Californium (22 page)

“Filibuster? They asked you guys to play?”

“They don't have to ask you.”

“But it's the Whisky,” I say like I've known about it my whole life.

“Doesn't matter.” Van Doren lets a couple cars go by, then says, “Some nights, anybody can play. You just have to buy a block of tickets and sell them.”

“You pay them to play?”

“That's pretty much how it works everywhere. You can't wait around hoping to get discovered. You've got to put yourself out there.”

He points to the hills behind the Whisky, has me look above all the dots of light in the hills to the top and over to a spot in the sky where the Day-Glo black is going more charcoal and the charcoal is getting scribbled with purple. It's so gradual, but it doesn't stop, and I could watch forever because crayons can't make colors like this. The purple gets lighter and lighter until reds and oranges slip in, the backdrop goes dark blue, and then,
bam,
the sun peeks over the hill like a lighthouse flipped on up there. A fraction of an earth turn later, it spreads over the whole ridge, the sky warming to the old familiar blue. The hill wakes up into that washed-out California brown I've seen since summer, and the dots of light begin turning into houses and apartment buildings.

Van Doren claps a hand on my shoulder. “Was it everything you expected?”

When you think about it, sunrises don't have much of a finish. They're like the day after Christmas or, worse, the week before Christmas when you're seven and you find a grocery bag full of presents in the basement with
From Santa
on all the tags.

“Where's the sunset part?”

“You know where it is,” he says.

“No, I don't.”

Van Doren gives me a little shove. “You've known all along.”

“Okay. Then why did you still show me?”

“It's something this senior on the track team told me when I was a freshman.” He flicks his head to get me to start walking to the car with him. “It's good to know how to figure a thing out and realize it's not that big a deal.”

“So I ruin things for myself?”

He shakes his head. “So you don't waste your time operating under the delusions of it.”

“That's depressing.”

“I thought so too, at first,” he says. “Then I figured out how to make it work for me.”

.

We drive home with the radio on. We talk a little, normal stuff about how letterman jackets are lame and who the best teachers are to get for calculus. When we get to my house, van Doren doesn't ask me not to say anything about how he freaked out or that he isn't going to UCLA next year, but I'm not going to tell anyone. I mean, when I found out there wasn't a Santa Claus, it was still fun to keep it going for Brendan and Colleen.

Just before pulling away, van Doren tells me through the car window, “Sorry about the book thing.”

It takes me a second. “At our lockers?”

“Yeah. Someone used to drop books on me too.”

“Really?”

“Really. Pretty stupid, huh?”

I nod.

“Reece,” he says. “I'll see ya Monday.”

“Yeah,” I say. “See ya Monday, Marc.”

The Squareback putters out of my cul-de-sac and the sky is as bright as day as I'm coming through the front door. “Reece?” my dad says from the kitchen. He's wearing church clothes and putting away dishes from the night before. I stop in the doorway and he looks me over. “Are you just getting home?”

“Yeah,” I say. “One of my friends had kind of a tough night.”

He turns around and leans back against the counter. “A tough night?”

I start playing with the phone cord, not looking at my dad. “His cousin got sick so we had to drive him back home to LA.”

My dad steps over to me and I stand up stiff. “You been drinking?”

“No.”

He sniffs the air. “Where's your Yankees jacket?”

It doesn't make sense to me at first, why he's asking that. Then the picture of the Yankees jacket lying on Keith's bed comes to me. “Keith borrowed it.”

“Uh-huh,” he says and pinches the TSOL patch on the Packy jacket. “What do all these letters stand for again?”

“I already told you:
TSOL
stands for
True Sounds of Liberty.
”

My dad's head goes sideways as he looks up and down the sleeves of his old jacket. “Tell me the others.”

I lie, telling him again
GBH
is
Guitar, Bass, and Harmony.

“And this one?” He points at the ax for Dead Kennedys—the only one that looks as dangerous as its name.

“What does it matter?”

“You tell me. If they're just bands, you can tell me their names.”

I let go of the phone cord, try to be totally relaxed the way van Doren would be. “They're the Dead Kennedys.” I trace the letters on the patch. “See? The
D
and the
K
make an ax.”

He goes back to the cabinet and starts putting dishes away again. “Get ready for church.”

“We're going to early mass?”

“Just me and you. And put on something nice. I don't know who you've been running around with and why you've been dressing so strange—”

“Well, maybe you would know if you were around once in a while.”

He slaps his hands down so hard on the counter I feel it in my chest. “Jesus. Go get ready for church.”

