Breakfast with Neruda (10 page)

The ride home goes by too quickly. I pull the little blue car into Shelly's driveway and feel a heaviness in my chest. I take a deep breath and hand her the sunglasses. I feel something between us shift.

“What's the matter?” she asks.

“I hate to give up the car. I don't want to go back to my own pitiful mobile home.”

She laughs. The real truth is I don't want to separate from Shelly and our fragile bond. I fear that string might break as soon as she enters her house, and she will not look back.

She leans over and kisses me, and the world is righted again, I think.

“See you tomorrow,” she says.

I stay up late reading Neruda's poems, marking my favorites with ripped flags of paper. I wonder which ones are Shelly's favorites. Will she decide I'm a dork if we don't like the same poems?

Ashley used to tease me, calling me a “word nerd” whenever I tried to talk to her about books. Her idea of literature was
Twilight
and
The Notebook
. I loaned her
The Shadow of the Wind
, but she said she couldn't get into it. “Too many descriptions,” she had said. She tried to get me to read
Twilight
, and I couldn't get past the first page.

But Shelly has some reading chops, so maybe she will like
The Shadow of the Wind
. Is she even thinking about me as much as I am thinking about her?

• • •

I wake on my own, and glance at my phone. Seven forty-five. Shit! I scramble into my clothes and piss along the fence. Inside the building I rinse my face in the water fountain just inside the door. I make it to the custodial office just in time to hear Earl bark at me, “The day starts at eight, not eight oh five!”

“Sorry. Overslept.”

I'm rumpled and hungry, but most of all worried. Why didn't Shelly wake me?

Earl says today we will be working in the library. “We need to pull the tables and chairs out into the hall.”

“Do the books stay in?”

“Now what do you think? That we're going to stack up shelves and shelves of books in the hallway? Mrs. Morgan would kill me if we did that.”

“Yeah, I guess that's a dumb question.”

“And you're a senior again this year?” He shakes his head. “Woe to the world when we release you.”

I want to ask him where Shelly is, but I don't want Earl to ask me why I am asking about her.

He unlocks the library and flips the lights on with a key. The school replaced all the light switches in the hallways, gym, cafeteria, and library with key locks because too many kids played with the lights at random.

“We'll leave the computers where they are. Our main function in here is to clean the carpets and fix anything on Mrs. Morgan's work order.” He slips his glasses out of his front pocket and reads a sheaf of papers. “Fix the broken lock on the AV storage door, change the bulbs in her office, and mend a couple broken chairs.” He folds the papers. “Let's get started, kid.”

Being inside the school library always reminds me of Rick. I first met him ages ago in the elementary school library. Back then we were in sixth grade at the old 4–6 school, and he was a dorky red-haired new kid with braces, and I was a dorky semi-new kid who wore secondhand, sometimes smelly clothes. Among our classmates we were odd ducks. It was bad enough Billy Meeks and his cadre of bullies tormented me. They'd done it since I moved here a few months before, and I heard Michael Faggot, or Faggot Flynn yelled as I passed by them in the hallways. Physically, they never touched me, though. Not since I kicked Billy in the balls after he spit on my brother on the playground. But he and his friends burned with animosity toward me and anyone else they knew they could pick on: poor kids, nerdy kids, and new kids. One day this skinny redheaded kid with a mouthful of braces walked into Mrs. Peterson's fourth-period sixth-grade language arts class. I noticed the look Billy Meeks shot to Jason Stoddard, as if they were marking him as their territory. I knew the new kid was a goner as soon as I saw him, and Meeks and Stoddard had him in their sights, aiming their rifles at him from the deer stand.

Mrs. Peterson told us to line up to go to the library for our biweekly visit. Every two weeks on Friday before lunch, one of the secretaries opened the doors to the library, and she snapped at us to sit down and stay quiet. If we wanted to check out a book, we had to wait for the secretary to boot up the computer at the desk. The school once had a librarian, but when she retired, the school didn't replace her. The only other time we got to use the library was on rainy days after lunch or when Mrs. Peterson insisted they let her class visit. I was secretly in love with Mrs. Peterson.

