Supergirl Mixtapes

by Meagan Brothers

  “That’s where the school is. I have to be there at eight in the morning.”

  “We could ride up there and check it out.” He pulled the T-shirt on. It was tight and black and said VIVE LE ROCK in white letters.

  “What about Mom?”

  “She’s got her, uh, thing today. One of her meetings. You know, AA or whatever.”

  “I didn’t know she drank.”

  “She doesn’t anymore.” Travis bent over to tug his boots on. “Hence the meetings.” He put on a fraying denim jacket with a patch on the sleeve that was a profile of a skull. Ran his hand through his hair. “You wanna go get something to eat?”

  “Yeah.” I got up and pulled on my black hooded sweatshirt. My army surplus boots were already on.

  “You expecting company?” Travis looked at me and snickered.

  “What?”

  “You could fit, like, three more people into those pants.”

  “They’re JNCOs,” I said. Everybody wore JNCOs back home. Superbaggy skater jeans. Maybe they weren’t cool in New York, though.

  “And you’re about to lose your sole.” He pointed at my right boot. I lifted my foot. I hadn’t even noticed. The sole had finally detached from the rest of the boot and flopped down, exposing the dingy inner lining. Travis went to the kitchen and opened a drawer. He pulled out a roll of duct tape and tossed it at me. I caught it awkwardly and picked at the edges, trying to pull some off the roll.

  “Here, gimme that.” He came over and snatched it out of my hands. “And you’re not even the one with the hangover.” He smiled and pulled a long strip off the roll, tearing it with his teeth. “Lift up.” He patted my right leg, and I steadied myself on his shoulders as he bent down to tape up my shoe.

  “All right, now you’re ready for action.” He patted my leg again and stood up. I looked down at the new silver strip capping the toe of my boot. He tossed the tape onto the kitchen counter. “One more thing, then we’re ready.” He crept back into the bedroom and came out holding two motorcycle helmets. He handed me one of them.

  “What’s this for?”

  “This is a dangerous city,” he said. Then he cracked up. “You should see the look on your face.” He opened the door. “Come on, it’s for my bike.”

  “Your bike?”

  “Motorcycle. Whatever. You’re cool on a motorcycle, right?”

  “I, uh …” I’d never been on a motorcycle in my life. But I didn’t want to be uncool, on a motorcycle or not. “I guess we’ll see.”

  It was Sunday afternoon and everything was open, doors propped and signs calling out: GYRO LOTTERY PSYCHIC ADVISER NAILS KEYS 99 CENTS INDIAN FOOD. I followed Travis through the streets of the Lower East Side to another diner, where we stuffed ourselves silly on French toast and bacon. We ate quickly and silently, then went back out onto the street, past the cleaners and tailors and the newspapers in thick stacks outside bodega windows, signs in Spanish taped beneath the ones in English. We passed kids in tight black pants who looked like rock stars, young men in sharp black jackets and sunglasses, old women dressed like Halloween gypsies shuffling behind carts full of laundry bundles with small dogs balanced on top. It was almost four in the afternoon, and the sun was sinking in the sky.

  “I love when it starts getting dark early,” he said. “I wish it was nighttime all the time, you know?”

  “I know what you mean.” I swung the motorcycle helmet as we walked. “It’s like everything’s more secretive or something.”

  “So where did you guys use to live? You grew up here, right?”

  “I can’t remember,” I told him. “We moved when I was two.”

  “That sucks.” We stopped by a skinny tree with a looped chain around it. Travis’s motorcycle was parked next to it. A small black Honda, the letters in gold. He knelt down to undo the lock. “I grew up across the river. Over in Queens. Same place as Johnny Thunders. I don’t guess they taught you about Johnny Thunders down there in South Carolina, did they?” He stood up, coiling the chain around his forearm.

  “Sure they did. He invented the cotton gin, right?”

  Travis looked at me and laughed.

  “No? Not the cotton gin? Louisiana Purchase, then. Women’s suffrage? The Teapot Dome Scandal?”

  “Come on.” He straddled the bike, still laughing. “Wait, where are we going, again?”

