Californium Read online

  “Yeah?” I say. “What’s up?”

  Treat laughs. “A preposition.” He punches Keith on the shoulder nice and solid, which looks pretty painful, but Keith gives it a tight smile. “Nah, it’ll be bitchin’ is all.” He snatches some paper from a guy sitting near us and draws a map. “Bring your bathing suits.”

  .

  Me and Keith are pacing around the PE lockers, wondering if we should try and get out of going to Treat’s since even in California you don’t go swimming with a guy you just met. We’re coming around the corner by the varsity room when the bell rings and Petrakis is there waiting for us.

  “Come here, little dudes,” he says. “You friends with that Mohawk guy?”

  We both nod.

  Petrakis glances at me and back to Keith. “You tell that guy if he wants to come out for football, there’s still time. Got it?” He slaps Keith on the back, solid, and pushes him toward the door. “Now, get the fuck out of here.”

  When we get to the quad, Keith says, “I’m going.”

  “To Treat’s?”

  “Yeah.” His head moves up and down a few times, fast and short. “I don’t care if you go or not; I’m going.”

  “I’ll go.”

  “Good,” Keith says, “because that guy scares me,” and I don’t know if he means Treat or Petrakis. Probably both.

  .

  Me and Keith hop my back wall to cut through the park and get across Yorba Linda Boulevard. The hills start dropping off into the canyon on that side of the street and you can tell the houses are older because there’s no pattern to them. Sometimes there isn’t even a house next door, just a field and horse fence.

  Treat’s house doesn’t look any bigger than mine, but it’s all one story and spread out wide. We put our bathing suits on in the bathroom next to the kitchen and Treat leads us straight out the glass sliding door to the backyard. It must be forty yards to the back fence, only there’s no pool. Right before the yard drops back into the hill again, there’s a wooden deck about three feet off the ground with a big, octagon-shaped bathtub sunk in the middle of it.

  “Cool,” Keith says. “A hot tub.”

  Treat shakes him off. “Jacuzzi.” He turns this dial in the back corner of the deck and the thing comes to life like a boiling pot of pasta. Here it is, September, seventy-five degrees out at three in the afternoon, the sun coming through the flat roof in checkers, and Treat climbs in.

  “Isn’t it a little hot for this?”

  “Nah,” Treat says. “This is the perfect time.”

  “For what?” Keith says. “Melting my contact lenses into my eyes?”

  “You have contacts?”

  “No,” Keith says. “It’s an expression.”

  Me and Keith sit down on the deck and let our legs dangle in the water. We tell Treat what Petrakis said about football and he laughs. “Who the hell wants to be a gladiator? No, thanks.” He leans back, looks around the yard, then says did we know that the Indians who lived in these hills used to do rituals that purified the land and their spirits?

  “It must not have worked,” Keith says. “We got all their land.”

  Treat looks at Keith like he might rip off his head, then stares past him. “It brings inner strength. The kind of thing that affects everyone around you.”

  “How?” Keith says.

  “Who won?” Treat says. “The Pilgrims or the Indians?”

  “The Pilgrims.”

  “How often do you see movies about Pilgrims?”

  Keith thinks about it a second. “Sometimes. Around Thanksgiving.”

  “Maybe. But you see movies about Indians all the time. You know why?” Treat doesn’t wait. “The inner strength. It influences people.”

  “People in Hollywood?” I say.

  “People everywhere.”

  Beads of sweat are sticking to Treat’s face and shoulders, and with his Mohawk growing all misty with the steam rising around it, he looks mysterious and wise, like the face in the mirror in Snow White handing out all those facts and advice. Treat says in sweat lodges the Indians would sit around in the heat and confess their fears and hopes and all kinds of things and just let them rise with the steam. “They could let private stuff out into the world without being embarrassed. So anything we say in the Jacuzzi stays in the Jacuzzi until it becomes part of the air.”

  Keith looks at me, like, Is this real? and it must be because Treat keeps talking. “I want you guys to know I didn’t go to the dance because I knew the music would be lame and it wouldn’t be very punk rock. But after you guys told me today how you hung out with those chicks, I almost wished I went.”

