Breakfast with Neruda (3 page)

She fumbles through her enormous purse. “It's kind of a long, boring story,” she says.

I give her a charming grin. “The radio doesn't work, and I'm not very interesting, so . . .”

“Fine. We'll flip for who has to spill their guts first.” We pull into the restaurant parking lot. I glance in the window and see a few kids from school, including my ex-best friend sitting next to my ex-girlfriend. “Not here,” I say, and back out of the parking space.

“Frenemies?” she asks.

“Something like that.”

She glances at her phone. “I guess we don't really have time to get waited on anyway. It's like ten after seven already.” I drive down Rocket Road and pull into the drive-thru at McDonald's.

I order the Big Breakfast platter with extra butter, an extra biscuit, a large Diet Coke, and an apple pie. Shelly glances at me. “Sure you don't want a side of beef with that? Wouldn't want you to starve.”

I stifle a laugh. “If I'm telling you my life story, you have to feed me first.”

Shelly just orders an Egg McMuffin and small mocha. She hands me the twenty, and I pay the girl at the window. It's Krissy Jones from my AP English class last year. She acts friendly enough, but her eyes dart between the two of us as if she's a little afraid. I take the change and am tempted to pocket it, but Shelly holds out her hand. I smirk, dribble the coins into her palm, and place the bills in her lap.

“Shall we flip now?” she asks.

“Can we eat first?”

We pull around and park by the exit lane. I open the bags. The uncommon smell of hot breakfast food fills me with glee. Normally all I eat in the morning is a few handfuls of dry cereal and a banana. I hold the plate in my hands like it's a silver platter and take a giant whiff. Shelly snickers and shakes her head as I stab at the eggs with the plastic fork and practically inhale them.

Shelly watches me as she slowly nibbles at her sandwich. She waits until I have finished the eggs, sausage, and hash browns and start to butter my biscuit before she says, “Heads or tails?”

With my mouth full of biscuit, I say, “Heads.”

She flips one of her quarters. “It's tails.” She smiles. “Okay, buddy. Spill the story. Why the hell did you want to blow us to smithereens? And why do you live in your car?”

I glance at her. I wonder how much of the truth I want to share. She already knows how I got in trouble, which doesn't really relate to how I left home.

“First of all,” I say, “you are not allowed to say you're sorry for me, or about anything I plan to tell you. Is that clear?”

She chuckles. “Okay.”

“Okay.” I cram the second biscuit inside my mouth and wash it down with a big gulp of Diet Coke. I belch. “Tell me what you think you know about me,” I say.

“Well, not much, except they actually found enough firecrackers in your book bag to burn down a chunk of the building.”

“True so far.”

“Why did you do that?”

I stare out the windshield, half watching the morning traffic build up on Rocket Road. “I wasn't planning to blow up the school.”

“Why the firecrackers then?”

“It's complicated,” I say.

“Did getting expelled get you booted out of your house?”

I shrug. “Yeah. Kinda.” I let the lie linger. I don't want to tell her about my mom's hoarding. Nobody knows about that except Annie and Jeff and me, and none of us is talking. I think Rick suspected too, because I stopped inviting him to my house.

“Isn't there some other relative you could live with?” Shelly asks.

I could have stayed with my grandmother for a while, but she's crazy too, in her three-pack-a-day, bottle-of-whiskey way, though at least her apartment isn't filled with useless junk. Grandma Barb lives in a senior apartment facility and has just the one bedroom. I could probably go there in an emergency, like if we get a blizzard this winter, but I can't live there since I'm not fifty-five-plus.

“No.”

“What about your dad?”

“He's not in the picture,” I snap. Unlike Jeff, who actually lives with his dad, and saw him every weekend before he moved in with him, I have never met my own father. I don't even know his name. Flynn is my mother's maiden name.

“But you still haven't told me why you had explosives in your book bag,” she says.

I slump back in the seat and take a breath. “Do you know Rick Shraver?”

“Marginally.”

“Yeah, well, he was my target. Not him, exactly. I was just going to blow up his car.”

