Californium (18 page)

T
he thing no one ever tells you about California is that even though it gets to at least seventy degrees every day in the fall, the mornings don't always start out that way. A lot of times it's cloudy and gray, and even though you know you'll be dying of heatstroke by lunchtime, you need a jacket to get through the morning. That, and if I'm going to ask Astrid to come see DikNixon, I need to do it in my Packy jacket now that the patches are sewn on. After I got the Dead Kennedys sewn on by myself and gave it a good look, I knew I wouldn't want to explain it to my dad, or even my mom. So I've been smuggling my Packy jacket in and out of the house by stuffing it in my backpack, which works fine until you've got a mess of homework and your mom sees you holding books while your jacket's peeking out of your backpack and
Why aren't you wearing your jacket? And why don't you wear the new one?
That's when parents start asking even more questions, or looking for patterns, or coming up with their own theories, and
none of that is good. So after practice yesterday, Treat said I could leave my jacket in the Two-Car Studio from now on and he'd bring it to school for me.

Tuesday morning my mom's at the front door yelling at Brendan and Colleen to get it in gear. Her freckles are covered for the day, her hair up and tight. She's jingling her keys in one hand and has my Yankees jacket in the other.

“Here,” she says.

I take it like she's handing me something to throw away. “Come on, Mom; it's California. It's not like it's
really
cold.”

She opens the front door and the cold air rushes in like I'm in the ice-cream aisle at the A&P. “The weatherman said it's going to stay cold all day.”

If my dad were home, I'd just put the jacket on, but he's been gone since before the sun came up. “I can't wear it.”

“Can't?” She looks at the jacket, then me, as she folds her arms. “What's wrong with it?”

I fold my arms to hide the goose bumps. “Nothing. It's just, people here hate the Yankees. They'll make fun of me.”

She stares at me, then lets out a big burst of air like she's blowing out birthday candles. “I don't have time to deal with this now. Where's your jacket with the patches?”

“I left it at a friend's house.”

“Left it?” she says like it's a hundred-dollar bill. “At Keith's?”

I stare outside, wondering if a little lie is okay. The jacket really is at a friend's house; does it matter which one? And suddenly, Treat's out on the sidewalk in front of my house, looking around like he's lost a ball in the bushes.

“Never mind,” I say and step out the door with the jacket.

“Put it on,” she says as I'm pulling the front door closed behind me.

Treat's hands are plunged into the pockets of his ripped-up jeans. He's wearing his sleeveless Levi's jacket with a lumberjack shirt underneath, checkered and bleached, and his army satchel is bulging at his side.

I cut diagonal across the front lawn and head down the sidewalk so he'll follow.

“Hang on,” he says. “I brought you something.”

I wave him up but don't stop walking until I'm at the corner, across from Keith's house. Treat's just about caught up, only a few feet behind me. Over his shoulder, back at my house, Brendan is walking across the lawn. He's looking down at his feet and stepping in the footprints my feet left in the dewy grass.

“Come on,” I say, because if Keith isn't ready, we can go inside until Brendan walks by and my mom leaves with Colleen in the car. Only, Keith comes slamming out his front door just as we get across the street.

“Hey, Treat,” he says like it's no big deal, like we always walk to school with him.

“Let's go,” I say and start walking up the sidewalk.

“Hang on,” Treat says and digs into his satchel. He pulls out my jacket, crumpled down to the size of a football. He takes a good look at my Yankees jacket. “You're
not
wearing that to school.”

Keith laughs. “Cool jacket, Slugger.” He's wearing his Mickey Mouse Mohawk T-shirt over a black, long-sleeve T, and with some new crosses added to Mickey's ears, it's looking really punk.

Treat unfolds the Packy jacket and it comes to life. The Dead Kennedys and TSOL patches scream out from the shoulders, and the red of the GBH patch looks bright and serious in the morning gray. I slip it on and it feels good to be standing there, the three of us looking kind of different yet fitting together. Like a band should.

“Reece?”

Brendan steps up next to me on the sidewalk, his eyes huge and on Treat.

