Californium Read online

  “Did they shoot you?” I laugh. “We’re done for!”

  Keith gives me a shush, his finger pressed to his lips until we both hear the voices on the other side of the wall. Some guy says, “I don’t think this will work even with an extension cord.”

  “You’re right,” says a girl. Astrid. “The patio’s the best spot.”

  Keith grins like we’re real spies now. I’m wondering where Astrid was about five minutes ago when I fell off the wall like I’d been shot and screamed, “Freedom!”

  “Yeah,” the guy says. “That’ll guarantee everything is level.”

  It stays quiet until we hear Astrid’s glass sliding door thud and click shut.

  Keith looks up at the wall. “Astrid’s having a party.”

  “How’d you get that?”

  “What do you think she was talking to that guy about?” Keith bobs his head. “She’s having a party. Tonight.”

  I look up at the wall, three inches of scratchy cinder block between my yard and hers, between both our yards and the park. “Do you think she saw us?”

  “No way,” Keith says. “I dropped as soon as I heard the door.” He smacks my chest. “My instincts are trained for that stuff.”

  “Well then, did she hear us?”

  “Who cares,” Keith says. “She’s having a party. We can spy on it tonight and see how cheerleaders get down.” He hops up the wall without any help from me, first time ever. “Treat is going to be so bummed, hanging at his grandma’s while we hang with cheerleaders.”

  I hop up onto the wall next to Keith. “You mean gawk at them.”

  Keith taps his lips with his finger, fake serious. “Observe. We’ll observe their behavior.”

  “If by ‘observe’ you mean slobber on ourselves while watching Astrid and her friends, then okay, we’ll observe them.”

  .

  Keith shows up at my house after dinner with his backpack on. We say we’re going to study for the periodic table test that’s coming up, which is partly true. We are having a test; we just don’t know when. Mr. Krueger says not knowing when you’ll be tested is the best way to learn. “Anybody can memorize something for one big day,” he said. “You have to live it if you really want to learn it.” He spun around in his chair like he was surrounded by it. Our first quiz hadn’t gone so good. “Come on, people,” he said. “Live it. I know it’s hard when you’ve got to know it to live it, but you can’t start living it if you don’t try to know it.” He looked down at one of the quizzes in his hand, then around the room nice and slow. “Someday soon I’m going to give you a sheet of paper with a blank table on it. You’ll have to show me everything you know, and then I’ll know if you’ve been living it or not. You can’t fake that.”

  Up in my room, Keith unzips his backpack and pulls out the biggest pair of binoculars I’ve ever seen. “My dad used to find Skylab’s orbit with these and we’d watch it.”

  “What did it look like?”

  Keith adjusts the binoculars. “Nothing really. A blip.” He holds the binoculars up to test them. “Except when it started falling back to earth and burning up. You could really see the smoke trail.”

  I hold up the flash cards I’ve made of all the elements. “We’ve got to make this look good. My mom could come barging in here at any second.”

  Keith takes one of the cards and looks it over. “Nice,” he says and hands it back. “We’re not really going to study, though.”

  “Why not? How long can we stare at a party that we’re not actually at?”

  It turns out, you can stare a pretty long time. The regular party stuff got boring pretty fast, a bunch of upperclassmen standing around holding beers, talking and not really doing anything, and Astrid didn’t seem to be anywhere. Then the football players showed up and we started connecting some dots. Like, we know Petrakis is dating Kylie Smith, who does the announcements every morning during first period, but we had no idea what she looks like. Then this girl with short brown hair, about half the size of Petrakis, came up and gave him a long kiss. She tucked herself under his arm and has pretty much stuck there ever since. It’s so cute my insides go cough-medicine warm every time I peer over at her.

  The only studying we’ve gotten in is figuring out which elements are most essential for a good party. Keith says you’ve got to have aluminum because you can’t crush an empty beer bottle on your head. We decide neon only works if you’re old enough to go to bars, but silicon could work anywhere. “Especially on Kylie,” Keith says.

