She must have given it to him last night.

As Hilary eased herself into one of the hard plastic yellow seats, her body missed the vibrations from the stranger's motorcycle. Ardath Haines, the TA, was already passing out the tests. If Hilary had stopped for coffee like she had wanted to, she would have been late. She pulled a pen out of her bright red backpack and twisted the desktop up from beneath the armrest. The flat surface was so tiny, the stapled corner of the nine-page essay exam hung over its edge.

"You may begin as soon as you get it," Ardath instructed the class, robotically, as he reached every third row.

With all the tests handed out, the busy part of Ardath's job as a Teacher's Assistant was over. He took his seat, facing the students from behind a folding table at the front of the three-hundred-seat lecture hall, and prepared to wait out the hour, occasionally glancing around to make sure no one was cheating. More often than not, his gaze would land squarely on Hilary.

Ardath didn't suspect her of cheating. In fact, he noticed she seemed to breeze through her psychopharmacology exams with a strong air of self-confidence. Had he had access to her transcript, he might have been naïvely surprised to see mostly B's and C's. For his part, her answers about the side effects of various psychotropic drugs rarely hit every point the professor instructed Ardath to look for. Even so, if Ardath gave Hilary more benefit of the doubt when grading her papers than he did the other students, he wasn't consciously aware of it.

He was consciously aware of the way her hair fell over her face and how she kept brushing it back with her hand until it annoyed her so much that she would have to set her pen down and wrap a pony tail up in a clown-white scrunchie. He also watched her tuck her left foot up under her right leg. He studied the intricacies of her folded knee bouncing up and down when she seemed to get stuck on a question. He silently rooted for her as she crossed out part of her answer, furiously scribbled down her newest take on the subject and blew a heavy sigh past her thin lips.

Ardath had had a mad crush on Hilary since the beginning of the quarter, even though he knew very little about her. He doodled on an extra copy of the exam to pass the time. As usual, his doodles gave way to sketches of Hilary. When she finished her test, ten minutes before the end of the allotted time, he drank in her every movement as she squeezed out of the center of her row and bounded down the steps to turn in her work. He snapped out of his daze when she smiled a goofy, carefree grin at him, just in time to hide his incriminating artwork from her before she plopped her paper on the table.

He found himself on his feet, following her out the side door, before he even knew what he was doing.

"Hilary," he called out to her.

She turned around and replied, "Hey, what's up." Her standard greeting. She didn't phrase it as a question, not even a rhetorical one. It wasn't a statement, either. It was barely an acknowledgment. Ardath wasn't sure if Hilary even remembered his name.

"Did you get your essay in yet for the internship?"

Hilary had once expressed an interest in an internship at a group home for troubled youths that he had told her about. The position usually went to a grad student, like Ardath. At 26, Hilary was older than her TA by a little over a year, yet she remained an undergrad because she would never take more than the minimum credits required per quarter. She had too many other priorities. But this year was it. She finally had enough credits to complete her bachelor's degree in psychology. As far as the university was concerned, it was time for her to move on. If she got this internship, it would go a long way toward helping her get into graduate school and continue living off her student loan.

The position was opening up because its current occupant, who happened to be Ardath, was to transition to the full-time staff at the end of the school year. For some reason, he had offered to help Hilary through the application process. Unfortunately, said process included an essay, with a deadline looming, that Hilary had completely forgotten.

"Oh, shit!" was her predictable response. "When does it have to be in by?"

"Five o'clock."

"Today?"

Ardath wondered if Hilary was really that clueless or if it was some kind of stalling tactic she thought might buy her more time.

"On the dot," he informed her. He wasn't lying. But he could tell she needed to hear further emphasis, so he added, "They're real strict about that. But I can take..." He was about to make a suggestion that would buy her an extra hour, but was cut off mid-sentence by R. Kelly singing about drinking Coke and rum over the freakin' weekend and having some fun.

"Hey, what's up," she spewed her customary greeting into her cell phone after the music cut off. It was her mother, but it sounded to Ardath like she might be talking to one of her girlfriends. "Yeah, I'm done. Where ya at? Hold on."

Hilary noticed Ardath pretending to take an interest in the fourteen foot tall, multi-colored chicken across the way, known as the Sun God, perched high atop its fifteen foot pedestal, derisively referred to by the students as the Gumby Legs.

"Thank you so much for reminding me about that," she said to him. "I totally owe you."

She had touched his arm when she said it. He couldn't be certain if she was thinking of shaking his hand or what.

Then he watched her skip away and continue chatting with whomever was on the other end of the line. "Yeah, I'm like fifteen minutes away. Chill the fuck out, okay?"

