Songs for a Teenage Nomad

by Kim Culbertson

  “She must run on an extra generator,” Drew whispers, clearly disappointed that Greta hadn’t caused more of a stir.

  Tala punches him lightly on the shoulder. “She’s nice.”

  Eli takes my hand and walks me toward the buffet table. “Look!” He points. “Oreos.”

  I get a cup of red punch and watch Eli and Drew eat six Oreos each. The DJ is playing old fifties love songs; “Earth Angel” drifts across the confettied light of the dance floor.

  “There’s a lot of people here,” Tala says to me, looking at the already crammed dance floor.

  I nod, sipping my punch. I watch her drag Toby onto the dance floor. They seem so happy, arms wound around each other. What must it be like to just come to a dance with your boyfriend? Both parents at home watching a movie or something? It’s been three weeks, and there is no sign of my father. My mom was right. Compelling and completely unreliable. As I scan the dance floor, I try not to think about him.

  Then my eyes fix on a couple locked in the almost motionless rocking rotation of a slow dance.

  Drew sees them too. “Damn,” he says, putting his drink down on the table. “Hey, come have an Oreo.”

  “It’s okay,” I tell him. “I see them.”

  He sighs. “He’s an idiot.”

  I watch Sam hold Amber in slow revolving circles. I halfheartedly agree, “He is an idiot.”

  A Beyoncé song replaces “Earth Angel.” I guess that’s it for the fifties. The body lock on the dance floor disperses. Some couples move into the fast dance, while others drift off toward the food tables. I lose sight of Sam in the shift.

  I notice Eli watching me from across the table. He wiggles his eyebrows and smiles. I try to smile back.

  He tosses an Oreo on the table. “I’m a bad date,” he announces. “I go straight to the cookies. I should ask if you want to dance.”

  “I don’t want to dance,” I say.

  “But I,” he says, grabbing both my hands and sweeping our arms out to the side, “am a marvelous dancer.” He drags me out onto the floor, just at the edge near the bathrooms, and proceeds to dance around me, kicking his heels behind him and to the sides. I see Drew over by the snack table, laughing.

  “What do you call that?” I ask him.

  “I call it the Sweetheart Dance!” He shakes his whole body, hooking his thumbs right and left. His red pants make swishing noises, and I notice he’s tied tiny jingle bells to his shoes.

  “You look like you’re being electrocuted,” I tell him.

  The music fades from fast to soft, but he keeps dancing at the same pace as before. “You do not like my dance of love?” he croons, adopting a fake French accent.

  “The music’s not even fast.” I can hear Drew laughing.

  Eli stands up straighter, cocks his head to the side, and listens. I can’t help but giggle. “You’re right!” he says. “It’s a slow song.” Without warning, he pulls me into his arms. “We must mash ourselves together now!”

  We start to dance, his hand holding mine, his arm around my back. Still giggling, I rest my head against his shoulder. His heart is banging through his shirt.

  After a moment, I feel someone watching us. Looking up, I see Sam leaning against the wall by the bathroom. His arms are folded across his chest. When he sees me notice him, he strides over to us.

  “What’s going on?” he asks gruffly. He stands a bit too close. I can’t help but back up, away from Eli, away from both of them. Eli eyes him.

  “I’m dancing,” I say slowly.

  He nods with just a bit too much emphasis. “Oh, uh-huh?” He darts a look at Eli. “I thought you said he wasn’t your boyfriend.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “I’m not her boyfriend,” Eli says.

  Sam runs his hand through his hair and points exaggeratedly at Eli. “You’re kind of chummy with him.” He gets in close to me, his breath hot on my face. “Kind of close!” He reeks of beer, which explains why he seems too elastic, his gestures too overstated. “At least I’ve been honest with you!” he sputters.

  “Honest with me?” I repeat, stunned. “I’m sorry, when were you honest with me?”

  “I explained about Amber!” He is close to shouting and has now drawn a crowd from our part of the dance floor.

  I rub my temples. The DJ is playing Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” and my head is pounding with it. “I’m leaving.”

