“Well, yeah, maybe. I think some of the students hold a Premiere Night at my aunt’s coffeehouse. I just started working there. The Underground—do you know it?”
“Ah sure, cool place. Did you say you work there?”
“Yeah.”
Lucinda doesn’t respond to that, just files it away with political smoothness. At home, most older teenagers have part-time jobs, but I wonder what it’s like here where money is less of an issue.
“I’ll introduce you to some of the filmies.”
“Thanks.”
“Okay, so you’ll be here Monday?”
“Yep.”
“Then I’ll meet you right here at eight o’clock.”
“Great.”
“Off to my debate club.” She smiles warmly and squeezes my arm. “You’ll like it here, Ruby. I’ll make sure you do.”
“Thanks, Lucinda.”
“If you need anything, call me at this number.” She hands me a small CD thingie.
“What is this?”
“Put it in your laptop, and it’ll pop up with all my information. It also has info about me running for junior class president. See you Monday.”
I find Mom standing in the doorway of Mr. James’s office, taking steps away, being drawn back, and finally breaking free with a look of relief on her face. “That was hard.”
“What was?”
“Getting away from Mr. James.”
We recite Mr. James quotes on the walk back to the car.
“You will just love this school,” I say with enthusiasm.
“Our school has one of the highest academic ratings in not just the state of California but the nation as well.”
“I think Mr. James is reliving his high school experience,” Mom says in the voice she uses when she and Aunt Jenna do their people-watching/story-making game.
“Not reliving, recreating. I think he was a painfully awkward teenager.”
We both laugh at that, and then Mom feels guilty for making fun of my school guidance counselor and says what a nice man Mr. James is and certainly an asset to the students who have him. “But you know,” she says as we open the car doors, “Carson wouldn’t have fit here at all.”
That makes us silent. Neither of us speaks the entire drive home.
Once in my room, which is still a maze of boxes, I dial Carson’s number. My friends are in school, but Carson gets out early for work experience. His voice mail comes on.
I leave a message: “I can’t believe you deserted me! You need to call me soon.”
I try my dad’s house, then Carson’s best friend, Marty’s house, only to find out that Carson headed up to the mountains after school.
He’s not ignoring me, I do know this. My brother is one of the least techie people to live in the twenty-first century. I created his MySpace for him. His friends often complain that they can’t reach him, or he forgot to turn on his phone, or he let the battery go dead. If he’d been born several hundred years ago, Carson would be exploring the New World. That’s my brother. And when life gets hard or stressed, he goes to the mountains.
So that’s where he is now. Driving back roads, music on. Maybe he’ll go for a long hike to one of his favorite lakes with a fishing pole in his backpack. I’ve gone with him a few times, and I follow the unspoken rules. We stop and get snacks; then he turns on some music, and we don’t talk except on rare occasions. And there’s something about driving those long mountain roads that gives a sense of freedom and escape and washes away the bad for a few hours.
Sometimes we talk on the drive home; other times we come back in continued silence as the reality of life returns. I rode with my brother after Dad told us he’d gotten married, and when Carson and his first girlfriend broke up, and again when Mom first told us about Aunt Betty giving us the house.
The boxes cluttering my room press in around me as I lie on my bed.
If Carson were here, I’d ask for a drive. I want my brother to be my brother still. With him there and me here, it’s like suddenly we aren’t siblings, or it’s like he died but no one is really sad about it yet. Thinking of Carson dying reminds me of Little Tony.
My head feels foggy as I pull a blanket over me. Foggy and sad and thinking of Carson driving and driving on some mountain road and trying to remember exactly what Little Tony’s face looked like—he had freckles, I remember, but what color were his eyes? What does it matter now that they will never look around the world again?
I wake to darkness with my cell phone vibrating next to my ear. It’s Kate, which makes me realize that I never read her other texts.
KATE: So what did you think?
ME: I forgot to read it
KATE: Hell?! Earth to Ruby.
