No Place

by Todd Strasser

  “I told you I changed clothes and left my wallet in my other pants,” Oscar tried to explain. “I work for Buzzuka Joe. This is his car.”

  While I watched from the sidewalk, Noah stayed in his car. We both knew why he hadn’t gotten out. I leaned into the car’s window. “Call the studio. See if you can get someone over here.”

  Noah tried his phone, listened, shook his head. “I got the message. They’re probably recording.”

  “Then go over there and get someone.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Noah muttered, and pulled away.

  The truth was, I had no idea what I was doing. I just had this strong feeling that if Oscar had been a different color, or in a different part of the city, this wouldn’t be happening. By now the cops were glancing at me with puzzled expressions; this wasn’t a part of Burlington where you saw a lot of white teenagers.

  I cleared my throat. “Excuse me, officers, but I think there’s been a mistake.”

  One of the cops scowled. “Sorry?” he said in a tone that implied, And just who do you think you are?

  I took my time answering. This wasn’t about changing their minds. It was about stalling while Noah went for help. Nodding at Olivia and Oscar, I said, “I’m a friend of theirs, and I’m sure everything they’ve told you is true.”

  Both cops looked at me like I was whacked. “Oh, really?” One of them snorted.

  “Yes, sir. This young lady works at Williams Sound, the music studio down the street, where Buzzuka Joe is recording his new album.” Buzzuka Joe was a former gangbanger turned rapper who was a big deal around Burlington. “You gentlemen are familiar with Buzzuka Joe, right? ‘If The Phone Don’t Ring, You’ll Know It’s Me’?”

  “Yeah, so?” one of the cops said.

  I didn’t have an answer. I’d been ad-libbing and suddenly had no libs to add.

  The cops seemed to sense that I was at a loss. “Listen, kid,” one of them said, “I don’t know who the hell you are, but if I were you I’d disappear, pronto.” He took Oscar by the arm and started to guide him toward the police car.

  I stepped between them and the police car, blocking their path. The cop with Oscar stopped and gave me an astonished look, then jerked his head at his partner, who came toward me. “I’m gonna count to three before I bust you for obstruction of justice and interfering with police duties. You got that? This is none of your business.”

  My heart was pounding and a voice in my head was screaming to get out of the way. But in my gut I knew that if Oscar were white they wouldn’t have bent him over the hood of the car and handcuffed him. There was a time when I might have shrugged it off as just another of life’s many injustices, but a lot of things had changed since then. I didn’t budge.

  “Listen, buddy, for the last time,” the cop snarled. “You don’t want to be a hero and you don’t want to get arrested. So move!”

  Even Oscar agreed. “He’s right, man. Stay out of this.”

  I could feel my pulse with every breath I took. I’d never been in trouble with the police before, and this was a bad time to start. I peered hopefully down the street, but there was no sign of Noah or anyone else from the studio.

  “Listen to him, Dan,” urged Olivia, who’d been watching my sidewalk improv.

  “Hey, you remembered my name,” I said, grinning.

  It almost seemed like she blushed. “Of course.”

  “Aw, for Christ’s sake,” the other cop growled, reaching for his handcuffs and starting toward me.

  “Okay, okay.” Raising my hands, I backed away. “I’m going. It’s just hard to believe that you’d arrest a guy just because he forgot his wallet. Like that never happened to you?”

  “You’re really asking for it, kid,” snapped the cop holding Oscar. He walked the big man to the police car, put his hand on Oscar’s head, and began to ease him down into the backseat.

  There was still no sign of Noah or anyone from the studio. In a few moments they’d take Osacar downtown and book him, or whatever it was that cops did when they arrested you. It just seemed so stupid and wrong, but I couldn’t think of a way to stop it.

  Oscar was in the back of the police car now, bent uncomfortably forward in the seat because his hands were cuffed behind him.

  The cop started to close the door.

  A horn honked. Everyone turned as Noah’s car raced up and screeched to a stop. Out jumped a little guy wearing a white suit, sunglasses, and a black fedora.

