by Nora Olsen
Clarissa sighed again, and I could tell she was going to spill it.
“Our house is getting foreclosed on. It’s really stressful. We got a letter saying the house was going to be put on the sheriff’s sale on Saturday, so we packed our stuff into boxes. I went to four different liquor stores to get cardboard boxes. But then the auction never happened. It’s like they’re just trying to drive us crazy. Even though we’re packing, my parents are still trying to work things out so maybe we won’t have to move after all. These short sale real estate agents keep ringing our bell like every five seconds. And I don’t know where any of my stuff is, ’cause I packed it all. If we do move, it’s not like we even have a place to move to. My dad wants to move to Arizona and live with his brother and a hundred ostriches in a trailer.”
That sounded like one crowded trailer.
“Jesus,” I said. “That is bad. I’m sorry.” I always thought a girl like Clarissa would have a perfect life. I guess you never knew what other people were going through.
“Thanks, I guess,” Clarissa said.
“Can you fight the bank?” I said.
“They won’t hardly answer my parents’ calls. What did you have in mind, a protest?” She laughed.
“I know sometimes the foreclosures are fraudulent,” I said. “Sometimes if it goes to court, the judge throws it out.”
“Really?” said Clarissa. “How do you know?”
“Can I trust you not to tell?” I asked. Why was I even asking? I just shouldn’t tell her. How did telling her my shameful secrets fit with avoiding her?
“If you don’t tell my stuff, I won’t tell your stuff,” Clarissa said.
“I know because my evil parents work in banking, and my father made a ton of money at Goldman Sachs betting against their own CDOs. That’s collateralized debt obligations.”
“Like, I have no idea what you’re saying,” Clarissa said.
“So this company he worked for, Goldman Sachs, bought these bad mortgages that people couldn’t pay, probably like your family’s. But they were bundled together into these packages called CDOs. Then they were selling these CDOs to their customers, telling them that they should totally invest in this great opportunity. Even though they actually knew all the time that the mortgages were doomed.”
“Your dad did that?”
“No, worse. He worked in a different area of the company. They basically bet on whether things are going to go up or down. My dad bet a lot of money that the mortgages were bad and would default. He made a ton of money for Goldman Sachs. They gave him more than a million dollars in bonuses, they were so happy with him.”
I wasn’t even sure why I was telling Clarissa all this. These were my deepest, darkest secrets. For some reason, against all my better judgment, I thought I could trust her.
“And they never got mad at him later?”
“No,” I said. “But he doesn’t work there any more. He went out on his own. He started a hedge fund. He’s an arbitrageur. Don’t tell anyone, okay?”
“You don’t want people to know how rich your family is?” Clarissa’s eyes were wide.
“I just don’t want them to know how evil my family is,” I said. “But anyway, maybe I can help you guys with your mortgage problems. I learned a lot about them. My mom deals with mortgages at her job too.”
I actually had learned one set of information about mortgages from my parents, and another set of information from a teach-in I went to at Occupy Wall Street. Between the two, I figured I was practically an expert.
Clarissa tucked her hair behind her ears again. I was starting to think it was kind of cute. “If I bring you some paperwork, would you be able to look at it and see if it looks fraudulent?”
“I could try,” I said. At last, I was going to have a chance to use my knowledge, for a good cause.
Out in the parking lot, I ran into Slobberin’ Robert. He was slipping flyers under windshield wipers, probably flyers for some awful Christian band’s show that a friend of his was in. “Wassup, dawg?” he said.
If he was willing to help some dumb guitarist pal, maybe he would help Desi.
“Hey, Slobbo, you know how Desi Kirchendorfer is running for homecoming queen?”
“That’s girl stuff,” Slobberin’ Robert said. “Not my department.”
“It is your department. Vote for her. Tell your friends to vote for her.”
“I don’t have any friends,” he said. “I’m liked, but I’m not well-liked.”
I hate when people who have a million friends say they have no friends. It’s like when really skinny girls start talking about how fat they are.