  I turn to go, but Sam reaches out and grabs my arm, pulling me back. “Wait!”

  “Ow!”

  It doesn’t really hurt; it’s more of a reaction, but it’s enough to make Eli grab Sam and wrench his arm from me. “Leave her alone!”

  With a cry, Sam shoves Eli. They are roughly the same height, but Sam probably outweighs him by forty pounds, so Eli goes flying and ends up sprawled on the floor by the bathrooms, his hair in his face.

  “Stop it!” I hear myself screaming. The room is spinning with shreds of jagged colored light. I think I might throw up. Most of the kids have stopped dancing and have formed a half-ring around us. No music now. Someone probably went to get a teacher.

  In the silence, punctuated by spinning flecks of light, I look at both of them, at Eli gazing up from the floor, at Sam blinking down at him, a look of surprise on his face. Then my eyes are drawn to the figure by the bathroom door, standing immobile, a small beaded purse spinning from its satin cord clutched in her hand. Amber. Her eyes meet mine, and she turns and runs from the room.

  CHAPTER 24

  PART OF MY LIFE

  …Sacramento sun pours through the wide windows, carrying with it a hint of late September chill. With the smell of Sunday brunch thick in the air around us—blueberry scones, a steaming ham-and-cheese quiche, the thick espresso that Dan drinks on weekends—Mom and I spin around the kitchen singing as loud as we can, India Arie pulsing through the speakers in the ceiling…

  In PE on Monday, I jog over to Ms. Davis. “Can I use the bathroom, please?” She nods and motions toward the locker rooms.

  Inside, the locker room is empty and smells of strawberries. Someone must have used body spray earlier; the air is thick with the chemical smell of fake fruit essences. At the sink I wash my hands and fix my ponytail. Noticing a smudge of dust on my cheek (probably from the disgusting mats they make us use), I lean into the mirror. Out of the corner of my eye, I see someone behind me.

  “I want you to stay away from him,” Amber says.

  Turning, I see she’s been crying. She holds a wadded tissue in her hand, and her eyes are red rimmed. She is not dressed for gym, so she must have been sitting in the locker room. Ms. Davis always excuses crying girls from class. Especially on rainy days.

  “Maybe you should talk to him,” I say, my hands starting to shake. “He’s the one who keeps approaching me.”

  “Maybe you should stay away from other girls’ boyfriends.” Her voice would be threatening if it didn’t sound so hollow in the middle, like words through a straw.

  My mind flashes to the picture she posted of me, and it’s all I can do not to smash her perfect, freckle-flecked nose. “Maybe you should tighten his leash. He doesn’t seem to want to stick around on his own.”

  She takes a step closer, and I press back slightly into the sink. “You think you’re so smart,” she says. “But look at you.” Her eyes rake over me. “You need to take another look at that picture. Because smart can’t fix fat.”

  I swallow against the knot in my throat and lean forward until my face is inches from hers. “You know what’s sad, Amber? You’re as pretty as you are, and he still doesn’t like you. At least I don’t have to stalk him to get him to kiss me.”

  Her face pales. She points a long, thin finger at me. “Just stay away from him…”

  She’s cut off by the swing of the door. Cass enters, wearing her PE top and a pair of jeans. At the sight of Cass, Amber freezes.

  Cass spots us and places her hands on her hips. “Well, well, well,” she grins, her gaze slippin
g from Amber to me. “What’s the story, ladies?”

  “It’s none of your business, Cass,” Amber snarls. “We’re just talking.”

  Cass sidles up and puts her face very close to Amber’s. “I don’t think I like your tone, Pampers.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  Cass turns to me. “You see, we call her Pampers because Amber used to wet her pants in second grade, isn’t that right?” She smiles sweetly at Amber, whose face turns scarlet.

  Blinking tears, Amber says, “Shut up, Cass. At least I’m not a freak!”

  Cass’s shove sends Amber stumbling back. Cass takes a deep breath and surveys her. “Are you going to finish what you started, or should you just leave now?” she asks, her voice low.

  Amber looks at me and then at Cass.