  “Eighty-Second Street, between Lexington and Park Avenue.” I put on the helmet and swung my leg over the bike. There was nothing to hang on to but Travis. I circled my arms around his ribs. He cranked the engine and it popped and huffed.

  “You better hold on tighter than that,” he warned me. “Unless you wanna leave half your brains back on Avenue C.” He cackled and cut the wheel. We sped out into the street, and I clung to him, instinctively, for dear life.

  “So I guess this is it.” I hopped off the bike and took off the helmet. Prince Academy. It didn’t look too bad. It was just a regular brick building, sitting there in the same block as all the other dark brick buildings. The only things that set it apart were the set of marble steps out front and the white flag waving with the Prince Academy logo in royal blue and gold.

  “Prince Academy? That’s the name of the place?” Travis turned the bike off. A taxi honked as it sped by, and he pulled up closer to the curb. “Forget Johnny Thunders. They’re gonna teach you all about Purple Rain.”

  “Yeah. And wait till you see the uniform. It’s all ruffles and lace.”

  Travis laughed. He got off the bike. “You start tomorrow morning?”

  I nodded.

  “Maybe, uh.” Travis scratched his head. “I know Vic’s not much of a morning person. But maybe we could come up here with you. Or whatever. You know, on your first day.”

  “That’s okay,” I told him. “I’m used to doing it on my own.” My dad wasn’t really a hands-on guy back at home. I had long since learned to forge his signature on permission slips and report cards. I took my bike or, if it was raining, called Brian for a ride. I hadn’t gone to school with a parent holding my hand since third grade.

  “Afraid it’ll ruin your reputation?” Travis sniffed. “Rich kids see you pull up on the back of some guy’s motorcycle, think you’re one of the bad girls?”

  “I’m not worried about the rich kids,” I said, walking up the marble steps and tugging on the locked wooden door. I guess I should have been more nervous, but I wasn’t. I guess after Langley, after everything that had happened with Brian, nothing bothered me anymore. Maybe it had all toughened me up somehow. I hoped that it had.

  “Are you embarrassed about it?” Travis asked. I turned and walked back down the steps. “Me and your mom?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I’m only six years older than you are.” He leaned against the bike. “Do you think it’s weird that I’m dating her?”

  “Look, I’m not gonna call you ‘Dad’ or anything. But as long as you care about her, I don’t care how old you are.” I looked at him. “I’m just used to doing things on my own. You guys don’t have to pack my lunch and help me find my homeroom, or whatever. It’s eleventh grade. I think I can deal.”

  “You can deal, huh?” He shook his head. “I gotta hand it to you, Maria. You got your shit together a lot more than I did when I was your age. Either that, or you’ve got a heck of a bluff. First time I came to the city I didn’t know up from down, and it scared the hell out of me. And I’m from Queens, not Ass Scratch, Carolina, or wherever it is.”

  “My grandmother lives in Atlanta. We’re down there every month. It’s not like I’ve never seen a skyscraper.”

  “All right, hot shot. Which train you taking tomorrow morning?”

  “The, uh—” I thought back to the subway map I’d been studying all morning. I still couldn’t remember all the numbers and letters. “The green one.”

  “The green one.” He shook his head again and got back on the bike. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Where are we going
now?”

  “We’re getting out of this neighborhood before somebody pulls up in a Rolls-Royce and asks me for some Grey Poupon.” He cranked the engine. “And I’m gonna teach you up from down.” He looked over his shoulder, and we were off again.

  We drove back downtown, weaving around cabs and cars and delivery trucks and people rushing out into the crosswalks. Travis drove us all the way down to Battery Park first, to see the water and the Statue of Liberty all lit up as the sun went down. We rode back up past the World Trade Center. He told me if I ever got lost downtown, the Twin Towers are south and the Empire State Building is north. South is down, north is up.

  “Above the Empire State Building, you’re on your own,” he said.

  We wove through the crooked streets of the West Village, down Canal Street, through Chinatown and the cobblestone streets of SoHo. Then we went up to Union Square, and Travis showed me where Andy Warhol’s Factory used to be. We circled around back to Bleecker Street until we dead-ended at CBGBs, a little bar with a dingy brown awning.