ME: Was in a guidance counselor appt
KATE: Yeah, yeah. K then, recap. Nick doesn't want to go with Nikki but feels bad telling her. He was caught off guard when she asked. It'd be so fun if you went with him. We'll get a limo and go to dinner at Nello's or...
ME: So you're going for sure?
KATE: Probably with jeffers-as Mends only.
ME: Hands Jefters? I'll be your bodyguard.
KATE: Yes, though you might want to keep your attention on your boyfriend.
ME: LOL, we're a bit presumptuous, aren't we?
KATE: Speak human please.
ME: Sorry. Hey, have you seen my brother?
KATE: Yeah. At school and at Marty's house when my brother picked me up.
ME: What did he say?.
KATE: I didn't really talk to him. But my brother said he'd be crazy to move now with only one year left. He's gone to school with everyone since kindergarten.
ME: Like me.
KATE: Like you.
ME: Tell him I keep trying to call him.
KATE: K. Sorry Rubes. But back to important-what do you think about Nick?
chapter eight
I have this recurring daydream.
It’s a secret to everyone except Kate.
The closest city to my hometown of Cottonwood is Redding. It’s not a big city; it’s just the only city within several hundred miles. According to my parents, who’ve lived there most of their lives, Redding has experienced a cultural awakening. They’ve renovated the downtown area and the old Cascade Theater and other stuff that adults get excited about. All I know is that Redding’s mall is embarrassingly small.
But Redding has the coolest bridge I’ve ever seen. The Sundial Bridge.
From miles away, the massive white column of the bridge’s dial is visible, rising from the trees like an airplane tail or a ship’s sail frozen in motion. The walking bridge stretches over the wide Sacramento River, with the dial rising on the far side with thick cables in symmetric lines holding the dial to the bridge. If someone could see it from above, it really would look like one of those old Roman sundials. And it really works.
At the summer equinox on June 21, the shadow from the dial falls in perfect alignment with the time knobs on the ground. Mom took me one year to see it. The day was filled with local groups and musicians putting on sun-related festivities: sunspot viewing through giant telescopes, sun dances, and scientific games for kids. It was pretty fun.
But the bridge at night—that’s when it’s nearly magical in beauty.
If you cross the bridge and go down the trail that leads beneath the bridge, the huge cables that hold the dial look like a giant violin. But only at night and from this point of view. Also, the soft green glow that comes from the translucent glass reflects off the river below. In the summer, bands play at the little Turtle Bay Café, and there’s a stillness to the diamond sky above us.
Not everyone loved the Sundial Bridge at first. Some people made fun of it—which, when I hear it, causes anger to rise in me and I want to call those people stupid or hicks or cultural losers. I’m not sure why I need to defend the bridge—it’s a bridge! And so I remind myself that there were people against the construction of the Eiffel Tower in 1889. And what would Paris be without th
e Eiffel Tower? So Redding has its Sundial Bridge.
Anyway, back to my recurring daydream, or rather night dream or rainy night dream.
I’m at the Sundial Bridge at night when the stars are their brightest.
The soft green glow of light comes through the frosted glass walkway.
It’s raining.
I’m there with him. The unknown him every girl imagines and maybe someday finds, hopefully, though I don’t see that many women with a husband who looks like him. (This worries me, I must admit.)
My him is there with me, though I can’t see his face, but his presence is more familiar than anything that belongs to me. It’s that familiarity I feel on rare moments among family—not those times when I’m sure I’m adopted or wonder why I can’t be comfortable playing games, undistracted, and not like the black sheep of the family. Not those moments.
But the familiarity when I can wear anything, not even look in the mirror, and laugh as loud and long as I want. Something like that kind of comfortable knowing, but even more so. He, the mystery guy, is like a part of me, part of my future, but it feels like I’ve always known him too, and that we’ve always been a part of each other. Maybe that’s where the idea of soul mates was born.
