Friend Is Not a Verb (9 page)

“Sure, man—sorry, I’ll let you get off,” he said. “But, hey, that’s so cool about your band and the gig at Bimbo! It’s huge. Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” My eyes wandered over to the rumpled pillow on my bed and the manuscript hidden beneath. I decided to take another risk. “So, do you think you could make it? To the gig?”

“It depends. I’d love to, obviously. I just don’t know if it’s such a great idea. I nearly had a heart attack buying the
laptop, and I was only out and about for less than two hours. But…ah, hopefully everything that needs to be cleared up will be cleared up by then and I can start hanging out in public again. Well, either that or I’ll be going to jail.” He laughed nervously.

“You really think that’ll happen?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. But if it does…it does.”

I chewed my lip. “Well, best-case scenario, if you can make it, do you think you can invite some of your college friends? I’d love to pack the place. Like the guys from your old band and your friend Madeline?”

He chuckled. “Why? Did Sarah say they were in town?”

“Um, no,” I said anxiously.

“Sarah is planning to go, though, right? That’s one audience member, right there.”

“To tell you the truth, I haven’t told her about the gig yet.”

“Oh.” Gabriel took a deep breath. “Well, last I heard, Rich and Tony were on their way to California, and Madeline is still…down south. But if Sarah knows something I don’t, maybe they can make it.”

Neither of us spoke for a moment. My heart beat a little faster.

“Talk to Sarah,” Gabriel said finally. “I’ll see you tomorrow at 10:30, okay?”

“Okay. See you then.”

I hung up. My fingers were clammy. I couldn’t tell what was stressing me out more: Gabriel’s stolen manuscript or the
trillion-ton elephant in the room I had to ignore whenever I talked to him or my sister.

I turned back to the window, watching Sarah as she methodically emptied a plastic sack of fresh soil onto a patch of dirt at the edge of the flagstones. What the hell was even running through her mind right now?

I suppose I
could
talk to her. But I had no idea what I’d say. There had to be a way in—a topic of conversation or line of questioning that would trick her into slipping up about the past year. All I need was one little detail that would allow all the other pieces to fall into place. The problem was, none of the pieces fit. I didn’t even know if I
had
any pieces. Could I ask her if Gabriel had somehow talked her into coming back home from the Dominican Republic, to try to reenter society again? That seemed to be the gist of his final diary entry. But, no, there was no way she’d tell me that. Maybe if I posed it as a simple yes-or-no question…

I flopped down on my bed, feeling antsy. Could I try to trick Mom or Dad into giving me a clue? Did they even have any? Did anybody really know a goddamn thing? Judging from Gabriel’s manuscript, Sarah seemed to be just as clueless about her own disappearance as I was.

Maybe I should forget about the big mystery and focus on what was important: the gig at the Bimbo Lounge. Yes. I should probably even use this vital time alone to practice a little on my own. But to tell you the truth, I hated practicing. It hurt my fingers.

Nobody was home when I showed up at Petra’s dad’s loft that night to work on her new material. Instead I found a note taped to the steel door at the top of a long, rickety wooden stairwell.

Ah, Petra. Did I miss going out with you?

I couldn’t even tell. Like I said: funnier in writing.

I pushed the door open and tiptoed inside. I’d never been here before. Petra’s dad was a relatively well-known photographer and was always traveling for work. (Her mom, who couldn’t take “the rock star lifestyle”—Petra’s words—had divorced him and married a chiropractor when Petra was four.) The place was nice. Well, maybe “nice” is the wrong word. It was huge, anyway—one vast room filled with junky antique furniture and big plants. It reminded me of a secondhand shop. All the couches were draped with worn velvet blankets, sun bleached from the massive windows overlooking Broadway. I could tell that Mr. Dostoyevsky thought highly of himself. The walls were lined with dozens of head shots (ones he had taken, I hoped): Ethan Hawke, Janeane Garofalo, and a bunch of other fortysomething actors—weirdly appropriate, given our nineties thing. I’d been a little worried, because from the outside the building didn’t look so great. It was a renovated meat warehouse. All the other units were sweatshops.

“Hen Birnbaum felt a twinge of envy staring at those famous
faces on the wall,”
Jim Forbes remarked.
“But even then, he knew his own superstardom would soon dwarf Ethan Hawke’s. In December—after their debut album,
Dawson’s Freak Show,
went platinum—Petra Dostoyevsky’s father quit his day job to become the band’s full-time photographer. Later, when he abandoned the rock star lifestyle, he also moonlighted as a babysitter for the eight children Hen and Petra adopted from war-torn Sudan.”

I propped my bass case against a wall and sat down on the couch. Something crumpled in my back pocket—the sign I’d torn off the tree in the East Village yesterday. Ha! Good thing I hadn’t changed my pants. I fished it out and unfolded it.

