Mom missed the tragic drama playing out on Oakley’s feet because she was still digging through the clothes boxes.
“Sandals look fabulous with this dress.” Mom picked up the blue satin dress and held the two items up together. “I had this necklace to go with it …”
She started digging through a shoe box she pulled from beneath the bed, but Oakley couldn’t take it anymore.
“Mom! Stop. What the heck is going on with all these clothes? When did you even wear them?”
“I wasn’t always a kindergarten teacher, you know.”
Oakley knew that. She wasn’t too young to remember the year Mom had gone back to school for her elementary education degree. Before that, she’d worked at the dry cleaners. Oakley still remembered how the dry cleaning shop smelled when she’d spend the afternoons there, playing with Barbies or watching TV while Mom worked. The chemicals and the clean scent wafted back through her memories.
“Well, you certainly weren’t wearing this at Press-n-Clean.” Oakley picked up a pair of gold lamé stretch pants with black elastic stirrups at the bottom and waved them at her.
It hit Oakley—Sherm hadn’t been making up that whole groupie thing yesterday.
“You really were a groupie? For a band?”
Mom just blinked. “I was really young.”
Young! Oakley coughed and dropped the ridiculous pants. Even though they were super cute. “For what band? For all the bands?” This pile contained enough clothes to wear to a concert every weekend of the year and never repeat. “How old were you? And why did your parents let you …”
Oh, her mom’s parents had died. That was right. Mom had been adrift at age sixteen. But where did she get all these clothes?
“I worked for a record company in Seattle. It was the grunge scene, and they had a few acts they’d signed for that. You know, Nirvana, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ all that.”
Oakley didn’t know, but she didn’t interrupt.
“They also had a few pop acts. I was a huge fan of one of the bands. On weekdays I worked in the office, filing, making coffee, typing stuff up, grunt work. But when the bands toured, I was paid extra well to dress cute. You know.”
“You were a booth babe.” The words came out with a thunk.
“I’m sorry?” Mom obviously hadn’t heard the term for someone hired and paid well to look pretty and draw customers to booths at tech exhibitions and conferences. There were all kinds of videos where you could learn about terms like this on YouTube.
“You were eye candy,” she finally said. Well, that made sense. Mom was really pretty, even now, at almost forty. “Did you even like the music? Did you have to pretend to like it?” Oakley couldn’t imagine trying to fake enjoying music if it stunk.
“Oh, no—” Mom jumped right in. “I liked it. I mean, I loved some of the bands. One in particular.”
A feeling rumbled in Oakley’s stomach, and it had nothing to do with the cold cereal she’d eaten. A foreboding.
“Mom?” Oakley prompted, but Mom was ignoring her now, digging through the jewelry box again. She’d clammed up. A sadness had fallen over her, one Oakley recognized from their deep past, before Mom had found Sherm. It made Oakley’s stomach quake. She didn’t want that sadness to come back again.
“Mom.” It was no use pulling her back when Mom had shut out the conversation. It was like this any time Oakley tried to pry out information from Mom’s past, and especially whenever Oakley tried to find out more about her bio dad. Complete stonewall. As in Great-Wall-of-China stonewall.
Mom spoke at last, but she didn’t answer Oakley’s inquiries. “How about this one, darling? It would look so great with the blue dress and red shoes.” She dangled a rhinestone choker from her index finger, but Oakley looked past it. In the box was a locket. She reached for it as Mom held the choker to her own neck and examined herself in the mirror. “My neck used to be a little prettier. It didn’t have these deep lines here beneath my … what are you doing?”
Oakley had lifted the locket, a large brass medallion-shaped oval, engraved with filigree flowers all over it. She inserted her thumbnail in the crease to open it and see what lay inside.
Mom lunged for it. “Oh, honey. That’s—”
Instinct made Oakley pull it away—probably after too many hours playing basketball in P.E. and avoiding the super-athletic girls who always came at her to steal the ball anytime by a miracle Oakley got possession of it.
