This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

FIRST EDITION, January 2013

Copyright (c) 2012 by Larry Buhl

All rights reserved

Cover design by Damonza

Interior layout: www.formatting4U.com

www.larrybuhlbooks.com

Printed in the United States of America

An original publication of Beso Books

For the castaways

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ALSO BY LARRY

ONE

August 26. Class journal number one is a list of dumb things people say:

·         Smile, it’s not so bad. Maybe it is that bad. And why are they imposing their good mood on someone else? Today, the woman who registered me for classes, and my biology II teacher, told me to smile. Both times, I thought I already was smiling.

·         How are you? People want me to answer “fine.” They don’t care if the pollen count is high and my sinuses are inflamed. I informed my case manager of those issues at my phone check-in last week. He responded as he usually does: “Awesome, awesome!”

·         Are we having fun yet? If you have to ask…

·         Let go and let God. Let God do what? Vagueness is irksome.

·         God bless you. When people sneeze, I respond with “Gesundheit,” unless they don’t cover their mouths, in which case I retreat quickly. In one of my seventh grade extra credit history papers, I wrote that gesundheit was originally used to prevent the sneezer from being invaded by evil spirits. In the future, I may respond this way to mess with superstitious sneezers. I will say, in a cryptic voice, “This is how it begins.”

**

It was getting late. I had spent too long on my class journal and had made no progress on my Caltech admissions essays. I was applying through early admissions, a process that was like choosing only one bride when the bride has the option of rejecting you. One might ask, “Why not skip early admissions and apply during the regular deadline?” The answer was to set a course for my future as early as possible. Knowing where I would be attending college by December 15th, rather than March, or later, would eliminate months of uncertainty. I had enough uncertainty in the Foster-go-Round, AKA Nevada Department of Child and Family Services, and earlier, with my biological mother, or BiMo.

I should not bring up my BiMo again, nor will I delve into the circumstances surrounding her death.

But I’ll offer this advice. People with severe allergies to shellfish and eggs should not leave their EpiPen at home when they go to a Thai restaurant and request something with shellfish and eggs. If they ignore this advice, when they experience the inevitable anaphylaxis, they should not leave the restaurant and stagger along an empty sidewalk until they collapse. As the saying goes, if I can save one life, it’s worth it.

The first Caltech essay prompt—Tell us anything you think we should know about you—was maddeningly ambiguous. My efforts contained gems like my opening paragraph.

The gazelle, when separated from the herd, is in a precarious situation. However, should he survive, he will grow stronger and wiser for the next onslaught. I am that gazelle, surviving and growing.

You are that admissions committee, laughing and hurling.

I concentrated on the second essay prompt. Communities we are born into, those we make, and those we fall into by accident, influence us and shape us. Describe a defining community in your life and what it means to you.

Even though many of my extra credit essays over the years turned out all right, I’m not much of a writer. Composing an essay about cyclonic separation, for example, was a breeze—and I don’t think this was a pun, intended or otherwise—compared to summing up my life experience while trying to sound upbeat about the whole thing.

Humans have much to learn from honeybees. Their society is a well-run machine, not unlike the most effective human communities. The ongoing colony collapse disorder that is now devastating bee colonies shows the limits of sociability. It is theorized that, because the bees know they are sick, they fly off together in a mass die-off. Living together. Dying together. This is why I want to call Caltech home.

I had a brain fart. This is not a medical term. It means that I couldn’t think clearly, temporarily. I required the assistance of Cap’n Crunch. I always disliked how products bastardized the spelling of real words. However, that didn’t stop me from consuming something that would have more accurately been called Captain Crunch, or Crunchy Sugary Cereal Squares. Whatever. Product naming was not the contribution I would make to society.

In the pantry, affixed to my cereal box, was a yellow post-it note. This has a lot of sugar. I left the note on the box. I had been considering better cereal choices, even though good nutrition was always more expensive. Now that someone I hardly knew was pestering me to eat healthier, I wanted to keep consuming crap.

