I settled on my old-school kicks, oversized hoodie, and ripped jeans. I’d worn these faded Levis so often, there was a hole in the left pocket. No matter how many times I told myself not to slip quarters in there, I did anyway. But these jeans molded to me in a loose kind of way, blending in so I forgot they were there. They fit me perfectly, and they were great as long as you didn’t look too close.
5 : Palm Leaves
The Metrorail rattled above US-1, carrying me south. A trampled McDonald’s bag slid back and forth under my feet. The little girl in the next seat was pressed against the window, watching the traffic slide by. She combed her toy pony with such determination, she almost ripped out its mane. I smiled and she smiled back.
My styrofoam cup of café con leche had gone cold. I chewed on the cup, chiseling half-moons in the rim, glanced out the bleary window and watched the strip malls whiz past. They were already decked out for Halloween: black cats and smiling ghosts, witches and scarecrows.
In elementary school, I learned the alphabet and multiplication tables. I learned about legends and mythology. I learned that motion is measured in distance and time.
I did not learn how to make friends. At least, none who stuck around long.
There was Mark Wienman, who taught me dirty words in Latin. Dave Brieske, who believed that the moon landing was fake. The kid down the street, Danny-what’s-his-name. We played Quake at his house a couple times before I moved. Danny had a bearded dragon for a pet. He fed it live crickets that he carried in a bag puffed with air. The crickets always escaped. You could hear them chirping in the downstairs den.
My teachers blabbed on and on about building the perfect track record: urging me to take A.P. Spanish, play the trumpet, try out for soccer, whatever looked good on my transcript. Except that I didn’t give a shit about college. That’s all I needed: more school, stuck in a dorm filled with wall-to-wall idiots, trapped in a place I couldn’t leave.
Dad used to march down the hall, storm into my bedroom, and launch into speech after speech about time wasted on the computer.
“It’s a nice day. Why are you spending it holed up in here?” he would say, sitting on the edge of my bed, gawking at the posters on the wall: Green Day’s heart-shaped grenades.
So I bought a lock for my door.
Dad didn’t get it. I sucked at sports, a fact that he was forced to acknowledge no matter where we moved. At one school, everybody worshipped the baseball team, like they were gods with lightning bolts instead of wooden bats. They wore jerseys to class on game days so everybody would look at them and stand in awe of their specialness.
The same thing happened at the next school, and the next. Replace baseball with football or basketball. Same deal. If you could kick a ball or whack it with a stick, everything was cool. This meant two things:
I had no social life.
I was a nonentity.
In ninth grade at Palm Hammock, I met Collin, who rode the bus with me. Collin kept a box of fireworks in his garage, and when he finally learned to drive, we cruised to the boat ramp at night and blew shit up. One time, we brought a bunch of old G.I. Joes. We propped Snake Eyes on a rock, stuffed a firecracker between his legs, and watched him sputter and pop. Collin documented the event with his video camera.
“That’s awesome, man. Nice and burnt,” he said in this lispy monotone. “Yo. Throw me the lighter.”
We dropped the remaining G.I. Joes in an empty Gatorade bottle. Crunched up balls of tinfoil and crammed them in, too. Doused the mess with Works toilet cleaner from the Dollar Store, shook the bottle until it melted and fumed. Then boom. We ran like hell. Collin would fling a Works bomb into the air at the last possible second, while I crouched behind a stump, plugging my fingers in my ears.
Collin wasn’t a jock, but he had this weird obsession with ultimate frisbee. As far as I could tell, girls mostly ignored him, although this one skinny senior chick, Ali Brewer, asked him to prom, and he never shut up about it.
I said, “So what? I heard she asked everybody in the whole damn school.”
“Yeah, well, the most you’ve done is … Let’s see. Make out with a girl you met on the Internet, thanks to the profile I set up for you.”
It was Collin who introduced me to weed. He got it from his brother, who got it from who knows where. We’d smoke up in the parking lot before first period. Collin said it would chill me out. Mr. Future Med Student could ramble on for hours about the molecular structure of marijuana and its effects on the brain.
It’s embarrassing to admit this, but I’d been having panic attacks at school. At least, that’s how Collin diagnosed me. I’d be sitting at my desk, staring at the back of Kelsey McCormick’s head, and then I would die in slow motion. That’s what it felt like. My chest would tighten, my lungs would explode as I struggled to inhale-exhale. Everybody was breathing my air. It felt like they were laughing at me, as if my thoughts were broadcast on the TV along with the morning announcements.
It was worse during PE. In the locker room, the jocks would pound me, leaving purple bruises that didn’t fade for days. I ducked into a stall when I had to change into my gym clothes. I was so freaked out, I didn’t even bother to shower. Just walked around smelling like ass for the rest of the day.
Guess I was having some kind of nervous breakdown. Between the stuff going on at school, my dad basically living in a war zone, and everybody else telling me to figure out my life in the next five minutes, I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. I’d talk a teacher into giving me a bathroom pass, then waste time hiding in there. I’d crank all the faucets and listen to the water spurting out just to block the noise inside my head.