  “You gotta ask your mom to tell you her CBs stories,” Travis said. “She used to see everybody down here when she was a kid. Ramones, Johnny Thunders, Patti Smith. Everybody.”

  I wished my mom was there. I wondered what she was doing. How long she’d been going to AA meetings. I didn’t know she had a drinking problem. That was probably why my dad and my grandmother were so uptight about me moving up here. Maybe I should tell them she was going to meetings now. Maybe they’d know that she was different. That she’d changed.

  “Come on.” Travis parked the bike. “Let’s go to the Punk Rock Mall.”

  “The Punk Rock Mall?”

  I followed Travis up to St. Marks Place, where there were rows of shops full of punk rock gear, black T-shirts with band names on them like Crass and D.O.A., plaid pants with tons of zippers, Doc Martens. There were people selling books and bootleg videos on the street, girls with nose rings handing out flyers for discount tattoos and piercings, punks and bums and kids younger than me all running in and out of the shops, different music blasting out of each open door. I felt like I couldn’t stop looking at everything, and everything begged to be looked at. Everyone wanted to be seen.

  “Let’s go spin the cube.” Travis snagged my sleeve and we ran across the street, just making the light. There was a concrete island in the middle of the crisscrossing streets with a sculpture of a big cube sitting in the middle of it. All around us, skaters did kickflips off the curb.

  “Take a corner!” Travis pushed against the edge of the big black cube, which seemed to balance on one of its pointed corners. Some kids with dreadlocks and leather jackets were sitting beneath the cube. They looked at us warily, then got up and walked away.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah! Start pushing!” Travis leaned into the cube, putting all his weight into it.

  “Like this?” I pushed against another one of the edges. There was a little give. Sure enough, the cube started to move. Pretty soon it loosened up, and we walked in a slow circle, pushing the cube, trying to work up to a run. The dreadlocked kids came back and helped, and then we really got it going. Finally we all collapsed, laughing. The cube grunted to a halt. Travis wiped his hands on his pant legs and spit.

  “You hungry?” he asked.

  “Sorta,” I said. It had been awhile since the French toast and bacon.

  “Let’s go get the bike and we’ll ride over to MacDougal Street.”

  “What’s on MacDougal Street?” I fell into step with him at the crosswalk.

  “The best falafels in town.”

  “What’s a falafel?”

  Travis laughed. I didn’t care. I just jammed my hands into my sweatshirt pocket and followed him, wherever he would lead.

  There was a note from Mom when we got home with our sack of falafels. This one was sketched with little cars in the corners, the words made to look like they were forming out of the puffy clouds of exhaust.

  Hi guys!

  I’ll be out late tonite—sorry! But guess what?

  Repo Man’s on TV! Go get sushi and don’t pay!

  Love, Vic

  “Why does she want us to steal sushi?” I asked.

  “You never saw Repo Man?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a line in the movie. Anyway, we got falafels.” Travis took one of the foil-wrapped falafels out of the bag and handed it to me. I was disappointed. I was looking forward to hanging out with my mom. I looked at my watch. Dad wanted me to call him when I got to the train station and again when I got to Mom’s. I’d been so glad that Mom and Travis even showed up—and that I didn’t have to call Dad and tell him he was right—that I forgot to call and tell him everything was okay.

  Halfway through the movie, I dialed his number. I waited until I knew he had gone to work. I don’t know why, but I didn’t feel like talking to him. So I left a message.

  “Hi, Dad … it’s me. I just wanted to let you know I got in okay. Sorry I didn’t call you last night, but there’s been a lot to do, getting ready for school and all.” I twisted the cord around my finger, looking through the kitchen at Travis. He was drinking beer and laughing at the movie. “And, uh, Mom’s been showing me around. So I guess I’ll call you tomorrow night and let you know how it’s going.”

  I couldn’t think of anything else. But then, at the last minute, I remembered to tell him that I loved him.

