Californium (15 page)

.

At lunch, it's just me and Keith in the Bog. He reads the note before taking a bite of his sandwich, his eyes scanning the page, lips shaping some words and stretching into a smile for others. Then he stuffs the note into his pocket and looks up at me. “Do you think Treat's been acting funny lately?”

“Treat?” I say, and Keith nods. “Has
Treat
been acting funny?”

“Yeah,” Keith says. “I mean, has he been staring anywhere at lunch or looking at anyone a lot but not saying anything?”

“I don't know. Treat always acts funny.”

“Yeah. I guess for him to act funny he'd have to not act funny.”

Keith sits back on the planter, really giving it some thought, really acting serious, and that's it. We start talking about a million other things after that: homework, tests, how Petrakis never messes with us anymore, and how van Doren only drops books near my head now, never directly on it. Things are getting better at school and it's all because of Treat, which is what I'll tell Uncle Ryan in the letter I write later tonight. I won't tell him that nobody knows tomorrow is my birthday. I guess I'm holding on to that like a fifth ace, or a pen that's really a gun, or a note from a cool girl. Or maybe I just don't want anyone making a big deal of it. Things really are getting better, but it doesn't mean I'm ready to celebrate. After all, for things to be better that means they had to have been pretty bad in the first place, and you can't just all of a sudden forget that. At least I can't, no matter how hard I've been trying.

B
efore I left for school today, my dad was still in the kitchen, work clothes on, car keys in hand. “Happy birthday,” he said. “We'll celebrate tonight.” I said, “Okay,” and he looked at my mom. She nodded once, like it was okay for him to leave now, and then one of those Mona Lisa smiles came over her face, and that's how I knew the whole thing was rehearsed. I appreciate it and all, but I wish it didn't seem so fake.

School, at least, feels normal until I get to English. There's a circle of people around Treat before the bell rings. He's telling everyone that after Mr. Marshall sat down behind his desk Monday, he uncrumpled the pages to the song lyrics and couldn't talk until he'd read them twice.

“I told him, ‘I know my First Amendment rights. I can write lyrics no matter how punk they are.' And you know what he did?” Treat pulls the exact same crumpled-up pages from his back pocket. The pages in my handwriting. “He gave them back
to me and said, ‘Fine. But you keep the swearing to yourself.' So I took them and said, ‘I'll try hard as hell to keep the goddamned swearing under control.'”

Everyone laughs and a couple people sneak a peek at the desk to see if Mrs. Reisdorf heard. Her pencil never stops moving, checking off last period's assignment, but there's a smirk on her face that she usually saves for when we read our own work out loud.

“Did you really say that?” Penny Martin asks because she isn't afraid to ask anything of anyone, not even Treat.

“Yeah,” Treat says. “Right before I asked him to jam with my band.”

A couple people laugh and Mrs. Reisdorf comes out from behind the desk, saying the bell is about to ring so we need to get to our seats.

“That's boss,” the sneezer whispers to me as he sits down.

“Yeah,” I say. “Totally unbelievable.”

.

Me and Keith are already in the Bog, halfway through our sandwiches, when Treat gets there. “Where're your little girlfriends?”

“They're in the cafeteria,” Keith says.

“They're not our girlfriends,” I say. “Where have you been?”

Treat looks around and grins. “Promoting the band.”

Keith wipes his mouth off with his hand. “What does that mean?”

“Making up stories,” I say.

“No.” Treat holds up a finger. “Letting people think what they want.”

“Yeah?” Keith says with a mouthful of sandwich. “Like what?”

“Some people think I told Mr. Marshall to fuck off. And some people think I got arrested for attacking Mr. Marshall in his office.”

“No way,” Keith says and smiles.

Treat nods and peers into his lunch bag.

Petrakis comes up to us and stands next to Keith. He's wearing his dark blue Levi's 501s and the T-shirt all the football players wear:
The Future Is Now: Esperanza Football, 1982.
“Gentlemen,” he says.

Keith steps aside without saying a thing and Treat squints at Petrakis.

“Hey,” I say.

He holds a hand up, like,
That's enough,
and turns to Treat. “I heard you're in a pretty bitchin' punk band. Is that true?”

Treat crosses his arms, crumpling his lunch bag between them. “Does the Ayatollah Khomeini have a beard?”

Petrakis thinks about it a second. “I knew it. Are you guys playing anywhere soon?”

Treat stares at him and it's hard to tell if he isn't answering on purpose or has no idea what to say.

