Leaving Paradise (7 page)

thirteen

Caleb

“Caleb, I hope you passed the tests,” my mom calls out from the kitchen.

I’m washing my hands for the third time tonight. I’ve got paint up to my elbows, compliments of my community service job. The old couple from the senior center signed up to have their kitchen painted a bright pink to match their fake pink roses on their kitchen table. “I tried my best,” I say.

“Let’s hope your best was good enough.”

I dry my hands on a towel, wondering when she’ll stop treating me like a stranger. One day I’m going to cut through her plastic exterior. One day soon.

The phone rings. My mom answers, then hands it to me. “It’s for you. It’s Damon.”

I take the phone. “Hey.”

“The manager from The Trusty Nail said you were late.”

Oh, shit. “I had to stay after school because—”

“I’ve heard it all, don’t waste your breath,” he barks out, cutting me off. “Zero tolerance. You sign in for community service on time. Period. You got it?”

“I got it.”

“This goes on your record, Caleb. I can petition a judge to have you sent back to the DOC. Keep screwing up and I’ll do it . . .”

He’s still babbling, but I’m too pissed off to listen.

“. . . I told you to be a model citizen and be on time for your job. You let me down.
Don’t
let it happen again.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” I argue.

“If I had a dime for every time I heard those words, I’d be a millionaire.”

Hardass. “I get it, Damon. Loud and clear.”

“Good. I’ll check in with you tomorrow,” he says, then hangs up.

When I put the phone down, I realize Mom’s been listening to my half of the conversation. She’s staring at me, but there’s an emptiness in her eyes—like she’s not all there. “Is everything okay?”

“Yep,” I say. Just peachy.

“Good.” She grabs her purse off the couch. “I’m off to the grocery store. I’m going to bake my Spaghetti Spectacular for the Fall Festival Saturday night.”

Mom is always volunteering for shit. She loves the attention, I guess. Her Spaghetti Spectacular dish has won the Ladies’ Auxiliary best recipe award every year. She’s even got the awards neatly stacked on top of the mantle in the living room.

Mom flies out the door in her usual flurry of chaos.

“She’s nuts, you know,” Leah says from the kitchen doorway.

Today my sister is wearing black jeans with chains dripping from them. The end of one chain is attached to one of her pant legs and the other end is attached to the other pant leg. How can she walk like that?

I watch Mom drive down the driveway as I look out the living room window. “Tell me about it.”

“Do you think things will ever get back to normal?” Leah asks, hope filling her voice.

“They’d better.” I’m going to spend my days trying, starting right now with my sister. She’s about to walk back into the kitchen, but I blurt out, “Do you ever talk to, you know, Maggie?”

She freezes, then shakes her head slowly.

“Not once since the accident?”

She shakes her head again. “I don’t want to talk about it, Caleb. Please don’t make me talk about it. Not now.”

“When, then?” She doesn’t answer. “One day we’re going to discuss it, Leah. You can’t avoid the conversation forever.” I put my jacket on, grab a basketball from the garage, and head outside. I avoid even looking at the Armstrong’s house as I head for the park in the opposite direction. I need to shoot some baskets to clear my mind.

My screwed-up sister is the one who needs group therapy. I’m the one who was locked up and everyone who stayed home is a frickin’ nutcase. Oh, the comic irony.

————

The next day I’m sitting in the principal’s office. Mom and Dad had to come with me to hear whether or not I’ve passed the tests. God this sucks.

Meyer opens a folder and stares at it. Folders suck, too. Especially ones that have anything having to do with me.

The defense lawyer assigned to my case after the accident had a folder outlining the accident, my arrest, and the history of my life. The warden in the DOC had a folder much the same. It’s like I wasn’t a guy anymore. I’d been reduced to words written by others about me. Even Damon relies on a damn folder. I could tell them a hell of a lot more than any folder could say.

“While Caleb did surprisingly well in almost all of the exams,” Meyer directs his attention to my dad, “he hasn’t passed the requirements for social studies.”

Gee, that’s no surprise considering what Leah said.

Mom’s smile loses its brightness for a second. “I’m sure it’s a mistake.”

I look over at my dad. He glances at me before saying, “Caleb went through the academic program at the, uh, Department of Corrections.”

Meyer puts a hand up. “That may be, Dr. Becker. But he didn’t pass social studies or rack up enough credits to be a senior.”

I’m going to say what I’ve been wanting to say all along, to hell with the consequences. “I could just drop out.”

Mom frowns. “Caleb, no.” Yeah, a real live public reaction!

Dad’s eyebrows furrow. “Son, you’re not dropping out. I’m sure Mr. Meyer can work something out. Right?”

