Libba Bray Read online

  The sky’s amazing, though. Bright blue, like paint right out of the tube before you water it down. The clouds are bouncy little mattresses up there. Something flutters past my window, making me jump. It’s a flock of birds taking off for the cloud beds. They must have come a little too close to the bus for comfort. I watch them till they’re nothing but specks. And for a second, I see something else in the sky, a flutter of wings too big to be anything I can name.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Wherein I Have a Very Strange Encounter While Stoned and Employ a Frying Pan in My Defense

  There’s a note on the fridge: Cam, home by 10:00. Lasagna in freezer. If you use the toaster oven, unplug it afterward. It overheats. Mom. There’s a hastily added Love you squeezed in before her name in a different-color ink. It’s the personal touch that means so much.

  Mom teaches English comp, single-celled organism level, at the community college. She could be teaching a challenging English lit class somewhere good, but she never finished her dissertation or whatever it is you need to become a bona fide PhD. Mom has trouble finishing stuff. The house is crowded with half-scribbled-in crossword puzzles, books with the bookmarks in the middle, bags of knitting, scarves she got halfway through and then abandoned.

  The lasagna is totally freezer-burned, cold and inedible, so I dial up a pizza. True to their ad campaign, Happy Time Pizzeria delivers within thirty minutes—complete with bonus mega-ounce sodas and cinnamon-frosted-bread dessert product—and I’m camped in the recliner, scarfing down my slices in the middle of our large, empty family room.

  I have a special relationship with the remote control. I like to think of it as my own personal divining rod, taking me safely past nighttime soap operas, used car commercials, televangelists, and medical trauma shows. It stops briefly on a repeat showing of Star Fighter, the cult metaphysical action movie all kids between the age of nine and thirteen have to see at least ten times before they can pass into puberty. No kidding—there are kids who can quote the whole damn thing.

  I let the screen idle on the news while I roll a J. Quick pictures stretch out across our TV’s full forty-two inches: young guys in camouflage holding guns while guarding a desert. Bloody kids crying in the blown-up streets of some foreign city. A follow-up story on a store bombing last Christmas. A commercial with Parker Day’s suntanned face hawking Rad XL soda. Back to the grim report and a local story, a fire in a neighborhood across town. The flames make me think about my weird dream in Spanglish class today, and I get a funny feeling inside, like when you’re driving around a sharp curve on a one-lane road and you can’t see what’s coming. The reporter says something about similarities to another fire and the authorities’ fears that an arsonist is on the loose. And then they switch to a story about celebrity baby names and some starlet who named her bundle of joy Iphigenia.

  I smoke just enough to make me slow down inside, like I’m part water bed. Then I hide the roach and spray a toxic amount of air freshener just in case anyone gets the crazy idea to come home early for some “quality time.” Finally, I flip on the ConstaToons channel so I can watch a marathon of my favorite animated classic, the one where a poor, bedraggled coyote chases a roadrunner around a tumbleweedy landscape. Every single time, this poor guy gets his ass handed to him by TNT gone wrong or falling anvils or other backfiring ruses. But he never stops chasing that damn roadrunner.

  I’ve seen this one a million times. The coyote rigs a skewed-perspective backdrop of a long hallway with many doors painted on it. It’s just a painting, but somehow, the roadrunner zooms right into the picture as if it’s real, opens one of the doors, and escapes. The coyote’s got a big “Wha … ?” on his face. He runs into the painting, and they chase each other in and out of doors, just missing each other. Finally, the coyote opens a door and a train runs him right over, poor bastard. Even though I’ve seen it a zillion times before, I laugh my ass off, because I’m stoned, and it’s my right to laugh at things that, in the cold hard light of day, would not be all that funny.

  A blur of white zips past the open doorway into the kitchen. It takes my weed-fogged brain two seconds to register what this means: Somebody’s in the house.

  “Mom?” I call. “Dad?”

  Nothing.

  “Jenna, is that you? You better cut it out. I’m warning you.”

  Shit. I hope I sprayed enough Citrus Rain to take away the pot odor. From the kitchen comes a faint rustling sound.