My eyes well up with tears and I step back out of the kitchen. “No. I'm going later, with Mom.”

“Reece!” my dad says like he's saying
Stop!

The tears start rolling down my face. “I don't want to go
anywhere
with you, Packy.” I step into the hallway, out of his sight, and sort of mumble, “You're the one who made Uncle Ryan go away. It's all your fault.”

Packy steps heavy and fast out of the kitchen and towers over me. He's only hit me once in my whole life, when my mom was away at Grandpa Quinn's funeral and I'd played ball in the house and broke her favorite lamp. But I'm ready now, ready to get slapped in the face or hooked by the arm and dragged outside. So I look him full in the face. “It's not my fault you feel guilty for everything.”

Packy looks at me the way he used to whenever something awful would come on the six o'clock news and he'd reach over and turn my head toward him. He'd keep his fingers up near my eyes just in case I tried to sneak a glimpse. I never did, though. I'd watch him turn his head a little, watch his eyes get squinty until they got a little bigger, and just as his mouth would open, he'd catch it and close everything up tight.

“Go to bed,” he says, stepping past me to the front door.

And that's it. No lecture. No grounding. No church.

B
rendan wakes me up. He's wearing an old R2-D2 T-shirt that's too small. Everyone else is downstairs, back from mass long enough to already be changed out of their church clothes. There's still the smell of bacon from breakfast, but my mom doesn't ask if I've eaten or why I missed church or anything. I get some cereal and sit down with Brendan on the couch to watch some ski race with a bunch of guys named Ingemar and Franz.

Packy stays busy the whole day with who knows what out in the yard and the garage and then the side of the house. At dinner, he asks Brendan if he thinks the NFL strike will ever end and Colleen about her catechism. He lets them both go on and on and even asks questions. Nobody asks me anything, not even my mom, and when dinner is over I do the dishes by myself because it's my turn, then go back to my room.

In my letter to Uncle Ryan, I tell him about Ted Three, and Tommy's, and UCLA, and how Astrid was actually looking out for me the whole time. It feels good to relive everything until I get to the part about my dad.
Packy sucks,
I write.
Don't ask.
It jerks at my eyes a little, seeing that on the page, real and impossible to take back, but it gets my heart going too and there's no way I'm scribbling over it.
That's just how it adds up right now. I know you know what I'm talking about.

I'm in bed before Astrid's light is out, thinking about her thinking about me. I imagine her saying how sorry she is and taking me by the hand and up the staircase to make it up to me. It's almost too much and as soon as her light goes out, the thought of her in bed sends me over the top and I get discreet.

.

Treat's in front of my house Monday morning and it doesn't matter who sees him now. I meet him with my hair already messed up and my Packy jacket on. “Nice,” he says.

Keith's waiting for us outside. Even with his jacket on, you can see he's got a polo on underneath with the collar turned up.

“Somebody's been reading
The Preppy Handbook,
” Treat says.

As soon as we're up the sidewalk a couple houses, Keith yanks down his collar. “Look!” He's got so many hickeys it looks like just his neck got into a fight.

“Sascha did that to you?”

Keith's all grins and head-nodding. “My mom's so pissed.”

“Sascha?” Treat says.

“She goes to El Dorado,” Keith says. He walks backward in
front of us, feeling the hickeys with his fingers. “Astrid knows her from cheerleading camp.”

“So is that what the bet was? That she could give you a hickey?”

“No,” Keith says. “The bet was whether or not she would kiss me.”

Treat turns to me, his eyes squinty. I nod. “She's real.”

“And hot,” Keith says. “She said she was marking me so all the girls at Esperanza would know I belong to her.”

“She pissed on you,” Treat says.

Keith looks at his hand like maybe it'd be wet or something.

“No, man,” Treats says. “It's solid. Did you mark her too?”

“I couldn't. She's got a boyfriend.”

Treat stops. “So you're hers, but she's not yours?”

Keith nods, fast and happy. “Yeah.”

Treat starts walking again. “I guess ignorance is bliss.”

Keith falls back in line with us. “Yeah.”

I laugh. “Do you know what
ignorance
means?”

“It means I went to Ted Three, made out with a girl, and I'm blissful.”

Treat puts an arm around Keith and gives him a big squeeze. He doesn't look happy or sad or even mad that he missed everything. He just shakes his head and says, “Better you than me.”

I don't know what this means, why Treat doesn't like football games, or how he can not care all that much about dances or parties. I guess it's punk rock, although I don't see why you can't be punk rock and still have fun.

