by Jeff Zentner
autumnlands: Ok I will but you have to promise to sit with me at lunch.
Travis felt warm all over. He was starting to compose his reply when a knock startled him. He prayed it wasn’t his father. Not that his father felt like he had to knock to go anywhere he wanted in the house. “Come in,” he called.
His mom entered, holding a brown paper bag. She closed the door behind her.
“Hey, sweetie. I was at the grocery today and I picked you up a little something as a back-to-school present.” She handed Travis the paper bag. “It’s not much.”
He opened the bag. It contained a paperback entitled The Rebel Knight. On the cover was a chiseled, grim-looking man with long, black hair; a five o’clock shadow; and a tunic open to reveal bronzed pecs. He had a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. Travis had a pretty good idea of the sort of book he was holding.
“Oh man, thanks, Mom!” he said, as convincingly as he could. “This looks awesome!”
Travis’s mom looked pleased. “I know how you like to read about knights and things like that. I thought maybe you hadn’t read that one.”
“No,” he said softly, leafing through the book. “I haven’t read this one.”
“Your dad means well,” she said.
Travis stared at the book, hefting it in his hands. “I wish he was better at meaning well.”
“Me too sometimes. Anyway. I’ll let you get back to what you were doing.” She leaned forward, hugged him, and kissed his cheek. “Have a great first day of school tomorrow. I love you.”
“I love you too, Mom.”
After she left and closed the door behind her, Travis shook his head and tossed the book on his bed. This wasn’t the first time. In fact, Travis had a respectable collection of steamy medieval romance novels under his bed. But he couldn’t bear to tell her.
Another message from autumnlands popped up. Ok I guess you won’t sit with me at lunch. Boo.
Southern_Northbrook: No no of course I’d sit with you at lunch LOL. Sorry my mom came in and I was talking to her.
autumnlands: Yay! Because I usually eat lunch alone. I don’t have very many friends at my dumb school. No one likes Bloodfall.
Southern_Northbrook: I totally know what you mean. I have two awesome friends but even they don’t get Bloodfall.
autumnlands: If we’re going to sit together at lunch I guess I better learn your real name. Mine’s Amelia.
Southern_Northbrook: I like the name Amelia. My name’s Travis.
autumnlands: Good to meet you Travis.
Southern_Northbrook: Good to meet you Amelia.
His heart beat the syllables of her name. A-mel-ia. While she was composing her reply, Travis got up, paced around quickly, picked up his staff, and twirled it around his head as best he could in the confined space of his room, watching himself in the mirror.
Dill hated going back into his house after hanging out with Lydia. It was like waking up from a euphoric dream. His house was still and suffocating when he opened the door. He set his CD on the kitchen table and considered the possibilities for dinner. They weren’t promising. He improvised a casserole with a couple of dented cans of green beans, a couple of dented cans of cream of mushroom soup, and a block of expired cheese—all freebies from his job bagging groceries and stocking shelves at Floyd’s Foods.
He threw the sad concoction in the oven, went and plugged in the air conditioner, and began playing his guitar, working on a new song that no one would ever hear. One about endings. One about people leaving you behind.
At around 8:45, Dill heard his mother clatter up the driveway in their 1992 Chevy Cavalier and come in the house. She exuded fatigue.
“How was work?”
“I’m tired. I had to turn away about twenty kids your age trying to buy beer.”
She flopped down with a soft groan in their battered recliner and rubbed her face.
“Did you take your pills for your back?” Dill asked.
“Ran out. Can’t refill until payday.”
Dill returned to the kitchen and checked on the casserole.
“Dinner’s done,” he called out to the living room.
Dill’s mother sucked in her breath and rose from the recliner, holding her mid-back, taking a moment to straighten, and grunting with pain. She entered the kitchen and sat at the table. She picked up Dill’s CD.
“What’s Joy Division and New Order?”