  3

  I took a moment on the marble steps of Prince Academy to tug my skirt down again and wonder if I’d just made a terribly rash decision. A wave of fear ran through me like a shock, and I almost wished I’d stayed at Langley, even if it meant dodging Brian and those guys for an entire year. I wished I’d at least taken Travis up on his offer to give me a ride. But I knew, at some point, I had to go in there and get it over with on my own. I took a deep breath. What was I so afraid of, anyway? Everything had worked out. I told my father and my grandmother that I wanted out, and they finally listened. Prince Academy was my salvation. They made a special exception, since the year had already started. They made an exception because I had good grades and my grandmother had lots of money. It was a combination that could get you all kinds of places, evidently.

  Well, grades, money, and a class-A freak-out.

  I pulled on the heavy wooden door, and this time it swung open. My skirt was too short. I was too tall. At least the uniforms were a little nicer than the ones at Langley, but the rules were more strict. Dress shoes or loafers, no exceptions. Langley famously had no uniform policy on shoes, so that was where everybody let their personalities hang out.

  The halls were quiet. I knew I was late. My new loafers pinched my toes. I found the school office. All the receptionists stopped and looked at me when I walked in. You really can’t sneak up on anybody when you’re five foot ten.

  “Hi, um. I’m new. Today’s my first day. Maria Costello.”

  “Have a seat.” One of the receptionists pointed to a row of plastic chairs, and I sat. As soon as I did, someone called my name.

  “Maria Costello?” I looked up. There was a woman in a pinstriped suit standing over me with a handful of papers.

  “Yeah? Yes, ma’am?” I stood up. I was taller than she was.

  “I’m not old enough to be a ma’am yet, am I?” She looked up at me and frowned.

  “I was—I just meant—” I backpedaled.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m Mrs. Alvarez. I’m the assistant principal.” She walked out of the office, her heels clipping along. I followed, double time. “Come along. I’ll show you to your locker and homeroom. You’re late.”

  “I know.” I slung my backpack full of empty binders and notebooks over my shoulder. “I’m still learning the subway.” I’d gotten on in the wrong direction and almost ended up in Brooklyn.

  “It’s fine for today. You’ll learn to budget your time pretty quickly here. The city will force you. This is your locker.” She barely paused. “The combination’s her
e, along with your schedule. You came to us from … South Dakota, am I right?” She handed me the sheaf of papers in her hand.

  “South Carolina.” I tried to read the papers as we walked.

  “Not close at all, was I? There’s also a map of the school, though I believe you received one of those in the package we sent.”

  “Yes, ma—Yes.”

  “The first-period bell is going to ring in another minute or two. Mr. Dunleavy is your homeroom teacher, and this”—she stopped in front of a closed wooden door—“is his classroom.” She opened the door and scuttled me in.

  “Mr. Dunleavy, your new student.”

  Mrs. Alvarez left, closing the door behind her. The papers she’d given me were crumpling in my sweaty hand. Mr. Dunleavy sat on the edge of his desk, calling the roll. The classroom was big, and the kids were all looking at me.

  “Class, our new import, Maria Costello.” He gave me a smile. He was a young guy with wire-rimmed glasses and a beard. “Maria, since you’re already standing, why don’t you tell us where you’re from and what you like to do.”

  “Well, um, I’m from South Carolina. But I was born here. And, uh. I just like to hang out. Listen to music. You know, whatever.”

  “Okay, guys, I’m sure you’ll all be your usual wonderful selves and help Maria get acclimated to her new surroundings here at Prince. Now—oh, Maria, you can have a seat.”

  I moved down the aisle, feeling huge, and sat at the first empty desk I saw as Mr. Dunleavy finished calling the roll. The bell rang before he got through the list.

  “Okay, guys, if you’re not here, please see me before first period,” he announced, and the kids laughed. While everybody else filed out I stayed in my seat, checking the schedule against the map of the school, trying to figure out where I was supposed to go next.

  At lunch, I saw a girl I recognized from my first-period English class who seemed pretty cool. She had dyed-black hair and black fingernail polish and she held court at a table with an empty seat, so I sat down.