“What about Desi? I guess she’s not your friend either.”
He smiled. “Okay, no homo, but even I have feelings. I really do like Desi Kirchendorfer. People always say people with Down syndrome are so sweet, and I have no idea what they’re talking about. That girl is a regular spitfire. Do not cross her.”
I couldn’t believe I was almost-friends with someone who said no homo.
“Think about it like this,” I said. “When you’re forty years old and your teeth are falling out, do you want to remember how you helped a nice girl achieve her dream or how you were just a schmucky guy who did nothing?”
“I’m probably not going to live that long,” Slobberin’ Robert said, laughing.
“What makes you say that?”
“I drink, I do drugs, I drive afterward,” he said. “It’s a matter of time.”
“That’s terrible. You shouldn’t do that.” I was repulsed.
“Easy for you to say. How else am I supposed to get from point A to point B without driving?”
“No, I mean you shouldn’t drink and drive,” I said. It was hard for me to imagine how he could be so stupid. This view into his twisted mind was amazing. It was like I had seen something gross that I could never unsee.
He shook his head, still smiling.
“It might not just be you who dies,” I pointed out. “You could take out a kid. A whole carful of kids.”
He shivered but still kept smiling. “I surrender, I surrender. I’ll help Desi.”
Driving home, I had a long fantasy about me and Clarissa riding horses on a beach and then dismounting and kissing as the surf lapped at our feet. Ridiculous. What was I, twelve?
I was shocked when I got into my kitchen and met my mom there. She was never home at this hour. “Mom, is everything okay? Why are you here?”
“I’m packing for my business trip to Bermuda,” my mom said. “Do you think I should wear my old-lady bathing suit with the skirt, or my tankini?”
“Old-lady one,” I said. I was feeling much closer to her these days. I had submitted my application to Simon’s Rock, and her essay had really helped our relationship. “Hey, Mom, did you ever ride a horse when you were a kid?”
“I took riding lessons at Claremont Stables,” my mother said. “It was the only place that gave riding lessons in Manhattan. Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” I said. “Maybe you can tell me a little bit about horses sometime.”
“Sure,” my mother said. She grabbed her purse, her garment bag, and her stylish little wheelie suitcase and headed for the door.
“Don’t forget your passport,” I said, but she was already gone.
Chapter Thirteen
Clarissa
On Tuesday, Lexie picked me up at the stable after work so we could discuss the foreclosure documents. I had scanned them and e-mailed them to her the night before. Her car was an eggplant purple Nissan Altima with a cloth interior, and it looked pretty old. I was surprised a girl with as much money as Lexie didn’t drive a nicer car. But then again, it was probably all part of Lexie’s angry girl act, like the way she dressed in clothes from Goodwill Super Store. How could she rail against capitalism and drive a Benzie?
“So, what you been up to?” she asked.
“Shoveling horse poop,” I told her.
“What do they do with all that h
orse poop anyway?”
“A company from Newburgh picks it up and turns it into compost.”
“I love compost,” Lexie said.
“Okay, that’s crazy,” I said.
“Hey, my car is a safe space! No negativity,” Lexie said.
I wasn’t sure if we were insulting each other in a friendly way or for real. We fell silent.
Her house also surprised me. It was a big old Victorian that had been restored. When I thought about it, that must have taken a lot of money, but it was so subtle looking. What was the point of being rich if you didn’t show off and have an opulent house?
“My dad will probably be home later, but my mom’s on a business trip,” Lexie said.
I wasn’t sure why that made me nervous. It wasn’t like we were going to get busy or something. We were enemies. Okay, not anymore. Frenemies? Also, what the hell, My dad will probably be home? My dad always came home. I didn’t have to speculate.
Lexie’s room was bafflingly decorated with anime posters, old movie star pictures, and vintage flyers of concerts Lexie couldn’t possibly have gone to unless she had seen Throwdown, whoever they were, when she was five. Over her bed was a big laminated poster of a hundred different kinds of butterflies, some of them circled in marker. Her bedspread was black with three skulls embroidered on it. Behind the skulls were angel wings and two pink guitars, crossed. Lexie followed my gaze and said defensively, “My mom got me that, okay? It’s awful when she tries to guess my taste. It’s always wrong.”