DOG WALKER NEEDED!

For two old English bulldogs and a Labrador Two families, one building 180 Thomas Street. (Btwn West B’way and Hudson)

You must: love dogs, love
these
dogs, feed them (3X daily: 9 a.m., noon, 5 p.m.), bathe and exercise them at the Warren Street Dog Run

$30.00 cash/day—Mon-Fri

Wow. A hundred fifty bucks a week, just for walking three dogs? Not only that; I could hang out in a fabulous Tribeca apartment.
Two
apartments.

I could see it now: One of the families would own a Steinway grand. The five weeks of piano lessons Mom had forced me to take when I was nine years old would finally pay off. I
would compose the band’s sensitive-but-not-cheesy ballad (a nineties take on the Beatles’ “Let It Be”) while a couple of purebred old English bulldogs lay at my feet, whatever old English bulldogs were. Better yet, I would confront my fears. Instead of denying the psychic significance of how Emma and I sometimes dreamed the same things at the same time, the lyrics would celebrate it. I’d call it “Dreams Are My Nerve Agent.” Perfect.

Once again, I was feeling great.

At the bottom of the page, there was a number, an email address, and a contact name: Glenda Abrahmson. With a name like that, she
definitely
owned a Steinway grand. I yanked my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed her up.

“Hello?” a woman answered. She had an English accent. Her voice was husky.

“Hi, is Mrs. Abrahmson there, please?”

“Speaking,” she said. “Who’s that?”

“Oh, hi…uh—my name is Henry Birnbaum,” I said. All at once, I was nervous. “I’m calling about the dog-walking job.”

“Oh, terrif!” she exclaimed. “Are you a student?”

Terrif?
I relaxed a little. “Actually, I’m on summer break.”

“How nice.”

“Thank you.”

“Have you ever walked dogs before?” she asked.

“Yes,” I lied.

“What kind?”

“Two German shepherds.” I wanted to sound impressive. Mom and Dad had never let us own a dog, citing allergies I still wasn’t sure actually existed.

“I trust this isn’t a case of résumé padding,” she said drily.

There was a beep. Another call was coming in on my line, from a private number.

“I’m sorry, can you hold on a second?” I asked.

“Go ahead and take it,” she said. “I’ll see you Monday morning, half past eight. You know where I live, right?”

My eyes widened. That was it? “Uh, yeah,” I said uncertainly. “Thanks.”

“Thank
you
, Henry Birnbaum,” she replied, then hung up.

I pressed the flash button, hoping it was Emma. I couldn’t wait to prove to her how everything in my life was suddenly falling into place. “Hello?”

“Hen, do you know where Sarah is?”

It was Dad. Ever since he’d become convinced the government was spying on us, he’d kept our home number unlisted. I wished he hadn’t. He and Mom never stopped catching me by surprise, and they never would.

“Well?” he prodded.

“Are you kidding?” I asked.

“She’s not out back in the garden or in her room, and she’s not answering her phone. We haven’t seen her since—”

“Dad, I got a job,” I interrupted.

“In the music industry?” he asked.

“I’m a dog walker,” I said.

There was a pause. “Hen, your mother and I are worried about you.”

I laughed. “Well if it helps, I am, too.”

“Are you planning on walking dogs for the rest of your life?” he asked.

“Didn’t we already have a conversation like this? I feel like we did.”

He exhaled deeply. “Let me just ask you a simple question. Would this job provide you with any health coverage in case, God forbid, I lost my insurance?”

Hmm.
I didn’t answer. I figured that if I were bitten by one of the dogs, Mrs. Abrahmson would take me to the hospital. She sounded like a nice woman.

“And how are you paid, exactly? Does your employer take taxes out?”

“It’s not a career, Dad,” I said. “It’s a job.”

“It’s neither,” he said. “But regardless of your grandiloquence, cash is still taxable income. You have to declare it. Otherwise, you’ll have to pay a fine.”

Grandiloquence?
I was beginning to regret subscribing to my family’s insanity. My own father was threatening me with the IRS. I hadn’t even started yet.

“Things are more complicated than they seem,” he added cryptically. “You’re not a kid anymore.”

“I’m not? Since when?”

“You’re sixteen years old,” he stated. “You had a bar mitzvah. You’re an adult.”

“According to who, your rabbi?” My voice rose. “Jesus, Dad! I can’t legally drink, vote, or see an NC-17 movie in a theater. I’ll be a junior in high school this fall. Say that word to yourself out loud.
Junior.
There’s nothing adult about it.”