Shit. Dill had a peculiar genius, honed over his years of friendship with Lydia, at turning any band into a Christian band on the spot. Arcade Fire? Refers to the fires of hell that those who forsake Christ in favor of video games will experience. Fleet Foxes? Refers to the Bible story in which Samson captured foxes, tied torches to their tails, and let them burn the fields of the Philistines. Radiohead? Refers to how human minds have to be living conduits to the Holy Spirit, akin to radio antennas.
“Oh…New Order…refers to the new order that Christ will create when he returns to Earth and reigns…Joy Division…refers to the division in joy between people who’ve been saved and people who haven’t. They’re Christian bands.”
Either his explanation satisfied his mother or she was too tired to quarrel. Probably the former, since she never seemed to be too tired to fight with him.
Dill pulled the casserole dish from the oven. It smelled okay and it was hot and cheesy. They weren’t picky in the Early house. He took a quarter loaf of stale white bread from the top of the refrigerator, to help soak up the casserole. Grabbing a couple of plates and spoons from the drying rack beside the sink, he set the table and dished them both up some food.
They ate quietly. “How was Nashville?” his mother finally asked.
“Fine. Lydia helped me get some good clothes for cheap.”
His mother dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “I wish you had more Christian friends from church.”
“Travis is from church.”
“I wonder about him. Dressed in black all the time with that demon necklace.”
“Dragon.”
“Same thing. Read Revelation again.”
Dill got up to refill their water glasses.
“And Lydia’s not from church,” his mom said.
“Yeah, but I told you that she’s Episcopalian or Presbyterian or something. She’s Christian.”
Dill’s mom snorted. “Love to see an Episcopalian take up the serpent or speak in tongues. Signs follow the faithful.”
“I can’t choose my friends according to who’s willing to pick up a copperhead.”
“Sure you can. It’s that you won’t.”
“Kind of hard now anyway, since the only snakehandling pastor around got locked up.”
Dill’s mom gave him a sharp look. “Don’t make light.”
“Trust me. I’m not. I visited him while I was there.”
Dill’s mom gave him another look, with a different sort of sharpness. “You might’ve mentioned that sooner. How was he?”
Dill stuffed a bite in his mouth and chewed slowly while he considered how to answer. “All right, I guess. I don’t know. Fine for prison? Looks like he’s made some friends because he had some tattoos on his knuckles.”
Dill’s mother wrinkled her forehead. “Really. Tattoos? Of what?”
“Mark sixteen eighteen. Across each of his eight knuckles.”
Dill’s mother stared at her plate. “He’s always been able to hear God’s voice. I haven’t understood everything your father’s done, but I trust that God’s willed it.” She mopped up the last bit of her casserole with a heel of dry bread.
I wouldn’t be so sure about God wanting Dad to do everything he’s done in his life. Somehow I sort of doubt that. Dill took their plates to the sink and put them in to soak. He opened a drawer, careful to not pull it off its track (it could be finicky), and pulled out a sheet of plastic wrap that they used, washed, and reused. He wrapped up the casserole and put it in the fridge.
“You better get some sleep if you’re going to s
tart school tomorrow,” his mom said.
“Why do you say ‘if’?”
“Because I’m not making you. You know that.”
“I guess I didn’t think you were serious when you said that.”
“I was. I’d just as soon you went full time at Floyd’s. They like you there. Make you a manager and you’d be earning thirty-five thousand a year before you knew it. That’s real money.”
“What about graduating?” I can’t believe I’m actually defending school to my mom.
“You can read. Write. Add. Subtract. You got a line to a good job. What do you need a piece of paper for? I care that you learn your scripture, that’s all.”
Dill scrubbed the dishes. “Lydia’s about to apply to every one of the best colleges in America; meanwhile, my mom is telling me to become a high school dropout.”
“Lydia’s dad is a dentist and her mom works too, and they don’t have our debts. No use comparing yourself to her.”
“No use is right.”
“Your dad didn’t graduate from high school. And I quit high school to marry him.”
Dill put down the dish he was washing, turned, and gave his mother an incredulous look. “You can’t possibly believe that’ll convince me.”
“Someday you’ll learn that you’re no better than your own name.”
