Californium Read online

  My dad’s in his machinist uniform, about to leave for his extra shift. My mom’s in a housedress that’s softer than a pile of kittens. Brendan’s got grass stains on his tube socks. Colleen’s pink play clothes are smeared with jelly.

  My dad says, “You want people to think we’re poor?”

  “Pat,” Mom says, “it’s a style.” She looks at me. “Right, Reece?”

  “Yeah, it’s pu—” I say, stopping myself just in time. “Puh-retty rockin’.”

  Brendan breaks into a new round of laughing. Mom looks at her watch and says, “You know, Pat, we may have enough time after dinner to make confession. Do you think anyone needs to go?”

  Brendan doesn’t make a sound after that, except to thank me for passing the butter, then the salt, and later a second serving of broccoli, which means he’s laying it on pretty thick since he hates broccoli.

  On my way out the door, Colleen says my new/old clothes look neat. With my Packy jacket on, I get a curfew and kiss from my mom while my dad makes Brendan clear the table. It’s not exactly a blessing, but it gets me out the door.

  .

  Me and Keith walk into the cafeteria and it’s a different world. It’s not just ribbons and posters like a junior high dance. The punch table is in a corral, a real wooden fence with a working gate and straw covering the tile floor. There’s a red barn made out of cardboard boxes with a real deejay inside. And even though it’s nighttime, nearly all the lights are off.

  Keith’s got on the ripped jeans he bought and some plain green T-shirt Treat found. He says he can’t believe he dressed up to look like nothing, but it kind of doesn’t matter what any of the freshmen are wearing. They’re all standing along the walls and only talking to other freshmen. Out on the floor are clumps of people you know must be sophomores and juniors because they’re all over the place, changing groups and people hugging or giving high fives because they haven’t seen each other all week and It totally sucks; I thought we’d have at least one class together. They’re sipping their punch and talking to each other relaxed, the way James Bond walks into a casino and fits right in.

  Keith points at the barn and says, “There’s your neighbor.” Astrid’s standing around with some other girls from varsity cheer. They’re all wearing straw cowboy hats, Levi’s, and Howdy Dance Committee T-shirts in maroon and gold, our school colors. Astrid wears everything better. Her shirt and jeans hug her body like a Christmas present that can’t hide what’s beneath the wrapping. And instead of a belt, she’s got a red bandana going through the loops around her waist. Most of her hair is hidden in the straw hat, and even though the strands pouring out each side are tucked behind her ears, they’re splashing onto her shoulders so you can see how long and blond it really is. She’s perfectly symmetrical except for this big silver hoop earring in her left ear. You might think that would throw everything off, but every few seconds there’s this flash of light from a tiny diamond in her right ear. Then the hoop shimmers and I can’t decide which side of her face looks better with which earring because they both look so good at the same time.

  Keith jabs me in the ribs. “Go say hi.”

  I swipe his arm down. “Yeah, right.”

  “Seriously,” Keith says. “You’re probably the only freshman she knows. Tell her you found her other earring.”

  Theoretically, I could do this: walk up to Astrid and go, Hey, and maybe she smiles and says, Hey, yourself. Then my stomach tightens and my arms ache like they’ve fallen asleep. It’s not even real, and I’m a mess.

  For real, though, Mr. Krueger appears in front of us. “Mr. Houghton. Mr. Curtis. You gentlemen are in my first-period class, are you not?”

  “Yes,” Keith says.

  “Yes, you are not? Or, yes, you are?”

  “We’re in your class,” I say.

  “Good,” he says. “Tell me, Mr. Curtis, what does Fr stand for?”

  Keith looks stunned. Mr. Krueger said we’d get pop quizzes; we just didn’t think that meant he’d pop up places and quiz us.

  Keith throws his arms out like he surrenders. “I don’t know. Freshman?”

  Mr. Krueger rubs his chin and says, “I’ll accept that as a valid answer, Mr. Curtis. On the quiz, however, you’ll want to answer, ‘francium.’” He claps us each on the shoulder. “Have fun, gentlemen.”