“It was good for the band,” I say, and me and Keith give him
the lowdown on how Ted Three went, how people like Petrakis and Ted had taken the new flyers and said they were coming to our party.

Treat says we have to keep the momentum going, spreading the word all week at school, working on songs all week after school, and making it to the football game on Friday for the last push. “We're going to eat lunch behind the tennis courts this week so we can stay focused and not get distracted by your little girlfriends.”

“Sounds like we're avoiding them,” I say.

“One of them, at least,” Keith says, and me and him laugh.

“See?” Treat says. “You guys are already losing focus.”

In Algebra, I give Edie some new flyers and say Treat has lunch detention all week and me and Keith are going to sit with him to work out some song lyrics.

At my locker, van Doren puts his hand down and says, “Five.” It takes me a minute to dig the flyers out, and the fifth one sticks with another one. Van Doren's hand stays there the whole time, relaxed while he's arranging things in his locker with the other hand. As soon as he has the flyers he slams his locker shut and bops me on the head with a folder. “Timing,” he says. “Everything comes down to timing, Reece.”

.

Wednesday in English, Treat shows me the stack of DikNixon flyers he folded into paper airplanes during second period. He keeps them hidden in his satchel until class lets out, then he walks to the rail near the stairs and flicks them from the satchel and over
the side real quick, and it's Air Force One, and Two, and Three, and Twenty-Five bringing DikNixon to the people down below.

In his fourth-period World History, where Treat sits in the front of a row because Mrs. Wirth makes people sit alphabetically, he slips some flyers in with the stack of handouts on Egyptian irrigation and watercraft. And every day at lunch, he's been rolling flyers up and sticking them in the chain-link fence by the tennis courts. They're all gone by the next day, and he does it again.

We keep working hard in the Two-Car Studio, staying late and Mrs. Dumovitch bringing us weird things to eat and drink with ginseng and bee pollen and anything else she can think of that gives you energy and keeps you focused. I don't eat dinner at home Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, and when my mom asks I say there's a big test coming up and I'll be at the library, or Treat's. She lets it go every time with, “If you say so. Just be home by ten.”

By Thursday evening, we've got nine songs down and play our whole set through. And even though we mess up a bunch, Treat says to take rest of the night off so we don't burn out. That, and he has to go to some new sushi restaurant with his parents.

It smells like spaghetti when I get home, but my mom's upstairs giving Colleen a bath and Packy's on the end of the couch, his hand under the lamp and Brendan kneeling in front of him with the needle and tweezers.

“Ah.” He yanks his hand back. “Go light until you feel the metal.”

“It all feels like metal,” Brendan says.

Without looking at me, Packy says, “There's leftovers in the fridge.”

“Okay,” I say, and then to Brendan, “You got this?” He shakes his head no.

“He'll get it,” Packy says. “You go eat.”

I'm guessing Packy was home in time for dinner since he always says pasta only tastes good the first time and my mom won't make it if he's going to be late. I heat it up in a frying pan and sit in the kitchen by myself to eat. I hear the living room clear out and don't even finish my plate because Packy's right, it does taste awful if you don't eat it on time.

.

After school Friday, Treat has a bunch of thick wood planks leaned against the boxes in the Two-Car Studio. We've been planning to put planks over the Jacuzzi so the deck won't have a hole in it and can work like a real stage. “I'm going to stay and help Lyle get the stage ready tonight,” he says.”

We can do all that stuff tomorrow,” I say. “It'd be better if you came to the football game tonight.”

Treat pulls planks down one by one and sets them on the floor like he's counting them. “You guys can handle it. I want to get started on this stuff tonight.”

“In the dark?” Keith says.

“Yeah, I'm going to do stuff in the dark. Are you an idiot?”

“That's what I mean,” Keith says.

“Then what are you going to do?” I say.

Treat nudges a plank with his boot. “Other stuff. Important stuff.”

Keith's giving it some thought, his face sort of scrunched up. “You could probably set up the lights.”

“Where are the lights?” I say.

Treat looks around real fast. “I think they're in my dad's car.”

“Dad?” I say. “Did you get in trouble?”

Keith steps closer to me and Treat. “Did you? We're still playing, right?”

“You guys still want to play, don't you?”

“Yeah,” Keith says.

“Then we're playing. Nobody's quitting.” Treat opens the garage door. “It'll be bitchin'. Totally punk rock.” He waves me and Keith out. “Now, go get ready for the game. Make some paper airplanes.”

“Got any messages for Cherise?” Keith says and makes a kissing sound.

Treat holds out his fist. “No, but I've got one for you to give to the paramedics.”

