Motorcycles, Sushi & One Strange Book

by Nancy N. Rue

  “So are you going to do it?” she said.

  “Do what?”

  “Eat the book.”

  “No, I’m not going to eat the book. That’s not what it means.”

  She folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. “What does it mean then?”

  I looked back at the page. A chill shivered up my spine– because I did know what it meant.

  “I’m supposed to, like, read it the way you eat food. So it gets inside me.”

  Weezie tossed her bob. “I don’t get it.”

  Neither did I, totally. But the weird thing was, I wanted to.

  Weezie’s only good quality was that she slept like she was dead. I turned on the light and polished my toenails and ate Rice Krispies, and she never even rolled over. I could have picked her up and carried her outside and she wouldn’t have woken up. I was tempted.

  I think the only thing that kept me from doing that was the RL book. I took it out into the kitchen and dropped it on the counter and then just looked at it.

  There was definitely something weird going on with the thing if I could understand it. That was something I’d envied in Chelsea and Marcus and every other person I’d ever sat in a classroom with who opened books and read them as easily as I opened potato chip bags and ate. If I could have done that, it would have made my whole life different. The only reason I didn’t snatch this book back up again was because I was afraid that it had only been my imagination–that I would open it and find out that as usual it was just words that wouldn’t mean anything in the next breath.

  It wasn’t a good enough reason. I grabbed it and opened it to a random page and stood by the light from the oven hood and read.

  He traveled to several different towns, but Capernaum was basically his central location.

  Already a word I didn’t know–Caper-where? I almost closed the book right then, except that the next sentence explained it:

  Don’t get hung up on the name. For now, just know he went to real places that you could still go to today. He wasn’t just a figment of somebody’s imagination.

  I got another chill. Okay–was this book reading my mind? Either that or I was losing it.

  He was teaching, and the people were blown away. They were used to teachers who used bigger words than Capernaum and took every sentence apart and made everything so confusing the students’ eyes glazed over.

  I heard that.

  But this man–he taught so they could actually understand it–as if he understood it–as if he knew it so well it was him.

  “You’re going to have to run that by me again,” I said out loud.

  He didn’t say, “This might mean this or it might mean that.” He said, “It is this. Live it. Do it. Be it.”

  I still didn’t totally get it–

  Read on and you’ll understand what that means.

  I hiked myself up on the kitchen counter. This was getting freaky. I considered putting the whole book down the garbage disposal. But I read more. Because I could.

  In the meeting place where he was teaching and people were hanging on every word, there was a guy who was mentally disturbed. As in psycho. He stood up and screamed, “Hey! What’s up with you, Yeshua? You Nazarene!”

  Nazarene? Was that some kind of put-down?

  “Nazarene” meant Yeshua was from Nazareth. Like if you’re from Alabama, you’re an Alabaman. Nazareth was a Podunk town, so this was like calling him a redneck. Anyway, this guy kept yelling like he was possessed, “I know what you’re doing! You’re the Holy One, and you’re here to take us down!” He was saying all this stuff right in the middle of church. You’d think the ushers would’ve escorted him out of there, but Yeshua said, “Be quiet. Come out of him.”

  Who was he talking to?

  See, the guy was possessed by a demon. Maybe we’d call it the schizophrenic demon or the psychopath demon, but whatever it was, it did what it was told. It threw the guy down on the floor in front of everyone and it left. Now here was this “crazy person”–probably homeless, out screaming nonsense on the street an hour before–suddenly sane, just because this Yeshua told his psycho-demon to get out.

  The people who saw what happened were completely flabbergasted. Somebody who spoke and something actually happened? He could just order an evil spirit to come out and it did? It was like he was the words he was speaking. Nobody could stop talking about it.

  Ya think?

  I closed the book and sighed and slid off the counter. Too bad this was just a story. If it were real, I’d be calling this Yeshua person up and sending him to UAB Hospital.

  The only other good thing about Weezie was that she got up early, and I was left in the coma I’d finally gone into around three in the morning. Lou didn’t come in and pull the curtains open, and I slept until the sun was way up. Then I took a long shower, just to avoid having breakfast with Daddy and his little girl. Maybe they’d go off and do something and let me do my thing. I still hadn’t gotten down to the ocean, and I was starting to believe I’d only dreamed that it was out there. Besides that, there was the RL book. I wasn’t sure now that it hadn’t been a dream too, and I wanted to find out.

  But Lou and Weezie were in the Everything Room when I tried to slip through to the kitchen without them seeing me. They were on the couch with their backs to me, Weezie kind of sideways, probably with her legs draped over his lap, and both of them chatting away like they’d been saving up things to tell each other.

  A pang went through me–sort of like what I felt the one time I didn’t get invited to THE sleepover back in sixth grade. The way I felt when Chelsea and Marcus talked about Christmas at their houses, while I pretended mine with my mom was just as good. The way I felt when they threatened to put me in the special ed. class…

  I shook myself away from that. Weird that I should feel it now. I didn’t want to be part of Lou and Weezie’s daddy-daughter thing. I wanted to get away from it.

