The Fading (8 page)

‘It’s cool,’ he said. ‘My dad lives here.’

‘I know, but what are you doing?’ She took a couple of steps into the kitchen and set her hands on her hips.

‘What?’ He was a child denying the obvious.

Her eyes went to the gas can and widened:
that’s what
.

‘Who are you?’ he said.

‘Julie.’

‘Julie?’

‘Uh, Wagner? My mom lives with your dad? Which means I do, too.’

He’d known Lisa had a daughter, not that she’d been imported. ‘Where’s your room?’

‘The basement. I keep it locked, so you better not have even.’

‘Oh.’ He didn’t know there was a basement, hadn’t found the door on his first rounds. She was new here, probably felt like
an alien in the new school, the new life. This was comforting to believe.

‘So, what the hell are you doing?’

‘Just cleaning up.’ Noel screwed the nozzle back on and carried the gas can back to the garage, set it against the wall near
the lawnmower, and returned to the kitchen. He washed his hands at the sink, reminded himself to breathe normally while feeling
the stab of her disbelieving eyes at his back.

‘When did you guys move in?’ he said over his shoulder.

‘You’re not supposed to be here.’ Julie’s footsteps pattered across the floor, and the sound of collapsing books came as she
slung her bag into a dining-room chair. She appeared on the other side of the breakfast bar, a fence between them.

‘Why not?’ Noel smiled in challenge. ‘He’s not my dad any more?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, chewing the inside of her cheek. ‘You just aren’t.’

‘Are you going to tell on me?’

‘That depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On what you were doing with the gas can.’

Noel laughed. ‘I rode my bike. It ran out of gas.’

‘Bikes don’t use gas.’

‘What grade are you in?’

Julie’s upper lip curled. ‘Ninth, but I skipped fifth. Why, what grade are you in?’

‘I’m not in a grade, Julie. I don’t go to regular school, which you probably heard. And my bike is a motorcycle, so, yes,
it does run on gas.’

‘You’re not old enough,’ she said. ‘You don’t even have a license.’

‘So?’

She crossed her arms. ‘You’re totally lying.’

‘Why do you care? Where did you come from?’

She wouldn’t let it go. ‘But why did you have to come all the way here for gas?’

He dried his hands and sighed. ‘I guess I didn’t.’

They stared at each other. He could see that she
knew the real reason, or some bullshit school counselor version of it. He could hear his dad talking to her and Lisa at the
dinner table. Noel is a troubled boy. He’s very fragile. He’s not to be in the house without supervision. He shrugged and
looked away. He couldn’t look at her too long or else she would know he was already thinking things about her.

‘It’s okay if you miss your dad,’ she said.

Noel laughed and went to the fridge. He needed a Coke or something, then he was getting the fuck out of here. ‘Why would I
miss an asshole like John?’

‘He’s not an asshole,’ Julie said.

‘Really? What is he, then?’

‘He’s really nice. And sometimes nice is enough. That’s what my mom says.’

‘And what do you say?’

‘We lived in Florida. My mom came here first, for her job. Then my dad sent me to visit and I decided not to go back.’

‘Good for you.’ Noel slammed the fridge. ‘Tell your mom to buy some Coke.’

‘You’re the one who’s been eating all the food.’

He glared at her.

‘They thought it was me for the first few days, as if I would eat frozen egg rolls and bean burritos.’

‘They know I’ve been here?’

‘Well, duh. Who else would it be?’

‘Shit. I gotta go.’ He headed toward the front door.

‘I won’t tell,’ Julie said behind him.

‘Like I give a crap!’ He slammed the door. Outside,
walking to the clubhouse, he felt like a jerk. But then again, screw her. Some little spoiled brat moves in, acts like she
owns the place. Didn’t buy his story about the gas. Probably’d tell her mom as soon as Happy John’s new trophy wife got home.
Although, really, Noel had seen Lisa and she wasn’t much of a trophy. She had that nutty permed hair and a serious butt.

Julie, though. Not bad at all. Why hadn’t he seen her before today? Home from school early? He looked at the Swatch he’d absorbed
at the mall the week before he turned thirteen. It was five minutes till three. Stupid. He must have gotten distracted in
the garage. Julie the Princess Eighth Grader now had major leverage over him.