I glance at her but I can't read her reaction. “Anyway, he and I used to be friends. Since grade school we were tight. But junior year I started seeing Ashley Anders . . .” It's hard to think about her now. Ashley Anders, with her butter-colored hair and ocean-colored eyes.

“Go on,” Shelly says.

“I never should have let Rick get to know her. I started seeing Ashley year before last, and we also hung around Rick sometimes. We'd go to the movies and stuff. A couple times when I had to work, the two of them got together and hung out. He was my best friend, right? I mean, shouldn't he be the one guy I trusted with my girlfriend? “

“You'd think.”

“Yeah. Well, I couldn't get off work on prom night last March. And by then . . .” I was about to say I had been living in my car for several months, but I wanted Shelly to think my moving out had to do with the bomb disaster. “I needed money for my car insurance and couldn't afford to risk getting fired, and nobody would trade with me.”

“Sucks,” she says.

I nod. “Ashley and Rick stopped by the theater before dinner so she could show me her prom dress. And those two looked really good together, you know? At ease and in sync, yet nothing odd clicked in me. Yet.

“I remember she wore this cobalt blue gown and her normally pale skin was sprayed with a fake tan. Not a gross fakey one, but just enough color to make it look more like the beginning of June instead of the end of March. People in line at the concession stand all stared at her, as if she had just come from the Academy Awards.”

I shift in my seat and look at Shelly. “Have you ever had one of those ESP kind of moments, like it's the best time in your life, but you know this is the last best moment of your life, and soon everything will turn to shit?”

She nods.

“Well, this was one of those times. I mean, Rick didn't hold her hand or anything, and they didn't appear to be acting like a couple, but there was this invisible energy between them, something that maybe even they weren't aware of. Maybe he was, but Ashley came up and kissed me, which right there in front of all those people made me look damn good. Anyway, somehow I knew that kiss was the last one. I had this unspoken dread, and that dread followed me through the rest of my shift. When I got off, I was supposed to meet them at the after-prom at Main Lanes Bowling, but they weren't there. I drove around, and didn't find them at his house or her house. And I'm wondering, what the hell?

“So I cruised around all night, worrying, thinking. I stopped and slept for a couple of hours, and drove around again. I woke at seven in the morning and I drove past the Red Roof Inn, and that's when I saw them, coming out of a room.” I picture it now: Ashley's hair all messed up in a knot on top her head, she and Rick holding hands.

“And something in me just snapped. I feel sick remembering it all now. How I wanted to mash my foot on the accelerator and crush them with my car. The only thing that stopped me was a little kid who came out of the adjoining room, so I just sped off.”

“And you plotted your revenge?” Shelly says.

I nod. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Wow,” Shelly says. “Sorry about that.”

“You said you weren't going to feel sorry for me.”

“I'm not sorry
for
you; I'm sorry with you.” She lights a cigarette. “One question, though.”

“Yeah?”

“How did you get caught? Did you tell someone what you planned to do?”

“No. When I was stuffing my bag in my locker before homeroom, one of the firecrackers, an M-80, which looks like dynamite, fell on the floor and a group of girls freaked out and started screaming, 'OMG, he has dynamite! He's going to blow up the school!' A couple teachers ran out of their rooms, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

“How were you planning on blowing up his car?”

“I was going to skip study hall and plant the fireworks,” I say. “Funny thing is I hadn't brought any matches, which kind of helped my case.”

Shelly laughs and shakes her head. “I'm surprised you didn't make ‘Morons in the News' on
Bob & Sheri
.”

“I made the national news, though.” All the networks ran the story. And the YouTube clips of my arrest will live online forever.

“So what did you do with your time off after they booted you out of school?” she asked.

“Worked at the theater. Read a lot of books.”

Shelly glances at her phone. “We better go.”

“Wait. You have to tell me your story.”

“We'll save it for lunch.”

We get back to the school with enough time for me take what my sister calls a “whore's bath” in the men's room, and report for duty. Earl has brought in a plate of peanut butter cookies. I'm liking him more and more.