  I made it to the kitchen and then stood there wondering how I was going to open the refrigerator without them hearing me. It was in that moment of stillness that Weezie said, “You know what I think?”

  “Do I have a choice?” Lou said.

  “No. You don’t. I don’t know, like, for sure, because I’ve only known her for–”

  “Two hours?” Lou said. I could hear that chuckle thing in his voice.

  “I just spent a whole night with her, Dad. She’s all hyper and unless she’s taking drugs–”

  “Weezie.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  She stopped as if she were pouting. Good. I didn’t appreciate being discussed before I even had my eyes completely open.

  “Don’t say anything if you don’t know it’s true,” Lou said.

  “Then I’ll ask it like a question. Do you think Jessica has ADHD?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘You little liar! Shut up!”

  By the time those words had been screamed out, I was standing in front of Lou and Weezie, breathing like a freight train. Weezie hugged a couch pillow–as if that was going to protect her–but she was nodding like the little know-it-all she was.

  “I knew it, Daddy,” she said.

  “You don’t know anything about me!” I screamed at her. “So just–”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Lou folded Weezie’s legs back into her own lap and stood up.

  I backed away from him so he wouldn’t touch me. I knew I’d smack him if he did. He put up both hands and shook his head.

  “Relax–we’re cool,” he said.

  “We are not cool! She’s a lying little brat–”

  “I am not! You’re crazy!”

  “I’m crazy?” I shouted at her, until I could feel the veins in my forehead popping out. “You’re the one who’s–possessed!”

  “All right, enough,” Lou said.

  He turned to Weezie, who was by now standing on the couch, holding the pillow like a shield. I didn’t know if he saw it, but the I-just-won-this-round shimmer in her e
yes was clear to me.

  “Sit down,” he said to her.

  “Make her back off me!”

  “I said sit down.”

  His voice got lower with every word, but it dropped Weezie to her seat. It did not, however, shut her up.

  “I’m not staying if she’s gonna be here, Daddy,” she said.

  “Not a problem!” I said. “You can have your ‘Daddy’ all to yourself. I’m gone.”

  Where I was going, I had no clue. I just turned around and fumbled with the latch on the glass door until I could slide it wide enough to get out, and then I ran–across the deck and down a set of steps and up a narrow road past an apartment building–all in bare feet. When I hit sand, there was a wooden walkway with railings so I took that too, running and stumbling and choking on the sobs I was not going to let through my throat if it killed me. The way it hurt–it just might.

  Why hadn’t I tossed that kid into a dumpster in the night when I had the chance? All I wanted her to do was hate me. I didn’t expect her to out me. She could have said anything else in the world to make Lou send me home. She could have told him I was a serial killer for all I cared, but not that I had a “disorder,” not that I was a mental case–like my mom.

  My side was about to split when I got to a turn in the wooden walkway and I had to stop, doubled over, to catch my breath. I wanted to keep running away from the memory that was pounding in my head, but it wasn’t working anyway. It was right there in front of me, just like it was the day it happened.

  That doctor in the emergency room after my car accident wasn’t the first one to tell my mother I had Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. He was just the only one who threatened to call child protective services if she didn’t do something about it–since I was obviously a danger to myself and others. She had to sign a statement saying she would give me medication and get me special help.

  I didn’t think she’d really go through with it. Nobody told my mother what to do, especially when she was in a No-Bed Phase, which she was at that point. But there must have been something on that paper that freaked her out, because Monday morning she was at the middle school, and three days later we were all in some kind of meeting that had initials–who knows. The guidance counselor and the district psychiatrist and two teachers talked to my mother about me like I wasn’t there. I drifted off into my own mind-thing until somebody said the words “special ed.”

  I almost turned the table over coming out of the chair. I was already yelling before I got to my feet–and that shrink was already scribbling stuff on his little form. Even at the time I wasn’t sure what I was screaming at them all, but it was something about not being stupid and not belonging in a special classroom.

  It didn’t matter that they kept saying special education didn’t mean I was stupid, that it just meant I “needed some assistance in dealing with my special challenges.” I don’t care what anybody says, no kid wants to be “special,” especially not a twelve-year-old girl who already feels like she’s walking through a pillow because of the drugs they’re giving her.

  My mother told me later that, as usual, I had acted like a two-year-old. At least I’d progressed to eight years old in her eyes by the time I was fifteen–but at the time she said she didn’t think I needed any special help, thank you very much, and that she would deal with me on her own. But when one of the teachers said they couldn’t guarantee that I would ever graduate from high school if she didn’t address my issues, Mom actually folded. She told me to wait out in the hall–which was where I was, right in front of that door that said Special Education Department, when Chelsea and Grace showed up and stared at me and stared at the sign as if it said, “Anyone standing here is untouchable.”

  “What were you doing in there?” Grace said to me.

  “I wasn’t in there,” I said. Lying was always my first option back then.

  “Then why are you standing here?”

  I opened my mouth, but nothing would come out, not even a big fat lie. I was frozen by the disgust that was already curling up her lip, and worse than that, the suspicion that narrowed Chelsea’s eyes. My best friend’s eyes. The best friend I wouldn’t have if I turned out to be “special.”

