Californium (3 page)

.

Third-period English is all freshmen, which is good since the guy behind me sneezes all through roll and gets me to answer to “Denise” because it sort of sounded like “Reece.” Everybody laughs until the teacher tells us it won't hurt to be nice to each other.

After class, California starts feeling like California, so I'm at my locker dropping off my jacket. It's a bottom locker, which means I'm squatting, twisting around legs, and getting nudged and bumped, the lockers around me slamming shut and rattling like a chain-link fence. With my books, folders, lunch, and backpack in there, my jacket is a tight squeeze and it's hard to see which folder is which. They only give you five minutes between classes, and after getting here and then getting my combination wrong twice, then having to dig out the little card with the right combination, it feels like at least three minutes have burned by. Every folder is here and of course Spanish is the last one I get my hands on. My heart's knocking at my chest, and the whole world's gone quiet, like that instant of silence right before something hits you. Then,
fwap,
something really does hit me. A folder bounces off my head, light and not so bad. I've never been drunk, but this must be the feeling:
How did my own folder hit me in the
head? How did it get on the ground in front of me when it's still right here in my hand?

The sound of lockers and voices comes rushing in like the start of a record, and there's a guy standing over me saying, “Sorry about that, little man.” He's skinny and tall, and he's got one of those crop cuts where your hair is flat and straight like the Beatles before they became hippies, but there's also this spot in the back of your head where it's chopped short and sticks up kind of random. It looks like a mistake. He's wearing a button-up gas station shirt with the name
Gus
sewn on it.

He asks me to hand the folder up and I've got no choice. It really may have been an accident, and besides, he's got a couple friends waiting around. So I hand it back up to him and he says, “Thanks, bud,” and slams his locker shut.

As soon as “You're welcome, Gus” is out of my mouth, his buddies laugh and all three of them walk away.

.

I write down a few names in my Spanish class and me and Keith go over the list at lunch. He circles the names of people he thinks he's heard of. He tells me the whole thing at my locker is no accident; upperclassmen love getting top lockers because the things they drop can pick up more speed before they hit you. “You're lucky it wasn't a history book.”

After lunch, we've got PE together with Coach Scheffler. All freshmen. When class is about over, we're hanging out in the locker room, waiting for the bell to ring, and all these guys in jeans and letterman jackets start walking in. Who knows how they got
out of fifth period before everyone else, and who'd stop them? They don't look like high school kids. They're tall and wide, thick necks and massive thighs. Half of them have five o'clock shadows and it's only one thirty.

Most of them go straight into the varsity room, but as the bell rings to end fifth period, one of the biggest guys steps into the hallway. Everybody goes around him like he's a boulder in a river. Then he puts out his arm, the leather from his jacket crinkling, and wraps it around Keith's neck. “Here's our guy,” he yells back into the varsity room. He wraps his arm around Keith's shoulder. “You want to help out the team?” Only, he's not asking. He's telling.

“You wait right here,” he says to me. When he turns and walks Keith into the varsity room, I catch the name stitched on the back of his jacket:
Petrakis.

A few minutes later, guys start coming out of the varsity room, one by one, carrying their helmets and wearing shorts and practice jerseys with just their shoulder pads. Petrakis is one of the last guys out the door and he slaps his hand down on my shoulder, telling me it was smart I stayed. He gives me the combination to his locker, which is where he's left Keith, and says if anything gets messed with he'll shove my head up Keith's ass and tie us to the flagpole.

The bell rings for the start of sixth period, but Keith doesn't say anything until we're outside walking. “If you get in trouble for being late,” he says without looking at me, “just say you went to the wrong classroom.”

I'm nodding and smirking, and because Keith looks more mad than scared, I say, “What's it like being ‘the guy'?”

Keith, it turns out, is the guy small enough to fit into a varsity
locker and still move around. Petrakis locked him in there and made him rub his shirt all over the back and sides to dust. “This is exactly what I'm talking about,” Keith says. “First impressions.”

“Was it roomy in there?”

He stops. “It's not funny, Reece. Tomorrow, you might be ‘the guy.'”

I hadn't thought of that. “Maybe we shouldn't wear anything nice.”

Keith rolls his eyes, and his head follows them up to the sky. “That's what I'm saying. If we'd been dressed cool, and not nice, this never would have happened.”

.

On Tuesday, I take notes on all the people Keith circled—what they wear, how they wear it, and if other people say anything about it. Gus drops a pen and a ruler on me, except he's wearing a bowling shirt that says
Gary.
After PE, Petrakis grabs Keith again.

Wednesday, Gus/Gary drops an orange on my head and says he can't believe it rolled out like that. It's so stupid and I wonder why he isn't the one getting picked on with his weird name shirts and gray worker pants like my dad wears. I can't believe I'm going to have to take it from this guy for a whole year just because he's a senior and probably knows everybody and all I've got is Keith.

