It was a dream come true. Ella Redding was sixteen; she was the olden orphan at the South Philadelphia Orphan and for her, it didn’t even seem real. A wealthy, handsome man and his wife had come in on a Wednesday in early March while Ella was at school at told the orphanage that they wanted to adopt the oldest orphan they had. They were from Southern California and didn’t want the "hassles of raising children" but wanted the rewards. Ella was thinking about a Spanish test she had the next day when the head of the orphanage came into her room and Suzie’s room and asked to speak to her.

"Your ship’s come in, Ella," Joan Kipp told her.

"What do you mean?" she asked. Ella had gotten her hopes up before and every time she had been crushed. If she had a deal with her real parents every time she had watched Annie, she might have actually had a childhood.

"A couple came in today," Ms. Kipp said excitedly. Her thick red hair bounced heartily and the green eyes were a fire at Ella’s good fortune. Ella wondered what kind of shampoo she used. "They want to adopt you!" she exclaimed.

Ella had heard this before. The last time was when she was twelve and this was the last time she had ever been truly excited about anything. Puberty, while inflaming her hormones, had actually mellowed her out. "Oh yeah?" she asked absent-mindedly.

"Dear child," Ms. Kipp shrieked, "are you listening? These people are wealthy, and they are from Southern California!"

"Oh yeah?" This time her ears perked. The Golden State! Wow! She had dreamed of the land of sun tans and movie stars for years. But then again, hasn’t every girl?

"Yes, Ella, yes!" To Joan Kipp, getting her oldest orphan adopted was a blessed day. She might even go out to eat tonight, she thought.

"What are they like?" Ella asked. Ella’s brown hair was straight and uninterested in adoptions. Her eyes were beginning to awaken however.

"’What are they like?’ Ella, these people want to take you from here!" Ms. Kipp said.

"I know, but they don’t even know me," Ella said.

"Alright, girl, calm down," Ms. Kipp said, in need of her own advice. "They are coming back tonight to take you out to dinner."

"Really?" This interested her. Ella had not been out to eat since her thirteenth birthday and that was a tradition in the orphanage. As she walked back to her room, she gazed into her small, shared closet and was disgusted with her minuscule selection of ‘going out’ clothes. Maybe Jenna downstairs would have something. Jenna Carlene was thirteen but she was big for her size. In fact, her and Ella had shared clothes they had been on the outs since Ella had beat her fair and square in a game of Uno and won Jenna’s music box. It had been close and Ella had almost lost her favorite earring, perhaps the finest piece of jewelry to have graced the orphanage in two generations.

Ella walked down the stairs, through a hallway she herself used to live in and knocked on Jenna’s front door. She was reading V.C. Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic when Ella entered. She didn’t respond at first and then Ella said, "Hi."

"Hey," Jenna Carlene said without looking up from her book.

"Uh," Ella’s request began, "I was wondering if maybe—"

"No," Jenna said.

"No? You don’t even know what I want!" Ella said, becoming angry. Then she remembered that today may be the beginning of the rest of her life. "Listen, let me start over."

"Go ahead," she said, and still had not looked up at Ella once.

"I’ll be right back," Ella said and before Jenna could respond, she was out the door and runing up the stairs. When she returned, Jenna’s music box was in hand.

"Oh," escaped from Jenna’s lips and she threw down the book and leapt over to her music box.

"Ok, now," Ella said, smiling. "I was wondering—"

"Whatever, Ella, whatever you want," Jenna said, fixated on her regained possession. It was the only thing she had from her parents and every orphan knows the worth of something like that.

"—if I could borrow your blue dress, with the red flowers—"

"Of course," she said breathlessly, and opened up the box. Quiet tunes emitted from it and Jenna was somewhere else.

"Cool, thanks, Jenna," Ella said and walked over to her closet. The dress hung sadly by itself at the end of Jenna’s closet space.

For the first time in awhile, Ella noticed the drab hallways and brown stairwells. The gray skies smirked from outside the dirty windows but it didn’t bother at all. She got back to her room and tried the dress on. It fit so well; Ella was happy. She put in her diamond earring and looked at herself in the small mirror that stood sharply against the door. She smiled and with it Ella was a whole new girl. She pulled her plain brown hair into a ponytail and then looked at her nails. They certainly needed some attention. She pulled out the only color of nail polish she had and began applying the scarlet paint to them.