Someday? “Yeah, well, maybe I’ll learn it in school this year. They seem pretty determined to teach me that. Good night.”
Dill put the dish in the cracked white plastic drying rack and went to his room. He lifted up his door by the knob, on its broken hinge, and shut it. He sat down on his twin bed, the only piece of furniture in his room besides a Goodwill dresser, and the lumpy mattress groaned under his weight. He popped his new CD into his hand-me-down CD player from Lydia. He put in his earbuds and reclined with his hands behind his head.
Sometimes music worked on the loneliness. Other times, when he felt as if he were sitting at the bottom of a dry well, looking up at the sky, it didn’t work at all. Today marked the beginning of the end for him, but only the beginning of the beginning for Lydia. He sighed.
No song would fix that.
When Lydia got home, her dad and mom were lounging on the couch, watching TV. Her mom had a glass of red wine and sat with her feet tucked under Lydia’s dad’s leg. A pizza box rested on the reclaimed-wood coffee table in front of them. Lydia’s dad had a fetish for industrial antiques. He had filled their meticulously restored Victorian house with them. The Restoration Hardware catalog was his pornography.
“Hey, kid,” her dad said. “Have fun in Nashville?”
Lydia held up her bags.
“I have my answer. How’d Al Gore treat you?”
“The real Al Gore who lives in Nashville? We didn’t run into him.”
“Your car, Al Gore. Ran okay?” Lydia had inherited Al Gore (the first Prius in Forrestville) from her dad.
“Treated us fine.” Lydia kicked off her boots, flopped onto the couch on the other side of her dad, and tucked her feet up under his leg.
“Are you hungry? We’ve got some Pizza Garden left there,” her mom said.
“We need a real pizza place in this town,” Lydia said.
“One more year and you’ll be in some amazing big city with more pizza places than you could ever possibly try,” her mom said.
“Yeah,” Lydia said, “but another year is a long time to eat subpar pizza.”
“You’re such an elitist,” her dad said. “Pizza Garden is fine. How bad can pizza ever really be?”
“ ‘Elitist’ is synonymous with ‘has discerning taste,’ but I’ll concede that Pizza Garden more or less gets the job done, as long as you avoid ham and pineapple.”
“That’s true of any pizza place, though,” her dad said. “Go on. Have some.”
“I shouldn’t.”
“You should.”
“I’m too lazy to get up.”
Her dad leaned over, grabbed the pizza box, and handed it to her.
“Shall I feed it to you as well, milady?”
“Shut up.” She took a slice.
Lydia’s mom sniffed. “Come on, Lydia.”
Lydia took off her glasses and wiped away a smudge. “I wish I could sit here and eat and nerd out with you two, but I need to work on my blog tonight. My audience awaits a back-to-school post.”
“Suit yourself,” her dad said. “But first, why don’t you go look at what’s on the kitchen counter. The senior-year fairy dropped by while you were out. We tried to tell her that you’ve been bad by telling your dad to shut up, but she wouldn’t listen.”
Lydia rolled her eyes playfully, got up, and walked to the kitchen. A brand-new Mac laptop, wrapped up with a red bow, sat on the counter. She clapped her hands to her mouth and squealed. Any lingering unease from her fight with Dill disappeared in a blink. She ran into the living room and hugged her parents, almost causing her mom to spill wine on the couch.
“The last thing you need is your computer crashing on you in the middle of a college application or writing your admission essay,” her dad said.
“I love you guys. Even despite your penchant for inferior pizza.”
Lydia bounded upstairs. Her dad always joked bitterly about how she’d annexed the top floor. Her parents occupied one bedroom. She occupied another. The other two bedrooms were Lydia’s wardrobe room—filled with wheeled clothing racks—and her sewing/project room.
Lydia sat in her bedroom at her stark, modern desk, bought on an Ikea run to Atlanta. While she waited for her new laptop to boot up, she scanned through the photos on her phone, posting the best shots to Instagram and Twitter.
Her phone beeped. A text from Dahlia Winter. Ugh first day of school?