Her thumbnail popped it open, and inside there were two photographs on the opposing faces. One was of a young man with dark hair slicked up in the front. He wore both a sly smile and Ray-Ban sunglasses, the black kind with the flat line across the top of the glasses. He was cute—really cute—in an old-school kind of way. On the other side was a group of four guys, including the sunglasses guy. Before Oakley could see much more than the number of people in the photo, Mom had snatched the necklace away.
“Mom!”
“That’s … well, it’s worth quite a bit of money, and …”
“You’re being really weird right now.”
“Maybe so. But all the same, I want you to be extra careful with that.”
Suddenly it dawned on Oakley, and she recognized the faces she’d seen so often as a kid. “Is that one of the bands that you …?”
“Not one of the bands. It’s the band.” Mom gazed down at the faces in the locket. “You really don’t remember, do you?”
Scene 3: “The Meaning of Being Lonely”
Remember what? Oakley shook her head slowly, wondering what was going on as she watched her mom wander over to an armchair in the corner and plop down, still looking fondly at the necklace.
Mom was humming. Oakley recognized it instantly. “‘Sweet Sixteen?’ Mom. Come on. Those are not pictures of Girl Crazy.”
“Oh, yes, they are.”
Oakley went over and sat on the arm of the blue velvet chair and looked at the pictures. “You were a groupie for them?” She racked her brain trying to recall any facts about the band. Other than what she’d said to the female judge yesterday at the audition about Girl Crazy having a tragic plane crash, Oakley knew little else.
A groupie. For Girl Crazy. Her mom had been close to Girl Crazy. Well, no wonder Oakley had received an earful of their songs every Saturday morning for cleaning every weekend of her life.
“Not technically a groupie, I worked for the label.”
Like that was different.
Mom finally looked up from the locket at Oakley. “It’s been twenty-three years now.” A wistful sigh filled the air around her.
“When you were, what? Seventeen?” How did someone get a job like that at such a young age? All Oakley had after school was Board & Brush, which she should probably start getting ready for or she’d be late to work.
Mom popped the locket shut and stuffed it down her shirt.
What! Where was that supposed to go? In her bra? “Mom.”
“I want to show you something.” Mom got up. “Come with me.”
Oakley followed her back into the closet. This time it wasn’t clothing, it was another one of those green plastic tubs. This one had Sharpie writing on it: The Wonder Years. Wasn’t that one of those TV shows on that rerun channel? Or on Netflix? With that kid from The Princess Bride?
“Mom, don’t tell me you were a groupie for a television show, too.”
“What are you talking about?” Mom took the box and plopped down on the floor, snapping the lid open. “This is my memorabilia. From the band.”
From inside the box came so … much … stuff, all of it related to Girl Crazy. There were signed photos, an autographed CD, a picture of Mom and a cardboard standee of all four of the band members. Next came what looked like a program from a concert. Did bands even do that now? There was a Pepsi cup. A Diet Pepsi cup. A bendy straw—used. Ew. A bunch more junk nobody in their right mind would want, let alone keep for, what had she sai? Twenty-three years?
“Mom. Why do you still have thi
s?”
“Hon, do you know what yesterday was?” She looked lost in thought—again. What was going on with her mom? Usually she seemed so … normal. “Did you hear that guy talking on the radio about the vigil?”
Uh … “Mom, I don’t know where you’re going with all this.”
“They were far too young to die.” A sniffle, and then a hiccup. “They’d just cut their album, their first full album after having two consecutive mega-hits. It hadn’t launched yet, and then, it never did.”
Oh, those other two songs had been singles. Oakley probably already knew that, though she hadn’t really given it much thought. “No album, huh?”
“Not that anyone ever was allowed to hear. The label refused to release it out of respect for the dead.”
Well, if not, then that meant every person in the music business wasn’t full of money-grubbing jerks trying to give teenagers the shaft. At least that label hadn’t profited off a dead band or their tragedy. Take that, Sherm.
Mom filtered through the stacks of items in the box.