  “You should know we’ve got an alarm system!” Our alarm system is basically me screaming my head off if I see this guy, but he doesn’t have to know that. Quietly, I slip into the kitchen. Nobody’s there. I do a quick scan for a weapon. Plastic napkin holders. Place mats. Steak knives so dull they can’t cut through butter. I grab the frying pan soaking in the sink and slink into the living room just as something darts up the stairs.

  Oh shit, man. My blood pounds the sides of my skull, and I feel woozy. Should I call the cops? My parents? What if I’m just stoned and paranoid?

  Be cool, Cameron. Just check it out first.

  I creep up the stairs with a fry pan as my only defense, and despite the fact that my heart is beating like a hummingbird’s, it strikes me as funny. Greetings, ax murderer! I was just wondering how you like your eggs?

  I reach the landing. Mom and Dad’s room is empty. So’s Jenna’s übergirl lair. No doubt any serial killer would take one look at the lavender walls covered with sensitive girl songwriter posters and dive out the window anyway. Bathroom’s clear. That leaves my room.

  The door’s half closed, so I kick it open with my foot. My room is exactly the way I left it: Rumpled clothes on floor. Stereo equipment and miscellaneous computer wires lying about. Unmade bed. Stacks of LPs, CDs, comic books. Closet doors are open. Okay, weird. I don’t know what kind of pot this is—Imagine There’s Some Badass Dude Coming to Kill You pot—but never again, man.

  Something catches my eye. The window’s open. That’s new. And there on the windowsill is a feather. I pick it up. It’s huge. Bigger and thicker than any bird’s feather I’ve ever seen. Soft and white with pink at the edges. Huh. I turn it over in my hand and I swear, I must be going mental, because there on the snowy surface of that gigantic feather is one word, a greeting.

  Hello.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Wherein My Part-time Gainful Employment Proves to Be a Hell Beyond All Imagining and I Make a Most Curious—Okay, Really Weird—Sighting

  “Cameron?” Someone’s banging on my door. Banging equals Mom equals easily ignorable. I roll onto my stomach and bury my head under my pillow. The banging continues, muffled somewhat by the layer of synthetic down filler over my head.

  “Cameron?”

  No. No banging. No Cameron. Cameron sleep now.

  The pillow is ripped savagely from my head.

  “Cameron? It’s ten o’clock.”

  I open one eye and see that yes, yes, it is ten o’clock. Ten zero zero. Zero, my favorite number. As in zero expectations, zero disappointments.

  “Ten o’clock. Good time for growing boys to get their sleep,” I mumble. “Night, Mom.” I try to grab behind me for the pillow but Mom’s still got a firm hold on it.

  “You promised your dad you’d mow the lawn today.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes, you did. Last Saturday, when you forgot to mow it after you’d promised to the week before.”

  I vaguely remember this, but honestly, all I can think about is the taste in my mouth. I’ve got the kind of pot hangover where I swear little road crews of pixies have been hard at work all night painting my tongue with dirt-enhanced pitch.

  “Right. Do it later,” I mumble.

  “He’ll be back from tennis in an hour.”

  “So I’ll start then.” I make a swipe for the pillow and miss.

  Mom holds it just out of reach. “Honey, you have to go to work at Buddha Burger.”

  My joyous part-time fast-food gig, which the ’rents forced me to take. I’ve onl
y worked there four weeks, and already it feels like a soul-sucking spiral of pain.

  “I’ll call in sick.”

  “Cameron, do you think that’s such a good idea? They might think you’re unreliable.”

  It seems a bad time to point out that I am unreliable. Or I’m reliable when it comes to being unreliable.

  “’Sokay. Somebody’ll cover me.”

  I take possession of the pillow again. Mom’s still standing in my room. I can feel her hovering. Some other mom might get angry, blow up, or drag me from my bed with a purposeful “Young man, it’s time you learned some responsibility!” In the TV movie version, that would be “the big turning point.” And at the end of the movie, when they showed me with a decent haircut and a graduation cap on my head, accepting the special scholarship/presidential seal/call to cure cancer, I’d thank my mom, and there’d be a glossy close-up of her tearstained face while everybody stood to applaud her.

  This is so not my mom. She’s like me—driftwood. After a few seconds, I hear her shoes squeaking a retreat.

