Songs for a Teenage Nomad

by Kim Culbertson

  My breath catches. In all my guessing and wondering, I never for a moment thought that Drew or Alexa or any of them would know anything. That they would be able to explain it to me. I’m so stupid. They’ve lived here their whole lives. “What do you two know?”

  “They’re really secretive about it,” Drew says. “His dad especially. There are a lot of rumors. Alcohol’s the one I’ve heard the most. That she gets sent away for it.”

  “Sent away?”

  Alexa nods. “No one really knows what happened with her. Sam’s always been really walled off about it. I think that’s why he hangs with the group he hangs with. He doesn’t have to talk about it. He can just play football and go to parties and…” she considers, genuinely puzzled, “and whatever else they do.”

  This doesn’t answer anything for me. “Then why’d he kiss me?”

  “He kissed you?” Drew doesn’t hide his surprise.

  “Is that hard to believe?”

  Alexa sighs, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Yes.”

  The word is a slap. “Well, he did.”

  Alexa explains, “Calle, it just doesn’t make sense. Sam Atkins doesn’t veer from his group. Why would he? He’s got so much going on at home. Why would he make his life hard at school?”

  “Why would I make his life hard? Am I some sort of freak?”

  “You’re not a freak,” Alexa says. “You’re just not…” She seems to have run out of words, but there’s no need for her to finish. I get it. It’s always been this way.

  CHAPTER 12

  FATHER OF MINE

  …Mom hid my Everclear CD for three days—threatening its destruction if I insist on listening to it repeatedly—but I find it wedged in behind the Costco-sized mac-and-cheese boxes while she’s at work. I lie face down on my bed and play it over and over until she wrenches it from my CD player and breaks it into a thousand pieces, telling me to find a new favorite band…fast…

  My mother’s drawers are a tangled mess of bras and tank tops, leggings and balled-up pairs of jeans. How can someone who always looks so put together start every morning with this? A tiny nudge of guilt quiets the critic in me; I am, after all, rifling through her drawers without permission.

  I know she has a windbreaker in here somewhere, a red one, that folds itself into a pouch, but she’s not around to ask. An hour ago, standing outside Bay View Foods, Alexa and Drew insisted I come with them to the beach for an impromptu early-winter picnic. They’re planning to meet some other drama kids there. Maybe the wind and sand will erase my run-in with Sam.

  Catching sight of the slippery red nylon pouch, I pull it free of a pair of black stockings. I almost close the drawer when my eyes catch on a corner of creamy paper poking through the neck hole of one of Mom’s workout shirts. I pluck it out, and the corner becomes the full body of an envelope. An envelope with my name written in careful black ink on the front. An envelope I’ve never seen.

  The return address is from Jake Winter. Winter? My heart quickens. I pause long enough to listen for any sign of my mother returning, and the silence of the house prods me forward. The envelope has been carefully opened. My reopening it will leave no trace.

  Inside is a letter from my father.

  Calle,

  My guess is that you probably won’t even get to read this letter. Your mother has become quite skilled at intercepting anything I try to send you, any phone calls I try to make. But if you do read this, I want you to know that I’m sorry I haven’t been in your life…

  I look quickly to the date at the top of the letter. Three years my mother has kept this letter tucked in the chaos of her clothing, moving it from place to place with us. Hidden.

  I have never gotten over finding your crib empty that morning your mother took you away. I still remember the sound of the rain against the windows of your empty room.

  What? I reread the last lines again and again. “…your mother took you away.” But he left us. When I was a baby. Walked out on us. Didn’t he? I race through the remainder of the letter. He’s been trying to find me, keeps missing us in our moves, wants to see me, know me. He leaves an email address, and the letter is signed, “Your father, Jake Winter.”

  My father’s name is Jake Winter. Not Smith like my last name. I think of the picture tucked in my journal, not taken in winter but of Jake Winter. My mind capsizes with questions. Why am I Smith? Why has my mom told me my whole life that he left us for his music? Why hasn’t she let me meet him? The letter is an open heart beating in my lap.