Walking back from the kitchen, I briefly peeked into my FoFa’s office. FoFa is a term I use for foster father. It is shorter than foster father, although I realize I have used many words to explain this. FoHo means foster home. FoPa means foster parent. FoMo is foster mother.

Anyway, his real name was Carl.

Carl worked as a part-time professor of computer science at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. He alluded to previously owning some kind of technology business in California. That, and the fact he liked cars and old clocks, and had traveled extensively, were all I knew about him.

Carl hunched over a desk covered with tiny, saw-like pieces of metal, an old rotor, screws, bezels, and glass. On the far wall were display shelves containing several dozen ancient clocks in various states of disrepair. I lingered a nanosecond too long. He looked up and raised his glasses. “There’s Carl, getting his clock cleaned again,” he said.

I wanted to respond, but nothing came to mind. It was odd hearing someone speak of himself in the third person. Later that night, I learned that cleaning someone’s clock was a euphemism for giving that person a beating. In the past, I was often perplexed by euphemisms and other clever English phrases. My teacher for tenth grade English told us to “avoid clichés like the plague.” She thought that was witty, but I didn’t get it, until someone explained that like the plague was a cliché and that my teacher had made some kind of double cliché. Lately I have reached a cease-fire in my battle with metaphors, similes, and other figures of speech so they are no longer albatrosses around my neck.

Carl was cleaning a clock, literally, but not getting it cleaned. I didn’t challenge him on this distinction. I didn’t ask him about his clocks, and I didn’t expect him to go into detail about the difficulty of replacing rotors. But he did. I listened.

One thing did impress me. Carl said he liked old clocks because they were well engineered and that modern electronics were built to be disposable. I kept an overstuffed Box o’ Crap under my bed because I hated throwing things away, so I appreciated Carl’s point about hanging on to things, long before he stopped making it.

Then he asked about my first day of school.

“It could have been worse,” I said.

He laughed, although I didn’t see what was funny. He inquired about my classes, so I provided my new schedule—calculus, applied physics, German IV, biology II, and English lit. I omitted the Creative Soul class because it would require too much explaining.

He wanted to know what topics would be covered in physics.

“Quantum chromodynamics.” The teacher hadn’t given us a syllabus yet. Quantum chromodynamics was the first physics phrase that came into my head. It was something I read in Scientific American magazine. I don’t know why I didn’t tell Carl the truth.

“I wish I could help you out,” he said. “If you need to know a thing or two about software design, I can help.”

My Cap’n Crunch was becoming a pond of tan sugar slurry. I thanked Carl for his offer. I took my bowl back to the kitchen to start over. I stared out the kitchen window and waited for the milk to transform the cereal into the perfect consistency, Cap’n Crunch al dente, while considering my approach to Caltech’s “community” essay. The blinds in the neighbor’s kitchen window pinched apart. I saw an eye. The blinds closed.

I must have lost track of time, because by the time I headed back to my room with my new bowl of cereal, Janet, my FoMo, had materialized in the living room. She was watching a TV show about convicted killers. The announcer said one murderer had “turned to the Bible to help him in his new career as a talk show host.”

Janet snorted. “Good luck.” At first, I thought she was talking to me, but I quickly realized she was making a crack about the killer. She pressed pause and the screen froze on the convict making a pucker face in front of a Bible.

“How was the first day of school?” I noticed Janet and Carl often asked the same questions separately. I wished they would be in the same room at the same time so I could avoid redundancy. I stopped next to an enormous Indonesian cabinet and told her nothing terrible had happened.

She laughed. “No bombs went off?”

I assured her no bombs had exploded. I didn’t know what was funny about bombs. I wondered whether there had been bomb threats at Firebird High in the past. I made a mental note to research that.

She started talking about her day. After a minute, it still wasn’t clear what her job was. I narrowed it down to something sales-related. My small talk session with Carl hadn’t gone as well as I had hoped, so I tried to be more proactive in chitchatting with Janet. “The bees are still dying,” I said.

“Whose bees?”

