Breakfast with Neruda (16 page)

“What's up, big bro?” he asks. “Hard day?”

“What can you tell me about Shelly Miller?”

“Why? What do you want to know?”

“Rick tried to warn me off her.”

“You and Rick are talking again?”

“Not exactly.” I shove a large chunk of bran muffin in my mouth. “We ran into him at Starbucks this morning, and he kind of ambushed me with this wild story about Shelly.”

“Oh.”

I reach into the bag and bite into the donut. Cinnamon-coated cake. Yum. “Listen, I really care about this girl, and whatever she has done I'm pretty sure I can get past it. I mean, look at me. Am I the poster boy for fabulous?”

He laughs. “Hardly. More like the poster boy for Homeless Guys Illustrated.” Jeff slurps his pop. “She came back to school second semester, a few weeks before they booted you out,” he says. “She stood out for two reasons. One, her appearance. Before she took off she was a blonde and kind of preppy looking. After, she had this haunted, black hair vibe, and she was anorexic skinny. I mean, she wasn't fat before, but she had a few extra pounds on her.”

“That's why she looked familiar the first day I met her,” I say. “
Michelle
Miller. Wasn't she a cheerleader and hung around a bunch of preps?”

Jeff nods. He steals the rest of my bran muffin and noshes on it. “All these rumors about her started flying,” Jeff says. “You know I don't gossip, but I heard stuff at lunch and in study hall. People claimed she was a heroin addict or had cancer or had joined a cult.”

“So what is the truth?”

He shrugs. “Nobody but Shelly really knows all of it,” he says. He glances at the clock. “Hey, my break's almost over. Stop by the house in a couple hours and we can talk some more.”

“Okay. I have to pay Paul for my new tires anyway.” I remember the camping gear. “Can I stow some camping stuff in your basement until winter? Mom gave me a tent and sleeping bag so I won't freeze to death, but it's kind of taking up a lot of room in my house.”

Jeff chuckles. “Sure.” He hands me his car keys and says, “Just put it in the trunk, and I'll take care of it.”

I kill the next couple hours by checking my work schedule, shooting the shit with Mitch, and taking a sponge bath in the men's room at the mall.

Paul has his head under the hood of a '96 Taurus when I pull up. They live in a slightly run-down house not far from the school. One of those three-bedroom houses that look like all the others on the street. What distinguishes their house is the scattering of toys in the yard. They live in the kind of neighborhood where the neighbors don't complain about messy yards. Kind of like my mom's neighborhood, except here the people own their homes instead of rent. Their driveway is dotted with oil stains, so I pull the Blue Whale onto the pavement. Paul always has several cars in the driveway and on the curb. “I like to bring my work home with me,” he says. He keeps threatening to black-top their yard, but his wife insists they need a yard for the kids.

Paul clatters around and looks up when he hears me slam my car door.

“Jeff home yet?”

“He's in the shower,” Paul says. “Washing the donut smell off. Hey, go grab me a beer. Help yourself if you want.”

I step inside the house. It's cluttered, but not stuffed to the gills like Mom's. One good vacuuming and dusting and the place would look fine. Their mess is from four kids and two adults living in a place meant for a couple with one kid or a dog. It's family mess, not the insane clutter of my mother's house. Their dog, Buster, greets me and licks my hand. He chuffs and barks once. Dee Dee, who is standing in the kitchen at the stove, turns to see who came in. She's short and plump but has a pretty face.

“Hi Dee Dee.” I move to the fridge.

She glances at me as she stirs something. “Hey,” she says, but not in a welcoming tone. Things have never been smooth between us, and they've been more tense since my arrest. I guess I wouldn't want my kids around a would-be arsonist, either.

“Paul wants a beer.” I hold two cans in my hand. “He said for me to help myself.” She nods and keeps stirring something fragrant, like homemade spaghetti sauce. “Smells good.”

