by Gin Phillips
The truth is that our options are going to be very limited by not having a car. This isn’t New York or Boston—Birmingham is not a walking city. Everyone has cars here, and even though you could ride the bus, it’s really inconvenient. (We had a neighbor who worked in a restaurant five miles away, and it took her two stops and over an hour to get to work every morning.) A few people ride bicycles, but there aren’t any bike paths; if you ride on major roads, you have a death wish. So that leaves walking. At least that’s what’s left for me and Lydia. And that means we’re within a half hour of a couple of nice restaurants, a used bookstore, a gourmet grocery store, and the Chevron.
My entire savings adds up to thirty dollars. That gourmet grocery store is definitely off-limits.
At the gas station, I linger over the food aisles, trying to memorize what’s on the shelves. If we need extra supplies, this is where we’ll have to come. (Man, beef jerky is expensive. You’d think it was dried diamonds, not dried cow.) I head to the counter with a Snickers—my favorite candy bar—and a Heath bar, Lydia’s favorite.
The girl at the counter is by far the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen working in a gas station. She has a short afro and creamy brown skin, and she’s slouching over the counter in a way that makes her seem confident and cool. It’s the kind of slouch that I could see myself practicing. I wonder if Adam Cooper likes slouchers.
Nope. I will not think of him. When I think of him, I see my mother’s face.
“I like your shirt,” says the pretty sloucher, handing me my change.
“Thanks,” I say. “My dad got it for me from Spain.”
That’s true. It has a mosaic bull on it. I can’t remember why Dad went to Spain, but I think it may have been a trip with a girlfriend.
“You’ve been to Spain?” she asks.
“I haven’t been anywhere.”
She gives me a sympathetic, I-get-you look. I like her a lot better than the hairy guy with a mustache who’s usually at the counter. He has a tattoo of what I think is a koala on his neck.
I head back to the honeysuckle tree to wait for Lydia. When she shows up a little while later, she’s sweating and out of breath. She’s got Saban’s leash in one hand: his tongue is hanging out of his mouth, and he’s sort of staggering.
I pull out a bottle of water from my backpack.
“Thanks,” she says. She takes a long chug, then she unzips her bag and pulls out Saban’s water dish. She pours him half of the water.
“Did you have any trouble?” I ask.
“Nope. Mom made me pancakes for breakfast, squeezed me hard for a second, and then said she was running late for work. I think she’s looking forward to me bringing back a pair of those aluminum can pants.”
As soon as Lydia’s rested, we pick up our backpacks and climb the crape myrtle, with Lydia passing Saban over the fence to me once I get on the golf-course side. We head to the putt-putt course. The second I open the door to Marvin, I realize we have a problem. The heat knocks the breath out of me. I haven’t been in Marvin during the heat of the day—he’s like a sauna. In the amount of time it takes to walk in, set down my bag and unzip it, my hair is drenched like I just got out of the shower. I go back outside and Lydia’s standing in the shade of her rocket ship. Neither one of us can quite make ourselves go inside again.
“I think I can be done setting up in maybe thirty minutes,” I say. “Meet you back here then. We can go find a nice shady tree or something.”
“You know, you could take the other bunk bed in my rocket,” Lydia says. “There’s plenty of room for us both.”
“No, thanks,” I say. “I want my own place. Or, you know, my own dinosaur.”
She shrugs, takes a breath, and darts inside the rocket ship. Plenty of kids at school hate being by themselves—they’re never without a group of friends around them laughing and talking. The worst punishment for them is if a teacher makes them sit alone at lunch. I’ve never been forced to sit by myself at lunch, but it wouldn’t be so bad, really. It’d be the perfect time to read a book. (The same thing occurs to me about being sent to prison—just having to sit on a bunk bed all day long might be kind of nice. You could read and draw and learn how to do things like paint or play the guitar. I think I could be okay with prison.)
