﻿THE DOOR TO MY PRIUS FLIES OPEN. TECHNICALLY, IT'S DAD'S PRIUS; we just moved to Los Angeles three weeks ago, but he almost immediately traded in his giant pickup truck for this shiny hatchback. A scream would have flown out of me, but my heart pounds so intensely I can't make noise. My former classmates warned me that L.A. was dangerous and that I was too soft for it, but I blew them off. I was from the kind of small town where the biggest news of the year was that the Gas U Go started carrying Coke products instead of Pepsi. ("More like Pepsi U Go!" we shouted when we found out.) I'd visited my aunt so many times in L.A. that I laughed behind their backs at their tales of urban violence, knowing that while the city might be big and busy, it was one of those things that had never been scary.
And yet, here I am, on my nineteenth day in Los Angeles, trying to leave school after showing up for a talent show that is being put on by the show choir that I'm not even interested in joining just so I could, I don't know, meet people and pretend I had a social life here. And my reward—apparently being carjacked. Carjacked!
Okay, think, Krista, what do you do if you're being carjacked? Call 911? Okay, actually, that's probably what you're supposed to do. That is something even a soft person from the Midwest can handle.
I reach out to my phone, resting safely and legally in its dashboard mount. Hopefully my shaking hand can connect with the right numbers. After all, there are only three. Two, really, one's a repeat. Oh my gosh, I'm melting down, I can feel it, maybe—hopefully this is the kind of carjacker who's just going to throw me (and my phone) out, and even though Dad will probably be upset that the car's gone, I'll be safe and, well, I don't know how insurance works but hopefully it'll all work out on the money side.
"I'm here, I'm here, I'm here."
I flick my gaze into the rearview mirror, even though I don't think you're supposed to make eye contact with people in the process of stealing you and/or your car. But I also am pretty sure carjackers don't normally announce their arrival with a triple "I'm here" either so all rules are out the window.
Oh my—holy—
It isn't a carjacker. It's Audrey Kim."
Audrey Kim is in my backseat. Again, technically, Dad's backseat, but he isn't here, I am and I'm in the Prius alone with the hottest girl I've ever seen in person.
"Sorry," she says.
Audrey Kim, what could you be sorry for? Audrey Kim, your face is perfect and your hair is perfect and you're now breathing the same air as me. You owe me no apologies.
"I think everyone's getting a Rydr," she continues, tossing her phone into her bag without looking at it, "so there are, ya know, twenty-seven black Priuses out there. It took me some time to find yours."
"Oh, sure," I stammer, instead of I am not your Rydr driver, I am not a Rydr driver at all! I too was just trying to get out of this weird surge of post–talent show traffic!
"Sorry too about the destination," Audrey says, so breezily. How does anyone talk to a stranger like that, just a casual sentence cast out there without any anxiety about how it could come back to you? Even in my group of friends, it was never a true fearlessness. If I said everything that I thought, maybe I would have ended up saying everything. And I prided myself on just how much I kept to myself.
"Oh?" I try to sound like I'm not too interested. Rydr drivers are never very interested, and that's on top of the fact that I'm not actually a Rydr driver and I have no idea what Audrey Kim's destination is.
It's already, as we all know, past the point in time when I should have said something, obviously. Hi, Audrey Kim, you obviously don't recognize me, but I'm in your chemistry class and your American lit class, and before I moved here, I guess I didn't really think there were girls like you in high school, but here you are, existing.
Oh! But not just that, obviously. Also, Audrey Kim, while this is a black Prius adorned with a Rydr sticker, it is not on duty, as my dad is the Rydr driver (Rydr drivr?) in the family, not me. This is an off-duty Rydr car. You should go catch your real ride now.
But, as we've already covered, I am not someone who just says things. So, I drive away from South Valley Academy, one of many shiny black hatchbacks in a line at the light at Coldwater Canyon Avenue like little beetles being let out into the world.
"The Grove at rush hour is a real masochistic move on my part," Audrey continues, thank god, because even though I've only lived here for three-plus weeks, even I know what The Grove is. It's an outdoor mall with a weird trolley and a movie theater, and I've already gone there with Aunt Margo for dinner the week we moved here and again last week. So instead of fessing up to Audrey—it's already too late to tell her she got into the wrong car, isn't it?—I tap the grove into Waze and watch as the directions display before me.
