Californium (27 page)

Keith thinks about it and doesn't shake his head until he sees me doing it.

“Exactly,” Treat says. “That's why I stopped.”

“So you
were
on drugs,” Keith says.

Treat looks right at Keith but his face is blank, almost sleepy. “I wasn't wasted. Sometimes I just don't care about anything.”

“Even us?”

“Anything.” He looks back at the water. “I just want everything off me.”

Treat promises it will be different now. He's getting a new prescription since his parents found out and he'll take it every
day. He'll care. And DikNixon will make history. “It's out there in the steam now,” he says. “It has to happen.”

I want to believe him. I know stuff happens to people and they can't always be who they were or who they think they're supposed to be. But knowing that doesn't mean I'm okay with it. It's more like what Mr. Krueger says about black holes: We can't wish them away, so we'd better learn as much as we can about where they are and how they work so we don't get sucked in.

.

Tuesday morning I'm waiting out front of my house again, still with no jacket. Keith finally yells to me to come on and I look at the wall for one more second. Still no Treat.

Before Algebra, a guy is passing around our flyer from the party, except this one is autographed:
Dumovitch, T. 102175—Orange County Jail
. Edie smiles when she hands it to me and that makes the whole thing almost okay, even funny.

On the way to the stairs she asks if I've got Dylan Long in any of my classes.

“Why?” I joke. “You need me to give him a note for you?”

Edie grins. “Maybe.” She says they're in United Nations Club together and do I think she should even bother trying to talk to him since he's a senior? As her buddy, what do I think is the best thing to do?

I want to say,
Nothing.
“Well, you know I'm an expert when it comes to getting upperclassmen to notice you.” She nods. “Meet me at the library after school and I'll trade you my top secret info for some algebra help.”

“I can't. We've got a pizza party fund-raiser.” Edie digs a flyer out of her folder and hands it to me. “You should come.”

“Maybe,” I say. “I think we have band practice.”

Edie understands, and she leaves wearing the grin that showed up with the mention of Dylan Long.

In English, Treat's so busy signing autographs he only has time to tell me practice is canceled; he's got some appearances to make. “Appearances?” I say, but he goes back to signing notebook paper and lunch bags without answering.

After class, Treat tells me he's doing good promotional stuff for the band but me and Keith don't need to come.

“Maybe we want to come.”

Treat stops walking. “Look, they just want me this time.”

“Who are
they
?” I say, but he won't answer. “Do they think DikNixon is just you?”

“Maybe. But it doesn't matter.” He gives me a good, friend shove. “No one's getting sacrificed here. I'll straighten them out.”

“Sure,” I say. “Sock it to 'em.”

.

Me and Keith spend the whole afternoon at the public library doing homework and quizzing each other. When Keith's out of notebook paper to fold into airplanes and toss at junior high kids, I give him the pizza party flyer so he can do one more.

I'm home after dark, the house pretty quiet and smelling like meat loaf. My mom and Packy are watching TV, Colleen's playing in her room, and Brendan's on his bed, a
Sports Illustrated
lying over his homework.

With my homework already done, I'm at my desk thinking a letter to Uncle Ryan. Even if Dylan Long is nice to Edie, he'll never take her seriously. It's not like she can drive up and see him at college next year. And if she gets a ride there, he can't even take her to an R-rated movie. So it can't work. The numbers don't add up. But I don't write any of that down. It's not like Uncle Ryan can do anything about any of that.

.

Wednesday morning at the wall: no Treat.

“The border guards keep getting him,” Keith says when he gets down the sidewalk to me.

I turn around and we start walking to school. “You think he's quitting the band?”

“I don't know,” Keith says. “He sort of is the band. If he quits, we're screwed.”

Keith's serious, not even a little grin or stupid joke after, and that makes me think his
I don't know
is really an
I think so too.
But at least Keith's sort of got Sascha/Karen. I'm right where I started. Or maybe even farther behind. Astrid definitely knows who I am now, and I don't think it matters at all.

So I'm sort of desperate to talk to Treat by the time I get to English.

