Songs for a Teenage Nomad

by Kim Culbertson

  I slip on my headphones, letting Tori Amos narrate the view.

  “Hey, Calle.” A voice through my headphones, a hand touching my shoulder.

  I start, dropping my pen in the loose sand at the base of the bench. Looking up, Sam is part sun, part sky. My stomach roils with the memory of our first walk here.

  “Sorry.” He bends to pick up my pen. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “It’s okay.” I snap my journal shut and turn off my music.

  “You writing?” He wears a cotton sweater the deep burnt orange of a Halloween pumpkin; it brings out the copper in his hair. His jeans are faded and fraying at the edges. I can’t take it all in. Instead, I look down at my journal and nod.

  He says, “Can I bother you?”

  “Sure. I mean…no bother.” I’m wearing a San Diego State sweatshirt my mother found at Goodwill and a pair of thick, grungy sweats that Rob gave me. I don’t even bother to try to fix my hair, but I’m happy that I’ve been sucking on peppermint Life Savers for the past hour.

  He sits next to me. “I went to your house. Your mom said you were here.”

  I take in both statements. He has seen my house. He has met my mom. I’m not sure which one worries me more.

  He decides for me. “She’s really pretty, your mom.”

  “Yeah. Clearly, it’s not genetic.” I attempt a laugh, but it comes out more like a hiccup.

  “Shut up,” he nudges me, all boy, all football player, and almost knocks me off the bench. “Oh, sorry.” He grabs my arm and rights me.

  I brush a toppled lock of hair out of my eyes. “It’s okay.”

  “What are you listening to?”

  “Tori Amos. ‘A Sorta Fairy Tale,’” I say. The first time at this beach with Sam felt like a fairy tale. Not anymore. Fairy tales are only good for the lead characters. And I didn’t get to be the princess in this one. At best, I got to be the frog. The frog that doesn’t transform after the kiss. Who just sits there on the log eating flies. No one wants to be that frog.

  “That’s a great song.” He folds his hands in his lap. Clears his throat twice. At first, I think he’s going to explain why he’s here, but he just watches the sun on the waves.

  Finally, he says, “It’s beautiful today. My dad says days like this in December make the housing prices in California worth it.”

  “Yeah,” I agree, knowing only that the housing prices are so far out of our range that I have no need to know what they are.

  “You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here.” He looks sideways at me.

  “A little bit, sure.” I slide back on the bench so that my feet come off the ground. Whoever built this bench must have been six-five. I swing my legs slightly back and forth; then, realizing this might be obnoxious, I tuck them cross-legged under me.

  “I needed to talk to you,” he says. “You sure ran off the other day at the stadium.”

  He’s seen me every day in school since. I’m not exactly hard to reach. “Yeah. I had rehearsal.”

  He nods. “You building the set again?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The fall play was really good. I liked what you did with the set.”

  “That was Alexa. I just fill it in.” He did not come to the beach to tell me he liked the set. Tiny bubbles of impatience pop in my stomach.

  Perhaps sensing this, he says, “I’m really sorry about Amber. I should have told you.”

  Told me that he’s seeing her, that he loves her, that she stalks him and he’s thinking about getting a restraining order? I say, “Okay.”

  “We’ve been kind of on and off since seventh grade.” He clears his throat again but doesn’t continue.

  “Drew told me.”

  “Oh?” He looks at me curiously. “What did he say?”

  “That you’ve been on and off since seventh grade.”

  He nods, agreeing with his own statement. “We have.”

  “I believe you.”

  “She’s a nice girl,” he starts.

  More bubbles, bigger, angrier ones, swell in me. “Hmm, that’s interesting.” My voice is sharp edged, serrated sharp.

  He sighs. “You’re mad.”

  “Not mad,” I say, clearly mad.

  “I don’t want you to be mad.” He bites his lip, his face a mix of worry and hurt. Fear?

  The largest of the bubbles pops. “What do you want me to say, Sam? That I’m happy for you? That I think it’s great you’re with Amber? Do you need to not feel guilty? Don’t feel guilty, okay? So we kissed. It’s not a big deal. I don’t need to hear this. I have a lot going on too. I can be the frog.”

  “What?” He looks just worried now.

  I decide not to explain it to him. “Nothing.”

  “Your mom told me that things are hard for you right now, that you’re upset about her and your stepdad fighting a lot.”

  “My mother has a big mouth.”

  “I know what it’s like to have things going on at home,” he continues, turning sideways to look at me. “I don’t want to add to that.”

  “I’m fine.” I study the corduroy cover of my journal.

  “I mean, things are hard for me too, you know. That’s why…that’s why I just need to be with Amber right now. She sort of gets the history.”

  “That’s fine. Whatever. I’m fine.”

  He stares at the hypnotic thumb that I’m running back and forth over the cover of my journal. “I don’t think you are.”

  “I wish you’d just go,” I tell him, opening my journal to a blank page. “I’m writing.”

  “I wish you’d talk to me.” He touches the side of my face.

  I brush his hand away. “Don’t.” I start to write nothing in my journal. I describe the sky, the water, the sand, willing him to leave by the sheer force of racing the pen across the page. Finally, he sighs, tells me to have a nice break, and leaves.

