Breakfast with Neruda

by Laura Moe

  Ashley turns and glances our way. “Michael,” she says. She waves timidly. “How are you?”

  “Great,” I say. “I’m better than great. Stupendous.”

  Shelly crosses her eyes and puts a finger in her mouth to feign gagging. It makes me half smile in spite of the uncomfortable moment.

  “How is your summer going?” Ashley says. Her buttery hair falls across her shoulder, but it no longer sets my engines running.

  “Miraculous,” I glance at Shelly. “Ready to go, hon?”

  “Sure, sweetie,” she says.

  We slide out of our seats. I take Shelly’s hand and we saunter toward the door.

  “Hey, Michael,” Rick says from behind me. “Can we talk?”

  “I think we’ve done our share of talking,” I say.

  He glances at Shelly, who waves her cigarette pack and heads out the door.

  “Seriously, man,” Rick says. “I need to talk to you.” His voice is anxious.

  “So you can apologize for ripping my heart out and obliterating our friendship?”

  “No. I mean yeah, I do feel bad about that.” He looks at the door. Shelly is outside, lighting up. Rick steers me away from the door.

  “Listen, what’s your relationship with her?” he asks.

  “Are you shitting me? You already have Ashley.”

  “No, it’s not that,” he says.

  “My relationship with Shelly is . . . well, it’s none of your business.”

  “Listen, man. We’ve known each other a long time, and I think you know I always have your back.”

  “Yeah, just like you did on prom night,” I say.

  “Yeah, I screwed up. But so did you.”

  “What? By trusting you with my girlfriend?”

  “By not really being there for Ashley.”

  “You’re freaking kidding me.”

  “No?” he says. “How many times did she ask you to do things? Important things, like go see her in The Wizard of Oz or take her to the prom? And you always used work as an excuse.”

  “It wasn’t an excuse,” I say. “Unlike you, I have to work.”

  “I know that, but still. She never felt you made much of an effort,” he says. “It’s almost like you outsourced her to me.”

  “I don’t have to listen to your crap.” I step toward the door, but he grabs my arm.

  “How much do you know about Shelly?” he asks.

  I flip his hand away. “Whatever you think you know, it doesn’t matter. I like her.”

  “How long have you known her?”

  “I’ve known her long enough to know she’s the best person I have ever met.”

  “So you know she ran away last year?” he says.

  I had kind of guessed at that. “Yeah, sure.”

  “And she told you about her getting arrested.”

  My expression reveals I don’t. He stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Jesus, Flynnstone, everyone knows it.”

  Everyone but me.

  “She was living in California with some guy,” Rick says. “She was high, and she rammed a car into a row of cars at sixty miles an hour.”

  That explains why she’s not allowed behind the wheel. “So? We all do stupid things when we’re drunk,” I say.

  “It wasn’t an accident.”

  The breakfast sandwich leapfrogs inside my stomach. I recall the remark she made about not caring if I drove her father’s car into a wall.

  He puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Flynn. I know we have our issues, and I was wrong. But just be careful is all I’m saying. She’s got a history. Ask her. It’s common knowledge.”

  I want to punch him, yell that he’s a liar, but deep inside, a kernel of truth exists there. Other than the Ashley debacle, Rick always did have my back. He always accepted everything about me. And he’s the only person I have ever allowed to mangle my name. Flynnstone, or Mikester. Everyone else calls me Michael. Except Shelly, who now calls me Neruda. Rick may be a scumbag girlfriend thief, but he is not a liar, nor is he a gossip, so whatever he knows about Shelly just might be true. Still, I feel the need to defend Shelly. “Listen, asshole, I don’t know what your deal is, or what kind of gossip you heard, but I think you’ve done enough damage to my life.”

  Shelly is leaning up against the rear quarter panel of my car. I don’t know how to look at her. She hasn’t lied to me that I know of, nor has she told me the truth. I’ve always sensed a dark secret about her, but it didn’t seem to matter.

  “What did he want?” she asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you two friends again?”

  “Doubtful.” I dig for my keys. “Let’s go.”

