Songs for a Teenage Nomad

by Kim Culbertson

  “Hey, why did the blond girl die in the helicopter crash?” Eli doesn’t wait for an answer. “She got cold and turned off the fan!”

  Alexa laughs and, curling her arm around Eli’s shoulders, walks with him toward the theater. I follow, watching them.

  At every other school, I’ve always been too nerdy or too alone, a girl without a history. With the drama kids, it’s different. They don’t mind that I’m always writing in my song journal or listening to my headphones, don’t care about my jeans and sweatshirt, my one-toned hair, my big bones. Eli has bleached the tips of his black hair white, and Drew has started wearing eyeliner and a crushed velvet cape. He chooses among three different cape colors, depending on his mood. I’m tame to these kids. For the first time, almost mainstream. A word said with amusement, and a little scorn, in this group. Weird. With them, I feel safer than you’re supposed to feel in high school. I hope I don’t screw it up.

  They’re well into rehearsals for the fall one-acts, three short plays by different playwrights. Alexa begged the drama teacher, Ms. Hecca, to let her do the entire set in black, white, and various shades of magenta, and has been frantically sketching designs for the past several weeks. Last night on the phone, she asked me to help paint the set, so I’m going to check it out. I’ve never really been into anything after school before. Maybe this will be different.

  Drew is the lead in The Actor’s Nightmare, and we’re meeting him at rehearsal after school. We walk the path to the Little Theatre. The school has emptied at the final bell, students whirling away in cars and buses or on foot, a daily exodus off campus toward downtown, toward home, toward anywhere. Just away.

  As much as I try to ignore it, my father’s picture creeps back into my mind. Each day, at home, I check the cupboard for the cream-colored box. It’s still there, where Mom thinks she’s hiding it. At night, I look at his picture, the edges already filmy with my fingerprints. Online searches aren’t helping. I don’t know enough to find him. At school, though, I try to think about other things, not the man in the pea coat with the wind in his hair.

  I take a deep breath as we near the theater. Eli and Alexa look so natural heading to drama rehearsal, discussing Alexa’s weird German teacher (for some reason, there’s a cot in her classroom), book bags casual over their shoulders. This is who they are, perfectly cast as high school drama kids. Everything around us is as it should be. The air, faintly stained with cold, is still warm in patches. I can hear the football team knocking into each other on the field that sprawls just beyond the main gym. I want to stop feeling like an extra in a movie who gets cut out of the picture in the final edit.

  Up ahead, the Little Theatre squats in the central part of campus, dwarfed by the main gym and mini-gym nearby. The music building, which houses both music and the art department, peeks out from behind, the smallest of all four buildings. All of them were recently painted a thick-looking royal blue. Four perfect boxes in varying sizes, a nuclear blue-box family. The rest of the school buildings, the “academic” cluster, ignore the elective boxes; they sit solemn in their intellectually superior beige paint, peeling and scarred from past, painted-over graffiti.

  “Hey, you guys.” Drew waves at us from the door of the Little Theatre. He’s in the red cape today: happy. “I’ve been waiting here for like an hour.”

  “Maybe you should stopping cutting seventh period,” Eli jokes.

  Ignoring him, Drew holds the thick, smoked-glass door open and we walk in. The interior reveals flat black walls and a smooth cement floor. A bunching of black curtains bookend the glass doors so that if they are pulled flush across the smoked glass, the room becomes a square black box. Rows of lights grip bars on the ceiling; it smells of dust and old makeup and, faintly, of pepperoni pizza. Students sit on the floor or on one of the two ripped couches slouching against the far wall. They stare at scripts, eat apples and SunChips, and drape their arms around one another.

  My eyes try to take it all in at once.

  Drew watches me absorb it. “It makes school bearable.” He takes my arm and tows me toward one of the slouching couch groups. I see Tala eating chips in the midst of a faded orange couch. Tala, Drew tells me, is the assistant director.

  “Hey, Tala. Calle’s here. Where’s Hecca?”

  Tala looks up and smiles at me. “In the prop room. They’re trying to squeeze Gaven into the old Hamlet costume for his scene with you.”