  “I hate you both!” she yells before pushing her way out through the doors. We hear her footsteps pound up the metal steps to the main part of the gym.

  Cass rolls her eyes. “Yeah, it keeps me up at night.” Turning to me, she sucks in her lower lip and then says, “We should go. Pampers will tattle.”

  She starts toward the back of the locker room.

  “Where are we going?” I trail behind, adrenaline still surging through me.

  “You’ll see.” Looking at me, she says, “You should change.” She slips on a gray sweatshirt.

  I hesitate.

  “Oh, come on,” she says, waiting.

  While I quickly pull on my school clothes, she unlatches the chain around the back door and pushes it open a crack. Peering out, she says, “All clear,” and disappears.

  She holds the door for me. Grabbing my backpack and Walkman, I follow her outside into the thin rain.

  ***

  Cass parks her truck by the old lighthouse trail.

  “The lighthouse is closed on Mondays,” I tell her.

  “I know.” She climbs out of the truck and starts walking the trail toward the beach.

  The fog and rain mix in ragged swirls. Fingers of it spread across the trail, and at times I can’t see Cass several yards ahead. Soon, though, we’re at the base of the lighthouse, its peeling paint in reach of our hands.

  Cass vanishes around the side. Alone, I stare into the shifting fog and try to locate the direction of the beach. Screeching seagulls and the thunder of the waves seem to hover all around me. The light is something otherworldly, not day, not night. I blink rain from my eyes and press my hands to my freezing cheeks. School seems an ancient land, something in a galaxy far away from this strange, floating ghost world.

  “Calle!” Cass hisses through the damp. “Come here.”

  I walk toward her voice, and two shapes emerge from the fog. At first I think Cass is with a child, and then I realize she’s found Emily, the old woman from the football game. She’s even smaller than I remember and as wispy as the sea grasses. She clicks open the door to the lighthouse with a huge metal ring of keys, smiles at Cass, and motions for us to go inside.

  “Thanks, Emily.” Cass says.

  “Thanks,” I say, and I can see her face register mine.

  “Calle girl. No nachos to share today?” Her laugh seems part of the air.

  “I’m afraid not,” I tell her.

  “Well, you girls go on up.” She waves at the doorway. “No sense in us getting any more soaked than we already are.”

  “We won’t be too long,” Cass says.

  “You won’t see a darn thing today, but that’s not really the point, is it?” Her voice seems to linger as she evaporates into the fog.

  We climb the circular stairs to the top. Emily is right. The world is a dense white blanket against the sweeping windows of the lighthouse. Cass presses her hand to the glass and seems to look through it all.

  “Isn’t it great up here?” she asks.

  “Amazing,” I say, watching the mist churn and undulate. “Like being inside a washing machine.”

  Cass nods, continuing to stare out into it.

  I look around the circular room, all metal and glass. Incredible to think that a hundred years ago, this lonely lighthouse guided ships away from the jagged rocks offshore, that it saved the lives of equally lonely sailors.

  “I’m glad you cut with me,” Cass says, her breath making tiny clouds on the glass. “I didn’t think you would at first. You’re such a brainiac.”

  “I just wanted to get out of there.”

  She laughs. “That’s how I feel every day.”

  “Me too.”

  She turns away from the glass and looks at me. “Because of Sam?”

  I shrug and sit on a small wooden bench against the wall.

  “He doesn’t really like Amber,” she says. “She’s just a habit. Like biting your nails.”

  “I know,” I say. “I just wish he didn’t bite his nails in public.”

  She laughs. “Sam’s a hard one to figure out,” she says. “Not like the other boneheads he hangs with. They’re transparent.”

  I nod, kicking at the bench with my heel.

  “You’re good for him, I think,” she says, cocking her head and studying me.

  “I’m not so sure.” What I’m most unsure of is her relationship with Sam. Maybe she’ll tell me. My heart flutters, and I lick my dry lips. Cass pulls her sweatshirt up to her elbows, and I notice that there’s writing on her left arm, blue ink pen. It reads, “In solitude, I am actual.”

  “What’s that quote from?” I ask, pointing. “On your arm?”