  I drive down Rocket Road, headed toward school. Shelly rolls down the window and lets the wind whip through her hair. She is one freaking-ass mystery.

  “He and I were friends for six years,” I say, “and I miss him every day, but I don’t think we can ever be friends again.”

  She sighs. “It’s hard when your friends abandon you.”

  We’re a few minutes late getting to school, but Earl doesn’t mention it.

  “Oh crap,” I say. “I forgot to pick up my sister.”

  Earl has no problem with me going to pick up Annie. I offer to stay late, but he waves it off.

  • • •

  Earl and I are set to clean the other art room today. When I get back from collecting my sister, I hear Earl grumbling loudly inside the art room. I am shocked when I go inside; the classroom almost looks like my mother’s living room. The counters are littered with stacks of drawings, paintings, ceramic projects, and other pieces of art. Mounds of drawing paper, watercolor paper, canvases, and art books cover the tabletops. Teachers were supposed to have everything packed up for summer, but Mrs. Davis’s room looks like a tornado hit it.

  “Damn it all,” Earl says. “We gotta pack all this crap up before we can clean.” He looks at me. “Go get Hess and Shelly. And bring some boxes.”

  I return carrying an armload of flattened boxes and notice Shelly standing in the center of the room, breathing in the waxy paint smell. She expels her breath and smiles.

  “The smell of joy,” she says.

  “I take it art is your favorite class.”

  “Not so much the class, but the act of creating art.”

  We start to construct the boxes. Earl grumbles under his breath, “You send out the e-mail, telling teachers to clear all the crap from their rooms.” He shakes his head and picks up a stack of drawing paper. Half of it slides onto the floor. “Damn it to hell!” He dumps another load of papers onto the floor and storms out of the room. He comes back into the room with a large wheeled container.

  “Change of plans.” Earl crosses his arms and scowls. “Throw it all out.”

  “Really?” Hess asks. “Won’t you catch hell?”

  “Probably. But I’ll give her my brand of hell right back.” He waves at Shelly and me. “Go get two more trash bins.”

  We wheel in two more containers. They’re big enough to hold a couple people. “Where do we start?” I ask.

  “You two kids take the counter on this side, and Hess and I will begin with the window ledges.”

  “Do we keep anything at all?” Shelly asks.

  “Only keep unopened paint, paper still in wrappers, and clean brushes.” He picks up a stack of loose papers and heaves it inside his bin. “Otherwise, it goes in the trash.”

  At first I feel kind of bad throwing away perfectly good art supplies. We toss out brushes, sketchpads, half-jars of paint, and student projects. After a while, though, it feels good to toss things out. I wish I could do this at my mother’s house.

  When I drive Shelly home, she invites me to come in, but I tell her I have some business to attend to.

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No. Some things I have do on my own,” I say. I lie and tell her I am going to confront my mom again. “My mom’s likely to be pissed. I don’t want the first tim
e you meet her to involve you seeing her yelling at me.” Shelly kisses me and tells me to call her later. I promise I will.

  Since running into Rick, I feel odd about Shelly, and I need to talk to someone about it. Ironically, Shelly is the person I can talk to when shit bugs me, but I can’t talk to her about this yet. If I ask her outright, it may just scare her off. She will tell me when she thinks I need to know.

  But mystery and uncertainty rattle around in my head like old bones.

  Who else can I talk to? Jeff. He’s sane.

  I text him.

  -Wuz up?

  -At TH

  -How late do you work?

  -5:30

  -Can I come by?

  -OK. Have a break in 15.

  I drive over to Tim Hortons, buy a cup of coffee, and sit in the corner booth, trying to wrap my head around the day. Just a few hours ago I was an ordinary guy, living in his car and dating the best girl he has ever known. Now I’m the detritus of an unnatural disaster.

  Jeff sits down across from me and slides me a bag of goodies. I open up the bag and see a bran muffin and a cake donut. “Thanks,” I say.

  “What’s up, big bro?” he asks. “Hard day?”

  “What can you tell me about Shelly Miller?”

