Exile (4 page)

The cord drops down the back stairwell and out an exit door, holding it a sliver open. I stop at the door. It occurs to me that whoever is out here is seeking precisely the kind of privacy that I’m about to interrupt. I peer out anyway.

Outside is a concrete landing. There is a ramp on one side that leads down to the back parking lot. The other side is bordered by a high cement wall. The smell of Dumpsters is ripe on the warm afternoon air. The guitar amp is right in front of me, aimed toward the wall. Overdriven chords burst from it, but the volume is set pretty low, just loud enough to feel and sing along to, but not loud enough to
carry around to the front of the school. A rainbow-colored cord arcs up, seemingly into the sky.

I edge around the door . . .

And find a boy standing on the top of the cement wall. He’s kinda skinny, wearing a navy-blue T-shirt and jeans. He has a cherry-red Les Paul slung over his shoulder, and he’s strumming and singing. His eyes are closed, half hidden by a mop of brown hair, the tendons in his neck straining. I push out a little further, to get a better look.

Caleb Daniels, standing on a wall, playing a rock show all his own.

He sings. It’s a ballad:

I find my breath getting short. My heart accelerating. Not just because Caleb’s got a great voice, or because his melody is catchy, no,
triumphant
, or even because Maya was right about the hotness. But because . . . all together, it’s doing that thing,
he’s
doing that thing that a song can do. Do you know it? When a song inhabits you, possesses you, and moves you like a marionette to its will?

His voice is high and easy, confident but also with a
slight sandpaper edge to it. He’s in a trance as he launches into the next part:

Oh wow, this melody is huge. This melody is going to cause death-by-swooning.

There is an off-key whine and Caleb stops, the spell broken. His hand missed a chord. He looks accusingly down at the guitar. Then his eyes snap up, right at me.

I duck back but I know it’s too late. The last thing I see is him starting at seeing me.

And then from beyond the door I hear. “Ahh shit!”

Silence—

Then a crash.

I lean back out. Caleb has vanished. The guitar cable has pulled out of the amp and is draped over the wall. I hear a long, pained exhale from the other side.

“Oh!” I rush out. “Are you okay?”

I run to the wall and try to hoist myself up, but it’s been
a long time since those Saturdays at gymnastics, so instead I sprint down the ramp and around to a line of Dumpsters. I peer over the lip of the one nearest the wall to find Caleb lying on a pile of black trash bags, his cheek resting against an unidentifiable pile of something like dust or hair, it’s hard to tell. The smell is unreal but the bags seem to have held. He’s holding his guitar up above his chest.

He stares blankly at the sky, blinks, then finally takes a big breath. He examines the guitar. “Okay, it’s fine.”

“What about you?” I ask.

Caleb sits up, taking in his surroundings. “I suppose it would be a pretty lame cliché to say that this fits my current situation.”

A little laugh slips out before I can stop it. “Yeah, please don’t.”

He unplugs the cable and holds out the guitar. “Can you take this?” For a moment, his eyes lock on mine. Dark brown, like murder-mystery dark, especially in the shadow of his shaggy hair. Soft features that just seem to get out of the way of those eyes . . . oh, boy.

I take the guitar carefully. “Got it.”

Caleb pulls himself out and brushes off. “How do I look?”

“Less like you just Dumpster dived than you could have.”

“I didn’t think anyone would hear me out here,” he says, coiling the guitar cable as we walk back around.

“I almost didn’t,” I say. “Why weren’t you up at the concert?”

“Long story.” He turns off the amp, unplugs it from the extension cord, and stuffs the amp’s power cord into the back.

“You mean the long story of how you blew up your old band and now you’re Least Likely to Get a Hug from a PopArts Kid?”

Caleb looks up at me. “Word gets around, huh?”

“That’s the point of words. They get around.” I hope that sounds witty. Then I worry it sounds dumb. But then I hate that I’m worried or trying to sound witty just because I’m around some band boy. Okay, a hot, dreamy, great-singing, possibly-with-a-deep-dark-side band boy. But still.

