Vibes (11 page)

I look at him warily. I really don't want to do this, but he did it, so I can't hold back. It wouldn't be fair. Maybe if I start with the worst thing, the rest will be easier. "Well, you know those practical jokes I told you about?"

He nods.

"They're kind of mean." With a pang I remember that poor woman's bloody knee. "I'm cruel sometimes. For no reason. Other than to make myself laugh."

He writes this down without seeming to judge it and waits, his pen poised over the paper.

"I hate my mom. My dad left because of her."

He writes this down, too.

"I guess you could say I'm a misanthrope. I just don't really like people, you know? I distrust their motives."

"That's why I like dogs. They don't have motives."

"That's only three," I say with dread. It feels like slowly extracting a tooth, talking to Gusty this way. The only way I can get through this is to babble. "I purposely frustrate my teachers. I don't take school seriously. I keep a cat in the house that makes my mother sick. I have a terrible diet. I just eat pizza and chips and I drink soda and stuff ice cream down my throat at night while I watch stupid TV. I'm conceited about my intelligence, and I think everyone around me is stupid because usually they are. I don't exercise. I drink too much coffee." I remember the way the dog had been trotting down the street, a huge smile on his face. He was so happy to be free, and for the first time I wonder if Minnie Mouse is truly happy. "I keep my cat locked in my bedroom all day because I have to hide her from my mother, and it isn't fair. I never write to my dad, which is maybe why he's stayed away so long. And he's coming back on Thursday and I don't know if he means to stay or not, and I'm not sure I want him to, even though if you had asked me a week ago what I most wanted in the whole world, I'd have said it was for my dad to come back. But I don't want him anymore. I don't want him to see me. I'm fat and he'll be disappointed, and I hate him. I just hate him!"

At some point Gusty has stopped writing things down and is just looking at me, and then pretty soon the people at the next table are looking, and then the guy at the front counter is looking at me. When I realize what an ass I'm making of myself I shut up completely and hold my hand over my face, which makes me look even crazier.
What am I doing? Why did I say all that?

I feel a hand on my shoulder, and Gusty blinks at me. His face is so sad that he almost looks ugly. He takes a napkin out of the holder on our table and hands it to me because he can see I'm nearly crying. I dab at my nose. It's totally full of snot but I don't want to expel mucus in front of him. "You're not fat," he says once I've calmed down a little.

"I'm not skinny."

"Skinny girls remind me of my sister," he says, wrinkling his nose. "Yech."

I laugh, but this makes a tear squeeze out of my eye. "I'm sorry!" I cry.

"For what?" It's not a rhetorical question. He really doesn't understand why I'm sorry, and he wants to know.

Somehow this scares me. I don't know how to answer him, and I don't know what to do. The way he looks at me is so—what? I don't like it. I don't like the way he's looking at me, as though he can see past my face into the toxic dump inside my head. I can feel his thoughts working their way through the tiny gaps in my mind. Like a trickle of water they seep through the wall I've held up between us, and I can hear them begin to drip onto my feelings, and they burn.
She's got real problems,
he thinks.

"It's getting late. I should get going," I say. "I'm sorry that I..." What? Had a conniption fit?

"You don't have to go, do you?"

"I'm sorry. I just—I just realized I forgot to feed my cat this morning."

"Oh, okay," he says. He seems confused. "I'll see you later?"

"Yeah." I pick up my backpack so quickly that I knock his satchel onto the floor, and everyone in the place turns to look at me again. I hold my head down and walk out of Pluribus.

I'm never going back there. I can't be with Gusty Peterson. He hurts too much.

Airports were invented by psychotic savants with an uncanny ability to pinpoint the precise level of grossness hungry travelers will tolerate in overpriced food.