  When I’m sure he’s a good distance away, I look up from my scrawl and watch his retreating back, the orange sweater, his washed jeans the color of the ocean. Even in the warmth of the day, I shiver, my tears cold on my face.

  ***

  Winter break passes. A Christmas tree goes up, then down. I listen to music and go to some movies with Alexa and Drew. I search Google and Yahoo People for Jake Winter. There are two in California, so I call both numbers. One guy is a doctor. I call the number anyway. A little girl answers the phone, and I hear laughing in the background. I hang up without saying anything. The other number is disconnected. A couple of musicians turn up, but they are all from the East Coast. I even try to find jail records, but nothing comes up. Either he’s not out there, or I’m just lousy at finding things.

  My mother and Rob take me to Greta’s Diner for my fifteenth birthday on New Year’s Eve before they go to a party at Rob’s office. I eat chicken soup and think of Eli. His visit to my house. His joke about the chicken and the French chef that I can never remember but that makes me laugh.

  I do not talk with my mom about my father.

  ***

  The first day back at school, I push open the thick glass doors of the Little Theatre and walk into darkness. Only the footlights glow at the base of the stage. Confused, I check my watch. Three-thirty. I’m on time for rehearsal, but no one else is. Considering most of the drama kids live in the theater, I check my watch again.

  Footsteps echo on the empty stage. Looking up, I see Eli walk across, carrying a paper coffee cup from a nearby café. He stops and looks around, his confusion mirroring mine.

  “Hey,” he says, spotting me. He takes a short drink from the sippy lid, and comes down the middle staircase and up the aisle. “What’s the scoop? Rehearsal’s three-thirty, right?”

  “I thought so.”

  “We should check Hecca’s office,” he says, passing by me toward the back of the room. Ms. Hecca has a tiny windowed-in office just off the lighting booth where she posts rehearsal schedules and flyers for plays in the city or at the community college.
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  “It’s at five-thirty,” Eli calls back. “Heck’s got some sort of emergency. I better call my parents. I was supposed to work at the restaurant tonight.” He flips open his cell phone and starts dialing.

  I join him at her office. On the door is posted a sign lettered in Hecca’s large, swelled writing:

  Sorry, guys! Emergency.

  We’ll have rehearsal today

  at 5:30 SHARP! Kisses—H.

  Eli closes his phone and takes a sip of coffee. “Maybe I can just set lights early,” he suggests, avoiding my eyes.

  “Sure.” I walk away from the office and sit in one of the back theater seats. Outside, it has started to rain, erasing a four-day stretch of January sun. Through the smoky glass of the theater, the world is a swirl of gray. The lights on the stage snap on. I squint at the blinding white wash.

  “Sorry,” Eli says through the speakers. The lights fade to blue; with the rain streaming down the window, we could be underwater.

  The winter show, a festival piece Hecca wrote, opens in two weeks, and the set is nearly finished. The play is set in a fairy-tale world, and Alexa designed a large storybook whose pages turn for the six scene changes. We’ve been laboring over the canvas all week, at times frustrated with the lumpy un-fairytale-like quality of our images.

  But with the wash of Eli’s lighting design, the blues and the ambers and the pale reds, the pages come alive. Alexa spent yesterday threading silvery strands of paint for accent—an accent I couldn’t see until now that the scenes are bathed in stage light.

  “Wow,” Eli breathes, sliding in next to me. “It looks awesome.”

  Eli is the only person I know besides my mom who says “awesome,” and I love it about him. “Thanks. Alexa’s so talented.”

  “Not just Alexa,” he says.

  My face burns, and I’m glad he has the lights on low wash so that I’m currently in shadow. “It looks good because of your lighting. Especially the moon.”

  Alexa and I made a five-foot moon and suspended it from the ceiling on fishing line. Although two-dimensional, with Alexa’s creamy shading and Eli’s clever spotlight, the moon looms full bodied in the air above the stage.

  He shrugs. “That moon was a great idea.” He knows the actual idea of the moon was mine, and I smile. I don’t deserve Eli. We haven’t talked for weeks. Before break, he avoided my eyes; during break, he was in Hawaii with his parents. His kiss seems far away in another world. Now, I just want to be near him. He smells like rain and coffee.

  “I don’t think any fairy tale is complete without a moon,” I tell him. “Moons are so lonely and hopeful.” I sit up straighter, feeling silly. The light in the room, the quiet rain, have induced a trance. “I guess that’s sort of stupid.”

  “No, it’s not,” he says quickly. “I think the whole play is sort of lonely and hopeful. I hope it’s good, that people like it.”

  “They will.”

  “Today’s our first day with partial costumes,” he says. “It should be fun to see the whole thing coming together.”

  “I’m just looking forward to seeing you in a bunny suit.”

  He laughs. Hecca has Eli as the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. He’s sort of half-narrator, half-character in the play. “Um. I’m a rabbit, thank you very much.”

  “Sorry. Rabbit suit.”

  He sighs as we watch the light on the stage. Then, he says, almost in a whisper, “I’m sorry about…about the thing at your house.”