A few minutes later, she was no longer Ella Redding, orphan. She was possibly Ella Redding, resident of California. She even smiled. Ella didn’t recognize herself or maybe, this time she finally did. As she sat on her rickety bed paining her toenails, she wondered who this couple was. Why would they want a sixteen-year old girl? Maybe this one would work out, she hoped. Ella felt her guard being let down and it scared her. She lifted the small silver pendant from her necklace and looked at the small smudged picture within it. Her mother, or as she cynically thought from time to time, the woman who she believed was her mother looked right back at her. She died of cancer when Ella was very young and there was no one to take care of her. Her father was in the Peace Corps, and was often curious what part of the world he was in and who he was helping. She hated him, though because he never came to rescue her. And now, two years from her anticipated and dismal freedom, a family from California wanted to adopt her. There must be a catch, she thought, and the guard came back up.

The orphanage buzzed all afternoon after word of Ella’s possible escape became known. They came in and visited her while she looked at her schoolbooks. After all, there were no definites in life. Ella Redding was only sixteen but she already knew that for a fact.

A little after six o’clock, after all of the children had been coaxed into the dining room, Mister and Misses Paul Latham knocked on Ella’s door. She took a deep breath and said, "Come in."

Paul Latham himself had been an orphan there and when he had turned eighteen, he hitchhiked across the country, as that was feasible in the sixties. He made it to San Francisco at a time where social and mental revolt was well underway and he quickly became submersed. After a couple of years strolling the Haight-Ashbury district and expanding his mind, he went to Los Angeles and wanted to try his hand at acting. Paul at that time had soft wavy brown hair and searing blue eyes. He thought he could make a fortune making movies and doing sex scenes with Bridget Bardot.

Two years later, Paul Latham knew he wouldn’t make it as an actor but he had lived a little of the lifestyle and now needed to find a way to live up to his standards. Upon the referral of a friend, he got a job at the bottom of a high-tech firm in Santa Monica, taking computer-engineering classes at night. There was where he met his wife, Frances. She too was taking those classes to get ahead and was one of only two women in the class. To Paul, it had seemed only natural for him to ask her out because he was the best looking guy in the class and she was one of the best looking women he had ever seen. She was whatever people think of as a blond bombshell, complete with soft, forgiving yet mischievous eyes. Paul could barely concentrate and eventually he had to transfer classes so they could still date.

Four years later, when Mike Schmidt was coming onto the scene to reinvigorate Paul as a Phillie’s fan, he graduated from UCLA with a degree in computer engineering. A few years after that, he and Frances were married. Her parents had been weary of Paul, seeing he had no family, no past.

"We just don’t know anything about his family," urged her father.

Frances was annoyed. "Neither does he, daddy," she told her over-protective father. "I’ve been with him for six years, he has a degree, he’s building a foundation for us and you’re still thinking about his parents. Maybe you should find them then," Frances said sarcastically.

And so he did.

Paul Latham’s mother had been a waitress in various restaurants for years until sometime in the mid-fifties she was killed in a car accident. It hadn’t even been her car but she was dead and her own son didn’t even know. Paul’s father was apparently some sort of professional gambler, and even though Paul had never known his father, this bothered Frances’ father greatly. He had his degree in psychology from Berkeley and was well versed in the addictive gene.

In the end, of course, Frances won and eventually her father grew to like Paul. Then in 1989, after ten years of marriage and attempts at having children, they had to look into adoption. Paul’s sperm count was ridiculously low and they tried different treatments before they resorted to adoption. Paul loved the idea and thought about all of the kids he had grown up with. Once you hit eight, being adopted was a crap shoot.

