The Blue-Haired Boy

by Courtney C. Stevens

  Dedication

  For all of my State Street kids, who climbed on a bus with Huel and me, served people around the country, started the rumpus, danced to Volcanoland, and dyed my heart the color of love!

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Excerpt from Faking Normal

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  IT’S a thirteen-minute walk from my house to the Clip-N-Save parking lot, but I don’t care if it takes a year. Dad has the day off.

  I’ve been to this shopping strip plenty of times. There’s a bench I like to sit on here. It’s in front of the army recruiter store. Technically, Army Recruitment Center. But they buy people—people like me, so store it is.

  I’ve still never been inside.

  My older brother, Ben, joined the day he was eligible. Mom and I walked him down here, but I sat outside on this bench. They met with the recruiter, signed on the dotted line, and Ben went off to boot camp instead of Rickman Community College. And left me to deal with Charles Lennox’s beer bottles and fists.

  “I’ve seen you here before,” a voice says from behind me.

  “Yeah,” I say, and swivel on the bench to face a man in army wear.

  “You thinking about joinin’ up?” He’s not a hick, but from his accent, he definitely grew up somewhere near here. Tennessee is hard to get rid of.

  Yes. No. I wish I could. I can’t today. “Too young,” I say.

  “And your name?” he says, as though he’s taking mental notes.

  “Bodee Lennox.”

  He shakes my hand and doesn’t do the crush all your bones thing that Ben always does. I like him for this right away.

  “I’m Lieutenant Williams,” he says, as he points to the patch with his last name. “And, Bodee Lennox, from the size of you, you can’t lack much till you’re eighteen. What are you, six-two?”

  “Six-one,” I say. Which most people don’t notice. Mom says it’s because I walk with my hands in my pockets and my shoulders rolled forward; I say it’s because Dad started beating the crap out of my tall when I was five. “I’ve got two years and some change before I graduate,” I tell the lieutenant.

  “Your parents know you’re interested?”

  “Nope.” Because I can’t be interested. I sit here because it’s next to the cheapest way out of town. And some days I need the reminder there’s any way out, even if I can’t take it.

  Lieutenant Williams props one black boot on my bench and leans toward me. I bet he’s done this a million times to guys like me.

  “It’s a big decision, but it can take you places,” he says.

  “I know.”

  I’ve lain in bed plenty of nights thinking about those places. Anywhere. Nowhere. Somewhere I won’t find one of Mom’s punched-out teeth on the floor of the kitchen. Somewhere I’m not the one who plays EMT after Dad buries a bottle in her skin. Somewhere I don’t wake up with his hands around my throat.

  “I’ve thought about it a lot,” I tell him.

  “You sound like you want to get out of Rickman.”

  “Doesn’t everybody?” I ask, and am immediately frustrated that I’ve extended the conversation. Lieutenant Williams is interrupting my bench time. I didn’t come here to talk.

  “Not exactly,” the lieutenant says. “Most of the people round here are kin to trees or something.”

  I raise an eyebrow.

  “They’re rooted,” he says, sliding both hands into his pockets as if he’s given up on signing anyone ever again.

  “I’m not.”

  And this is a lie. Mom and I aren’t just rooted, we’re cemented, concreted, and chained to Dad. We—Mom, Ben, and me—tried to leave him once, and he almost killed us. Not the way kids at school might say a roller coaster or a wild car ride almost killed them. Like dead. The real dead way.

  I guess almost dying still counts. It kills things like strength and belief and will and hope. Now, Mom’s as broken as an old horse. She doesn’t buck Dad. And I don’t buck her.

  The lieutenant smiles and winks. “No pretty girl to write home to?”

  “There’s a pretty girl . . .”

  “And . . .”

  “There’s no and.” Out in the world, at school, I don’t talk. Because Exhibit A, I’m the son of Charles Lennox. And Exhibit B, there’s nothing I can offer the girl I like.