  I shake my head, knowing we’ve already moved past it. “You shouldn’t be sorry, Eli. I’m the one who ran you out of there. You’re the sweetest person I know. I don’t deserve you.”

  “That’s true,” he says, and I swat him lightly with the cuff of my sweatshirt.

  “Anyway, I hope we’re friends,” I say.

  “Now you’re being stupid.” But he seems to swell with it, our clearing this hurdle in our friendship. He stands. “I better check the second-act lights—make sure we don’t have any shadows.” As he stands, a human shadow moves outside the window. I look in time to see Cass disappear around the corner.

  “What the hell?” Eli goes to the window, looking after her. “What was she doing here?”

  I shrug. “What’s her deal?” I try to sound casual.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I mean, I know she’s a loner or whatever, but why is she like that?”

  Eli climbs over the row of theater seats, sitting on the top of one of the chairs and planting his green-leather Converse-clad feet where his butt should be. Hecca would kill him if she saw him sitting in the chair like that.

  He sighs. “Cass’s got a totally screwed-up family. She doesn’t have a dad. Her mom’s a fugitive.”

  “What?”

  Eli nods. “Seriously. She’s, like, wanted by the FBI. Cass never sees her mom. She lives with her uncle over on Sanderson Street. He owns that bar—Lucky’s.”

  “Whoa,” I breathe. Maybe Cass and I have more in common than I thought.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t know. It’s a small town. Word gets around.”

  “What’d her mom do?”

  “She’s some activist or something. And I heard that, like, twenty years ago she was with a bunch of people who blew something up, something major. I mean, a guy died in it.”

  “Seriously?” The word catches slightly in my throat and comes out staggered, airless.

  He shakes his head. “Yeah, I know. It’s wild. Like something out of a movie or something.”

  “Whoa,” I say again.

  “Yeah.” He looks out toward where Cass had been a dark flash outside the window. Was she looking for me?

  Sara comes walking across the stage, sucking a lollipop. She extracts it and points it at us. “Hey!” she says. “You two made up! Eli, don’t sit in the chair like that.”

  “Okay, Mom.” He slides into the seat.

  She waggles the lollipop at us. “This is so great. If you two stayed mad for the show, I would have had a nervous breakdown or something.”

  Eli, fond of Sara’s exaggerations, winks at me. “Now your nervous breakdown will have to be about something else,” he tells her. She sticks out her tongue, green from the lollipop.

  “Pretty,” Eli says.

  “Oh, my god!” she shrieks, turning to see the set. “The moon looks incredible. Oh my god, this is going to be the best play we’ve ever done here.”

  Of course, Sara says this about every play. Smiling, I gaze at the glowing white moon, and, hanging there bathed in light and shadowed with lonely sweeps of silver paint, it gazes back.

  CHAPTER 17

  PEOPLE TALKIN’

  …cars snake up the mountain, their taillights rows of red glowing eyes in the darkness. With all of the headlights beamed forward, the mountain and the gash of sky behind shine faintly purple. My mother sings quietly to the Lucinda Williams song on the radio and inches forward in the car. All of the spiritual people have come to Sedona to sit on the mountain and commune with the energy. Mom says a little spiritual energy in our life couldn’t hurt…

  The note is a poem, puzzling and strange. After PE today, I find it crammed into the edge of my gym locker. The writing looks knifed onto the page in thick black marker, but the words, locked together in crisp staccato, are music.

  Words, hurled as whispered bombs,

  Trap, attack, hack at your soul

  Until you fall back into the darkness,

  Into the hanging arms of a stranger,

  Kicking and biting, crying, knowing

  You will never be home again, never

  Find home at the end of that strange,

  Familiar road you’ve always walked

  Softly on. The bombs are buried deep

  In the soil of our hearts, our heads, our dreams—

  But you slip, you clutch the whisper

  That’s not a bomb, a crutch, that’s lurking under

  The wind, the waves, the breaking glass of trust,

>   That hovers, like a waiting fox, in the corner

  Of your eye to guide you, to hide you from the

  Darkness. Only this fox, this curled silent sadness,

  Needs you more than you need him.

  Don’t be fooled by fools.

  Meet at Lucky’s tonight at 8. For Sam.

  Outside, in the shallow, wet air that promises rain tonight, I tuck the note deep into the front pocket of my jeans and decide on which of the dozen lies racing through my mind I will tell my mother.

  ***

  The road to Lucky’s is not well lighted. I have a few street lamps but no yellow squares of lit windows to guide me. I stuff my hands, already gloved, into the front pocket of my sweatshirt and wish a flashlight would appear in the dark air in front of my eyes. No such luck.

  I told my mother that I was going to the movies with Alexa and Drew. Distracted, she gave me a little wave but did not look up from the onions she was chopping at the kitchen counter. Since any announcement of movie-going usually results in a full-fledged interrogation—What movie? What is it rated? What is the running time?—her small wave and lack of eye contact surprised me. Something is wrong with her lately. Still, I was lying to her, so I guess her distraction was in my favor. She didn’t even give me a curfew.