A Long Way From You (6 page)

“Wow,” Kiki exclaims. “Mom says I can sleep in your bed tonight, and I’m going to stare at your poster all night. It’ll be like we’re looking at the same stars.”

Tearing up, I squeak, “I’m always thinking about you here.” My guilt that I didn’t call earlier overwhelms me.

“What are you having for supper?” I ask as I wipe a single tear away.

“Stouffer’s lasagna,” Kiki answers. I can hear Amber saying something in the background.

“Okay, Kiki,” I sigh. “Make sure you eat some veggies as well. You want to be tall and strong, right?”

“Okay, Kits,” Kiki says. “I love you. And remember:
Who you gonna call?
”

“Ghostbusters,” I answer, blinking a few times. I suddenly remember that I saw
Ghostbusters
on TV with my dad right before he left. The movie gave me nightmares, and he stayed up all night trying to convince me it was actually a comedy. “A green gooey sidekick named Slimer? Kits, c’mon, how’s that scary? A marshmallow man? How’s that scary? One day, I’ll take you to New York and you’ll see it’s not scary.”

I found out a few weeks after we saw that movie that real life is what is actually scary.

“I miss you,” I say, and hope my voice doesn’t crack. “Put Mom on.”

I hear some scuffling in the background, and Amber picks up the phone.

“Kits, any celebrity spottings? And did you take my black heels?” Amber rants.

“I’m not here to see celebrities,” I say and then lower my octave level, so Corrinne can’t hear. “The black heels are under your bed. And where are you going in black heels anyway? Remember, the bathroom fuse is the top left. And don’t blow-dry your hair in the bathroom. Do it in my room.”

“Okay, Kitsy. What am I going to do without you?” Her voice trembles a bit, and I realize she’s really nervous about being on her own.

So I keep my mouth shut and don’t let any of my ten thousand worries escape. Just last month, I spent the money I was saving for a watercolor set to pay our overdue electric bill. It would’ve been hard to paint in the dark anyway.

“Y’all will have a great summer, Amber,” I say cheerfully. “Do something fun with Kiki. You know that Rob will give you free Sonic food. Take Kiki over there sometime. And make sure you actually go you-know-where.”

With my foot, I push Corrinne’s bathroom door all the way shut. You-know-where is the unemployment office, and Corrinne especially doesn’t need to hear this part. Of course, I know Sonic isn’t any better for Kiki than frozen lasagna, but at least he’ll get out of the house. And Rob, my manager, would never make Amber pay. He knows from my willingness to take over anyone’s shift without a second thought that money’s pretty tight in our family.

“I’ll go tomorrow,” Amber promises quickly. “And that rumor about the factory is starting up again. Not that someone with my qualifications should have to work on the assembly line, but maybe there will be some management positions available.”

The speculation about the farm equipment factory reopening goes around every year. I stopped believing in it around the same time as I stopped believing in Santa Claus. Amber went to college for two years, so she thinks she’s too good for most jobs because of her
qualifications.
I even tried to get her to work at Sonic with me, and she said, “Kits, I don’t think you understand. I don’t work because there aren’t jobs in the Spoke for my degree. If your father hadn’t forced me to stay here, I’d be a successful career woman by now. I’d probably even have my own business.”

Sometimes what I hear is
if I didn’t have to be with you and Kiki, I’d be happy and successful
. Sometimes it sounds like she’s blaming not just my dad but Kiki and me, too.

“A job is a job,” I say, which is always my answer. This time I add, “I feel bad I can’t work while I’m in New York.”

“You deserve a break,” Amber says with a sigh, and I hear her rustling around. “I have to go. Lasagna is in the oven.”

“Amber,” I coax, “remember, easy on the wine.”

Click
.

It’s not that I worry about Amber driving drunk or running off to a bar and leaving Kiki home alone. She has never done any of those things. The problem with Amber and her Arbor Mist habit is that she just checks out mentally. When she’s drinking, she’s always around but never
actually
there. Truthfully, I feel relieved not to be at home supervising, but that makes me feel guilty, too. I wish just once I could be happy in a normal, teenage way without having a conscience about it. I remind myself that’s one of my goals while I’m here in New York.

I hear Corrinne’s voice through the door. “Wardrobe time!”

“Okay,” I call back to her. “I’ve just got to dial Hands real quick.”