  ***

  My mother lied to me.

  The structure of a lie—of something purposefully told or withheld—is strange to me. My mother doesn’t lie. At least I thought she didn’t. I have never had the type of relationships that require lies, even small ones. This year, though, the lies I have been dodging all my life have caught up to me. My fair share all at once. Sam. Now my mother. And I have this father sitting out in the world somewhere without an answer to his letter, wondering about me. About his daughter.

  I didn’t go to the picnic yesterday, and Alexa seemed hurt when she left me sitting here on the aluminum bench by the theater minutes ago. I could’ve told her; she would’ve understood. But this is mine. The letter in my hands is a thin paper, like onion skin, with thick greasy letters that march in order across the page. I look again at the bottom: “Your father, Jake,” it says, the signature now a familiar secret. Jake. Jake Winter.

  Sitting here, I am full of the metal-colored sky. All around me, blue December air coats the world with a strange, cool light. I watch the students flood the exits of the school. They seem robotic in the blue light, magnified. The light brings out the clothes of students wearing color, but the ones in gray, in black, in earth tones are muted like they’ve been washed too many times. My own sweatshirt is the blue of the light, and I imagine I am camouflaged in it.

  Last night, my mother looked at me only slightly funny when I coughed twice and told her I was fighting something and going to bed early. I should confront her. Demand an answer. My father’s email address is tucked in my pocket. I should walk down to the media center and write to him. Confront Mom or write Dad. Instead, I sit on this metal bench and stare at the sky.

  ***

  Mom’s sulky lately, wearing the same sweatshirt days in a row. Like me, but not like her. I haven’t seen Rob much; he drifts in after a run or work or the gym but usually not until much past eight or nine. I hear their heated whispers late at night when they think I’m sleeping. They aren’t newlyweds anymore.

  I don’t want to think about my mother. Or Rob. The computer in front of me has given me more important things to worry about. Before school this morning, I wrote my father. Just a short “Here’s my email; here’s where I’m living” note. Painfully short. After school, I checked to see if he’d written back. I hadn’t expected a response, but I also hadn’t expected this. My letter sits returned in its slender slot of the inbox. Rejected. His address no longer exists.

  “Hey, stranger.” Alexa pulls a chair up to the computer.

  I quickly delete the rejected letter and close my email.

  “Who’re you writing to?”

  “Just a friend in San Diego.” I sign off, fumbling a smile. Alexa knows me better but also knows not to push.

  “Hey,” she begins again. “I’m sorry if I was a witch to you yesterday about the picnic.”

  “No big deal.” I shrug. While I really don’t think it’s a big deal, I know I appear aloof and strange.

  She darts a look around the library, which is now inhabited only by a few diehards and the pale light of late afternoon. She lowers her voice anyway. “Look. It’s none of my business and none of Drew’s business who you like or who you want to spend time with. We were just trying to give you some advice is all, because we don’t want you to get hurt.”

  I nod. This time, I manage to pull off a reasonably believable smile. “Seriously, Lex. It’s no problem. I have a lot on my mind. A lot that has
nothing to do with Sam or school or anything here.”

  She nods knowingly. “Parents.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I get that.”

  I pull my backpack onto my lap and wait for her to say more. Any second, I’m bound to spill the letter to Alexa, and I really don’t want to do that.

  Then her face lights. She grabs me around the wrist. “You know what we should do?”

  “What?”

  “We’ll go to Tala’s and have her read fortune cookies for you.”

  “Have her do what?”

  “Read fortune cookies.” I must look completely befuddled because she releases my wrist, laughing, and says, “I know it sounds nuts, but Tala’s really into this, and it’s a lot of fun to watch her.”

  ***

  Tala has the bedroom of someone who’s lived there her whole life. The walls are papered with her past, layers of all her years: posters of ballerinas, Hello Kitty, Colbie Caillat; concert stubs and a Cal Bears pennant; a princess crown; hundreds of pictures of Toby.

  Alexa and I sit on the floor in the center of a giant purple throw rug shot with silver glitter strands.