  * * *

  Fortunately, Buzzuka Joe had a copy of the car registration, and a little while later the cops let Oscar go with a ticket for driving without a license. He thanked me emotionally. “I don’t know why you did that, man, but God bless you.” Shaking his large hand was like shaking a baseball mitt.

  Olivia gave me a grateful hug, then added in a scolding tone, “Do you have any idea how close you came to getting popped?”

  I shrugged and gave her a wink. She smiled and kissed me on the cheek. “See you at the studio.”

  They got into the Range Rover, leaving Noah and me on the sidewalk. Now that the danger had passed, my best friend put his hands on his hips and affected the amused patois he sometimes used in private when issues of race came up. “What de hell was dat, white boy? Trying to impress Olivia?”

  I shook my head. “No, it just bothered me.”

  “Since when?”

  Since everything started going against me and my family too, I thought. But what I said was, “Don’t you think the guy’s had enough crap in his life? His football career ends with a concussion, and now they want to arrest him because he forgot his wallet?”

  “So you have to be the hero?”

  “A man got to do what he got to do.” The line from The Grapes of Wrath, which we’d read in school the year before, had become a little joke between Noah and me, a sort of catchall explanation anytime one of us did something that we couldn’t, or didn’t want to, entirely explain.

  3

  After watching Buzzuka Joe lay down a couple of tracks in the studio, we headed back to Median. It was dark by the time we got there. “You guys coming to Tory’s later?” Noah asked as he drove. Tory Sanchez was his girlfriend.

  “We have to go to this stupid party first,” I answered glumly. “Some friend of Tal’s from dressage.”

  “Why can’t she go without you?”

  I gave him a weary look. “Because we’re a couple, remember?”

  “Bet Olivia wouldn’t make you go to boring horse parties.”

  Back at the studio I’d been Olivia’s knight in shining armor. Now that I’d “saved” Oscar, she couldn’t stop touching and flirting with me. Talk about having your ego stroked. After that, everyone flopped on the couches and relaxed into a fun time digging on the music. It was so different from being with Talia’s dressage friends. They were all nice enough, but reserved and careful about everything they said and did. Maybe it was because they came from a world of private schools, country clubs, and fancy vacations. Of course, except for private school, that was Talia’s world too. And, to some extent, Noah’s and Tory’s, as well. But it was different when I was with them. We’d all known each other since grade school.

  Noah turned onto my street. When I spotted the U-Haul van backed into my driveway, my spirits plunged faster than a two-seam fastball.

  Stopping at the curb, Noah glanced at the van, but said nothing. I was pretty sure he knew what it meant, but it was something we’d never spoken about.

  And we’d spoken about practically everything.

  “See you later?” he asked solemnly.

  I nodded, got out of the car, and pretended to walk up the driveway. The second Noah’s taillights were out of sight, I stopped. A heavy sensation of dread had begun to mass in my chest. I’d known this day was coming sooner or later. Only I’d been clinging to the hope that it would be later.

  A lot later.

  Like, maybe, not in this lifetime.

  * * *

 
Moving boxes were stacked in the front hall.

  “That you, Dan?” Dad called from the kitchen.

  “Yeah.”

  “Just in time for the last supper.”

  Welcome to my father’s demented sense of humor.

  I went into the kitchen, where my parents were sitting on folding chairs at a card table having bowls of homemade vegetable soup and bread. On the floor were cardboard boxes filled with kitchen utensils.

  “So this is the end?” I slumped down while Mom got up and prepared a bowl of soup for me, adding boiled beef because she knew I needed extra protein in my diet. Both of my parents were vegetarians, but they were cool with me being a carnivore.

  “This is the end . . . buhm, buhm, buhm . . . beautiful friend, the end,” Dad chanted as if even now he couldn’t take it seriously.

  “I prefer to see it as a new beginning,” Mom said.

  I shook my head. “Hard to believe.”

  “You don’t have to,” Dad said. “It’s just a temporary setback, Dan. We’ll get things together. You’ll see.”

