Breakfast with Neruda (2 page)

Shelly laughs. “There's nothing to worry about then,” she says.

I wonder what she did to spend the summer with the custodians and me.

After I unload all the debris inside the west lockers, I move to the east lockers and clean those out too. After I'm done removing stuff, I start forming piles by separating stuff by category. Around 1:30, Earl brings me a flat cart. “Okay, kid, start stacking the textbooks on this. Try to sort them by subject.”

I nod. “What about the other books?”

He wrinkles his brow. “Unless they're library books, just pitch them.” He reaches down and picks up a thick book with DISCARD stamped in red on the cover. “Also toss out ones like this that the library no longer wants.”

“Can I keep any? I mean, the miscellaneous or discarded ones?”

“Sure, kid. Knock yourself out.”

It takes me about half an hour to sort and stack all the books. I start a pile of ones I want to keep and toss the rest in the trashcan. I drop the library books in the drop box outside the library and wheel the textbooks to the loading dock at the back of the school. The rear doors are open and I notice Shelly standing outside, smoking a cigarette. “Hey, you can get in trouble smoking on school grounds,” I say.

She turns to look at me. “Ha ha,” she says. “I'm already in trouble.”

I step outside. “So what did you do to get assigned to Camp Clean Up the School?”

She nods her head at her cigarette. “You're looking at it,” she says. “Too many days getting caught smoking on school grounds.”

“Irony,” I say. “I like that.”

“Yeah. Hess doesn't care. He smokes too, so he gets it when you just need a cigarette. ‘Just don't get caught,' he says.”

“Busted.”

She inhales deeply and flicks the butt on the cement. “I'm shaking with fear.”

We both step back inside. Somehow I know there's more to her story than just smoking, but it's not really my business. “Well, back to the salt mines,” I say.

We walk in silence until we reach the staircase.

“See ya,” she says.

Earl is loading the clothes on another flat cart when I get back to the hallway. I notice a green book bag next to my stack of books. “Figured you might need something to carry them in,” he grumbles. “Seeing how the cops took your other bag away.”

“Thanks,” I say.

“Let's gather up the rest of this crap and call it a day.”

We box up the homeless shelter stuff and wheel it out to the loading dock. Earl slaps me on the back. “Okay, kid. Tomorrow we start working on the rooms. See you at eight.”

I shove my new books inside the bag, and head out to the Blue Whale.

I get in the car and realize I should have taken a shower. “Shit,” I mutter. I pull out my TracFone and punch in Annie's number. She answers on the third ring. “Hey, is there a clear path to the bathroom?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Okay. I'll be over soon,” I say. “I need a shower before work.”

I drive toward my family's townhouse. It's kind of a crappy place, a rented two-story with a fenced-in back porch. I rap on the front door and my sister yells, “It's open!”

I take a deep breath and shove at the door, and it opens just enough for me to sidle my way inside. The place reeks of stale cigarettes, rotting food, and dead mice. I cough and hold my nose. There is so much stuff in here I have to climb into what was once the living room. The blinds are open, but it's always dark in here.

“Hey!” I hear my sister say.

“Where are you?” I ask.

“In the kitchen.”

I shuffle, carefully clutching my bag, to the narrow path leading to the kitchen. I expel my breath and take another breath. It doesn't smell much better in here.

Annie stands at the counter, making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “Want one?”

I glance at the stacks of dirty pots and plates cluttering the counter. But I notice a spray bottle of Windex and see Annie has cleaned off a space for making sandwiches. “Sure.”

My younger siblings and I all have different fathers. My brother, Jeff Nolan, is a pasty-faced blond with hazel eyes, and my sister, Annie Durant, is biracial. She's small and dark with deep, cocoa eyes. My sister and I have dark hair, but I'm tall and have green eyes. To strangers we look like three random kids, not siblings who used to curl together like puppies in strange beds every night.

We're all close in age. Jeff and I will both be seniors together now that I have to repeat, and Annie will be a sophomore.

“You working tonight?” she asks.

