Wish You Were Here, Liza

by Robin Wasserman

  “I’m just kidding,” I said quickly.

  “So who’s right?” Caleb asked.

  “Um, both of you?”

  “Try again!” Dillie charged.

  “Neither of you?”

  Dillie made a low, growl-like noise. “Lizard…”

  “Liza!” I corrected her. “Okay? You want to know who’s wrong? You’re wrong. You can’t call a tree a flibber and you can’t call me Lizard, just because you feel like it, or because you think I look all green and scaly or something.”

  “That’s not why we call you Lizard,” Caleb said. “It’s because —”

  A loud CRACK cut off the rest of his words.

  We all looked up, wondering if a tree was about to fall on us.

  “What was that?” Caleb asked very quietly.

  I was afraid I knew.

  Another deafening noise split the silence. This one was more of a BOOM. As if the sky was exploding. And then a moment later, it did.

  Or, at least, the clouds exploded, right on top of us. Fat, heavy raindrops splattered on my head. The forest floor turned to mud.

  “Come on!” I shouted over the noise of the storm. “Back to the campsite!”

  We sloshed down the path, sinking deeper into the mud with each step. Wind howled through the trees. Thunder rumbled all around. Rain pum-meled us. The fat drops had been replaced by tiny, hard hail-like pellets that drilled into us like needles.

  “What’s your rush?” cried Dillie as we broke out of the trees into a clearing. She stopped in her tracks, throwing her arms wide and turning her face to the sky. Her cheeks were streaked with water, and for a moment, I thought she was crying. But then I realized she was laughing.

  There was nothing to laugh about — we were stranded in the middle of nowhere, drenched, probably about to be struck by lightning. On the other hand…a giggle burbled out of me. Maybe she was right. What was my rush? I was already as wet as a person could possibly be. My clothes were drenched, my shoes were filled with water, my hair was soaked. What was the point in running? The rain couldn’t hurt me. And I counted five long seconds between the FLASH! and the BOOM!, which meant the lightning was still pretty far away.

  I had to admit, it felt pretty good standing there with the storm raging all around. I tipped my head back, closed my eyes, and let the rain wash over me.

  “Are you both insane?” Caleb shouted. Water streamed down his glasses as he frantically tried to wipe the mud from his jeans.

  “Yes!” Dillie cried. She grabbed my hands and whirled me around in a circle. My feet skidded on the soft, slick grass lining the path, and I flew backward. Dillie’s feet were all tangled with mine, and we toppled down together, landing on our backs in a puddle of mud.

  We burst into giggles.

  Caleb just shook his head. “You’re both nuts,” he said, trying to clear the water off his glasses.

  Dillie climbed to her feet and slung a mud-spattered arm around him. “I know. That’s why you love us,” she said cheerfully.

  Without thinking about it, I grabbed my camera and froze the moment. “Don’t look now, but I think you’ve got a little mud on you, Caleb,” I teased as thick glops of mud slithered down his shirt.

  Caleb sighed, but he couldn’t hide his smile. “Can we go back to the campsite now?”

  We tromped slowly through the woods, sloshing and splashing in the mud. The pouring rain eventually faded to a drizzle, and as the sun came out again, our drenched clothes kept us cool. “Best hike ever,” Dillie pronounced as our campsite finally appeared on the horizon. “Right, Lizard?”

  I didn’t say yes — but I couldn’t say no.

  “Don’t call me Lizard.”

  Location: Hound Dog Hotel, Middle-of-Nowhere, Oklahoma

  Population: The Schwebers, the Golds, the Kaplan-Novaks, and one bored, tattooed woman behind the front desk

  Miles Driven: 1,442

  Days of Torment: 26

  I didn’t get to talk to Jake all day. Not in the car with my parents, as we hurtled down the highway trying to stay ahead of the rain. Not at dinner in Mom’s Café, where I was stuck at one end of the long table and he was at the other.

  The longest conversation we had all day was ten seconds and four words long. It was after dinner, after we’d checked into the Hound Dog Hotel. Jake and Caleb’s room was on the east side of the parking lot; ours was to the west. “Night, Zard,” Jake said as he turned away from us.

