Wake Up Happy Every Day by Stephen May Page B

the traffic in any case. It’s building up now. She is doing the thin-lip thing again. She can make it go like razor-wire when she wants. It’s such an obvious sulk that Lorna wants to laugh. It’s funny though, because she wouldn’t have thought Linwood was her usual type. Altogether too jock, despite the glasses. Maybe we’re both getting desperate, she thinks. Or maybe it is just that they had been in Megan’s space, the gym being her domain. If it’s that, well, it’s unfair because it was Megan who had insisted she should drive her to Russian Hill after class, be there to provide back-up. It wasn’t like Lorna was begging to hang at the boxing club. And she hadn’t wanted the attention from Linwood, hadn’t encouraged it. She had, in fact, been fairly abrupt with him, a bit off. Rude even.
    She supposes now that the best thing would be to clear the air with a few light remarks, to make Megan laugh. It is usually easy to josh her out of a mood, but Lorna is starting to feel a bit tired and headachy and anyway, maybe Megan isn’t even thinking about Lorna’s accidental flirtation with Linwood at all, maybe she is just stressed about the traffic. Maybe she is genuinely and simply concerned about flyovers and intersections and freeways. Whether or not to take the FAIR lane, the one where you can pay ten dollars and ensure a queue-free ride. The stuff Lorna, as a permanent passenger – as one of the fourteen or so people in the state who doesn’t drive – never has to worry about.
     
    She had already formed the impression from her mum that her father had done well in business, but even so this neighbourhood is still a bit intimidating. These have to be the most expensive houses in the city. Huge, surrounded by electronic gates and walls and looking down on everyone else. Each one like a castle busy getting on with its own fairy tale.
    Uncertain of where the house is exactly, they park up to consult the scrap of paper on which Lorna has scrawled the address. The grandeur of the area makes Lorna feel drab and shy in contrast. Megan conversely seems to brighten now the drive is over. Yeah, maybe it really had been the traffic making her do the tight mouth thing. Lorna hopes so. She doesn’t want a ridiculous spat over some idiot boy to spoil what could be her last few weeks in the States.
    ‘I think it’s that one,’ Megan says as she points at a particularly film-setty palace painted the colour of manuka honey. ‘And do you think that’s him?’
    Lorna follows Megan’s imperious finger with its short athlete’s nail. She sees a plumpish, balding, rosy-cheeked man in a dark suit come out of the gate that belongs to the golden house. They watch as he points elaborately at the line of parked cars. It’s a gesture that seems overdone, more like a G-man taking a bead on a mobster with a handgun than a man opening the doors to his car. It does the job though, the lights on an anonymous, grey Lexus-Volvo-Audi-SUV thing blink twice.
    The guy is about the right age, and he looks anxiously uncomfortable. Meaning that, yes, he looks English. Is there any creature less built for elegance in the sun and heat, than the middle-aged English bloke in a suit? So it could be her dad, it really could. Yet she feels no exhilaration. Instead she feels flat and frumpy and her headache is worse.
    Megan is already out of the car. ‘Come on, sister, look alive.’ And yes, of course, this bloke, this possible dad, might be driving off any second. There isn’t time to sit around plucking up courage and rehearsing what she is going to say and whatnot. She clambers out of Megan’s battered Focus feeling hot, ungainly, sticky, sweaty and nauseous. Perhaps it is just as well her dad – if that’s who he is – doesn’t look like a glamorous movie exec.
    Megan links arms with her and hurries her along. ‘Exciting, huh?’ she says, and she doesn’t sound satirical or anything. She sounds like she means it.
    They are about 100