Californium (5 page)

O
ne of the things I tell Uncle Ryan in the next letter is how having a huge friend with a Mohawk will probably come in handy at school, but maybe it isn't the best idea to let my parents meet him.
Especially my dad,
I write.
You know how he is when things don't go to plan, and I don't think he planned on me having weird friends.
I write about the Howdy Dance and feeling stupid in front of Astrid because Uncle Ryan's told me before that we all do stupid things sometimes. “Me more than anybody,” he said once, and I remind him of that.

After that, it's just a bunch of crap about Brendan getting in trouble at school, and Colleen already loving her new teacher, and Mom saying the tomatoes here are terrible and having great strawberries and oranges doesn't make up for it.

I know what I want to write next, but I'm not sure if I should. In the newspaper the other day, there was a family special on baseball tickets to see the Angels. Even though they were playing
Cleveland, I told my dad it would still be great to go. He said he didn't have time and I said that if Uncle Ryan were here he'd make time. “Well, Uncle Ryan isn't here,” my dad said. I probably should've shut up about it right there because when he says something without looking at you he's either not really listening or he's trying not to get upset. “It's not like it's against the law to have fun in California,” I said, and that was it. I got an earful about how life isn't fun and games all the time and if I thought it was, all I had to do was take a look at Uncle Ryan and I could see how that turned out for him. He stopped right there, real sudden, and looked at me like I'd just called him out at home when everyone else in the world could see he was safe. “I didn't mean that the way it sounded.” He waited a second, said, “Let's just not talk about Uncle Ryan, okay?” and then left the room.

Uncle Ryan used to get an earful sometimes too, my dad telling him there's a time to have fun and a time to grow up and isn't it about time he grew up? I figure Uncle Ryan doesn't need any more of that coming through me, so I leave out all the stuff about the ball game and what my dad said.
I wish you were here,
I write instead,
or that you could write back, but I'm pretty sure you can't.
I add a
Ha! But I'm going to keep writing you, if you don't mind. It makes me feel a little better, so I hope, somehow, these are getting to you and they make you feel good too.

.

Monday starts with Gus/Gary knocking me sideways to catch the physics book that somehow flew out of his locker. I'm flat on the ground and he's standing there with the book, saying it was
a close one, he
almost
got me. He's smirking, but he sticks his hand out to help me up, so I have to say, “Thanks.”

In Algebra, Mr. Tomita gives us the last ten minutes of class to get started on our homework. My left foot's propped on the side rail under my chair, my knee sticking up and out into the aisle, and suddenly it tickles a little where the hole is, like a fly's walking across my skin. Edie's leaning forward, a blue pen in her hand, writing on me. It feels so good I pretend not to notice until she's done and it reads,
Statement.

“You think I'm making a fashion statement?”

It's quiet a second until she whispers, “Just a statement.”

I turn around and she's got an
I know the answers you have to look up
smile. “What kind of statement?” I say, and Mr. Tomita shushes me from his desk, staring until we make eye contact. His chin moves down just a fraction but he doesn't say anything. It's a warning. A minute later a folded paper crinkles against my arm. Without looking up, I reach back and grab it. It's a drawing of a guy in ripped jeans, an untucked shirt, and a jacket. There's one of those cartoon bubbles above for what he's saying, only he's not saying anything. There's just an exclamation point.

I make a question mark next to it and slide it back. The paper crinkles and swishes a little like Edie's smoothing it over, but it never comes back.

When the bell rings, I turn around. “An exclamation point?”

Edie picks up her books and starts walking for the door. “Don't worry about it.”

“How can I not worry about it?”

“Just don't.” She stops next to the door. “Come on.”

She's going in the opposite direction from my next class, but I walk with her anyway. “Tell me.”

“You tell me.”

“What my fashion statement is?”

Her voice goes pretend serious. “Yes, Reece. What
is
your fashion statement?”