  “Good luck.” He lets go of my arm, grabbing for some of Tala’s corn chips.

  Through the smoked glass of the theater door, I notice Amber walking alone toward the football field. She practically glides, her long legs the perfect length for her boot-cut jeans, the sunlight catching her hair. You’d think the girl had her own lighting designer.

  Drew says, “Hey, can you show Calle what we need her to do?”

  “So…you’re in?” Tala asks.

  I turn away from the window. “I’m in.”

  CHAPTER 5

  CIRCLE

  …in the thick tar night of Sacramento sky, with bats slipping like arrows across the stars, with Big Head Todd and the Monsters on so low I can barely hear them, I see Mom’s car pull in, no Dan in the passenger seat, and I know he is gone like the others…I watch her open the car door, step outside, her face bathed in street lamp. Another one gone. She loves them so instantly, and with such hot light, and then it’s like she just burns out—like the star we learned about in science that uses up all its fuel and just stops shining…

  Something slams into the other side of the gym lockers, the impact intense enough to rearrange the contents of my locker. One of my Doc Martens lands on my bare foot.

  “Ow,” I mutter, even though it doesn’t really hurt. I hear footsteps run away at the sound of my voice. The locker room door bangs shut.

  Still barefoot, I peer around the lockers. A girl is huddled on the floor, her brown hair draping her face. She wears only a white tank top, panties, and one green sock. Her hand gingerly pats her head.

  I rush to kneel by her. “Are you okay?”

  “Spanking,” she says in a deep voice. She sits up, massaging the back of her head. “Damn, that hurts. Those bitches ambushed me.”

  I’ve never been one to swear. Not that I’m a prude or anything; it doesn’t offend me. Sometimes, I swear in my head. It’s just that when I try it out loud, I sound like an idiot. My mother laughs when I do it.

  “You don’t have the mouth for it,” she’s always told me. “You’re no sailor, for sure.”

  This girl’s a sailor. “Goddamn it,” she says, looking around. “They took my goddamn clothes.”

  My face flushes at the next string of words (some of which I don’t even recognize). Then she tucks her hair behind her ears, and I get the first good view of her face. Cass Gordon. Andreas Bay’s loner girl. Notorious, she has no friends and spends more time cutting classes than going to them.

  I can’t believe anyone slammed Cass Gordon into a locker. She looks like she chews glass for breakfast. The first week of school, she beat up a senior. A senior boy.

  “I have extra sweatpants in my locker. They kinda smell, but you can wear them.” I look around for Ms. Davis. PE teachers have a strange way of disappearing just in time for us to be humiliated in the locker room.

  Cass stares. “You’re new.”

  “Yes.” I stare back. “Do you want my sweatpants or not?” Brave. This girl could waste me.

  Suddenly, like a July rainstorm, she smiles. It messes up her face, making it vaguely sweet. “Sure, new girl. I’ll take the loaner.”

  I return to my open locker.

  I hear her stand up. My navy-blue sweats are wadded into a ball and jammed into the back corner of my locker. When I pull them free; they feel cold and sort of damp. Gross.

  “Never mind, new girl,” I hear her say. Her arm appears around the corner, holding up a wad of clothing. “Dumped them in the garbage. Creative.”

  I wad the pants back up and return them to their da
rk corner. Shutting my locker, I slip on the new Docs my mom swears cost half her paycheck even though they were on sale. When I go around the corner to see Cass, she’s gone.

  ***

  I slip on my headphones to the strains of Counting Crows and walk the short path to the Little Theatre. An October mist curls around the few trees in the empty quad. The school is tired in the Friday air, hauled out and worked over a long week, only to be abandoned to the weekend.

  I look forward to the theater on Fridays. We only have rehearsal officially on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, but Alexa goes every day, so I do too. On Fridays, we paint flats in the square black room and talk about movies and music and teachers and Alexa’s drawings. She outlines things, and I paint them in.

  We sing along to Alexa’s favorite singers, Kate Nash and Regina Spektor. And to one of my favorites, Jack Johnson. She doesn’t laugh when I tell her that his music Band-Aids my soul. When I sing “No Good With Faces” for her, she tells me she loves my voice and that I should learn to play guitar.