We arrive forty-five minutes early only to find that Dad's flight is delayed by two hours. For the first hour we walk around and Aunt Ann buys me a pile of crap I don't need. I get a silk scarf with brown butterflies on it, a best-selling novel by some ex-marine hack, a mint green travel mug, some botanical body oil that smells like sandalwood, a Denver Broncos team jersey, a glass paperweight with a scorpion inside it, some Zuni Indian turquoise earrings, a vibrating massage thingy, and finally, because it is all getting pretty heavy, a red rolling suitcase to carry it all. Once we cover every store we get some chai green-tea decaf skim-milk lattes and two huge brownies with walnuts in them and watch CNN while we eat. Then we realize we are hungry and get personal pan pizzas and eat those, finishing it all off with fat-free frozen yogurt sundaes. I think she must have spent about two hundred dollars, and I didn't ask for a thing.

"Are you excited to see your dad?" she asks as she shovels her narrow face full of vanilla frozen yogurt dotted with tiny M&M's.

"Yes," I say, because this is the tenth time she's asked me and I've finally figured out that the only thing that will shut her up is if I tell her what she wants to hear.

"I'm excited, too! He says he's lost twenty-five pounds!" She giggles, which makes her look like a baby bird. "So have you heard from Gusty?" she asks me leadingly. She suspects there's more to the story than I've told her, and she won't let up until I break.

"No, I haven't, and I don't really want to."

"Yeah, right." She giggles. "How does he act at school?"

"I don't know. I've been avoiding him." Since my breakdown at Pluribus three days ago, I've managed not to be in the same room even once with him. Every Morning Meeting I've arrived at the last possible moment and left at the earliest opportunity. Every lunch period I've eaten with Mallory in the parking lot, and every day after school I have been the first student out the door. I just have to keep this up for the next three years and I'll never have to speak to him again.

"You need to stop avoiding the people you like, honey."

"I don't like him."

"And I don't like Russell Crowe."

"Gusty is a dumbass anyway."

"You would never have a crush on a dumbass."

"I don't have a crush on him."

She rolls her beady eyes. "I think you should give this boy a chance, Kristi. He sounds like a nice kid, and he's cute, too. That's a difficult combination to find." Aunt Ann shares my suspicion of beautiful people, though she's less draconian about it.

"He thinks I'm sick."

"How do you know?"

"Because I can
read minds
," I tell her for the millionth time. She's the only person who knows about my ability because she's the only person I can trust with it. She only half believes me, which is fine with me. I don't have anything to prove.

"Honey, I know you're intuitive, but I don't think you're right all the time."

"I know what I know."

"Oh yeah? What am I thinking right now?"

I stare into her small brown irises. I let my mind go blank enough to receive her message and then say with a shrug, "You think I'm beautiful and any boy would be proud to go out with me, but you don't know Gusty Peterson and I do. He thinks I'm sick and psycho and that's all there is to it."

"I think you're the one who thinks you're sick, whatever that means. But I have to admit that was exactly what I was thinking. You're gorgeous, you just don't know it, and any boy
would
be proud to be with you." She winks at me, then stacks our empty bowls and tosses them into the trash can. "Let's go to the security area to wait for your dad."

I follow her very reluctantly. The pants I'm wearing are chafing the insides of my thighs, and my shirt feels weirdly constricting. For the first time in two years I'm wearing a store-bought outfit. My found wardrobe is probably a little much for Dad to take in, and maybe I don't want to show him that part of me. So instead I'm wearing the black slacks Mom got me for Christmas and an eyelet blouse Aunt Ann picked out for me when we went to California wine country last year. She buys even more stuff for me when she's blitzed.

We park ourselves by the security gate and Aunt Ann takes my hand. One of her fingernails digs into my wrist, but I don't mind so much because she's helping me feel less shaky. I take slow breaths and practice in my mind how I'll be. I will smile slightly, but not like I'm excited. More like I'm only slightly glad to see him. I will not cry. I will not say anything to him unless he speaks to me first, and then I will give him exclusively one-word answers until we get into the car. Once in the car I will open up slightly more, just enough to give him encouragement so that he doesn't give up the idea of trying to talk to me. By the time we get to Aunt Ann's house, I will begin volunteering information, but only the kind of stuff I would say at a job interview, such as my grades, my hobbies, current interests. I will mention Mom more times than he is comfortable with, and I will say her medical career is going splendidly, which will be almost the same thing as spitting in his eye. But I'll do it innocently so he won't know I'm consciously toying with him.