“Is this your bro?” Treat says.

“Yeah.”

Brendan hasn't looked this scared since the Saturday he confessed about the trash can fire.

“What do you want?” I say and zip up my jacket.

Brendan's eyes move from Treat's real Mohawk to the Mickey Mouse Mohawk and then to my patches. “I don't want anything.”

“Great. See ya.”

“Okay,” he says and walks away real fast.

“Bright kid,” Treat says.

I push the Yankees jacket at Keith. “Can you put this in your house? I'll get it after school.”

“Sure,” he says and takes off to do it.

Treat looks back down my cul-de-sac.

“Astrid's already gone,” I say. “She gets a ride with her friends.”

“You have to ask her today. Three people congratulated me yesterday for our gig in San Diego.”

“I'll try.”

“Try?” He looks at the gray sky like there's something there,
then back at me. “People know we're DikNixon. We've got less than two weeks until the party, and socialites like Miss Astrid have to make plans well in advance.”

“It's not like it's easy to ask.”

“You think carving our logo into desks all over campus is easy?”

Keith comes running back and we start walking. Treat puts a finger to my chest. “You've got to do more than try.”

“Do. Or do not,” Keith says. “There is no try.”

“Yoda?” Treat says and gives Keith the stink eye. He puts an arm around my neck and squeezes a little. “Remember, this is bigger than all of us. If Astrid doesn't come, no cheerleaders come. No football players, no upperclassmen . . .”

“Not even the geeks will come,” Keith says. “Except for me.”

.

No one in first period actually asks if me and Keith are in DikNixon. But it's like half the class watches me sit down. And halfway through class, when I look over at Keith to see if he's as bored as I am, I catch someone beside Keith watching him like something could happen at any second.

It's the same in Algebra. Edie sees it too. She passes me a note with a cartoon drawing of me surrounded by bug-eyed people. The little bubble by my face actually says something this time too:
I'm not Dick Nixon, but I play him in a band.

In English, Penny Martin asks if it's true, that I'm in Treat's band, and Treat says it is. “Wow,” she says. “Who knew you were cool?”

Van Doren hasn't been to the lockers all day and I'm glad. If he asks me anything, I know my answers will sound like I'm covering something up, because I am. We're not really a band with all this experience. And as soon as van Doren knows there's a cover-up, it's probably over for DikNixon.

I miss Astrid all day too, but I know how that happens. It's hard to see anybody on the way to English, or Spanish, or on the way to lunch when you're looking at your feet the whole time, and really, those are the only times I usually see her.

During practice in the Two-Car Studio, Mr. Dumovitch comes out with a box full of flyers. The cutout letters and huge picture of Treat look even fiercer with the little lines and blurriness the copier made. It looks like a ransom note, except across the top it says D
IK
N
IXON / TERRORIZE YOUR NEIGHBOR TOUR.

Treat hands a bunch to Keith. “Give these to Edie and Cherise tomorrow, and make sure they tell people about the free beer.” He hands me just one flyer. “You don't even have to talk to Astrid now; just say, ‘This is my band. There's going to be free beer.'”

“That's talking,” Keith says.

Treat keeps looking at me. “You know what I mean. The flyer will do the talking.”

On the way home, Keith's going on and on about how great this is, how it's all fitting together like Legos. I'm imagining Astrid at her locker, folding the flyer into a paper airplane and sailing it into the back of my head as I'm walking away. Then real life hits me: Tomorrow is trash day. I can hand Astrid a flyer in the morning before school, before anyone else is around. Even
if she smiles and drops it right into the can, at least no one else will see.

.

The quiet wakes me up. I'm sitting straight up in bed, light pouring through my window, but my alarm isn't blaring. I can't think what day it is. It feels too early to be Saturday, and if it was Sunday my mom would already be getting after me to get ready for church. Then the whir and bang of the trash truck echoes into my room and my stomach squeezes with tickle pain. The alarm clock is blinking
12:00, 12:00, 12:00
and I throw on the dirty clothes draped over my chair, grab the flyer, and run downstairs.

