April crinkles up her nose. “This is creepy,” she whines. “Let’s get out of here.”
We move into the hall. There are no more ceilings — all those ugly white ceiling tiles have fallen down and the wires are sticking out. Big pink balls of insulation litter the hallway like industrial tumbleweeds. The lockers are rusted and the floor tiles pulled up. There were times, especially freshman year, when I cursed this school and wished it would explode, disappear. Be careful what you wish for.
Someone has cleared all the tables and chairs out of the cafeteria — or maybe that someone was Katrina. In the hall outside it, all the paint has peeled off the walls, but that big engraved sign with the lists of our state championship teams through the years looks untouched.
We walk back to the football stadium. It’s still standing, of course. If there’s one thing in Bayou Perdu that could withstand anything, it’s the football stadium. A military helicopter hovers overhead nearby.
Mandy wanders off onto the track. I’m a good ways behind her, so I can’t see her face, but I can feel her sadness from here, just from the way she’s holding her head. She scans the field from one end to the other, and then she turns back toward me. She does a cartwheel. Then another.
“Clap your hands!” she commands the empty stadium, then claps her own three times. “Stomp your feet!” She pounds the ground.
I find myself doing what she says.
“Clap your hands! Stomp your feet! Cavaliers that can’t be beat! Goooo, Cavs!” She ends with a spread-eagle jump. Her face looks exhilarated, defiant. She’s happy to be alive, happier than I’ve seen her in weeks. She’s just getting warmed up. “Who rocks the house? I said the Cavs rock the house, and when the Cavs rock the house, they rock it all the way down!” She’s shaking her hips, pivoting around, reliving all those Friday nights.
April Dubcheck looks at her like she’s totally lost it.
When she’s done, I go over and hug her. My weird, wonderful sister.
“I heard they might not reopen Bayou Perdu High. Not even next year,” says April. The words hang in the air. “Everyone’s going to have to go to Bellvoir.”
Mandy glares at her.
“My mom said we’re not coming back here.” Why did I say that? Out loud. To April Dubcheck. Who I don’t even like.
April crinkles her nose again. “What?” Her tone is one of disbelief.
“My mom says we’re not coming back here. Even when we can.”
Her eyes widen. “We’re coming back even if we have to live in a van. The Dubchecks have been here for four generations. My dad says it would take more than a hurricane to keep us out of here.”
There is no one in the world I hate more than April Dubcheck right now. That should be us. We’re the resilient ones.
When we get back to the tent, dinner is starting. The Minnesotans have attempted to make po’boys. They are such nice folks, no one wants to tell them that you can’t give Louisianans a po’boy without asking if they want it dressed. It’s on bread that looks like a hamburger roll. When I turn to Mamere, who’s behind me in line, she looks down at her pitiful sandwich and raises her eyebrows. “Bless their hearts,” she mutters. Several people come up and make versions of the same joke to Mamere and Mama. “We need you ladies here real bad. Forget the hurricane. We’re going to starve to death!” Ashley Parker’s dad bangs on the table down from us, pretending to incite a riot. “Food fight! Food fight! We want Vangie’s! We want Vangie’s!” The other men think this is hilarious.
After dinner, the mood becomes more serious. Heads are huddled together; people speaking in hushed tones. I can hear them talking about their sense of loss, but also their anger. How could the levees have failed? Why weren’t officials prepared? Why couldn’t the government have done more, acted more quickly to arrive with relief?
You can hear sniffling and crying from different areas of the tent. Mama and Mamere are deep in conversation with a group of ladies. Daddy is with the men. One of the Bayou Perdu High football players who graduated last year is chatting up Mandy, who is clearly enjoying it. I think about Evangeline, how the Acadians were in “exile without end . . . on separate coasts . . . scattered like flakes of snow.” Just like we are now.
I step outside, past the light that is spilling from the tent, into the dark, far enough away that the sounds of talking fade and I can hear a few crickets, somewhere out there in the marshes. I look up at the sky. The stars are sharp and clear here, so many more than you can see in the city. Everything under it has fallen apart, but the Bayou Perdu sky is the same.