Adoption it turned out was much more involved than they thought. Two years into it, Paul’s night classes paid off in spades. He was part of a high-tech buyout with the company he had started in the shipping/receiving department and after graduating, moved up the ranks swiftly. Paul Latham now was a millionaire over night. The adoption world was now at his feet and he shocked quite a few agencies by deciding to go to his old orphanage in Philadelphia and choose the one least likely to be adopted. Frances was supportive but talked Paul into traveling for awhile first so they will have been ready to settle down by the time they adopted.

Paul agreed and off they went. They saw everything in the U.S. they wanted to see, Hawaii, Europe, Tokyo, Greece, North Africa, Iceland and even Moscow. Both Paul and Frances were from the Cold War generation and visiting a place like Russia was not high up on the list but they believed if their lives could change as much as they had, then so could Russia’s. They loved it, and even stayed for a week. They spent a few weeks in Mexico, the Caribbean, and finished off in the Bahamas. Paul and Frances Latham enjoyed their late thirties to say the least.

Upon their return, Paul and Frances bought a piece of property in Laguna Beach overlooking two hundred degrees of the Pacific Ocean. It took almost a year but they built the most beautiful home with twenty-foot windows erected to allow a perfect view of the sunset everyday.

Once they were settled and the house was furnished how Frances wanted it, Paul starting talking about adoption again. This time, Frances was very receptive and they began the process again, though this time they wanted something no one else seemed to want: a fifteen or sixteen-year old girl. They decided on this because they felt too old to have a baby but they wanted to feel the rewards of having a child. Paul wanted a girl, much to the surprise of his friends because Paul was a modern man. He sensed that women of the next generation would cause an upheaval of sexuality and equality. Without making it seem too objective, he wanted to raise an independent woman, a woman who could command respect. Frances found Paul’s reasoning admirable and even downright applaudable. Paul never really told Frances but it was one of his favorite things about her. She never took Paul’s bullshit and always made him feel strong for what he believed in. It was a beautiful union, and in their own ways, they both knew it.

Paul and Frances Latham entered her room and introduced themselves to Ella. She immediately thought what a beautiful couple they were and they smiled at her. Ella like them right away.

They went to a restaurant that Ella had never heard of. It was very nice but not too nice to make Ella feel uncomfortable. They sat and looked at the menu. Ella only recognized items from the child’s menu but Frances asked her what kinds of food she liked.

"Um, chicken, mushrooms, and I’m a huge fan of garlic," Ella said, and her eyes lit up.

Frances smiles and suggested the Chicken Piccata. She liked Ella and gently squeezed Paul’s thigh in a romantic gesture of approval.

"Have you ever been to California," the good-looking man with the blue eyes asked.

"I’ve never been anywhere," Ella said honestly. The orphanage didn’t really have funds to go on trips but she did go to Bloomsburg once.

"Oh yeah," Paul said, amused by her soft innocence but hard realism.

"Yeah. A girl who was adopted from the orphanage got me out for the weekend. I was about," she thought, "eleven, maybe twelve I think. We even went hiking one day," she said.

"That’s great," he said. "I love hiking. Ella," Paul said, using her name for the first time, "did you know I was an orphan? At this very orphanage nonetheless?"

Ella’s eyes widened and she could not believe her ears. "Really?"

"Yep," he said, pleased with her reaction. "and now we live near Los Angeles, by the beach."

"Wow," Ella remarked, in a daze from the overwhelming life that now seemed to be hers.

Frances watched this rather plain-looking girl. But the potential, she thought, the potential. This was not your ordinary adoption.

Two weeks later, Ella Redding was now a Californian. She cut her hair to shoulder length and a vitality appeared in her face that even Joan Kipp could never have predicted. Paul and Frances had cleaned all the boxes that had comprised Ella’s new room. They were going to let her pick out whatever sort of decorations she wanted, though Frances wanted to help.