  “Jeez,” Keith says as Mr. Krueger walks away. “He got one look at my clothes and labeled me an idiot.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Yeah, he did.” Keith tugs on the ripped part of his jeans. “I’m going to check my hair. At least I can fix that if it looks stupid.”

  With Keith gone, it’s easy to pretend I’m watching people dance and not looking over them to the other side where Astrid is. She’s been standing there the whole time with her friends, her head tilting every so often, talking, listening, smiling, laughing. No one’s asked her to dance, which makes sense, because who would have the nerve? My heart’s gone hummingbird just thinking about being wrapped up with her in a slow song, my thumbs looped through the bandana on her hips, and then a voice whispers in my ear, “It sucks being cool, huh?”

  Edie from Algebra is right next to me and I don’t know how she got there. Or when. She’s wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, showing her arms, which are skinny but not bony. She’s grinning like maybe she’s been watching me watch Astrid, or maybe she’s just happy to see me. I say, “Hi,” and she says, “When it is time to work, work. And when it is time to dance, dance.”

  “Are you asking me to dance?”

  She grabs hold of my sleeve. “Now is the time to dance!” She pulls me through pairs of people standing still at the end of a song. We’re in the middle of the dance floor and the deejay says to get ready for “What I Like about You,” and Edie does. She squares off in front of me as the new record starts hissing. “Do you know how to pogo?”

  A guitar riff launches out of the speakers and Edie is airborne. Everyone is. They’re bouncing up and down to the music, and as soon as Edie lands I take off with her on the next jump. It’s not so complicated, you know, and near the end of the song I’m turning myself sideways in the air, hitting the floor, bringing my knees up then down, hitting the floor, scissoring my legs out and back, hitting the floor. Edie’s laughing with each move, bouncing along with me and trying my moves herself.

  When the next song starts, Edie’s legs go stone-still, which is funny because it’s “Shake It Up,” by the Cars. Her arms start moving, though, and as the song picks up she flails them around and shakes her head side to side. I’m mirroring her the whole time, my arms swinging a little more crazily, my head shaking a little harder.

  “You’re good,” Edie says as the song ends.

  I’m breathing heavy, beads of sweat rising in my hair and tickling my scalp. “Thanks. You are too.”

  The next song comes up quiet, a synthesizer rising and a slow drumbeat. Neither of us move; then Edie sticks her hand in the middle of my chest and pushes me back a step. “Come on; I don’t dance to slow songs.”

  We find Keith near the wall and I introduce him to Edie. She shakes his hand, says how nice it is to meet him, and takes off to find her friends.

  For the next half hour, Keith’s bugging me to go find Edie and her friends so he can dance too. It’s pretty easy to ignore until he says, “If you’re not going to talk to Astrid, it’ll look a whole lot better if you’re dancing with girls instead of talking to me.”

  We find Edie with three other girls. Keith already knows two of them from his junior high. The third girl, Cherise, is someone Edie must know from her junior high. Cherise doesn’t talk much, and between her long hair and the darkness, you can’t tell if she’s a fox or a dog, or something in between.

  We all end up dancing in a circle so no one is really dancing with anyone, but it’s fun. The only time anybody even touches is
when one of Keith’s moves goes wrong and he stumbles into somebody, which is fine since he apologizes each time and you can tell he’s not doing it on purpose.

  By the time the lights come on, we must have danced to ten songs, with little breaks for punch or the girls saying they’d be right back whenever a slow song came on. One of the girls from Keith’s junior high asks if Filibuster is playing somewhere after the dance. “Yeah,” Keith says, “van Doren’s always got something up his sleeve.”

  The girls wait like maybe Keith actually knows something. Then the deejay crackles over the sound system that everyone rocked, and disco sucks, and it sucks if we leave the gym trashed like a disco, so it would pretty much rock if we all threw some trash away as we left. Keith grabs Cherise’s cup and says, “We’ll get them.” Edie hands me her cup and Keith grabs the rest.

