Anywhere but Here

For Min, Julia, and Matthew

The first time I wake up, I lie there wondering what day it is. I can see sunlight poking through the curtains, high on the cement wall of my basement bedroom.

I roll over to look at the clock: 9:54.

Shit! Shit, shit, shit!
I leap out of bed as if the mattress has caught fire and grab my pants off the floor. It's Friday, and Lauren hasn't called to wake me up because Lauren isn't my girlfriend anymore, and calling lazy-ass guys to cajole them to school is no longer in her job description.

A minute later I'm back on the bed. Perched with my head in my hands, dry heaving, I wish I'd called Greg last night instead of hanging out with Dallas. Dallas had an unfortunately generous
beer supply. And the pants I just pulled on smell distinctly of vomit.

I wonder if I puked before or after leaving his house. Hopefully after. Then I wonder what my statistical chances are of passing next week's history final if I don't go to the review class this morning.

I roll my eyes toward the ceiling.

Battle of the Plains of Abraham . . . 1759.

Leader of the French . . . Montcalm.

Leader of the English . . . Wolfe.

Winner . . . must have been the English.

Importance of the Plains of Abraham . . . no freaking idea.

But I'm going to pass, no problem. I yank the pants off again, crawl under the covers, and go back to sleep.

•  •  •

I wake for the second time in the early afternoon, stagger to the bathroom for two Tylenol and a drink from the faucet, then flop back onto my mattress. My book flies from where it was balanced on top of my headboard and almost brains me.
The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook
, by Chris Jones and Genevieve Jolliffe. One day, I'm going to make documentaries the way some of the people in this book make films.

Not today, though.

There's a pounding at the basement door. It's probably only a
tapping, but in my booze-addled cranium, it echoes.

I stagger over and fling it open. “What?”

I'm still in my boxers. I wouldn't notice except that Lauren is standing in the carport looking like the leggy blonde from a romantic comedy, wearing a bright red dress and movie-star sunglasses.

“You look nice,” I mumble.

“You look awful, Cole,” she says, slipping off the glasses. “Can I come in?”

Can my ex-girlfriend come in? She doesn't
look
dangerous. As long as she doesn't yell, I should be able to survive this. Our first, awkward, post-breakup conversation has to happen sometime, right?

I move aside. Waving good-bye to her friend Lex, who's loitering on the sidewalk, Lauren sweeps past me through the hall and into my room, a wisp of vanilla perfume in her wake. She smells like a birthday cake fresh from the oven.

I follow her in and sit on my desk chair, crossing my arms and trying to look as if I have it together.

“Gross,” she says. “It's like something died in here.” Without asking, she opens my window.

“How was school?” I'm hunting for a safe topic of conversation. It's strange how you can talk to someone almost every day for two years and then feel suddenly so . . . separate.

“You missed the review session,” she says. Lauren is the most dedicated student I know. If the town of Webster were attacked by
Shaun of the Dead
zombies, Lauren would take her textbooks into hiding with her.

She's good at commitment.

“What exactly did you do last night?” She picks up my jeans between her thumb and her forefinger and carries them to the hamper like toxic waste before straightening the quilt on my bed.

“Since when are you my mother?” I yawn.

I say it without thinking, but Lauren freezes.

“Sorry,” she says.

I shrug. “I didn't mean it that way.”

“I don't want to make you think about your mom.”

“Really, it's okay.”

“I don't want to bicker with you, either. I came over because last night, with my mom hovering in the kitchen, I felt like we didn't get a chance to talk properly, and . . .”

“Sure.”

But just so we don't have to discuss things right this second, I leave to find my toothbrush.

•  •  •

The third time I wake up, Lauren's leg is thrown over mine. And it's naked. This is another good thing about Lauren. You
wouldn't think that an honor roll student with the work ethic of John Ford and a religious fanatic for a mother would be willing to sleep with me. She always said it was okay because we'd been together forever and because we were going to be . . .

“Mmmmm,” she breathes, wiggling closer and brushing her fingertips across my chest. She looks up at me with those blue eyes that seem brighter when she's happy. “I'm so glad we're okay again.”

My whole body tenses. I try to smile, but I can feel it turning into a grimace.

“What?” she says. She's like that. She picks up my feelings through my skin, using weird lizard senses.

“I . . . um . . .” I don't get any farther than that. There are too many things going on inside my head, and none of them are good. Potential sentences are swirling together like water in a toilet bowl. Did I say we were getting back together? I didn't. I'm hungover, not wasted. I definitely did not say we were getting back together. I
did
just sleep with her. And I'm not such a jerk that I can sleep with her and then shove her out of bed.

I could run.

“Oh, yikes!” I've never said “yikes” in my life, but that's what comes out. “It's four o'clock already? I have to be at the school. Guidance counselor. I gotta run.”