By lunchtime, Shelly has evaporated. Hess tells me she had a court date. That sneaky bitch. She knew all along she wouldn't be here.

• • •

It reaches 100 degrees today, which means my car is 250 degrees inside when I get off work. Or rather, work detail. The AC in the Blue Whale hasn't worked since the beginning of time, so I soak my hands in water from the outside spigot so the dark blue plastic steering wheel doesn't char my skin. I start the Whale up and use my 4-70 air conditioning, which is where I open all four windows and fly down the freeway at seventy miles an hour to cool her off.

My phone buzzes just as I pull off at a rest area. Mitch has texted and wants me to come in early. One good thing about this weather is the movie theaters are crowded. I text back,
Give
me an hour
.

There is no way I can close the windows and lock the car in this heat, so I haul my whole pack into the men's room. I take another sink bath, shampoo my hair, put on deodorant, and rummage through my bag for one of the cologne samples I ripped out of
GQ
magazines at the public library. I have Guess and Montblanc. I choose Guess, deciding to save the other in case I ever get a date again. I also change my shirt. My cargo pants are filthy. All I have left is a pair of jeans, and the theater has a dress code: khaki or olive green pants only. No shorts. Hell. I text my brother Jeff.

-Got any long pants I can borrow?

-Yeah

-Can I come by?

-Meet me at TH in 30

-Need to b khaki or green

-K

I hand-wash my cargo pants in the sink. The hand soap will make them stiff, but at least I won't smell like a Rottweiler that rolled in cow shit next time I wear them.

I put on the jeans, stash my shampoo and other crap in the bag, wring out the pants, and go back out to my car. Nothing's missing. It's too hot to commit crimes.

I clip the wet pants to a line I rigged up in the back seat. The 4-70 air will help dry them.

At Tim Hortons, I sit at a booth and wait for my brother. They know me in here so I know they won't throw me out for loitering. In fact, Lexie, who's working the counter, brings me a cup of water. I thank her and read while I wait for Jeff.

A few minutes later, Jeff slides into my booth. “Hey, bro,” he says. “What do you know?” He is freshly showered, wearing his brown Tim Hortons uniform. His short blond hair is still damp from a shower. He hands me a pair of khaki pants.

“Thanks.”

“Want something to eat?”

“Sure. I can always eat.” Jeff chuckles and gets me a box of Timbits and cup of chicken noodle soup.

• • •

One bad thing about working in the only movie theater in town is I know too many people who come here. I am standing behind the concession counter when I spot Rick and Ashley in line at the ticket booth. I feign a stomach cramp and tell Mitch I need to take a quick break. “It must be the tacos I had at lunch,” I say. I'm not ready to face either of them. I spend about ten minutes in the employee restroom, plenty of time to avoid a confrontation.

I work until midnight. My pants are not stolen (thank you!) but not completely dry, either. The humidity clings to everything like spider webs.

The good thing about living on a relatively safe side of town is I can sleep with the car windows open without getting murdered. But tonight it storms again, a mega–special effects show of rock concert lightning and thunder, and I am trapped in a mobile greenhouse. Sleep will be rough, if it comes at all.

I try to listen to music to drown out the storm. I had remembered to charge up the iPod at work, but the music on it sucks. Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber-ish boy band shit. Once I get paid I'll buy an iTunes card and download something decent like some jazz or blues.

The rain pounds as if a herd of buffalo is stampeding on my roof, and the wind rocks the Blue Whale back and forth like a boat. If it weren't a hurricane out there, the rocking motion would be relaxing.

The storm dies down after an hour or so, and I manage to get a fistful of sleep. I wake up all clammy and my clothes are stuck to my skin.

I feel like road kill, but I squirm up and extricate my weary body from the Blue Whale to piss in the bushes. I stumble back to my car and Shelly is sitting on the open tailgate, inhaling a Marlboro.

“Hey,” I say.

“I see you survived the latest tornado,” she says.

“Really? So that
was
a tornado.”

“Yeah. A small one hit the north end of town,” she says. “The power's out at our house again.”