  Alone in the theater, we even talk about politics. She thinks the current president is ahead of his time compared to the former President who Alexa calls an anti-Aristotelian thinker because she’s taking a philosophy elective now and knows something about Aristotle. We talk about movies. We both love director Cameron Crowe, and our favorite scene of all time is the “Tiny Dancer” scene in Almost Famous when they all sing on the bus. Because music always makes things better.

  I sing loudly around Alexa.

  As I head toward the royal-blue pod of buildings, I spot a lone figure walking, head down against the wind. Sam. Of English class and ladder tragedies. I cut across the circle of lawn toward him. He looks up. I smile, glad the bruises from our last encounter have long faded.

  “Hi.” I slide my headphones back.

  “Your nose is all better.”

  “I’m a quick healer.” Lame. It’s been over a month.

  He doesn’t seem to notice. “What are you listening to?”

  “Counting Crows.” I bite my lip, not wanting him to think I listen to stupid music.

  “I love their first disc.”

  “Oh, me too,” I say. “’Omaha’s one of my favorite songs of all times.”

  “That’s a great one. It’s on my iPod. So, where are you off to?”

  I curl my hand tighter around my battered Walkman. “Little Theatre.”

  “Are you in the play?”

  I shake my head. “Actually, I’m the assistant set designer.” The title sounds unnecessarily important.

  “Wow. That’s really cool.”

  It isn’t cool. Looking around, I notice that we’re standing right in the center of the circle of grass. Gum and chip wrappers choke the edges of the lawn where it meets the cement.

  He wears a letterman’s jacket that looks different from the ones other guys wear.

  “That’s a nice jacket.” I want to say important things to make him want to talk to me. But I also don’t want to talk too much.

  He glances down at it. “It was my grandpa’s. He was a great football player.”

  “Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “A great football player.”

  He looks momentarily uncomfortable. “I’m okay.” He pauses. “Our team’s not so hot.”

  “So I gather.” I wonder if I’m being coy or just obnoxious. I’m hoping for coy.

  “You’re a strange girl, Calle. I mean, you’re not strange-weird, just strange-different, you know. I mean, no one I know talks like you.” Has he even heard me talk that much? “You always say interesting things in English.” I make a note to stop talking so much in English class. Interesting means weird.

  “Hmm.” I don’t know what else to say. His hair curls in all different directions but manages to look ordered. He has sports-star-on-a-cereal-box hair. And wide boy shoulders.

  “So, are you coming to the game?” He stuffs his hands into the back pockets of his jeans.

  “What game?” I know what game he means and don’t have the slightest idea why I just asked that. Coy again? I should stop. Coy doesn’t work for me.

  “The football game. The last one is tonight. JV starts at 5:30. I’m playing in it.” He exchanges back pockets for jacket pockets. “You should come.”

  “Sure.” Attempting to be casual, I give him what I hope is a charming, noncommittal smile. “I’ll try.”

  The white of his smile shames toothpaste commercials. “Great. I’m number 21. My grandpa was 12, but he was a quarterback. I’m a running back. So I flipped his numbers.”

  I think this is supposed to be cool. He’s waiting for me to say something about it, so I say, “That’s so cool that you did that.”

  He nods, smiling. “Yeah, it’s like a tribute to him. So you’re coming? Look for me,” he says with the confidence only popularity allows. “I’ll see you there.”

  I frown, watching him stride across the quad. I don’t know about this boy. This football-playing, perfect-smile, wide-shouldered boy. These are the kind of boys who shove smaller boys into trash cans. Last year, Henry—a kid in my art elective who drew amazing pictures of dragons—ended up in a PE locker for three hours after this kind of boy stuffed him in there. Why is this boy asking me to a football game?

  CHAPTER 6

  UNDERNEATH IT ALL

  …Mom throws a last-minute Fourth of July barbecue, stringing Christmas lights behind the house all around the small patch of grass she calls our yard. People cram together, sipping beer or mineral water, talking over the No Doubt playing from the stereo in the window. Mom crouches by the tiny Weber, flipping hot dogs, and taking drags from the cigarette of the man in the Eagles shirt who has managed to attach himself to her. When he’s not looking, she catches my eye and makes a hideous face until I dissolve into giggles in the corner…

  “Can you put a new CD on?” Alexa asks, blowing a stray lock of hair from her eyes. She is perched at the top of the ladder, painting a magenta trim across the top of the downstage flats.

