Vibes (15 page)

"What is it?"

"A day of raucous mad fun at the arcade!"

He barely gave me enough time to tell Mom where I'd be before he whisked me off to the mall. And now we're sitting thigh to thigh in a miniature submarine, doing combat with a cheesy-looking giant squid. Dad mans the torpedoes while I steer the vessel.

Video games were invented by demons riding dragons through the depths of a computer-generated hell rendered with excellent graphics so that I can see every drop of my blood on their three-pronged spears. I hate video games because I suck at them. When the bad guys in video games shoot at me, I actually get scared for real—I cringe and try to hide behind the control panel even though I know I am in no physical danger whatsoever. I can never hit a single target no matter how hard I try, and the stupid digital music they play grates on my opera-loving nerves. Worst of all are the thoughts bouncing around in video arcades. Violence, death, destruction, sex. Arcades bring out everyone's worst drives. Video games are agents of evil, and they should all be burned in a giant slag pit.

Dad's thoughts:
She probably never thought the old man could be so hip!

At least I don't hear the thoughts that used to scare me so much, about how worthless he was, about how Mom and I would be better off without him. Losing that patient really brought him low, but he seems to be much better. Maybe soon he'll start talking about moving back home.

"Fun, huh?" Dad asks just as our submarine sinks to the bottom of the Indian Ocean to be consumed by a metal-eating giant squid and its young.

"It's great." I try not to sound sarcastic, but the harder I try, the more sarcastic I sound. "Really," I add, so now I sound sarcastic and bitter. "What time is it?"

"Three-thirty."

"I'll be right back."

I go to the bathroom to check my face. I didn't even have time to put on any makeup this morning, not that I care what anyone in here thinks of me. Without eyeliner my eyes look super huge and buggy. I don't even have lip-gloss on me, so my lips look dry and cracked. My hair dried naturally, and it's all super curly and too big. I'm wearing my smiley face T-shirt and the first crinkly skirt I ever sewed, made from the set of Bambi sheets I had when I was a little girl. I look like a hippie chick from Woodstock who wandered through a time warp without her toiletry kit.

I weave my way through a group of little boys fighting over the boxing game and find the pay phone in the back of the room.

The phone rings once before Hildie picks up. "Hi," I say. "Is Gusty there?"

"Who is this?" she asks suspiciously.

"Hildie, I just need to talk to Gusty about our character education assignment."

Someone in the background asks, "Who is it?" I know that voice. Evil Incarnate is at their house. She's probably already worked her claws into his tender young flesh.

"Gusty is busy right now," Hildie tells me.

"This will only take a second, Hildie," I tell her.

"A second is a long time to waste on some people," she spits.

"Witty. Superbly executed. Now please go get Gusty."

"Okay." She laughs. I hear the phone being set down, and then a conversation ensues, loudly. "Did you know Kristi has had a crush on my brother for like
forever?
"

"No! I did not know that!" says Evil innocently.

"She actually thinks she has a chance with him. Isn't that sad?"

"It
is
sad. It's
so
sad."

"Gusty told me he thinks Kristi has
real problems
." Hildie giggles. "She practically had a breakdown at Pluribus."

"I heard. Everyone's talking about it."

"So are you and Gusty hanging out tomorrow?"

"Yeah, he's helping me train my dog, but I know it's just an excuse to be with me," Eva purrs.

I barely hear them because my heart is thumping too loudly. I knew this would happen, but I can't help how I feel about being passed over for a beautiful person.

I drop the pay phone to let it hang by the cord and walk away aimlessly. I feel so cut down that I forget why I'm standing in a room full of little boys with painfully swollen sex organs. It even comes as a surprise when Dad taps my shoulder.

"Hey, Kristi," Dad says. "Want to play air hockey?"

I stare at him. All the emotions I'm feeling are writhing in a mass on my face.

"What's wrong?" He wraps one arm around me. "You okay?"

"Can we just go, please?" I say.

"Sure thing, honey. Sure." He guides me through the arcade. Preteen-boy thoughts ricochet around me, but they're blocked by Hildie's and Evil's mean voices in my head.