After a while, I started smoking during school. I’d sneak off to the parking lot and take a hit during lunch. Then another the minute I got home. It was like I couldn’t function without it. Word somehow got out among the low-level smokers that I was the one to see if you needed a few hits for the weekend. I never sold much, just if I had extra from Collin’s brother’s hookup. Of course, nobody invited me to parties or anything, but some of the girls acted real nice. This one chick, Danica Stone, would stroke my arm during math class. It felt amazing, her long fingers sliding up and down.
Obviously, my social life was a joke. I used to buy these lameass books about magic and sleight-of-hand, hoping my card tricks would impress girls. I never got a chance to find out.
Collin wasn’t much help. The farthest he ever drove was the mall. I’d slump in the food court, watching him scarf frozen yogurt while he explained why I should cut my hair. He didn’t know the truth. The techno he blasted in his car made me want to vomit. When he dragged me to thrift stores and wedged my bare feet into a pair of broken-down boots, I smelled dead grandfathers in those places and my pulse jumped. Besides, nothing ever fit me.
We used to skate in the park together, until Collin said he was “too old” for it a few years later. Really, he was just lazy. We called ourselves the Two Amigos. He didn’t know that I only sat with him at lunch because we had gone through freshman and sophomore years together, riding the bus with those older boys, the ones that slunk around, looking for a way to break you.
When you’re little, everyone tells you to “be yourself,” as if these words could solve all your problems. They don’t tell you the truth: nobody really wants you to be yourself.
“So this thing about you joining the military. It’s bogus, right?” Collin asked, as we roamed the aisles at Walmart, our only source of amusement at three in the morning.
My family had been pressuring me to join the armed forces. Go directly to boot camp, do not pass go. Why the hell not? I came from a clan of military men. I had to live up to their standards, even if I secretly doubted that I could ever please them.
I inspected a Snackmaster All-In-One Dehydrator. “Check it out. You can make your own beef jerky.”
“Nice way to change the subject,” Collin said.
“Maybe I don’t feel like talking about this right now.” I hid the Snackmaster inside a barbeque grill display, which was decorated with plastic hamburger patties.
“You never talked about it before,” Collin said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not exactly my definition of a hero.”
“Gee. Thanks,” I said, kicking a shopping cart across the linoleum. “You’re not my idea of an Ivy Leaguer.”
“Oh snap. Sweet comeback,” said Collin, grabbing hold of the cart and pushing it out the door. I followed him into the empty parking lot. Collin was right. I’d always fantasized about busting the bad guys, but that didn’t mean I could hack it. Half of my uncles were army guys. It was the default option, according to Collin, who was graduating a year ahead of me. He wouldn’t stop bragging about his acceptance letter from Tufts.
He started slicking back his hair. He wore aftershave that reeked like floor cleaner and when I called, he wasn’t home. On the rare occasion we hung out, there wasn’t much to say.
“Man, I can’t wait to get out of here,” Collin said, climbing into the cart.
“What? Walmart?”
“This,” he said, spreading out his arms. “You want to end up like them?” He jabbed a finger at the trucks crawling along the turnpike.
“I’m just sick of school,” I said, giving the cart a shove.
“I hear that,” Collin said. “But your grades don’t suck. What’s the deal?”
“It’s not about grades.”
School never fazed me. It was the space in between, the lunchrooms and PE fields, the faces in the hall, that left me numb.
“You better start pumping iron,” Collin said.
I pushed the cart a little faster. “Why?”
“Because the army is going to kick your ass.”
I smashed my weight into the cart. Collin jumped off just as it tipped and slammed into a creek behind the parking lot. It sat there, half-submerged in muddy water, its wheels spinning around and around.
That was the last time I talked to Collin, my so-called best friend. I tried calling his house. He never called back. His mom said he’d gone shopping for dorm stuff: a coffee maker and a duvet. I juggled the word duvet in my brain until it made no sense.
I got off the train at Dadeland South Station and hustled across the busy intersection. The air smelled like car exhaust and the sweet smoke of burning meat, thanks to the BBQ spot nearby. When the light changed, I made a mad dash to the bookstore. A Lexus blared its horn, as if I was committing some crime by crossing the street.
When I walked inside the bookstore, it felt like everybody was watching me, from the white-haired woman checking out the Monet calendars, to the Little League boy in the café practicing his times tables. No sign of Morgan and her Cleopatra hair.
I circled around the entire store, then I finally saw her at a table, slurping coffee from one of those complicated, dome-shaped cups from Starbucks. She wore a pair of wooden flip-flops and a dress so frilly it swallowed her whole. The buttons below her neck were shaped like butterflies. I spent a lot of time staring at them as walked toward her.
Morgan had a bunch of art magazines spread across the table, along with her sketchbook. Its pages had swollen it to almost twice its natural size. I took out a pen and drew a smiley face on the cover.
“Hey. No vandalizing,” she said, smacking me away. “Don’t you realize that you’re breaking the law?”
“How so?”
“You’re BYOCing in a bookstore.”
I pulled up a chair. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Bringing your own coffee.”
My fingers curled around the styrofoam cup. “Keep it a secret.”
