Follow the Sun Read online

  Follow the Sun

  a novel

  SOPHIA RHODES

  Copyright © by E.S. Romero/Sophia Rhodes

  All rights reserved

  Incognito Press

  www.incognitopress.com

  First Edition, December 2011

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored into or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For Leo and Sofie,

  with all my love, always

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  My first and most vivid impression of California was the vastness of the land, the vibrant green of the surrounding valleys and the irrepressible sunshine pouring down on the burnt-red Spanish tile roofs of my new neighborhood. But despite the glow of my new beginning, I already hated this place. I thought only of arid deserts and prickly cactuses, scurrying lime-colored lizards and long stretches of roads that wound up inside a horizon painted with the bluish hue of cataracts, and I ached for the east coast. Washed-out and just about as parched as a dried-up well, California was the complete opposite of all that I missed about my old hometown. Had I not moved here, however, my path would never have intersected with my heart, and there would be no story to be told.

  “Diana! Come back here this second!”

  My mother’s screeching closed in behind me as I ran down the cold stone steps faster than my feet could carry me. My reddened cheek still stung from her harsh slap and I was so angry I could have screamed out loud.

  It was the summer of 1957 and I had just turned seventeen. Fats Domino were Number One on the record charts, stiff crinolines and poodle skirts were in, and I was supposed to be having the time of my life. But inside, I was slowly dying.

  It was a Monday morning and I’d just come out of my so-very-important appointment with the Dean of the Arts Department at Pierce College in Woodland Hills. Little did it matter to my mother than I hadn’t the slightest interest in coming here for the fall semester. What I really wanted was to apply to a college back in New England from where we’d moved only five months earlier. I was breathlessly homesick and carried more than your fair share of resentment for having been dragged to Los Angeles on account of my mother being hot on the heels of a man she barely knew.

  It was testament to my mother’s impulsive nature that now she’d insist I go to Pierce or forget about college altogether; once she made up her mind about something, no matter how fanciful, there was no shaking her loose of the thought. And since I had the miserable misfortune to remain a minor until next April, parental consent was required on the application to study out of state, and she was unbending.

  Her boyfriend and my soon-to-be-stepfather Albert had an administrative position in the history department at Pierce, which they figured would get me a serious discount on tuition. Together they arranged for me to meet the Dean of Arts in the hopes that he’d be suitably impressed to put in a good word with Admissions. Of course, no one had bothered to ask me if I wanted to attend community college. This wasn’t exactly why I’d been a proper bookworm all through high school – cramming constantly, staying up until midnight for four straight years to revise assignments, cross and dot every word, making myself sick to earn every straight A in my record. And for what?

  “All I want is a chance to apply, Mom. Just let me apply to Radcliffe or Smith College, and if they don’t take me, I swear I’ll do what you say. All my teachers said I have a real good chance to get into an Ivy League academy with a scholarship!”

  This sorry state of begging went on until last Friday, which is when she broke the news to me. “You’re staying put in California. This is your home now,” she said, sifting through my closet for what she thought might be an appropriate interview dress and pulling out with triumph a short-sleeved, light blue chiffon number with navy polka dots smattered all over like an invasion of indigo ladybugs.

  I got back at her by sinking the interview grandly. Somehow I managed to surpass even my own expectations of poor form, but you couldn’t say that it didn’t take some serious planning. All through the weekend I scoured Miss Manners’ Guide to Etiquette for Young Ladies from cover to cover and proceeded to do the exact opposite – not shaking hands with the dean when he extended his hand, mumbling answers to his questions, tapping the toe of my shiny black patent shoe as I gazed out his office window at the sunlight streaming down over his gleaming cherry wood desk, trying my best to seem obtuse.

  We sat stiffly on his maroon leather chairs, neither of us wanting to be there. The interview lasted exactly fifteen minutes and concluded with my mother shaking me hard by the shoulders as soon we got outside the exit doors. “What is wrong with you, Diana? Have you completely lost your mind?”

  I tried to pull away from her only to feel the sting of her backhand across my face. Shocked, I looked up. An inch away from me, her face was the picture of fury, scarlet lipstick smudged over her front tooth, nostrils flaring like a mad bull. Her jaw trembled as she bellowed, “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life!”

  Her hand flew up again but this time I was quicker, tearing myself free of her grasp, but not before I heard the seams of my cap sleeve give way. Undeterred, I flew down the front steps without so much as a look behind.

  At first she gave an impressive chase for a woman her age. I knew that if she caught me she wouldn’t stop until she pulled out every hair on my head so I ran around the building and down a side alley, heart pounding in my throat.

  “You come back right this instant if you know what’s good for you!” I heard her calling out one last time, puffing. “I’m leaving, you hear me? You’ll have to find your own way home!”