Ella walked into her new room and just sat down for awhile. She had a view of the ocean, and to her elated surprise, her own bathroom. Her own bathroom. She really was in heaven. Frances stood in the doorway and watched Ella’s first impression. She could not have been happier and she immediately went down stairs and hugged her husband. Their lives now seemed complete. Ella’s orientation to California was fun and frustrating, like learning a new language abroad. She felt like the luckiest girl in the world but she knew she had a lot of catch up in this new, fast-paced society. She had difficulty making friends and those she did, she couldn’t really relate to. They had everything anyone could possibly want, including parents and yet they still acted spoiled and unhappy. She occasionally reminded herself that she did have parents now but the word ‘parents’ still didn’t mean anything to her. She looked up to Paul and Frances as guardians, kind, generous people who were going to oversee her last few years of childhood. In many respects though, she felt light-years ahead of her peers in terms of maturity. She had had nothing, gotten used to it, and now she had anything she could have wanted.

For the first couple of months, things were great. Paul and Frances could not have been happier with Ella. She truly was a blessed child and they thanked each other everyday for the choice they made. True, she was almost a grown up, but they could be around for those last few crucial years of forming. Then they could be off to travel again, sometimes taking Ella with them. In fact, once summer hit, they took to San Francisco for a week. Paul took her to see where he had formed many of his beliefs encouraged her to find an area she might want to go to college. To Paul and Frances, college was an automatic. If Ella Reding-Latham, was to become the modern woman they hoped, college was the oxygen to her future. She would need it to breathe in the crazy, education-based world that was slowly becoming the present.

Ella was still overwhelmed by her new life. Suddenly it was no longer a cold spring. It was seventy-two degrees everyday and was perfectly sunny by lunch time. How anybody got any work done in this place was a mystery to her. She sat in her classrooms at Laguna Beach High School and smelled the ocean breeze all day, dreaming of guys with surfboards at their hips and getting a tan before July. None of this was real to her. And her new parents. Paul and Frances were great. They were involved in her life but not to the point of nosy. Almost too great, she thought, sitting in her English class. They were discussing Brave New World. Ella wasn’t. She was looking out the window and dreaming of her new life.

At dinner that night, Ella was quiet. She had become quite talkative the last month or so but that night she was obviously somewhere else.

"Ella, where are you in there," Paul asked in his good-natured way. Frances was nibbling at her tuna salad, trying to admit to herself that she would always be on a diet.

"What?" Ella asked, from that place.

"What’s going on? You seem awfully quiet tonight."

"Oh, nothing. It’s just hard to believe that this is my life now," she said, playing with her peas. Ella imagined them miniature beach balls and her broccoli were umbrellas.

"Yes, I can imagine," he said. He took a bite of his teriyaki chicken and looked at Ella. They had the same roots, he thought. None. Paul sometimes wondered about his parents through each year it became less and less often. And now that he had a child, he became consumed with his own parenting, determined that Ella would never feel abandoned again.

She remained quiet and so Paul let it go. He was amazed at his own restraint and it made him think that perhaps he had never really grown up.

Later, Ella lay on her bed listening to the Dave Mathews Band and adolescently stared at Brave New World. She had her own phone line but no one to call. She touched her earring, her last vestige of her previous life; Ella felt reincarnated. She read the same line from Bernard Marx four times before she fell asleep with the lights on dreaming about the Liberty Bell.

Before anyone knew, summer was here and the grass could not be mowed enough. Birds were cheerful and Ella worked on her tan. She had started a journal recently and was by herself more than she wanted. Paul and Frances had a special vacation planned but as she sat there next to the blue pool, under the blue sky, having blue thoughts, she couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t.

Ella loved Chicago. The three of them spent a week there in early July and she thought it was the cleanest city she had ever seen. Granted, she had only seen two or three other cities but she was enthralled with the steady breeze and the ocean-like lake that bordered the northeast corner of the city.

When they returned, summer was in full bloom in Laguna Beach. It is perhaps the ideal place to spend the normally interminable months. It hardly every got about eighty-five degrees and there was always the coean. The God blessed ocean, she came to call it. She blossomed that summer, tanned bronze and started ballooning in the right areas. She was growing up and she knew it. School was an obscenity; Ella had practically forgotten who she was. Could you blame her though?

Paul, who no longer had a nine-to-five job, was noticing the changes in Ella. Frances was oblivious but Paul Latham loved his wife on her own level. In fact, Frances liked Ella but never understood where the girl was coming from. She knew Paul and Ella had an unspoken bond because of their pasts and she left it at that. She was just proud to be a mother. She had even enjoyed making lunches for Ella the last couple months before school let out. Now that it was summer she let Margarita the housekeeper take care of it.

