Blues for Zoey

by Robert Paul Weston

  “No way,” said Topher. “I’m not paying.”

  “A bet’s a bet,” said Eyebrow Ring.

  Topher ignored him. He glared at Zoey. “Nobody said you could come in here. I don’t even know who you are.”

  “You don’t know who half these people are,” said Becky. “Neither do I.”

  “Shut up, Becks, I wasn’t talking to you.” His eyes were still on Zoey. “Who invited you?”

  She shrugged. “Some guys I met.”

  “Who? ”

  “I don’t know their names. They just invited me.”

  “You don’t know who you came with?” Topher’s eyes scanned up and down Zoey’s body. “What’s your name?”

  “Zoey.”

  “Zoey what?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t have to tell you that.”

  “It’s my fucking house. How do I know you’re not, like, a crazy person?”

  “Zamani,” she said at last. “My name is Zoey Zamani.”

  “Zoey Zamani? Dumb name. Oh, and you owe my friend with the ring in his face a hundred bucks.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s your fault I lost the bet, so you gotta pay.”

  “No way.”

  “I don’t care, as long as I get my hundred bucks,” said the kid with the eyebrow ring.

  “You will,” said Toph, “just as soon as—”

  He stopped because he had been interrupted—by his own ass. Topher farted so long and hard it sounded like he was shitting a train. Everybody screamed. They plugged their noses and ran.

  In a second, everyone was out in the hall and running for the kitchen. Zoey and I were pulled along with the crowd, and, looking back through the door, I saw Topher plop down on the bed as if all his energy had blown out, along with the monumental ass-monkey.

  “Fuck,” I heard him mutter. “I was saving that.”

  The last guy out of the room slammed the door and followed everyone else toward the kitchen. Someone pulled on my elbow. It was Zoey. Her fingers slid down my arm, and suddenly we were all alone, hand in hand.

  “C’mon,” she whispered, tugging me deeper down the forbidden hall. “You gotta see this.”

  23

  “Claire de lune,” Part 1

  She pulled me along to the end of the hallway, to the Salon. It was a massive room with hardwood floors and a ceiling punctured with skylights. Through them, we could see the moon and the stars above us. In one corner was a huge, brilliantly white grand piano.

  “Cool, huh?”

  “You’ve already been in here?” I asked her.

  She winked at me. “I like breaking the rules.”

  “It’s so shiny,” I said, staring at the piano. Even though my mother used to play one of these for a living, we only ever had a second-hand upright at home, back when Dad was alive.

  Zoey circled around it. “Do you play?”

  I admitted I used to, when I was younger. I told her my mom had once given me lessons but I was never very good.

  “Too bad it’s white,” she said. “I’m a firm believer all pianos should be black.”

  “It looks good in the dark,” I suggested. “Like a ghost.”

  Zoey didn’t respond. She ran her fingers over the rim. Then, silently, she raised the fallboard. “What should I play?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Toph’s mad enough already.”

  “I told you, I don’t like rules.”

  She slipped her legs over the stool.

  “Wait, don’t.”

  She ignored me and looked up, her huge eyes catching the blue light of the moon. “I know just the thing.”

  I was about to run over and stop her, but I froze. Zoey had started playing “Claire de lune.”

  When I was a kid, whenever Mom tucked me into bed she always went downstairs afterward and played this song. She called it the perfect lullaby. It was one of the last songs she taught me (or tried to) before Dad died. I could never play it like this. It reminded me of something Mom used to tell me.

  “A lot of people, especially people who don’t play, think the loud pieces are the hardest. The fast pieces, the ones with a lot of jumps, lots of notes. They’re hard in one way, but practice will always get you there. It’s the slow pieces, the quiet pieces, the sad pieces that are really the trickiest. That’s because there’s always something you can’t learn. You’ve just got to have it inside you.”

  It wasn’t until then, standing in Toph’s moonlit music room, that I understood. That thing my mother talked about—Zoey had it inside her.