Anyway, Lydia and I both like to have time to ourselves. Neither of us has brothers or sisters, and I think that has something to do with it. There are plenty of times that I have to entertain myself—there’s no one else around to do it. If I hated alone time, my life would be pretty miserable. Instead I’ve learned to enjoy it, and I miss it if I don’t have it.
Despite all these positive thoughts about alone time, even a minute inside Marvin is miserable. I think I might pass out. But I prop the door open, so there’s a little breeze. I start to think I can handle it. I pull out an inflatable mattress, the kind you float on in the swimming pool. I blow it up—outside in the shade of an oak tree—and bring it back into Marvin. It’s a pretty good couch. I pull out my Lava lamp and plug it in, just to see if the electricity works. It does. Between the inflated mattress and the floating blue shadows on the wall from the Lava lamp, I’m really feeling an underwater theme in here. It’s more like being in the belly of a whale than a dinosaur.
I pull out my laptop, which is wrapped in a blanket. It’s time to leave Marvin. I need to get closer to some of the houses lining the golf course.
Once I went to the beach down at Gulf Shores, and I met a boy from Philadelphia. We caught mussels together for a while, snatching them up in the surf and then tossing them back so they could bury themselves in the wet sand again. It was his first time to Alabama, and he said that before he came down here he thought nobody owned any shoes. And nobody had electricity. That made me think: 1) he had been watching some very old movies; 2) he was sort of condescending for someone who lived in a city known for cream cheese; and 3) my state has an unfair reputation.
I know some people think we’re still all about dirt roads and hound dogs down here. But I’ve lived in a big city all my life. I don’t want Lodema to be some big camping trip. I don’t want to just fish and wander around dirty and barefooted. I need the Internet. And I don’t want to have to walk all the way back to my house to get it.
I should mention that I did one other thing during the last four days. I started hanging out along 34th Street, the street that’s closest to the putt-putt course. The backyards of those houses are only forty or fifty feet from the fence around Lodema. I took my scooter to 34th Street and rode up and down the sidewalk during the afternoons when people were getting home from work. I struck up conversations with people and complimented them on their pets. I asked the people’s names. Then I asked for their pets’ names, and I scratched plenty of dogs behind their ears while I oohed and aahed over them. I found out what kinds of dogs they were. I found out from the pet owners if any of their neighbors had pets. I bet I know the names of at least twenty dogs and cats that live on 34th Street.
When I boot up my laptop and call up the list of available networks, I recognize several of the networks that are labeled by last names. Anderson. Bailey. Watson. Levey. Sanchez. All of them are security-enabled networks requiring a password. This is where it gets fun. I know how people love to use their pets’ names for passwords. Birthdays and anniversaries, too, but those are a lot harder to figure out. So I play around with different combinations—pumpkin, pumpkintheboxer, lady, ladycollie, sam, schnauzer, samschnauzer, samtheschnauzer, labradoodle, dixie, dixielab, dixielabradoodle—and pretty soon I have it: the Watsons’ password is eugenebeagle. I’m in.
Soon I’ve got a wireless connection whenever I want it, and both our places are hot but comfortable. I see that Lydia’s even brought a little fan, which she’s angled right over her bed. Saban lies in front of it with his tongue hanging out. He raises his head occasionally, then looks disappointed and flops back down.
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sp; “Should we walk him?” I ask. “He seems depressed.”
“He always looks like that.”
“Huh.”
Regardless of Saban’s opinion, we’re ready to get out in the fresh air. We grab our lunches and a couple of bottles of water. We don’t bother putting Saban on a leash. It’s not like he can go very far. But we haven’t even left the putt-putt course before Lydia’s yanking on my arm.
“What?”
“Look,” Lydia says, pointing toward the aquarium hole.
I do look, but all I see is the concrete and the fake grass and those three fish mouths. “What?”
She strides over and leans down by the three fish. Saban pants along beside her. When she stands up, she’s holding something in her hand. I look closer. It’s a Coke can.
“This wasn’t here last week,” she says. “Someone else has been here.”
I think about that. It hadn’t occurred to me that anyone else would come on the course, but it doesn’t seem like a huge deal.