  “Why? What do you want to know?”

  “Rick tried to warn me off her.”

  “You and Rick are talking again?”

  “Not exactly.” I shove a large chunk of bran muffin in my mouth. “We ran into him at Starbucks this morning, and he kind of ambushed me with this wild story about Shelly.”

  “Oh.”

  I reach into the bag and bite into the donut. Cinnamon-coated cake. Yum. “Listen, I really care about this girl, and whatever she has done I’m pretty sure I can get past it. I mean, look at me. Am I the poster boy for fabulous?”

  He laughs. “Hardly. More like the poster boy for Homeless Guys Illustrated.” Jeff slurps his pop. “She came back to school second semester, a few weeks before they booted you out,” he says. “She stood out for two reasons. One, her appearance. Before she took off she was a blonde and kind of preppy looking. After, she had this haunted, black hair vibe, and she was anorexic skinny. I mean, she wasn’t fat before, but she had a few extra pounds on her.”

  “That’s why she looked familiar the first day I met her,” I say. “Michelle Miller. Wasn’t she a cheerleader and hung around a bunch of preps?”

  Jeff nods. He steals the rest of my bran muffin and noshes on it. “All these rumors about her started flying,” Jeff says. “You know I don’t gossip, but I heard stuff at lunch and in study hall. People claimed she was a heroin addict or had cancer or had joined a cult.”

  “So what is the truth?”

  He shrugs. “Nobody but Shelly really knows all of it,” he says. He glances at the clock. “Hey, my break’s almost over. Stop by the house in a couple hours and we can talk some more.”

  “Okay. I have to pay Paul for my new tires anyway.” I remember the camping gear. “Can I stow some camping stuff in your basement until winter? Mom gave me a tent and sleeping bag so I won’t freeze to death, but it’s kind of taking up a lot of room in my house.”

  Jeff chuckles. “Sure.” He hands me his car keys and says, “Just put it in the trunk, and I’ll take care of it.”

  I kill the next couple hours by checking my work schedule, shooting the shit with Mitch, and taking a sponge bath in the men’s room at the mall.

  Paul has his head under the hood of a ’96 Taurus when I pull up. They live in a slightly run-down house not far from the school. One of those three-bedroom houses that look like all the others on the street. What distinguishes their house is the scattering of toys in the yard. They live in the kind of neighborhood where the neighbors don’t complain about messy yards. Kind of like my mom’s neighborhood, except here the people own their homes instead of rent. Their driveway is dotted with oil stains, so I pull the Blue Whale onto the pavement. Paul always has several cars in the driveway and on the curb. “I like to bring my work home with me,” he says. He keeps threatening to black-top their yard, but his wife insists they need a yard for the kids.

  Paul clatters around and looks up when he hears me slam my car door.

  “Jeff home yet?”

  “He’s in the shower,” Paul says. “Washing the donut smell off. Hey, go grab me a beer. Help yourself if you want.”

  I step inside the house. It’s cluttered, but not stuffed to the gills like Mom’s. One good vacuuming and dusting and the place would look fine. Their mess is from four kids and two adults living in a place meant for a couple with one kid or a dog. It’s family mess, not the insane clutter of my mother’s house. Their dog, Buster, greets me and licks my hand. He chuffs and barks once. Dee Dee, who is standing in the kitchen at the stove, turns to see who came in. She’s short and plump but has a pretty face.

  “Hi Dee Dee.” I move to the fridge.

  She glances at me as she stirs something. “Hey,” she says, but not in a welcoming tone. Things have never been smooth between us, and they’ve been more tense since my arrest. I guess I wouldn’t want my kids around a would-be arsonist, either.

  “Paul wants a beer.” I hold two cans in my hand. “He said for me to help myself.” She nods and keeps stirring something fragrant, like homemade spaghetti sauce. “Smells good.”

  I’d love to be invited to stay to eat, but I know I won’t be. I hold up the two beers and mutter, “Thanks.” I join Paul in the driveway and hand him his beer. He crams his rag in his jeans and pops open the can. We lean against the quarter panel of the Taurus.