  Her voice sounded further back this time and I knew she’d given up the chase – for now, at least. God only knew how I’d get home without her since Woodland Hills was a good hour’s drive from our dingy apartment in Panorama City, but at the moment being around my mother was just about the last place in the world I wanted to be.

  I was crying hard by now, my chest heaving with the weight of everything that had happened the last few months – leaving Boston, all my friends and creature comforts, my favorite bookstore with the tall glass windows, the two hundred year-old Cambridge library close to the Charles River where I scrawled my first poem on the back cover of Heidi at the age of eight. Even the memory of the bakery I frequented every Saturday in search of the perfect chocolate scone made me sniff louder. I missed all of it so much I thought my heart would burst out of my rib cage and try to find its way back home without me.

  A safe distance from the Arts building, I slowed down. My sobs had turned to a rather pathetic, dying dog sort of coughing. Breathless and runny-nosed, I looked around me. It was obvious I was still on ca
mpus grounds, but the buildings on the other side of the street had begun to taper off, giving way to rolling fields of freshly-plowed black earth. Several hothouses were scattered in the distance. Of course - I must have stumbled onto that agricultural section Pierce College prided itself for - “an area set among 427 acres of rolling hills, thousands of rose bushes, a natural preserve and a forest boasting giant redwoods,” according to the glossy brochure I skimmed over last night.

  No doubt I was lost, but for whatever reason I didn’t feel concerned in the slightest. It was hard to resist such a beautiful day: the sun sitting high against an unblemished azure sky, birds chirping on windowsills, barely a minute past the noon hour. A light breeze ran through my long hair and fluttered through the folds of my cap sleeves. I inspected the half-ripped seam in the fabric – it was a diminutive tear, nothing that a five-minute mend wouldn’t fix. A powerful sense of relief washed over me. I may well be receiving the beating of my life later tonight, but in that instant I was free as a bird and the day as glorious as could be.

  I looked around for a place to sit down and instantly spied the perfect spot – the wide stone steps of a five-story college building. There were about fifteen steps up to the entrance, a pair of grand oak doors with an etched border. I chose a cozy nook a couple of steps down from the landing. Smoothing the baby blue fabric of the dress over my bare legs, I circled my knees and took in a deep gulp of air, exhaling slowly.

  A breathtaking panorama of vegetation unfolded in front of me – across a narrow road from me there was a large patch of gnarly crimson rose bushes blending into a background of pea-green flowering shrubs and tall grass. Several steps to the right of the horticultural display there was a conservatory made entirely of glass panels, its entrance marked by a set of tall white doors. As green as the peat moss on the underside of a seaside rock, the rolling hills of the valley swelled up in the distant background, dappled in burnished ochre.

  There was something undeniably beautiful about the silence of those flowers, the soft wind blowing through their petals, where light dew drops netted the shimmer of sunlight inside their orbs. The distant hills stood with their foreheads to the sky, unbending and strong, magnificently secure in their permanence.

  As I was about to drift off into my reverie, the roar of a loud engine and the whiny, high-pitched voice of Frankie Lymon belting out Why do fools fall in love? brought me crashing back to the present. Frowning, I scanned for the culprit and didn’t have long to wait until I discovered the source – a cherry-red truck pulling off right in front of the rose bushes, obstructing my beautiful view of the garden. Bad enough that all the windows were rolled down and the radio was cranked loud enough to wake half the campus. With its rounded hood crossed by chrome fenders, its gleaming hubcaps and silver Studebaker ornament affixed on its side, it was mocking me. Incensed, I squinted at the driver’s side, straining to see what kind of jerk would make a racket such as could wake the dead.

  The engine suddenly turned off and a tall young Mexican wearing a white undershirt and a bandana around his head hopped out. He wiped his palms on his stained blue jeans and stripped off the bandana, tossing it on the back seat. Turning to walk to the back of the truck, he ran a hand through his slick ear-length black hair. Something didn’t seem right about how he looked. I blinked and squinted, peering closer, whereupon it suddenly deemed on me that he was in fact a she. Though lean and muscular, the Mexican’s gender was given away by the swell of hips and slight curve of a bosom. Judging by the smoothness of her face, she didn’t look to be that much older than me.

  Without hesitation, she started pulling wooden crates off the back of the truck and unloading them by the side of the road. She stacked four, five crates on top of another, her well-developed muscles lifting them up as if they weighed nothing but air.

  I watched her with fascination. I’d never seen a girl dress like a man, much less work as hard as one. There was something dangerous about the sharp expression on her face; brows furrowed, jaw set in a tight line, she looked someone nobody would mess with.

  Almost as if she sensed she was being watched, she glanced up. Though too late for me to pretend I hadn’t been looking, I still turned my head away. From the corner of my eye I could see her staring at me for a second, as if to question why I was gawking, and then she wiped her forehead with her arm and went back to the crates.