Why do I care what they think? I knew I had no chance with Gusty—it's not as if they've given me a big news flash. I still feel like I have a hatchet in my heart.

Dad leads me through the mall, past all the stores Aunt Ann wishes I would shop in, and sits me down in the food court. "Want some lunch?" he asks gently. "Corn dogs?"

I used to love corn dogs when I was a kid. That was before I discovered funnel bread. But of course Dad wouldn't know that. "Whatever."

He rushes off as though corn dogs are the key to secure familial relationships.

I sit staring at the shapes passing by me: Legs covered by corduroy, denim, twill, gingham, jersey. Feet covered by leather, nylon, Vibram, and canvas. Among them I see one familiar-looking pair of legs, semiobscured by a skateboard carried at waist level, at the bottom of which dirty, unlaced sneakers skip around, weaving through the crowd.

I know those legs as well as I know my own erotic dreams.

Of course he's here. Just when I'm at the low point in my life, as if on cue, Gusty is wandering through the mall carrying his skateboard. He works his way through the lines of people waiting to get their pictures taken and made into key chains and heads right into the arcade. He looks like he's on a mission of some kind.

My brain clicks through the chain of causality, and I know what probably happened: Gusty called my house like he said he would. Mom answered and told him I was at the arcade with Dad. Now here he is, looking for me.

I feel too confused to move. None of it makes sense. He told Hildie I have
real problems.
He thinks I'm sick and psycho. He's hanging out with Eva to help train her dog. But he keeps trying to find me, and patch things up, and get together. Maybe he just wants to get the character education assignment done, but everyone knows that it's a totally bogus project and they're not even grading us on it. He seems to want to see me, so much that he's willing to come to the mall to look for me.

"Here we are!" Dad cries just as I get up. He proudly holds out a tray with four corn dogs and two large Cokes.

"I'll be right back!" I yell, and I take off running.

I dodge through the mall, maneuvering through families with screaming babies and married people fighting with each other. I break through a group of kids all wearing identical T-shirts and someone yells, "Hey!" but I'm already gone. I take a sharp right and suddenly I'm wrapped in the cool, crowded darkness of the arcade.

I see him at the back of the room, searching the faces for mine. I like the way he's holding his skateboard, because it makes the muscles in his arm strain against one another. His other hand is shoved into his pocket, and he's turning in a circle, squinting as he looks for me. For once he's not wearing a baseball cap, which is nice because his dark gold hair is overgrown and starting to curl around his face. When he finally turns in my direction and sees me, he breaks into a smile that frames his teeth perfectly.

He is so effortlessly gorgeous that he makes me gasp.

I smile at him. I don't even think about smiling—it's not like it's a plan or anything. I just do.

He weaves his way toward me, and I wait for him.

"Hey. You look different," he says.

I forgot I don't have on my makeup. "Um, I—"

"You look good. Natural is
good
." His eyes seem to get tangled up in my hair, which is messily cascading over my shoulder and tickling my arm.

"Thanks," I say, grateful for the darkness in here because I'm blushing so much, my ears are on fire.

"Your mom said you were here, so I thought—"

"That's good," I tell him.

And it's like we run out of words. Whatever is supposed to happen next seems unreachable. I don't know what to say, and I can tell he doesn't, either. The only thought I sense in the air is a nameless, wordless, glowy kind of feeling, but I can't tell if it's coming from him or from me. Maybe it's coming from both of us.

"My dad's in the food court," I tell him, because I'm so nervous that I can't
not
talk. "We have corn dogs," I say, and immediately cringe. "
We have corn dogs"? Did I actually just say that?

"I love corn dogs," he says quickly.

So now the next step is to go to the corn dogs. This I can handle. Corn dogs. Okay.

Gusty doesn't make sense to me, but right now I make even less sense. I am insanely happy that he's here in the mall about to have corn dogs with me and Dad. I should be more careful, but I don't want to be careful. Even if I'm pretending that all his actions add up to something special, I want to pretend.

Dad looks surprised when we get to the table. "Oh! Hi! Aren't you"—he snaps his fingers at Gusty, trying to remember his name—"Gus? You're Hildie's brother, right?"

