Californium Page 3

  It’s not so bad. My dad’s hands are thick and rough, and he tells me not to worry about hurting him. He winces a couple times, sucking in air through his teeth real fast, but most of the time he sits there quiet, one hand at a time under my desk lamp until we’re done.

  He doesn’t stick around afterward to ask about school or see other baseball cards. He says, “Thanks,” and heads downstairs to heat up leftovers.

  I pull out my notebook from the desk and work on a letter to Uncle Ryan, tell him about Keith and Petrakis in the locker room and how this guy van Doren is kind of a ghost. When I start telling him about the Willie Wilson card and how even with all those hits and stolen bases he looks stupid in his sky-blue Kansas City uniform, it makes me mad. Dad’s been totally different without you around, I write. But it’s his fault we’re all the way out in California. And he’s the one volunteering for all those extra Saturday shifts and overtime. I kind of want to say to him, “See what you did? Are you happy now?” But I guess he wasn’t all that happy before we left, either.

  It’s weird seeing that on the page. I’ve been thinking it; now I know it’s real. And even though I can take it back by ripping up the letter, I don’t. What’s the point in lying about it?

  .

  Saturday morning, Keith’s at the front door fifteen minutes before he said he’d be. My parents aren’t up yet because my dad needs to sleep in before his Saturday night shift.

  I creep into the room, to my mom’s side of the bed, and crouch down by her face. “Mom,” I whisper and shake her shoulder.

  Her hair is spread across her face, hiding her freckles and eyes. “What?” she whispers.

  “Keith’s here. We’re going to buy school clothes.”

  “School clothes?” my dad says from the other side of the bed. “School’s started.”

  “Get me my purse,” she says. “It’s on the dresser.”

  My dad rolls over. “You didn’t buy his clothes yet?”

  “He wants to do it himself.”

  I hand my mom the purse.

  “When the sales are all over?” my dad says.

  She sits up and blinks at the purse before peering inside.

  My dad rolls back over. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he says, and I don’t know if he’s talking to me or my mom.

  .

  Keith says Miller’s Outpost will have everything we need, so we hop my back wall for a shortcut through the park. Since summer ended, they’ve turned the baseball diamonds into soccer fields and me and Keith walk around all the painted white lines. We could cut the corners since it’s the littlest kids playing and they all bunch up around the ball anyway, but Keith says we shouldn’t. People here are crazy about soccer and they might not like it.

  Miller’s Outpost is in a little shopping center with a Tower Records on the other end of the parking lot, sort of mirroring it, and a bunch of small stores running between them—cleaners and tax guys, nothing good.

  We’re the first people in the store, the place still smelling like powdered carpet deodorizer. The back left wall has shelves and shelves of blue jeans, all Levi’s. Keith walks straight back there because we need 501s with the button fly. We each grab a couple pairs and walk over to the shirts. They’ve got the short-sleeve collared ones you wear with the collar up and the long-sleeve button-ups you leave untucked if you want to look cool. This is what we learned taking notes, stuff I’d never have guessed. We take turns picking out shirts to keep from getting the same colors and end up with six each—one for every day of school plus an extra for the Howdy Dance tonight. In the changing rooms I unfold the first pair of jeans and the price tag drops down in front of me. Then I catch the price on a shirt and suddenly my hundred bucks doesn’t seem like a lot of money. Depending on how much tax is, my money’s only going about as far as two pairs of jeans and maybe three shirts. How’s that supposed to last the year, like my dad says it should, when it won’t even get me through a week?

  I walk through the double swinging doors without trying anything on and start looking for a sale rack. The big window banners that said BACK TO SCHOOL SALE since August started are all gone. Now they just have leaves everywhere and say FALL FASHION.

  Keith comes over to me in jeans that go past his feet and a stiff shirt rising off his shoulders. “Does this look right?”

  I shake my head. “Have you looked at the prices of this stuff?”

  “Not really.” He pulls a shirt off the rack we’re standing by and holds it up. “Check this out—there’s a little plastic baggie on here with extra buttons.”