  I couldn’t peel my eyes off her. She had to be used to getting stares from strangers, not that it seemed to bother her either way. Twenty or so crates later, she wiped her hands again on her jeans and stood back to look at the stacks on the sidewalk, an expression of satisfaction on her face. She fished a folded paper out of her pocket, opened it and perused its contents, rapidly checking the crates against a list on the page. Nodding to herself, she turned and started walking to the conservatory, disappearing through the large white doors, only to emerge moments later with a steel-enforced dolly. Now back to the crates, she started stacking them on the dolly four or five at a time and rammed them forward back toward the greenhouse.

  A balding, middle-aged man with wire-rimmed glasses came out and stood at the entrance, propping one of the doors open with his foot to let her pass through. Crossing his arms, he watched her go back and forth loading and unloading her cargo, and when she was done they both went back inside. A few minutes later she emerged alone, tucking what appeared to be a wad of cash in her back pocket.

  She strolled confidently back to the truck, and for a moment I thought she would just climb in and drive away in a flurry of ear-shattering doo-wop music. But I was wrong. As she reached for the door, she hesitated and appeared to change her mind. Reaching in through the window, she fished out a cigarette from the side door pocket, lit it and leaned against the truck, one foot resting against the tire. She put her head back and inhaled slowly, closing her eyes.

  The picture of brute strength just twenty minutes earlier, her weariness was starting to show. Sweat glistened on her neck and shoulders, the undershirt clinging slightly to her body. In contrast, her face revealed no sign of strain. Abruptly she opened her eyes and stared straight at me. I flinched and went to look away, then thought better of it and decided to resist the urge, forcing myself instead to hold her gaze. I smiled guiltily, as if acknowledging that I’d been caught with my hand in the cookie jar.

  I kicked myself internally – why was I acting like such a fool? Why was I all knotted up about looking at some girl? Whatever for? I looked at other girls all the time, when I saw one wearing a skirt I liked, or if she had a nice hairdo that I wanted to copy, and there really was no reason to feel so awkward just for looking at one.

  The girl gave me a slight nod, her lip curling slightly, and I couldn’t figure out whether it was a greeting or a gesture of derision. Just standing there looking at me she had this funny way of making me feel exposed all over, yet betrayed nothing of her own thoughts. I could just see her thinking I was some silly nincompoop who had nothing better to do with my day than sit and people-watch. Probably someone’s little sister waiting for class to be over to get a ride home.

  Everybody who met me thought I was younger than seventeen. According to my mother, it was because I did nothing with myself. Not for lack of reflection, but I simply couldn’t figure out why it was so important for people to change how they looked in order to be accepted. Makeup was an art that only certain lucky girls were born with a talent for, myself not being one of them.

  To be honest, I feared that if I applied too much eye shadow or mascara I’d look like a raccoon or something out of a barnyard. My eyelashes were already long and dark, and the one time I’d experimented with lash curlers I came out looking like the bride of Frankenstein. I was content with my face: oval-shaped, with rosy cheeks and radiant skin that didn’t need heavy powder and concealers. My eyes were large and green, flecked with light hues of brown and gold. Cat eyes, my grandmother had called them when she used to hold me on her lap. “You’ll never need makeup when you grow up,” sh
e smiled. “You’re so naturally pretty.” Not that I really believed her. After all, isn’t your family supposed to think that their children are the smartest, prettiest, or whatever?

  Generally though, I looked pleasant enough despite the smatter of light freckles that popped up across the bridge of my nose every summer after my first sunburn, or my appalling tendency to chew on my lower lip when I was nervous. My hair was a dirty blonde mix of honey shades that turned lighter through the summer. It hang nearly down to my waist and I liked to keep it tied in a no-fuss ponytail at school. Despite mother’s persistent urging, I had no inclination to cut it. When all the other girls were giddy about going out to get their first perm, I read magazines with photos of starlets like Katherine Hepburn and, as God is my witness, I’m embarrassed to admit that I envied her lush romantic tresses. I believed long hair looked dramatic on a girl and I wasn't in a big rush to burn mine with flatteners, curling irons and everything in between.

  As the Mexican stared right back at me, I found myself biting my lip and started humming to myself, trying to calm the butterflies in my stomach. I started counting the blue ladybugs stitched into my dress for lack of something better to do, when a clear voice called out to me, interrupting my thoughts:

  “Hey there.”

  I looked up hastily to see her staring back in expectation, head slightly tilted to the side.

  “Uh, hi…” I said, my voice breaking. I cleared my throat. “Hello.”

  “Nice day, huh,” she said, a slight smile playing on her face.

  “It is beautiful,” I agreed, gathering my composure.

  “So you go to school here?”

  I was quick to shake my head. “I’m just here for today. Had an appointment with admissions about maybe starting here in the fall.”

  She nodded as she put out her cigarette with her heel. “How’d it go?”