I explained colony collapse syndrome, in which honeybees were leaving their hives and dying by the billions. The latest research showed that the die-off could be caused by anything from an undiscovered fungus to cell phone signals that mess up their internal radar. I segued into an explanation of why bees were so important. For the record, they pollinate a huge variety of crops. Take away the bees and you take away up to one third of the human diet, from almonds to zucchini.

“Guess we’ll have to live on granola bars pretty soon,” she laughed.

I was silent. I could have pointed out that some granola bars have almonds, but I chose not to.

“Speaking of food, we need to have dinner together,” she said.

We needed to?

I told her I worked at my catering job four nights a week, and that I had to prepare for my Caltech application.

“Aren’t you the busy one?” Her tone indicated this was a statement borne of annoyance, rather than a question.

I said Friday would be all right.

“That wasn’t so hard. I’ll make something with almonds or zucchini, before the bees go extinct.” She laughed. She was doing a lot of laughing about serious subjects. But that was better than yelling and throwing a breast pump for no reason. One of my past FoMos did that.

I took my bowl of Cap’n no-longer-Crunch to the kitchen, hurled it down the drain, and gave up. I gave up on the essays, too. I spent the rest of the evening culling some useless items from my Box o’ Crap.

My Box o’ Crap was a fairly ornate wooden box, about a foot by two feet, and eight inches deep. My BiMo gave it to me when I was ten. I’m sorry to bring up my BiMo again.

**

August 27. Things in my Box o’ Crap:

·         A ancient tin of Altoids.

·         Programs from all of my science fairs.

·         A name tag from a horrible supermarket job.

·         Birthday cards from Nevada Department of Family Services.

·         Photocopied Christmas letters from biological grandmother, supposedly written by her cat.

·         Every letter from Family Services informing me of a transfer to a new FoHo.

·         A movie ticket stub, from The Pursuit of Happyness. It was an okay movie, but it bothered me that they misspelled happiness on purpose.

·         My BiMo’s unmarked CDs of some of her favorite songs.

**

Sometime around 2 a.m., I remembered I had to work on Friday, so I wouldn’t be able to have dinner with Carl and Janet. And I was scheduled for Saturday and Sunday evening shifts as well. I got up and wrote a note to that effect on the refrigerator white board. As much as I wanted to be accommodating and pleasant, I didn’t want to rearrange my schedule for a FoPa dinner. It was nice of them to offer, but I assumed my case manager put them up to it.

I could imagine the conversation.

Case manager: “Do something for your new foster kid so he doesn’t become a prostitute or drug addict.”

Janet: “Is that likely?”

Case manager: “Happens all the time. Many end up dead.”

Janet: “Oh dear. We should make dinner.”

Case manager: “Awesome, awesome! And keep asking about his school.”

Carl: “We will! And I’ll talk about old clocks!”

I hoped they would forget about dinner. FoPas and biological parents made a lot of promises. By the time they were ready to follow through on any of them, it was usually too late.

TWO

A room with a locking door in a quiet house was all I needed. That’s what Carl and Janet offered. It was a very nice house in an older subdivision, which meant it was built at least a decade ago. Bordering this subdivision was a megastore, a strip mall with a pharmacy, a strip mall with a gas station, and a dusty patch awaiting a chain store. All of these stores were in walking distance.

On the day I moved in, they took me on a tour of the house. They spent more than five minutes showing off their dining table, a heavy, primitive carved wood piece that looked like it belonged in the jungle. Actually, it was made in the jungle. They had it shipped from a village in rural Thailand. I appreciated them taking the time to show me everything. But I received their implicit message. Don’t mess up our beautiful stuff.

Just before the Foster-go-Round transferred me to Carl and Janet’s house, I submitted an application for emancipation. The emancipation process would take four months under the best of circumstances. With the state cutbacks, the system was working even slower than usual. I anticipated that my hearing would be Thanksgiving at the earliest. After that, it would be another month until I was cut loose from the system.

I didn’t bring up the issue of emancipation to Carl and Janet. I assumed my case manager had informed them. Either way, they didn’t need to be involved with the process until the hearing. All I needed to do was stay out of their hair.