  “Wow,” I say, my eyes straying over the pictures of Tala and Toby—at Disneyland, at the beach, at a birthday party. “She has a lot of pictures of Toby.”

  Alexa makes a face. “Those two are practically married.”

  Tala pushes open the door, carrying a tray of sodas and a clear sack of fortune cookies. “Okay, folks,” she says. “Fortune time.” After setting the tray on the bed, she drapes a sheer red cloth over the lampshade, bathing the room in rose-colored light.

  “Where did you get all of those cookies?” I ask. There must be a hundred cookies in the bag.

  “Eli’s parents own Mandarin Garden.”

  “They do?”

  Alexa nods. “His mom’s from China; that’s where he gets that hair.” I love Eli’s shock of glossy, black hair. Lately, he’s let it grow long, razored just above his dark eyes.

  “Pick six cookies,” Tala tells me, opening the top of the sack and holding it out.

  I select six cookies and hand them back to her. She takes a white cloth napkin from the tray, carefully spreading it out on the purple rug. One by one, she lays the cookies in a neat, even row. She closes her eyes; the lids are thick with taupe shadow. I dart a look at Alexa, who smiles, covering her mouth to stifle a giggle.

  “Alexa,” Tala says, her eyes still closed.

  “Sorry, Tal.” Alexa fixes her face to serious.

  Tala opens her eyes. Carefully, she cracks each cookie in one hand, crumbling it like sand through her fingers, and smooths each white slip of fortune onto the purple rug until all six slips sit in a perforated line, their inks varying colors of the rainbow.

  “Now, I’ll tell you your fortune,” she says seriously, eyes half-lidded in concentration. I watch her closely, taking in the elfin lines of her face, the narrow angled jaw, the almond eyes. With the sides of her blond hair braided into a knot at the back of her head, she looks straight out of The Lord of the Rings.

  “Okay,” she says, her fingertips grazing the fortunes. “The first slip is for family. It says ‘you will be strong in the face of trouble.’” Her voice is whispery, and I feel ridiculous. Still, I try to look intently at her as she squints at the fortune. “Your strength is what’s key here. Emotionally. Not physically. You’ll need to be strong.”

  Something hits at the pit of me, a clawing at my middle. In the silly rose light of the room, on the silver-threaded purple rug, I know this means my mom. And my dad. Will I ever find him? I lean in closer.

  “The second slip says ‘you see the world for what it is.’ This slip is for friendship. Red ink. Look for it in unexpected places.” Tala sighs, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ears. “Friends will come from different sides of your life but they are all valid—except for one.” Alexa frowns slightly; I try to ignore it.

  “The third slip is for personal self. It says ‘you give of yourself.’ But you need to take care of yourself first, before you take care of someone else.” She stops, studying the slip closely, and then looks the same way at me. “This is especially important.”

  “Okay,” I whisper. Alexa’s eyebrows raise and she averts her eyes, studying the now shadowy pictures on the walls.

  “The fourth slip is for dreams. It says ‘there is safety in your loved ones.’ This one’s conflicted,” she says, her eyebrows in a quizzical tilt on her brow. “You want safety, but you want love. And love for you isn’t safe.” I shift uncomfortably on the floor, my feet tingling. “You might have to choose.”

  “What do you mean?” I take a sip of my Sprite, my stomach turning.

  Tala looks at me. “Safety or love. Let’s see…” She runs her finger over the fifth slip. “Your fifth slip is for love. It says ‘the road of life is long.’ It’s not a clear road. You have options for both.”

  “Options?”

  “If you protect yourself, you’ll choose safety. If you choose love, you don’t protect yourself. We’ll have to see what the sixth slip reads.”

  “What’s the sixth slip for?”

  “Fate.” Alexa leans in a little, watching Tala’s face closely. “This is the one that ties the others together, that controls them.”

  “What does it say?” I find myself caring, hoping for some sign, as stupid as all of this is.