“The world was in love with Girl Crazy. Trust me, I was not the only girl crazy about Hudson Oaks.”
Hudson Oaks? Every time she’d heard his name in the past, she’d thought it sounded like a housing development with cookie cutter mini-mansions in upstate New York.
“He was endlessly dreamy. His eyes had this glint, you know? I mean, when he wasn’t wearing his sunglasses. Which was rare. But I saw him without them a few times.”
“Mom.” However, Oakley’s words didn’t bring Mom out of her memory trance. “Mom,” she tried again to no avail.
“When Hudson sang, I mean. Yeah. The world stopped spinning. His voice could turn a girl’s insides to molten lava.” Mom hugged her lower abdomen and shut her eyes. Oakley was getting uncomfortable. “I went to the Camas River Gorge every year on the anniversary of the plane crash, every October until I met Sherm. You remember, right? Camping out? Singing ‘Sweet Sixteen’ on the rocky bank with some other hopeful fans?”
“Is that who those people were?” Vague, fleeting memories from Oakley’s childhood wafted through her mind. Campfires, singing, marshmallows, throwing rocks in a wide river that Mom wouldn’t let her get too close to. “I thought we were camping with friends.”
“We knew he was coming back.”
The words made something in Oakley’s chest slam sideways. “Who? Who knew who was coming back? Mom? Mom!”
Mom let out a huge sigh. “They recovered all the other bodies from the plane crash. The pilot’s. The drummer Nick Sticks’s body, Chris the guitarist’s, Al—also called Alfonzo—the cute one who played the synthesizer and always wore cowboy boots. His body was all the way past Portland when it washed up on the banks. His family was relieved.” She blinked like she was getting emotional. “But Hudson’s family—they never got that catharsis.”
Oakley had to think for a minute to recall what the word catharsis meant. Oh, yeah—healing. Meanwhile, her skepticism-o-meter started pointing into the red zone. If this behavior of Mom’s didn’t fit under the groupie heading, nothing did.
Mom picked up a concert t-shirt. She turned it over and fingered the tour dates listed on the back. “They were scheduled for Seattle the following day. Their last concert was twenty-three years ago last night. In Portland. They went down at the Gorge. Engines caught fire. No survivors—or so they said officially.”
No survivors, oh! That was actually really sad, and Oakley’s heart softened when she put herself in her mom’s shoes. If Oakley had a band she really loved, and no one else in her life to be devoted to, like Mom’s world had been, she might get all mournful about a tragic celebrity death, too.
Maybe.
Okay, maybe not. Oakley was far too much of a realist for that. But it seemed like Mom was in genuine emotional pain even after all this time, so she didn’t allow herself to make light of it.
“But the one guy …” —the housing development guy— “… he was never found? But they said no survivors anyway?” He had to be the one in the single-picture side of Mom’s locket. Which was now lodged next to her heart. Ew.
“Not officially. They never declared him dead.” Mom sighed. “I was sure he would come back. I wished it on every wishing star. On every coin I threw in a fountain. On every birthday candle, wishbone, eyelash, salt over my shoulder …” Mom lost reality again for a second. Oakley processed the weirdness of this tidal wave of revelation while Mom pulled out a hiker’s map of the Camas River Gorge. It had little red Xs all over it. “I hiked the area. I didn’t trust the police to make a thorough search.”
“Mom.”
“Do you know, every single time I see the time eleven eleven on a clock, I stop and wish for Hudson’s return?”
Oakley looked at the ceiling. This obsession—how had Oakley not even known this huge part of her mother? Who was this stranger?
“I couldn’t believe it could be true. Something deep inside me told me I’d find him again. He was too important to me. To all of us.”
Watching the lingering sorrow mar Mom’s pretty face, Oakley marveled. Her mom suffered from an epic celebrity crush, even after two decades. It might have been kept hidden during their daily life, but it was obviously still in effect not too far beneath the surface.