  “Nah,” I joke, “on Sergio Ortiz.”

  It’s funny, I think, because Sergio is famous for ripping off his shirt every time he scores a goal for the soccer team. But Keith’s face is totally serious. “You know he likes to get all-the-way naked at parties, right?”

  “What?” I shake my head. I’ve never heard that, but there’s Sergio down in Astrid’s backyard, his letterman jacket on a lawn chair and his shirt already hanging out his back pocket.

  Keith nods and says it’s okay, that it wasn’t as gay as he thought at first since I didn’t know. We’re quiet for a minute, maybe two, before Keith picks up the flash card for tellurium. “This one is cherry,” he says. “Te is almost Ted.”

  “It’s too bad the atomic number is fifty-two and not two,” I say. Keith just stares at me. “It would be Te two, then. Ted Two?”

  “Sweet,” Keith says. “Maybe our band will play at Ted Fifty-Two.”

  I laugh. “If we’re ready by then.”

  About eight thirty I get Brendan in the room to test us on some of the flash cards. It’s a perfect move because he’ll leave us alone the rest of the night if he thinks we’re really studying. Colleen wanders in too, but as soon as I give her a couple blank flash cards she leaves for her crayons.

  A few minutes after Brendan leaves, a band starts setting up on Astrid’s back patio. From my room, we can only see the front edge of the drums, and it’s hard to tell who’s messing around with the guitars and amps because the back porch light makes everyone a silhouette at first. A skinny guy with a crop haircut is winding the cord around the microphone stand. When he stands all the way up, the park lights make him 3-D. “That’s Gus/Gary,” I say. He’s wearing jeans and a stupid tank top that looks like a British flag, and he’s saying, “Check. Check. Check,” into the mic. I guess he got to come to Astrid’s party because he’s helping the band.

  People start crowding around the porch and Keith’s got the binoculars out, saying any second the whole band will come walking out the glass sliding door. But they don’t. A couple guys who were just standing around pick up guitars and start twanging them a little. Another guy climbs behind the drums and thumps the bass a couple times. Gus/Gary is still at the microphone when a frumpy-looking guy in a plain white T-shirt steps up next to him. Everybody cheers and Gus/Gary puts his arm around the frumpy guy and says into the mic, “Thanks, you bastards.”

  Everyone cracks up and then Gus/Gary pulls the frumpy guy closer and says, “Ted!” A roar goes up and people start chanting, “Ted, Ted, Ted.” Ted throws his arms up, his belly flops out of his shirt, and Gus/Gary shoves him into the crowd. Everyone keeps chanting, “Ted, Ted, Ted.”

  “Holy shit,” Keith says. “This is Ted Two.”

  Gus/Gary shakes up a can of beer and pops the top, sending a stream of suds over the crowd. The guitars scream, the drums roll, and Gus/Gary throws the can over everyone, out into the darkness of the yard. He yells into the microphone, “Fuck you; we’re Filibuster!”

  The whole backyard roars like they’ve elected a new pope, and Keith pulls the binoculars down and grabs my arm. “Holy shit. Filibuster!”

  “Van Doren’s band?” I point at the lead singer, at Gus/Gary, even though Keith’s looking through the binoculars again. “That’s van Doren?”

  “Guess so,” Keith says. “Van Doren’s the lead singer.”

>   It’s amazing. Gus/Gary still looks like Gus/Gary, but he’s van Doren now and he’s all over the patio, pogoing, pushing the people at the front of the patio, pushing the other guys in the band, swirling his head, swirling his whole body. The music zooms like race cars flying by, and the only word I can make out is fuck, which seems to be every other word. The song lasts about a minute and a half, then just stops. Everyone erupts into cheers. The people in front slap hands with the guitar players, but when they reach for van Doren’s hand he gives them the finger. Then there’s a tap-tap-tap from the drummer. The next song starts, and it sounds like the first song.

  “These guys are awesome,” Keith says.