  “You seem troubled by something,” he says.

  I take a gulp of beer and let its salty bitterness soothe my tension. “Yeah. Kind of.”

  “Spill it.”

  “What do you do when you find out something bad about a person you care about? Something that may or may not be true, but most likely is?”

  “Can you give me little more detail?”

  “There’s this girl I like.”

  “Women,” he says. “They always spell trouble.”

  I smile. We clink our cans together. “Go on,” he says.

  He knows about the whole Rick problem, so I don’t have to remind him of that. “I ran into Rick and Ashley today at Starbucks. I was with this new girl,” I say. “I’ve been seeing her the past couple of weeks. And things are going well with us.” I take another swig. “But Rick stops me on my way out the door. At first I think he wants to apologize for being a shithead, which he sort of does. But what he really wants to do is to tell me something bad about Shelly, my new girl.”

  “How bad?”

  I gulp down the rest of the beer and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “Bad.”

  “Is it true?”

  “I don’t know. Some of it is, I guess. I’m hoping Jeff can fill me in. He knows her, and he was at school when Shelly came back from her long, mysterious absence.”

  Paul slaps me on the back. “Hope you get this worked out. Just remember, gossip is often just idle jealousy.”

  I nod. “It’s just that Rick has never steered me wrong before. I mean, yeah, he stole Ashley, but before that, he always had my back.”

  “Do you like this girl?”

  “Yeah. I like her a lot.”

  “You’re screwed,” he says.

  The screen door slaps and Jeff comes out wearing jeans and an orange-and-black Rooster High T-shirt. His hair is still wet from the shower. “Hey, bro,” he says.

  “Hey. Wanna go for a ride?” I ask.

  “Okay.” He sees the beer can. “I think I’ll drive, though.”

  I smirk. “One beer doesn’t make me drunk.” I crumple the beer can and hand him my keys anyway. I slide into the passenger side and fasten the seatbelt. “It’s weird being on this side of my own car. I’m used to seeing the world from the left side.”

  Jeff adjusts his seat and backs out of the driveway. “This may change your whole outlook on life,�
�� he says. We swing by McDonald’s and get fries and Cokes. As we pull away from the drive-thru, Jeff says, “What’s up, bro? Is Mom okay?”

  “Yeah. I mean, no. She’s still a nut bag.”

  “How’s about Annie?”

  “She just left for band camp today.”

  “Good,” he says. “She deserves a break.” He keeps his eyes on the road and chews on his bottom lip. He always chews on his lip when he stews over something. He makes a lousy poker player because when he has a bad hand, he sucks in his bottom lip so much it looks like he’s wearing dentures.

  “Shit, Jeff, what do you know?”

  He changes lanes and heads east from Rocket Road, away from the traffic. “It’s not so much what I know, for sure. Nobody knows all the facts. I was surprised when I saw you with her for the first time. But then I remembered you were cleaning the school over the summer, and I figured she was too. I didn’t know you were dating her, though.”

  “It didn’t start out that way,” I say. “We’ve gotten to know each other. I thought pretty well. But then Rick dropped a bomb on me earlier today.” I summarize what happened at the restaurant and what Rick told me.

  “Well, he’s not entirely wrong,” Jeff says. “You missed the last few weeks of school, so you don’t know the whole story.”

  “I didn’t even know her before this summer. I mean she looked sort of familiar, but we never traveled in the same social circles before.”

  “I kind of knew her because we were lab partners in biology together sophomore year. And she was okay. Some cheerleaders are stuck up and don’t talk to those of us lower on the social strata, but she was nice enough.”

  “So why didn’t I see her at school last year?”

  “She took off before school started, and came back around the time you got the boot. And when she did come back she looked totally different,” he says.

  “There were a bunch of stories in the paper about a major drug bust in Columbus and car theft and how a local teen was involved. Shelly’s name was never mentioned because she’s under eighteen, but people at school kind of put two and two together. The dates of her arrest and her disappearance kind of meshed. And former friends sort of corroborated the story.”

  “Former?”