Dahlia was her best Internet friend. Actually, they’d become close real-life friends after Lydia had spent two weeks that summer at Dahlia’s family’s beach house in Nantucket. Returning to Forrestville after that wasn’t easy. The experience had confirmed to Lydia that they’d make good roommates at NYU, which both of them had chosen as their top pick for college. Lydia had her fingers crossed to get in. Of course Dahlia would get in. Dahlia’s mother, Vivian Winter, was the infamously icy editor-in-chief of Chic Magazine. Dahlia could waltz into any school she liked, but she wanted to be near the heart of the fashion industry and she had a thing for slumming it. Hence her friendship with a “poor” girl from Tennessee.
Ugh is right. You can’t imagine my school’s awfulness, Lydia texted.
Feel for you. We have creeps at school too.
I bet Phillips Exeter has a different kind than Forrestville High. When does your school start?
Yeah, probably. September.
Hate you. (But in loving way)
LOL gotta run love. Hang in there at Hillbilly High.
Lydia set down her phone and began typing a post about the road trip to Nashville, shopping at Attic, and some thoughts on the first day of school. She got stuck and began looking for ways to procrastinate.
She downloaded her pictures from the Nashville trip to her new computer and sorted through them. Travis, leaning on his staff, doing his best to look grim. She opened a tab and pasted them into an email to him.
Can you believe it? We ran into Rainer Northbrooke (sp?) in Nashville. He said to say hi. Enjoy.
And then she started browsing through the pictures of Dill, looking distant. Lost. Haunted.
Lydia felt a familiar pang of guilt and sadness that she couldn’t use the photos on her blog. When she’d gone to New York Fashion Week, there’d been a meet-up of teen fashion bloggers. A bunch of thirteen- to seventeen-year-olds talking about content and brand preservation.
“It sucks when your friends have a look that’s off-brand and you can’t talk about them or show them on the blog. It’s so awkward to explain. What? Are you going to say ‘Hey, sorry, but your style sucks so I can’t tell people I hang out with you?’ But that’s the reality,” a thirteen-year-old from Johannesburg said with a world-weary a
ir, the others nodding sagely.
Lydia had just sat and listened. Oh, I could tell you a thing or two about having friends who are off-brand.
Travis was hopelessly off-brand, and he couldn’t care less.
Dill? He was another story. He was tall and had these dark, brooding eyes with high, sharp cheekbones; thick, shaggy dark hair (that she cut for him); gaunt, angular features; and full, expressive lips—all of which placed him outside of the vanilla beauty standards of Forrestville but would make him a great Prada or Rick Owens model.
She did her best with him. And even though she dressed him as what he was—a musician from the rural South—his look wasn’t what made him off-brand. In fact, he’d probably be a big hit with her audience, not that she needed to spend her time dealing with people crushing on Dill (not possessive, just busy).
His name was the problem. Her readers were inveterate Googlers. The last thing she needed was for them to see a picture of Dill, get curious, find out his name (They had ways. Oh how they had ways.), and Google it. Because guess what came up on a search for “Dillard Early.” Very bad for the Dollywould brand.
People, Dahlia included, already treated Lydia with a sort of benevolent condescension (You’re so intelligent and open-minded for a Southerner! You have such sophisticated taste for living where you do!). They imagined her living in a house…well, like Dill’s. My house is probably nicer than yours, she’d murmur to herself while reading their well-meaning comments. My parents met at Rhodes College. There are two Priuses and a hybrid Lexus SUV in our driveway. I have a hundred gigs of music on my brand-new Mac laptop and Netflix and high-speed Internet. I’m not chasing raccoons around a trailer park barefoot, folks.
She skipped through the pictures of Travis, Dill, and the three of them; picked out the best pictures of herself and some of the pictures of her with April (who was on-brand); and dragged them to her computer desktop to use. She still didn’t feel like working on her blog post, so she texted Dahlia. Hey. What are you doing right now? Can you talk?
Sorry, darling, not at the moment. Just sitting down to dinner with Peter Diamond. Text me later.