  “From the look on your face, there is definitely an and.”

  I tug at one of the loose threads in the fraying knee of my jeans. “Nope.”

  “Right. Well, you should figure it out if you enlist. Boot camp and deployment are lonely without letters. Especially without ones from pretty girls.”

  Life is lonely, man. “Thanks,” I say, trying to will him away from my bench.

  He doesn’t go. I sit in awkward silence while he continues to lean toward me, clasping his hands together every couple of seconds. I crack my knuckles and then grip the Clip-N-Save plastic sack with my lunch. If he won’t go, I guess I will.

  “Nice talking to you, Lieutenant.”

  He opens one of his Velcro pockets and hands me his card with four million social network ways to reach him. “Come back and see me when you finish school.”

  “I will,” I say, even though I know I won’t.

  It’s time to change benches.

  Chapter 2

  LUCKY for me there are two other benches in town: one at the bus station and one by the river. Of course, there are a ton of benches, but these plus the one at the Clip-N-Save are the ones I call mine. Last night was awful, so I knew this would be a two-bench day even before the lieutenant interrupted my peace and quiet. Since it’s the closest, I walk to the bus station.

  The station is old and smells like dirty pavement and people who haven’t showered. And Cheetos. Bus Station Odor is not exactly a scent to bottle and sell, but I like it. Hope smells bad and good at the same time. I take another whiff: cigarette smoke. A bus must be unloading. Yep, one en route to Panama City, Florida.

  I run my hand over the worn wood before I sit down and flick away a pile of crumbs. This bench is against the side wall of the station, so I can lean back and watch the buses unload and reload. I say reload because the passengers get off and then get back on after a smoke and a vending machine run. Passengers don’t stay in Rickman.

  I’ve thought about buying a ticket fifty-seven times—I actually counted—because that’s how many times I’ve watched a bus pull away since I turned fifteen more than a year ago. According to the rule, you have to be fifteen to travel alone.

  There’s a bus leaving in twenty minutes. I’d still have time to buy a ticket, but I don’t move.

  Thirty smokers and bathroom-goers mill around me. And I pretend I am one of them.

  “You got a light?” someone asks.

  I’ve been asked this at least once before each of those fifty-seven buses pulled away. Which is why I bought a new lighter at the Clip-N-Save this morning.

  “Sure,” I say. Then I flick my Bic like an expert and inhale with the man who has trenches on his face instead of wrinkles, and a shirt so thin I can see the hair on his chest through the fabric.

  “Thanks,” he says. “Too long between smokes.”

  I don’t ask how long, but I smile at him. Which is clearly not something he’s used to, because he pats down his pockets and squints hard at me.

  “Where you headin’?” the man asks.

  “Nowhere,” I say.
<
br />   “That’s the only place this bus goes, boy,” he says, and drifts away toward the vending machine.

  Here, I’m always boy. If it’s late at night, a grandmother-like lady will say, “Boy, does your mother know where you are?” Or if I hand some guy a quarter for the Coke machine, he’ll say, “Boy, I really appreciate that.” I like it. Boy isn’t said with the same snarl my dad uses. We boys aren’t cowards for staying with mothers who won’t leave their fathers.

  If they start calling me man, I’m in trouble.

  Of the benches, this one’s my favorite. Because no one joins the army anymore, at least not while I’m watching. (Except Ben.) And no one drags a raft and a sack down to the Cumberland to float away. God, I’d love to see some runaways pull off a decent Huck and Jim. Freakin’ heroes. But people do get on buses going to nowhere.

  And I envy the hell out of them.

  I light three more cigarettes and give my lighter away to a construction worker in need of it before a girl getting off the bus catches my eye. I’m not sure girl is the right word. She’s older than me, but not by too much. I don’t know whether to stare at her hair (green) or her feet (motorcycle boots) or one of the many silver chains that connect this to that on her jacket. Instead, I stare at her mouth, which is open in a yawn followed by a smile, and is perhaps the largest mouth I’ve ever seen. But beautiful. Because the size of her mouth is the size of her smile.

