Cameron and the Girls (4 page)

She takes off again. We are getting closer to the tangle of evergreen blackberry vines that hide the side road from the driveway.

“For your information,” she says, “Mom will now spend the rest of the day feeling all guilty because she took my phone, and by the time I get home, she'll want to apologize and let me do whatever I want.”

“Like what?” I say.

“Like this.” On the other side of the blackberries a maroon Honda sits idling.

“Who's that?” I say.

As if to answer, a boy I recognize but don't know steps out of the car. He is all grin, with long dark blond hair falling in thin strands on his forehead. “Hey cutes,” he says.

Beth runs up and kisses him on the lips. I have never seen her do this with anyone before, and I feel embarrassed. She turns back and says, “If you tell a soul, your ass is dead.”

“Don't worry,” I say.

“Meet Dylan,” she says.

My brain backs up a step. I feel a wobble in the air. Dylan gives me a little wave and I squeak out, “Hey.”

“You want a ride to school?” Beth asks.

“In that?” I say, pointing to the car.

“What did you think?”

I'm not sure I like this new sister of mine. She seems to be putting on a show. But I don't want to ride the bus alone, and I agree to go with them.

They put me in the back next to schoolbooks, backpacks, and a floor full of dirty wrappers. The car smells like the outside of McDonald's.

“Now, drive carefully,” says Beth, “so you don't attract attention.”

But Dylan doesn't care about attention and pulls out fast, throwing gravel all over the berry bushes. Beth slugs him but she laughs and moves closer.

It is a different scene I see out the window, closer to the ground, as we motor through Lexington and along the West Side Highway. I can barely see the river over the top of the dike. Beth and Dylan are talking low in the front seat, and every once in a while, Beth laughs. It is a good laugh and reminds me of The Girl's voice.

Unlike all the good feelings I had last night, something is wrong in my head this morning. It feels a little growly and dark. I have to fight to make my thoughts straight. Something inside me is waking up and flexing its muscles. It feels like I'm falling over, even though I'm sitting up straight. Behind my eyelids, bright yellow flashes get in the way, and when I open my eyes, no matter how hard I try to avoid those lights, they follow me.

But the worst part is the low rumble I hear at the back of my head. Like distant thunder before a whopper of a storm. I sit nervously in the seat and rub my arms.

Beth glances back and frowns. “You okay?” she says.

“What's the forecast?” I say.

This makes Dylan laugh, but Beth narrows her eyes. “Be careful,” she finally says. “I heard you in your room with Mom last night.”

“What did you hear?” I ask.

“I heard you talking about a girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend?” says Dylan. “The little guy has a girlfriend?”

“I'm not little,” I say.

Beth gives me her warning look and sits back straighter. “Maybe,” says Beth. Then she leans in to Dylan again and kisses him on the cheek.

“Yowzer,” says Dylan as he caresses her chin.

Seeing them like this, I can feel it in every part of me. I want what they have.

T
he
next day is Friday and a lot of kids are sick, including the gym teacher, Mr. Fundseth. The substitute has the class go on a walk for exercise. I'm the last one out, and I'm already way behind the others. I start to jog, but I hear a voice.

“Hey.” The voice comes from my left, between the shop and mechanical-drawing buildings; Nina is leaning with her hands flat against a wall. “Wait up,” she says. She walks over. “I thought you'd never come out.”

“I don't really want to,” I say.

She studies my face. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, are you?”

She shrugs. “Not really, but what else is new?”

I look over to the walkers, who are quite far away.

“You don't really want to go with them,” she says.

“Not really.”

“That's the right answer,” she says as she takes hold of my shirt. “Come on with me.”

We're walking in the lot and I look around. The class is almost out of sight now. Cars are speeding by in front of the school. One small red one revs its engine before it shoots across the street into the lot. At the same time, I realize Nina has stopped.

“Oh, great,” she says. I turn and see a ghostly look on her face.