And so, okay, I’m reasonable enough to know this mystery guy may be all a dream and might always be. But I dream it anyway.
In the dream, we hold hands as our feet walk over the glow of soft green light going near the white railing above the rippling waters of the Sacramento River. The clouds hang low and offer the soft rain that dampens our hair and faces.
In some renditions, we sit beneath the covered area of the Turtle Bay Café and drink coffee or cocoa or hot tea, depending on what I’m in the mood for when I’m imagining. We lean close and talk about books, movies, and philosophy while warming our hands around our cups. Or we talk through our eyes, with silent mouths, as our fingers touch each other’s.
Maybe we run across the bridge instead of strolling, and I slip a little, a graceful slip, not my usual awkward stumble. He catches me and holds me close, breathing in the smell of my hair, and the smell of him fills my senses, and the scent that is him is also now me. For we’re best friends times a thousand. Boyfriend/girlfriend times a million. Two lost halves, finally a whole.
Then, despite my variety of imaginings up to this moment, then we reach the moment. The final moment that is always the same.
One beautiful, perfect, solitary moment.
Here it is.
There in the soft light of the night, beneath cables like a giant’s harp string, our faces and hair wet with the rain, he stops and folds me in close against his chest.
And we kiss.
We kiss one of those rarest of kisses. A Princess Bride kiss, a Klimt painting kiss, a Notebook kiss—yeah, that one even has rain like mine.
This kiss isn’t like anything I’ve seen or experienced before or ever could with anyone else.
That is the bridge guy.
NICK: What have you been doing? You're gone a few days and then desen us? We need to talk, you and me.
ME: I suppose we do. I slept all Saturday, It's crazy how much I slept Then I had to clean my room and my phone is being weird, and now I'm getting ready for church. I just got online and everyone is suddenly talking to me.
NICK: Etcuses excuses.
A bunch of other messages are popping up as I type. This is the first I’ve been on my laptop in my room since we arrived. My e-mail and MySpace are filled with messages. I’m still loved, which is nice to know when I wake in a strange room in a strange town and it takes several minutes to even know where I am—which happened twice last night.
“It’s time for church!” Mom calls up the stairs.
I say good-bye to everyone with a promise to talk on the phone with Nick later, then close my laptop and trudge downstairs.
Church? Moving, work, my counselor’s appointment, sleeping all day yesterday, and this tiredness from moving and working have kept me from responding to most everything my friends have sent. I want to stay home in my pajamas, get a cup of coffee, and catch up with everyone. But Mom is unrelenting.
Austin teases me about the frown on my face as we get in the car, but I don’t even care.
For the longest time, my feet were in Cottonwood but my head was somewhere else. Now my feet are here in Marin—at the moment they are resting on the floorboard of the car and are being driven to church—but my head is very much in Cottonwood.
We’re going to “try out” different churches. Mom and Austin already went to one when they were down here a few weeks ago. They said it was a “maybe,” so we’ll visit there soon.
We pull into a parking lot by a warehouse-looking place with no landscaping outside, but lots of cars and people streaming in. It’s the exact opposite of the church my parents attended when I was little and they were still married, with its hundred-year- old bell tower and white clapboard siding. Even the people walking in don’t look like the usual churchgoers. No dresses and old ladies in nylons and pumps, not a suit jacket or tie in sight. These people look ready for a rock concert or an outdoor art fair.
“Leave your phone in the car,” Mom says, and Austin gives me a smile.
“But—”
“For one hour every week, you can leave your phone.”
“I have to leave my phone for more than one hour a week.” I say this as I set my phone on the seat, where it looks sad and small next to the seat belt. “I don’t have my phone while I work, when I sleep, or when I shower. And once in a while I go out without it.”
“Wow,” Mac says. “That’s an accomplishment.”
Mom and Austin laugh, which makes Mac smile like that kid from Where the Wild Things Are. I give him one of my looks.
