My mouth tic is acting up, and I’m glad my back is to J. J. and Dawn so they can’t see me rapidly stretch open my lips—a yawn that never comes. Not that they care. J. J. knows I do good work, regardless. And, as he told me on my first day on the job, that is what matters in the kitchen: quality work and communication. I do quality work, though not because I care about the culinary reputation of the Moonglow Café. I do it because I know, even if I’m currently pissed about it, that I’m lucky to have gotten a slot in the kitchen.
There are some bad assignments. Like working the gardens in mid-July’s heat and humidity, building layers of callus on sunburn on callus on sunburn. Like cooking at Dining Hall, which is little more than a mindless conveyor belt churning out variations of a dozen recipes on a strict schedule of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, for our four hundred commune members. The Moonglow Café, on the other hand, is a professional kitchen. The café’s diners are outsiders, mainly from Slater, though sometimes from as far as Wichita and Kansas City.
I’ve got a good assignment here, though I’m pretty sure it has less to do with luck and more to do with being J. J.’s son. While parental bonding isn’t encouraged at Red Sun, no one denies certain biological factors. It’s clear that I have J. J.’s dark, curly hair and Ruby’s high cheekbones, and the Council must have also figured that if J. J. was good in the kitchen, his offspring would be too. What they didn’t consider was what J. J.’s offspring might be feeling. Sure, I work hard enough in the kitchen, but I don’t want to cook for the rest of my life. I don’t want to do anything for the rest of my life save play the commune’s Yamaha. It was only a dream before. Then Gregor left Red Sun at the beginning of the year, and I knew this was a sign for me. A sign that I could fill the Outside with my music.
As it turns out, I was wrong. It wasn’t a sign. It was false hope, and I’ve now been sentenced to a decade of cutting and sweating in this kitchen. I won’t be up for reassignment until I’m twenty-six, and at that point I might as well be dead. Real musicians—musicians who make a difference, the way my gods did—burn bright and early, way before they ever reach twenty-fucking-six.
Archer shows up with the rest of the team: Sunshine, Eduardo, Lola, and Heath. Though my enthusiastic chopping has deprived him of the usual prep work, he grabs a few remaining beets and takes his place beside me.
Unlike me, my best friend, Archer, likes kitchen work. For a couple of years he and I have been on prep and dishwashing—typical preassignment jobs. Now that we’ve been officially assigned here, we’ll replace workers who’ve been reassigned to other jobs in Red Sun. My guess is that we’ll be taking on saucier, since it’s the most commonly vacated role in the kitchen. Until the commune-wide changes go into effect tomorrow, though, it’s more prep work for us.
I feel Archer’s eyes on me, even as he cuts.
“Watch yourself.” I nod to his rapid knife strokes before returning to my own. Then I scrape a diced beet from the board and into the steel bowl between us.
Archer sets down his knife. He’s staring at me like a dumb fish, and he looks especially dumb because his long red curls are bunched up under a hairnet.
“Holy shit, man,” he says. “Just . . . holy shit. Why didn’t you say something?”
He knows. Someone told him about my assignment. Bright, maybe. Or even Phoenix himself.
I grab a new beet, severing the roots in one clean cut. As I do, I stretch my lips wide. Then I speak.
“It happened this morning,” I say. “When would I have said something?”
“Did he tell you beforehand, or was it . . . BAM. Surprise!”
Archer waves his knife in a manner that’s not at all in keeping with J. J.’s kitchen safety regulations.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Fuck that, Galliard. I’m not gonna have you sniveling over there the rest of the day. Out with it.”
I tic again, opening my mouth. It’s comical timing, really, like I’m letting out the silent scream I feel deep inside.
I set down my knife and say, “He didn’t tell me. I knew there were some other members who’d applied, but I thought I was a shoo-in. I didn’t know until Rod was going on about how they’d already commissioned paintings from Phoenix.”
“Holy shit,” Archer says, this time in a whisper. Then he shrugs. “You were the one who wanted to be his friend.”