The engine revs again and a horn honks. Now the red car is very close to us. I notice paint on the windows and tin cans tied to the back bumper. The driver's window glides down, and a woman with uncombed frosty hair pokes her head out. A cigarette juts from her mouth. “Hey, baby girl,” she says.

“Go away,” Nina says.

“Got a live one,” the woman says, laughing. There is a skinny unshaven man in the passenger seat, and he laughs too.

I look at the writing on the back window. Just Marryed, it says.

“Listen, I'm going to be away for a couple,” the woman says. “Think you can take care of things while I'm gone?”

“Just go,” Nina says.

“That's the sport,” the woman says. “There's some money on the table to tide you over.” She puts the car in gear, revs the engine one more time, and peels out, the cans clanking behind her.

Nina and I watch her go. “Who's that?” I say, but I know.

“My so-called mother,” she says.

“Did she just get married?”

Nina looks at me as if I have no brain. “She just does stuff like that to get attention. She's still married to some other guy. She thinks she's so cute.”

Nina's mom has rounded the corner now and passes the last of the walkers. The substitute is no longer craning his neck to check for stragglers.

Nina takes me by the arm again. “Come on, let's go.”

I let her drag me along. “Where are we going?”

“I want something to eat,” she says. “And ever since they took the candy machines out, there's nowhere to get it except at the gas mart.”

The gas mart sits a couple of blocks away. “But we're not supposed to leave the school grounds.”

“Yeah? So?”

“So we can't go to the store.”

Nina makes a big deal of putting her hands on her hips.

“Look around. Do you see anybody stopping us?”

I do look around again. The lot is empty. I suddenly feel a pain in my chest and rub at it. The thunder in the back of my brain has not left since it started yesterday. I can feel Nina studying me again, and I visualize myself behind thick glass at the zoo.

“Well?” She taps her foot on the asphalt.

I open my mouth, but before I can speak:

One should try to be law-abiding.

Saved by The Professor. “I prefer to be law-abiding,” I say.

There are always better things for young minds to do.

“There are better things for young minds . . .” I stop and consider what I'm saying. “We could get detention.”

Nina shakes her head. “Cameron, we're already in the EDP. Is that the worst thing you can think of?” She takes off for the street.

I hurry to catch up and am nearly clipped by a car as I sprint across.

“Why are you in there, anyway?” I ask. “You seem pretty normal.”

“I am normal,” she says, not looking at me. “It's everybody else who's nuts.” She takes a few more steps and adds, looking at the ground, “I'm, you know, depressed.”

“Oh,” I say. “Is it bad?”

“You ever been depressed? If you have, then you wouldn't ask that stupid question.”

“Sorry,” I say.

“Don't worry about it.”

“You talk a lot,” I say. “I mean, in class you're so quiet.”

“That's because I've got nothing to say to those other nuts.”

I wish we could slow down, but Nina seems bent on a mission. We cover the block or so to the store in record time. In front of it, a man with a full bright-red beard is filling his SUV with gas.

“I live down there in that house,” Nina says, pointing.

I follow her finger about halfway down the block and see a small, boxy red house. The grass is already high in the yard, and old pruned rhododendron branches are strewn all around. “Nice,” I say.

When I look back, Nina is holding out her hand. “You got any change?”

“No.”

“Hmm. How are we going to get any candy?”

I have no answer, but something odd begins to happen. Her face is changing before my eyes. I shake my head, but it still happens. Her mouth turns down, her cheeks wrinkle up, and suddenly her eyes are full of tears. I think maybe I'm hallucinating.

I start to say, “I'd better . . .”

But Nina walks over toward the island where the bearded man is topping off his tank. She starts talking to him, barely loud enough for me to hear. I can see her back shake, her hand come up to her face and cover her eyes. Then, like a miracle, the man reaches in his pocket and pulls out a pile of change. Nina picks and chooses from the pile and comes back.

“Nice guy,” she says, passing me and going inside.

