Ballads of Suburbia (31 page)

I explained it to Maya like I had Dr. Larson, “I don't write about real life anymore. I'm writing a screenplay about vampires. If I can't escape with drugs, I'll escape into imaginary worlds.”

Maya, of course, said nothing. Though I kind of wished she would. I traced the letters on the small, flat marker. Maya Estelle Danner. Estelle was her grandmother's name. “I wish they'd inscribed one of your grandmother's sayings,” I told Maya. “I miss them. They were good advice. What would you tell me now?”

Words Dr. Larson had often repeated echoed in my brain as I flipped through my sketchbook to a drawing I'd made following Liam's visit:
“You'll need to write and talk about real life someday, Kara.”

Immediately after Liam left, I'd knocked on Dr. Larson's door. As I sat down in the chair across from his desk, I informed him, “My brother should not be allowed to see me. He'll bring me heroin.”

“Is your brother a drug user?” Dr. Larson had asked pointblank.

I couldn't bring myself to betray Liam. Not when I was about to hurt him so badly by moving away. He'd need an escape.
Cass did acid to cope with Wes leaving and she's fine,
I'd reassured myself as I lied: “No, Liam just has friends who deal.”

But when I returned to my room, I crudely sketched a tombstone that read, “Here Lies Liam. It was all his sister's fault.”

Looking up from the drawing, my whole body shook as I started to cry silently. The tips of my fingers traced Maya's middle name again. “Your grandmother would say, ‘Secrets lead to sickness.'” It was the last “wisdom” Maya had shared in her ballad.

I kissed Maya's headstone and walked back to my dad's car. “I'm ready to go,” I said in a scratchy whisper.

Handing him my sketchbook, I added, “But you and Mom should plan on getting Liam some help.”

December 1999

I
T TOOK FOUR YEARS FOR MY BROTHER
to accept that he needed help. During that time, I graduated from high school in Wisconsin and moved to California to pursue a degree in film at USC. Whenever I heard from Liam, I ended up in my therapist's office for an emergency session.

Sometimes Liam called when he was wasted and wanted someone to talk to. Mostly he called when he was broke. I'd refuse to wire cash to Chicago and he'd scream at me, but I never gave in. Finally, on a hot day in July just a few months before his twentieth birthday, I got the kind of phone call I'd hoped for:

“Kara, I'm flying into LAX tomorrow and I want you to pick me up and check me into rehab.” With all the cigarettes and god knows what else he smoked, Liam finally had that Johnny Cash baritone he'd desired at age four. He also had a laugh that sounded like a cough. “Preferably one with hot celebrities.”

I took a deep breath. “Does Mom know about this?”

He chuckled again. “Who do you think bought the plane ticket? I spent my last dollar on a speedball that landed me in the ER. Though at least I did my last shot in some Gold Coast high-rise. Where were you? Facedown in the dirt at Scoville Park?”

“Yeah, you're way classier than me, Liam,” I replied sarcastically, writing down his flight information.

He'd already done a twenty-eight-day program in Chicago, but he knew if he was really going to get his act together, he'd have to get away from home like I had. He wanted my eagle eye on him after he did one more inpatient stint and then moved into what he termed “a very glamorous halfway house.”

“After that, I want to go back to school,” he told me as he paced around my Echo Park apartment, marveling at my view of palm trees while he chain-smoked. “I don't know if they'd let a loser high school dropout into USC, but maybe if I do time at community college first. Don't laugh, but I think I want to be a social worker. You know, help kids so they don't have to hit rock bottom like we did.”

I pointed at him with my mouth open like I was about to laugh, but then I grinned. “I think that's awesome, Liam. You always did give good advice. If only I'd taken some of it.” I sat down on my bed, encouraging, “Seriously, you'll get there. I got to film school, after all.”

He stopped pacing and looked at me. His eyes were a little lined for his age, but at least the circles were gone. And he'd shaved off the dreads, reverting to the strawberry blond buzz cut he'd had as a kid. “You haven't slipped, not once?”

“I've done a pretty good job staying away from drugs. I drink occasionally. It's the cutting I couldn't give up for the longest time, but I haven't done
it in over a year.” I displayed my arms. White lines stood out against my tan skin, but there were no fresh pink scars there or on the tops of my legs or on my belly, where I'd continued to cut secretly through my sophomore year of college. “I was working a high-stress job this spring and I almost started up again. The important thing is to know your triggers. Also, you love your cocaine and that shit is everywhere here,” I warned Liam.