  If I had ESP, here’s what I would have said to him, brain to brain: Are you thinking about last night? Are you thinking about your parents getting divorced? If you want to talk about it, you can always talk to me. And also you look incredibly cute in that green sweatshirt. You should wear it all the time. I mean, not all the time, because then it would start to stink. But a lot.

  Here’s what I said out loud: “Good night, Jake.”

  As we stepped into the motel room, Kirsten gave me a weird look. “So that’s what’s going on with you!”

  “Something’s going on with you?” Dillie asked.

  “Nothing’s going on with me,” I said, throwing my bag down on one of the gilt-edged velvet chairs.

  “You’re going to claim you’re not acting weird?” Kirsten asked.

  Since when did Kirsten start paying attention to how I was acting?

  “Weird? Look where we are,” I pointed out. “The only thing weird is this room.”

  According to the sign hanging over the door, Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll himself, had once stayed in this room. The owners had renamed the hotel in his honor and turned the room into a total Elvis shrine. (Once she’d heard about the room, Dillie had demanded it.) One wall was lined with album covers and fake solid gold records. The other was wall-to-wall photos and velvet portraits of Elvis: Young Elvis, Vegas Elvis, Fat Elvis, Soldier Elvis, even a hound dog dressed up like Elvis and propped against one of Elvis’s guitars. The white hotel bathrobes were studded with rhinestones, just like Elvis’s famous white jumpsuit. The pillows were shaped like hound dogs and broken hearts. The pay-per-view movies all starred Elvis, and the sign over the trash can read DON’T BE CRUEL — RECYCLE.

  “Nice try,” Kirsten said. “But you can’t change the subject that easy. You’ve been acting weird all day. Like…happy.”

  I wondered if her whole older-and-wiser act bugged Jake as much as it bugged me. I decided I’d have to ask him, next time we got to talk.

  “See?” Kirsten said, triumph in her voice. She pointed at my face. “This is what I’m talking about. You’re smiling.”

  “Am not,” I said.

  “She’s right,” Dillie said, looking like she hated to agree with her sister. “You have been in kind of a good mood all day.”

  “So? What’s weird about that?” I asked. “People can be in good moods without it being weird.”

  “People, maybe,” Kirsten said. “You? No. You’ve been sulking for weeks, but then Jake tells you good night, and your whole face lights up like —” She laughed. “Like that!”

  “Jake?” Dillie asked, now even more confused. “What does Jake have to do with any of it?”

  “See?” Kirsten crowed. “She blushes every time you say his name.”

  “Do not!” I retorted.

  “Jake Jake Jake Jake Jake Jake Jake,” Dillie said, testing it out. The she nodded. “You’re right, Kirs.” She started laughing. “Really, Lizard? Jake? He’s so…”

  I turned my back on both of them.

  “Obnoxious?” Kirsten suggested. “Boring?”

  “You don’t know him like I do,” I said.

  Then it occurred to me that I probably shouldn’t have said that out loud.

  “I knew it!” Kirsten said. She started talking in a high, fluttery voice. “Oh, Jake, you’re so sweet and smart and misunderstood.”

  I threw a hound dog pillow at her head. Hard.

  Kirsten sat down next to me on the bed. She smoothed out an imaginary lump in the bedspread (which was embroid
ered with a giant Elvis face, of course). “Look, I’m just saying that you should keep in mind that he’s a lot older than you —”

  “Two years,” I said. “That’s not a lot. A lot is, like, five or something.”

  “Just don’t get your hopes up,” Kirsten said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Right. Because you know everything.”

  “I’m not saying I know everything —”

  “You’re always saying you know everything,” Dillie put in.

  “Fine!” Kirsten stood up and grabbed her cell phone. “You think I care if you want my advice? You’re on your own. Good luck!” She stalked out of the room.

  “Don’t worry,” Dillie said. “She’ll be in a much better mood after she talks to Thomas.” She said it in the same lovey-dovey gushing voice she always used for his name. “So…” She bounced on the mattress. “You want to talk about Jake?”

  “No.”

  Dillie shrugged and started poking around the room, the subject already forgotten. I didn’t get it, the way things just rolled off her back. Little stuff made her so happy, and when it came to the big stuff, she just didn’t seem to care.

