The Other Way Around (10 page)

“How come?”

“On a corporate level, the pay sucks, they sell cheap plastic crap made by children with lead poisoning in China and that will probably end up in a landfill in less than six months. On a personal level, my Aunt Ginger used to work at one of these places. She hurt her back, and they hired a big lawyer to convince her she wasn't entitled to worker's comp. After that she couldn't work for a while, and she and my Uncle Paul couldn't afford to have me live at their house any more. So that's how I ended up at foster home number one.”

“Oh,” I say. I had never really thought of Walmart as anything more than a big store that sold a lot of stuff. “I think camping gear is down here.” We make our way down the aisle filled with coolers, fishing gear, tents, and camping stoves. At the end there is a small section devoted to sleeping bags rolled up in neat spirals. The cheapest one is $49.99, about twenty dollars more than I have left. I could use Mom's credit card, but I really don't want to. I don't want her to hold it over me that I was on my own for less than twenty-four hours before I was dependent on her again. I also don't want G or anyone else to know I have it, for a couple reasons.

As we're standing there, a blue-smocked employee with a tight ponytail lacquered to her head walks briskly past the end of the aisle.

“Excuse me,” G calls after her. “Are these the cheapest sleeping bags you have?”

“Yep, that's it,” she says. “Except for the kids' ones.” She
eyes G up and down. “You might be able to fit. My son still uses one and he's fourteen.”

“Where would we find those?” G asks.

“Around the corner.” The woman points to the next aisle over.

***

“Ooh,” G exclaims as she unties the knot and unrolls a Strawberry Shortcake themed bag. It's covered with pink and green cupcakes, but it's only a little bit smaller than an adult sleeping bag. “There's this, Spiderman, or Superman.”

I try and imagine crawling underneath this thing with Emily, and thoughts of Analiese Gerber make my stomach turn. Who am I kidding? “I guess I'm more of a Spidey guy.”

“I can see that,” G says. “There's definitely something a little secretive and nerdy about you.”

“Thanks.”

We pay for the sleeping bag and a large bag of Twizzlers at the register. I stuff the last of my money, all two dollars and seventy-two cents, back into my pocket.

Back in the parking lot I'm surprised to see the bus is running and everyone is packed inside. “Come on,” G says nervously, “Let's run.”

“Okay, but it's not like we stole this stuff or anything,” I joke.

“Right,” she agrees. But her eyes are scanning the parking lot.

We start running towards the van. Lyle is riding shotgun, and Jesse is driving again, so G and I jump in the back. As soon as we slam the van door Jesse burns a little rubber peeling out
of the parking lot. I get up on my knees and look behind us. Two agitated-looking Walmart security guards are pointing at the van as we drive away.

I sit down, feeling a little bit thrilled but mostly confused. Emily is organizing a pile of stuff including a loaf of bread, two large containers of orange juice, a couple bags of Sun-Maid raisins, a family-size bag of baby carrots, several large bags of tortilla chips, and what looks like a child's paint set.

“Where did all that come from?”

“The excesses of capitalism,” Emily answers without looking up.

“Did you guys steal that stuff from the store?”

“Hell no,” Lyle says. “I wouldn't set foot in there if you paid me.”

“Well then where did all that come from?” I thought the question had been pretty clear the first time.

Lyle turns around in his seat and looks me straight on. “The dumpster,” he says simply. “Pretty sweet, huh?”

I can tell he's waiting to gauge my reaction. I take a moment giving myself a little more time to process this information. “So you're going to eat this stuff? Out of the trash?”

“Where do you think your peanut butter and bread came from last night?” Lyle asks. “Or this morning's oatmeal?”

“A store?”

“It
was
in a store,” Emily explains. “They have to pull the stuff off the shelf before it expires. Most of it hasn't even expired the day it goes in there, and in a big store like that it doesn't sit there very long. Almost everything in there is perfectly good food.” I'm not totally horrified, but there must be some displeasure in my facial expression.

“See, I told you he was going to freak out,” Lyle says.