He's in the middle of a story and flicks his head to me as I walk in the room. The Mohawk is freshly bleached, as tall as ever, and he has some new orange streaks in it. It'd be nice to hear how the promotional stuff went so I can know DikNixon still matters, and so I can stop thinking about the stupid United Nations Club
pizza party and how great it was, and how much money they raised, and how Dylan Long asked Edie to stay late with him to help count the money. There was more to that story and Edie was ready to tell it until I said I probably had a quiz coming third period and needed to get in an extra couple minutes of studying, which is true even if I couldn't have cared less right then if Don Quixote made it home.

.

At lunch, the Bog fills with people who want Treat to tell them more about the cops and jail and the party, and he spends the whole time talking to everybody except me and Keith.

Right before the bell, right after I ask Treat about the promotional stuff and he says it fell through, he says he's got too much going on again today for band practice.

“What the hell?” I say. “Are we a band or not?”

“Hell, yeah, we are,” Treat says. He looks right at me and it's hard to say he's lying. “We'll practice tomorrow.”

“Really?” Keith says.

The bell rings. “Totally,” Treat says.

He starts to take off toward the cafeteria but I grab his arm. “Why aren't you at the wall in the morning?”

“I will be,” Treat says and shrugs free. “I gotta go now.”

He fast-walks through the crowd of people heading out for their lockers and fifth period. Like I said, it's hard to lose a guy with a bleached Mohawk in a crowd. Especially if he wants to be noticed. Treat steps up on a planter and when Cherise comes out of the cafeteria he throws out his arms and bows to her.
Everyone over there laughs and Cherise smiles; then he hops down and they walk off in the direction of her locker.

And now I see the pattern: no Treat at the wall in the morning, no talking to him in English, no talking to him at lunch, no band practice. Ever. He is Dik-
Fucking
-Nixon now. I'm Vice Idiot Nobody. Keith is Secretary of Stand There and Stay Quiet.

Twenty-four hours later, my hypothesis is playing out perfectly: no Treat at the wall, no real conversation in English, and now he's a no-show in the Bog. “Did he say anything to you?” I ask the Secretary of Stand There and Stay Quiet.

Keith talks through a mouthful of sandwich. “I haven't seen him today.”

I haven't touched my food. “Should we go over to his house after school?”

“He won't be there,” Keith says.

He says it so confident I figure he must know something. “Did you hear that from Edie or Cherise?”

Keith shakes his head. “I haven't seen them today either. I can just tell.” He takes another bite, calm, and shrugs, like,
That's that.

Me and Keith hang out at the library again after school. We get all our homework done and he shows me the note he's working on for Sascha/Karen. It's eight pages so far with what he's done every day this week, pictures, lists of places they can meet to kiss so her boyfriend won't find out, and the lyrics to a punk rock love song that go, “Missing kissing / got a mission for kissing / you, you, you / Frenching and necking / scarring my neck again / for you, you, you.”

“How are you going to get it to her?” I say.

He slides it over to me. “You, you, you.”

I pull my hands away like it's radioactive. “I don't know where she lives.”

“Yeah,” Keith says. “But Astrid does and—”

“Nope.” I shake my head. “I'm done playing pony express for people. You're on your own, cowboy.”

Keith takes the note back. “I'll find a way. Like Romeo did. Our forbidden love will triumph.”

I haven't read
Romeo and Juliet
yet—we're supposed to read it and see a production sometime in the spring—but I'm pretty sure it doesn't go the way Keith thinks it goes, though I don't say anything.

.

Nothing changes on Friday except that Treat doesn't even look at me in English. After class, he says he's in a hurry and we'll talk at lunch, which would be fine if he actually showed up at lunch. So me and Keith wait for him at his locker after school. He walks up with Cherise, all smiles and both her arms wrapped around one of his biceps. “Hey,” he says, “I'm glad I caught you guys so you can be the first to know.” He looks at Cherise, who squeezes into him a little tighter, and then back at us. “I'm resigning from DikNixon.”

It punches me right in the heart even though I knew it was coming.

Keith looks at me, then Treat. “There's no DikNixon without you.”

“Sorry,” he says. “No band should play past its prime. Why do you think the Beatles broke up?”

“Yoko Ono,” I say.