It was the last thing Ardath heard her say before she turned the corner.

Hilary bummed a cigarette from a passing student at the edge of campus as she started her second five block walk of the day. Fifteen minutes later, she entered a medical clinic where her mother awaited her arrival in the third floor waiting room.

Keela Sample vibrated and lit up like a cell phone when she noticed her daughter approaching. No matter what kind of shit life was dumping on Keela, Hilary's mere presence always brightened her day. She got up to hug her baby girl and wondered how Hilary had ever managed to outgrow her. Reminders that her child was no longer the short, pudgy teenager she once was over a decade ago made Keela feel older than her forty-six years.

Hilary despised Dr. Felspar, but her mother's weekly appointment was close to campus and right after Hilary's psychopharmacology class, so it was a convenient way to get a ride home. Ardath's suggestion to make a learning experience out of the visits was never a factor in her appearances there. She believed the doctor was making up new conditions in order to sell her mother more psychotropic drugs she didn't need. Whenever Hilary wasn't arguing with his ever-changing diagnoses, she would sulk and pout, noticeably.

When they were through with Felspar, Hilary went with her mother back to La Jolla Shores, to the last of the succession of the dozen or so homes she had grown up in prior to turning twenty-one and deciding it was time to leave the nest. She loved her independence, but it was always comforting to be able to come back home whenever she was sad or sober or starving. Keela fixed Hilary a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and asked her about her day.

"The usual," Hilary answered, knowing her mother was just making small talk because it was too early in the day for anything significant to have happened yet. She took a half-hearted bite of her sandwich while she tried to think of something to add. "I don't have to work tonight."

"That's good. What are you gonna do?"

"I don't know yet. Probably just the usual," she shrugged.

She wasn't trying to be evasive. Her mother knew very well "the usual" for Hilary meant she'd go out drinking with friends at her favorite watering hole in O.B.

"Wow, that sure is some exciting life you lead," Keela laughed.

"There's something else I'm supposed to do. I just can't remember." Hilary pondered her memory lapse for a few seconds, then took another bite of her lunch.

"Claire's coming over," Keela informed her.

Hilary pushed her plate away to indicate she was full. If the gesture came off as meaning she had lost her appetite at the mere mention of Keela's best friend, it would not be an incorrect interpretation, either.

Keela noticed Hilary had only eaten two thirds of one half of her sandwich. She wondered how Hilary managed to function on so little fuel, but she stopped herself from saying anything because that's not the kind of mother Keela Sample was, she told herself.

"I just remembered!" Hilary said, jumping out of her chair. "I need to use your computer, Mom."

Hilary was already on her way to the computer that was set up in a corner of what would be the dining room in a more traditional home. She had already switched it on before her mother answered, "Sure, baby."

"I'm applying for this internship and the deadline is today and I have to write some stupid essay for it," Hilary explained, as she plugged in her flash drive and continued the work she had started a month ago, back when she was still more motivated by the job itself than by its deadline.

Hilary was glad she had something to keep herself busy when Claire Gresham arrived to pick up Keela for a golf outing. Besides giving her ample justification to ignore the oafish woman, it gave Hilary a credible excuse to decline a reluctant courtesy invitation to join them.

Not more than forty minutes after they left, Hilary read over what she had written and realized she had no way to guess what her prospective employers might be looking for. Either they were going to pick her or they weren't. She pressed "Print" and jumped a little at the clicks and whirs her mother's dormant printer made as it sprang into action.

Hilary blew on the printed pages to dry the ink and stuffed them into her backpack, then pulled out one of her textbooks and stared at it. She had another chapter to read and she knew it wasn't going to get done at the bar, so now was as good a time as any.

She went into her old bedroom and slipped into the bathing suit she kept stuffed at the bottom of her book bag for just such an emergency. Armed with a towel and some suntan lotion, she took her own oafish friend, Cognometric Measurements in the Developing Personality, on a date to the beach.

The five block walk took Hilary through the center of the quaint village by the sea. She passed the Mom & Pop corner grocery store, the drugstore that served handmade ice cream through a window on the side, the town's busy liquor store, two upscale restaurants and finally reached the gleaming Pacific Ocean. After selecting the ideal patch of sand on which to lay her towel, she applied a generous amount of suntan lotion to her smooth, golden skin, opened her Developmental Child Psychology text, and dropped her head into its unread pages for a brisk nap.

"Hills," said a young boy who was shaking Hilary awake.

She wasn't sure if she had been asleep for five seconds or five minutes, but it couldn't have been much longer than that since the sun and the tide were still in their same positions. She shaded her eyes to see a curly haired seventh grader standing over her. Hilary recognized him as Thomas, one of her mother's Special Ed students. He was flanked on either side by two girls his age, Soledad and Tracia.