Whatever. He’d find another way to fuck with Happy John, from a distance.

He went back again the next day. Told himself it was to look for more money. His stomach was queasy during the ride out to
Highway 36. Told himself it was because he didn’t eat breakfast. He rode up and down the street, to see if anything was different.
The shitheel hadn’t called his mom last night, so maybe the brat had kept her word. He locked the Honda up near the pool and
took his time walking back to the house. The neighborhood was all gray. Gray three-story town houses with sharp angles, with
a line of yellow and blue flags lining the streets, like this was a yacht club. In the middle of Colorado. Yuppieville.

On her way out the door for work this morning, his mom had asked him what he was going to do today.

‘Same thing I do every day,’ he said from the bathroom, into the mirror. He had a new pimple in the small cluster that liked
to form at the left corner of his mouth. He needed a haircut. ‘Read some books and do the exercises.’

Three years ago, when he had turned eleven, Rebecca took him to Boulder Bookstore on the Pearl Street Mall and bought him
$300 worth of books. She started him on
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
and
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
and
The White Mountains
, gradually led him into
Johnny Got His Gun, Gatsby, 1984
. ‘I knew it,’ she told him midway through the first year, after administering a standardized test one of his former teachers
gave her. ‘You’re reading at the eleventh-grade level.’

After he got a taste for it, losing himself in the safe and simple bubble that was reading for pleasure, his mom let him wander
his way through the Beat writers.
On the Road, Howl, Naked Lunch
. Reading pacified him at first, giving him an excuse to stay in bed all day, hiding from all those eyes. The blink, as he
had come to think of it, came now and then, but he was safe at home and stopped worrying about it so much. At times it was
like a private shame, taking him when he was alone. In the shower. When his mom was at work, masturbating to old copies of
Playboy
he’d stolen from his dad.

Once, during that first year, he found himself so engrossed he did not even pause his reading when the hands holding
Deliverance
vanished and the warped paperback hung suspended over him, its pages turning
themselves, as if the Word was being handed down to him from a divine source, saturating his brain with poetic and terrifying
survival images that seeped into his dreams, waking him only after the book fell on his belly, which had reappeared as he
slumbered away the rainy afternoon. He was in love with books, the frail lives and unmasked adults inside, the adventure and
wickedness and heroism (and the cruel costs of all these things).

After he was hooked, her quizzes began. Sometimes Rebecca read the books in parallel, assigning him reports on topics she
chose from the texts. He spent most of his twelfth year in biographies and, as a reward, crime novels. Aging boxers. Felons.
Women who liked knives. Last year he’d trudged through a seemingly endless historical phase.
Shogun, Exodus
, and more Michener than any boy should have to endure. Sometimes he lay in bed and stared up at the book titles on his shelves
and imagined them as courses he would never get to take at a real college, filling in the discussions and lectures with imaginary
professors and midterms, moccasin-wearing classmates and cute rich girls of his own choosing. His geography and history and
science were
Centennial, Hawaii, Poland, Space
. His friends were Malcolm X, The Old Man and that boy on the Sea, George and Lenny, the Animals on the Farm, and Charlie,
the little girl who could start fires.

Rebecca employed New Age weirdos to entice him into philosophy, which only left him tired and frustrated.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
, with its strangely inviting lavender cover, its quiet angry dad and troubled kid, was a puzzling exception. He read it twice
and then carried it everywhere for a few months, dipping into its looping metaphysical passages while his mom dragged him
around on her errands. Though he didn’t understand a lot of it, it made his brain hurt in a good way, serving as a sort of
Jungle Gym for the mind, and gave him the idea to buy the Honda.

Maybe it was being cooped up in his room for three years. Maybe it was puberty. Whatever the reason, he was now sick of books
and wanted to be around real people. He’d seen a good deal of the world without hardly ever leaving the house. He craved experience.

‘How’s it going?’ his mom said, rummaging in her purse, cursing lost keys. She was always running late, forgetting something,
coming back two or three times before the Corolla was safely away. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been much help lately.’