I glare. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“All I’m saying is I never liked the guy much. I told you the day he came here that he was a pompous ass. He’s an outsider. What did you expect?”
My jaw jerks rightward. I stretch my lips apart. “Yeah, that’s not helping right now.”
“What would help? Now’s the time I’d expect all-out fisticuffs, but we both know you would lose. Hard.”
I slice away at my beet, uncovering its red heart with angry strokes. “I don’t want to fight him. The Council made their decision. A fight’s not going to change that.”
I feel noble for saying this, and also kind of nauseated.
“Well, yeah, sure, but . . .” Archer hems for a moment, then says, “Phoenix knew better.”
And there it is. Archer has named it: Phoenix—Red Sun outsider, friend, and role model—knows better. He knows I’ve wanted to be resident artist since way before he ever met me. He knows what it means to me. None of that stopped him, though. He did what he wanted, because he’s a selfish prick.
I stop there and ask myself, Is that fair?
I give it some thought. I think back two years, to when I first met Phoenix. I think of a crumpled letter in a wastebasket—a memory I can’t shake. I scrape the chopped beet from my cutting board. Then I decide: Yes. That’s an entirely fair assessment. Phoenix is, without a doubt, a selfish prick.
“Okay,” says Archer. “Here’s what’ll make it better: Dreamlight Season.”
A chill runs through me, same as it did before, when I tossed that paper from my hand—an advertisement for the Dreamlight itself. Thanks to Archer, I know all about that Outside attraction.
No Red Sun member is allowed to leave the commune for any reason other than a medical emergency. That’s a foundational rule of commune life. Every set of rules has its exception, though, and Red Sun rules are . . . no exception. What Archer calls Dreamlight Season is more formally known as Crossing.
The thinking behind Crossing goes like this: Adolescents are bound to experiment, act out, and push boundaries. That’s the natural order of things. For this reason, the Council instituted Crossing—a period of bending rules. From the age of fourteen to sixteen, for three summers, the first day of June through the last day of August, Red Sun members can leave the commune and explore the outside world, provided they return by a nightly curfew. At the end of those three summers, should an adolescent wish to leave Red Sun, they’re free to do so. If not, they’ll settle into adult life here and work their assigned job. The point is, no one here at Red Sun is forcing us younger members to stick around. If we want to leave, we can. The only hitch is this: Once you leave, you don’t come back. You’ve broken with Red Sun’s energy, and you’re on your own. The same holds true for any adults who choose to leave. There haven’t been many, but there have been some—Gregor, our former resident artist, among them.
Archer is a big fan of Crossing. His first summer, he went to Slater’s drive-in theatre, the Dreamlight, and watched every new release the Dreamlight showed. I can recite the full list of movies he’s seen, because he would not and will not shut up about them:
The Apple Dumpling Gang
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Omen
Murder by Death
Jaws
The Last Tycoon
Star Wars
That’s not all Archer does. He and the other crossers head into Slater and go to parties with actual outsiders our age. They explore the town and eat and drink and generally mess around. He says it’s great.
I’ve never left the commune.
For my three summers of Crossing, I’ve stayed in the commune, working extra hours in the kitchen and spending nights alone at the piano or talking to Phoenix. For these three summers, I’ve been fine.
I guess Phoenix is responsible for a lot of that. He made me feel like the commune’s favored son. I sneered at the shameless way Archer and the other crossers threw themselves at the Outside, as though it could offer them anything they hadn’t already been given. I made a vow to never step outside the commune fence. Because to step outside means to admit Red Sun is missing something.
And it’s not.
“Galliard. Did you hear me?”
Archer’s fingers dig into my forearm, and I reel back into reality.
“Yeah, I heard you.” I shrug off the grip, and my mouth tic picks up again. Perfect. The last thing I need right now.
“It’s getting old, man.”
“What is?”
“The holier-than-thou phase. You know you’re not getting a medal for keeping yourself penned in here, right?”
“I’m not after a medal.”
“Then what? Just scared?”
