Mary’s best friend, Jessica, looked disinterested in everyone. She stared around the park, continually fussing with her dyed black pixie cut. She was cheerleader pretty, but wore a hipster uniform of Converse sneakers, faded jeans, and a thrift-store-chic Smurfette T-shirt. She did flash a big smile that dimpled her cheeks and wrinkled her cute-as-a-button nose, but her green eyes were stamped with the same judgmental expression as Mary’s and she didn’t deign to speak to us either.
Craig sat on the other side of Christian. When Harlan introduced him as Mary’s older brother I did a double take. They didn’t look related. Craig was on the pudgy side, had much lighter hair, and his plump cheeks were spotted with freckles. Upon closer examination, I noticed that Mary covered her freckles with a thick layer of makeup and Craig bleached his hair. His dark brown roots matched his sister’s shade. Craig had a bit of an attitude, but at least he spoke, flicking his chin in the air and mumbling, “What’s up?”
The last in their circle was Quentin. His skin and blue eyes were so pale, he seemed albino, but his hair was inky black and braided into the teeniest braids, which hung down to his chin. He hardly spoke, and when he did it came out in a near whisper, but he was the only one who kept smiling at us genuinely.
Within fifteen minutes, I really wished he would talk, because everyone else cracked inside jokes, chatted about band rehearsal, and ignored Maya and me. I felt just as left out as I had on the other side of the park with Stacey’s metalhead friends. I even squinted in their direction, thinking that if Stacey was there, I’d take Maya over and introduce them. I figured Maya could overlook Stacey’s embarrassing boy-craziness since they shared the same sense of humor. But I didn’t see Stacey.
I was relieved when Maya announced, “Kara and I are going to take a walk.”
Harlan and Shelly were the only ones who said good-bye.
We wandered up the hill and sat down. Gazing out at the entire park, Maya remarked, “I don’t know about Harlan’s friends. Besides Shelly and the kid who didn’t talk, they weren’t very friendly.”
I studied Christian. His apple-red hair color was washed out, almost pinkish with crimson streaks. Cute, sure. Cute as I remembered, except his face was set on permanent glare. The more Mary touched him, the more irritated he grew. Even though she didn’t seem like the nicest person, I felt kind of bad for her. I told Maya, “I can’t believe Harlan wanted to get one of us mixed up in that drama.”
“I know.”
We lit cigarettes and watched as Christian stood abruptly and stalked over to a bench. Mary trailed him. Observing the heated argument that ensued and ended with Mary fleeing the park, Maya cocked her head and smiled. “I guess it’s as good as TV.”
There were footsteps in the brittle grass behind us. Maya and I turned slowly to find a teenage girl dressed in a heavily starched white blouse and a long, itchy-looking gray skirt. She said, “I’d like to talk to you about Jesus.”
I stifled laughter and Maya raised her eyebrows, asking, “Who? Does he hang out here? ’Cause I don’t think I’ve met him.”
The girl remained composed. She fluttered her eyelashes and smiled. “That’s why we’ve come today, because we’ve noticed that Jesus does not hang out here.” She said “hang out” carefully, as if translating it from a foreign language. “This park seems to be a place of…” She paused as if to measure her words, but apparently decided to be firm. “A place of sin.”
“Sin?” Maya snorted. “Are you a sinner, Kara? ’Cause Ah come from a fine family of Flor-dah Baptists, so Ah know Ah ain’t no sin-nah,” she continued, conjuring up a southern drawl.
This was going to be even better than screwing with the kids in chemistry class. I focused on the white bra strap that I could see through the girl’s blouse and dramatically pulled my lipstick-stained cigarette from my mouth. “I’m really more interested in learning about Satan than Jesus.”
The girl’s cheeks flushed. “Your mockery is foolish, but Jesus will forgive you and only He can save you on Judgment Day.”
Maya got to her feet and dropped the exaggerated accent. “Listen, lady, I heard about you people coming by busload every month to try to convert the heathen kids at the park and I’ve been looking forward to it ’cause I want you to explain something to me. The Ark. I mean, come on. How the hell did that work? Two of every animal in the world and just some old guy and his wife taking care of them?”