  If nothing’s on sale, I need time to think. Are a couple nice things from Miller’s Outpost better than a whole bunch of crappy stuff from Kmart? “Let’s go over to Tower Records.”

  “Now?” he says.

  “Yeah. Let’s see what Adam Ant’s wearing on his album covers.”

  At least four different girls at school this week have said Adam Ant is a total babe, so Keith says okay to a quick look, just to make sure we’re not forgetting anything.

  We walk across the parking lot to Tower Records, talking about the other album covers we should check out for clothes because girls always like guys in bands. As we’re coming through the door, Keith freezes and I nearly knock into him. Not ten feet away, just on the other side of the first row of album bins, there’s a guy with a bleached Mohawk. A real Mohawk with the sides shaved bald and the huge stripe of hair down the middle. Guys back in Jersey never wore Mohawks. At least, not in Paterson. You might see a guy wearing combat boots and ripped jeans, or a sleeveless Levi’s jacket with chains and patches all over it, but you never saw it all put together on a guy with massive arms and a white-as-snow Mohawk big and spiky enough to stab somebody.

  Keith walks around the first row of bins, staring at the floor. He doesn’t stop until he gets to the back of the store, where they keep the posters. My feet don’t want to move at first; then they just go straight to the bin in front of me. The Mohawk’s on the other side and I know better than to look up, but it’s like an eclipse: You know you shouldn’t stare straight at it—it’s dangerous and there’s a safer way to look—but that just makes you want to do it even more. I flip through three or four albums at a time, my head down and eyes up to see when it’s clear. Finally, the guy turns toward the front counter and the Mohawk fans out for me like peacock feathers.

  Keith’s looking too, and when we see each other, I give him the Get over here look. He opens his eyes real big, which means nothing to me until I realize Mohawk guy has turned around and is staring at me. We make eye contact for a millisecond before my eyes dive back into the bin. And there’s Adam Ant, black eyeliner and a thick white line painted across his face. A white-guy Indian/pirate.

  The chains on Mohawk guy’s jacket clink real soft as he steps to the bin right across from me and Adam Ant. When I move down the row to the B’s, Mohawk guy does the same thing, in the same direction. I wait a second, then look up, and his face is already there, waiting. “What are you looking at?” he says. It’s not mean-sounding like you might think. He leans forward and looks down, the Mohawk bearing down on me like some giant buzz saw. “The Beatles?”

  My eyes can’t find words, just four hairy guys walking across a street, the one in front looking like Jesus in a disco suit. I look up. “Do you work here?”

  “Nope. I just know my music.” He closes his eyes and nods when he says it. “If you want my advice, don’t be a trendoid and buy Abbey Road. Get Revolver.” The Mohawk goes a little sideways and he squints. “I know you, right? From school.”

  I know it’s only been a week, but if a guy within a mile of you has a bleached Mohawk and arms bigger than your legs, you’re probably going to remember him.

  “Are you van Doren?”

  He shakes his head. “I’m Treat,” he says. “You sit in my row, right? In front of the dude who’s al
lergic to school?”

  “In English?” I say. Treat nods, making the Mohawk cut at me. “Yeah, I sit right in front of the sneezer. Couldn’t take my jacket off all week, you know, unless I wanted a snot shower.”

  Treat laughs like we’re old buddies and checks out my jacket. “That’s bitchin’. Is Packy your nickname?”

  “Nah, I’m just Reece. The patch sort of came with the jacket.”

  “Salvation Army?”

  “Hand-me-down.”

  “Well, it’s a good one.” Treat flicks his head toward the door. “You can’t get bitchin’ stuff like that at candy stores like Miller’s Outpost.”

  “Not for a hundred bucks,” I say.

  “Totally,” he says. “You could get ten of those for a hundred bucks at the Salvation Army.”

  “Really? They’ve got cool stuff?”

  Treat nods, waits a second, then says, “You want to check it out?”