“Friday,” I say. “We've got something going on.”

Petrakis looks at me, kind of surprised I'm in the band. “Sweet. Where?”

Treat comes back to life. “Why?”

Petrakis turns to Treat. “Me and my friends want to check it out, see you fuck a few people up in a slam pit. Like the time you did that backflip off the stage at the Palladium.”

The Mohawk moves up and down and Treat laughs a quick “huh
.
”

“Yeah,” Keith says. “That was an awesome night.”

Petrakis looks at him, like,
You're in the band too?
And now we need to make this real or he's not going to believe anything we say.

“We're going to be in San Diego on Friday,” I say. I look off to the side like I'm talking to the ground, the way they do the undercover drug deals on
Starsky & Hutch
where you don't make eye contact because only a cop would make eye contact. “We're parking a flatbed truck in a parking lot at SDSU and playing until the cops make us leave.”

“Ah, man,” Petrakis says. “That sounds awesome, but we've got a game. What about Saturday?”

Treat shakes his head. “If we're not in jail, we're working on some new shit Saturday.”

Petrakis get this sly grin; then he looks over at the Senior Circle and you know he's feeling the pressure, talking to freshmen this long. He shoves his hands into his jeans pockets and takes a couple steps. “Let me know when you've got a Saturday show. I'll bring some of my boys.”

“Sure,” Treat says. He waits for Petrakis to turn and step away; then he flicks his hand out a couple times like he's brushing Petrakis off. Some people nearby give that an “ooooh,” but Petrakis keeps walking like it can't possibly be about him. Treat turns to me and whisper-yells, “What the fuck is this SDSU stuff?”

I tell him about Edie and her cousin, and he likes it. But now I'm wondering what Treat said about
his
band. “Did you tell people you're in DikNixon?”

“No,” Treat says. “Just a band.”

Keith is suddenly miserable. “We can't go to the football game now, can we? We're supposed to be in San Diego.”

I look at Treat. “You know when everyone hears about the SDSU show from Edie, they're going to connect those dots to what Petrakis knows and—”

“DikNixon lives!” Keith says. So happy now.

Treat flicks my TSOL patch. “We're gonna need a lot more songs. Soon.”

Just as the bell's ringing to end lunch, Edie comes up to me, right past Keith and Treat, and shoves my shoulder back. “Somebody just said, ‘The Mohawk guy's band is playing at SDSU.'”

Cherise has come over too and they're both looking at me, waiting for an answer. I smile. “It's kind of a long drive, so you guys might want to wait until we're playing closer.”

Cherise nods like that makes sense, but Edie's got that look in her eye, the one she uses when we're comparing homework answers and mine are different. “You know what this means?”

Cherise looks at Treat and actually talks. “Everyone's going to know you're DikNixon.”

Treat lifts his arms and makes peace signs with both hands.

Cherise crosses her arms and sort of smiles, then looks at Edie.

“Are you guys ready for this?”

“We're gonna be,” Treat says.

Edie brushes atoms off my shoulder. “You better be.”

On the way to our lockers, Treat tells Cherise and Edie it's too bad they can't come down to SDSU. It sounds so good I'm thinking what it would be like to say that to Astrid. Then suddenly
we're playing the same party with van Doren and Filibuster and Astrid is all over me between sets. I'm nothing but happy until Edie shows up in my head saying our set didn't sound anything like Bad Brains but it looks like we have them. It's a punk rock joke, which Edie wouldn't really make, but imaginary Edie and real Edie are both right. If we don't sound like we know what we're doing when we do play for real, they'll call us names or throw things or, worse, rush the stage and throw us off. There's no coming back from a meltdown like that, and just the thought of it makes a bolt of pain shoot through my stomach.

.

When the whole class is good, sometimes Mrs. Wirth lets us slip out of World History a couple minutes early since it's the last period of the day. It's amazing how campus is the quietest place in the world two minutes before the bell rings, before people come flying out the doors like it's the Kentucky Derby.

My backpack's nearly filled with homework when the wave of noise and people starts. No one's gotten to my row of lockers yet and,
bam,
a book hits me in the thigh. It doesn't hurt because it's this tattered little paperback,
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
But like an idiot, I look up to van Doren's locker even though he's not there.

“Over here.”

I turn around and van Doren's walking across the grass behind me.

“I hear you got a gig Friday night.”

Even though my backpack is set to go, I keep crouching there, looking up at him. “Uh-huh.”

He snatches the book from me and stuffs it into his back pocket. “Wonder Bowl?”