Caleb lifts the amp and starts toward the door. It seems like he might just walk off, but then he pauses for me to catch up. “So why aren’t
you
at the concert?” he asks.

I smile. “Long story.”

We head inside. He bends, straining to grab the extension cord around the bulk of the amp, but I step in front of him and start looping it around my palm and elbow as we go.

“Very professional,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“So, long story like the band you totally broke to the world dumped you and now you can’t stand being around bands?”

“There go the words,” I say. “Getting around. But, actually, I came looking for you.”

“It’s Summer, right? We were in chem lecture last year. I’m Caleb.”

“I know. And yeah, I think we were.”

“No, we definitely were. And in Spanish class sophomore year. You sat in front.”

This is impressive and maybe has me a bit with the fluttery nerves. “
Si, senor
. Aren’t you going to ask why I came looking for you?”

We arrive back in the Green Room. Caleb slides the practice amp into a closet and locks it. “No,” he says, moving to the case racks on the far wall. “I don’t want to spoil it.”

“What do you mean?”

Caleb pulls out his case, kneels and lays his guitar on the bed of burgundy fur inside. “Because you’ll say that you’re wondering if I’m going to put a new band together, because the ones you just saw up there weren’t good enough. . . .”

“Which is just past confident and maybe slightly cocky of you to think.”

Caleb shakes his head. “Just being honest. I used to care what sounded confident or cocky . . .”

“But now?”

“But now I’ll just tell you that I’m not going to put a band together. No one would have me anyway.”

“Well, that might be true, but . . . why not? I heard you
out there just now. It was good. Though I guess you know that.”

“Really?” Suddenly he sounds like my opinion matters. “No, I mean, sure I can sing and play and stuff, but that song just now, I was out there because I didn’t want anyone to hear it.”

“Why not?”

“Same reason I’m not forming a band.”

The bell rings. End of lunch. Time for sixth period, which for me is calc.

Caleb stashes his guitar. We start out the door just as the first PopArts kids are pushing in and they all have a glare for Caleb, and by extension me.

Out in the hall, Caleb stops before heading in the other direction. Streams form on either side of us.

“So,” I say, “you’re gonna do the loner thing.”

Caleb frowns and glances away. “Not that simple.”

“Okay. What happened then? What happened on August fourteenth”—just the mention of his Twitter-nuking date makes his eyes flash back to me and they’ve cooled and I can tell we’ve entered shark-infested waters—“that turned you into an—”

“Exile,” says Caleb. He just looks at me.

A second passes and it’s weird. “What?”

He looks at the ceiling. Back to me. He’s not smiling, exactly, more like studying, but . . . damn those eyes. “You want to know?”

I give him a courtesy eye roll. “We covered that topic already when I asked
what happened
.”

“I’ll tell you, but you have to go out with me.”

“What?” I wonder if I heard him right while knowing of course I heard him right and thinking this is one of the most backward pickup’s I’ve ever heard of, but also I think my pulse just hit a hundred. “You’re asking me out?”

“Yes.”

I don’t want to say yes, but I don’t want to say no, and then just to say something I hear myself ask, “When?”

Caleb’s eyes stay dead on me. “Now.”

I probably kind of gape at him. “Now.”

“Now.” He glances at the pair of doors that lead out toward the parking lots.

“I have class,” I say.

Caleb sighs. “So do I. Everyone has class. There will always be class. Come with me anyway. And I’ll tell you why. I’ll tell you everything.” He steps closer. It feels dangerous, like maybe he’s being too forward, or like maybe I might just reach out and touch him, and I’m having no luck figuring out which, because my senses and my heartbeat and my thoughts are all a blur.

“I thought you were going with the nobody-understands-me thing.”

“I was, until five minutes ago. But one thing I learned this summer is that life can change pretty fast in five minutes.”

I remember a five-minute stretch in July where I learned the same thing. “I’m not gonna lie; you’re making a good case here.”

“Summer,” he says.

What is it about someone calling you by name? How rarely does that actually happen? To hear your name in close confines.