“What’s up with the butterfly poster?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m circling the ones I’ve seen,” she said. “I love butterflies. They’re so beautiful. It’s like, why are people so into making up myths about God and Jesus and stuff that can’t be seen? When there’s so many miracles and beautiful things that are real and we can see them every day, like butterflies. Forget I said anything. I don’t think we should discuss religion. You want some Yan Yan?”
“Some what?”
Lexie took out a little pink snack carton with Japanese writing on it. She peeled off the top and handed it to me. Inside were these breadstick-looking things and a separate compartment of pink stuff. The pink stuff was not unpleasantly fragrant and reminded me of those scented markers. I pulled out a stick. It had writing on it. It said: Fox, Beware of Lies. I dipped it in the strawberry goo and handed the package back to Lexie.
Lexie took one and read it off to me. “Goat, be lucky.” She blushed. Then she sat down on her bed and said in a businesslike way, “Okay, so here’s the deal about your parents’ mortgage. I think you could make a good case that it’s a fraudulent mortgage.”
I sat in the chair that was at Lexie’s desk. “Really?”
“Yeah. First of all, that stuff about how your dad didn’t know it was an adjustable-rate mortgage, and the teaser rate? That totally smacks of predatory lending. That’s when they use deceptive practices and target uneducated people. No offense to your dad or anything.”
“None taken,” I said.
“Anyways. The fact that he was only three months late on his payments when they went into foreclosure is another red flag. Also, when your parents refinanced the house? They practically gave your parents more money than the house was even worth. They shouldn’t have done that. They’re not supposed to loan you more than you can pay back. That’s just a bad practice. But all that stuff is more unethical than illegal. Here’s the big thing. Your foreclosure documents were robo-signed.”
“Excuse me?” Not understanding what people said to me about the mortgage was getting pretty old. I reached for another Yan Yan. This one said: Starfish Star + Fish.
“There was a whole thing on 60 Minutes about this. Let me show you on YouTube—they can explain it better than I can,” Lexie said.
What kind of sixteen-year-old watched 60 Minutes? That show was for old people. Lexie found the video she was looking for, and I was relieved to see it was really short.
But Lexie was right; the video explained everything very simply. Basically banks had given mortgages to anyone with a pulse, so now they had so many foreclosures they couldn’t keep up with all the paperwork. So instead of having bank employees review the foreclosure documents and sign them the way they were supposed to, they hired a bunch of hairdressers and high-school students to sit around signing thousands of affidavits without even knowing what they were.
“I’m a little bit jealous of these robo-signers,” I said, taking another Yan Yan. “They got nine bucks an hour just to sign papers.”
I had a daydream of myself sitting in a nice cool bank, signing papers instead of cleaning stalls at Mrs. Astin’s. Then I would come upon the documents for my own house, and I would just put them in the shredder.
“I think you’re missing the point,” Lexie said. “Robo-signing isn’t legal, it’s fraudulent. It invalidates the whole foreclosure.”
“Wait, wait,” I said. “You mean we could keep our house if our documents were robo-signed?”
Lexie grinned. “I know your documents were robo-signed. That’s the beauty of it. There are lists on the Internet of all the known robo-signers. One page is called You Know It’s Robo-Signed If Their Name Is. And it was right there on the list. Charmaine Marchesi.” She flipped through the documents I had scanned and shook the page at me, stabbing at the signature line.
“Charmaine Marchesi,” I read. “Huh, what do you know?”
“There’s something else too,” Lexie said. “I believe the bank is missing papers they need in order to foreclose on you. Where’s the promissory note? A lot of times when the loan changes hands over and over like yours did, the lenders are so badly organized that they lose this important paper. This is something that could make a judge throw out the foreclosure.”
“Wow. So how do I get it to court? I’m not sure how much time we have.”