  Two of the girls walk away, leaving Edie and Cherise. “Thanks for dancing with us,” Edie says.

  “No problem,” Keith says.

  Cherise gives Edie’s arm a little tug and Edie looks at me. “Now is the time to leave, and when it is the time to leave . . . ,” she says and waits.

  “Don’t dance,” I finish.

  “And when it is the time to dance . . .”

  “Don’t leave,” I say.

  Edie tilts her head sideways. “Ah, that’s sweet, but I’ve really got to go.”

  We both burst out laughing, and Edie gives me a little wave as she steps away.

  Keith’s smiling until we turn and head for the closest trash can. “What was so funny?”

  “It’s a math joke.”

  “There’s no such thing,” he says, and then just stops and stares. For a second I wonder if Treat is here, but Keith mouths, Astrid. He forces the cups in his hand onto me, then turns around and walks away.

  Astrid gets to the trash can right when I’m tossing in the cups. “We have to stop meeting like this,” she says.

  “Yeah,” I say and nod once like that means something.

  She smiles, drops in a stack of cups, smacks her hands together like she’s dusting them off, and walks away, the bandana swaying as she goes.

  Keith’s waiting for me by the big exit doors. “She smiled at you.”

  “To keep from laughing.”

  “No.” Keith shakes his head. “She saw you in your cool new clothes.”

  He must be razzing me. “No one said we looked cool.”

  “We talked to girls. We danced with girls.” Keith squints the way he did when Mr. Krueger asked him what Fr stood for. “That’s what we want, isn’t it? The experiment is a success.”

  Hey, Neighbor!

  One of the things I tell Uncle Ryan in the next letter is how having a huge friend with a Mohawk will probably come in handy at school, but maybe it isn’t the best idea to let my parents meet him. Especially my dad, I write. You know how he is when things don’t go to plan, and I don’t think he planned on me having weird friends. I write about the Howdy Dance and feeling stupid in front of Astrid because Uncle Ryan’s told me before that we all do stupid things sometimes. “Me more than anybody,” he said once, and I remind him of that.

  After that, it’s just a bunch of crap about Brendan getting in trouble at school, and Colleen already loving her new teacher, and Mom saying the tomatoes here are terrible and having great strawberries and oranges doesn’t make up for it.

  I know what I want to write next, but I’m not sure if I should. In the newspaper the other day, there was a family special on baseball tickets to see the Angels. Even though they were playing Cleveland, I told my dad it would still be great to go. He said he didn’t have time and I said that if Uncle Ryan were here he’d make time. “Well, Uncle Ryan isn’t here,” my dad said. I probably should’ve shut up about it right there because when he says something without looking at you he’s either not really listening or he’s trying not to get upset. “It’s not like it’s against the law to have fun in California,” I said, and that was it. I got an earful about how life isn’t fun and games all the time and if I thought it was, all I had to do was take a look at Uncle Ryan and I could see how that turned out for him. He stopped right there, real sudden, and looked at me like I’d just called him out at home when everyone else in the world could see he was safe. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.” He waited a second, said, “Let’s just not talk about Uncle Ryan, okay?” and then left the room.

  Uncle Ryan used to get an earful sometimes too, my dad telling him there’s a time to have fun and a time to grow up and isn’t it about time he grew up? I figure Uncle Ryan doesn’t need any more of that coming through me, so I leave out all the stuff about the ball game and what my dad said. I wish you were here, I write instead, or that you could write back, but I’m pretty sure you can’t. I add a Ha! But I’m going to keep writing you, if you don’t mind. It makes me feel a little better, so I hope, somehow, these are getting to you and they make you feel good too.

  .

  Monday starts with Gus/Gary knocking me sideways to catch the physics book that somehow flew out of his locker. I’m flat on the ground and he’s standing there with the book, saying it was a close one, he almost got me. He’s smirking, but he sticks his hand out to help me up, so I have to say, “Thanks.”