“Yeah. I have to be there in an hour, so that's why I need a shower.”

She grins. “You're a poet and you don't know it.”

I roll my eyes at her and dig through my pack. My shirt is a wrinkled mess, but if I shake it enough times it won't look too bad. It's just the movie theater. I wear a vest over it anyway. “So what are you up to today?”

She sets my sandwich on a napkin and hands it to me. “Scott and I are going to a concert.”

“Cool.” She's been dating Scott, a fellow band member, since they were in eighth grade. He's an okay guy for a tuba player. I notice a Timbits box on the counter. “I see Jeff has been by recently.” He works at Tim Hortons, and sometimes brings work with him when he visits.

Annie passes the box to me and I fish out a couple. I hand her back the carton, but she waves them away. “Keep 'em,” she says. “You need them more than we do.”

“Thanks.” I pop the donut bits in my mouth. “Mom home?”

Annie sighs. “She's out at a flea market.”

“Jesus,” I say. I finish my sandwich and donut pieces and take a drink of water directly from the tap. I don't trust the cleanliness of any of their glasses. I wipe my mouth, and say, “Hey, wait 'til you see what I got today.” I unzip my bag and pull out the iPod. “Look.”

Annie's face lights up. “Wow. Where'd you get that?”

“It was inside one of the book bags. Earl said I could keep some of the stuff.” I had planned on keeping the iPod, but how would I keep it charged up? I hand it to my sister. “It's for you.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, and I got you something else too.”

She raises her eyebrows. I can almost hear her mind screaming,
Not more stuff!

“Don't worry,” I say. “It doesn't take up much space, and you can throw it out.” I pull out one of the books I got from the lockers and pass it to my sister.

Her face breaks into a grin. “
The Arabian Nights
!”

When my sister's dad, Bob, was still alive he used to read stories from
The Arabian Nights
to get us to sleep.

“Sorry it's kind of beat up, but it was a freebie from the school lockers.”

She holds the book against her chest. “Thank you for this. I won't throw it away. I'll toss out something of Mom's to make room for it.”

Our mom's stuff has accumulated enough to start spilling into my sister's room. And Mom freaks if you throw anything out. Oddly enough, as much crap as there is in the house, she notices when things are missing. It wasn't always like this. We used to move every few months, but about five years ago, when Mom married Tomas, we moved here. He's long gone, but the junk multiplies.

Jeff got lucky. He lives with his dad and his new family. Since they live nearby, Annie and I see Jeff at school all the time. Rooster, Ohio, is a small enough place, and everyone goes to one of three high schools in the county. Jeff's dad gave me my car. Not that he knows I live in it. At the time, I just needed a car to get to work and back. I moved out even before I got expelled because Mom's piles of crap had buried my bedroom.

Annie started keeping her clothes in a dresser drawer on the back porch about a year ago so she won't smell like the inside of the townhouse. Even in cold weather she changes clothes behind a curtain she devised from a blanket.

“I started sleeping out back,” she tells me. We walk to the back door and I see Annie has rigged up a folding lawn chair with some cushions. “I can't breathe inside this house.”

“You're always welcome to sleep in the backseat of my car,” I say.

“I might take you up on that if things get any worse.”

I give her a quick hug. “Thanks for the sandwich.” I pick up my bag and carefully trek my way up to the bathroom. Keeping a usable bathroom and a somewhat functional kitchen were the sole triumphs my sister had negotiated with our mother. So far. I just wonder when Annie will be shoved completely out the door too.

I drape the shirt over the shower door, hoping the steam straightens it out.

When I get back downstairs, Annie is sitting on the porch reading from the book. She looks up when I step outside. “Remember
The Fisherman and the Genie
?”

The Fisherman and the Genie
was one of our favorites as kids, probably because it was Bob's favorite.

“Thanks again for the book,” Annie says.

“No problem.”

She picks up the iPod and charger and hands them to me. “Here. You don't have any way to listen to music,” she says. “I have the radio or my stereo. Plus I already have an MP3 player.”

“Are you sure?” I say.