“Maybe it’s kids,” I say. “Serial litterers. Or maybe there’s still a maintenance guy who checks on things.”
“And that doesn’t worry you?”
“Not really,” I say. “I think there’s a good chance the wind just blew that can over here. It’s one Coke can. And this place is huge. What are the chances of running into anybody if someone’s here?”
“If somebody’s on this golf course, it’d be nice to know who,” says Lydia. “I might walk into my rocket one day and find some guy waving a knife.”
Have I mentioned that there’s a downside to Lydia watching all those horror movies?
“You mean some guy waving a Coke,” I say.
“I just think it’s strange,” Lydia says. “That’s all. This place is supposed to be abandoned. But if there is a guy with a knife, I’ve been practicing this kickboxing move that might be perfect.”
She demonstrates, lifting one leg off the ground and bringing her hands up in a boxing position. She twists and leans back a little, then bends her knee and rams the heel of her foot into my shoulder.
“Ow!”
“Right?” she says, pleased. “And if you had a knife, don’t you think you would have dropped it?”
She’s lucky that I think being weird is a good thing.
Rubbing my shoulder, I start walking and tell her to come on. I don’t plan to waste anymore energy thinking about the Coke can or imaginary knives. We have a new world to discover.
We set a pretty fast pace and keep within sight of the fence, hoping to make a complete loop around the course before it gets dark. I’ll admit, we get a little sidetracked. Even with the constant itchy weeds and swarms of gnats and mosquitoes, the golf course is fascinating. We see the flag for Hole Four at the top of a wide, steep hill. The top of the hill is flat like a crater, and the white sand of the sand traps catches the sunlight. We plow through the grass and hike up the hill. When we get to the top, panting, it’s obvious we’re on what used to be the green. The grass is thicker and nicer than most of the course—no weeds, just tall, soft green blades. It makes me wish all grass was like the grass on the putt-putt course, that it didn’t grow at all. Then we’d be standing on a carpet-grassed green like on television, and we could lie down and take a nap on it.
Needing a break, we sit down even though the spot isn’t quite as nice as carpet. We flatten out a patch by making grass angels, then we lie back and catch our breaths. That’s when we notice that you have a perfect view of the airplanes landing and taking off at the airport, which is maybe ten miles away. When we’re flat on our backs, we can see the white underbellies of the planes as they go over us. The Southwest planes look like orange and purple birds gliding through the sky, and when they get close you see their red bellies. They’re by far the most colorful ones. It’s like we’ve found some hidden island where giant, prehistoric birds still live, and we can observe them secretly. I smile at that idea: This white bird-plane is going off to find food for its nest. The next bird-plane is coming home to rest for the night. That last one is going so high and so straight that it just enjoys the feel of flying.
We shake the grass out of our hair and walk until we come to Hole Six, which is another steep climb. We’re curious if we can see the planes better from here, but instead we’re looking into downtown Birmingham. Just below us, we see the Western Supermarket and the stoplight on 22nd Street. Then lots of flat gray roofs. But past that, the view of the city is breathtaking. I look away from the lights and peer downhill—there’s something about steep hills that makes me want to roll down them. So I do. I lie down and push off, and soon I’m tumbling so fast that everything is a green and blue blur. I keep picking up speed—if I were a boulder on a mountain, I’d be starting an avalanche. If I were an airplane on a runway, I’d be lifting into the air. I shriek and I taste grass in my mouth. Then I’m at the bottom, breathless, my head spinning. It’s like the end of a roller coaster: First of all, I’m possibly ready to throw up. Second of all, I’m thinking I need to do it all over again.
As I’m sitting up, I hear a thumping sound and a squeal. Lydia is coming down the hill, too. She lands a few feet from me.
“That was amazing!” she says, still lying sprawled across the ground, her eyes squeezed shut. “Let’s do it again!”
So we do. And before we know it, the sky has turned orange and pink, and we have to start jogging home. We don’t want to make our moms suspicious on our first day.