I'd love to be invited to stay to eat, but I know I won't be. I hold up the two beers and mutter, “Thanks.” I join Paul in the driveway and hand him his beer. He crams his rag in his jeans and pops open the can. We lean against the quarter panel of the Taurus.

“You seem troubled by something,” he says.

I take a gulp of beer and let its salty bitterness soothe my tension. “Yeah. Kind of.”

“Spill it.”

“What do you do when you find out something bad about a person you care about? Something that may or may not be true, but most likely is?”

“Can you give me little more detail?”

“There's this girl I like.”

“Women,” he says. “They always spell trouble.”

I smile. We clink our cans together. “Go on,” he says.

He knows about the whole Rick problem, so I don't have to remind him of that. “I ran into Rick and Ashley today at Starbucks. I was with this new girl,” I say. “I've been seeing her the past couple of weeks. And things are going well with us.” I take another swig. “But Rick stops me on my way out the door. At first I think he wants to apologize for being a shithead, which he sort of does. But what he really wants to do is to tell me something bad about Shelly, my new girl.”

“How bad?”

I gulp down the rest of the beer and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “Bad.”

“Is it true?”

“I don't know. Some of it is, I guess. I'm hoping Jeff can fill me in. He knows her, and he was at school when Shelly came back from her long, mysterious absence.”

Paul slaps me on the back. “Hope you get this worked out. Just remember, gossip is often just idle jealousy.”

I nod. “It's just that Rick has never steered me wrong before. I mean, yeah, he stole Ashley, but before that, he always had my back.”

“Do you like this girl?”

“Yeah. I like her a lot.”

“You're screwed,” he says.

The screen door slaps and Jeff comes out wearing jeans and an orange-and-black Rooster High T-shirt. His hair is still wet from the shower. “Hey, bro,” he says.

“Hey. Wanna go for a ride?” I ask.

“Okay.” He sees the beer can. “I think I'll drive, though.”

I smirk. “One beer doesn't make me drunk.” I crumple the beer can and hand him my keys anyway. I slide into the passenger side and fasten the seatbelt. “It's weird being on this side of my own car. I'm used to seeing the world from the left side.”

Jeff adjusts his seat and backs out of the driveway. “This may change your whole outlook on life,” he says. We swing by McDonald's and get fries and Cokes. As we pull away from the drive-thru, Jeff says, “What's up, bro? Is Mom okay?”

“Yeah. I mean, no. She's still a nut bag.”
“How's about Annie?”

“She just left for band camp today.”

“Good,” he says. “She deserves a break.” He keeps his eyes on the road and chews on his bottom lip. He always chews on his lip when he stews over something. He makes a lousy poker player because when he has a bad hand, he sucks in his bottom lip so much it looks like he's wearing dentures.

“Shit, Jeff, what do you know?”

He changes lanes and heads east from Rocket Road, away from the traffic. “It's not so much what I know, for sure. Nobody knows all the facts. I was surprised when I saw you with her for the first time. But then I remembered you were cleaning the school over the summer, and I figured she was too. I didn't know you were dating her, though.”

“It didn't start out that way,” I say. “We've gotten to know each other. I thought pretty well. But then Rick dropped a bomb on me earlier today.” I summarize what happened at the restaurant and what Rick told me.

“Well, he's not entirely wrong,” Jeff says. “You missed the last few weeks of school, so you don't know the whole story.”

“I didn't even know her before this summer. I mean she looked sort of familiar, but we never traveled in the same social circles before.”

“I kind of knew her because we were lab partners in biology together sophomore year. And she was okay. Some cheerleaders are stuck up and don't talk to those of us lower on the social strata, but she was nice enough.”

“So why didn't I see her at school last year?”

“She took off before school started, and came back around the time you got the boot. And when she did come back she looked totally different,” he says.

“There were a bunch of stories in the paper about a major drug bust in Columbus and car theft and how a local teen was involved. Shelly's name was never mentioned because she's under eighteen, but people at school kind of put two and two together. The dates of her arrest and her disappearance kind of meshed. And former friends sort of corroborated the story.”

“Former?”