While Maya ranted, I glanced down the hill and noticed at least fifteen more people dressed similarly to our proselytizer roaming the park.
Ours struggled to keep her voice pleasant. “I’m not here to debate with you. I’m here to explain the joys of Jesus. If you let Him into your life—”
“Okay! But before we get to that, tell me how big the damned boat was!”
The girl pulled two tracts from a cardboard box and shook them in front of us. “If you read these, you’ll learn about faith. Faith will settle all of your doubts.”
“Gimme those!” Maya grabbed the box and sprinted down the hill, her shoulder-length scarlet hair streaking through the air behind her. The stunned girl backed away, dropping the two tracts she had in her hand. I picked them up, laughing at the title, “Rock and Roll: A Tool of the Devil,” and tore down the hill after Maya.
She stood in the center of Scoville, dumping the box of tracts into a messy pile. I tossed the two I had on top. We stared at the pile, trying to figure out what to do next. In a flash of inspiration, I picked up a handful of booklets and lit them on fire.
“Yes!” Maya exclaimed, and began to flick lit matches at my growing inferno.
The sparks caught everyone’s attention. Harlan snatched the box from the hands of the man who was lecturing him and Shelly, and ran over to add more fuel. Others quickly joined suit. A metalhead who Stacey had thought was “soooo cute” doused the fire with Zippo fluid, and the flames leapt high, sucking down the soaked paper like a fourteen-year-old with a stolen bottle of booze. Soon there were twenty of us whooping and cackling and joyfully slamming into one another as we danced around the flames like a pagan tribe, or maybe more like a circle pit at a punk show.
The God freaks ran toward one another for safety from what surely was a sign of Armageddon. When their bus sped away, a cheer arose, but the celebration was short-lived. The bus had been blocking the ever-present eye of Youth Officer Robbins, stationed in a squad car across the street. He dropped his coffee out the window and screamed into his radio.
Since we were all caught up in the destruction, hardly anyone noticed the cop’s approach, but Maya did. She grabbed my hand, and we retreated back up the hill. As sirens wailed, we strolled innocently into the Write Inn, and then hurried upstairs to Maya’s room.
Collapsing on Maya’s bed, out of breath, I asked her, “Aren’t you afraid someone will tell the cops we started it?”
A dark grin spread across her doll face. “Nah, they had way too much fun. No one will ever forget the day you came to the park, Kara.”
“But you’re the one who started it by taking the tracts from that girl-” I began, ready to add that it wasn’t the first day I’d been to the park.
“No,” Maya interrupted. “I grabbed the box, but you started the fire. Everyone’s going to love you tomorrow, girl. We are gonna go back, right?” Her eyes gleamed, and I could still see those flickering flames reflected in them.
Feeling as exhilarated as I had the first time Liam helped me to crowd surf, I matched Maya’s twisted smile, my dark red lipstick giving it my own signature. “Sure, we’ll go back tomorrow. It’s better than TV.”
9.
THE DAY AFTER THE FIRE, MAYA sauntered into Scoville like she owned the place. I followed, not feeling nearly as self-assured. We joined the same people from the day before. Harlan gave us both bear hugs, and Shelly smiled widely, but that was to be expected. I was certain the others would continue to ignore us. I couldn’t have been more shocked when moody Christian welcomed us into the fold.
“
Hey, Firestarter,” he said, tossing a wicked grin my way. “Thanks for the giant ashtray.” He flicked his cigarette butt into the bald patch hemmed in by scorched grass. Beneath a few cigarette butts, the ashes of the tracts mingled with the dirt. I proudly realized that they’d moved into the center of the park to sit around the remnants of my fire.
Craig reached across the fire pit to hand Maya and me some flyers. “You should come see our band Symbiotic next weekend. Our old frontman is gonna be back in town. It should be pretty cool. Maybe you could provide us with some pyrotechnics to give Shelly’s basement that genuine arena-rock feel.” He chuckled at his own joke.
On the flyer, Symbiotic was drawn as a late-eighties cock-rock supergroup, their names even written across their pictures as Christian aka Slash, Quentin aka Nikki Sixx, and Craig aka Rikki Rockett. In bold letters, it also touted the return of Wes aka Sebastian Bach.