  “The ink is blue, which means water will play a key part. It says ‘the universe provides happiness to those who want it.’” I think of the wide arms of ocean that stretch out nearby. “The universe wants you to be happy because you want other people to be happy.”

  “So my fate is to be happy?” I sit back. How generic.

  “If you want it to be.” Her shrug is a dismissal. She begins to pick up each slip, placing them in a purple ceramic bowl. She drops a lit match into the glossy belly of the bowl, and the tiny white slips curl in flames and fade to ash.

  ***

  My mother is washing vegetables in the sink and doesn’t hear me come in. I watch the sharp lines of her back from the doorway as she scrubs at a yellow squash. She had her hair highlighted last week, and it falls past her shoulders in glossy, varied strips.

  “I found the letter.”

  She jumps, water splashing. “Jeez, Calle.” She doesn’t turn around but leans instead on the edge of the sink.

  “Sorry.”

  She begins to mop the counter with a dish towel. “What are you talking about? What letter?”

  “The one from my father.”

  At this, she turns, her hands tangled in the dish towel. “You went through my drawers?”

  “You weren’t here, and I needed a windbreaker.” She will try to make this my fault; I know it. “Don’t change the subject.”

  Her face flushes. “I think the subject has to do with you going through my personal property.”

  “The letter was my personal property; it was addressed to me.”

  She tosses the dish towel on the counter. For a moment, something strange crosses her face, a ghost of fear moving across her anger. “You weren’t old enough to see that letter when it came.” Opening a cabinet, she pulls a cutting board down and begins to line up the vegetables on it.

  “When would I be old enough?”

  She begins chopping a carrot into Life-Saver-sized circles and doesn’t answer.

  “Mom? When were you planning on showing me the letter?”

  She starts on a zucchini. “I don’t have to explain myself to you. I’m your mother. I had my reasons.”

  “What were they?” I take a breath, knowing that if I start to shout, she’ll start to shout. “Don’t pull the ‘because I’m your mother’ argument because you know it’s crap.”

  The knife pauses above the yellow squash she’s cutting into disks. “Calle. Your father left when you were eight months old. He has no right to contact you. He’s a father in biological terms only. Don’t imagine it’s something else.”

&n
bsp; “He says you left him.”

  “Well, that’s obviously ridiculous. He left to be with his band. I’ve told you a thousand times.” Chop, chop, chop. I think she might take her finger off.

  “Why would he say you left?”

  She slams the knife down. “Why does Jake do anything?”

  Tears threaten my lashes, and I swipe at them. “I don’t know, Mom,” I say to her back. “I don’t know him. You haven’t let me know him. I didn’t even know his real last name!”

  She picks up the knife again and doesn’t respond. The vegetable discs turn to half circles, to wedges, and finally to bits.

  “Have there been other times?” I ask.

  She dips her head, intent on her chopping. “What?”

  I hold up the letter. “Is this it? Is this the only one?”

  She whirls on me, the knife skittering across the counter. “What are you saying, Calle?”

  “I want to know why you’ve been hiding him from me!”

  “So now suddenly you want your father in your life? Is that it?” She yanks open a cupboard and pulls out a wok.

  “I want the choice.”

  Retrieving the knife, she uses it to slide all of the vegetables into the wok. “No.”

  “No?”

  She sets the cutting board and the knife carefully into the sink, turns to me, and repeats, “No.” I open my mouth, but she cuts me off, her voice low and certain. “Listen to me, Calle. That man…those things in the letter aren’t true. He’s…his reality is different than what really happened.”

  She pauses, appraises me. I can see tears forming in her eyes, her struggle to keep them at bay. “Calle, there are things about your father, things you don’t know…” she trails off. Finally, she whispers, “I made the mistake of bringing him into my life. I will not bring him into yours. You are not to have contact with him.”

  My chest tightens but threatens to burst; I want to run, but am cemented to the cracked, tan linoleum beneath me. “You can’t do that,” I try to say, but I am not sure it comes out. Collecting myself—like tumbled laundry, piece by piece—I manage to hoist my backpack onto my shoulder and step backward from the room.