I sidled up to the new kid in line and said, “Hey, I'm Michael.”

“Rick,” he said. He shook my hand.

Just then Billy purposely shoved me against Rick with his shoulder, knocking us both against the wall. “Oh, so sorry, your major Faggotism,” Billy said. He leered at Rick, then me. “I see you finally found a boyfriend.”

On the way down the steps, Rick asked, “Who is that?”

“The school asshole. Or at least the biggest asshole in sixth grade.”

We purposely sat far away from them in the library, but Billy and Jason shot us looks the whole time. I sat with Rick at lunch at the table where other misfits sat: a couple of gamer guys, a boy who always picked his nose, and two girls from band who only talked to each other. None of us were friends, per se, but in the lunchroom, if we sat together, the sheer number of us somehow protected our group. We were safe until we got released to the dreaded playground. Every day I prayed for rain so we would be allowed to either go to the library or the gym.

I never went to the gym; it was an open savanna for bully targets. The other geeks and I always opted for the library, and those twenty minutes were kind of a slice of heaven for me. Even though the magazines were old and the pages of the paperbacks yellowed, being in the company of the printed word made me feel whole. It still does. So even though I suck at science and math, my English teachers have always loved me.

But this day was not one of those lucky rainy days. The new kid and I were destined to meet our dooms on the playground with the other losers. Somehow I knew Rick the Redhead would be the chief target today. He was new, a distraction, new blood. Like on the savanna, fresh blood provided temptation.

“Listen,” I told Rick, “these kids are going to mess with you.”

“Yeah, I kind of figured that,” he said. “It's the redhead thing. And the braces.”

“And you don't weigh much more than a sack of potatoes.”

He laughed. “You're one to talk.”

“Too bad we don't have superpowers.” I said. “Or swords or laser beams.”

“True, but I have a better weapon,” he said. “Just watch.”

As if on cue, Billy and his tribe sauntered over to the corner of the building where Rick and I stood. They were careful to watch for the teacher on duty, made sure she was not watching. “Hey, Ugly,” Billy said to me. “Aren't you going to introduce us to your new faggot friend?”

We both ignored him, and he shoved me into the wall. I expected to feel a fist in my face, but as soon as Billy lifted his arm to punch me, Rick let out a bloodcurdling scream that could have been on the soundtrack of
A Nightmare on Elm Street
. He wailed so loud the entire playground stopped, and everyone looked. I put my hands over my ears. I was surprised the screeching didn't break glass. Billy and his friends also covered their ears and backed way, but the teacher on duty caught Billy's arm and asked what was going on.

“N . . . nothing,” Billy said. “He just started screaming.”

“Billy, I am not unfamiliar with your reputation,” she said. “Are you bothering these boys?”

“No ma'am,” he said.

Rick had meanwhile stopped wailing. How could such a small guy make such a big sound?

As he and I walked back inside the building, I asked him how he did it. “It's easy. You just push the air up through your diaphragm, in your stomach. You don't use your throat at all.”

“Where did you learn that?”

“Singing lessons,” he said. “It's how singers and stage actors project their voices.” It turned out Rick had a variety of sound effects he knew how to use. He could mimic livestock and sirens. He was also quickly snatched up to be the chief tenor in the school choir.

Billy stopped picking on Rick and me after that, and once we moved on to the big Junior/Senior High building, where kids from three elementary schools filtered into the 7–12 school, Billy had a whole new crop of nerds to pick on. He himself got bullied by high school kids.

Miraculously, Rick and I outgrew our skinny dorkiness. By high school, we had started to look like humans instead of pogo sticks with hair. I still looked forward to visiting the library, but Rick kind of moved on. He used his extra time in the band and choir rooms, honing his music skills, and later, scamming me out of a girlfriend.

• • •

For the next couple hours Earl and I stack chairs on a flat cart, move them into the hall, clear the cart, and reload. Every time I go to the hallway I look for signs of Shelly. Is she even here today? Is she avoiding me?