“Shut up,” Tim unexpectedly chimes in. “I thought it was a little weird at first too. But it's really all perfectly good food, and sometimes you find other cool stuff.”

I look curiously at the bread, carrots, and tortilla chips. They seem okay. “Isn't it kind of sloppy and gross in there?”

“Sometimes,” G says. “But most stuff is in bags. We can pull the bags out and see what's in them before we even open them up. We live in a really sanitized world. Even our garbage is pretty clean.”

“It's not just about getting food out of the trash,” Emily says. “It's a movement, an anticapitalist movement. It's Freeganism.”

“Freeganism?” I look up in time to see Jesse and G meeting eyes in the mirror. G is rolling hers. “So does that make you Freegans?”

“Yes,” says Emily definitively.

“If you like labels,” Jesse says. “I just like getting stuff for free.” He smiles at me in the mirror. “It fits my budget.”

I think about the two dollars and seventy cents left in my pocket. Who was I to be complaining about the origins of a perfectly good peanut butter sandwich? “Okay with me, I guess,” I say.

“See!” Emily says triumphantly. “I told you he wouldn't be weird about it. Andrew is open-minded. He's a highly evolved male of the species.” She leans over, wraps her arms around my neck, and kisses me on the cheek. My face flashes bright red, and Lyle looks annoyed as he turns around to face front again.

Emily continues putting away the food, and Tim puts his headphones back on. G starts arranging the bags behind her into a little nest. I grab a couple of duffel bags and lean them up
against the side of the van. The last time I was intentionally in a car without my seatbelt on was when I was seven and our neighbor used to let me and his son stick our heads out the sunroof of his Porsche on the way home from soccer practice. Somehow Mom found out and forbade me from ever getting a ride with them again. It's an odd feeling to be hurtling down the highway at sixty or so miles an hour with no restraint, when my whole life had been belted in and buckled down. I kind of like it. “So where are we going?” I ask.

“Rochester,” Jesse says from the driver's seat.

“How come?”

“College town, lots of young people around,” he says.

“On Thanksgiving break?”

“Yeah, there won't be a lot of students. But it's got a little downtown area. People will be out and about today and tomorrow.”

“Biggest shopping day of the year,” I say offhand.

“You know, today is actually International Buy Nothing Day,” Emily chimes in.

“Wait, let me guess,” I say. “Is that a day when everyone is supposed to buy nothing?” As soon as I say it I wish I could take it back. Emily ignores my sarcasm and keeps talking. “International Buy Nothing Day was created in response to Black Friday. You know the day after Thanksgiving when they have all those sales and people line up and get crushed to death in order to get the new Tickle Me Elmo for their precious little kid?”

“Uh-huh,” I say.

“Well International Buy Nothing Day is all about showing corporations that they don't have power over us and they can't tell us what's going to make us happy.”

“I don't know,” I say, “That Elmo is a pretty funny little guy.” I'm only kidding and trying to lighten the mood in the van. But Emily just glares at me. G gives a little snort, and Jesse stifles a grin with the back of his hand. It's the second time in an hour that I have no idea what they're talking about, but I want to prove I can think for myself. “All I'm saying is people like buying stuff. Some people clip their coupons for that day like a month ahead of time. They love the idea that they're getting something for nothing, or something for really cheap. Why rain on their parade?” Now I'm just playing devil's advocate. I don't want Emily to be mad at me, so why can't I shut up when she's talking about something that's obviously really important to her?

She looks at me fiercely. “They're raining on Earth's parade,” she growls with a clenched jaw.

That's all G can take. She snorts loudly and doubles over laughing. Emily glares at her and retreats into a corner of the van. It's quite awkward, since there really isn't anywhere to
go.
She turns her face toward the wall and tries her best to look dignified.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “I'm not trying to make fun of you. I just don't really get how getting people to buy nothing for a single day will really make any difference?”

“The goal is to raise people's awareness about consumerism and the effects we're having on our planet,” Lyle rejoins the conversation. “It's not really about not shopping on that day so much as it's about getting people to realize that their way of life is corrupting their souls and ruining the planet.”