I start walking down the road — the washed-out asphalt that was the road — to Danielle’s house. I don’t expect to find much, and I don’t — a pile of rubble. No walls standing whatsoever. I kick the debris with my foot, trying to sift through it to find some trace of Danielle. But there’s nothing I recognize as part of my friend. Just a haunted feeling that enters me. The ghost of our friendship, once so solid, now just a memory, unsubstantial, slipping through my fingers. My throat closes. I take out my phone and dial Kendra as I’m walking back toward the light of the tent in the distance.
“You sound terrible,” she says after I say hello.
“I’m in Bayou Perdu.”
“How bad is it? Scale of one to ten?”
“I think you’d have to use a number beyond ten.”
“Did you see my house?”
“I took some pictures. I’ll send them to you. Your house is actually better than most.”
“Of course it is,” she says, sounding like her usual confident self.
I explain to her about school. The state of the basketball court is distressing to her.
“What about the diner?”
“It’s completely gone. Mama says we’re not coming back here.”
Kendra is silent for a second. “She doesn’t mean that,” she says. “She’s just upset.”
“She sounded really convincing.”
“Just give her some time. She’ll miss the water and the fishing and all.”
“That’s me, not her.”
“Well, she’ll miss the crawfish boils, then.”
“There’s not going to be any crawfish boils here for a while,” I say. How do I tell her how empty, how not like our home, it feels? “I went by Danielle’s house.”
“Any word yet?”
“Nobody has heard anything from them.”
“She’s probably here in Houston. She probably goes to my high school. It’s so big, you’d never know.”
“Will you ask around? Or ask your mom if she can?”
“I’m on it.”
I smile. Good old Kendra. Solid and real, even on the end of a telephone line. “I miss you,” I blurt out.
“Don’t get all mushy on me,” she says.
THE RAIN IS BLOWING in sheets outside the back of the music room, pattering lightly, rhythmically, on the awning that hangs overhead. Tru is harmonizing with it as he searches out a melody. I am listening to the birth of a song.
It opens slowly, the way the petals of an orange blossom take their time to unfurl. It is light dancing on the water, or the wind rustling through the marsh grass. It’s sweet and a little sad, but also hopeful. It carries me halfway around the world, to a river whose name I don’t know, where waves lap the sides of boats with unfamiliar shapes and the air is scented with exotic flowers.
“Does it have words?” I say. The spell breaks.
He shakes his head. “It’s really just stealing riffs from this traditional Vietnamese song,” he says. He plays a few chords. Like the ones he just played but more measured. “Like this one. It’s kind of hard to translate,” he says as he plays on. “Something about the moonlight and clouds. Waiting for someone. It starts raining — it’s always raining in Vietnamese songs. Also, there’s something in there about soup.”
The weather is lousy, so there’s no one else outside the music room but us — a rare occasion. I feel like I have kind of, sort of made fr
iends with Derek and Chase in the past couple of weeks. But moments like this, alone with Tru, have become what I wait for, long for. His music has started to trickle into that big empty space in me where home was, where certainty was. He’s doing the rescuing this time.
It feels the way it does when I’m fishing before first light with Daddy. When the sun comes up over the water and all those shadows fill into shapes and become clearer. That’s the way it is with getting to know him. The colors and shapes fill in slowly. The music, of course, is the first thing that comes into focus. He makes me three CDs of the blues and Dixieland greats he loves: Tru Tunes, he labels them, volumes 1, 2, and 3.
“You seem sort of upbeat for someone who’s so into the blues,” I say.
He tells me about his adopted grandpa and next-door neighbor back in St. Bernard, Mr. Monks. He gave Tru his first guitar and taught him how to play. He was a blues great, Tru says, playing in honky-tonks all around the South in the ’40s and ’50s. “And you know, it’s kind of a misnomer,” he says. “The blues aren’t really about being sad. Some blues songs are really joyful. It’s just a particular type of musical expression.” I had never even heard the word misnomer before and didn’t know what it meant. Tru is smart.