  I do. I mean, not with this guy, but Keith’s staring at a Led Zeppelin poster like he can’t figure out how hippies with no shirts and supertight pants equals cool. “Okay,” I say, “let me get my friend.”

  .

  The Salvation Army store is in the old downtown. My dad says President Nixon grew up here when downtown Yorba Linda was the whole town. Now it’s just a couple blocks of Joe Schmoe, Attorney-at-Law, and I. M. Lame, Real Estate Agent. No wonder Nixon left.

  On the walk, Treat tells us he didn’t get the Mohawk until yesterday after school. He’d have done it sooner, only his dad said he had to get a copy of the school dress code first and prove it would be okay. “If I came home with a Mohawk,” I say, “my dad would cut off my head just to make it go away.”

  Treat busts up and we look at Keith.

  “Well, if I ever cut my hair like that,” he says and touches the back of his head, “which I never would, I’d tell my mom it was super important to me and then my dad would go along with whatever she said.”

  The Salvation Army store is big and high ceilinged like an old A&P. There’s used furniture up front and racks filled with clothes from the middle all the way to the back. Treat says, “You guys need jeans, right?” He weaves through the furniture and shelves, splitting between people instead of walking around them. They all take a good look after he passes, and one old guy stares at him the way you do when Walter Cronkite says, “We want to warn you: The following footage is graphic.”

  Like at Miller’s Outpost, there’s Levi’s 501s stacked on shelves along the wall, except these jeans look like laundry day, folded uneven, faded and fraying everywhere. Keith won’t touch them. If he can’t see the yellow size tag sticking out, he goes on to the next one. I’ve got three pairs over my shoulder to try on by the time Keith hooks a pair of dark blue ones by the belt loop and pulls them out. They look brand-new until they drop open to show a rip by the left knee.

  “Bitchin’,” Treat says. He snatches the jeans and holds them up high. “You can’t usually get new ones with a good rip.” He tosses them back before Keith is ready and they flop over Keith’s face. “You’ll have to wash the hell out of them to get ’em faded right, but that rip’s perfect.”

  There must be a thousand shirts on the racks. Keith tears through them pretty fast, still only that one pair of jeans over his shoulder.

  “You’re not going to find any alligator shirts,” Treat says, and Keith just stops where he is and looks at me. Treat flips through the rack and out come these long-sleeve button-up shirts. They don’t have the thin stripes like guys at school are wearing; they’re thick and dark and some have weird patterns and shapes you can’t even find in a geometry book.

  We both give Treat the Are you serious? look and he says these shirts aren’t finished yet. “You have to tie them in knots and bleach them. Like this one,” he says, and holds up a red paisley shirt with white blotches all over it.

  “That’s not an accident?” Keith says.

  I take it from Treat. “I’ll give it a shot.”

  It’s weird trying on the clothes. The jeans are already worn in, not stiff like cardboard, and they aren’t scratchy. Everything feels like it just came right out of my closet.

  Keith steps out of the changing room in the ripped jeans and one of the long-sleeve button-ups, and it looks pretty decent.

  Treat folds his arms and nods, the Mohawk shooting forward. “Yep. A little bleach and those will be totally punk rock. Now all you guys need is boots.” He tears out across the store.

  When Treat gets far enough away, Keith says, “Are you buying any of this crap?”

  “I think so.”

  “None of it’s new,” he says.

  “That’s why it doesn’t cost as much. And this guy’s cool, isn’t he?”

  Keith looks over at Treat firing through a big bin of shoes. “I guess. He looks like one of the Plasmatics.”

  “You think Petrakis would ever stuff that guy in a locker?”

  Keith squints at me because I’ve sworn never to bring that up again. “I didn’t say I don’t want to be his friend. I’m just not sure I want to look like him.”

  Treat comes back a minute later empty-handed. “Boots are the hardest thing to find,” he says. “You have to get lucky.”

  I tell Treat I already feel pretty lucky with the jeans and shirts. He turns on this half grin and asks Keith if he likes the stuff he’s got.