Thomas shifted his feet and some sand spilled onto Hilary's book, irritating her.

"Get out of here, Thomas. I'm trying to study," she whined.

"No you ain't. You sleepin', biyotch!" he sassed back to her.

Soledad knocked Thomas on the head and shot him a look that was meant to remind him to show Hilary some respect for some secret reason Hilary could not yet surmise.

Thomas said to Soledad, "Don't you be hittin' me, woman."

Soledad decided to take over for Thomas or they'd never get anywhere. "What Snoop Dopey Dopehead here is trying to say is we were wondering if you could do us a favor."

Thomas threw his hands out to his sides in a grand gesture and rolled his eyes up to heaven as if to tell Soledad he was getting to that his own damn self, biyotch.

"Out with it, dude," Hilary demanded of the youths. "I don't have all day."

"Buy us some brews, G. Aw-ight?" he spat out, trying to sound as black as he could for a white kid from Mission Bay.

"No. Now get lost."

"Please," chimed Tracia, the shy one.

"Come on, Hills. Yo' moms lets us drink," argued Thomas.

"I don't give a shit. I ain't got no money."

Thomas promptly flashed five fresh, new twenty-dollar bills in her face. "I got the Big Heads!" he bragged, referring to the currency's latest makeover which had Andrew Jackson's skull enlarged to the size of the Elephant Man's.

"Shit, man. Why didn't you say so?" Hilary was starting to get more interested in their proposition.

"Like, duh," Soledad interjected.

"Who'd you tear those from anyway?" Hilary wanted to know, wondering in the back of her mind if picking up on their slang might somehow get her extra credit in her child psychology class.

"Yo' moms."

Hilary wished there would be questions like this on her exam: Underage Special Ed students ask their teacher's daughter to buy them beer with money they stole from the teacher. What should the daughter do?

Final answer: "Cool beans. That means I get two."

Hilary grabbed the wad of cash from Thomas as she got up. She made the girls carry her things as they walked back toward the liquor store.

Fortunately, she had remembered to stick her suspended driver's license in her book before she left the house because she never knew when she might need it. Not that she would need it here. Mr. Onley at the liquor store knew Hilary like he knew his own mother. Hilary and Keela were his best customers. Five years earlier, Hilary had bought herself a bottle of Captain Morgan on the morning of her twenty-first birthday. It was the first time she had been able to use her real I.D. Her mother took a picture to mark the occasion.

The kids waited outside the store for Hilary. She came out with two six-packs in a brown paper bag, which Thomas volunteered to carry for her.

"You ain't gonna dehydrate before we get back to the house, Thomas. It's only two blocks."

She could only imagine what it might do for her current career ambitions if a cop saw her come out of a liquor store and turn over a package to a minor. Hilary saw the two girls giggle at Thomas and felt a little girl-power moment between her and them.

Once they were inside Keela's house, hidden from prying eyes, Hilary reached into the bag and cracked open a cold one. She felt the smoothness of the golden malt beverage flow down her throat and punctuated her action with a refreshing, "Ahhhh."

She noticed Soledad already digging into the bag. Hilary slapped her hand away.

"That's rude," she scolded the youngster. "I'll get it."

When Hilary's hand came out of the bag this time, it held a Pepsi, which she tossed to Soledad before pulling out two more for Thomas and Tracia.

"What the fuck?" Thomas chirped.

"Hey, don't curse. You really thought I was gonna give you beer?"

"Man, you stole my money," Thomas complained, without thinking it through.

"Whose money?"

Thomas realized he'd been had and there was nothing he could do about it.

The truth was, Hilary didn't really care if they drank. In fact, she knew they would anyway, so it didn't make much difference to her how they got it. Whatever beer she left in the house, they would grab as soon as she was gone. It was her mother who was letting them live there, so they were her mother's responsibility. Hilary just thought it would be fun to fuck with them.

"That's what you get for jackin' my mom," she said. At the end of the day, she could pat herself on the back for liberating her mother's money from these juvenile delinquents. For now, she rewarded herself with a second beer.

Tracia finished a swallow of her soda and spoke up, her voice soft and full of worry. "Don't tell your mom, okay? She'll send us back to group home."

"She'd never do that," Hilary assured Tracia. But the words group home wrapped around her brain and she remembered the deadline for the internship application. "Shit! What time is it?"

She looked at the cuckoo clock at the end of the hall, not having any idea if it was right. If it was, she had less than an hour to get there, and no car.

The West of 5 novellas are a work in progress. If you noticed any typos or other mistakes, please send an email to:

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