He strums a sitting-on-the-front-porch-in-the-heat-staring-out-at-the-cotton-fields-nursing-a-black-eye-a-hangover-and-a-broken-heart kind of song for me. It makes me ache for home. That muggy, muggy southern Louisiana heat that no one in her right mind would miss. I love that he can make me feel that with his music.
I find out that his family is living in a place like the one we’re in, except that it’s two families — nine people — in the same amount of space. “It’s cozy,” he says. But in a way, he says, it’s not that weird for them. His parents grew up in refugee camps in Cambodia during the Vietnam War, so they were used to sharing everything. When they bought their trawler, a bunch of cousins chipped in and owned it together. They are used to having lots of people around.
One day, we’re walking around the side of the school past those sketchy loners. Tru waves to one of the guys, who’s all tatted up and looks like a biker. He goes over, shakes his hand. They laugh a little and he comes back.
“You know that guy?” I ask, not able to hide my surprise.
“Yeah, Sam. He lives in my apartment complex. He’s a good guy. He’s been through a lot. He’s trying to get it together. Addiction is really tough.”
Pretty much any other guy I know would have called Sam a dirtbag-loser-crackhead and made jokes about him. Tru has a big heart. It’s like there’s room in there for everyone.
Conversations with him are not what they are with other people. He cuts to the chase, to the heart of things. “Do you believe in fate?” he asks one day. I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that question before.
“I don’t think I can anymore. I mean, I used to kind of think there was this great big good thing out there that was supposed to happen to you. That was your fate. And you get it because you deserve it. And now. With everything that’s happened. I don’t want to think that this was my fate. To lose everything, you know? That I deserved what happened.”
“But what if the good thing is wrapped in a bad thing?” he asks, looking serious and thoughtful. “What if when you go through the bad thing, the good thing’s on the other end? Or if you respond to the bad thing in the right way, you get the good thing?”
My first thought is that I wonder — I hope — that he is thinking the same thing I am. That maybe we had to go through losing everything to meet each other again. And that’s the good thing. “Maybe. Maybe things aren’t supposed to be easy. Maybe we’re supposed to work for it,” I say. “Why, do you believe in fate?”
“My parents really believe in fate. It’s a Vietnamese thing. Everybody’s name is in a big book with their whole life story written next to it. But I guess they also believe it’s written in pencil, because they think you can erase it and rewrite your story if you work hard enough. I think it’s an excuse parents give their kids to make them work harder.”
“So what’s written next to your name?” I ask.
“‘Legendary bluesman,’ of course,” he jokes. He gestures like he’s putting his name up in lights. “What do you think yours says?”
I look out into the bland blankness of that soccer field. When I look into my future, what I wish for isn’t a job or a title or anything like that. I’m not like Mandy, who wants everyone to admire and love her. For me, it would be enough to have one person. Someone who looks into my eyes and really sees me. To have that, that one person and this whole big ocean to explore and take care of, to keep for those who come after me. That would be enough for me. That would be everything for me. But that, of course, isn’t what I say. “I honestly don’t know” is what I say.
“What do you love?” he asks, and the question makes me blush. “Not love to do, but what do you love.”
I think back to the times when I’ve been happiest, when I feel like everything is right with the world. I take a deep breath. “I love water. Open water. The light on it, especially in the late afternoon. I love fishing. Not just catching, but fishing. Waiting and then excitement when you feel a tug on your line. I love birds. All kinds of birds, but especially sea birds. Their feathers and wings and grace. I love the way the seasons come and go, and at home at least, you can actually feel them coming and going. I love music. The way it can take you places you’ve never been before and how sometimes it just captures exactly what you’re feeling. I love Louisiana food. Food that brings people together, I guess. I love belonging to something. Being part of something bigger than myself.” I feel embarrassed now. Like I’ve gone on too long and said too much.