I open my mouth, then press my lips back together, forming a seal. I know Archer is trying to rile me up, but I don’t have the fortitude to rise above it. Not now. After this morning, my fortitude is completely shot.
“I’m not scared of anything,” I say.
Which is a magnificent heap of bullshit.
Sure, I’m scared.
I’m scared Phoenix has been wrong.
I’m scared the Outside might be as obscenely good as Archer and the others make it out to be.
And what scares me the most? It’s the fear that after this summer, Archer won’t come back from the Outside; he’ll be one of the few Red Sun members who cross straight out of the commune.
“Boys!” J. J. barks from across the kitchen. “This isn’t teatime.”
“Yes, sir,” Archer and I say, and, thoroughly chastised, we return to our beets.
I’m thinking now not of my fears but of a piece of paper that a strange wind blew my way. That advertisement was for the Dreamlight, and now here is Archer, urging me to go to that very Dreamlight with him. I can’t help wondering if this means something.
It might be that Janis or Jimi or Buddy is trying to send me a message.
It might be that I’ve been thinking of that flyer since it first hit my face.
It might be that I’m angry at the Council and Phoenix and every stupid dream I had about being resident artist.
Whatever the reason, I speak.
“I’ll do it,” I say, slicing with hot energy. “Tomorrow night, I’ll do it.”
Archer doesn’t look up from his work, but he doesn’t have to. I can feel the triumph radiating off his pink skin.
4
Stella
SUNDAY, JULY 31
If you ask anyone in town, they will tell you it was the moon landing that ended my mother’s life. If you look at the timing, you will understand why.
On July 20, 1969, at 3:18 p.m. central time, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.
I was nine. My mother, brother, sister, and I were at a church potluck, to which my mother had brought a big bowl of Waldorf salad, crowned with a circle of maraschino cherries. We sat outside on folding chairs, the radio broadcast turned all the way up. My friends Linda and Dennis and I wore matching green construction-paper helmets we’d made from Sunday school art supplies.
When the landing was announced, people cheered. Some even embraced.
My mother cried.
They were not tears of excitement—little glimmers in the corners of her eyes, like the other mothers had. She sobbed. Her frame shook, and she covered her face, and two of her good friends patted her back and asked her what was the matter. Eventually, they took her aside to recover, because she was scaring Jill, who was just a toddler and very fussy.
After some minutes of soothing, my mother dried her eyes and returned to us with a smile, as though nothing was wrong in the wide, wide world.
My father was working double shifts that day, so he was not at home that evening. My mother put Jill to bed at her usual time, but I was allowed to stay up late. I sat in the den with her and Craig, and we watched the live broadcast from space.
At 9:56 p.m. central time, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.
Craig and I jumped up and down on the sofa. My mother did not tell us to stop. She wore a calm smile. Later I fell asleep there, on the sofa. Craig did too.
When we woke up early Monday morning, my mother was not home. We looked for her in our parents’ bedroom and the kitchen. Then we looked outside and found that the car was gone. It was strange of her not to leave a note, but Craig and I assumed she was running errands. Time passed. Jill woke, and Craig and I fixed our own breakfast. My father returned home from work. Then lunchtime came, and Craig and I fixed our own lunch. It was at dinnertime, when my father woke and there was still no sign of my mother, that something first felt wrong. My father called family friends; no one had heard from my mother. After an hour more, he got into his car to go looking. He ordered us to stay at home and look after Jill. We fixed our own dinner, and we watched television, and we fell asleep.
In the morning, my father woke us. Betty Hume, our mother’s closest friend, was there. She was red in the face. Her mascara was running. She smiled at us, though, and said everything was going to be all right.
I am not sure when I actually understood what had happened. I only know that from that day on, everything shifted. Everything changed.
They found my mother’s car in the empty parking lot of Slater High School.
They found her body inside the building. She’d broken a window in the library to get in. Then, according to the police, she made her way to the planetarium, where she turned on the projector. She then tied a rope around one of the exposed pipes beneath the projection booth. She hung herself under the constellations of the southern hemisphere.