  Keith bobs his head a little and so I do too.

  “Okay,” Treat says. “I confessed something. Now you guys have to climb in and confess something too.”

  “What if we don’t have anything?” I say.

  “You’ve got something,” Treat says. “Everybody does.”

  “What if we really don’t?”

  “Then you have to think harder. There has to be balance for this to work.”

  Keith slides in and starts telling this story about some girl he made out with in the bathroom at his church. When I ask who it was, Keith says it was early in the summer, before I moved here, and somebody’s cousin from another state. I ask who the “somebody” is and Keith says, “Somebody who doesn’t go to our school anymore.”

  “Are you confessing or bragging?”

  “Confessing,” Keith says. “She was a seventh grader and I was about to start high school. I sort of took advantage of her.”

  Treat nods. “That works.”

  Keith grins and looks at me. “What’s your confession, Reece?”

  “You mean confession, like a sin? Because I don’t think making out with a girl is a sin unless she doesn’t exist.”

  Keith looks around the yard like he’s admiring the petunias, and Treat says, “It doesn’t have to be anything like that. It can be something you’ve never told anyone. Something you want to get off your chest.”

  I have stuff like that, stuff I wouldn’t tell a priest. Stuff like fishing Uncle Ryan’s keys out of that stadium cup the morning he disappeared, hiding them in my backpack, and then throwing them in a trash bin on the way to school. Or even writing the letters to him, since my parents don’t know about that and they wouldn’t like it. Or how writing the letters at my desk is how I first noticed my window is right across from Astrid’s. Now I’m gawking every time her light clicks on, hoping somehow through the curtains I’ll see her taking off her bra or just lying on her bed.

  But there’s no way I’m getting into any of that. “Hold on,” I say and I’m down the steps, running through the yard, and yelling back, “I’ve got one.” The water flies off my legs and most of the drippy stuff’s gone by the time I’m in the house and fishing through the pockets of my jeans. Then I’m back on the deck, holding out the drawing of me with nothing to say.

  “Who gave you this?” Treat says.

  “Edie,” I say. “One of the girls from the Howdy Dance.”

  Keith leans out of the water to see it up close. “You got a note? Sweet.”

  Treat shakes his head. “This is serious shit.”

  I set the note down and climb all the way into the water. “I know. I don’t exist.”

  “What are you talking about?” Keith says. “You got a note. From a girl.” He turns to Treat. “A cute girl.”

  “It’s not a note,” I say.

  Keith looks back at me. “It is too. It’s just in hieroglyphics.”

  “Okay. Then it’s hieroglyphics for a guy who doesn’t exist.”

  Treat’s nodding, but Keith’s shaking his head. “How can you be nonexistent if Astrid talks to you?”

  “All she does is say, ‘Hey, neighbor!’ when we take the trash out. Sh
e even called me ‘trash buddy’ at the dance. That kind of sucks.”

  “It doesn’t suck,” Keith says.

  Treat looks hard at me. “That cheerleader chick everyone thinks is so great is your neighbor?” Me and Keith both nod and Treat takes in a huge breath. “That does suck.”

  “How?” Keith says. “How can a cheerleader talking to you, the head cheerleader, ever suck? Unless you say, ‘Excuse me,’ and she says, ‘There’s no excuse for you,’ and you say, ‘I don’t need an excuse; I got a hall pass,’ and she says, ‘You could’ve fooled me,’ and then you say—”

  Treat fires a stream of water right into Keith’s face. “Okay, I get it.” He looks at me. “Not that it’s my style, because a cheerleader’s opinion doesn’t matter, but we’re going with de facto power here—”

  “De what?” Keith says.

  “De facto,” Treat says. “Not who we wish had the power, but who actually has the power. Cheerleaders have it. So that ‘Hey, neighbor!’ crap doesn’t mean anything good. She has to talk to him just to be civil. But it’s like making friends with the neighbor’s dog. You pat him on the head and say, ‘Who’s a good boy? You’re a good boy. Yes, you are,’ but you’re never going to take him for a walk.”

