by Laura Ruby
That’s what Tony tells me.
Tony runs the place.
“What’s your guess?” he says. He’s tall or medium or short and he’s got black or brown or blond hair.
“What?” I say.
“About the wreck? What do you think it is, kid? A Chevy? A Nissan?”
“I don’t know,” I say, the answer to every question since the accident.
Tony shakes his head, tucks an unlit cigarette into the corner of his thick/thin mouth, and punches a number into an ancient computer. It makes a wheezing noise and belches up a location.
“Ford Explorer, model year 2003, registered to one Edward Rochester,” Tony says. “Lot C, row 7, slot 43. Too bad for you. I bet it was a chick magnet.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Chick magnet.”
Tony switches the cigarette to the other side of his mouth. “So, Ed. What were you doing? Looking at some girl crossing the street when you should have been watching the road?”
“What?”
Tony squinches his black/blue/yellow eyes at me. “What happened to your car?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
Tony stares as if I might be suffering from head injuries. (I do have that ladder of stitches on my forehead, the black eye.) But then he shrugs. Tony’s only making conversation; Tony couldn’t care less. He tells me if I can’t guess the Wreck of the Week, I can buy a cap for $15.99 and a T-shirt for $9.99. The Nirvana tow trucks are $24.99, perfect for gifts. Do I have a little brother? Little brothers love them.
“Or,” he says, “maybe you’re interested in some earrings.” He gestures to the wall behind him. Sure enough, there are rows of earrings pinned to a Styrofoam board. Some have teeny Nirvana trucks dangling from silver wire. “My wife makes them. For your mom, maybe?”
I say, “I don’t have a mom.”
Tony blinks. “Everybody has a mom.”
“Okay, I have a mom, but she doesn’t play one on TV.”
“Huh. Well. That’s…” Tony shakes his head in confusion and then decides to cut his losses. He leads me outside and points. “Lot C, third lot on your left. Rows and slots are marked.”
I see nothing but acres of mangled metal.
“Trust me. You’ll find what you’re looking for. Everyone does.”
I start walking. I expect Bodhi the bath mat dog to herd me, but I guess his job is done. I pass a new Beetle, midnight blue, smashed on the front passenger side and missing both back tires. The right headlight has been plucked neatly from the socket, like a diseased eye.
I keep walking. A Honda Accord looks perfect from one side, but when I make it around to the other, I see that the back door has somehow been ripped off. There’s an Infiniti with weird punctures all over the body, as if a pissed-off pro-wrestler had a tantrum with a pickax. A bunch of cars with no damage at all that I can see, ones that must be broken on the inside.
Nirvana is the place where cars go to die.
The place is a scene waiting to happen. I want to film it all. My fingers curl, itching for my camera. But I don’t have my camera. It’s in my car, along with the rest of my life.
I’m here to get it back.
Tony’s right, the car’s easy to find. The lot numbers are marked with signs, and the rows and slots are spray-painted in safety orange on the crispy grass. Lot C, row 7, slot 43. A black Explorer registered to one Edward Rochester, chick magnet. I thought that SUVs were supposed to get the better of car crashes, but not mine. The front end looks like a failed experiment with origami. The back end has the perfect imprint of the mattress truck that had done its best to crawl up my ass. Broken glass shimmers on the seats and floors. There are big smears of blood on the steering wheel and on the dash. At the hospital they told me that head wounds bleed more than anything else, which is why I looked like something out of a news report on Iraq.
I open the only door I can, the front passenger door. Amazingly, all my stuff’s still here. My laptop’s in three pieces, which can’t be good. I peer into the backseat, at the piles of extra clothes, the shoes, now damp from when it must have rained (except I don’t remember any rain). Pages from my show binders are everywhere, littering the whole interior with white. I see Riot Girl 16 notes, scripts, equipment lists, all that stuff. I can’t open the trunk without a crowbar, but I know what’s in there. A microphone, spotlights, extra batteries for the laptop, about a thousand pens and pencils, blank cue cards, and the camera.
I’m here for all of that. But I’m also here for a CD, the one with “The Girl from Ipanema.” I want that book I promised to read but never did. And I’m here for the tennis racket, the good luck racket, the racket I used when I won that one time.
I have a duffel bag with me. I sit in the passenger seat, the empty bag on my lap. I should be cramming it with stuff, packing up the bits and pieces of my life, putting Humpty back together. But all I can think is: What will I do with a laptop in three pieces? With a tennis racket? With the lights or any of it? The video camera alone cost sixteen hundred dollars. I should go back to the office, get a crowbar, and get that camera. But I can’t. I’m too tired. My stitches itch. None of this feels like mine anymore. It feels like someone else’s wreck. Like some black, burned-out hulk you see on the side of the road and you think, Huh. I wonder what happened to that guy.
I get out of the car. I glance around at the other cars and think about the people they belonged to. (I know, I know: “It’s about time you thought of other people, Eddy.”) Were they hurt? Did they lose an eye or an ear or an arm? Can they walk? Are they dead? Are they around here somewhere, hiding behind the Toyota or the Buick, saying, Hey, guys, get a load of this one, coming back to the car graveyard to get all his crappy, broken stuff. What the hell does he think he’s going to do with it? What the hell does he think it means?
I back away from the car that’s not mine anymore. All the other cars are looking at me—I swear, they are looking at me—waiting to see what I’m going to do.
I drop the duffel bag. I turn and walk past the acres of mangled metal back to the front office, where I buy a Nirvana cap, a toy truck, and a pair of earrings. $54.97 plus tax. I put on the cap. I sit out front to wait for the cab that Tony called for me. I sit and wait for the real story to begin.
Acknowledgments
One of the cool things about being a writer is that you can spend hours and hours watching movies and call it research. Thanks to the many filmmakers who work so hard to bring us their visions—whether they appear on YouTube or the big screen. Thanks also to Clarissa Hutton, Ellen Levine, Anne Ursu, Gretchen Moran Laskas, Carolyn Crimi, Esther Hershenhorn, Myra Sanderman, Esme Raji Codell, Franny Billingsly, Rosemary Graham, Audrey Glassman Vernick, Tanya Lee Stone, Tania Ortiz, and Mary Roach, for writing the Meatball’s favorite book, Stiff. Thanks especially to JFMBH, who specifically requested a book about a player who gets his heart crushed/smashed/totally annihilated (maybe she was a little angry at the time). And, as always, thanks to Steve.
About the Author
LAURA RUBY lives in Chicago with her family. When she’s not writing, she’s watching tennis tournaments, Hitchcock films, Forensic Files, and Law & Order reruns. She is also the author of GOOD GIRLS and several books for children and adults. You can visit her online at www.lauraruby.com.
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Also by
Laura Ruby
GOOD GIRLS
For Younger Readers
LILY’S GHOSTS
THE WALL AND THE WING
THE CHAOS KING
Credits
Jacket photo of camcorder © 2008 by Ali Smith
Jacket photo of couple © 2008 by STOCK4B/Getty Images
Jacket design by Amy Ryan
Copyright
PLAY ME. Copyright © 2008 by Laura Ruby. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusiv
e, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition March 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-188462-7
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