Ella Redding-Latham did make a few friends. One was a guy who had just graduated and was eighteen. His name was Gary and he was a surfer, long hair and all. She liked him but had never been on a date before. Her hormones that summer were out of whack and she thought about him often. Then one day she saw him on the beach, with his surfboard. He said hi and Ella almost melted. She had never felt this way before. Gary could tell and without even being conscious of it, he took advantage of it. His casual nature and easy brown smile sent ripples through Ella’s forming body.

After seeing him two more times at the end of July, she finally agreed to go out with him even though she didn’t really know what that entailed. Paul Latham asked his daughter where she was going that night and she had said ‘out’. Then Ella hugged Paul and thanked him.

"Why?" he asked, smiling.

"Well, I don’t know. It’s just, I can’t believe this is my life," she said.

"Believe it," said Paul. "You’re a really lucky girl, you know that?"

"Yeah?" she asked, looking up at his blue eyes.

"Yep, but you know that." Paul wanted to talk to her more but could see she wanted to leave. "Alright, well you have a good time, ok? And try to stay out of trouble, ok?" Paul smiled and stepped aside so she could pass in the white hallway. He tried not to notice that she had a backpack. As the door closed, Paul Latham decided he would have a drink.

Gary was a pretty nice guy for an eighteen-year old. His hair was long and dirty blond and his face was so tanned that his blue eyes looked gray. Ella liked how he seemed to know what he wanted. He told her he was going to move to Santa Barbara at the end of the summer. Ella had no idea where that was and one night, after having sex in the back of his convertible mid-sixties Chevy, he drove by a gas station to buy a map and showed her where it was. She took the map home that night and Frances found it one day while Ella was lying out by the pool. She noticed that Santa Barbara was circled but Frances Latham wasn’t exactly a mother figure. It just didn’t strike a chord with her.

Gary planned his move for the beginning of September. Ella didn’t think it a coincidence it was a week before school started. She spent many of her nights on the Internet, something very new to her, looking up information on the city of Santa Barbara. It looked beautiful and she thought of Gary often. She knew he had her hooked but at that point, it was too late.

She looked for rational justifications for leaving. She had everything, and two ‘parents’ that cared for her. Why she would want to leave all that she didn’t know. But then she thought about Gary’s eyes, his tan, his surfboard, and the way he held her. Ella told herself to calm down. She was also scared he might want to leave her. When she had those thoughts, however, she reverted to her old mentality, the one where no one cared and no one invested anything in her. Then she thought of Paul and Frances. She owed them everything. If only that had been her last thought on that mid-August night. As the white fan above her bed spun, cooling the room, her last waking thought was a swirling of Gary’s eyes, and an imaginary apartment she and Gary were going to rent out in a couple of weeks.

The day of the ‘Big Runaway’, as Ella and Gary had begun calling it came. The smell of freedom woke her and she went downstairs for breakfast. Paul was at the driving range and Frances was with her personal trainer. Paul Latham had been dealing with investments the last few weeks but still aware of the change in his daughter. He hadn’t known what it was but it was there, like a kernel of popcorn stuck in his teeth.

He decided to have a talk with Ella. Paul knew he could not control her but hoped he could be around for these last couple years of development. With the way Zeus and his co-conspirators worked, Paul’s unscheduled meeting coincided exactly with Ella’s secret departure. She had planned on leaving after lunch; she knew much about the ‘runaway’ as did any orphan, but she forgot that Paul himself knew quite a bit about it.

Ella had spent the last week slowly moving things out of her room and into Gary’s trunk. By nature she was a minimalist and so she didn’t really take much, but it was enough so that Paul stopped her that morning while her backpack was full.

"Hey Ella," Paul called after her down the stairs.

She swallowed hard and put on her façade. "Hey Paul."

"What are you up to this morning?" he asked, just to keep her in the house while he came down the stairs.

"I was gonna go to the beach with some friends," she said, and consoled herself by thinking it was only a half lie.