“Yeah. I'm sure.”

• • •

I get off work around 10:30 and stop at Kroger to buy a box of crackers (bread molds too quickly in this summer heat), a jar of Jif peanut butter, and a squirt bottle of honey. In the school library I read an article in
Outdoor Life
about surviving hikes and getting lost in the woods. It said peanut butter and honey are perfect foods because they're nutritious and don't spoil when they get too hot or cold. According to the article, a jar of honey can last 3,000 years, so I've been pretty much living on peanut butter and honey and fast-food dollar menus since I moved out of Mom's house. I buy a couple bananas and apples. I almost never eat salads or vegetables because they spoil quickly.

I count my leftover money: $13.12. Hopefully I'll find some more cash in the east wing lockers tomorrow.

I drive around the Graham Park neighborhood close to the school, but not so close I'm actually on the lot. I have to wait for the night custodians to leave at eleven; usually the school parking lot is empty by 11:15. The few minutes I charged the iPod at Mom's didn't last, and my phone is also dead, so I still don't know what time it is.

I sometimes sleep near my mom's, but now that I have to be at school so early, I park the car on or close to the school grounds to make sure I get there on time. I don't want to screw up this community service gig.

I could park the car anywhere I guess, but there are parts of town where I don't want to be seen, and also parts of town that scare the crap out of me. It's so hot inside the car I won't sleep for long stretches anyway. Tonight I settle in a dark spot near the football field, behind the training room. The heat forces me to sleep with the windows and the tailgate open.

The first thing that wakes me is the light. The sun rises early in summer and hits me in waves. Next thing I notice, of course, is the heat. My T-shirt and boxers are stuck to me. The third thing is the smell of something burning. A cigarette. But I don't smoke. What the hell? I jolt upright.

“Morning, sunshine.” Shelly is sitting in the open tailgate of my car, smoking. “Nice place you have here,” she says. “And such a good neighborhood.”

I run a hand through my hair and wipe my eyes. I grab a pair of shorts and slide them on over my boxers.

Shelly laughs. “Don't be embarrassed. I know about morning wood.”

I'm actually more embarrassed that she found me sleeping in the car. “What time is it?” I ask.

“Six-thirty or so.”

I try to conjure the reason that my car is parked behind the school at 6:30 in the morning when our sentences don't begin until eight. “I worked really late last night,” I say, “and I didn't want to be late and have Earl turn me in to the court.”

“Oh,” she says. She glances at the stacks of clothes and stuff everywhere. “Sure,” she says, as if she sees through my lie.

I slide out of the back of the car. “I work right after school, so I change clothes in here a lot.”
Good cover, Michael
, I tell myself. I turn away from her and pee along the back fence.

She reaches into her purse and pulls out a twenty. “How about breakfast?” she says. “Steak 'n Shake?”

“You're buying?”

“Technically my dad is buying. But you're driving.”

I envy her money. I'm also envious that she has a father, especially one who will give her a twenty with no questions asked. I clean the debris off the passenger seat and toss it all in the back. The door groans as she opens it and gets in. She glances around at the stuff littering the backseat.

“I am way overdue for going to the laundromat,” I say. Piles of my dirty shirts and pants are tossed on the seat next to my columns of books.

We drive in silence for a couple minutes, and then she fiddles with my radio. “It only gets AM,” I say.

“Why?”

“It's old, and it didn't come with FM. The antenna broke off a long time ago, so even what I do get is scratchy.”

She snaps off the radio. “That's okay. I'll just let you tell me why the hell you're living in your car.”

My face grows hot. I barely know this chick who, like me, lives on the south side of the law. “First, you tell me what the hell you did to get sentenced to community service.”

“I already told you. Got caught smoking.”

“That only gets you a few detentions or Saturday schools,” I say. I shoot her a glance. “I mean, look what I did. And it's a lot worse than inhaling too many packs of Kools.”

She crosses her arms. “I smoke Marlboros.”

“Whatever. I know what you did is at least as bad, if not worse, than me almost accidentally annihilating the school building.”