“When Sarah was sixteen, she—”

“When
Sarah
was sixteen?” I spat. “
Sarah
? She’s a role model now? You don’t even know where she is! Maybe she ran away again!”

He sighed. “You’re upset, Hen.”

“I have to go, Dad. Good-bye.”

I shoved my phone back into my pocket. My hands were shaking. An adult, huh? Fine. Clearly, fantasy life or no fantasy life, I
had
reached a turning point. My parents had set the terms. We were peers now. Equals. Therefore, I could act as rude, secretive, and off-the-charts psycho as they did. The solution was simple. I vowed not to speak to them again until Emma’s father had secured a multimillion-dollar recording contract for Dawson’s Freak.
Then
we could talk about taxable income and health coverage.

Sarah never came home that night. I pretended not to notice. I was too busy, anyway. I was employed now. I had responsibilities.
Adult
responsibilities. When I returned from Petra’s, I marched straight up to my room and closed the door without saying a word to my parents.

I wasn’t that upset anymore, either. I was in a strange mood. Rehearsal had left me pleasantly discombobulated.

Not surprisingly, Petra wasn’t too interested in letting me compose a sensitive-but-not-cheesy ballad on a Steinway grand. Mostly she wanted to work on her own latest number, “Oedipus Wrecks.” It was one of her better ones. The chorus had only one lyric, repeated sixteen straight times: “He’s gonna turn his mutha out.” I nailed the bass line, too, which was essentially a rip-off of Parliament Funkadelic’s “Give Up the Funk.” Come to think of it, the whole song was. I wasn’t sure what it had to do with nineties nostalgia—it was way more seventies blaxploitation—but I had too much fun playing the riff ad nauseam to call her on it. We both did. On my way out the door, she pecked me on the cheek and said, “That was groovy. You should wear your bass lower, though, sweetie. The strap is too tight. It makes you look adult contemporary.”

Funnier in writing,
I reminded myself with a sigh.

I sat down at my computer.

My plan was to google old English bulldogs to see what I’d be dealing with all summer. Unfortunately I made the mistake of checking my email first.

There was a single message waiting in my in-box:

I scowled at the screen, baffled. Was this a joke? I clicked on the message.

Hmm.
I was used to weirdness. My entire life was weirdness. And I could have easily handled this freakish new situation in stride if it weren’t for one line: “It will all be over soon.” That wasn’t what people said when everything was hunky-dory, or in Sarah’s words, when they were “safe.” It was what people said when they were about to murder a sworn enemy or detonate a bomb they were strapped to or plunge from a skyscraper. I immediately called Emma.

“Wow, that’s so weird,” she answered.

“You don’t know the half of it,” I muttered. “What’s up?”

“Nothing really. I was just dialing your number again for the hundredth time. Where have you been, anyway? Your phone’s off and your voice mail is full.”

“I was at Petra’s.”

“Oh. Did you guys make out?”

I frowned. “No, Emma. We did not make out. We did
not
shtup
. Our physical intimacy was limited to one kiss. No tongue.”

“You kissed on the lips?”

“Jesus, Emma! You want me to make a video next time? It was a rehearsal.”

“Sorry, sorry. So what’s going on?”

I stared at the screen. “I’m not really sure. My sister’s gone again, but she just friended me on Facebook. She says it’s the only way she can let me know she’s safe. She also said, ‘It will all be over soon.’”

“Whoa,” Emma murmured. “What does that mean?”

“I have no idea. Do you think I should accept the friend request?”

“Are you kidding? Of course. Plus, it’s bad karma not to accept a friend request on Facebook, even from stalkers.”

I almost smiled. “Do you have a Facebook stalker?”

“Well, yeah,” she said, as if I should obviously know.

“Who?”

“Petra, for starters,” Emma said. “When you guys played at assembly in April, she sent me, like, forty messages, telling me to spread the word and make sure all my friends came. I wrote on her wall that assembly was a requirement, but it didn’t stop her.”

“Very funny. Anyone else?”

“That kid from your band, Bartholomew. I think he has a crush on me.”

I started laughing. “What makes you think that?”

“He sent me a bunch of messages, too, asking me if I could talk to you about the dorky way you dress. Oh—and he said he liked my hair because it sticks out in a hundred different directions. He asked if I used any product.”

My smile faded. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“You never told me that,” I said.

“There’s a lot I haven’t told you, Hen. You have enough on your plate already.”

True. And now was definitely not the time to worry about Bartholomew Savage’s opinions about my wardrobe or conversations with Emma he was having behind my back. I clicked the “accept request” button and followed it to Sarah’s home page. More weirdness. Her profile was completely barren—just a silhouette for a photo, no comments, no status information…no news on her news feed other than “
Sarah
is now friends with
Henry Birnbaum
.” And I was her only friend.