“I thought you were living in Seattle most of your life, Mom.” It dawned on Oakley all at once—why not Seattle anymore, and why Wood River. It was the closest town to the Gorge area. She plunked down on Mom’s closet floor in a space between the old clothes and the weird knickknacks. “You left Seattle when the plane crashed? And you moved … where?”
“First to a tent city near the Gorge.”
A tent city! Oakley suppressed a gasp.
“I was there a long time. Until I met your father. Forest ranger.”
Whatever had slammed to the right side of Oakley’s chest earlier now slammed to the left. Forest ranger! Now this was useful information. How could Mom have kept it all this time and not told her? Oakley had wondered a thousand times a day her whole life. She’d asked and been denied access—until now. Oakley dropped her mouth open to hurl a hundred questions, but Mom was already talking.
“I could tell he thought I was a little crazy, but he helped me search the wreckage for a full summer, every night after he got off work.” She smiled softly, as if lost in the memory. “One thing led to another. I didn’t want to marry him, but he proposed. I said yes. We stood on the banks of the Camas River to take our vows.”
It was like someone was slapping Oakley’s face back and forth a hundred times. Mom had married a forest ranger who helped her search for a missing rock star. She gasped for breath. All this time, Oakley had conjured up thousands, maybe millions, of images of her father, never knowing, never being able to settle on anything.
Now—she had a uniform to put his ghost into. Olive pants, green t-shirt with a logo. She added a beard to his faceless form.
“And? It wasn’t happy?” Oakley managed to croak out. Why had Mom let Oakley miss her shot at knowing her dad all these years? What had gone so horribly wrong? She pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them tight.
“When I didn’t quit searching for Hudson after the wedding, your father got irritated. Then he got angry. Then he left. I signed the divorce papers, no contest. I could never make him happy, not the way I was then.”
Speaking of angry, anger raged up inside Oakley. Her mom, with this bizarre obsession with none other than a pop star had driven away her father.
Through clenched teeth she asked, “What was his name?”
“Who?” It was like Mom snapped out of her reverie. “I told you. Hudson Oaks. That’s why your name is Oakley.”
What!
Rage made Oakley’s blood instantly double in speed, and her heart pumped like she’d been running uphill for ten miles at full speed. “No, Mother. What’s my dad’s name?”
“Oh, you mean Derek? He was Derek Marsden. Ranger Derek Marsden. He was a nice perso
n.”
Nice. Person.
“He’s my father, Mom.”
“Yeah, well.” Mom gave a shrug, a helpless gesture, whether from apathy or resignation it didn’t matter to Oakley—she was made of fury at this moment.
“Why haven’t you ever told me about him? You’ve been keeping this from me all this time.”
“Our split …” Mom grimaced. “I said I didn’t contest the divorce. But I didn’t say I wasn’t bothered by it.”
“Bothered?” The word seemed too weak.
“Maybe embarrassed— no, mortified would be more accurate. I mean, I lost a good man.” She shrugged, like it was water under the bridge that could never be brought back. “It was my fault entirely. By the time you came along and were old enough to explain things to, I had realized that.”
She hadn’t told Oakley because she was embarrassed.
“Does he even know about me?” she asked through clenched teeth to prevent the scream from erupting.
Mom opened her mouth and shut it. Then seeming to sense Oakley’s tense state, she said, “You became my world. I thought we were enough for each other.”
“You didn’t tell him I exist.” Oakley got up and stormed out of the closet, away from the Wonder Years memorabilia, and the whole pile of crazy going on there.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“I have a job. A real one. Where I don’t have to dress like a floozy and throw myself at rock stars.”
“I tried to do everything I could for us to have a happy life, despite my mistakes.” Mom followed her. “I left my old self behind. I buried those outrageous clothes, that image. I went to school. I got a respectable job. I met and married Sherm.”
Sherm. Humph.
Mom was explaining, but she wasn’t begging forgiveness, like she ought to be doing.
“I’ll see you later.”
“Oakley, I love you. I want you to remember that.”
My 90s Boy Band Boyfriend: A YA Time Travel Rockstar Romance (Teen Queens Book 2) Page 4