Worry puckered his forehead as he plopped down beside me. “I know,” he nodded gravely. “And I've already messed up this rehab thing twice. But that was when Mom made me go and when it was court-ordered. I didn't want to do it. Now I really do.”

“Then you will do it and I'll help.” I hugged him tight, pleased he didn't feel nearly as bony as he had when he was using.

Liam squeezed me back and reached for the ashtray on my nightstand. He noticed the ragged red notebook that sat on a stack of school books on the bottom shelf of a nearby bookcase. “Shit, you still have this thing?” He ran his fingers across the ransom-note lettering of “Stories of Suburbia” on the cover. “Did you read it?”

“Aside from Maya's entry, no. I'm not allowed because I never wrote in it.”

“You
never
wrote in it?” he asked, appalled. “Even I wrote in it. You should write in it now so you can read it.”

I took it away from him and stuffed it back on the shelf. “No, I'm not ready. Shrinks have been encouraging me to write about my feelings and memories of Oak Park for years, but I just can't. I don't see the point of reliving it.”

Five months later, when Stacey convinced me to come home for the first time, Liam insisted on putting the notebook in my carry-on. “Maybe you'll write in it or at least let it remind you to stay out of trouble.”

I read the entire notebook cover to cover on the plane. No, I didn't write in it first. I broke that rule because I'd realized it had only hurt everyone. If these were true ballads, they were meant to be sung. Maybe if I had heard Liam's or Maya's sad, truthful songs earlier, I could have helped them. Maybe we could have helped each other.

Liam's ballad ultimately did help me when I ran into Adrian at Stacey's. I thought about Liam, finally sober and ready to start his first semester of col
lege. It would destroy him if I put one toe down the old path. I couldn't let him down again like I had when we were younger.

My slightly drunk, zigzagging journey through Oak Park with Stacey made me crave the good old days, but I didn't let myself forget that in the aftermath of those “good times” I'd lost two of my friends forever and almost lost my brother.

When I saw Adrian in Stacey's living room looking like he'd stepped straight out of 1995 with the long, tawny curls, the worn-in leather jacket, and tattooed skin scented like the air off Lake Michigan, my old feelings for him came rushing back. But Adrian and I smoked cigarettes and talked until dawn on Stacey's back porch, and that was as far as it went.

I showed him the notebook, too, and told him I read it.

“And you didn't write in it first? You broke the rules. I should keep it.” He gave me one of his sly grins. “I've still got all the pages with the newspaper articles in a box in storage somewhere.”

“Those aren't our stories, though. I got the better pages. Besides, I'm gonna write in it. If it's not too cold on New Year's, I'm going to go to Scoville and start writing.”

Adrian took the notebook, flipping carefully through it with his cigarette-free hand. “You're going to spend New Year's at Scoville?” he asked incredulously.

“Yeah.”

“The dawn of the new millennium, when Y2K hits and all the power goes out and the world falls into chaos, you're going to be at Scoville Park.”

I hugged myself, shivering in the cold, and smiled. “Seems fitting, doesn't it?”

“I guess.” Adrian grinned flirtatiously, his eyebrows arching over dangerous, dancing brown eyes. “But wouldn't you rather go to a party with me?”

“No.”

“Show at the Fireside? The city's shutting it down soon. You might not get another chance.”

“They've been saying that since we were in high school.”

Adrian's smile grew widest of all when he said, “A hot night in my bed?”

“I thought you didn't have a bed because you just got out of jail.”

He whistled long and low. “You really know how to reject a guy, don't you?” He tugged the collar of his coat down and pushed his long hair off his neck, indicating the ink on the left side of it. “You always liked my tattoos. Check out the latest?”

“If you're trying to get me to come close enough so you can kiss me, it's not going to work. And you shouldn't have gotten tattooed there. You'll never get a job.”

Adrian shrugged. “The dude who tattooed me when I was sixteen told me that if I got that tattoo I'd be in and out of jail for the rest of my life and so far he's been right. Let him be.”

I frowned. “You're better than that.”

“Whatever, Ms. Straight-and-Narrow with her lip ring. I bet you have tattoos.”

“I can take the lip ring out and none of my tattoos are in visible places. And no, that is not an invitation for you to see them,” I added quickly because he'd already opened his mouth.

“I really fucked up when I lost you.” Adrian grew somber, fingering a page in the notebook written in Quentin's handwriting. “And when I lost Quentin.” He tapped his neck tattoo, fighting tears. “That's what I got here. Q for Quentin. Got it on the fourth anniversary of the day he died.”

I breathed through my teeth, suppressing a sob. “I have an M with angel wings around it on my back. For Maya. My first tattoo. Got it a year after she died.”