  Keith knows I don’t have a dog and I’m pretty sure he’s trying to figure out if Astrid does. Treat must see it too, because he looks right at Keith and says, “What I’m saying is she probably doesn’t even know Reece’s name.”

  “She knows my name,” I say, even though I’m not sure she does. The weekend before school started, Astrid was on the side of her house messing with her trash cans, sort of rearranging them. It gave me an excuse to hop up on the wall and ask if she needed help with anything.

  She had a grocery bag rattling with beer bottles. She smiled and right then could have asked me to drink whatever was left in every one of those bottles and I would have said, Bring me a straw.

  “You’re a lifesaver,” she said. “Can I put this in your trash? Some of my friends came over last night and brought beer without telling me.” I came around and took the bag and she gave me the smile again, toothy and perfect, her head tilting to one side. “Thanks, neighbor. I owe you one.”

  I tell Treat and Keith all about this and they’re both quiet, watching me like I’m the last guy to cross the finish line. “Crap. She doesn’t know my name, does she?”

  Keith shakes his head.

  Treat’s head doesn’t move. He’s thinking hard, and then he says, “The note’s a good confession, Reece. It’s one thing if you don’t matter to a cheerleader. Who does? But if freshmen girls aren’t seeing you—”

  “I knew it,” I say. “I don’t exist.”

  “Theoretically,” Keith says.

  Treat looks over at him. “Hypothetically.”

  Keith watches the bubbles coming up and popping around him for a second. “Well, theoretically, hypothetically, metaphorically. I know I exist.”

  Treat shakes his head. “Not really. But we’re only a couple weeks in. You guys still have time to make an impression like I did.”

  I glance at the Mohawk. “No way. My dad would leave an impression on my face if I came home with a Mohawk.”

  Keith raises his fingers to the surface of the water, letting the bubbles boil through them like he’s controlling some witch’s cauldron. “We could throw a big party. Like that Ted guy did.”

  “Sure,” I say, “and invite all the people who don’t know who we are.”

  Keith shrugs and keeps watching bubbles. Treat nods slow and steady, and it’s like he’s about to talk, only he doesn’t. I’ve counted something like fifty bubbles before Treat says, “You guys are posers.” He doesn’t say it mean, like you might think. He actually sounds nice about it. “Your clothes are good. You just aren’t legit.” He looks at Keith. “Do you know who the Dickies are?” Keith laughs and says that’s not a real band, but Treat’s nodding, serious. “How about the Germs? Do you guys know ‘What We Do Is Secret’?”

  “We’re keeping this secret?” Keith says.

  Treat splashes him. “No. That’s a Germs song.”

  I laugh like I knew that.

  “I’ll make you guys some mix tapes,” Treat says. “That’ll help.”

  “Make sure you write The Germs on it,” Keith says and gets this funny grin. “So my mom will be afraid to touch it.”

  “Sure,” Treat says, “because we know she’d have her hands all over The Dickies.” He smiles and splashes himself in the face. “There,” he says to Keith. “Now you don’t have to do it.”

  As soon as Keith smiles, Treat closes his eyes and puts his finger up to his lips. Me and Keith are looking at each other, like, Is something going to happen? and then something does. The water jets click off. Without the motor running, you can hear the last bubbles on the surface of the water breaking open and fizzing like a giant glass of pop. Treat’s arms rise above the surface, the water running off them in a steady trickle at first, then drips and drops. He has us raise our arms too, and we hold them there a minute until Treat opens his eyes and says, “Now, we are in balance.”

  It feels pretty good how nice Treat is even though he looks so fierce, but I’m not feeling the balance. I don’t see how wearing my clothes and knowing any song by the Germs is going to make me look different to Edie or be able to talk to Astrid. When I say that, Treat nods like he knew all along there had to be more. “We need to find the balance in our actions and not just our thoughts.”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “The tapes will help. There’s something else, though. Something I was saving until you guys seemed ready.”

  Keith leans his chin out like a dog begging for a bone. “We’re ready.”

  Treat closes his eyes. “Everybody knows guys in bands. They exist on a whole different plane.” He opens his eyes. “So we’ll start a band. A punk band.”