I pull on my jeans—clean ones—while I spout some
nonsense about not wanting to miss the college application talk. It's true that I have an appointment. We all automatically get one so we can talk about The Future before choosing our senior classes. Everyone knows the counselors spout a load of bunk. If they actually knew anything about the future, they wouldn't be working as part-time high school fake-a-shrinks, would they?

I'd planned to blow off the appointment. Now, suddenly, it seems extremely convenient to go.

Lauren makes sounds in her throat as if she would like to talk, but I don't even look at her. I tug on a T-shirt, grab my house keys from my dresser, and bolt.

“You might have to get dressed. Dad will be home from work in a while. I'll see you soon,” I tell her as I dash toward the door.

I jog the first couple blocks down the hill, just in case she calls after me.

What was I thinking? I don't even want to consider the emotional mess I've caused. What I'd like to do—and so far, this is my best idea of the day—is to pretend it never happened.

Never happened.

I head toward Canyon Street. Just as I get there, the sun comes out from behind a patch of clouds, and I force myself to take a deep breath and look around.

Normal. I'm going to act as normal as the other people meandering down the street.

This is where I would start if I were making a documentary about Webster. I wouldn't open with the tourism brochure approach: wildlife refuge, lakeshore, and hang glider
takeoff points. Those are scenic and all, but how many people hang glide?

No, I would fade in like this:

[Setting:
Canyon Street, town's main drag. Old brick bank visible in distance. Street is lined with false-fronted stores, suitable for a Wild West movie.
]

Even though the shops along here are box shaped, each has a tall front wall of a different color, decorated in carved gingerbread-style wood or hung with an old-fashioned sign. The style must have been all the rage when Canyon Street was built. To me, it makes Webster look like something created by a set designer and built inside a soundstage.

I'm just about to turn toward the school when one of our senior-citizen neighbors spots me.

“How are things going for you and your dad, Cole?”

They always ask the same questions, and they always have the same sympathetic look in their eyes.

“Great,” I say. “Everything's going great!”

In the last twenty-four hours, I got hammered with Dallas, then screwed my ex-girlfriend, and now I have to see a counselor. Yup, it's going great.

“Late for an appointment, though!”

I turn downhill again. If this town is a Wild West set, the high school is something else entirely—a square, white, cinder-block building. So white that if it didn't say
WEBSTER HIGH
in big block letters, you'd think surgeons with sterile scalpels might be practicing lobotomies just inside.

I push through the double doors and into the tiled foyer, where my footsteps echo. It's 4:05, and everyone's cleared out. There's only the receptionist sitting at her massive desk with her one-hundred-button phone, and teachers' voices from the staff room behind her, and the ricocheting sounds of basketball practice from the gym.

Down the hall in the glassed-in waiting area of the counselors' offices, I flop onto a chair. A few minutes later, Ms. Gladwell swings her door open and sends the last student back into the world.

“You can call me
anytime
if you ever need
anything
,” she says. It's obvious the pipsqueak who's leaving doesn't believe her. No one ever does.

“Come in, Cole. Grab a seat,” she says, motioning to the gray swivel chair that passes for a black couch in her office.

I'm assigned to the worst counselor in the school. She's new, for one thing. Apparently, she moved here from the coast last year because her doctor recommended a dry climate for her asthma. She looks like she has asthma. She looks like an asthmatic mouse
with severe cheese allergies. And maybe a thyroid problem. She has stringy yellow hair, huge glasses, and even though she weighs about as much as my forearm, she dresses in men's gray T-shirts. Anyone can see that she's the one who needs counseling.

“So,” she chirps. “We have to figure out what you're going to do next year. Any ideas?”

I shrug. I have ideas, but the thought of talking to her about them seems as appealing as a trip to the dentist. I pause to mentally curse Lauren for chasing me out of my own house and landing me here. Now that I think about it, this whole appointment is exactly like a trip to the dentist. All that's missing is the smell of fluoride and the sound of suction.

Fifteen minutes. I only have to live through fifteen minutes, and then I can go home. Lauren will be gone. It will be like it never happened.

Ms. Gladwell fans a few catalogs on the low, round table between us. They're for Purcell Technical, the College of the Rockies, and a vocational school in Calgary. Apparently, Ms. Gladwell doesn't think much of my academic potential.

“You think I'm going to be a plumber?”

She blinks. “These schools offer a lot more than plumbing programs. Besides, there's nothing wrong with being a plumber. Good money.”

“I was thinking of something . . . farther away.” Like, if this
office were Mercury and my future school were on one of the moons of Pluto. That would be perfect.

“Oh. I see,” Ms. Gladwell says brightly after she's rustled through my file for a while. She pushes her glasses farther up her nose and gathers the first batch of catalogs. “So you're headed to university, then. What are you thinking of studying? There are good history grades here.” She taps my file with a chewed fingernail.