“That's okay,” Keith says.

“Okay,” Treat says. “See you guys tomorrow.”

.

Edie and Cherise meet us outside the football stadium and we give them some flyers. Cherise's face is total attention until Keith says that Treat's not coming; then she's waving to friends and looking bored as we tell them what we're going to do.

Me and Keith walk along the bottom of the bleachers with
our flyers, our hair messed up perfect, and our second-best punk shirts (we're saving the best for the show). Astrid is maybe ten feet away on the field, looking up into the stands like she sees everyone all at once, but I bet she sees me too. Maybe not exactly like I want her to, but how many guys has she made a point of looking out for? That's got to mean something.

We start going around to groups of people and reminding them about the party and the free beer. For people who don't know about the party, we use the Ted Fischel theory: say you're trying to keep it low profile and nobody says anything out loud, but everybody finds out. Some freshmen and sophomores go up to Edie and Cherise and get flyers from them. Some juniors and seniors wave me and Keith over and say, “You guys throwing the party with the free beer?”

“And the band,” Keith adds each time.

When we run out of flyers, some people write the address on their arms, and Keith tells them if they carve it in with a razor it won't smear.

.

We're at Del Taco after the game, Edie and Cherise sitting across the table from us. Edie knows we ditched them all week and she wants to know why.

“Doesn't matter,” Keith says. “We're here now, aren't we?”

“Does this have something to do with your hickey?” she says.

Keith smiles and touches his neck.

Edie looks at my neck and I pull at my jacket so the collar opens wide. “Not me.”

Cherise giggles, but Edie just squints at me. “You wish you had one,” she says and squeezes a bunch of hot sauce all over my half-eaten burrito.

“Hey, you owe me a burrito.”

“Here,” Edie says and pushes her burrito over to me.

The burrito's barely got two bites out of it. “I can't take that.”

“Yeah,” Keith says. “He'll get cooties.”

Cherise giggles again. “He might like her cooties.”

“Just take it,” Edie says. “Since you guys are giving us a ride home.”

“We are?” Keith says, but it's not like he'll say no. It always looks good when people see you getting into a car with girls, even if they aren't cheerleaders.

When Mr. Curtis pulls up in the parking lot, Keith opens the back door like a valet. Cherise climbs in and slides across behind the driver's seat and Edie follows her, sliding to the middle. Keith takes a step like he's getting in and I grab him. “What are you doing?”

Keith turns and whispers, “You can have shotgun.”

“You have to take shotgun,” I whisper back. “It's
your
dad.”

He looks down at the empty seat and then steps out of the way. “Duh,” he says nice and loud. “I'm just getting the door for everybody.”

We aren't out of the parking lot and Keith's turning half around in the front seat and saying, “Tomorrow is going to be so great.”

Mr. Curtis sticks his arm right into Keith's shoulder. “Sit back, Keith. I'm trying to make this turn.”

“You're not even looking this way.”

“I'm not saying I am. But if I suddenly needed to—”

“Fine,” Keith says and sits back.

Mr. Curtis yells, “Hold on, everybody!” like he's Peter Pan; then the tires chirp and the seat goes heavy on my back. We make a sharp right and the weight of me rolls left and there's no way to stop the side of my body from sliding into Edie. I go as tight as I can—my stomach and legs and arms—but I'm pressing so hard against her I feel everything from her shoulder down to her knee. At least, I think I do. There's the squish; then something's making the side of my body feel different, like I'm leaning against an electric fence, except one that doesn't hurt.

Cherise giggles because Edie's squashed into her too. Edie starts laughing, then I do, and then Keith turns around and yells, “Slam pit!”

It's half a block before Edie says, “Excuse you.” I'm still pressed up against her and she presses her thigh deeper into mine a little.

I slide over an inch. “Sorry.”

“No, you're not.” She quick-smiles as she scooches half an inch away from Cherise and closer to me.

My eyes drift down to my lap, taking in Edie's and a little of Cherise's too. We all have on jeans but none of them look quite the same. It's like one of those maps in your geography book where the legend has ten shades of blue to show the different parts of Australia—Victoria in light blue, Queensland in sky blue, the Northern Territory in navy. Cherise's jeans are deep blue and pretty tight, and since she likes Treat, that makes her Indian Territory. Or maybe the Forbidden Zone. Or better
yet, the Twilight Zone, since she's so spacey and weird but you still like her. Edie's jeans are a faded blue but smoother and tighter than Cherise's. She's so cool and ready to do anything. The Fun Zone. No, Adventureland. That's more than just fun.