“I love Symbiotic, but Wes is not going to be happy when I tell him that his band has started doing Skid Row covers,” Maya remarked with a smirk.
A chorus of voices responded to her statement. Craig, who didn’t get Maya’s sense of humor, explained that the flyer was a joke. Christian, thinking his band had gained notoriety all the way down in Florida, wanted to know how Maya’d heard Symbiotic. But Harlan shouted over everyone else, “Whoa! Maya, how do you know Wes? He left Oak Park before you moved here.”
“Oh,” Maya answered simply, “he and Cassie are my cousins.”
This quieted everyone. Finally I asked, “Why didn’t you ever mention that?”
Maya shrugged and gave the response I should have expected, given her tendency to antagonize religious zealots and our fellow chemistry students: “I love social experiments. I wanted to see who was friendly to strangers”-she smiled at Harlan and me-who wasn’t”-she honed in on Jessica and Mary and kept her focus on them as she finished “and how that all changed once everyone found out who my cousins are.”
Quentin, the one with the shy smile and the black braids, softly admitted, “I knew. Cass talks about you all the time and I see the resemblance, very similar eyes. Not the color, but—”
“Are you kidding?” Jessica interrupted. “They don’t look alike at all. Maya’s obviously playing some weird game. Hello? Cass and Wes are black.”
“Cassie and Wes are biracial,” Maya corrected. “Our moms are sisters. I’m not playing any game. Why would I?”
Jessica looked to Mary to back her up. I’d noticed that Mary was sitting as far from Christian as possible that day and her expression was even more dour than before. Mary shrugged and told Jessica, “Cass does have a cousin named Maya. Remember that picture on her dresser from when she went to Florida in second grade?”
Jessica grimaced at Mary. “No. But if you recognized her, why didn’t you say anything yesterday?”
“Yeah, Mary, isn’t it your job to keep Jessica up on all the latest gossip?” Maya mimicked snapping a whip.
Everyone laughed except Jessica and Mary. Mary crossed her arms over her chest, ignored Maya’s remark, and replied to Jessica, “I didn’t recognize her. She was a cute little blond kid in the picture. Besides, why wouldn’t Cass tell us about her cousin moving here? We’ve been best friends since kindergarten.”
Jessica nodded, sitting up straighter. Clearly this was the defense she expected from Mary.
“Best friends’?” Maya questioned coldly. Her gray eyes shone like freshly sharpened knives. She forced her mouth into a straight line and said no more.
An awkward silence descended until Christian filled it, asking Maya, “Did Wes send you the Symbiotic demo? What do you think of my band?”
“Of your band?” Maya laughed. “I thought Symbiotic was Wes’s band.”
Christian shrugged. “When he comes home and visits, sure, but when he left I stepped up. I play lead guitar and sing now.”
“Ah, you’re the cocky sophomore he told me about.” Maya watched Christian’s face flush. Then she smirked and added, “He says you’re pretty damn good.”
Shelly nudged me and whispered, “Maybe Harlan’s right about those two. I see some potential sparks.” Speaking at a normal volume, she asked, “Are you coming to my party on Friday? It’ll be Wes’s big homecoming.”
“I didn’t know about it.”
“Well, consider yourself invited. Every Friday night from now on, come to my house. I get a keg, everyone comes over.”
I thought about the last party I’d been to at Shelly’s, and the uncertainty I felt must have shown on my face, because Harlan threw his arm around me and implored, “You have to come, Kara. It won’t be any fun without you.”
“It won’t be any fun if Harlan takes over the stereo again with his terrible techno,” Craig interjected.
Harlan turned to me for support. “Sorry, not a techno fan,” I told him.
Craig gave me the thumbs-up. “What bands are you into?”
And a conversation about music started up. Soon we were on to movies, then books, and by the time evening crept in, we all seemed like old friends-at least Maya, Shelly, the guys, and I did. Mary and Jessica managed not to speak directly to me or Maya and went home an hour before the rest of us. But I didn’t care about them. I was too pleased that suddenly things were happening for me. I had new friends. I had plans for Friday night. I had a life.