We stop by the staircase. Gobs of people are bobbing down the steps like a waterfall. A couple freshmen are trouting their way up, getting knocked all over the place, which is their own fault. Unless you're Treat's size, you've got to wait until most of the people coming down clear out, because not only are they merciless; they've got gravity on their side.

“I haven't really thought about my clothes as a statement,” I say.

“That's kind of what they're saying.”

“Nothing?”

“Uh-huh. A big exclamation point with nothing in front of it.” She hands me the folded-up paper from her pocket and jumps into the stream of people heading up the stairs. “See you later.”

I unfold the paper and it's just the same as it was, the guy in the ripped jeans with nothing to say. On the way to English, I fold it up and slide it into my back pocket, keeping it safe from I don't know what.

Treat's already in the classroom when I get there, and people are staring at him since they've never seen the Mohawk before. He nods at my new/old clothes and a couple people look over at me, probably wondering how I'm friends with this guy. It feels pretty good, so when Treat says me and Keith should meet him in
the Bog at lunch, I'm all for it even though I don't know what the Bog is.

.

The Bog, Keith tells me, is the middle of the quad where there's trees and shrubs in these big planters, really nice except they water it constantly so it's always muddy. Upperclassmen get all the spots around the edges, so freshmen get stuck in the Bog.

For the most part, the upperclassmen couldn't be bothered with you at lunch unless you cut across their grass or sit too close to the planters up against the library, the Senior Circle. But as Treat's cutting across the quad in front of the Senior Circle, guys in letterman jackets just stare at him.

When Treat gets to the Bog he throws up a hand. “What's up?”

“A preposition,” Keith says.

Treat grabs Keith's shirt in back and yanks it up. Keith looks like a dog waiting to get smacked and Treat says, “You don't tuck that in.” Keith doesn't even move, and Treat claps his shoulder. “You gotta get the rest. I'm not sticking my hand down your pants.”

Keith tugs and pulls real fast, his shirt flying up like a mushroom cloud until it settles back down, completely untucked and, really, looking a lot better.

Me and Keith tell Treat about the Howdy Dance and then we all talk about our old junior highs. Treat went to a private school, uniforms and everything. “I finally told my parents to save their money because if I had to go one more year I'd get myself kicked out again.”

He says it so relaxed it takes me a second to realize he said “again.”

“That's balls out,” Keith says.

“I guess,” Treat says. “Listen, you guys should come to my house today after school.”

“Yeah?” I say. “What's up?”

Treat laughs. “A preposition.” He punches Keith on the shoulder nice and solid, which looks pretty painful, but Keith gives it a tight smile. “Nah, it'll be bitchin' is all.” He snatches some paper from a guy sitting near us and draws a map. “Bring your bathing suits.”

.

Me and Keith are pacing around the PE lockers, wondering if we should try and get out of going to Treat's since even in California you don't go swimming with a guy you just met. We're coming around the corner by the varsity room when the bell rings and Petrakis is there waiting for us.

“Come here, little dudes,” he says. “You friends with that Mohawk guy?”

We both nod.

Petrakis glances at me and back to Keith. “You tell that guy if he wants to come out for football, there's still time. Got it?” He slaps Keith on the back, solid, and pushes him toward the door. “Now, get the fuck out of here.”

When we get to the quad, Keith says, “I'm going.”

“To Treat's?”

“Yeah.” His head moves up and down a few times, fast and short. “I don't care if you go or not; I'm going.”

“I'll go.”

“Good,” Keith says, “because that guy scares me,” and I don't know if he means Treat or Petrakis. Probably both.

.

Me and Keith hop my back wall to cut through the park and get across Yorba Linda Boulevard. The hills start dropping off into the canyon on that side of the street and you can tell the houses are older because there's no pattern to them. Sometimes there isn't even a house next door, just a field and horse fence.

Treat's house doesn't look any bigger than mine, but it's all one story and spread out wide. We put our bathing suits on in the bathroom next to the kitchen and Treat leads us straight out the glass sliding door to the backyard. It must be forty yards to the back fence, only there's no pool. Right before the yard drops back into the hill again, there's a wooden deck about three feet off the ground with a big, octagon-shaped bathtub sunk in the middle of it.