  As far as I was concerned, there was no little stuff. Everything you did and everything you said could be a big deal. Any word that popped out of your mouth could torpedo your cool factor in a heartbeat. If anyone knew the stuff that went through my head, they’d think I was a total freak.

  At least, anyone back home would, I thought, looking around at the motel room. Out here, with all these different Elvises looking down from their gilded frames, you’d have to try really hard to look like a freak. In fact, out here it was starting to seem like the only truly freaky thing was being normal.

  “Let’s do makeovers,” Dillie said suddenly.

  “Really?” I was surprised. Makeovers were the kind of thing Sam and Mina and I did at sleepovers. We spent late nights haggling over nail polish colors and trying to decipher “Ten Steps to Glamour Hair” in old magazines. It didn’t seem like something Dillie would be into.

  “Don’t you want to?” Dillie said. “You could be Jailhouse Rock Elvis and I could be Vegas Elvis.”

  “Wait — what?”

  “You want to be Vegas Elvis? Well…I guess that’s okay.”

  “Dillie, I am not dressing up as Elvis.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, because it’s…” Weird? Lame? Because playing dress-up was for little kids? “It just sounds boring.”

  “You’re boring,” Dillie muttered.

  “You know what?” I said, sick of her calling me that. “Let’s make a deal. You can give me an Elvis makeover — if I can give you a makeover. A different kind.”

  “What kind?”

  “You’ll find out. Deal?”

  She scowled. “Fine, but we’re starting with you.” Then she skipped to the closet and pulled out one of the rhinestone-studded bathrobes. “And we’re starting with this.”

  “What do you think?” Dillie asked as I did a slow turn in front of the mirror. The person in the mirror smiled when I smiled, nodded her head when I nodded mine, winked when I winked…but I still had a hard time believing it was me. Because what would I be doing in a white, rhinestone-studded bathrobe (the bottom half wrapped carefully around my legs to make it look like a jumpsuit), and Dillie’s oversize black sunglasses? My dark brown hair was coated with enough hairspray to make it stand at least a foot above my head in a perfect pompadour. On my feet: Dillie’s blue sneakers, the closest we could find to a pair of blue suede shoes.

  “I think…” I laughed, then dropped my voice low and curled my lip in my best Elvis impersonation. “Don’t be cruel, baby. You know I look like the king.”

  Dillie giggled. “The queen, maybe. But close enough.”

  “So what about you?” I asked, pushing her under the bathroom lights. “What do you think?”

  Dillie took a careful look at herself. I’d washed her hair and then blown it out with a diffuser, giving her thick, blond waves. Her nails were coated with a plum-colored polish, and her skin was glowing after an orange blossom-scented face mask. A dab of pink gloss made her lips shine, and a little of Kirsten’s eye shadow brought out the green in her eyes. I’d replaced the alien earrings and the saggy UFO sweatshirt with the cutest outfit I had in my suitcase: a flowy, hippie-style shirt that Mina had picked out for me, and cute denim capris.

  “I think I look like Kirsten,” Dillie said, not sounding very happy about it.

  “You’re way prettier than Kirsten,” I said. It was true. I’d never noticed it before, but Dillie was pretty. And not just okay-pretty, like maybe I was on an especially good day. With her long blond hair, sparkling green eyes, perfectly pert nose, and pursed lips, Dillie was really pretty. The kind of pretty that would make a guy like Jake pay attention.

  No. I am not jealous, I told myself. I’m happy for Dillie that she looks so good. This is good news. I am a good person.

  And because it was something a good person would do, I told her again how great she looked. “You’re beautiful, Dillie!”

  She just shrugged. “But this isn’t me,” she said. “So it doesn’t really count.”

  “It is you,” I said. “It’s just you with a few small…improvements. You could look great like this every day, if you didn’t always dress so weird.”

  Oops.

  The moment it popped out, I was sorry.

  “You think I dress weird?” Dillie asked, sounding hurt.

  “I thought…I guess I thought that was kind of the point,” I told her. “You know. Weird in a good way. Like, cool.”

  Dillie dropped onto the bed. She was sitting on Elvis’s nose. “Maybe it is. I don’t know. I actually dressed like this for a while last year, like Kirsten. I thought it would make my mom happy.”

  “Did it?”