  She face-plants off the top step of the bus.

  I’m beside her before she hits the ground. Well, almost. Unlike everyone else in the station. Nothing fazes these people. You do a hit of cocaine, steal a baby, or get run over by the bus itself, and they wouldn’t leave the bathroom line.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, squatting beside her and touching her arm.

  I expect her to shrug me off, but instead, she comes up laughing. Deep. Rich. That mouth open wide enough to stuff an entire pack of cigarettes in at the same time.

  “Holy hell,” she says, and lets me help her up.

  I repeat the question.

  She dusts her knees, still laughing, and says, “Nothing a Mountain Dew won’t cure.”

  I’m the one who puts a dollar twenty-five into the vending machine. She sits on my bench and I sit beside her, handing over the Mountain Dew. As if the cure for falling off a bus is green sugar the exact color of her hair.

  I mention this and then feel stupid.

  “You like it?” she asks, spiking the front into a faux hawk, which doesn’t stay, but limps down over her forehead.

  I nod. And I’m not lying.

  While she inhales her drink, she says more about nothing than I’ve said in my entire life. Where do all those words come from? It’s as if she’s got them stored in her boots or something. And how can she share so freely? We’ve been together for maybe five minutes, and I feel like I know more about her than anyone at school. I can’t help but be drawn in by her, and so I scoot closer, as if osmosis might make this chatty-happy-being-comfortable trait rub off on me.

  “You don’t talk much,” she says after I have answered every question with a nod.

  I search for something to say. “Where’re you going?” I ask, expecting one of the next dozen bus stops. Huntsville. Birmingham. Montgomery. Or, if she’s going north, Bowling Green. Louisville. Indianapolis. Even Chicago.

  “Don’t know yet. You want to come?” she asks playfully.

  Her accent is hard to place. Want to sounds like a southern wanna, but come sounds like California or somewhere west.

  I nod again, mesmerized by the way she moves her hands and animates her face. She’s . . . she’s . . . a magnetic force of a girl. Not the kind of girl I want to date; the kind of girl I would want to do something crazy with. Something brave.

  “Well, if you’re coming with me, you better know how to use the mouth God gave you. Guy-Who-Only-Nods, I’m Gerry.” She’s joking about me coming along, but there’s clearly an expectation that the guy who peeled her off the concrete and bought her caffeine can actually talk.

  “I . . . sorry.” I crack my knuckles and take a deep breath.

  Why is this so hard? When for once, in a very long time, I feel like I want to talk.

  Gerry extends her hand toward mine and rescues me. “And you are?”

  “Bodee Lennox,” I say, and her hand is in mine.

  This moment happens slowly and with eye contact. Blue on brown. Head to head. Green on blond. Talking alien to silent alien.

  “No shit,” she whispers.

  Her sweaty hand slides away from mine and into her back pocket. She opens up a man’s trifold wallet, which doesn’t exactly go with her skinny jeans, and flashes me her license.

  I read. Geraldine Lennox. Eighteen. Fresno, California. And note she does not look punk-gypsy in her picture. She looks entirely different.

  Which I tell her.

  She laughs. Not quite as big as when she fell off the bus, but close. “You can say that again.”

  “You look different,” I say.

  “You, Bodee Lennox, are adorable.”

  No one has ever accused me of being adorable. I feel as if someone lit a campfire inside my cheeks. But I don’t take my eyes off Gerry.

  There must be hundreds of Lennoxes in the world, but I’ve never met any besides my family. I certainly haven’t bought them Mountain Dews. “This is a little bit crazy,” I mumble, wondering what this coincidence means.

  Because it definitely means something. Square in the middle of our difference is sameness. And the alien seems to know this is no random meeting, too. Her eyes are wickedly wide and kind. Ready.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” she says.