  They’re not awesome. I mean, it’s not like I expect them to sound like Billy Joel or the Bee Gees, but Uncle Ryan used to listen to Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones, and even with all those guitars and the weird lyrics you can tell those guys know what they’re doing. It is cool how the guitarist in Filibuster plays with one hand and slaps people’s hands with the other. And the bass player is leaning back, his head up at the sky all peaceful, like he can’t even hear the sonic boom coming out of his amp. Van Doren’s bent at the waist now, leaning out toward the crowd, both hands hugging the mic. His body is perfectly still, but his head thrashes in a blur and he spits out every word like a cat with a hairball.

  The backyard is a hurricane. There’s a mass of guys circling, all in the same direction, bouncing off each other, kind of light at first, then faster and harder. Some guys spin while they circle, all of them smashing into each other randomly. Even a couple girls are in there. Not Astrid, though. She’s off to the side with some of her cheerleader friends, bobbing her head a little to the music. Her hair is pulled into a sideways ponytail, like maybe she’s ready in case she decides to jump into the hurricane too.

  By the fourth song, me and Keith are swirling around the room and crashing into each other. It only goes for about a minute, and just when we’re getting tired, the song ends. We catch our breath; then it all starts up again.

  As the last song ends, with Keith holding his arms up in the air like all the cheers coming from Astrid’s backyard are for him and me spinning in my desk chair, holding two pencils in the air like I’m a drummer, my dad comes booming through the door without knocking. “Are they done?”

  Keith drops his arms but his legs are still spread out funny from the pose. I spin the chair back to the desk and shuffle the flash cards. “I think so.”

  My dad walks straight over to the window and looks down at Astrid’s yard. “I wonder if Alex knows about this.” He turns to me. “Is this one of those punker bands?” I can’t believe my dad even knows those words. “Do you know these guys?”

  “I don’t know them. I’ve heard of them.”

  My dad shakes his head and starts walking out of the room. “Well, I wish I hadn’t heard them. But if I do again, I’m calling the police.”

  Keith doesn’t have to tell me how bad it will look to be the guy whose dad breaks up parties. But he does anyway. “You need to signal Astrid somehow.”

  “Sure,” I say, “but what’s the signal for Keep it quiet, my dad’s a jerk?”

  Twenty minutes later, when the guys from Filibuster start coming back onto the patio and picking up their instruments, I run downstairs to the living room. My parents are on the couch, looking relaxed for once. Mom’s hair is down and she’s leaning into my dad’s shoulder while they watch TV. It’s the way they used to look every weekend back in Jersey.

  I don’t have a plan, so I just blurt out, “You can’t call the police. It’s Saturday.”

  “It’s scaring your little sister,” my dad says. “She thought we were under attack.”

  In my head, there’s a squadron of electric guitars flying over our house. I grin a little because it’s got to be a joke. “Come on.”

  My dad isn’t smiling. “Have you seen these punkers on the news? They’re violent.” He looks at my mom, who nods, then back at me. “That’s not music.”

  When Treat played the Clash for us in his room, the cassette case had a picture of a guy smashing his guitar, and there were songs listed like “Spanish Bombs,” “Clampdown,” and “The Guns of Brixton.” But these are just high school guys. They’re Astrid’s friends.

  “Reece,” my mom says and sits straight up. “Do you know these kids?”

  “I don’t know. Not really.”

  A rattle and rhythm of thumps force their way through our living room wall.

  “I’m calling,” my dad says.

  “Wait,” I say. “It’s the weekend.”

  “It’s almost ten o’clock,” my dad says. My mom puts a hand on his arm and he looks at her. “Well, I can’t just let them keep going all night, Eileen.”

  “Maybe,” I say and don’t know why I’m saying it, “I can talk to them.” I look at my mom and she looks at my dad.

  His chest heaves once, a big, thinking breath. “If you go over there and tell your friends to quiet down, I won’t call the police.”

  “Okay,” I say and head for the stairs to get Keith.

  “Now,” my dad says, stopping me at the first step. “Right now.”