My plan required money for an apartment, plus tuition and living expenses for Caltech. There was no guarantee I would receive enough financial aid. That meant I needed to boost my earning potential, stat. The crummiest bachelor apartment in the vicinity of Firebird High would be at least $400 a month. After seven jobs in two years and over two-dozen tutees, I managed to save only $10,588.

Unfortunately my hours at my latest job were dwindling, and the owner, Mr. Ferguson, had cut our already paltry wages. All catering businesses in Las Vegas were in a slump, but Covenant Catering was in dire shape.

It didn’t help that Mr. Ferguson had been turning away business due to his religious beliefs. He was a devout, newly-converted Mormon who was making up for his “first forty-five years in the spiritual wilderness” by going completely overboard. He would cater no events with alcohol or caffeine and would not work with organizations that promoted moral depravity. He was also against catering functions that had anything to do with gambling. In Las Vegas. He turned down the chance to cater the grand opening of a dental clinic. He thought x-rays were blasphemous. After only three jobs in a month—two wedding receptions and a small office party—he relented on his no caffeine rule and he saw the light on x-rays. I think that’s a pun and an idiom.

Mr. Ferguson kept reminding me that I was the first employee he had hired outside the “flock,” which meant Mormons. He said this so I would feel even more grateful for the job. In the interview I told him I had thought about Mormonism and I was “looking for answers.” I put it exactly that way so he would hire me, thinking he could convert me.

I like to believe that my culinary skills helped in the hiring decision. I was self-taught. My BiMo was not so much a bad cook as an inconsistent one. I had to read labels carefully whenever she was too lethargic to do so. In her last two years she became increasingly careless about avoiding eggs and shellfish. One time I checked the label of a new protein powder. One of the ingredients was apovitellin. I had not heard of that substance before and I told her to wait until I checked it out. Apovitellin, the Web site said, was derived from the low-density lipoprotein of eggs and could cause even worse reactions in allergic individuals than the egg itself. It could have killed her. She gave the tub of protein to her then-boyfriend and thanked me for being so conscientious. I was eleven, by the way. In her last year, I did most of the cooking for us, at least when she was at home. By doing this, I saved her life. Or, rather, I prolonged it a bit.

I said I wasn’t going to mention my BiMo any more and I meant it.

For weeks, Mr. Ferguson had been giving me pamphlets about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. At the end of every shift he would ask whether I had any questions. I said I had read them, which was a lie, and that everything was clear, which was also a lie. This led Mr. Ferguson to keep badgering me to ask questions.

After a few weeks, my questions turned silly. Do astronomical associations have any qualms about each faithful member of the church having his own planet? If the Garden of Eden were really in Missouri, would St. Louis be a holier place than Boston? If Satan was Jesus’ brother, is the main conflict in the world sibling rivalry? He valiantly struggled to answer, treating each question as if it were the key to unlocking my appreciation of his religion.

Mr. Ferguson asked at beginning of every shift if I had made any “progress” at school. Progress to him meant leads for new customers. I told him I had not, and that it was a new school, and it had only been in session for a few days. “A bright young man like you should have no trouble making friends,” he said.

It was flattering that he thought I could pull in business. But it bothered me that he expected me to do his youth outreach for free. After a few days of pestering me about bringing in new business, I told him there were two students who wanted an engagement party. He lit up like a kid in front of a bottle rocket.

“There won’t be any tobacco. Jenny quit smoking because Amber hated the taste of nicotine when they kissed.”

Mr. Ferguson looked like he accidentally swallowed a marble. “Those are girls’ names.”

“Right. There won’t be any alcohol or caffeine. Wicca ceremonies usually have punch and cake.” I started to enjoy this ruse.

He squinted as if trying to see something in the distance. He said he would think about it. For the rest of the shift, I worried he might be desperate enough to accept these fake clients. Maybe Wiccan lesbians were more acceptable than caffeine. What did I know? As it turned out, either Wicca ceremonies or lesbianism was a bridge too far. When I clocked out, he thanked me for my efforts. He sent me off with some more LDS reading materials and an extra weekend shift.