“Whoa, seriously, corrupting their souls? Isn't that a bit heavy-handed?” I don't like that he's taking Emily's side against me.

“I don't think so,” Lyle says.

“Neither do I,” Emily declares from her corner.

***

My face is warm and my butt is starting to go numb from sitting on the van floor. I glance once around the van, but no one besides Emily seems that mad. Maybe I haven't completely blown things after all. I'm surprised to realize that I care. I pull my copy of
Into the Wild
out of my backpack and pick up where I had left off last night. I'm not really reading, though. I just keep running my eyes over the same sentence again and again. It's actually the second time I've read it, so I know what's going to happen. I just love the buildup, his life on the road, and all the little details about the weird, unhappy people he meets. Periodically I glance up at Emily, who is ferociously clacking away on some wooden knitting needles. Whatever she's making is large and gray and shapeless. The wool gives the whole back of the van the smell of dirty hay.

At one point I catch Tim watching me as I watch Emily. I quickly look away. “So what's going to happen when we get to Rochester?” I ask him.

“They'll do their show, we'll try and make some money for gas, and then we'll keep going,” he says.

“What's the show all about?”

“It's a little different every time. Usually Emily dances or does the hoops. Jesse juggles and usually tells a story, and then Lyle and G do their thing.”

“Which is what?”

“Hmm,” Tim says. “Really better seen than described.”

The road hums along, and it's quiet in the van for a while. I
turn to my backpack and rifle through the contents again. I take out my notebook and turn to the back, thinking maybe someone will want to play hangman or something. I'm surprised to find a shakier block-letter version of my handwriting is there on the back of the inside cover. My name and an address I haven't lived at for almost seven years. I turn to the front and flip past a couple blank pages until I come to a title. It says
Divorce Diary
. Nine- or ten-year-old me has given it a subtitle too. “Stupid stuff I don't want to write about Mom and Dad's stupid divorce which has nothing to do with me.” It's long and, I recognize now, plainly a falsehood, but I'm still impressed by the literary technique.

It also triggers a memory. For a couple months at the beginning of fifth grade, Mom and Dad had me visit with a counselor to talk about my feelings around the divorce. The counselor suggested I write things down in a journal. And here it was. I flip forward, but there are only a few pages with writing on them, each one a short list. One of them simply says, “pedofile priest = nothing.”

When I was in fifth grade, the teacher announced that our class was going to adopt an orphan for our class holiday project. The teacher held up one of those packets with the starving child on it. You know, the one with sad, soulful eyes and a distended belly. The other kids were really excited about it and a conversation immediately began about what we would name our orphan. “The kid probably already has a name,” I said to no one in particular. But I was ignored amidst an excited buzz of gift ideas for the new class pet. “My mom says these programs are all a big scam,” I announced, louder this time.

The class quieted. The kids were looking at me with interest. Only slightly more exciting than picking out names
for the class orphan was the possibility that an adult might be shown up in some way. Mrs. Pettengill gave me a tired stare. But it was quiet, and I had the floor. “I mean you might as well hand over your money directly to some pedophile priest.” Now it was very quiet. The kids didn't know what I meant.
I
didn't even know what I meant. It was just something my mom used to shout at the TV every time those ten-minute ads came on. That, and “There are plenty of starving kids right here in our own country.” In retrospect the second comment might have been the better choice. Especially since I had no idea what a pedophile was. Mrs Pettengill did. Her jaw just about hit the floor as she hustled me out of the room and down to the principal's office.

It was a lot different than the first time I got sent to the principal's office. There were no punitive consequences except Mom had to come pick me up. It was a couple weeks before Christmas vacation. I remember Dad was on the computer a lot, trying to find a new place to live. Mom got pretty red in the face when she found out about my comment, but even she didn't bother to punish me. It was the first time, throughout the whole divorce, I remember thinking she had really let me down. Needless to say that class project was canceled. Something the other kids held against me for the rest of the year. I was the Grinch who stole their orphan.