“I don’t know that part,” Lexie admitted. “I would start by sending a letter to the bank saying you’re on to them and you intend to take it to court. And then go on our local TV station and explain your plight.”
“I’m not sure about that,” I said. Her ideas seemed a bit half-baked. Like something from a kids’ movie where people win just because they’re right.
“And also look for a good lawyer. But obviously your parents really need to be the ones who do that.”
“I’m sure they will, when I tell them everything you told me,” I said. “Thank you, Lexie. This is a big deal.”
I felt a lightening around my heart. Maybe my family wouldn’t be cast into the street. My gratitude was genuine and vast. I got up and threw my arms around Lexie.
A sensation like an electric current went through my body. I experienced a strong urge that didn’t come from my brain—but from somewhere else—to push Lexie down on the bed and kiss her. Oh, my. I tore myself away from Lexie, and I had to make myself do it.
“All right, I gotta go,” I said.
“Wait, stay,” Lexie said. “Have another Yan Yan.” She took one herself. “Mouse, do not be timid,” she read.
“No, I have to go to the library,” I said at random.
“I’ll drive you,” Lexie said. “Unless someone is coming to pick you up?”
I shook my head. No one was coming to take me to the library because I had just conceived of the idea one second ago. But I would be safer in Lexie’s car than in her bedroom. Lexie would be busy driving, so I couldn’t kiss her or paw at her.
“Are you going to the Dover Plains library?” she asked.
“Yes. Yes, I am. That is exactly the library where I’ve been planning to go.”
I calmed down a little in the car. We were listening to these two soothing female vocalists. I wondered what would be so wrong if I did kiss Lexie. She was much nicer than I had originally thought. And she was kind of cute. I peeked over at her strong profile, her spiky blue hair. Her pale arms gripping the steering wheel. Her well-shaped legs.
“What?” Lexie said, glancing at me. “Why are
you staring at me?”
“Me, staring?” I said.
“Yeah, you were staring at my legs.”
“Uh, let’s see.” I was not good at lying. “Oh, I was just thinking you’d make a good horseback rider,” I stuttered out.
“You really think so?” Lexie sounded pleased. And like she’d bought my story.
“You ever done it? Horseback riding, I mean?” I asked.
“No, I never did. I was kind of thinking recently I’d like to try it. Maybe you could teach me.”
This whole conversation sounded like double entendre. Either Lexie was flirting with me, making fun of me, or she was genuinely interested in horses. I wondered what she really thought of me. Did she think I was dumb because I didn’t know anything about mortgages and butterflies or whatever?
“Who is this singing?” I asked, to change the subject.
“The Indigo Girls,” Lexie said. “If you’re going to be a real lesbian, you have to learn about the Indigo Girls.”
“I’m bisexual, I told you,” I said.
“I don’t trust bisexuals,” Lexie said. “If I was dating a bisexual, what would stop her from deciding to date a boy instead?”
“I can’t believe you,” I said. “What’s to stop anyone from deciding to date someone else instead? Bisexual doesn’t mean sleeps around. It doesn’t mean you have to date a boy and a girl at the same time.” Why was Lexie talking about dating a bisexual? What did that mean? “It’s totally unfair that bi people face discrimination not just from straight people but from gay people too sometimes.”
“What you say makes sense,” Lexie said reluctantly. That was something I liked about her. She’d say these dumb things, but she was willing to admit when she was wrong. “I guess I just don’t believe bisexuals really exist,” Lexie said. “Like, girls who say they’re bi are really gay and won’t admit it, or straight and just goofing around.”
“Well, we do exist,” I said. “Wouldn’t I know whether or not I exist? They say it’s a spectrum. Sexuality is a spectrum. Like autism.”
“Like autism?” Lexie repeated doubtfully.
“There’s a range of where you can be. So picture a football field. Way over on one end are the people who only like people of the opposite sex. And way over on the other end are people who only like people of the same sex. And then a lot of people are strung out somewhere in the middle.”