  .

  It doesn’t feel real walking through Astrid’s side gate, through the dark, past the trash cans and two guys going the other way. It’s Yankee Stadium half an hour before the first pitch—the nerves and excitement about what could happen—and each step closer to the backyard sends an achy tickle up my legs.

  I come around the side of the house right next to the patio, right next to the band, and everyone’s packed tight in the yard. It’s between songs, so the hurricane isn’t swirling. There are so many people around the patio whose faces I’ve seen, even if I don’t know their names. Then I can’t believe it, but I see other freshmen—a couple people from student government and some football players who are hanging out near Petrakis. It’s only about five people from the entire freshman class, but it makes me feel stupid. They got invited to a party that I didn’t even know about, that I still wouldn’t know about if I wasn’t playing on my back wall like a ten-year-old. And here are these guys already bonding with the right people, already exactly where Keith says we need to be. But I’m never going to be varsity this or vice president that. So do I have to pull a van Dorken, flip people off and shove them around so they can smile and give each other high fives for getting abused? Who wants to be the emperor of idiots?

  Van Doren leans into the mic, says, “Let’s do this motherfucker,” and the guitars, drums, and hurricane all start at the same time. People like Astrid, who just want to stand, are on the other side of the patio, and it takes me the whole song to squeeze over there. The next song starts right away, and van Doren sings, “The fucking queen and / the fucking king / fuck all the fuckers / fuck ’em clean.”

  Astrid’s hair swings back and forth with a rhythm you wouldn’t think a song like that could have. She’s wearing a sleeveless sweater and pink pants that are so tight all the way down to her ankles they must have grown on her. She’s worn the pants to school before, but now, this close, I can see the stitches running down to little zippers at the bottom of each leg. Her arms are skinny but with just enough muscle that they’re not scrawny, still summer brown with tiny blond hairs shining from the patio light. I tap her shoulder with my whole hand and it’s hard and tight and soft and hot. Everything at once.

  She looks over her shoulder to the crowd at first; then she sees me.

  “Hey!” I shout.

  Her whole body turns to me. “Hey, neighbor. I’m glad you came.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” she says. She grips my arm kind of serious and leans in close, her breath warming the whole side of my cheek. “Have you had any beer?”

  The only beer I’ve ever had in my life are the sips Uncle Ryan gave me once on Thanksgiving and once at the shore on Labor
Day. I shake my head and she says, “Good. Promise me you won’t drink, okay?”

  I nod, then shout through the waves of music, “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  She lets go of my arm and turns her ear to me. I cup my hand and lean in close. She smells like flowers and something else, not sweat or anything gross, something natural, almost sweet, and I’ve got that drunk feeling again, like when van Doren first hit me with a folder, but in a good way this time. “My dad is thinking about maybe calling the police if the band keeps playing.”

  Astrid pulls away and looks around the yard, then at her watch, which is pink with polka dots all over the face and only the number twelve at the top. She must be able to read it, though, because she nods and says, “Go tell your dad I’m sorry and that I’ll take care of it, okay?”

  “I’m sorry. He’s really being a—”

  “It’s okay.” She looks toward the side of the house where I came in, then back at me. “Just hurry up and go tell him.”

  By the time I’m back at my front door, a police car is creeping down our cul-de-sac, blue lights twinkling off my dad’s truck, but no siren.

  My parents are still on the couch, acting like they haven’t moved a muscle. I leave the front door wide-open, the blue light pulsing off it: “You didn’t even give me a chance.”

  My dad sits up straight and looks at the door.

  “Why didn’t you wait? Astrid said she’d take care of it.”

  He looks at my mom, then at me. “I didn’t call them, Reece.”

  “Come on, Dad, I’m not stupid.”

  He walks over to the window and my mom says, “We didn’t call them.”

  “Oh, right, Mom, they just appeared out of thin air.”

  Before my mom has a chance to say anything, my dad’s in my face, his finger an inch from my nose. “You do not talk to your mother like that.”