"Oh yeah? Beautiful day for it," he said, using the smile that had won Frances over many years earlier.

"Yeah," she said non-committaly, her hand resting on the knob of the front door.

"Hey, hey, why don’t you come back inside for awhile? We haven’t spent much time together. Let’s have some breakfast, my treat," which was in Paul’s language meant that he was making it.

"Uh, alright," Ella said slowly, not wanting to make any waves. She tried to act like she wasn’t running away that day. She came away from the door and smiled as carefree as possible. Paul knew something was up.

Paul went into the kitchen and threw a couple of Lender’s Bagels into the toaster while he rummage for some fresh fruit in the refrigerator. He found a cantaloupe and cut it up in half. Ella dropped her backpack and sat at the island kitchen. The sun was soft and blue through the large windows. The overall effect was refreshing. Paul planned an attack while Ella nibbled at her cantaloupe.

"So, how have you been lately? I’m sorry I haven’t been around much," he said and looked at her.

"It’s ok Paul," Ella said maturely.

"No, it’s not. It’s just that this parenting thing is new to me." He stopped and walked over to the toaster. He scurried the four bagel halves onto two plates and pulled out a couple kinds of cream cheese including Ella’s favorite, the fat-free kind.

"Thanks," she said, and began smearing it onto her bagel.

"So, what’s up? Do you like it here?" Paul asked, paying special attention to her response.

"Yeah, it’s great, it’s just too much to take sometimes," Ella said. "But you guys have been great, you made feel really comfortable and stuff." She felt naked to Paul’s casual probing.

"That’s great," he said. "It’s just it seems that you’ve been a little distant lately, that’s all," Paul said. He was careful about prying; it usually led to the person clamming up.

"Hmm," she said, closing up slightly.

"I know how you feel," Paul told her. She was quiet, eating her bagel. Paul thought it best to let it go. Ultimately, it was out of his hands but he wished he could relate to her. Sure, they were both orphans but she was part of some Marilyn Manson-MTV generation that didn’t scare him really, but he was quite aware of how quickly ‘they’ grew up now. It used to nag at him, sitting in adoption agencies that were politely trying to let he and Frances down easily. How much could one really influence their kids when their inundated with garbage everyday? Just give a good example, he thought, that’s all you could do. "Hey Ella," Paul called to her as she was leaving.

"Yeah," she said, trying not to act annoyed.

"Come here and give me a big hug," he said awkwardly. Paul Latham had not said that to another female in years.

"Alright," said Ella, unsure of what was going on.

"I want you to know something Ella," Paul said, looking right into her eyes. The embrace had ended and Ella shifted in her sandals. "I want you to know you forever, Ella, I really do."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Look, I know that you can’t or won’t be contained, I see that look in your eye. I just want you to know that I’ve seen your beautiful side and no matter what happens, I want us to be friends."

"Alright," said Ella shyly. "I want to know you too. Can I go now?" she asked.

"Of course," he said, "of course. Have a good time." Paul Latham had never felt so out of control in his entire life.

Ella left with thoughts swimming in her head. Did Paul know? No, she thought, but maybe he understood. She waited down the street for Gary to come and read Brave New World. She hadn’t read it during her class and it made her feel better as she sat on her back pack in the early September midday.

They went to Pedro’s Tacos in San Clemente and planned their trip. "Alright," Gary said, eating a fish taco, "what time should I pick you up? How about after dinner?" he asked and those blue eyes entranced her.

"Sure," she said, gazing into a gray ocean that never ended.

"Look Ella, what are you expecting out of this?" Gary asked. He liked Ella but didn’t want to be tied down, not yet, not with his eighteen-year old body screaming for as much as possible.

"Don’t worry about me," Ella’s old self said. "I have my own reasons for going, Gary. I won’t be relying on you." Ella did not like Gary thinking she was hanging onto his leg through this thing.

Gary was shocked. He had never heard Ella talk like that before. Then again, Gary didn’t really know about her childhood. Ella remained indignant and then Gary softened for the first time since they had known each other. "Look, I’m sorry Ella," he said and grabbed one of her hands. Ella looked away out the window and wondered how the beach in Santa Barbara was different than here. She had never had a job before but she was a survivor.