  “What the fuck?!”

  Suddenly, the lights came on and I saw what Zoey meant about white pianos. At the flick of a switch, it went from a ghostly, mysterious gleam to looking like a cheap carnival ride.

  “What the fuck are you doing in here?”

  It was Topher. He was swaying in the doorway, his eyes wild (but at least he was wearing pants).

  “Sorry.” Zoey shrugged, going right on playing, giving up “Claire de lune” for something random, just loose improvisation. “When I see a beautiful instrument, I just have to play it.”

  “Fuck that,” Topher said. He was holding a wineglass full of beer and he pointed it at me. “So, what, you two are like—together ?”

  “I just met her,” I told him. “But you can at least be civil.”

  Topher laughed. “Civil ? Who says civil ? And like you’d know how to be civil to a girl. Becky told me all about you. She said when it comes to money, you’re tight as a fish’s ass.”

  Zoey snorted. “How civil of you to say.”

  Topher’s face flushed red and he stormed over to the piano, slamming down the fallboard—WHAM! Zoey only just managed to pull her fingers out of the way. He could have broken every bone in her hands. Hell, he would have lopped off her fingers.

  All I could think of to say was, “Toph! Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa!”

  “Shut up, Kaz! Take your slumdog girlfriend and—”

  Before he could finish, Zoey screamed at him. “YOU FUCKER!”

  She slapped the bottom of his wineglass. Beer and foam went everywhere. It sprayed on the wall, the floor—even inside the piano.

  “Fffffuck!” Topher shoved Zoey so hard she fell off the stool. He raised a fist in the air like he was going to hit her.

  Which is when I (finally) stepped in. I grabbed his arm and he spun around, fists flying, and even though he was kacked up to the eyeballs, he still hit the mark.

  Getting punched in the face comes with a very distinct sensation. First, all the pain shoots through your nose. It feels like your sinuses are wired to a car battery. Your eyes gush like you’re sobbing (not the coolest thing that can happen to you at a party), and then the pain goes bang through your whole head and it’s so bad it leaks into your legs, which of course morph into noodles.

  My only salvation was the fact that Toph was extremely drunk when he hit me. The punch was on target but clumsy. For a second, I actually thought I might be okay, but when I took my hands away from my face, the room really started to spin—because it wasn’t just tears and snot making my hands all slimy. It was blood.

  Toph had given me one Big Daddy of a nosebleed. The awful redness dribbled through my fingers and turned the puddle of Toph’s beer a vomitus pink.

  The second I saw the red in my hands, all my most important organs floated away, drifting up through the skylights like lost balloons. Just as I collapsed on Toph’s polished hardwood floor, all I could think was I hope to shit I’m about to leave a big fucking stain.

  24

  The Wisdom of Vomit

  I felt like Shain Cope sounded … like the end of the world.

  I woke up on Toph’s front lawn. Calen and—here’s a surprise—Devon Whitney were standing over me. They picked me up and, sagging between th
em like a damp laundry line, my shirt spattered with B-L-O-O-D (I was careful not to look down), I let them march-slash-drag me out to the car. Halfway there, my stomach voiced its sincere opposition to being moved. A searing mash of beer, bile, and barbecue potato chips spewed out of me.

  Devon nearly dropped me. “Disgusting! ”

  Calen, however, saw the wisdom of my vomit. “Yep, get it all out now. One drop in my car and you’re walking home.”

  I heard voices behind me. It was Alana and—another surprise—Christina Muñoz. They were tagging along half a block behind us. I could hear Christina gushing about “the best reality show they’ve ever made.” She was talking about Big Daddy.

  When they heard the cough and splatter of my puke, they came running up to us.

  “Are you okay?” Alana asked me.

  “No, but my stomach feels better.”

  Christina winced at my shirt, which now had a tasty new layer of abstract painting on it, courtesy of my gag reflex. “Sorry I got mad at you before,” she said. “You have to admit, though, that wasn’t the best music. Like, not for a party. Maybe not for anything.” She giggled loudly. “Anyway, Topher is such an asshole. But seriously, are you okay?”