Adrian shut the notebook and stared at the cover for a minute. When he looked up at me his eyes were damp. “I haven't been to visit Quentin in too long. You wanna go with me? We can go see Maya, too.”

That was the hardest invitation to turn down. I shook my head back and forth several times before I got the words out. “I'm going to do that while I'm here, but I'm sorry, I can't do it with you.”

I was crying freely now, and so was Adrian. “Okay, I get that. I'm glad you and your brother got out, you know.”

“I wish you would,” I choked.

“Maybe. I'll call you if I do.”

I knew that, as hard as I hoped, unlike Liam, he would never call. I recog
nized my own old cravings in his eyes. He couldn't deal with this. He needed a line, a pill, a needle, whatever it was he did now.

Adrian extended the notebook with a shaky hand, but before he let me take it, he asked, “You aren't gonna write on New Year's because you think the story you have to tell is what happened on New Year's five years ago, right?”

“You mean Christian?” It was the first time
that
name escaped my lips in ages.

Adrian inclined his head in a sharp nod.

“No. I don't think so. I don't know what I'm gonna write about yet.”

“Good.” Adrian relinquished the book. “'Cause that's not your whole story. Not even close.”

“I know.”

Adrian rose to leave. He squeezed my hand as he passed, but didn't try to kiss me or hug me. He didn't even say good-bye. As his foot hit the first step, he turned and said, “Make it a movie like we planned, okay?”

I smiled over my shoulder.

“I'm serious, man. And I don't care who you get to play me, but you know when the screen goes black, before the closing credits, put that it's dedicated to Quentin.”

I heard his voice falter, but his face was shrouded in darkness, so I couldn't see if he was crying again. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I added, “And Maya.”

“And Maya,” he echoed.

As I listened to him walk away, I pulled my knees up and hugged them, pressing the notebook between my thighs and chest. I let the tears fall hard. I let them freeze against my face in the cold. Then I had one more cigarette and I finally went inside.

I half expected Stacey to be waiting up for me when I tiptoed in at six a.m., but she wasn't. I packed the notebook away and tried to get comfortable on the couch underneath the blue plaid blanket that had been on Stacey's bed at her mom's house for years.

I couldn't sleep. The sky had started to lighten, so instead of being com
pletely dark, the room had that sickly gray tinge to it that I associated with the night I OD'd. This brought on a wave of anxiety and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to pretend I was in my bed in California, where it was only four and still dark, but that didn't help. Only one thing would.

I crept into the room next to the living room with my backpack. The light in there seemed brighter, safer, more blue than gray. It fell on a twin bed with a Winnie the Pooh blanket and cast an ethereal glow around Lina, highlighting the dark brown ringlets of hair that surrounded her head on her pillow, the tiny hand that hung down from the side of the bed, and her smooth, cherubic cheeks. Even in her sleep, Lina smiled, innocent and carefree as a child should be. I wanted to freeze time, so she could stay that happy forever, never have to face the troubles that her mother and I had.

Settling on the floor amid her scattered toys, I unzipped my backpack. I kept my gaze trained on Lina, making sure the sound didn't disturb her, but she proved to be a very heavy sleeper.

I took out the notebook and stared at it. I had to tell this story. For Lina. Because I couldn't stop time and she would grow up, but she didn't have to grow up too fast like Stacey and I did.

At first I still didn't know what to tell or how to tell it. There wasn't just one defining moment that I could sum up in five to ten painstaking handwritten pages like my friends had done. I couldn't just write about the fight I'd had with Christian on New Year's Eve or my overdose in Scoville Park. There was so much more.

Skimming my friends' stories again, I realized that their lives had been bigger than the tales they told, too. Cass was more than a girl who coped with her mom's mental illness and her brother's absence by doing acid. Adrian was more than a kid who felt abandoned by both his birth parents and his adoptive parents. And that's when I saw it: my story was the sum of all these parts.

I glanced at Lina again, reassuring myself of her deep sleep, and then I quietly ripped pages from the notebook. I removed each person's story, or ballad, as I dubbed them so long ago, and began to arrange them like puzzle pieces. I didn't put them in chronological order, but in the order in which they'd
influenced my larger story. Next, I tore out blank pages of paper and placed them in between, marking the gaps I'd have to bridge with my memories. Each one could be its own ballad, some short as a punk anthem, some long as an epic song.

I took a cue from the movies, opening with a topographical view of Oak Park. I smiled as I imagined a camera focusing in on Scoville Park, the only place in my hometown that I would ever think of as home, as my stage to shine on, as mine.