I disliked organized religion because of my BiMo. She hated it because her biological mother had basically disowned her for not accepting Jesus Christ as her savior. I hadn’t heard from my grandmother since my BiMo’s death. She was sure it happened because the Lord was angry. And she was sure that I was tainted for having been raised for thirteen years by a heathen. Whatever.

On the bus ride back to Carl and Janet’s, I made a chart of the costs and benefits of keeping the catering job versus finding a new one. A man wearing a t-shirt that said Vagitarian sat next to me. He looked down at my paper and made burbling sounds that may have been laughter, or an effort to dislodge a phlegm ball. In the costs column of my chart I wrote, in large letters, right under low pay, incompetent owner, proselytizing, and commuting time, Riding Two Busses With People With Stupid T-Shirts Who COUGH Without Covering Their Mouths And Stare At You.

**

September 3. A partial list of tutees, past and present, from longest to shortest:

·         Levi Butler, a sixteen-year-old home schooled Mormon. Ongoing.

·         Eddie Kim, an eight-year-old hellion with mystery parents.

·         Danny, who lasted until he received a 95 on his science test. His parents had expected me to eke out a perfect score from him.

·         Nathan Niedermyer, a crybaby whose mother had some undiagnosed illness that caused her to hide in another room and bark orders at me.

·         Stacy, who absorbed nothing and spoke only to make obtuse jokes.

·         Sheri, Stacy’s younger sister, who insisted on listening to her iPod when I tutored her in English.

·         Eric, an aggressive ten-year-old who often tried to punch me. His mother cried because I was supposed to be Eric’s last hope.

**

The easiest solution to the money deficit was to entice former tutees to re-hire me. I called several numbers in my book, using my parent-pleasing upbeat voice that made me sound insanely happy. Conversations went like this.

“Hi, it’s Tyler Superanaskaia. I tutored your—”

“Super-who?”

“Just Tyler. I tutored your son/daughter last year and I’m inquiring about his/her exam/paper/final grade/SAT result.”

One line was disconnected, one father said they were about to move out of state, and two mothers said they were broke. Another gave me a long story about how she got sick and lost her job and her husband left. Several people were not home.

I did reach Mrs. Niedermyer, whose son had trouble with pre-algebra, a worthless training-wheels type class. “You made Nathan cry,” she said. “You made him feel stupid. He’s just a boy and your words cut him like a knife.” She ended the call with “Thank you,” in a tone people usually use with the F-word.

I was left with no choice but to advertise. I printed a dozen fliers to promote my tutoring skills. Award-winning student tutor. Math and science are my specialties. I arrived at Firebird High early to put up the fliers in semi-conspicuous places. It took exactly two periods before they were completely defaced. On one flier, the -ent in student had been crossed out. Math and science had been replaced with bondage, domination, sniffing feet, eating underpants, and some swear words. I took down three of the fliers, but Principal Steve Nicks found the others.

He called to his office during sixth period. It was difficult to discern Principal Nicks’ mood. His atavistic moustache covered his lips. His eyebrows were also bushy and partly hid his eyes.

“So… Mister…” He was looking down at a sheet of paper. I knew he was trying to figure out how to pronounce my last name. Often people breezed past the first two syllables, and then slowed down, making odd mouth contortions. Ordinarily I would say my name before they could mangle it. But this was tricky. If I said it too slowly they would think I considered them dumb. When I said it too fast they thought I was casting a spell.

“Superanaskaia,” I said. “It’s Russian.” My explanation sounded like an apology.

“Tyler. Is this your work?” He held up a flier in which someone had written on with black marker, I give great cunny lingus!

I told him the original text was mine but not the defacement. There was no point in lying. My full name and number were printed right above cunny. He scolded me for not placing fliers on the kiosk in the courtyard cafeteria. I apologized and promised to do so in the future.

“No, you won’t. Not unless you get office approval.”