"Yeah, I'm Gusty." When they shake I notice that Gusty's hand is as big as Dad's.

"Have a seat," Dad says, and hands Gusty a corn dog. He gives me a quizzical look, and I dare him with my eyes to make one teasing comment. Dad gets the picture and makes like he's casual. "Nice board—is that a Tony Hawk?"

"Yeah, a Falcon." Gusty says. "You ride?"

"I used to, back in the seventies on those puny little boards with the roller-skate wheels."

"Old school!" Gusty says, and starts talking about some documentary he saw about skate punks in California, and suddenly those two are all over the greatness of the sport and how it's unappreciated by the establishment, and I'm invisible while I nibble on my stale corn dog.

As far as I know, Dad was into Dungeons and Dragons as a teenager and basically spent his youth in darkened basements practicing magical spells and vanquishing creatures of the night. So either Dad has been keeping his love of the skatepunk scene from me all these years or he's totally faking it.

As the conversation progresses, Gusty seems to be less and less interested in what my dad has to say, and finally he casts me a quick little confused glance. I catch his thought:
Why is Kristi's dad trying to impress me?

Before Dad embarrasses himself any further, I break in. "Dad, Gusty and I have some homework to do, so..."

"Oh. Okay." He seems totally crestfallen as he looks first at Gusty, his new best friend, and then me, his long-lost daughter. "I understand. That's cool. I'll give you a ride."

Dad gets quiet while the three of us walk to the parking garage, and I can feel he's mad at me.
She won't even give me a chance,
he's thinking.

Maybe you don't deserve a chance,
I think back at him. But he can't hear thoughts. He's too wrapped up in his own coolness to receive the vibes of others.

It's weird—all this time he's been away, I've been super pissed at Mom, but now that he's back, I've totally forgotten about being mad at Mom and I focus all my spite right at Dad. I'm glad he feels crestfallen. I'm glad he's frustrated that the arcade ploy didn't magically bring us closer together. He hasn't even told me how long he's staying or
if
he's staying. And he hasn't mentioned Mom or even asked how she is. So he can take his disappointment and use it to plug up the huge leak in his chest where his heart is supposed to be. I've got better things to worry about than him.

He pulls up in front of the house and I open the car door, but he puts a hand on my arm. "Gusty, mind giving us a second?" he says into the rearview mirror.

"Sure. Thanks for the corn dog," Gusty says before getting out of the car and standing on the lawn to wait for me.

Dad blinks his eyes at me. I feel in his mind a vague fear and I don't like it, because with Dad fear means he is about to disappoint someone. "Honey, there's something I wanted to talk to you about today."

I search his dark eyes for some clue as to what he wants me to do with this information. I get a flash of Africa, but that's it. "Why didn't you—"

"I was hoping that playing together would help us break the ice and we could spend the afternoon talking. I'm guessing as I go along here."

"Guessing what?"

"How to—" His eyes drop to my chin as if he's studying a manual on how to operate alienated teenage daughters. "I just don't know how to talk to you anymore, you know? I'm not sure what to say to you."

"Spit it out. Just say what you have to tell me."

"Not now. I can't now."

"Are you moving back home? Is that it?"

"No," he says as he rubs his hand over his face. "That's not it."

"So you're what? Staying in Africa forever?"

He looks up like a deer in headlights, and I read him effortlessly. He is realizing for the first time that his staying or going might actually be what
I'm
most interested in talking about. I try to read him, but all I can see are shadowy pictures of Africa and an outline of someone, someone with long hair. "I'm staying in Africa, at least for a while yet."

"Fine. Now I know. Goodbye." I get out of the car and slam the door so hard that the shocks squeak from the force. I walk toward the house, right past Gusty, who is looking at the ground as though looking at anything else is punishable by castration. I hear the buzzing of an electric window behind me and Dad calls, "Kristi!"

"What?" I reel around.

"Let's get together tomorrow, okay? I'll see if Ann will lend me her house for a couple hours. So we can talk?"

"Whatever," I tell him. We stare at each other until finally Dad looks away, starts the engine, and drives off.

Why
did this have to happen in front of Gusty?