  Keith’s nodding. “I totally concur with Treat’s theoretical hypothesis: I don’t even know who van Doren is and I know him.”

  “Van Dorken,” Treat says. “That’s what everybody called him before he started Filibuster.”

  Keith says he’s heard that too. It’s kind of hard to believe, if you ask me. Not with the way everybody worships the guy. And even if it is true, I’m not van Doren. Our band that doesn’t exist isn’t Filibuster. “How will this change anything?” I say. “I’ll go from being the guy nobody notices to the guy in the band nobody’s ever heard of.”

  “Come on,” Keith says. “A band!”

  Treat reaches his hand out toward Keith, like, Hold on. “Listen, Reece.” His voice is soft like Uncle Ryan’s the time he saw me drop a fly ball and told me after the game it was okay, nobody’s perfect. “Just imagine: The next time you see that cheerleader chick walking out to her car, you say, ‘Can you give me a lift? I need to go jam with my band.’”

  Treat waits. His hair and the clothes he wears to school already make him look like the lead singer of some kind of band. Keith nods slow and serious. I’ve seen a guitar and little amp in his closet, and he said he’d had a few lessons once. It almost makes sense, and even with the two of them staring at me, I can see Astrid’s face, surprised and happy as I’m standing in front of her with some guitar clinging to my side. We’re at the curb, next to our trash cans, and I start strumming a song for her. Only, I don’t really know how a punk song starts, and now my guitar is a baseball bat. But Astrid smiles anyway and says, Keep going, neighbor.

  “Okay,” I say as Astrid’s face goes away and Treat and Keith are right there, waiting. “I guess I’m in.”

  Emperor of Idiots

  Me and Keith have this game we play called Berlin Wall. One time, after they’d started lighting up the soccer fields behind my house for night games, we noticed how those huge floodlights make night shadows. We bolted from the dark side of the brick bathroom building to the
shadow of a pole. Then we went from the pole to the shadow of a tree, sneaking all the way to my back wall. “Who are we hiding from?” Keith said. “The East Germans,” I heard myself say, and suddenly it all became clear: The people in the park were border guards; the cinder-block wall separating my backyard from the park was the Berlin Wall. Our mission: move from one shadow to the next, staying still and waiting for the guards to look the other way, then sprint for the wall. If we got up and over fast and smooth we were safe in my backyard, West Berlin. Anything else and we were caught up in barbed wire or worse, shot.

  We haven’t told Treat about the game because we know it’s kind of stupid and we’re not sure whose side he’d be on anyway. Plus, that would mean he’d know where we live and might want to come to one of our houses. How do you explain your huge friend with the bleached Mohawk to your dad when he doesn’t even like ballplayers with bushy sideburns?

  .

  Our first band meeting is Saturday morning in Treat’s room. We sit on Treat’s bed as he fires through a stack of cassette tapes and plays different songs for us. The guitars sound like low-flying planes with some guy screaming in short bursts about who knows what because the music’s so distorted. We’re just getting to the Clash, which actually sounds like real music, when Treat’s mom says it’s time to go. They’re heading to Treat’s grandma’s house in LA.

  If we still lived in Jersey, I’d run home to catch the Saturday Game of the Week. My dad would be waiting for me, trying to get Brendan to sit down for an inning or two and trying to convince Colleen the reason some balls are called foul balls is because of the funny way they fly through the air, like chickens. But my dad’s at work, so me and Keith stop in the park to practice some new moves for the Berlin Wall game.

  I’ve been reaching the wall three steps before Keith, slamming my back against the blocks, dropping my hands down, and locking my fingers just as Keith gets to me. His right foot lands in my hands and I pull up hard, launching Keith to the top of the wall. It’s about our tenth try and Keith finally makes it to the top without dangling and needing a second push. He reaches back to pull me up, just the way we planned. But as Mr. Krueger said on our first lab day, “If everything worked out the way we had it in our heads, we wouldn’t need to experiment.” Right as our palms slap together, Keith slides off the wall, landing in the grass next to me and going into a crouch.