  In Algebra, Mr. Tomita gives us the last ten minutes of class to get started on our homework. My left foot’s propped on the side rail under my chair, my knee sticking up and out into the aisle, and suddenly it tickles a little where the hole is, like a fly’s walking across my skin. Edie’s leaning forward, a blue pen in her hand, writing on me. It feels so good I pretend not to notice until she’s done and it reads, Statement.

  “You think I’m making a fashion statement?”

  It’s quiet a second until she whispers, “Just a statement.”

  I turn around and she’s got an I know the answers you have to look up smile. “What kind of statement?” I say, and Mr. Tomita shushes me from his desk, staring until we make eye contact. His chin moves down just a fraction but he doesn’t say anything. It’s a warning. A minute later a folded paper crinkles against my arm. Without looking up, I reach back and grab it. It’s a drawing of a guy in ripped jeans, an untucked shirt, and a jacket. There’s one of those cartoon bubbles above for what he’s saying, only he’s not saying anything. There’s just an exclamation point.

  I make a question mark next to it and slide it back. The paper crinkles and swishes a little like Edie’s smoothing it over, but it never comes back.

  When the bell rings, I turn around. “An exclamation point?”

  Edie picks up her books and starts walking for the door. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “How can I not worry about it?”

  “Just don’t.” She stops next to the door. “Come on.”

  She’s going in the opposite direction from my next class, but I walk with her anyway. “Tell me.”

  “You tell me.”

  “What my fashion statement is?”

  Her voice goes pretend serious. “Yes, Reece. What is your fashion statement?”

  We stop by the staircase. Gobs of people are bobbing down the steps like a waterfall. A couple freshmen are trouting their way up, getting knocked all over the place, which is their own fault. Unless you’re Treat’s size, you’ve got to wait until most of the people coming down clear out, because not only are they merciless; they’ve got gravity on their side.

  “I haven’t really thought about my clothes as a statement,” I say.

  “That’s kind of what they’re saying.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Uh-huh. A big exclamation point with nothing in front of it.” She hands me the folded-up paper from her pocket and jumps into the stream of people heading up the stairs. “See you later.”

  I unfold the paper and it’s just the same as it was, the guy in the ripped jeans with nothing to say. On the wa
y to English, I fold it up and slide it into my back pocket, keeping it safe from I don’t know what.

  Treat’s already in the classroom when I get there, and people are staring at him since they’ve never seen the Mohawk before. He nods at my new/old clothes and a couple people look over at me, probably wondering how I’m friends with this guy. It feels pretty good, so when Treat says me and Keith should meet him in the Bog at lunch, I’m all for it even though I don’t know what the Bog is.

  .

  The Bog, Keith tells me, is the middle of the quad where there’s trees and shrubs in these big planters, really nice except they water it constantly so it’s always muddy. Upperclassmen get all the spots around the edges, so freshmen get stuck in the Bog.

  For the most part, the upperclassmen couldn’t be bothered with you at lunch unless you cut across their grass or sit too close to the planters up against the library, the Senior Circle. But as Treat’s cutting across the quad in front of the Senior Circle, guys in letterman jackets just stare at him.

  When Treat gets to the Bog he throws up a hand. “What’s up?”

  “A preposition,” Keith says.

  Treat grabs Keith’s shirt in back and yanks it up. Keith looks like a dog waiting to get smacked and Treat says, “You don’t tuck that in.” Keith doesn’t even move, and Treat claps his shoulder. “You gotta get the rest. I’m not sticking my hand down your pants.”

  Keith tugs and pulls real fast, his shirt flying up like a mushroom cloud until it settles back down, completely untucked and, really, looking a lot better.

  Me and Keith tell Treat about the Howdy Dance and then we all talk about our old junior highs. Treat went to a private school, uniforms and everything. “I finally told my parents to save their money because if I had to go one more year I’d get myself kicked out again.”

  He says it so relaxed it takes me a second to realize he said “again.”

  “That’s balls out,” Keith says.

  “I guess,” Treat says. “Listen, you guys should come to my house today after school.”