The guy takes a deep breath and pulls out yet another folder, which seriously makes me want to laugh. He studies the contents while we all wait in silence. “Well, I could put him into a junior level social studies but keep all of his other subjects at the senior level.”

“Oh, that’s a wonderful idea,” Mom shrieks.

Dad nods.

“He’ll have to take summer school and graduate late. It’s not ideal but—”

“That’s fine, isn’t it, Caleb?”

Oh, man. Summer school? Why don’t they just stick bamboo under my fingernails instead? “Whatever it takes, Dad.”

I stare out the window at the cars driving past the school and birds flying to who knows where.

“Caleb, why don’t you get a class schedule from my secretary,” the principal says, then checks his watch. “You can catch the last half of third period if you hurry.”

Dad and Mom are silent as we exit Meyer’s office.

The secretary hands me a piece of paper. “Here’s your class schedule.”

I walk to senior English. Leave it to old Meyer to make me enter the classroom smack in the middle of class. I wince as I open the door.

I can almost hear an announcer’s voice in my head.
Yes, ladies and gentleman, the main attraction . . . straight from juvenile jail . . . Caleb Becker!
I feel sixty eyes on me, burning into my skull as I walk up to the teacher, Mr. Edelsen. “Can I help you?” he asks.

“I’m in this class.”

Silence.

Eyes.

Muscles tightening.

“Well, have a seat then.”

I walk to the back of the class and pick a seat next to Drew Rudolph. We used to hang out. You know . . . before.

After class I have lunch. I pay for an apple and Coke from money my parents gave me this morning. As I walk through the lunchroom, I hold my head high. Let them talk about the ex-con all they want. Facing these kids is nothing compared to the guys at the DOC.

When I turn the corner, I bump into Kendra. It’s the first time we’ve been this close since my arrest.

“Hi, Caleb,” she says with a teasing lilt to her voice. “Drew told me he saw you in English class.”

I nod.

“Remember when we had English together?”

Boy, do I. We used to take bathroom breaks at the same time and meet in some deserted hallway to make out and feel each other up. “I remember.”

She smiles at me with her bright teeth and killer full lips. I could have kissed those lips forever. I still can.

“Well, I guess I’ll catch you later,” she says.

“Later,” I say, watching her butt sway as she walks away.

————

After school, for community service, I fixed an old lady’s fence and hung up her light fixture.

Before I got convicted I’d come home to find at least ten messages from Kendra, begging me to call. But this time I got home and the answering machine only had one message . . . from Damon.

I called him back. Our conversation went like this.

“Caleb?”

“Yeah?”

“Good job today. On time and everything.”

“Thanks.”

“Keep it up. I’ll call in two days.”

Woo hoo! He’ll leave me alone for a whopping two days.

My dad is working late tonight so it’s only me, my mom, and Leah. Leah is pushing her food around on her plate, not really eating. Mom is too busy yakking to her friends on the phone. I don’t think she even realizes Leah and I are sitting at the table with her. I’m thankful when everyone in my house is sleeping. It’s the only time it resembles the old days.

At night I’m lying in my bed, staring at the clock like I’ve been doing for the past two hours. Three o’clock in the morning. I can’t sleep. Too many thoughts running through my useless head. Maybe I need an uncomfortable and overly used mattress like I had in the DOC in order to get a full night of sleep.

Throwing the covers back, I stand up and pace my bedroom. The picture of Kendra on my headboard is staring back at me, her smile a secret promise between the two of us. I snatch the cordless phone from the living room and take it back to my bedroom.

I dial Kendra’s number, her private line that only rings in her bedroom, but I hang up before it rings. What if she’s dating someone else and doesn’t want to talk to me? I sure as hell don’t want to be running after her if she’s hanging with another guy.

I look out the window, gauging how long it’ll be until the sun comes creeping up. In the DOC, there were always guys who couldn’t sleep. You could see them across the way sitting in their bunks, or you could hear them tossing and turning. The new guys and youngest kids had the hardest time. They’d be crying silently, the only indication being a random sniffle or shoulders slumped over and shaking. Even though some of them were just twelve or thirteen, they tried to act like men.

But they were, in the end, just boys.

I notice a light turn on in Maggie’s bedroom, the glow outlining the curtains covering her window. I have computer class with her, but usually I sit in the back while she takes a seat in the front row. I keep my head down because the kids in class are analyzing my every move. When the bell rings, Maggie is the first one out . . . sometimes I think she’s out of there before the bell even rings. Does she think she’s the only one affected by the accident?

fourteen

Maggie

Ican’t sleep after my nightmares and have to turn my light on to stay awake. At least this time I didn’t wake Mom up screaming.

This nightmare was different. Kendra Greene drove the car, not Caleb. In all my other nightmares, it’s Caleb at the wheel of the car that hit me.

