Sister Slam and the Poetic Motormouth Road Trip (10 page)

I smiled, and filed the

moment in my memory.

“Drive defensively,” I said.

“You never know what kind of

maniac's going to smash into you.”

Twig and I

started our day jobs

the next morning.

“Is that a Twinkie?” asked Twig,

and I hid the cupcake behind my

back.

“Ssh,” I said. “
Twinkie
is a curse

word here in the health food world.”

After work, Twig and I entered a frenzied

night world of swirled words,

on the brink of something big.

The gig was packed,

with hackers selling tickets

at hiked prices outside.

By Friday, when it was time

to tell Jake and

his parents good-bye,

Twig and I had made enough money

to rent a miniature persimmon-

walled room with no furniture.

“We need a sofa and a chair,”

said Twig, combing her hair.

Her voice echoed in the empty room.

“No, first we need beds and

food,” I said.

“I'd say that your first priority

is a good bolt for the door,”

said Jake. “You've got to be safe.”

Jake checked the window, making

sure that it was locked.

It was a full moon.

“See you soon,”

Jake said to Twig, and

we went outside.

Jake intertwined his fingers

with mine, and my skin tingled.

“See you next week,” he said,

and he kissed my cheek.

I said okay, and

my head ached as I

watched him walk away.

In the morning, I called Pops

from Scarecrow's shop, filling him in

on everything that had happened in one

short, important week.

“You're not getting

married or anything?”

Pops joked.

“I'm a wide-load

bride,” I replied.

“I'm married to poems;

carried across the threshold

of a whole new life!”

“Just be careful,”

Pops said. “The city

is so big.”

It was time for the whirlwind

to begin. The gigs were a blur,

a haze of faces and words.

Sometimes, hearing my

own husky voice slicing spicy through

the microphone in a dusky, musky room,

I thought of how nobody would

believe this back home.

With elastic disco clothes and

purple plastic bows, I was spastic.

“We are Sister Slam,

Twig, and the Poetic

Motormouth Road Trip!”

I screamed night after

night, spazzed by success.

I jolted the groupies

with tick-tocking

bolts of shock, kicking

butt when the tickets

sold out and the doors

were locked. It

rocked when a fan-man

named Brock asked

for my socks as a souvenir.

“Here,” I said, and I tossed my

stinky socks into the crowd,

where there was a loud scuffle

as three guys tried to grab them.

It was surreal: a crazy-hazy

daisy petal of a heavy metal

dream made real by just

stealing words from

the dictionary and mixing them up.

“We're missionaries,”

Twig said one night.

“We preach the letters of

the alphabet, and how they

can save you, if you

combine them just right.”

I stopped having stage fright,

and wore lots of white leather

and feathery boas, with psycho

go-go boots from The BoBo Shop.

“You look hot,” Jake said,

on the weekend.

“Not,” I said.

“Hot,”

he said. “I should stay

here all week

to protect you from the freaks.”

That night,

in the violet

spotlights, a strange shining

knight in silver armor

invited me to a toxic waste site.

“Red spider mites bite

you until you turn blue,”

said Mister Cuckoo.

“No, thank you,” I replied.

“But I love you,”

said the man, and it

was the sock fan Brock, screaming

heebie-jeebie-like.

“Jake!” I yelled,

and he came

from backstage

and stood by my side.

“I'm her bodyguard,”

he said. “Protector

of the Sister. Don't

mess with her.”

The cops came and shoved Brock

from the club, and Jake looked buff

with his Sister-protecting biceps flexed.

“See,” Jake said.

“You need me

to protect you from the freaks.”

“Right now,” I said, “I need sleep.”

“Me too,” said Jake. “And my

parents will kill me if I don't

get home.”

Twig and I were hip, our lips slicked

watermelon pink and our hair

streaked with the color of

the week. We reeked

of rhyme and wrote poems

all the time. Twig and I also

bickered like sisters over stuff like whose

turn it was to wash the dishes.

“I wish I had my own place,” Twig

complained after telling me what

a pain I was. “You're hard to live

with,” she said. “Kind of a diva.”

I got a slim Creamsicle-colored cell phone

with a ding-a-ling ring, making sure that

the call zone included Jake's home.

On weekdays, I missed Jake like crazy,

and I wrote a boatload of woeful

wicked Jake-sick poems.

We spoke every day

on Jake's lunch break

at Doozy's Music Store.

“What's up?” Jake would say.

“Everything's okay,” I'd say.

One day, Jake sounded

blue. “I'm really missing

you,” he said.

“You have no clue.”

“Oh, yes, I do. I miss you, too.”

It was a flurry of busy stuff:

a Marshmallow Fluff cream-puff existence.

But the phone rang late

one starless

September night when

the sky was crying

and black, and it

was Twig's dad, Jack.

“Laura,” he said,

out of breath,

“your father had a heart attack.”

I crumpled

to the floor.

“I can't handle it

if I lose my only

parent,” I said out loud.

“There's no way I can

be an orphan. A girl

needs a parent on this

scary planet.”