“What?”

Van Doren opens his locker. “Yeah, that's what I thought.”

“We're playing in San Diego,” I say. “I'll let you know when we play around here.”

“Not necessary,” van Doren says. The last bell rings and he pulls some sunglasses from his locker and slips them on. “I'll know before you do.” He closes the locker soft and takes off across the grass, disappearing into the mass of people spreading out from the open doors.

.

We work on another Neil Diamond song after school, “Forever in Blue Jeans.” I've changed it to “Forever in Ripped Jeans,” just in case Treat or Keith might have heard it before. We get it punked up pretty good; then Treat wants to start in on another song. He says we need to work right through dusk and dinner and homework. Maybe even sleep. I say I can't. Keith is all over me about commitment and hard work, and Treat's nodding until I lie and say it's my little sister's birthday.

“So?” Keith says.

It's not like I wouldn't rather be here, but I can't get away with missing my own birthday even if I haven't wanted to celebrate much of anything lately.

Treat throws his hands up. “Blood,” he says. “It's everything.” He pulls a patch from his back pocket and hands it to me. It's a Dead Kennedys tomahawk, just the
D
and the
K
fused together
yet somehow looking really threatening. Really simple. Really cool. “Go,” he says. “And start sewing these on.”

I've been unpinning the patches on my jacket every night and hiding them in the pockets until morning. I don't know if I'll ever be able to get away with making them permanent, but I can't think about that now. “Check,” I say, and I'm gone.

.

My dad gets home from work when dinner is just about over. He's excited, even smiling a little, and eats real fast to catch up. My mom brings out this chocolate fudge cake, which gets Brendan happy, and Colleen's bouncing in her chair because she loves blowing out candles. It's a weeknight, my dad in his work boots, my mom's hair up and freckles still covered in powder. It doesn't feel like my birthday even with everyone singing to me and smiling. I let Colleen help me blow out the candles. When we're done with cake, my mom sets three normal-size boxes next to me on the table and one big one.

Brendan taps the big one. “You'll never guess what this is.”

“Brendan!” my mom says. “Shush.”

I get a new batting glove for my right hand from Brendan, and one for my left from Colleen. My parents get me two checkered button-up shirts that they probably paid too much for. “I noticed you like these kinds of shirts now,” my mom says.

I try to imagine them bleached out and looking decent. “Thanks.”

Brendan shoves the big box in my face. “Now open this one,” he says, and the table shrinks in on me. Brendan and my mom
lean forward, smiling. Colleen stands up on her chair and puts her elbows on the table. Even my dad sets down his cup of tea and leans forward.

It's too light to be an Atari or some other kind of video-game system, and it's not like my parents have heard of that stuff anyway. They don't usually go in for gifts that cost a couple hundred bucks, especially if they don't improve your hand-eye coordination, teach you your ABCs, or at least warm your toes
and
keep them dry.

For a second, I wonder if it's something Uncle Ryan bought for me a long time ago and told my dad to save until I was a freshman, or fifteen, or something like that. I rip through the paper, more excited than I mean to be, to a plain white box that's kind of flimsy with the paper off. The tape is just plain old Scotch—not the long, impossible-to-tear-without-ripping-the-box skinny stuff that companies use on things that are really worth something. The box pops open no problem. There's tissue paper, but I can see dark blue through it with swirly white letters spelling out
Yankees
.

“It's authentic,” my dad says as I hold it up, a shiny blue, satin jacket. “We had your aunt Mary pick it up for us by the stadium and mail it out.”

“When?” I say.

My mom smiles. “We've been working on this since school started and we had to give you your father's jacket.”

She looks so proud of herself that I have to look down because I can feel how blank my face is. I trace the big letters with my fingers, try to think of something to say. “It's got the real stitching.”

“That's what I told your aunt,” my dad says. “Don't get one of those cheap, ironed-on deals. We want the real thing.”

I still can't look up. “It's really nice.”

“Put it on,” my dad says.

I stand up and slide it over my shoulders and down my arms, slick until my hands break through and the cloth at the end of the sleeves grips my wrists snug. Each blue button snaps together with a solid pop, and the cloth around the neck goes just to my collar, not too high, not too low. The letters are stiff and glowing across my chest, and it looks so official that for just a second, it has me. I'm thinking of a night game in Yankee Stadium with my dad, me leaning over a railing and asking Bobby Murcer to sign right on the
Y
.

My mom leans back in her chair, hands together, that proud smile still on her face. “It really looks good on you.”