I am relieved I wasn't hallucinating after all and watch her through the glass. Her face is back to normal again as she checks out the candy aisle.

In a minute, she comes back out with red licorice and a Snickers bar. She hands me one of the licorice pieces.

“There now, that wasn't difficult, was it?”

I've never hung around with anyone like her before. Although I am still worried about being away from school, I also feel sort of adventurous. I jam the licorice in my mouth and chew hard.

“What are you in the class for?” she asks. “Besides just being weird.”

“I don't work well with others.”

“What's that mean?”

“It means in the normal classes I get a little hard to handle.”

“Do you have ADD?”

“No.”

“What, then?”

“Schizo.”

She doesn't flinch the way most people do. “You got a shrink?”

I tell her about Dr. Simons and the tufts of hair on his knuckles, his tall cupboard full of med samples.

We start walking in unison back down the street. I wonder how we do that when neither one of us has said anything about it.

“I take Zoloft,” Nina says. “It's an antidepressant, but it makes me suicidal.”

Suicidal
is a word that I stay away from. It's a word that really makes my parents pay attention. “Isn't it supposed to make you not that way?” I say.

“It has the opposite effect on some of us.”

“You don't look suicidal,” I say. Although when I think about it, there could be thousands of ways to be suicidal.

“Well, don't get too close to me. I could blow at any second.” She laughs. There she goes again, taking it so lightly.

But she quickly sobers up. “People think being depressed is just being tired and lazy. It isn't. It's more like being dead when you're still breathing.”

I want to hear more, but we've come to the street in front of the school, and I notice the other kids are coming back from the walk. Nina grabs me, and we sneak along behind the trees that line the street until we're at the rear of the gym class.

“I love it when there's a substitute,” Nina says.

 

On the way home, Beth is not on the bus. But I don't have to worry too long. She jumps out of the blackberry bushes when I walk by.

“Hey, hey,” she says.

“What are you doing?”

“Mom is not ready to meet Dylan, and Dad is definitely not ready. Dylan let me off here and went back to track practice. Isn't that cool? He went way out of his way.”

“Cool,” I mumble.

We walk in silence for a moment and then I ask, “Do you know what a Renaissance man is?”

“Sure. A Renaissance man is a guy who's good at a lot of different things. Why do you want to know?”

“A girl called me that,” I say.

“Hmm,” she says. “I wouldn't really think of you as a Renaissance man.”

“Well, I guess some people would,” I say. And I feel buoyant, even skippy. I take off ahead of her, galloping all the way.

 

Now is not the time to be sneaking out of the house, so I stay in my room and try to keep myself busy. I reach under my bed and pick up the book that is still overdue at the library. I flip through the pages, but my mind is not there.

The good feelings start to go away. And once again, on the inside of my head, something is flexing its muscles. I'm wondering if the rest of my life will always be a fight with myself. Or will The Girl always come and make it all better?

As I think of her, I should be calming down, but my nerves are on fire. All up and down my arms and legs, the synapses spark to life. My brain rolls around like a ball bouncing against my skull. I feel pressure and reach up to touch my head when:

How would you like to have the life of a lifetime, Mr. Renaissance man?

I sit up higher and look around. Another voice I don't know. My tongue suddenly feels thick and tarry. “What?”

Be bold? Be tough? Live the life you should be living?

“I don't know what you mean,” I say.

Change it up, then. Make it great. Make them respect you. Before it's too late, Mr. Cammy.

“Who are you?” I cry.

Are you down for a change?

A
t
dinner, my hands are shaking. Dad notices.

“Something up, bud?”

“Not really,” I say. From across the table, Mom smiles nervously at me. “Too much homework maybe.” She winks, as if now we're buddies because I told her about my girlfriend.

“I know what that's about,” Dad says, laughing. For a moment, he and Mom commiserate about their school days, and Beth sighs big while she stirs her spaghetti with a fork.