"It's fine," I say, trying to sound nonchalant but kind, as Dad says the best Rydr drivers are. You don't want to talk too much and annoy someone, but you should be friendly, too. He and Mom moved here to work with Aunt Margo, whose artisanal mustard business has taken off in a huge way, but L.A.'s a lot more expensive than the-middle-of-nowhere Missouri, and so Dad's driving for Rydr in his nonmustard time. Even though it's a part-time gig, he's dedicated himself to learning the ways of Rydr.
"No, The Grove at any time is like one of the seven circles of Hell," Audrey says, and despite my knowledge of good Rydr driver behavior, I laugh. I laugh like it's the funniest thing I've heard in my entire life.
"Normally it's one of the outer rings, but at rush hour? It's second or third from the center."
I continue laughing like someone the camera zooms in on during a recorded standup comedy special. Get a grip, Krista. I mean, it's not not funny, but Audrey Kim is not exactly reinventing comedy in here.
"Anyway, I know it's your job, but it's still a terrible drive, so, I'm sorry," Audrey says. "Normally I take the bus, but I'm running late, so we're here instead while I come up with an excuse when Mom sees this on her credit card statement."
I glance in the rearview mirror, and accidentally make eye contact with her. Unless eye contact is okay? Dad didn't cover this in any of his Ryder ramblings in the last nineteen days. I look back to the road, which is safest no matter the proper eye etiquette.
"Dude, I'm sorry," she says. "I have no idea why I'm saying so much. Well, I do, it's because I'm nervous as hell about—anyway, sorry. About the ride, about my mouth."
"Nothing's wrong," I say. "With the ride or your mouth."
Oh, god, ew, why did I say that? I chance another look back, but Audrey just smiles.
"Thanks," she says. "Five stars!"
I realize she's talking about Rydr's driver rating system, and I wonder what she'll think when it's time to actually give the tip and review at the end of the ride. It certainly won't say Krista P. and won't feature my photo in a little bubble. But that'll be later, after I drop her off, when I'm on my way back to my new house that doesn't feel anything like home yet.
When Mom and Dad announced we were moving to California, I didn't know what to feel. My old classmates were right; I am soft. I cry a lot and I'm scared of horror movies and I wore half of a cheap BFF necklace for six months, because I didn't want to say anything negative, before Emily noticed it was turning my skin green. (We pivoted to bracelets woven out of embroidery floss after that.) Moving, much less to a big city, didn't seem like it was for me.
But a small town—my small town, at least—wasn't for me either. I always felt different, somehow, somewhere buried beneath my skin. For a long time, I attributed it to the things I could tick off a list, like all the ways I was too soft, or how during the last presidential election we were the only house with a Democratic yard sign on our whole street. (Not our whole block. The whole goshdarn street.) But it was more than that, and all those things added up sounded better suited for Los Angeles. It was my way out. Here I'd see yard signs that matched ours, here my softness would be enhanced by the scent of orange blossoms at dusk, and here I'd kiss a girl and not wonder what anyone thought about it.
But, so far, none of that has happened. There are no elections going on right now, my selfies look the same even with orange blossoms in the air, and my first kiss has still not happened. My first girl kiss, that is, because I don't count anything that happened before I knew I was queer—oh, gosh, I'm queer, that's a thing I am that I think about myself now. A real thing I have a word for, not just some vague differentness about me.
But, still, California is different than the Midwest, or at least the specific place I landed is different than the specific place I left. There I'd been, whispering words into my mirror, alone, and now here I am, where a girl like Audrey Kim just existed.
The car feels silent—too silent—and I try to remember everything Dad's told me about being a great Rydr driver. "Can I put some music on for you?" I ask, in a voice that comes out more squeakily than intended. For a moment I worry that my five stars are in jeopardy and then remember I am not her actual driver, this whole thing is a weird accidental sham!
"That'd be great," Audrey says. "Whatever's good for me."
I realize then that I have to turn on the car stereo, which is connected to my iPhone, and which I only paused leaving school because I wasn't used to driving this car out here at all, so I needed a few moments of silence. When my phone reconnects to the stereo, there's nothing to be done. The cast recording of Be More Chill is going to blare out into the car directly into Audrey Kim's ears.
Obviously, of course none of this matters because Audrey Kim looks like a Wildfang model and I look like a librarian who graduated a decade early but still readily embraces lumpy cardigans and sensible shoes. And Audrey doesn't recognize me from American lit or chemistry.