“Yeah. She used to hang with a group of rich bitch country club preps, but most of them dropped her. The only one I know for sure who sort of hung in there as a friend is Maggie Alter."

“Shelly never mentions anyone,” I say.

“Maybe other kids' parents forbid them to hang with Shelly.”

“She seems friendly enough with you.”

“Hell, man. I don't judge her,” Jeff says. “Who are any of us to judge? Aren't we all freaks under the skin? Even the most normal person has some shadow lurking under the bed.”

I remember how I used to scare him and Annie by telling him there were shadow monsters under the bed. Because I was the eldest they always believed me. To a point. Eventually they figured out I was full of shit.

“How do I get Shelly to talk to me about it? How do I let her know I don't care what she did?”

“Just say that. Say, ‘Shelly, I don't care why you got arrested. We're here, and this is now, and whatever you did before is history.'”

I nod. “Yeah. That makes sense. But what about the rumor she meant to kill herself behind the wheel? How do I approach that?”

“How do you feel about it?”

“I don't know. I don't get a suicidal vibe from her. I mean yeah, occasional sadness, but . . . Rick said she was really high.”

“Yeah, maybe. People do weird shit when they're high. Stuff they wouldn't normally do.”

I watch cornfields and soybean fields whooshing by. “Why wouldn't she be upfront about this?”

“Why would she, dude? First off, she probably thinks you already know. Everyone else does.” Jeff hangs his arm out the window as he drives. “Does it matter?”

“What do you mean?”

“Does it matter why she got busted? I mean, you knew she had some trouble. So did you. So if you like her, does it matter why she's in trouble?”

I sit back and let the wind blow over my face and close my eyes. “I guess not.”

“Did you share your troubles?”

“She already knew about me. She calls me the Unabomber.”

He laughs. I open my eyes and look at my brother. “And she knows I live in my car.”

“Holy shit,” he says. “That's big.”

“She doesn't know why, though. I told her Mom threw me out after the Rick debacle.”

“What did she tell you about why she's working at school all summer?”

“She said she got busted for smoking.”

Jeff laughs. “That's sort of true. She got five days out for smoking in the girls' restroom.”

Jeff and I are quiet for a while. The rumble of the tires on pavement soothes me.

“So do you like her?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “I like her a lot.”

“More than Ashley?”

“A whole lot more. I hate to admit this, but Rick's right. He and Ashley are better suited for one another. They both have that artsy music thing going on.”

“What do you like best about Shelly?”

“She's brave,” I say. “And generous and funny, and she kicks my ass.”

“Good for her.”

“But there's this wall around her.”

“Don't you think it's because she's been burned?”

“Yeah, maybe. Now that I know what she was up against.”

“So what are you going to do next?” Jeff asks.

I lean back against the headrest. Sometimes it's a relief to let someone else take the wheel. I am suddenly tired from worrying about my mother, my sister, Shelly's secrets, and my own crappy life. “Sleep.”

When Jeff pulls in front of his house, Paul is in the front yard dangling his son Danny by his feet. The six-year-old squeaks in delight and tries to wriggle away. Jeff won the lotto with dads.

Dee Dee comes to the door and says, “Clean up guys, it's dinnertime.” She spears me with a look, and I know I'm not invited to stay. She has to accept Jeff, but I'm not Paul's son. There is something off about me. Sometimes
I
don't want to be near me.

Paul tries to insist I stay and eat, but I claim I have to work. I get back in my car and notice Jeff has left a $10 bill on the dashboard. Good thing, since we used up most of my gas. I wave the ten at my brother and yell thanks.

I forage for some donuts behind Dan's and find two jelly-filled and a chocolate cake. After I eat, I go to Graham Park and sit on a bench and read from a battered copy of
The Call of the Wild
, one of the books Earl let me keep from locker cleanup. At first I think I'll pass on it because the main character is a dog and it's usually assigned in middle school, but I quickly get into the book. Near the end of chapter two I recognize myself in Buck, the dog.