  “I’m going to be an aide for one of the teachers,” I blurted out.

  For the longest moment of my life they continued to stare at me while I silently begged the door not to open, pleaded in my mind for my mother not to come out and destroy my seventh-grade life completely. And then the moment ended and Chelsea said, “That’s cool.”

  Grace moved away a couple of weeks later. Then I only had Chelsea to fool every time I had to go check in with the special ed. teacher whose name I refused to learn. At least I didn’t have to go to special classes. At least it only lasted for the rest of that school year, and then my mother got mad at the way they were doing things and I didn’t get special help anymore. But no one can say something that threatens your social existence at twelve goes away at thirteen or fourteen or fifteen. It was there, always–the lip curling, the name-calling that could start at any moment if somebody found out.

  And now somebody had.

  I pulled my forehead up from the railing, ready to run away again, and that’s when I saw it. The ocean. Stretching out just beyond the hills of scrub brush and sand I’d been cutting through on the walkway. Sparkling its eyes at me. Begging me to come and see.

  I did. Only I didn’t run this time, because I didn’t want to look away from that ocean as I made my way to it. I never knew there were so many shades of blue, like the sky was melting into the water and leaving its trail of color behind until it washed up on the sand with only a memory of blueness in it. All that blue was rolling toward me and then curling back on itself. I had to get to it before it rushed away for good.

  I didn’t stop until the water was slipping over my toes, cold and foamy. Then I just stood there and let it talk to me.

  Come on–jump in–I’ll take you away–I’ll bring you back–I’ll take you away…

  I was in up to my knees, the waves teasing at the hems of my shorts, before I heard the growl of an engine. When I turned around, Levi was coming toward me, right down the hardpacked sand. Only the unbelievable fact that Lou was driving on the beach kept me from diving into the surf and swimming for China. That and the absence of Weezie on the seat behind him. I had the random thought that the white helmet with the pink rose on it must be hers. I reminded myself never to wear it again. Not that Lou would be taking me anywhere on his motorcycle, now that he had the suggestion in his head that I was “challenged.”

  Lou stopped the bike about six feet from the water’s edge and turned off the engine and removed his helmet. He hung it on the handlebar like he was going to stay for a while and climbed off. I groaned inside when he pried off his boots and rolled up his jeans to his knees.

  With no place to go, I watched him wade into the water and stop just close enough so I could hear him say, “You came to the right place.”

  I grunted.

  “This is where I always come when it gets to be too much. I should have brought you down here sooner, but it’s been a little–”

  He stopped, but I knew he’d been about to say “crazy.” The fact that he wasn’t saying it made me feel more like a freak than ever. It was like me saying nuts on the psych ward.

  “I guess you’re mad because I yelled at your kid,” I said.

  “It was interesting to see Weezie meet her match,” Lou said.

  I stared at him. What did it take to make this man go off?

  “Listen,” he said, “I think it was too soon to put you two together. I shouldn’t have done that, and I apologize.”

  “You apologize?” I said.

  “Yeah. You’ve had too much at one time, and I didn’t prepare her like I should have either. I messed up, and I’m sorry.”

  In spite of myself, I said, “I don’t get it.”

  He shot up an eyebrow. “What’s to get? I made a mistake and I�
�m asking you to forgive me.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes, way. I don’t understand, Jess.”

  I leaned over and splashed some water out to sea. “I just never had an adult tell me they were sorry, that’s all.” Usually it was them telling me I needed to apologize to somebody else. Now that happened a lot.

  “So you’re expecting me to tell you to apologize to Weezie.”

  “Yes, and you can save your breath. No offense, but she shouldn’t have said that about me–that I was crazy and weird.”

  “No, she shouldn’t have. Nor should you have said she was a lying little brat. I’d say you came out about even.”

  “Good,” I said. “So you’re not going to try to make me tell her I’m sorry.”

  “Are you sorry?”

  “No.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t say it until you mean it. The same goes for her. I hope that’ll happen at some point, but it isn’t going to be today.”

  “Yeah, well, about today.” I swung my foot back and forth through the water and watched some foam collect on my leg. “I don’t think I can be around her without getting in her face, unless she just doesn’t talk to me. Or about me. Like that’s gonna happen.”

  “That won’t be an issue. Her mom came and got her.”

  I felt my eyes spring open.

  “I told Weezie the same thing I told you–this was too much too soon, and we’ll try it again next weekend.”

  I grunted again. “I bet she pitched a fit.”

  “She tried. We worked it out.”

  “Okay, so, like, are you even human?”

  He broke into a sun-squinty smile. “What makes you ask that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You know how to bodysurf?”

  “Huh?”

  “Bodysurf. Ride the waves in.”

  All I could do was shake my head at him.

  “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  I so did not want to do that–or anything else he suggested– but he acted like I’d just said, “Yippee, Daddy!” He looked over his shoulder, toward the horizon, and put a hand up like a stop sign. “We have to wait for just the right one,” he said. “Not too big, not too small–”