As we head away from Hole Six, we see movement off to our left, close to one of the ponds we haven’t explored. At first I think it’s just a tree in the wind, but then I see a shadow. Not a tree shadow. A person shadow.
“Lydia,” I whisper.
She stops and turns back to me. “What?”
“Over there.”
“I don’t see anything.”
She starts walking, but I’m slower to move. I decide Lydia’s talk about some Coke-drinking boogeyman has made me paranoid. We pick up the pace and barely make it back into our own yards before the sun completely sets.
CHAPTER 8
THE CHEWY CENTER
As we climb over the crape myrtle and drop down to the golf course on our second day at Lodema, we make a plan. So far we’ve stayed close to the edges of the golf course. If Lodema were a piece of Valentine’s candy, then we’ve only nibbled around the chewy center. It could be caramel or coconut or that disgusting orange crème—we don’t know. So that’s the goal for the day—check out the chewy center and find out what’s in there.
First we need to visit the putt-putt course and drop off our second batch of supplies. Today I filled my backpack mostly with snacks. Next to my inflatable float/couch, I stack up the food I’ve brought—peanut butter, bread, crackers, dried apples. A big can of peanuts and a box of raisins. I had to limit my food supplies to things that didn’t need to be refrigerated and that Mom wouldn’t miss from the pantry.
I fill one corner with a few other supplies: mosquito spray, roach spray, Band-Aids, soap. A plastic bowl, an iron skillet, a plate, and a fork. A bathing suit and a change of clothes, just in case.
Lydia sticks her head inside Marvin as I’m folding my extra T-shirt.
“An underground city built by monkeys,” she says.
“A pirate ship with chests full of gold,” I answer.
We’ve been doing this all morning—seeing who can come up with the strangest, most impossible things we might find today. Of course, it’s more likely that we’ll find nothing but weeds and maybe another pond or two. Or snakes. I’m still watching for snakes.
“How could a ship get on a golf course?” asks Lydia.
“I don’t know,” I say, “but that’s why it’d be such a great hiding place. No one would think to look.”
We head straight toward the center of Lodema. We head past Marvin and the putt-putt course, and i
f we look over our shoulders we see a dinosaur and a rocket ship and a volcano behind us, and, past that, the city skyline. After ten or fifteen minutes of walking, we can’t see much of anything but the tall grass up past our waists and pine trees all around us. We stumble across a concrete path—an old golf cart path, I guess—and after that the walking gets easier.
“It doesn’t look like the monkeys are going to happen,” I say, wiping the sweat off my forehead. My hair is sticking to me, pieces of grass are sticking to me, and I think some gnats might be sticking to me.
“Maybe an enchanted castle where everyone inside has been asleep for a hundred years,” says Lydia. “Like Sleeping Beauty.”
“Or maybe . . .”
“Don’t even start about the snakes again,” she says.
We plod on, taking swigs of water as we go. When we first see the castle, I think Lydia was right about Sleeping Beauty. We come around a bend in the path and instead of just treetops and sky, we see the top of a stone building. It’s falling apart, with big gaps and holes in the roof and walls, but on one side there’s definitely a turret like in fairy tales.
“If there’s a princess in there, I’m not kissing her,” I say.
“Come on!” says Lydia, and she starts running through the grass. I’m so close behind her that the grass she stomps down slaps back against my thighs. It’s dry and scratchy against my skin, but it makes a whispering sound as we run like it has a secret to tell us.
Once we get closer to the stone building, we can tell there’s not a sleeping princess inside. For one thing, it’s too small to be a real castle. It’s barely bigger than the kitchen of our apartment. But mainly what rules out the princess idea is a faded blue and white sign that says CONCESSIONS hanging over a boarded up window. I suppose it’s blocking the open space where people used to sell drinks and snacks. I’ve heard that before Lodema was a golf course, it was a big park with a merry-go-round and paddleboats and maybe a Ferris wheel. I never really believed it, but the concession stand makes me wonder. I’ve never heard of a concession stand on a golf course.