"It’s alright Gary. It’s just that I’m a free spirit, ya know? I’m not going there to be with you. You’re a ride there and you’re nice to me. I hope we’ll still hang out but I don’t expect anything from you."

Gary had never heard any girl talk like that before. "Ok," he said and went back to his taco. Damn, just like his buddy had told him. You sleep with a virgin and she’ll get all weird around you. He hadn’t really known what he meant until now.

They decided upon seven o’clock. Dinner at the Latham house would be over and Ella would say she was going to a movie. That afternoon she had laid on her bed and thought and thought. Was she willing to give al of this up? It wasn’t hers, Ella reminded herself and looked around her room. She didn’t think Frances would miss her that much though she was nice. Paul might be hurt, but Ella knew he would understand. She felt compelled to write a not to him, explaining her situation. She waited and waited and then had a great idea. She wrote a letter to Jenna back in Philadelphia explaining what was going on. Jenna would think she was crazy, because she was always dreaming of California. But she didn’t mail it yet. She would wait; she still had another letter to write.

The plan went over great and before midnight, Ella and Gary had his car parked in Santa Barbara. In the morning, they walked around downtown, and Ella grabbed a few applications at restaurants and at a record store. Gary just walked around, looking. It was a cool town, he thought. He might even enroll in the community college. Gary had a buddy going to school there. He had an apartment and had told Gary he ‘his girl’ could stay there for awhile.

Ella was so excited. While Gary and his friend spend the night taking bong hits, she filled out applications and wrote a letter. She thought maybe she should call and tell Paul that she was alright but would wait until the next day.

The weather in Santa Barbara was similar to Laguna Beach, but a little warmer, and a little more breeze. She called college from a pay phone against her own will. She knew Paul would be able to have the call traced, but she still wanted to talk to him.

"Oh my God, Ella, are you alright?" Paul asked breathlessly.

"Yeah Paul, I am. I’m planning on sending you a letter but you deserved a phone call."

"Ella, where are you? Let me come and get you," Paul said.

"Paul, you know that’s not gonna happen. Thanks for everything and I’ll be in contact soon. And no, I’m not doing drugs. You’ll get a letter soon and it will explain everything, ok? Bye Paul. I can never repay you." She hung up the phone, stood in the phone booth and cried.

She probably shouldn’t have called but she couldn’t help it. Ella tried to put it behind her and walked along State Street dropping off applications. She looked older than sixteen and could tell from the looks she got from older guys in business suits. She smiled politely and continued along her way. Gary and his friend Jordan were surfing and Ella was trying to get a job. Somehow it didn’t add up but then she remembered; Ella Redding was alone, she would always be alone. There would be people that would come in and out of her life but she would have to count on herself. She splurged and bought a milkshake, walking around the palm-tree’d street and was enjoyed the peace that surrounded her private storm.

Later that evening as promised, she wrote a letter and addressed it to one Paul Latham. She had thought maybe she would make it out to Paul and Frances but decided against it. Amidst the sweet smelling smoke, she received a phone call.

"Hello," she asked, wondering who in the hell it might be.

"Yes, Ella, this is Frank at Righteous Records. We have an opening for a full-time position. Would you like to come down tomorrow for an interview?"

"Oh yes, please, that would be great, thanks," she said gratefully. She got off the phone and was floating. Gary and Jordan were floating in their own way and she kept the news to herself. With the Grateful Dead squeaking from the stereo, Ella sat at Jordan’s small, makeshift dining table and lit a candle. She took a deep breath and wrote a letter that Paul Latham read a week later. He was surprised to find it was postmarked from Philadelphia. Paul knew Ella was still in Southern California but admired her ingenuity. He stood in front of his million dollar estate, in his Ralph Lauren get up and read:

Dearest Paul:

Paul was in tears. He looked out at the empty blue sea, and hadn’t felt so alone in years, but somehow it comforted him a little. He hoped Ella would be alright. He went inside to write her back but first things first, he left for the mall. Paul Latham was forty-seven years and he was going to get his ear pierced.