“Um . . .” None of this is what I’m used to people saying to me.
Summer
. . . but what the hell? I just spent the vast majority of two months rehashing and regretting all things band boy! Did I not just do this? Is this not just me going in another circle? The cute singer boy who says the big things, all mysterious and poetic? And we remember how that turned out and yet, YET,
Caleb isn’t Ethan
, I find myself thinking, and I want to know. I want to know.

Dammit dammit dammit.

I need to know.

It’s my turn to glance at the doors. This probably lets him know he’s almost got me. Maybe that’s my point. “When you say tell me everything,” I say, “do you mean like tell-me-you’re-secretly-a-psycho-killer-with-a-plan-to-add-me-to-your-petri-dish-collection everything? Or—”

Caleb laughs. “We’ll walk to Taquitas. There is nowhere along that route for me to dice you up with a scalpel.”

I stare at him. Six thousand miles away, the bell rings.

We’re late.

And it is like that bell has somehow severed me from the universe. The hall has emptied. Life has gone on, just like it did last night in Silver Lake. Everyone is somewhere and I am in this other place, a bubble out of time. Only this time it’s not in Burrita Feminista, though the similarity in prospective restaurant choices does hint at a larger plan to a universe I was calling out as an empty void just a few hours ago. We are in our own time line now, that’s how it feels. Like life has left us behind but maybe also like we are free. We could do this. I could leave school
on the first day back. . .
.

Somewhere, Carlson Squared is calling “Nooo!” in slow motion.

Somewhere else, Postcards from Ariel and Ethan Myers are on the road doing God-knows-what.

Here, now, I am saying:

“Okay.”

Caleb smiles. I thought it might be victorious, but actually, he just looks relieved.

“Come on.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

Formerly Orchid
@catherinefornevr 3m
So bummed to be in calculus right now!!

For the first few moments after leaving school, across the sidewalks, through the main parking lot, I keep looking over my shoulder, expecting alarms to go off or for someone to come running out after us. Another part of Catherine’s cover story is her near-perfect attendance, and so this feels like breaking cover.

But nothing happens; the sky remains blue; the birds chirp; the school’s doors stay closed.

“You know seniors are allowed to go off campus for lunch, right?” says Caleb.

Actually, I’d forgotten that. We’ve only been seniors for four hours. “This isn’t lunch period, though.”

“Well, no, but, since we missed lunch, we’re now
applying critical thinking to a situation. Isn’t that what they’re always telling us to do?”

I smile. “Sure.”

Neither of us adds anything, and then ten seconds go by . . . then thirty . . . and then, uh-oh, somehow we’ve been walking for almost a full minute in silence. For someone who just invited me on a school-skipping date, I expect Caleb to be chatty, but now it’s getting awkward. We’ve exited the school parking lot and still nothing. One of us will need to say something
important
to justify breaking the world’s longest silence—

“What bands do you like?” Caleb finally asks.

Phew. We talk bands, comparing notes as we weave through the labyrinth of strip mall that stands between us and Taquitas, which itself is part of an outdoor food court. My parents have described a time when Mount Hope was a quaint town with something called “charm.” At some point, though, the town decided to allow a series of factory outlet stores in. The kinds of places that have last season’s seconds perpetually on sale. The kinds of places that make you think: Does the world really need this much
everything
?

After that it was like a zombie breakout, one block affecting the next. There is still one strip of downtown that’s “historic,” with a single art-house movie theater and an old Spanish mission and a chrome diner called Smackie’s, but—no joke—if you want to meet your friend to shop
for sweaters at, say, J.Crew, you have to specify which one (there are three).

It’s far too hot to be wearing my denim-hoodie combo. I push up my sleeves and tie back my hair, feeling sweat breaking out on my neck and forehead, my cheeks getting red. Nice look. A skirt would have been good. Sandals. But dates were not on the first-day-of-school schedule! And besides, manager Summer doesn’t dress up for business. Then again, I’d vowed never to let my heart hammer again during business hours, and here it is, hammering away.