I picture her sitting at home, laughing about what an idiot I am to her parents. “He quotes poetry. Can he be any more lame?” Or maybe she calls a friend and tells her, “Let me tell you about my worst day ever. Remember that idiot guy who tried to blow up the school? Well, I went out with him a couple times, and he is such a dork.”

“Hey kid,” Earl says, “get your head out of your ass, and help me move this furniture.” The tables and chairs are heavy and wooden. Together we lift the tables and carry them one by one out to the hallway. “Sons of bitches weigh more than we do,” Earl grumbles.

After twenty tables and eighty chairs, Earl wipes his brow and says it's time for a coffee break. We saunter down to the lounge and I see a plate of peanut butter cookies. I don't want to appear greedy, but this is my breakfast, so I grab three and practically inhale them.

Earl hands me a steaming cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Didn't want you to choke on all them cookies.”

“Yeah, I uh, didn't have time for breakfast.”

I take one more, and Hess walks in, trailed by Shelly. “Hey,” she says.

I want to shout at her, yell that I spent the morning imagining the worst possible scenarios, but she sits next to me, smiles, and all is right in the world again.

“I figured out why you like
The Shadow of the Wind
so much,” she says.

“Yeah?” I bite into a cookie and pretend her presence isn't playing a beatbox in my chest.

"Besides the wonderful writing, engaging characters, and the shroud of mystery,
you're
Julián Carax.”

“What do you mean?”

“The character Julián Carax in Zafón's
The Shadow of the Wind
is a boy who never knew his father, and he spends his life trying to find him. Carax writes a book he calls
The Shadow of the Wind,
which Daniel Sempere discovers in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books,” she says. Shelly touches my arm. “In a way, Carlos Ruiz Zafón wrote your story, too.”

Her fingers send electric currents through my skin. “Huh,” I say. “I never thought of that.”

Shelly and I drive to Burger King for lunch. She has started smoking again, but as a healthy diversion, she orders the veggie burger, which she claims does not taste like a Nike insole. I still opt for a double cheeseburger. We share a large order of fries.

“I think we should try to find your father,” she says.

“I don't even have a name,” I say. “I wouldn't know where to start.”

“Have you ever seen your birth certificate?”

“No.”

“Where were you born?”

“In Columbus, I think.” The thought of going through my mother's house, rummaging through the stacks of crap to find my birth certificate makes me lose my appetite. “I think my mom lost it in one of our moves,” I say.

“Well, even if your mom doesn't have your certificate, we can get a copy of it online from the records office.”

“Don't I need an adult's permission?”

She tweaks her brow at me. “I can get anything. If I can't, I know people who can.”

I give her a doubtful look.

“My dad's a lawyer,” she says. “I know about this stuff. All we need is your full name, date of birth, and city where you were born.” She ruffles through her giant purse and pulls out a pocket-sized notebook and pen. “Do you have to work after school today?”

“Yeah.”

“Give me your info and I'll look it up for you.” I write down my name, date of birth, and Social Security number for her. “Good thing I'm not worth anything, or I'd worry about you stealing my identity.”

She snorts. “You're probably some eccentric millionaire like Howard Hughes who lives in squalor.”

“I wish.”

She looks over what I have written. “I'll have to give an actual address,” she says. “Not the parking lot of Rooster High School.”

“Very funny,” I say, and write my mother's address. “I use my mom's address for mail,” I say. “I'd better tell my sister so she can intercept the mail. My mom might freak if she knows I'm looking for my dad.”

“Parents are freak shows.”

“That they are,” I say. I stop writing. “Listen, can we wait until tomorrow to do this? I'd kind of like to be the one to do the search. It's not that I don't trust you. It's just . . . I've waited a long time. This is kind of important.”

She considers this for a second. “I totally get that.”

I park in a shady spot behind the building. Shelly gets out and runs toward the fence separating the football field from the parking lot. She grasps the barbed wire and stares out at the field. “Look,” she says.