Keith gives me a
Who?
look, but I shake him off.

“Yeah, well,” Treat says, “if the Beatles never break up we never get ‘Imagine' or ‘Band on the Run.'”

Keith says he's never even heard of those bands, then looks at me, like,
Right?
I shake him off again.

I want to ask Treat who he thinks is going to cover for him the next time he messes up. Does he know it'll take him down? Then I think,
Good, be your own worst enemy.
Which isn't nice, I know, so instead I say, “What if we just put it on hold awhile?”

Treat shakes his head, the Mohawk making the
no
look huge. “It's got to be a clean break. I'm moving on to other things.”

My arms flail out, Jesus-like. “Come on, at least think about it.”

“I already did,” Treat says, kind of quiet, like he's afraid he'll scare Cherise. “It's over for DikNixon. There's no coming back this time.”

Keith steps forward, his finger right at Treat's face. “You said we had to care about each other like we were brothers, and that even if we didn't care about ourselves on something, we couldn't do that to our brothers.”

You might think Treat would swat his finger away, but he just stares at the ground.

Cherise looks at all three of us, and she looks just as sad as Treat. “You guys can still be friends. You don't have to be in a band together to be friends.”

“I know,” I say. “But a band is something different. It means more.”

“Brothers,” Keith says, nodding at Cherise, and I want to say,
Don't talk anymore. You'll ruin what you already said.

Treat finally looks up, says, “Sorry. I gotta go,” and leaves so fast Cherise has to fast-walk to catch up.

Keith starts saying what a jackass Treat is, what a dickhead move that was, how we should call him Been-a-Dick Arnold now. He's right about all of that, and I'm angry too, but mostly now it feels like it did when Uncle Ryan died, where your face is heavy and stopped up so you can't laugh or cry or hardly breathe. Everything just aches.

.

Keith's dad drops us off at Wonder Bowl Friday night, saying he had no idea kids still liked bowling and to call when we're ready to come home. There's a sign outside the banquet room with four bands on it, including Filibuster. After the first band, people come up and ask us if Treat really left DikNixon because he got a solo record deal or if it was because of his probation. Nobody asks what we're going to do now without Treat.

Van Doren gets there after the second band plays and tells us why the bands he missed suck and why the next one is worth getting in the slam pit for. Then he points out which guys to stay away from in the pit because they just want to hit people. “Assassins,” he says.

The next band is good, and me and Keith are huffing and sweaty when van Doren calls us over to the side of the stage. He tells Keith that Filibuster needs a roadie tonight, which means he'll be running guitars and picks and strings out to the guys as they need them. “And you're going to introduce us, Reece.” When I ask what he wants me to say, he says, “The truth.”

From the stage, you can see how long and skinny the banquet room is. It's crammed full of people, but I'm not nervous. I step up to the microphone, a real one, and even though I'm not sure what I'm about to say, it just comes out: “This is what you've been waiting for, you sick bastards.” There's a cheer, not too big, but it gives me a beat to think, and everything comes together: “Get ready for the band your dad likes best, because it scares the pants off your mom . . . Filibuster!”

Van Doren's next to me right as the words leave my mouth. He wraps his arm around my neck for a second, a weird little hug, then shoves me into the pit as the music explodes.

Filibuster plays a great set, people thrashing everywhere the whole time, Keith keeping up with breaking strings and shouts for
The blue guitar!
The brown guitar!
No, not for me, for him,
and
Good job, dude.

Afterward, we help the guys load up their stuff; then van Doren drives us to a Denny's restaurant and we all eat breakfast at one in the morning. We sit around the table, the six of us drinking off the two coffees we ordered, everybody talking about the gig and bands and school and college and whatever else. When it gets quiet, Keith starts talking about how his mom wants him to garage sale all his
Star Wars
action figures and I'm sure that's it—van Doren will never hang out with us again. But one of the guys in Filibuster says Keith will probably make some serious bank if he has some vehicles too. Keith says he has the
Millennium Falcon
and the Death Star and van Doren looks at him like he's mad. “You can't sell that stuff yet. Tell your mom to put it all in Ziplocs, and in about five years some freak will give you enough money for all that stuff to pay for college.”