Hands also picks up on the first ring. “Hey, doll,” he says, “I got worried. Don’t tell me New York City doesn’t have cell phone reception.”

“Sorry,” I apologize, and I mean it. Hands is always there for me. “I went to MoMA, the museum I have the book on. The place is amazing, Hands, better than I ever imagined.”

“That’s great, Kitsy,” Hands says, pausing. “I do want you to have a vacation . . . just not one from me, too.”

Breathing in deeply, I remind myself that Hands isn’t trying to be a nag and that I should’ve called when I landed, but I was too caught up in the excitement. Just because I wanted to get away from the Spoke and work on my art doesn’t mean I want to get away from Hands. At his house, I can forget for a few minutes all the stuff going on back at home. Hands is always pushing me to ask for help and telling me to remind Amber who the mother is. The only thing is, it’s nothing that Hands can completely understand—because
he’s
an only child of two with-it parents, whereas I’m the part-time mom, part-time teen to one single mom and one little brother.

“Promise me you’ll check in on Kiki,” I urge.

“Kit-Kat,” Hands says, “I already promised twice that I would. I’ll go by tomorrow after practice. . . .”

I hear Corrinne rummaging through her closet and I feel like I should get off the phone and hang out with her. But I hear a strain in Hands’s voice, something off in his tone.

“Something wrong, Hands?” I ask.

“No,” he says and pauses. “It’s just you didn’t call and I was worried about you getting to Corrinne’s okay. Plus, when Bubby and me were tossing around the football, he mentioned that there’s a transfer from Bulston . . . and I know this kid, Kits. He plays quarterback, too. I think I’ll definitely have competition for my spot this fall.”

“Oh, Hands,” I say, and take a breath.

Football is not only Hands’s thing. Football is all of Broken Spoke’s thing: It’s also our
only
thing.

“I’m sure you’re better than him. Y’all won state, don’t you forget that. No one is going to take that or your position away. You got all summer to work out. It’ll be okay,” I say, trying to sound confident. I notice it’s a little hard to be a cheerleader with major pep-and-go on a long-distance call.

“I gotta go,” I say. “Corrinne has big plans for us, and I can’t be late.”

“What kind of plans?” Hands asks.

I pause. “We’re going out for supper,” I lie. Corrinne told me over our manis (Corrinne’s word, not mine) that it was a huge party, and that there might be college kids and live entertainment. It will not be a supper at all, and if it were, they’d call it dinner. “No one uses the word
supper
here,” Corrinne said. “
Trust
me.”

“Okay, I’ll let you go then. O O O,” Hands says, and he almost sounds like himself again. “Call me later. I know it’s only been a day, but it’s weird not doing stuff together. Bubby even asked me what it’s like to have
Hitsy
separated for a month. Get it,
Hitsy
? But really, Kitsy, I do feel I’m missing part of me without you here.”

“That’s sweet, Hands. X X X,” I say softly and hang up. I put my cell phone down on the bathroom counter.

I don’t feel like I’m missing part of me in New York. Instead I feel like I’m finding new parts of me here.

I breathe in and look in the mirror. My blond curls look a little frizzed out, and the bags underneath my eyes aren’t doing anything good for my normally bright blue eyes. I feel tired, as if I’d space-traveled from one world to another rather than flew across country, but I do what I always do when I have to cheer tired: I smile bigger and add more concealer.

“Corrinne Corcoran!” I chirp as I open the door. “How about the best night of our lives?” And part of me thinks it could actually happen, since anything can happen in New York.

Corrinne’s face breaks out into a giant smile. “Thank God, I thought you got homesick. You freaked me out until I remembered that you’re good person, and you were acting like one by calling home.”

And as soon as she finishes her sentence, she swings open her closet door.

“Pick out whatever you want!” Corrinne says. With all the incredible clothes she owns, Corrinne could open a boutique right out of her closet. Luckily, I get to go shopping there for free.

I find myself wishing my real life was always as easy as it is at this moment.

Chapter 4
When I Was Seventeen, I Went to a Party at The Pierre Hotel

D
RESSED IN
C
ORRINNE
’
S WHITE SLIP
dress and black tights and wearing a feathered hair extension, I know I don’t look like myself, and I definitely don’t feel like myself. And I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing.