I needed to ditch

this city, quick,

and make my way

to the Banesville Hospital,

but I had no car of my

own. Twig and I

sometimes borrowed

an old gold

Ford, but it was a loan

from Scarecrow.

Home. I want to go home.

I ripped a comb through my hair

and stepped into a pair of sweatpants

and boots. I was still wearing my Misfits

nightshirt.

Home. There's no place like home.

I was Dorothy in
The Wizard

of Oz
, but Sister in the City,

clicking together the heels

of my glittery red Doc Martens.

“Twig,” I said, and she sat up,

rumpled and bleary, mascara

smeary, weary from a late-night slam.

“Pops had a heart attack.

I need to go home.

Are you with me,

or are you staying here?”

“I'm with you, come hell

or no hair gel,” Twig said.

“But what about

how you jumped out

of the car on the

way here?” I asked.

“Temporary

carsick-chick insanity,”

said Twig. “You know

we're superglued at the hips,

and at the hearts, too.”

I tried to smile.

“Should we take a bus

to Banesville?”

Twig suggested.

“Or maybe it'd be best

to take the train.”

Shaky, quaking, scared awake,

I called Jake, even though it was late,

to get his advice.

“Sit tight,” he said.

“I'll be right there.”

Jake must have raced, and his

face was pasty white when

he squealed and peeled

to the curb, then leaped up

the steps six at a time.

“Oh, my God.

You have hives!” he said,

touching my neck.

I was a wreck,

stressed breathless.

“I'm glad you're here,”

I blubbered, then collapsed

into Jake's strong embrace.

He stroked my face.

“It'll be okay.

We'll pray, okay?

No way that it won't be

okay,” Jake said.

“Yeah,” Twig agreed.

“Pops is strong.

Nothing will go wrong.”

“Let's roll,” Jake said, taking

control, which was my goal.

We piled into Jake's

car and started

on the far drive home,

leaving the neon

lights and taxi traffic

of the city behind.

In the dismal darkness

of the Lincoln Tunnel,

I blew my nose

on a paper napkin

I'd found on the floor

of Jake's car.

“Thanks for coming

with me, you two,” I said.

“We'd be maggots

not to go with you,”

Jake said,

and he reached

over and squeezed

my hand.

“This is what friends

are for: to stick with

you when life sucks,” Twig said.

“Life does suck on

occasion,” I said.

When I was nine,

and Pops told me

that Mom had died,

I'd thrown myself

on my bed, hopeless and angry,

banging my head

and wishing that I were dead

instead of her. I wore

Mom's flowered nightgown

that night, and about a thousand

nights after,

holding tight to the scent of Mom.

“If Pops dies,” I said, “I won't be able

to handle it. It'll kill me.

I can't go through it again.”

We each melted

into our seat-belted selves

and rode in eerie silence

until the knifelike

sharp lights of the hospital

whittled holes in the sky,

carving, cutting through darkness,

as I hoped with all my breath

that my pops wasn't dead.

It smelled like

Lysol and dying

flesh and wet diapers

in intensive care,

where defenseless

people have to wear

those senseless gowns

that are all open down

the back, exposing

butt cracks and stuff.

It was bad enough

that Pops was in

the hospital,

but seeing him sleeping

in that dress—

pale and helpless—

made me catch

my breath.

It felt like

death, and

hearses, and I

accidentally

cursed at a

nurse clomping

past, chomping

on Starbursts.

“Quiet! Holy

hell! Can't you

tell people are

trying to sleep

in this bleepin'

place?” I raged.

Then I felt like

an imbecile, because

I made more noise

than the nurse.

Pops opened his eyes.

“Laura,” he whispered,

his words a wisp.

“Baby. I was going

crazy, waiting.”

I cracked, and fritters of Sister Slam

fell in fragments to the hospital bed.

I kissed Pops's

creased cheeks

nineteen times each,

weeping like a freaking idiot.

Pops's face was tinted

ghostly Coast-soap

blue, and I didn't

have a clue

what he was hooked

up to.

An IV, beeping machines,

a tangled

ivylike vine

of wires, and lights

like fires burning were all

connected to Pops.

There was a

lighted road map

of his heart

on a screen.

The room was dim,

and we were lit

by the red lights

of Pop's broken heart.

The old geezer

Doctor Proctor

(known by everybody

in Banesville)

was wearing cruddy green

scrubs with

red blood blotches,

and he was crotchety.

“The surgery went fine,”

he snapped. Then he gave me

a line of crap about how

my father was bothered

by his daughter's AWOL,

and how I ought to be ashamed

and maybe even blamed

for causing all the stress

and distress that might

have made

Pop's heart explode.

“Whoa, dude,” said Jake.

“Nobody's to blame.

No offense, sir,

but it's not

Laura's fault.”

“No, it's not,” said Pops.

“It's not Laura's

fault. It's all the

malted milk shakes

and Tastykakes I ate.

Give Laura a break, Doc.”

“Put a sock in it,” said

Twig, as Doctor Proctor

stomped off without another word.

Pops grinned. “Hi, Twig,”

he said.

Twig leaned over Pops's

hospital bed and kissed

his bald head.

“They said I'm lucky

to be alive,” Pops said.