  She glances down. “From second period today. Health.”

  I shake my head. “No, I mean, whose is it? Who wrote it”

  She studies her arm. “I did. Sometimes when I’m bored in class—which is all the time—I write down things that pop into my head. I just didn’t have any paper today.”

  “I do that too. Not on my arm. In my journal. Only they’re mostly songs. Songs that make me remember.”

  She nods. “I’ve seen you writing in it at school.”

  “What does it mean?” I ask her.

  “It means I’m my purest self only when I’m alone. And when I’m using my own words.” She shrugs. “It just went through my head, that’s all. And it was a hell of a lot more interesting than Mrs. Jenner droning on and on about disease prevention.”

  We both listen to the swish of wind outside for a while and the creak of the lighthouse, this washing machine world growing familiar around us.

  Finally Cass says, “I want to tell you about my mom.”

  I sit up. “Okay.”

  She sighs, running a hand through her hair. She must have just cropped it a few days ago; it’s never been this short before. Turning to me, she says, “Sam told me what you did. The note.” I nod. “That was really cool.”

  The more I thought about that note afterward the more I believed it was a stupid thing to do. But I don’t tell her this. I say, “Thanks.”

  “She screwed up a long time ago, you know? Ancient history.” She leans back into the glass. Behind her, the mist continues to swirl, occasionally shot through with laces of light from an unseen sun. “I don’t know how much you know.”

  I try for honesty, and the words are sticky. “I heard she’s wanted by the FBI.” In the hollow room, they sound like an accusation.

  She nods and folds her arms across her chest. “She is. When she was young, way before I was born, she belonged to this group, this activist group in New York. They were protesting some company that was knocking down some community building. A whole bunch of people were going to end up homeless.

  “Anyway, one of the guys in her group was crazy—a total nut job. And he set a small bomb at the company’s headquarters. No one was supposed to be working that night. He was just trying to scare them. It was an accident,” she explains, “but it still left a dead guy.”

  “Oh my god.” Fumbling for something to do, I dig in the front pocket of my backpack for my ChapStick and smear it quickly across my lips.

  She watches me, purses her lips, and breathes out slo
wly. “Yeah. It’s pretty major. Anyway, she panicked and ran. Came out here to her brother. Had me. Then took off again. Now she’s always running.” She pauses and turns back to the window.

  I nod, knowing something about that. “And your dad?”

  She hesitates, not turning from the window. “She told me he died.”

  “Do you see her?” I don’t know if the answer to this will push me back into the world of crime, but I ask anyway.

  “Sometimes,” she says. “Never for very long. This last time I only saw her for fifteen minutes. Now I won’t see her for years. My uncle takes care of me. Has my whole life. But she’s still, you know, my mom.” She looks back at me. “I figured you’d understand, what with your dad situation and all.”

  “I understand.” I know what it’s like now to have fifteen minutes of your life mean so much.

  “You and your mom still fighting about it?” she asks.

  “Not really.” Outside, the mist continues to form a cocoon around us. We might be the only two people in the world. “He found me,” I find myself telling her.

  “What?” Cass turns from the window.

  “My dad,” I say. “He came here. To Andreas Bay. We had pizza.”

  “Seriously? What was that like?”

  Like talking into a dream, I tell her about the coffeehouse, the miniature golf, him leaving again. “It was so weird, like it didn’t even really happen.”

  “What does your mom think?”

  I shake my head. “She doesn’t know. She’d flip if I told her, and we’d just move again. All our moves, all the new places, my whole life has been about keeping away from him.” I pull my sweatshirt arms down over my cold hands. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. He said he’d be back in a week, two at the most, and it’s been almost a month. I’m not holding my breath.”

  “Maybe he really had work to do, like he said.” Cass bites her lip and looks like she doesn’t really believe what she’s saying. “Or maybe he just doesn’t know how to be your dad, and you’ll have to show him.”

  “Maybe.” I take a deep breath, weighing her words. Maybe I have to try harder. He doesn’t know how to be a father. “You know, it’s hard,” I say, almost to myself.