  And before I know it, my hand is in my back pocket, reaching for my wallet.

  “What’s your ticket say?” I ask.

  Gerry points at the LED runner on the bus. Panama City.

  I stand up.

  “Hey, where you going?” she asks.

  “To buy a ticket.”

  She nods as if this is normal, as if it’s a given for all guys she meets at bus stations.

  She can’t hear the jackhammers pounding on the cement of my quiet personality or the chains of fear breaking in my head, but I can. This is my chance to change. Gerry is a girl who can face-plant and come up laughing, and I’m a guy who needs a how-to manual on that.

  Dad’ll kill me if he finds out.

  But I’ll die here if I don’t go.

  Chapter 3

  PANAMA City is expensive. I don’t have a hundred and forty dollars, one way, so I fork over fifty-one dollars for a round trip ticket to what I’m sure is the finest vending machine in Huntsville, Alabama.

  I’m not leaving town; I’m taking a break. It’s all I can afford, monetarily and emotionally.

  Gerry sticks her head halfway through the front door of the station. “Hey, Nods-a-Lot”—she waves at me—“I’m saving us a seat.”

  “Be right there,” I say.

  The man behind the counter takes my money, but reluctantly hands over the ticket to Huntsville. His eyes flick toward the door. “Nothing good ever happens on a bus,” he warns.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I say, hoping that’s not their business slogan.

  Rolling my ticket into a half circle, I exhale a cloud of questions. This is the part where I should change my mind about going. One, this is a waste of fifty or sixty bucks, which is practically a million in my world. Two, if Dad finds out, he’ll go ballistic. And three, as previously established, this is crazy.

  But God, I need this. I know that I do.

  So, even though spontaneity is not part of my personality, I am going to get on that damn bus.

  And I do.

  Dad can’t control everything.

  Gerry waves at me when I board. I make my way to the back of the bus, past all the people who asked for a light and a quarter. The smell in this hallway-size space is an uncomfortable, contained version of the station, plus some additional toilet fumes. I’m
glad I couldn’t afford Panama City.

  When I reach Gerry, she shuffles her backpack and stuffed bear out of my seat to the floor and says, “Here you are.”

  “Yeah,” I say, and drop into the blue captain’s seat beside her.

  She turns sideways (in the space I can barely fit both knees), pulls one leg under her, and leans against the bus window.

  Nervously, I swipe my hair across my forehead, knowing it will fall back and cover my face. “Yeah,” I repeat, because Gerry is comfortable with staring.

  While my eyes dart from the seat back in front of me to her, and then again, to the seat back, she asks, “You do this a lot? Follow girls onto buses?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Well . . . I’m not an ax murderer, so you’re in good shape.”

  “I know that,” I say.

  “No”—her blue eyes intensify—“you don’t.”

  “Then, I guess you’ve got between here and Huntsville to kill me,” I say.

  I can joke about this, because I’m feeling a magical connection between us. It doesn’t make sense, but I know Gerry’s as harmless as the stuffed bear beside her bag.

  “Why not come all the way to Panama with me?” she asks.

  “School on Monday. And I can’t afford to go any farther.” The bus rolls out of the parking lot. There’s movement beneath me. Wheels on pavement. Announcements about travel time to Huntsville. “But I’m on the bus,” I say, still a bit shocked at this simple truth.

  “With me.” She gives a little squeal of delight and then leans toward me and says, “The last guy who sat there filled jelly doughnuts for a living. Can you imagine? And get this, he was thin as a rail and allergic to sugar. What about you, Bodee My-Same-Last-Name, what do you do?”

  She doubles her staring power.

  “Um,” I stall. “I go to school.”

  There’s no way I can tuck my legs under me, but I swivel to face her. She has six earrings in her right ear, which look like a row of bridesmaids to a diamond-stud bride. There is also a tiny sparkle stud on her nose beside a scratch she received from the face-plant.

  Gerry breaks eye contact and says, “I loved school.”