  I wondered if she always jumped around like that from sentence to sentence. “I’ll be fine,” I told her. “I just need to get home and take a shower.”

  “Your girlfriend is crazy, by the way,” said Devon.

  “My who? She’s not my—wait, where is she?”

  “No one knows,” said Calen. “After you passed out, she wanted to stick around, but Topher wasn’t having it.”

  Devon laughed. “It took, like, five guys just to get her out of the house.” He shook his head, recalling what I’d missed. “And I thought my girl was fierce.”

  Calen explained how supremely pissed Topher had been, how he said he was going to call the police, although he never did. He only wanted to scare off Zoey, who was screaming and kicking up a riot.

  “Yeah,” Devon repeated himself. “Your girl was fierce.”

  “She’s not my girl.”

  “She is kind of hot,” said Calen. “You got her number, right?”

  “Oh, no! I didn’t. I don’t know anything about her.”

  “Not even her name?”

  “Zoey,” I said. “Zoey Zamani.”

  Alana smiled at me. “Cool name.”

  25

  It Runs in the Family

  I didn’t sleep well that night. When you’re lying alone in the dark, it’s hard to ignore the lingering throb of a smashed face. But that wasn’t the real reason. In truth, I couldn’t stop thinking about Zoey.

  In the morning, bleary-eyed, I did a Yellow Pages search for people named Zamani. There were forty-one listings, with addresses all across the city. I knew it would be stupid to dial at random. I recalled Calen’s advice from the night before: Girls hate needy. Anyway, do people who play music in the street get their names listed in the phone book?

  So I just sat there with a face like a junkyard, scanning up and down the addresses. I was still reading the list when a taxi rolled up out front. Through the window, I saw Mom ease herself out of the back seat.

  After an attack, she prefers silence at home. For a day or so, she’s kind of out of it, almost like she’s still asleep. She hates it when Nomi bounces to the door, leaping up, hugging her, yapping like a puppy.

  Mom’s feet dragged up the stairs. The entranceway door opened and closed. I heard a shuffling as she took off her shoes and pulled on her slippers.

  “Kaz?”

  “I’m here,” I said through the bedroom door. I didn’t want her to see my face. “How’re you feeling?”

  “Tired. Ironically. Where’s your sister?”

  “She slept over at a friend’s. Katie’s mom’ll bring her home this afternoon.”

  “I’m going to lie down for a while.”

  I waited, but I didn’t hear the sound of her door. When I peeked into the hall, she was still standing there.

  “The kraken wakes,” she said dully. There was a weak smile on her face. I wasn’t sure if she meant me or her.

  “You okay?” I asked. “You want something to eat?”

  “Not yet, first I’ll—Kaz, your face !”

  “Yep, I know. I was sort of there when it happened.”

  “When what happened?!”

  “Just some guy I know. He punched me.” I didn’t tell her it was Topher. She might want to call his parents. That wouldn’t be pretty.

  “Punched you? But why?!”

  I explained as much as I could, careful to leave out references to parties, girls, beer, et cetera. There wasn’t much left after the self-censorship. It was simply an argument that got out of hand.

  “I should have been here,” she croaked. “If I’d been with you, I would’ve—”

  “Mom, stop it. Even if you weren’t in the hospital, it’s not like I would have asked you to come along.”

  “But look at you!” She leaned forward, peering into my face. My nose was about two inches too wide and purple blotches pooled under my eyes. “There was blood, wasn’t there?”

  I shrugged.

  “Did you … ?”

  “Pass out? Of course.”

  Mom laughed sadly. “Passing out at the worst possible time. Runs in the family.” She pulled me into one of those head hugs your mom gives you when she thinks you’re still five.

  “Ow! My face!”

  I pushed her away and the nubs of bone in her shoulders jabbed my hands. They were way too pronounced.