  “We’ve got our health,” added Mom.

  “Oh yeah, I forgot. Right.” I pretended to agree. Like as long as we had our health it didn’t matter that we were losing our home.

  * * *

  Neither of my parents had jobs. After being a stockbroker for a long time, Mom had been let go about five years ago when her firm went out of business. She’d looked for another job for almost four years before giving up. The longer you were out of work, she said, the more people believed there had to be something wrong with you, and the harder it was to find new employment.

  For a while we managed to scrape by on Dad’s salary as a supervisor for the Burlington Inner City Youth Sports Program. But then Dad had lost his job and now there was no way we could continue to live, eat, and keep up the payments on the house. The bank had started foreclosure proceedings—they were taking away our home so that they could resell it to someone else.

  “When do we have to be out?” I asked, and took a sip of soup. Mom had grown most of the ingredients herself in the garden she tended in our backyard.

  “Monday morning, seven a.m.”

  Since we’d known for months that this day was coming, my parents had sold a lot of their furniture and had put a few favorite pieces in storage, leaving only the bare essentials we needed to live. Over the weekend we would gather up that stuff and leave. Forever.

  * * *

  After dinner I went up to my room. I probably should have made good use of the time by packing the few things that remained—some favorite trophies, the ball I threw my only shutout with, a couple of cherished team photos, my first mitt—but I couldn’t imagine being in this room without them, even for a weekend. I knew I’d wait until the last moment.

  The same went for my clothes, books, and posters. I just couldn’t do it now. It was too depressing. Instead, I took a shower and changed. On my way out I stopped in the kitchen and called to whoever might hear: “I’m taking one of the phones.”

  We were down to two.

  Outside Talia waited at the curb in her red BMW convertible.

  “So we don’t have to stay at Carrie’s for more than an hour, right?” I asked as she started to drive.

  “I promise I won’t keep you away from Noah any longer than necessary,” she half teased.

  In the car’s side-view mirror I watched the U-Haul van in our driveway grow smaller and then vanish in the dark. We’d moved into our house when I was two, so I couldn’t remember living anywhere else. I’d thrown my first pitches to Dad in the backyard, and learned to ride a bike in the driveway. We’d had all those Christmas trees in the living room.

  How soon before some other family moved in, and it would be like we’d never lived there at all?

  “Please think about coming to Hilton Head with us?” Talia asked, pulling me back from those thoughts. “Didn’t we have the best fun during the summer?”

  “The best,” I echoed dully. Talia’s family had rented a house and I’d been invited to join them for a week. It had been nothing short of amazing—beautiful beaches, fun fishing, great seafood, living large—but it had been weird, too, doing all this stuff my own family couldn’t come close to affording. “I appreciate the invitation, Tal, really. But I can’t.”

  She didn’t reply. While neither she nor any of my other friends knew exactly what my parents’ financial situation was, you’d have to be pretty obtuse not to get a feeling that things weren’t good.

  We stopped at a 7-Eleven and Talia said, “Be right back,” which was code for Stay in the car while I buy stuff for the party.

  She returned with two shopping bags brimming with Diet Cokes, Mountain Dews, and an array of snacks. From there we drove to Carrie Bard’s house, where I carried the bags in, as if I’d been the one who’d purchased everything.

  4

  Over the weekend I wandered half-dazed through workouts, homework, helping mom pick vegetables in her garden, and—finally—packing the last of my stuff for the move. When I told Talia that we were going to stay with Mom’s brother, Uncle Ron, the only question she asked was whether my parents were thinking of moving away from Median entirely. I promised her they weren’t and quickly changed the subject.

  I kept having this fantasy that we were losing our home only temporarily, that in a week or two something unexpected would happen and we’d get it back, or we’d get another home that was just as good.

  The weird thing was, that’s sort of what happened. At Uncle Ron’s, Mom and Dad moved into the guest bedroom and I got the foldout couch in the downstairs activity room. Next to it was the changing room and shower for guests who used the pool and tennis court in the backyard. So that was my bathroom for now.