  I hop down from the stage, crossing to the chair where Alexa has propped Ms. Hecca’s portable stereo. “Where’s your rehearsal mix?” I ask, searching the ground nearby.

  “It’s not there?” she asks, brush poised. I shake my head. “Well, damn.” She shrugs. “Must have left it at home. Ask Hecca if she has any music that doesn’t suck.”

  I have Ben Harper and John Mayer in my bag, but Ms. Hecca offers me a Death Cab for Cutie disc, which I love. Hopefully, it doesn’t fall into the “suck” category.

  I start the disc going and reposition myself on the stage where I’m painting a piece of railing for a scene with Drew and Sara. “Cool,” Alexa says, singing along. “My mom and I love this one,” she says.

  “My mom and I love it too,” I tell her.

  “What’s she like?” She climbs down off the ladder to refill her paint tray.

  “My mom?” I shrug. “She’s pretty cool, I guess. Really pretty. Kinda flaky. Bothers me about my clothes.”

  Alexa laughs. “So she’s a mom. What’s your dad like?”

  I hesitate, then say, “He left eight months after I was born. I’ve never met him.”

  Alexa pauses, her eyes evaluating me. Casually returning to the painting, she asks, “Have you ever tried to contact him?”

  I shake my head. “I’ve asked my mom about him before, but she doesn’t talk about him.”

  “Really? Not at all?”

  I pull the wrapping off a new, thin paintbrush and rub the soft bristles across my palm. “She gets really weird when I bring him up, defensive. I guess he broke her heart.”

  Alexa sighs and surveys her work, maybe so she doesn’t have to look at me. “That’s so sad.”

  “He’s a musician. I know that much. He left to try to make it with his band. I don’t think my mom ever got over it.”

  Alexa frowns. “What about you?”

  The picture is tucked away in my song journal. I almost t
ell her about finding it, but I stop. Shrugging, I say, “I have my mom.”

  “Stepdad?” Alexa climbs down from the ladder, eyebrows raised.

  “A few.” I dunk the paintbrush in the shiny black paint and watch it stream off back into the can.

  “A few?” she repeats, moving the ladder to the next section of flat she has to paint.

  “Four so far. My mom’s been married four times, and we’ve lived with seven others. My mom says ‘six’ because Mark didn’t count, but he ate all our food and left wet towels on the floor so I say he counts.” Even though I’m not looking at her, I can feel her turn and stare.

  “Seriously?” she asks.

  I nod, my eyes fixed on painting a fake staircase. I know we’re not normal. All the men. The moving. But that’s just my mom.

  “They’re always Ted or Dan or Rob. See, my mom meets someone, and it’s really great. And then we usually move and start a new life. And it’s great for awhile. And then it’s not. And then they leave. That’s been pretty much it since kindergarten for me. At least that’s when I really remember it clearly. I’m sure it’s probably been that way my whole life.”

  “How many schools have you been in?” She starts to paint again, and I’m glad she’s not still staring at me.

  “Thirteen so far,” I tell her. “No, fourteen counting this one.”

  “No way.” She shakes her head, catching a drip with a wet cloth. “So you’ve had, like, no stability in your life at all.”

  I consider this. I don’t think I know what she means. Stability. I’ve always had my mom. I tell her this. “And,” I say, “they all drove Fords.”

  “Fords?”

  I look up at her small frame on the ladder, her lips pursed in concentration. “You want the long version?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “I’m not going anywhere. I have a lot of flats left to trim.” She points down the row with her brush. “I mean, if you want to. I don’t want to pry or anything.”

  “You’re not,” I tell her. And she’s not. I’ve never talked to anyone this much about my mother’s guys. Not even the counselor that the last school made me see because they thought I was suicidal when I wrote a poem about death for English class. We were reading Edgar Allan Poe—how could I not write about death? We moved the next week anyway, so it didn’t even matter.