  Dillie shook her head. “Turns out Professor Kaplan doesn’t notice what I wear. I don’t think she cares.”

  “Maybe you’re lucky,” I said, thinking about how I wasn’t allowed to wear skirts more than an inch above my knee. My mom kept a measuring tape handy, and she wasn’t afraid to use it.

  “Yeah,” Dillie said. “Maybe.”

  For weeks, I’d been gritting my teeth at Dillie’s nonstop perky act, the way everything that happened was always “awesome!” and “fun!” and “no problem!” But now all I wanted to do was make her smile again.

  “You do look great,” I told her, steering her back toward the mirror. “I mean, not as great as I look…” I preened in my bathrobe and puffed up my pompadour. “But pretty good.”

  “You’re right, I do,” she said. “Although…” She scooped up her giant plastic green alien earrings and slipped them back into her ears. “Much better, don’t you think?”

  Weirdly enough, I did.

  Chapter Six

  Location: Silverado Ghost Town, Texas

  Population: 0

  Miles Driven: 1,649

  Days of Torment: 35

  Texas had fewer cowboys than I’d expected. What it did have were wide stretches of desert sand. Gutted towns with empty streets. Big men with big hats; big women with big hair. Big cities with big spaces between them. Almost everything about Texas, I quickly realized, was big.

  Including the heat index. That’s the thing that measures how hot it feels, rather than how hot it actually is. So say, for example, that the thermometer reads eighty-two degrees. But you’re stuck in a car with a wonky air conditioner, and outside the sun is so hot you could fry some eggs on the street. And you don’t care what the thermometer says; you’re pretty sure that it’s about 150 degrees.

  That would be the heat index.

  My point: Texas was hot.

  For the first few days, I didn’t notice. I was too busy trying to figure out what was going on with Jake. Did he like me? Did he like me? I kept track of everything he said to me — which wasn’t hard, since he didn’t say very much. There was the afternoon in Shamrock, Oklahoma, that he told
me my tag was sticking out of my shirt. The dinner in Elk City, Oklahoma, when he bet me I couldn’t balance a spoon on my nose longer than him. (I won.) And the time I almost fell on my face at the Texas Bug Farm (a field of half-buried Volkswagen Beetles). I caught myself just before I went splat, and he laughed. “Have a nice trip, Zard?” he’d said. “See you next fall.”

  Teasing, plus a special nickname. That had to mean something.

  But what?

  More than ever, I missed Sam and Mina. I needed some serious advice, and it wasn’t the kind of advice I could get from Kirsten, Dillie, or anyone else on this side of the Mississippi. I was totally on my own.

  After more than a week of obsessing over every little Jake-joke and Jake-smile and extremely adorable but confusing Jake-shrug, my mood was in the toilet. It was about then that I started noticing how hot it was.

  Sweat-pouringly, T-shirt-drenchingly, blood-boilingly Texas hot.

  It was the kind of day that any normal person would want to spend on the beach. Or safely inside, somewhere cool and air-conditioned. Our parents, on the other hand, deemed it the perfect day for a trip to the Silverado Ghost Town, an authentically re-created frontier land that would let us experience what life was like in the Wild West.

  We’d passed by plenty of ghost towns on the way there. Real ghost towns, the kind that died when their mines went dry or their factories closed down or a new highway sent all the traffic in another direction. These towns weren’t towns at all anymore. They were just clusters of empty buildings with boarded windows. Empty gas stations with cobwebbed pumps. And plenty of dust. Once, I thought I even saw a tumbleweed.

  Silverado wasn’t like that. More than anything, the place reminded me of Colonial Williamsburg, this fake town my parents had dragged me to when I was nine. Colonial Williamsburg was supposed to take you back to the days of colonial America, and it was filled with people dressed like soldiers and fife players and Founding Fathers. All the stores were called things like “Ye Olde Local Shoppe” and “Dr. Johnson’s Cheese and Apothecary,” and the big highlight was audience participation in the butter churning. At Silverado, there were fake sheriffs and fake outlaws instead of fake patriots and fake redcoats. The stores were called things like “Rattlesnake Saloon” and “Ye Olde Blacksmithee.” Instead of a butter-churning demo, there was a daily shoot-out in the town square. Which, I had to admit, was more interesting than the butter thing…but still just as fake.