We step out into the cool of a summer night. I can see people strolling, biking, and jogging down the Hudson River Park. Summer in Texas basically means avoiding the outdoors and opening car doors with pot holders so you don’t get scalded. We have heat advisories and you can be arrested for jogging because it’s dangerously hot. If I were wearing tights in Texas right now, they’d melt permanently onto my legs. I think I could get used to the New York version of summer.

“Are we going to take that underground train thing?” I ask Corrinne.

Corrinne stops strutting up the block in her three-inch wedges and bends over at the waist. I wonder if something is wrong until I hear her high-pitched laughter.

“It’s called the subway. Oh Holy Holly Golightly, I don’t know if I can leave you in New York alone,” she cackles.

Blushing, I fib easily, saying, “I knew that. I was just practicing the part of a naïve country girl. How’d I do?”

“Aced it,” Corrinne says, throwing her hand in the air. A yellow cab comes barreling toward us.

“Here’s the thing about the subway, Kits. It’s fine for getting from place to place, but it’s no good for making an arrival. Think about celebrities and how sexy they look getting out of cars.”

“Corrinne, you can usually see those celebrities’ privates, which isn’t sexy. And they ride in limos, anyway,” I argue.

“Kitsy,” Corrinne says as she climbs into the cab, “we can’t be going places in limos. We were just in a recession. It would be insensitive. East Sixty-First Street and Fifth, please. The Pierre Hotel.”

I slide into the cab next to Corrinne and buckle my seat belt, even though Corrinne tells me nobody wears seat belts in cabs. “It’s a cab, Kitsy, not a pickup truck.” I’m not sure I follow her logic, and there’s no way that I’m letting anything, especially a taxi collision, mess up my summer and my chance at becoming a real artist.

The cab zooms off into traffic. I stay quiet in fear of saying something else stupid and watch the city out my window. Bike messengers wearing twenty-pound chain locks around their waists weave through traffic. Several almost collide with our cab, and each time I white-knuckle grab the door handle. Corrinne keeps on calmly typing on her iPhone.

Once I can relax, I stare out the window at all the places I want to visit. There’s an entire restaurant devoted to dumplings and a store that sells only jeans! I’m also shocked by all the different types of people I see. There are little kids by themselves on scooters zooming around.
Adults
on skateboards. I could paint the rainbow with the many different-colored Ray-Ban sunglasses I spot. I see a couple, the woman in an evening gown and the man in a tux, walking casually down the street as if they got that dressed up all the time. Every single person I notice seems interesting enough that I want the cab to stop, so I can ask them: “Who are you? How did you get to live here? Why not me?”

We approach a green forest, which I immediately recognize as Central Park.

“Ohmigosh,” I squeal. “It’s the park. It’s from
Sex and the City
when Carrie and Big fall in the water, not to mention it’s in every movie about New York. It’s so beautiful. I read all about this statue called
Angel of the Waters
above a fountain in the park. A sculptor named Emma Stebbins created it in the late 1800s! I must see it.”

Corrinne looks up from her iPhone, which she had been obsessively typing on throughout the entire ride, not even noticing the incredible city outside.

“There’s my Kitsy,” she says. “I was beginning to worry that the city turned you into a mute. And who’s Emma Stebbins? Hopefully, your art friends understand you, since I’ve no idea what you are saying.”

That reminds me of Art Boy from MoMA. I hope that was just the first of a whole summer of conversations about art.

We pull up in front of The Pierre, a white hotel with arched windows and two beautiful awnings. Men dressed in green suits with top hats guard the hotel as if it were a palace and they its protectors. As Corrinne hands a wad of cash to the taxi driver, a doorman swings open my door and grabs my hand to help me out. I’m having a total princess moment.

“Does your friend live in a hotel like Eloise?” Corrinne and I, teetering on her highest heels, enter the lobby.

“No,” Corrinne answers. “Vladlena’s just renting a suite for her birthday. It’s totally winning. No one has to use a fake ID, and we can still party in style without getting caught by someone’s parents. Besides, Eloise lived at the Plaza.”

I don’t ask about how Vladlena, a high school exchange student from Russia at Corrinne’s boarding school, can afford to host a birthday party like this. I think that this must, like most things here, fall under the category of T.N.O.M.W.: Things Not of My World.