  “It looks worse than it is,” I told her unconvincingly. “I feel fine.”

  Mom shook her head. Her eyes were wet. “Later, we’ll have Mr. Rodolfo lend us his car. We’ll all drive up to Beauhaven. You let Tracey have a look at you for once. She’ll fix us both up, you’ll see.”

  26

  Beauhaven

  One side effect of her illness is that Mom isn’t allowed to have a driver’s license. So whenever we drive up to the Beauhaven Center, it’s always me behind the wheel. The center is two hours away, in an almost-suburban town called West Olsten. As far as I know, there’s no such place as East Olsten, but that doesn’t seem to bother the people of West Olsten.

  Never go there, by the way.

  I’m sure there are a zillion places in the city—maybe even right in Evandale—where you can get retired hippies to ram-slash-dribble homeopathic smoothies down your throat, but if you asked Mom, nowhere was as good as Beauhaven.

  As soon as you pull into the parking lot, everything looks false—the marble pillars (which are actually textured cement); the roof of wooden shingles (which are obviously plastic); the pair of potted evergreens on either side of the entrance (both of which are polyurethane Christmas trees). It’s all synthetic crap, crafted to give the opposite impression: that Beauhaven is fully in touch with the all-natural world.

  Out front is a sign painted with the Beauhaven logo. A cartoon daisy, with the initials BC. Below it is the familiar slogan:

  The Beauhaven Center

  Get Wellness!

  (Mom had been trying for two years, but she hadn’t gotten any yet.)

  Tracey, the woman who ran Beauhaven, was a “reiki specialist.” For Mom, this was crucial. Reiki came from Japan and so did she, at least in a roundabout way. According to her logic, if anything was going to work for her, it would come from her ancestral homeland.

  “Please,” I begged when we got there. “Don’t make me go in.”

  “But Kaz, your face.” Mom shook her head. “Nomi can’t even look at you.”

  She was right. We had picked my sister up on the way and she was in the back seat—covering her eyes.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Really.”

  “How would you know if you’re fine? You’re
not a practitioner.”

  “What does that even mean? A ‘practitioner’? If you’d said ‘doctor’ for once, then yes, you’d be right. I am not a doctor.” I pointed at the Beauhaven building. “But neither is she!”

  Mom shook her head. “I’m not hearing this. Tracey is wonderful—and you’re seeing her.”

  “I am not.” I turned and stared grimly out the window. The sky above Beauhaven was bright blue and completely empty except for a few fluffy clouds and a flock of big black birds. They looked ominous. And hungry. I willed them to swoop down and devour the place, but they weren’t into it. They just flew away.

  “You’re going in,” said Mom.

  “Why can’t you just go in and leave me here? I’ll be fine!”

  “Don’t fight,” Nomi told us, speaking blindly from the back seat. “It’s bad for Mom if you fight. Stress is bad and then she’ll—”

  “I won’t.” Mom reached back to rub Nomi’s knee.

  “Well, he should do what you say.” Nomi spoke as if I wasn’t there. “He’s supposed to know that stress is the problem.”

  “You’re eight! ” I told her. “You’re not even supposed to know the word ‘stress.’ ”

  “Your face is gross,” she retorted, which certainly shut me up. Mom tugged down the passenger-side sun visor and flipped open the mirror for me to see. The bridge of my nose looked like a deformed potato and the two dark puddles under my eyes were swelling into lakes.

  “Looks worse than this morning.”

  Mom smiled, vindicated. “Guess that means you’re coming in with us.”

  (It did.)

  Tracey was a thin blonde woman with faintly muscled arms. If you only saw her from behind, you might easily assume she was my age, a teenager—until she turned around, that is. Then you noticed the fake tan she used to hide her wrinkles and the sagging, scrotum-like skin around her armpits.

  “Welcome back,” she said to Mom, clearly happy to see her. “And who’s this?”

  “My son, Kaz. As you can see, he might be in need of some of your magic.”