10.
ON FRIDAY I TOLD MY PARENTS I was sleeping over at Maya’s so I could do whatever I wanted that evening. Maya and I hung out at the park for a few hours before returning to her hotel room to get ready for the party. The plan was to walk to her cousins’ house and catch a ride with them.
We walked a few blocks northwest, the houses getting bigger and bigger the farther we went. Maya murmured, “Wide lawns and narrow minds. That’s what my grandma said about this town when my dad told her we were moving here. My grandma speaks mostly in clichés.”
I chuckled and told her, “Your grandmother was actually quoting Ernest Hemingway’s opinion of Oak Park.”
“Hmm, if it’s really like that, no wonder Wes is so happy to have gotten away.”
“So, is he coming home from college on spring break or something?”
“College?” Maya laughed so loudly that someone in a house across the street flicked a light on and peered out the window at us. “Wes got expelled in November for setting off a smoke bomb in the caf.”
“Holy shit, that was your cousin? They evacuated the school for half an hour!”
Maya smirked. “Yep, that was Wes. Between that and his drug dealing, my aunt and uncle were fed up. They sent him to California. He’s working on my uncle’s friend’s farm and getting his GED. I guess he actually likes it out there, but Cassie misses him. She’s going to be so happy…” Maya trailed off, squinting at a shadowy figure crouched in a driveway two houses down. “Cassie!” she shouted, but the girl didn’t look up. She sat with her head in her hands.
Maya rushed to her cousin, kneeling behind her and embracing her in a Harlan-style bear hug. Not wanting to intrude, I approached slowly. Cass’s tears glittered in the light that shone down from above her garage. She swallowed back sobs, stuttering, “He’s not coming home…Mom’s flipping out again…she has been all week…that’s why I haven’t been at school or the park…but I hoped he would still come home. I’m sick of dealing with this alone.” Then Cass noticed me. She blinked, summoning her strength, and said, “Oh, hi.”
“Hi,” I replied awkwardly, shifting my weight from one foot to the other.
Cass rose and wandered down the driveway toward me, Maya following. Dabbing at her darkly lined eyes, Cass allowed a tentative smile, asking softly, “I met you before, right? At North Riverside Mall?” She furrowed her brow. “Kara?”
“Yeah,” I said, studying her.
Cass was a willowy, caramel-skinned girl with dreadlocks in shades of brown, red, and blond spilling from a black bandanna down to her waist. Three years ago she’d been a good six inches shorter, slightly pudgy, and those dreadlock
s-all her natural coffee shade-had hung just past her shoulders. Regardless, Cass was unforgettable. Etched in my mind as part of a rare cool moment Stacey and I had had in junior high.
“I still have the necklace you stole for me.” I pulled a metal pot leaf from the mass of black cords, silver chains, and beads that decorated my neck.
“How do you guys know each other?” Maya demanded. Even though she thrived on being secretive about her life, she didn’t like being kept in the dark.
“We shoplifted together once,” Cass told her, asking me, “When was that? The summer between seventh and eighth grade?”
“Yeah.”
That summer Stacey and I had taken the bus to the mall practically every day to bum around the food court and steal crap because we were bored. We kept seeing Cass there with two other girls-Mary and Jessica, I realized. Stacey liked Cass’s skull-and-crossbones bandanna, so she decided we should introduce ourselves. She’d always been the more social one. She walked right up to Cass and said, “Nice bandanna.”
Cass replied, “Nice hair wraps,” reaching out to touch one of the many braids wound in colorful string that Stacey wore in the undermost layer of her hair.
Cass and I exchanged smiles, but didn’t actually speak for half an hour. Not because I was being snotty like Cass’s friends, who ignored us. I was just shy as usual. The first thing I said to Cass was “Thanks,” after she handed me the stolen pot leaf on a black leather cord. She gave Stacey a bandanna, but didn’t give her friends anything. Even though I didn’t smoke pot yet, I added the necklace to the growing menagerie of jewelry that made undressing preshower quite a ritual.
Stacey and I looked forward to seeing Cass the next time we went to the mall, but we never saw her again.
Ballads of Suburbia Page 6