“Cool,” Keith says. “A hot tub.”

Treat shakes him off. “Jacuzzi.” He turns this dial in the back corner of the deck and the thing comes to life like a boiling pot of pasta. Here it is, September, seventy-five degrees out at three in the afternoon, the sun coming through the flat roof in checkers, and Treat climbs in.

“Isn't it a little hot for this?”

“Nah,” Treat says. “This is the perfect time.”

“For what?” Keith says. “Melting my contact lenses into my eyes?”

“You have contacts?”

“No,” Keith says. “It's an expression.”

Me and Keith sit down on the deck and let our legs dangle in the water. We tell Treat what Petrakis said about football and he laughs. “Who the hell wants to be a gladiator? No, thanks.” He leans back, looks around the yard, then says did we know that the Indians who lived in these hills used to do rituals that purified the land and their spirits?

“It must not have worked,” Keith says. “We got all their land.”

Treat looks at Keith like he might rip off his head, then stares past him. “It brings inner strength. The kind of thing that affects everyone around you.”

“How?” Keith says.

“Who won?” Treat says. “The Pilgrims or the Indians?”

“The Pilgrims.”

“How often do you see movies about Pilgrims?”

Keith thinks about it a second. “Sometimes. Around Thanksgiving.”

“Maybe. But you see movies about Indians all the time. You know why?” Treat doesn't wait. “The inner strength. It influences people.”

“People in Hollywood?” I say.

“People everywhere.”

Beads of sweat are sticking to Treat's face and shoulders, and with his Mohawk growing all misty with the steam rising around it, he looks mysterious and wise, like the face in the mirror in
Snow White
handing out all those facts and advice. Treat says in sweat lodges the Indians would sit around in the heat and confess their fears and hopes and all kinds of things and just let
them rise with the steam. “They could let private stuff out into the world without being embarrassed. So anything we say in the Jacuzzi stays in the Jacuzzi until it becomes part of the air.”

Keith looks at me, like,
Is this real?
and it must be because Treat keeps talking. “I want you guys to know I didn't go to the dance because I knew the music would be lame and it wouldn't be very punk rock. But after you guys told me today how you hung out with those chicks, I almost wished I went.”

Keith bobs his head a little and so I do too.

“Okay,” Treat says. “I confessed something. Now you guys have to climb in and confess something too.”

“What if we don't have anything?” I say.

“You've got something,” Treat says. “Everybody does.”

“What if we really don't?”

“Then you have to think harder. There has to be balance for this to work.”

Keith slides in and starts telling this story about some girl he made out with in the bathroom at his church. When I ask who it was, Keith says it was early in the summer, before I moved here, and somebody's cousin from another state. I ask who the “somebody” is and Keith says, “Somebody who doesn't go to our school anymore.”

“Are you confessing or bragging?”

“Confessing,” Keith says. “She was a seventh grader and I was about to start high school. I sort of took advantage of her.”

Treat nods. “That works.”

Keith grins and looks at me. “What's your confession, Reece?”

“You mean confession, like a sin? Because I don't think making out with a girl is a sin unless she doesn't exist.”

Keith looks around the yard like he's admiring the petunias, and Treat says, “It doesn't have to be anything like that. It can be something you've never told anyone. Something you want to get off your chest.”

I have stuff like that, stuff I wouldn't tell a priest. Stuff like fishing Uncle Ryan's keys out of that stadium cup the morning he disappeared, hiding them in my backpack, and then throwing them in a trash bin on the way to school. Or even writing the letters to him, since my parents don't know about that and they wouldn't like it. Or how writing the letters at my desk is how I first noticed my window is right across from Astrid's. Now I'm gawking every time her light clicks on, hoping somehow through the curtains I'll see her taking off her bra or just lying on her bed.