I guess it’s because I saw Kendra talking to Caleb in the cafeteria yesterday. He didn’t see me because I sit right next to the doors so I can leave as soon as I’ve finished eating.

The cafeteria is a strange place. The populars can be spotted right away. They’re loud and laugh a lot. The regular people sit in their own cliques, totally separate from the popular lunch tables.

I used to be a popular. Most athletes in Paradise are populars. But now I’m a loner who doesn’t even mingle with the regulars, not even the lowest ones.

Loners sit by themselves, scattered throughout the lunchroom. They eat alone, then make their hasty exits.

I never knew where the loners went to, they just disappeared during lunch hour. But now that I am a loner I know that secret place.

The school library. It’s the mysterious place you can go to and not be seen.

Caleb isn’t afraid of attention. He walked right into the cafeteria yesterday, his head held high as if he was Mr. Meyer himself. Then he went right up to Kendra Greene and said something to make her smile. I swear everyone in the room was silent, watching them reunite. Does he know Brian and Kendra are a couple? The way Caleb stared at her butt when she walked away from him makes me think he’s oblivious to what’s been going on since he was in jail. Some things haven’t changed.

I pull back my window curtains and stare out at Caleb’s window. It’s a little past three a.m. He’s probably sleeping like a baby without a care in the world.

But he’s not. His light is on and I see his silhouette pacing his room.

I let the curtains fall back to cover the window, turn the light off, and hurry back to bed. I can’t fall into old habits, not now after everything that’s happened.

The reality is I had a crush on Caleb since first grade. He used to tease Leah and me as we played with our Barbie dolls and dressed up in costumes. But when we needed a boy to play a part in one of our shows, we could always coerce him into acting the part. And if we made up a ballet show, we could count on him to be an audience member as we jeté’d and plié’d our hearts out in front of him.

But the time I fell head over heels in love with Caleb Becker was in sixth grade, when he took the blame after I broke his mom’s ceramic statue of an owl that had been given to her great-great-grandmother from some former U.S. president.

Leah was upstairs getting ready and I was waiting for her in their living room. We were going to play tennis at the park. Caleb surprised me by flying down the stairs with a Star Wars lightsaber in his hand, waving it around. I laughed and put up my racquet as a weapon, challenging him. He came at me with the saber, and I swung my racquet to ward off his attack. I counted on whacking his saber, not the ceramic owl on his mom’s credenza.

His mother heard the crash and came running. Caleb said it was his fault, that he was playing around with the saber. He never named me as the one who broke the statue; he didn’t even name me as an accomplice. I was too scared at the time to tell the truth, even when I knew he got grounded for a whole month. Without even realizing it, he became my hero.

After that, I used to watch Caleb through my window when he played catch with his friends or had Boy Scout meetings in his backyard. When we were in seventh grade he started mowing the lawn while listening to music. I could hardly concentrate on my homework while I watched him weave back and forth across the lawn with the mower, his muscles bunching through his t-shirt as he gathered grass clippings and shoved them into garbage bags.

Sometimes he’d catch me looking at him and wave. Sometimes I tentatively waved back, but then I’d close my curtains and keep them closed for a week so he’d never know how I really felt about him. Other times I’d pretend I didn’t see him, although I suppose he knew I’d been spying.

Caleb never let on that he liked me more than a friend. That was okay by me. I just kept up hope that one day he’d see me as a girl and not his twin sister’s pesky friend.

He had girlfriends over the years, but was never serious about any of them.

Until Kendra.

They started dating in the beginning of our freshman year. Kendra hung out at his house every day after school; they were inseparable from the start. Every time I happened to glance out my window and spot them in an intimate embrace, my hopeful heart crumbled little by little.

That was also about the time my dad left. So here I was, desperately waiting for my dad and Caleb to love me as much as I loved them.

What could I do to make the ones I loved love me back? The only thing I was good at was tennis. So I practiced and played and challenged myself every day during the summer between our freshman and sophomore year. Surely, once Caleb saw I was the only sophomore on the varsity squad, he’d notice me.

And I sent my dad articles from the local paper about my success, never forgetting to add the tennis coach’s prediction that I’d make it to the Illinois state championship in October.

That season my dad never saw me play.

That season was also when Caleb lost his virginity to Kendra.

Once, just once, I saw them having sex one night under a blanket in his backyard. I never told anyone, although I could have sworn Caleb looked up at my window and knew I’d been watching.

He never said anything to me about it. And I never told Leah. She’d be grossed out anyway. In fact, after that I felt so embarrassed I stopped watching Caleb.

I keep going over the night of the accident in my head. The conversation I had with Caleb before the accident and the stories I heard about afterward.