  “All right,” she says, before pulling the door shut. “But at least use the Weedwacker around the front walk.”

  “Sure thing,” I promise, and fall right back to sleep.

  I wake up at eleven-fifteen, which is fifteen minutes before I’m supposed to be reporting for my six-hour shift at Buddha Burger, a twenty-minute drive across town. Shit. I grab my uniform—black pants, white button-down shirt with a meditating Buddha cow floating atop a hamburger bun, dorky faux Tibetan monk hat—brush my teeth, and look around to see if there’s anything I’m forgetting. That’s when I see the long feather on the floor and last night’s weirdness announces itself in my memory. What the hell was that? Hello. The feather said hello.

  But there’s nothing written there now. For all I know, that feather’s been on my floor for a long time, and last night was some random ganja flip-out. I throw it in the trash and run downstairs.

  After some minor-league pleading with Mom, she agrees to let me take the Turdmobile, her crap-brown box of a car. It’s ugly but it runs, and it’s better than the bus when you’re late. All down the block, the lawns are alive with men on riding mowers. They gallop across their yards, whipping them into shape, in control of those few square feet of ground. All hail the suburban action heroes! Do not tangle with those men—they have Weedwackers and they know how to use them! I mean, honestly, I’m supposed to get good grades, go to a good college, not screw up, so I can get to do this shit someday? Thanks, I’ll pass.

  Dad, still in his tennis whites, pushes the power mower around our already pristine lawn. Our eyes meet for a nanosecond, and then Dad stoops to examine a particularly hearty clump of weeds. As I back the Turdmobile down the driveway, he’s running the mower over the same spot again and again, forcing the rebellious patch to bend to his will.

  I’m through the doors of Buddha Burger seven minutes past my shift start time, which, if you ask me, is within the realm of acceptable. But not so for our manager, Mr. Babcock. He’s waiting by the clock, his bushy mustache scrunched into a hairy M above a tight frown. He makes a point of looking at the clock, then at me.

  “Hi, Mr. Babcock,” I say, punching in.

  “You’re late, Cameron.” Wow. And you, sir, are incredibly observant.

  “Yes, sir. Sorry about that. I had to take my mom’s car and it kept stalling out. …”

  “Cameron, I’m gonna give you a piece of advice, son. Never explain, never blame.”

  He stares meaningfully at me. I think the human interaction manual says that I’m supposed to supply a comeback here, something to show I have “understood the message.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s good advice, sir.”

  He puts his arm around my shoulder like he’s my life coach. “Son, I don’t know what your home situation is.” In his thick Texas drawl, “situation” has about ten syllables. “Maybe you don’t have a daddy at home. Maybe you do. But here at the Buddha Burger, I like to think of us as family. You know what that means?”

  There’s yet another place where I can feel awkward, resentful, and out of touch?

  “It means that while you work here, I’m like your daddy. I make the rules. And when I say you need to be here on time or even ten minutes early for your shift, I mean it. You got me?”

  “Yes, sir,” I say. Mr. Babcock pats my shoulder. He smiles, and the caterpillar mustache—the envy of state troopers everywhere, I’m sure—straightens out again. I hear that on the weekends, he’s a part-time security guard with mirrored sunglasses and a gun. He probably poses in front of his bathroom mirror to see how he looks saying “Freeze!”

  Mr. Babcock is pleased that I have “heard his message.” I’ll bet he feels all cuddly inside that he may have “put another youth on the path to responsibility.” I make a mental note to write Kick Me on the back of his shirt sometime.

  I’m working with Lena today. Just great. Lena’s the most literal person I’ve ever met, with the heart and soul of a district attorney. When Lena is shift manager, she expects you to work your ass off—no skipping off to the walk-in for a secret smoke or pretending to clean the bathrooms for thirty minutes. It’s by the book all the way.

  She hands me a rag. “Late again, Cameron.”

  “Just by seven minutes. That’s not really late, Lena.”

  She swivels around, hands on hips. “Yeah? That’s seven minutes I had to cover for you. Not cool.”

  “It’s not that big a deal.” I busy myself stocking the napkin holders on the counters, but I can feel her eyes on me, like she sees straight through to my inner assholian, irresponsible core. I look up and she’s studying me.