This church is marketed toward the young, hip crowd. Mom and Austin keep glancing at each other, and I hear Mom whisper, “I think we’re too old to be here.”
It’s pretty cool though. The worship music has a strong beat. There’re guitarists, a keyboardist, and a drummer, and long lights dangle from the ceiling. The place sort of reminds me of a large, open Starbucks, and then I hear the hissing sound of milk steaming and spot the espresso section.
Mom closes her eyes during the worship songs. Mac sings louder than I think he should, so finally I nudge him with my elbow, forgetting that it’s in direct line with his head.
“Ouch!” he yells just as the melody pauses, bringing down raised arms and causing heads to turn our way like a wave of dominoes falling.
I want to sink and hide in the couch we’re standing in front of. Mom doesn’t notice, but Austin gives a little smile—my stepdad never gets annoyed at either of us, which is pretty nice considering stepdad stories—and the other faces quickly turn around and back toward the sky to the invisible God they all seek to worship.
Strangely, He—God, that is—feels very invisible to me. And I realize it’s been a long time since I’ve thought of Him otherwise. Once He was as existent as the weather, a cool breeze on my face, or even as concrete in my life as . . . my cell phone. But of course more than that. He was God to me. Now it’s like maybe I made all that up.
It sort of scares me to think this way. But I can’t help but wonder as my heart rests still and empty within my chest if all these people are making God up for themselves as they raise their hands and weep and sing with such peace on their faces.
God, where did You go? Or are You even there?
The pastor speaks from a small platform in the center of the couches and chairs. He talks about “gratitude in the midst of . . .” He explains that “in the midst of” could be any circumstance, trial, temptation, or challenge.
He talks a lot about gratitude, and I draw little pictures on my program that make Mac smile, then we play tic-tac-toe and MASH.
When we get to the car, I find Kate has sent me a 911 text:
KATE: You MUST all me. ASAP!
ME: Why?
KATE: Nick news.
ME:
I'll call when I gel home.
But strangely, I don’t really care to call or know the big secret. A week ago I would’ve been dying to find out, but now the anxiety and excitement are gone. I can guess what it’ll be about—Nick wishes he could take me to prom, Nikki found out and now she doesn’t want to go with him, Kate and my friends will want me to go with Nick, Nikki will be mad at me, my friends mad at her . . . the usual drama.
As we eat tacos at a little restaurant that is my new favorite Mexican restaurant of all time—this decided as soon as I taste the best salsa ever and view an interior so authentic that I expect to walk outside and find ourselves in MAYheeco—Austin asks, “So what did you think of the church?”
“It was cool, I guess.” Something about being at church, even with my scary questions about God, gave me a surprising peace that I’ve brought along to the Mexican restaurant.
“I’m not sure if cool is good or bad,” Austin says with a laugh.
Austin isn’t as outgoing as my dad, who could make friends with a lamppost. But he’s genuine, trustworthy, and . . . steady. That’s something I didn’t realize was important until our fractured family didn’t have it. Mom can be cluttered with too many thoughts, too many things to do, and too many worries. She cooks, cleans, and organizes when she’s worried about us—which has been all the time lately. When she’s relaxed, Mom is a fun mom who also offers great advice. Austin says he was pretty boring without Mom, so I guess they even each other out.
We’re still a pretty fractured family, I realize, thinking of Carson, who still hasn’t even called me. But at least we don’t have to worry about Mom the way we did for a while. Carson would come in my room at night, upset that she wouldn’t get out of bed or eat much, that she looked dazed and confused and was missing her article deadlines and not paying the bills.
“I guess there’s a lot to be grateful for,” I say, but I keep thinking how Carson isn’t with us—and he’d so love the super burrito they have here—and how Dad is far away and living his life, and how I don’t have any friends and am starting at a school like Little Orphan Annie going to a New York prep academy. But I make Mom and Austin smile by saying, “I’m grateful for this taco, even in the midst of . . .”
Ruby Unscripted Page 6