  It felt strange:

  We’d lost our home.

  And moved into a much bigger, fancier one.

  * * *

  There must be lots of different reasons why people move in with relatives—houses burn down, parents get divorced, whatever. But I wonder if we all share one similar sensation. That of feeling adrift, like losing an anchor. Walking down the hall at school on Monday morning, I saw Meg Fine pulling books out of her locker. I stopped and stared, recalling that I’d seen her coming out of Dignityville, feeling the unexpected urge to say something, to connect with someone who, just maybe, understood what I was going through.

  Unfortunately, by stopping in the middle of the hall, I’d unintentionally created a snag in the flow of bodies. Kids brushed past me, muttering as they detoured. Meg sensed something and looked up.

  Our eyes met and she scowled. Suddenly I felt that I had no choice but to go over. “Hey.”

  “Oh, uh, hi, Dan.” She swept some of that curly red hair away from her eyes.

  “So, how’s it going?” I asked.

  Meg’s forehead furrowed. “Okay,” she replied uncertainly, obviously wondering why I’d asked.

  She was right to wonder. It must have felt like I was coming from out of nowhere. I still had time to make up some excuse and move on, but instead, as if under remote control, I lowered my voice. “So, uh, listen, last Friday I was driving through town with Noah? And, um, I saw you.”

  Meg stiffened as she recalled where she’d been on Friday after school, then said, “So?” stretching the word into two wary syllables.

  Moving a little closer, I softened my voice a bit more: “We just lost our house and had to move in with my uncle.”

  Her eyebrows dipped as if she didn’t understand why I felt I had to share this with her. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said in a way that sort of indicated that she wasn’t sorry, not really.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by her chilly reply, but it caught me off guard. “Well, I mean, both of my parents lost their jobs. Like you and I—”

  “Everyone in my family works,” she cut in, a bit harshly. “Except for my dad, who’s too sick to work. My mom and brother both have jobs.”

  At that point
I should have shut up and dropped it, but I stupidly continued. “Then why are you . . .”

  “Living in Dignityville?” She finished the sentence irately. “Maybe because my father’s treatments are unbelievably expensive? And my brother’s got college loans he’s trying to pay back? And after all that, there’s nothing left?”

  She was clearly upset and offended. This wasn’t what I’d been hoping for. I’d thought that our common experience would give us something to talk about. But like most impulsive, poorly thought-out ideas, this one had backfired and now I felt like a jerk. “Hey, listen, I didn’t mean anything bad. . . .”

  The bell rang. We were both officially late for class. Meg rolled her eyes as if I was a complete horse’s ass, and hurried away.

  * * *

  After school at Uncle Ron’s house, Mom and Aunt Julie were in the kitchen making dinner. Dad was in the den drinking a beer and watching college football on the big flat-screen HDTV. We bumped fists. “S’up, dawg?”

  I shrugged. “Not much.”

  “Work out today?”

  “Yeah. Core stuff.” I glanced at the screen. For the past two years at our house we’d had to get by on whatever the antenna on the roof would pick up for our ancient twenty-seven-inch cathode-ray TV with its dull and muted colors. In contrast the color on Uncle Ron’s flat-screen was amazing, almost brighter than real.

  “Who’s playing?” I asked.

  “Michigan Tech Huskies and Missouri Storm.”

  I’d never heard of either team and was pretty sure they were bottom-of-the-barrel Division III noncontenders. “Sounds exciting,” I deadpanned.

  “Hey, check out the drops of sweat.” Dad pointed at the screen. “The individual leaves of grass.” He slapped the couch. “Grab a beer.”

  School rules forbade athletes from drinking, even during the off-season, but Dad and I had an understanding. I might have taken him up on the offer if I hadn’t had homework to do.

  Downstairs, my ten-year-old twin cousins, Mike and Ike (their real names were Michael and Isaac), were playing air hockey. I sat on the couch and tried to read. Adding to the racket of the puck slamming around the table were Mike’s and Ike’s feeble but rowdy attempts to impress me with their G-rated preteen trash talk.