  “I guess,” Keith says.

  The Mohawk shakes from side to side. “Look, you can go over to Miller’s Outpost, get your school uniform, and look like every other freshman. Or you can be totally punk rock, be your own man.”

  Keith doesn’t look real convinced, but he buys a bunch of stuff anyway.

  When we’re walking back toward the park, I ask Treat if he’s going to the dance tonight.

  “No way, man. I’m not buying into the system.” He says he’ll see us at school Monday and that he’ll keep his eye out for some boots. He turns around, waits, waits, waits, then runs across all six lanes of Yorba Linda Boulevard and disappears down a side street.

  Keith wants to go back to Miller’s Outpost. I say to give it a week, to wait and see what happens at school. “I’ll see what happens tonight at the Howdy Dance,” he says. “After that, I can’t make any promises.”

  In the park, the older guys are playing soccer now. They look real sharp in their uniforms with their shirts tucked in and socks pulled up high. They spread out over the entire field the way they’re supposed to. We could still cut the corners on the way to my back wall, because even with the coach yelling, a few of those guys can’t resist drifting in a little. But this time, I don’t bring it up. We just decide what time to walk to the dance and swear to each other that we’ll wear the clothes we just bought.

  New/Old Clothes

  My whole life, the only reason to get dressed up on a Saturday night has been for confession. There’s ice cream after if we’re good, but the scratchy shirts and choking ties don’t really feel like an even trade, especially with how long it takes Brendan to get through his list of sins. When he was eight, my mom used to catch him throwing rocks at birds. All the time. She’s not a yeller, but she stays on you like a tick. Like you don’t even know she’s there until you turn around and can tell by the look on her face she just saw everything. Or enough. Then it starts: Do this; don’t do that; pick that up; put that down; get going, mister; don’t you walk away from me; God helps those who help themselves; and my favorite of all: I love you, but if you keep acting like that, I’m the only person in the world who will. It always gets me to stop what I’m doing wrong, or to get moving, or to straighten up and fly right. But not Brendan. She could bust him for throwing rocks at birds in the morning and then catch him doing it again in the afternoon.

  One Saturday, Brendan’s in the confessional going as fast as he can and leaving out as much as he can so he’s not stuck with a rosary
and a million Hail Marys. Then it stays quiet even longer than it normally takes for the priest to add up Brendan’s sins, and finally Father Nash says, “And what about the birds, Brendan? Aren’t you sorry about trying to hurt God’s creatures?”

  It scared him to death, and when Brendan told me about it later it was pretty clear he had no idea Mom had called Father Nash beforehand. Now he’s in there every confession racking his brain for every little sin, even the ones he’s only thought about. By the time he’s done with his penance, my clothes are at war with me—the collar slicing my throat, the pants crawling over my thighs like I’m strapped to an anthill. It’s worse than any penance a priest has ever given me.

  So even though I’m dressed up for the Howdy Dance, it’s my new/old clothes: faded jeans and the bleached red paisley shirt Treat found for me. When I asked my mom if my dad had any old boots, she came back with this ancient pair of black Converse All Stars and they seem to fit. Everything feels like warm sheets on a cold morning and yet I look different to me. New.

  Keith says the dance is just the opening act. After this, it’s football games and parties and formals. Then basketball games, more parties, and more dances. We don’t have to get this perfect; we just can’t mess up and start a chain reaction that blows the whole year for us.

  At the dinner table, Brendan gets a look at my shirt and laughs.

  My mom glares at him and he goes instantly quiet, shaking to hold it in.

  My dad looks up and leans sideways in his chair to see what the big deal is. “Are these your new clothes?”

  “They’re new?” Brendan says and starts laughing out loud again.

  Colleen’s across from me and her head disappears under the table to see. “What’s so funny?”

  My mom reaches over and pulls her up. “Be a lady.” She waits until Colleen is settled and looks over at me. “Do you like these clothes?”