After PE, Keith steps into the varsity room as soon as he sees Petrakis. Petrakis smiles and says, “You're a team player, little dude. But you should know better than to come into the varsity room without being invited.” Then a bunch of guys drag Keith to the showers, tell him they're sorry but this is bigger than all of
them, and hold Keith still so they can wet him right on his crotch like he's pissed himself. I'm so scared watching it's like I'm Saint Peter, knowing it's too late to save the guy and scared they'll get me next:
That guy? I'm not with that guy. I have no idea who he is. Never seen him before.

Keith won't even talk after that. He just heads to class, and who can blame him? I mean, if this is what they're doing to us the first week, how are we supposed to still be alive by Halloween?

On Thursday, a little English book crashes down on my knee. Not too bad. Keith waits at the varsity room door with sweatpants on under his PE shorts. Petrakis makes him dust another locker, but he puts Keith on the honor system and doesn't lock him in. When Mrs. Wirth gives me detention for being late to World History, I tell her what's been happening after PE. She says she can't imagine Coach Scheffler would ever allow that in his locker room. “But it did happen,” I say, and she doubles my detention for smarting off.

On the way to school Friday, Keith says if I stop being his friend now I can probably save myself. When I tell him we're in this together he says, “Okay. Then we're buying clothes tomorrow no matter what.”

Almost everyone is wearing school colors. Even Mr. Krueger has on a maroon T-shirt with gold letters that reads
Class of Bismuth.
He's grinning and looking pretty proud of it, but nobody gets it until he says that we have two people in here that are in the Class of Bismuth. “Is that eighty-three?” I say.

“Well done, Mr. Houghton.” He takes two steps down the aisle of my row so he can look right at me. “What will your class be?”

It's eighty-six, but I know not to say, “Eighty-six.” I look up at the flourescent lights for a second like maybe it will come to me; then I shrug and say, “I should know, but I don't.”

“Radon,” Mr. Krueger says and points to the chart at the front of the room. “It's quite dense,” he adds with this tiny grin.

By lunch, we still haven't seen van Doren, but it's like he's everywhere. We've heard he's getting invited to run the Misfit Mile at indoor track meets in LA. Over the summer, his band Filibuster played a pool party that was so big they had an opening act. The pool had giant blocks of ice and so many cans of beer floating around that van Doren started the show off by walking across it without getting wet. The guy who threw the party, Ted Fischel, got kicked out of his house when his parents got home. Now everyone's calling the party Ted One because when a party is that great, there has to be a sequel. And as long as van Doren's around, Ted Two could happen at any time. Some people say van Doren's getting scouted by record companies. Some say he's getting scouted by UCLA. We look for his name on letterman jackets, listen for it in crowds, but we still haven't found him.

We have pretty good notes, though, and when Petrakis gives us Friday off for good behavior, I say it's a good sign.

“The only good sign,” Keith says, “is when the people who matter are talking about us the way they talk about van Doren. That's when we matter.”

T
his time last year my dad would always get home from work in time for dinner. Colleen would show him some Popsicle-stick doll she made in preschool and he'd act like he never knew someone could do such amazing things. Brendan would explain how even though it's not his fault Chad Beckerman caught the football with his face, he's sorry anyway. Dad would tell him to try and do better tomorrow, then ask me how the Yanks were looking for their next series in Boston or if those IRA guys were still on that hunger strike in Northern Ireland.

That's not how it is now. Friday night, hours after dinner, I'm on the bed in my room, filing baseball cards into shoe boxes—one for the American League, one for the National, and one that's all Yankees.

My dad knocks on my door and walks in, his work clothes still on. “Got anyone good there?”

I shuffle through them and hold up a Willie Wilson card.

“He's not too bad.” My dad reaches out to grab it. His hand is scrubbed clean but it smells oily. There's still dark stains around the edges of his nails and fingers, the way a cartoon hand is outlined.

“Maybe I should hold it.”

As he sits down in my desk chair, I flip the card around to show him the statistics side. Willie Wilson is a .300 hitter. He's been leading the league almost the whole year. “Look,” I say, “he's better than ‘not bad,' even if he isn't a Yankee.”

“You're right,” he says, only he doesn't laugh or even look at the card. His eyes are down at his hands and they stay there for a few seconds. I'm studying the card like there's going to be a Willie Wilson test or something; then my dad asks if I have time to grab the tweezers and a needle. Sometimes the lathe gives him these little metal splinters in his fingers and it stings pretty good. My mom can get them out, unless she's running an errand or busy with Colleen. When she can't do it, it's up to me.

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 allergic 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.