‘It’s fine. A little more math and I can take the GED and get it over with.’ He walked into the kitchen to look for some breakfast.
‘We’re out of waffles,’ he said.

‘I’ll go to the store tonight.’ She pulled on a dirty purple windbreaker one of her boyfriends had left behind and he didn’t
understand why she kept wearing it. It was too big for her and made her look like the people they had seen in line for food
stamps. ‘Anything else you need?’

‘Milk, cereal, bread, lunch meat, Cheetos, bacon, Rice-A-Roni, some steaks—’

‘Okay, Noel, I’m doing the best I can. Jesus.’

He came out of the kitchen which, in their apartment off Kalmia, was only about four steps from the front door. ‘Do you need
some money?’ he asked her.

‘No. Absolutely not.’

‘Right.’ He dug into his jeans and handed her two crumpled twenties he’d taken from the open cash register at the grocery
store last week. He hadn’t been in the bubble, but being in the bubble had taught him the value of opportunity, and the ease
with which the common blindness of others presented it.

She hesitated, but not for long. ‘This isn’t right.’

‘Have a good day at the restaurant,’ he said, and kissed her on the cheek.

‘I promise someday—’ Rebecca started.

‘I know, I know.’

‘For such a tall drink of water, you’re a good kid,’ she said. ‘Stay out of trouble.’

‘Uh-huh.’

Tico’s was Boulder’s busiest Mexican restaurant. With her tips it was almost enough, but also, in another way, it was not
even close to enough.

The TV was on, so he didn’t hear Julie come through the front door. Of course, he hadn’t heard her come in yesterday, either,
so maybe she was just really quiet. He’d been telling himself he would leave by one. Then one thirty. Then two. But every
time he got up to leave he wound up pacing the kitchen, checking the cupboards, as if hidden in one of them was the answer
to
the question: if he really wanted to fuck with Happy John, what was he doing here? He could have ridden to the store – the
new Richardson Sporting Goods mega-store at 88th and Wadsworth – and slashed his dad’s tires. He was eating the last Oreo
when the sound of her book bag crashing onto a dining-room chair startled him.

‘What a surprise,’ Julie said.

He wiped black crumbs from his lips, thinking of his pimples. Her lips were shiny with some kind of pink gloss and she was
wearing designer jeans, a plain white shirt buttoned to her throat, and a gold chain with a cross. She planted her hands on
her hips again, stepping back into her bossy role. He swallowed, licked his teeth.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Exactly. What do you want?’

‘Why didn’t you tell on me?’ he said.

‘Maybe I did.’

He smiled. ‘Nope.’

‘What’s your problem anyway? What did you do?’

‘No idea what you’re talking about,’ Noel said.

‘Your dad said you got kicked out of school. You had to go to family counseling. Then you went away for a while.’

Noel went to the fridge and drank milk, watching her over the carton his nose was stuck in. He guzzled for effect.

‘Really?’ she said. ‘You really have to do that?’

Noel belched.

Julie made a horrible face. ‘You filthy pig. No wonder they locked you up.’

‘They didn’t lock me up. I went into an exile of my own choosing. And Happy John’s the one who went away, remember?’

‘How should I know? I wasn’t here.’

‘Right. You were in Florida, with the alligators.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Think about it,’ he said.

She took a bottle of sparkling water from the fridge and left the kitchen with as much drama as she could muster. He followed
her into the living room where she plopped down on the couch and used the TV as an excuse to avoid eye contact.

‘So, what was it? You steal John’s car or try to kill yourself or something?’

Noel sprawled over a reading chair in the far corner. ‘I refused to go to school.’

‘And?’

‘And that’s it. One day I just refused to go. My dad freaked out. He and my mom fought a lot. About their own bullshit, mostly,
and me. Then my dad left.’

‘There has to be more to it than that.’

Noel shrugged.

‘Come on. Seriously, tell me.’

‘First tell me something you did.’ He smiled at her and winked.

She faced him, aghast. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

‘Never?’

‘Stop looking at me! You’re freaking me out.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, laughing. ‘You did something.’

Julie chewed the inside of her cheek. They watched a talk show, then she changed it to
The People’s Court
. The plaintiff was suing for $847.00 because the defendant had ruined her couch and broke the TV.