“I am soooo glad you didn’t say shopping,” he says, half laughing. “I think the things we love are what lead us to our fate, you know? Maybe that’s what fate is. When you catch up to the things you love.”
There are some people that when you spend time with them, you walk away feeling empty and drained. When I am with him, I walk away feeling so full, overflowing. Better than I was before. I know more, I feel more, my brain and my blood are buzzing. And I need that so much right now.
The shock and pain of missing Danielle, knowing nothing about where she could be, has started to dull a little. I’m still checking the message boards every week. But not every day. I feel guilty for being happy when I’m with Tru, like being happy is a betrayal of her, of her memory. That makes it sound like she’s dead. And there’s a real chance that she could be. I’ve gone over and over it in my head. If she is out there, she wouldn’t be able to find me, either. I’m not where I’m supposed to be. Maybe she’s trying. Maybe she’s worried about me, too.
We’ve gotten in the habit of going to Aunt Cel’s every Monday night for red beans and rice. One day after we eat, Aunt Cel and I are alone in her kitchen and she brings up Danielle. “You know,” she says hesitantly. “I’ve been doing some inquiries about your friend. I haven’t heard anything concrete yet, but I did get the contact information for someone at the Red Cross who could be very helpful.”
Mama walks in. “Did I interrupt something?” she asks.
Aunt Cel looks uncomfortable. “I was just telling Evangeline that I’ll do everything I can to help Danielle,” she said.
Mama gives Aunt Cel a cold look. “Of course you will,” she says. “You’re always here to take care of things we can’t handle ourselves.”
“That’s not what I meant,” says Aunt Cel. This conversation is suddenly not about me or finding Danielle.
“I sincerely hope that they have started a new life happily somewhere,” says Mama, exiting the kitchen on the other side. “But not being a part of it may be the best thing for Evangeline.”
I feel a surge of anger boiling up. “Why does she hate Desiree so much?” I spit out at Aunt Cel. “I mean aside from the obvious reasons of her being a terrible mother and wrecking Danielle’s life. Which is not Danielle’s fault.”
&
nbsp; “Things happened,” Aunt Cel mutters. “It’s a long story. Regardless, you’re right. It’s not Danielle’s fault. And I know you won’t be satisfied until you know what happened to her. I’m going to keep trying, too. We’ll find her.”
Mandy. She is lost in a different way. The cheerleading thing sent her into a downward spiral. One day, I saw her as I was coming back from the soccer-field hill. Just as I was crossing that bit of parking lot in front of it, I saw Mandy in the passenger seat of Lacy’s car. They both stared out at me. I made a motion for her to roll down the window. Shockingly, she did it.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“We’re going out to lunch. Pretend you didn’t see me.”
“You’re going to get caught.”
“I’m not going to get caught. Don’t be such a goody-goody.”
Lacy smirked at me and waved. “Laaater,” she bleated. Then she squealed out of the parking lot.
Of course they got caught, and of course Mandy got suspended.
Then there is more drama.
Byron has really moved on. There’s some girl called Elena in Nashville where he’s living now. Mandy broke her own rule and called him after she didn’t hear from him for a few weeks. I overheard the whole thing, listened to her trying to act cool on the phone and then descending into desperation. “What’s her name? Just tell me, what’s her name? Is she a cheerleader? . . . Then what does she do? . . . Great. That’s just great. Have a nice life, Byron.” I nearly got hit by the phone as she threw it across our bedroom. So I spend a lot of time trying to be where she is not.
The same goes for Mama. But if I’m in the living room, I can hear her on the phone in the kitchen talking to her new work friends. She doesn’t sound like herself at all, not just her voice, but her words. She has this attitude that I’ve never seen before, complaining about the kids and the laundry, talking about going out for margaritas with the gals after work. I don’t think she’s ever had a margarita. Where would you get a margarita in Bayou Perdu? She’s a chameleon. A phony. When she acts like that, I can’t look at her.
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