  “Can I ask you a question, Cameron?”

  “I think you just did. Or did you mean an additional question?”

  Lena doesn’t even bother to dignify this with a new facial expression. “My question is this: What’s wrong with you?”

  She’s staring at me with those big brown eyes, waiting. And what I want to say to her is I don’t know. I honestly don’t.

  “Right. I’ll just go wipe down.”

  Lena shakes her head slowly, judge and jury. And then she does that thing I can’t seem to do. She shakes it off, puts on a smile, and turns to the next customer. “Hi, welcome to Buddha Burger. How can I help you?”

  Only six more fun-filled hours to go.

  The tables are a mess. Every inch of the fake bamboo tables is covered in the sticky, mushy remnants of Buddha Burgers, Meditation Fries, and Fresh Fruitiful Frothies. People come here because they think it’s healthy and they’re saving the environment while they chomp their fast food. There are lots of framed pictures showing smiling indigenous peoples who are absolutely not being exploited by the corporate office. In the back is a Zen water fountain supposed to induce feelings of peace. Mostly it makes people have to go to the bathroom. New Agey chant music is piped through the speakers. Rug rats run around playing with their Buddha cow toys, making moo sounds and fucking up all my cleaning efforts.

  Lena summons me to the front over the mike. It’s her break time, and she is very, very serious about taking her break at the same time every shift. I take over the register just as Staci Johnson and her crew walk in. On the bell curve of high school humiliation, this rates the top grade.

  “Lena,” I beg in a whisper. “Can you take this one for me, please?”

  “Ha! Funny.” She holds up her Star Fighter graphic novel. “I’m on break.”

  “Look, I’m sorry I was late—”

  “That makes …” She counts heads. “Five of us.”

  “Really, really sorry. It won’t happen again. Just please take this one.”

  She makes a show of drumming her fingers on her chin like she’s thinking hard. “Hmmm. Let me see. Um. No.”

  “Lena. Please. Pretty please. I’ll be your best friend.”

  “I have a best friend. Her name is LaKeesha. You’d know that if you ever paid attention to anyone else.”


  “Okay. I’m a jerk. A self-involved jerk. But I swear, if you just take this one order, I will get the soy cheese from the walk-in for a week. Promise.”

  For a minute, I think she’s considering. Then she flips her book open to the ribbon-marked page. “Sorry. I’m at a good part. The fate of the universe hangs in the balance.” Lena shoves her card into the time clock. I hear the gunshot-hard click-punch of it seal my fate.

  “Excuse me, could we get some help?” Staci calls out.

  Lena jerks her head in their direction. A smirk pulls at her lips. “Sucks to be you.”

  Shit.

  Resigned, I trudge over to the register, wondering if girls can smell your total fear, like wolves or very experienced serial killers.

  “Hi, welcome to Buddha Burger. Can I take your order, please?” I say, pulling out a plastic tray and putting a one hundred percent recycled paper liner on it. I avoid eye contact by staring at the useless factoids: DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the genetic code that makes you uniquely you! Before they’re your cruelty-free burgers, Buddha Burger cows are raised with sunshine and happiness. That’s why they taste so moo-velously good! Recycling is good for the planet—and you and me. Let’s all get recycled!

  “Excuse me?” one of the girls says, snapping her fingers to get my attention.

  Staci Johnson and I are separated by a cash register and two feet of counter. “Wow. It’s Cameron Smith. I didn’t know you worked here.” Staci stifles a giggle. “Nice hat.”

  Here’s a heaping plate of I Hate You. Would you like fries with that?

  Staci & Co. change their order four times just to mess with me. They all want Fresh Fruitified Frothies, which are a pain to make. It’s February, girls. Order coffee. I’m at the blender for what seems like hours, developing carpal tunnel syndrome, or aggravating the carpal tunnel syndrome I’ve already brought on by frequent self-abuse, which I suppose I could cut back on. Then again, everyone needs a hobby. The Frothie-making must have been harder than I thought, because when I bring out the tray of drinks, my hands start to twitch and jerk. Every muscle in my arms is break dancing. I can’t hold on to the tray. It goes flying, splattering Staci in blueberry-strawberry-peach soy moo.