“It’s cool. I’m on a first-name basis with the entire staff.” As if to prove her point, she waved to the dude at the coffee counter. He was counting change without looking up. “Here’s a present for you,” she said, slipping a rubber band around my wrist. She held her hand there for a second. “Fits perfectly.”
“Thanks,” I said, then looked around some more. “What’s the story?”
“I worked here last summer. But I got axed.”
“For what?
She grinned. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
“So it’s like that, huh?”
She mashed her hands together and bent forward. “Afraid so,” she whispered. “I was stealing books.”
“That takes balls. I mean, who robs a freaking bookstore?”
“It wasn’t really stealing. I was borrowing,” she said, flicking her straw at me.
“Nice. That hit me in the ear,” I told her. “By the way … this is a store. Not a library. You’re supposed to buy things.”
Morgan gnawed her straw. “I’m not a big believer in capitalism.”
“So what’s up with the long dress?” I asked. Not the slickest move in the world. Why couldn’t I shut up while I was ahead?
Her neck turned red. She was even cuter when she blushed. “It’s freezing in here, right?”
“Not really,” I said, confused.
“Don’t you love my ensemble?” she blurted out. “It’s so Little House on the Prairie. I got it at Miami Twice on Bird Road. You should go there sometime.”
“Sure,” I said. Yeah. I should’ve just tattooed these words on my forehead: I. Have. No. Game.
“Let’s blow this joint,” she said, grabbing her bag and scattering the avalanche of magazines on the floor. I noticed a photo on the front cover of TIME: an American soldier leaping out of a helicopter, caught between the plane and the desert, stuck, frozen in the moment. I flipped it open and found Dad’s name in the credits. My stomach burned, like I was about to start crying or throw up or both, if that’s possible.
Dad never let me touch his cameras, which were decorated with strips of masking tape and “A+.” I thought this was some kind of positive-thinking trick, like a pep talk. When I asked about it, he said, “No, son. That’s my blood type.”
The guy behind the counter glared.
“Could you pick that up?” he asked. He wasn’t really asking.
“We could,” said Morgan. She still didn’t move. It was almost funny, but I didn’t feel like laughing.
The bookstore dude was pissed. “Now. Pick it up.”
“Isn’t that your job?”
He stared at her.
“For god’s sake.” She reached down and plopped the magazines on the table. A bunch of people turned around and shushed us.
“Yo. I’m calling the manager,” the guy said, grabbing the phone.
“Whatever,” said Morgan.
“Okay, troublemaker,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
By this time, my ears were tingling and I couldn’t find the door fast enough.
“So you’ve traveled around a lot?” asked Morgan, as we made our way through the sweltering parking lot.
I got the feeling she was trying to place me in some category and couldn’t settle on one yet.
We climbed into her “suburban assault vehicle,” a dented Ford Explorer. The bumper was plastered with faded stickers—everything from the Miami Dade Humane Society to Apple computers, along with local bands like Poison the Well and Jacuzzi Boys. If I could’ve given Morgan a heads-up, I’d tell her to keep her car clean, but I wasn’t there to dish out warnings.
I climbed into the passenger seat, scrambling over a heap of crumpled soda cans.
“Sorry about the mess.” Morgan cranked the engine and rolled down the windows, just a crack. A blast of heavy bass squirted out of the radio speakers, what my old band teacher would’ve called a crescendo. “Is this one of those pirate radio stations?” She winced. “They play this
song like a hundred times a day.”
“You call this a song?” I snorted. “Sounds like the seventh circle of hell.”
“Never heard of them. Were they on Total Request Live?” She asked. I couldn’t tell if she was joking. She popped the glove box, rustled around inside, pulled out a tiny sandwich bag and something metallic, as slim as a credit card.
“Ever read The Divine Comedy?” I asked.
“Nope,” she said, sprinkling weed into the circular dent at the end of the card. “Is it funny?”
“Hilarious.”
“That would make a great name for my band … if I had a band.” Morgan jerked the steering wheel and made an illegal U-turn out of the parking lot. She reached for her tote bag, found a Zippo that said South Beach in fancy cursive. When she lit up, the damp vegetable smell of pot hung heavy in the car.
Man, I could’ve used a hit. This girl was making me nervous. She was on another level I could never hope to reach.
“I’m trying to get a band going,” she said before lapsing into a fit of deathlike coughing. “Basically, I had a band. Past tense. It was just Skully playing the piano and me singing. Sort of like Mates of State. Only we sucked.”
I nodded like I understood.
“And we were, like, eight years old,” she added. “That’s why I hang out with Skully. Our checkered pasts.”
Morgan smile wickedly and dangled the pipe in front of me. A million thoughts raced through my mind: What if we got pulled over? What if she crashed?
“I’ll pass.”
“You sure?” She waved it back and forth, as if trying to hypnotize me. “Aren’t you the boy who’s always drawing pot leaves on your notebook?”
“That’s just for show.”
Morgan twisted around to look at me. “I know the truth, right?”
“What’s that?”
She grinned. “You’re really a narc.”
The car grew quiet.
I tried to laugh, but the air got caught in my throat. “I just don’t smoke when I’m drinking.”
Narc Page 4