He was obviously drunk; the policemen who arrested him gave him an alcohol test immediately after he admitted to hitting me with his car. But was he so drunk he didn’t know what he was doing?

So what if he hated what I told him that night, it was the truth. His girlfriend was cheating on him.

“You’re lying,”
he’d said that night.

I was determined not to let him get away from me before I told him.
“I’m not, Caleb. I swear I saw her with another guy.”
I didn’t add that the other guy was his best friend.

He grabbed my shoulders so hard I winced. Caleb had never laid a hand on me before. His rough touch made tears roll down my face.

“I love you,”
I’d told him.
“I’ve always loved you.”
I’d let my fear of the truth and my love for Caleb all come out that night.
“Open your eyes, Caleb. Kendra is playing you for a fool.”

He took his hands off me like I was on fire and he was getting burned. Then he said something I’ll never forget.
“You don’t get it, Maggie, do you? You and me will never happen. Now stop spreading lies about my girlfriend before you get hurt.”

That warning has echoed in my head from that day until now. The logical part of me knows it was an accident. Of course he didn’t mean to lose control of his car. But in the dark recesses of my mind there’s this little nagging doubt that creeps up every once in a while.

I finally fall asleep, but it’s not a restful slumber because my dreams are haunted by the fact that I won’t be able to escape Paradise and go somewhere far away—where the past can’t catch up with me.

The next day after school I get off the bus and come home to a message on our answering machine from Mrs. Reynolds—the old lady I met yesterday. She left her number and told me to call her as soon as I got home. When I call her back, she says she wants to interview me for an after-school job . . . as her companion.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“I can strike a deal with you so you can go to Spain,” she says, totally tempting me. “Can you come to my house in Hampton so we can talk?”

As fast as my limpy legs can carry me I’m on a bus heading to Hampton. It’s not far, just a fifteen minute bus ride from Paradise. The whole time I’m thinking of the deal Mrs. Reynolds wants to offer me. What does a companion do? Play checkers and listen to her talk about the old days?

It can’t be that hard. I can do it, even with a bad leg. Visions of making the old lady tea sandwiches and lemonade while we sit and talk float in my head.

Leah and I used to talk—for hours on end about nothing and everything. I know talking with an old lady won’t be the same as talking to an old best friend, but I think it could be cool.

I ring the doorbell to Mrs. Reynolds’ house and she greets me with a smile. “Come in, Margaret.”

I sit primly on her expensive, cream-colored sofa, trying to make a good impression.
Maggie, forget about the past and focus on the future,
I tell myself.

Mrs. Reynolds has bright, alert, green eyes that defy her old age, and an attitude that rivals the senior girls on the pompom squad. “Would you mind working for a crabby old lady like me, Margaret, if at the end you’d be able to take that trip to Spain?”

“Besides needing the money for studying abroad next semester,” I say, holding my hands in my lap and trying not to fidget, “I believe one can learn a lot from people with life experience.”

Did I just hear Mrs. Reynolds snort? “Don’t you mean ‘old people’?” she retorts.

I bite the inside of my mouth. “Um, what I meant was, um . . .”

“Take it from someone with
life experience
. Don’t pussyfoot around, it only wastes time. Can you cook?”

Does macaroni and cheese count as cooking? “Yes.”

“Play gin?”

“Yes.”

“Do you talk too much?”

Her question throws me off guard. “Excuse me?”

“You know, do you just talk to hear your voice, or do you keep quiet until you have something interesting to say?”

“The latter,” I answer.

“Good. I don’t like senseless chatter.”

“Me, either.”

So much for not
pussyfooting
around.

“I’ll expect you here from three thirty to seven o’clock on weekdays, a few hours on weekends. I can give you an hour break so you can do homework.”

“Does that mean I’m hired?” I ask.

“It seems so. I’ll give you fifteen hundred dollars a month, enough to pay for that tuition you need. You can start after school on Monday.”

Wow. Way more than I’d make if I worked anywhere else. “It’s too much,” I admit. “You could probably get someone for a lot less money.”

“Probably. But you want to go to Spain, don’t you?”

“Of course, but . . .”

“No buts. Buts can be categorized as senseless chatter.”

I want to kiss and hug the woman and thank her a hundred times. But I don’t think she’s the kissing and hugging type. And if I thank her a hundred times, I think she’d have an aneurysm from the amount of senseless chatter.

Mrs. Reynolds stands, using her cane to steady herself. Which reminds me to add, “I have a limp.”

Instead of asking me about it, the woman just says, “So do I. So do most of my friends. At least the ones who aren’t dead. As long as you don’t complain about yours, I won’t complain about mine.”

And that, if you can believe it, is the end of my interview.