The truck is next door and only the trash cans people put out last night are on the curb; everybody else is going to miss it. Even Astrid. I pull my cans out onto the driveway and then go for hers. The driver stops the truck between our houses, and while his partner's dragging my cans to the truck, he jumps out to help me with Astrid's. He's got a red bandana like a headband and the rest of his black hair is braided into a thick rope going down his back. And even though his jumpsuit is baggy, like maybe he's skinny, he carries a trash can in each hand while I drag one. His arms are brown and veiny and covered in tattoos, barbed wire wrapped up with a rosary and a bloody Jesus head with the crown of thorns. When we get to the truck, he dumps both his cans and slides one into the other before pulling mine from me. He dumps it real fast, slides it into the others, then puts out his gloved hand to me. “You throwing that out too?”

The flyer is crinkly in my hand. “No.”

The driver takes a good look at it and nods. “That's a pretty scary dude,” he says, sliding the trash cans over to me.

“He's cool.”

“Oh yeah,” he says as he's walking around the front of the truck to get back in. “Guys like that, they already had their trouble.”

Astrid comes walking out onto her driveway, baggy sweatpants and a giant Go-Go's T-shirt sagging from her shoulders. It's kind of funny because all the girls on the shirt have their hair in towels and cream all over their faces and you can tell they're probably pretty but this isn't them at their best. And here's Astrid, her hair messy and eyes squinty and she might as well have on face cream and a towel too. It makes her sort of real.

“Reece?” she says, her arms folded and goose bumps all across them. “Did you pull out our trash cans?”

“Yeah,” I say, nice and slow. “There wasn't time to get you—”

“You're so sweet,” she says and touches my arm. Her eyes go to the flyer and she tugs it from my hand soft and slow. “What's this?”

My body is so warm even though it's cold outside and kind of relaxed because all the excitement is over. For the first time ever, talking to Astrid feels normal. “Oh. That's for you.”

While she reads it, she keeps one arm folded across her chest, her hand tucked into her armpit. “Do
you
know DikNixon?”

“I'm in DikNixon. Me and some other guys.”

Her mouth opens and she looks up. “That's you?”

“Yeah. I write the songs.”

“Wow.” She smiles and it's so big it has to be real. “That's
very
cool.”

I'm nodding and have to actually think
Stop nodding
to make
myself stop, but it doesn't go on too long and I say, “You should come to the gig. There's going to be free beer.”

She studies the flyer for a second more. “Maybe. It depends on what my friends are doing Saturday.” She looks up and gives me this uneven, almost dirty grin that takes out my knees like a game-saving tackle. “You're DikNixon,” she says and folds up the flyer. “Okay.”

“Yeah,” I say, trying to keep from smiling. “And if you can't make it, we'll have other shows.”

“Okay,” she says and backs away.

“Okay,” I say, wondering now if I've just undone what I've done. Then I notice my dad's truck still in the driveway. “Happy Wednesday,” I say and take off running.

.

When he looks at his watch on the nightstand, my dad says, “Damn,” and heads straight to the bathroom. My mom says to get Brendan and Colleen going while she writes their late notes for school.

With everyone running around fast and a little frantic, I leave my hair sticking up in every direction, throw on some clothes quick, grab my backpack, and get out the front door without a jacket.

It feels colder now that I'm not dragging around trash cans, my face getting tight and tingly in the air, so I'm happy to see Treat walking foot over foot on top of the wall between my yard and Astrid's. His arms are out sideways, his face concentrating. He thuds down on our driveway, glances up, then yells past me, “Morning, Mr. Houghton!”

My dad is almost to his truck, keys in hand, and staring past me. “Morning.” He gets a really good look at Treat before unlocking the door and climbing in. He looks at me, says, “See you tonight, Reece,” and closes the door.

Treat steps up next to me. “This is kind of late for your dad, isn't it?”

My dad backs out of the driveway, his head turned away and eyes on the street. He doesn't have any reason to look back now, but as soon as the truck's pointing in the right direction, he takes one more peek before driving off.