You can understand, then, why people would say it was the moon landing. For my mother to kill herself in the planetarium on the night Neil Armstrong made one giant leap for mankind was too coincidental, especially after her unexplainable sobbing at the potluck. According to a client at Vine Street Salon—a loud gossip unaware of my parentage—my mother was “star-crazed.”
Star-crazed. That is what people say.
But they are wrong. I know, because I read my mother’s letter.
• • •
When I arrive at the Dreamlight, I am sweat-caked and sore, and my heart is hammering. Though the urge to vomit is gone, my unease remains, and a stitch cramps my side as I chain my bike to the rusty rack outside the concessions hut. My coworker Kim is already there, starting up the popper.
I take a few long gulps of night air, attempting to regulate my breathing. I don’t want Kim to ask what’s wrong, because, honestly, I am not sure what is wrong. I only know something is . . . off. Very off.
First, this morning, there was Velma the goldfish. Then there was the border collie—a dead ringer for a dog that couldn’t possibly be in town. Then came the wind, as unexpected as it is relentless. And now this. Dozens of dead, eyeless snakes.
It’s only coincidence. I know that, deep down. Weather can be strange, and animals can react strangely to it. Yes, I witnessed an inordinate number of odd occurrences today; that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
When I enter the hut, I am still shaken, though not enough for Kim to notice. I tie on my cheery yellow-and-white-striped apron and set about replenishing the candy display. Kim and I exchange hellos and nothing more as we settle into our nightly routine. Soon the concessions hut is busy with dozen-person lines at our two ordering
windows. Our work is rhythmic—order, scoop, two pumps butter, cash, register, next.
I am a loner, but if I were to count anyone as my friend, I suppose Kim Dupree would be it. We were in the same grade at school, but we didn’t hang out there. Kim and I only got to know each other at the Dreamlight, where we spend our nights packed close together in an overheated hut the size of a large closet. Kim has buzz-cut hair, dyed platinum, and several tattoos on her left arm. During the day she works at the Exchange, a record shop on Vine Street. She smokes—both kinds. I like her because she is never phony. She enjoys talking about the things I read in my Carl Sagan books, and I enjoy hearing her rave about a new band called the Ramones, which she claims is going to revolutionize the music scene. And we both pretend not to notice when the other sneaks a handful of popcorn from the popper.
Sometimes I see Dennis and Linda around here. They were my closest friends when Mom died, and we still hung out afterward, through middle school. When Craig left, though, I stopped sleeping over at Linda’s and made excuses for why I couldn’t meet them both for a weekend matinee. It was easier that way, with everything else I had to do: school, my jobs, and taking care of Jill. Then Linda and Dennis started to date, accompanying each other on trips to the Dreamlight. I didn’t mind. It seemed only natural that I had faded from their lives.
Since the drive-in is only a mile outside Slater proper, most kids make a night of it by driving or biking out. The owner, Mr. Cavallo, has partitioned off a large patch of browned grass close to the screen, where people can set up plastic chairs and blankets. The cars line up behind the rope fence, and everything plays out the way it did in the sixties, during this place’s glory days, before the national economy tanked and people here in Slater started closing stores, losing jobs, and failing to find enough money for the mortgage, let alone the movies. Based on Mr. Cavallo’s mutterings, sales aren’t what they ought to be. I’m pretty sure I’m working in the twilight days of the Dreamlight.
Though Star Wars has shaken things up some. I know of many high schoolers who’ve come to the showing over ten times. Even now the lot is nearly full—a summertime miracle, and an even bigger turnout than there was for Jaws two summers ago. Every night I am surrounded by moviegoers more eager than ever to root for the Rebel Alliance and scoot closer to their dates whenever the evil Darth Vader makes an appearance. Personally, I am tired of the film. I like the story well enough, but seven nights a week of the melodramatic, brass-heavy opening is enough to turn anyone off; most nights I tune the movie out. I’ve become a pro at numbing my thoughts and relying on muscle memory to get me through the night.
The Great Unknowable End Page 3