That's the plan.

But when the people start filing past the security gate, my heart rises to my mouth and all thoughts sail out of my brain. Aunt Ann is jumping up and down very slightly, biting her thin lip and kind of squealing. I stand behind her because I would rather she be the first person Dad sees when he gets here. Almost the entire plane full of people has filed past us before a balding man with blond-streaked hair, dark skin, and shining eyes comes up to us, drops his suitcase, and holds up his arms. "Hi, girls!" he cries.

It's Dad. I didn't even recognize him.

"Your hair!" Aunt Ann cries as she rushes at him. "Oh, little brother!" She starts crying.

I just stand there as they hug and hug. "Hey, little sister," the man who is my dad says. Aunt Ann is really the older sibling, but Dad calls her his little sister because she's so petite. "How you been?" he asks her, looking at me over her shoulder.

I don't like the way he's looking at me, as if he expects me to be mad and wants me to know that he's fully prepared for it. He pulls away from Ann and puts one hand on my shoulder. "Kristi. My, you've grown into a beautiful young woman."

I don't know what to say to him. I try to read his mind, but his strange face and weirdly skinny body are too distracting for me. He lost a lot of hair, but he looks a lot younger than he used to because he's so thin. The way he moves on his feet is light, as if he's ready to jump into action. He holds his head high, and his shoulders are square instead of bent like they used to be. He almost looks like a movie star. I watch him like I'd watch TV not expecting it to watch me back.

A smile slowly creeps over his face. The wrinkles around his eyes bend, and he takes a step toward me. I can see what he means to do, so I pick up his suitcase to hold between us. "We're parked a long way from here," I say, then I turn my back on him and walk away.

Things don't go the way I planned. I thought Dad would have all kinds of questions for me, but mostly he talks to Aunt Ann. He keeps looking at me in the side mirror of Ann's Honda Civic, as if he can't believe the way I look. I let him look at me, but I don't have anything to say to him, and apparently he has no trouble containing his curiosity about me as he answers all of Aunt Ann's questions about Ebola, dysentery, typhoid, measles, tuberculosis, malaria, and parasitic worms. I can tell she's working her way up to AIDS, which gives me a little time to think strategy.

I'm not in control. I thought I would be the one fending off the questions, but Dad is too busy to ask a single one. Aunt Ann is too fascinated by disease to give him a moment's thought about anything else. I listen to him explain that Ebola is rare, even in Africa, and that he hasn't seen a case yet. And yes, there are parasites, but they aren't transmitted through human-to-human contact. That he's inoculated against most everything else and so we shouldn't worry about catching anything from him. He sounds authoritative and happy to be talking about medicine. When she starts asking about AIDS he practically jumps out of the car with excitement, talking all about how his team is heading up a national campaign for education about prophylactics. A puppeteer from San Francisco is going to give educational puppet shows to grown women about birth control, how to say no to a man, and how to look out for an abusive personality. It sounds a little patronizing to make a puppet show for grownups, but then, what do I know about African people? Maybe they like puppets. Or maybe they're just too polite to tell rich do-gooders from America when they're being condescending jerk-offs.

We finally get to Aunt Ann's tiny house, which is one suburb over from ours. It's a poorer suburb, because she doesn't make that much money as a hospital administrator, but she likes where she lives. She's surrounded by a lot of Latinos, and she shouts incoherent Spanish at them, so they love her. Near where we park the car a whole bunch of guys wearing sweaty office shirts are kicking around a soccer ball. When they see her, one of them cries,
"Mamacita, por qué no vienes para una cerveza luego, eh?"

"No puedo, papi!"
She giggles. Her face is bright red.
"Mi sobrina bellísima está en casa con mi hermano."

They break into even faster Spanish that I can't begin to understand. I had only a year of the Language of Our Hispanic Neighbors at Journeys before the parents decided they wanted their kids to learn the Language of Our French-Canadian Neighbors instead. Aunt Ann yells something about
mañana
at them, and then we all go into her tiny house.

She has put up a banner that says, "Welcome home, little brother!" in big orange letters. She runs into the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, "Sangria all around?"