I promised him I would seek approval to post fliers on the courtyard kiosks.

“No, you won’t. Students are forbidden to advertise for personal services.”

I promised to do nothing in the future. This was the answer he wanted, apparently.

When he dismissed me, I asked him whether this run-in would go into my student file. “If you call me Stevie, maybe.” I had no idea what he was talking about.

I snail-mailed extra fliers that weren’t defaced to parents of past tutees who hadn’t outright rejected me. One parent responded via email.

Eddie has problems. I hope you can help. Mrs. Kim.

Mrs. Kim was the mistress of understatement. To say that Eddie Kim had problems was like saying Dalton’s theory was a little bit helpful in understanding our atomic world. That was a chemistry joke.

Eddie Kim was the only tutee I ever fired. The final straw was when he stabbed my dress pants with a leaky pen. The commute to the Kim’s house from my previous FoHo required one 20-minute bus ride and a seven-minute walk. From my current FoHo it would be an eighty-minute bus ride. Then again, Mrs. Kim voluntarily paid $25 an hour, even though my asking rate was $20.

The Kims lived in an area called Mystic Lakes. One may wonder what kind of lakes are natural features of Las Vegas. The correct answer—none. It was a planned community of houses ranging from huge to gargantuan, all surrounding man-made water features. The Kims had a moderately-sized house for the area, one that would be a mansion in any other neighborhood. They had enrolled Eddie in a variety of private academies, but he didn’t last at any school for very long. His latest school, unless he converted to Judaism, was his last shot in Vegas.

I was running late, so the bus was not an option. I rode my bike. It was something I avoided during the afternoons due to the heat and aggressive drivers, and something I would never do when wearing dress clothes.

My usual attire was an oversized, generic polo shirt and loose khaki pants, an outfit that allowed greater airflow, which was helpful in the heat. But for Eddie’s mom I needed to dress to impress. At my first session, Mrs. Kim told me she trusted tutors who wore professional clothes. So before the second session, I dropped a lot of money on dress shoes, dress shirt and a tie. But Mrs. Kim was almost never home. The new clothes turned out to be a pointless investment.

As I pedaled past a supermarket, a huge insect dive bombed my head. My BiMo didn’t believe in killing insects. “Other living things have as much right to live as we do,” she said. She made an exception for ants, temporarily, when they invaded our apartment. She would have been saddened by the current plight of honeybees. The combination of swatting that insect and thinking of my BiMo made me temporarily inattentive. I did not see the SUV swerving into the lot until it was almost too late. I braked hard. My bike skidded. I did an extended pratfall on the pavement.

When these things happen, your life supposedly flashes before your eyes. What flashed before my eyes were the sun, the supermarket’s sign and the grill of a Toyota, which screeched to a stop about a foot from my head. The driver, an egg-shaped woman with an absurd straw hat, jumped out, stood over me and helplessly waved her arms. “Are you all right? Tell me you’re all right!”

I showed how all right I was by hobbling away with my broken bike while snarling “fine.” I carried my bike on the bus. By the time I reached the gates of Mystic Lakes, late for the session, I felt the injuries. It was like someone had taken a branding iron to my shins, elbows and chin.

Mrs. Kim would have been appalled by my torn, bloodied clothing. As usual, she was not there. I was met by Sun, their housekeeper, a demure Chinese woman who didn’t care what I wore and whose mangled syntax often involved a smutty-sounding misuse of the word come. Today she had a new double entendre.

“Oh no you going down!”

I thanked her for her concern. I promised her I was all right, even though I wasn’t. With the agility of an arthritic octogenarian, I climbed the winding and unnecessarily elaborate brass-trimmed staircase to the second floor where Eddie was kept.

Eddie lay on his bed, surrounded by dozens of electronic gadgets and toys. He jumped up on his knees when he saw my bloody clothes. “Are you on your period? Hahahaha!” Someone, not I, had taught him about reproduction since our last tutoring session.

I asked for antiseptic. Eddie marched toward his own bathroom and made a grand gesture with his arm, as if heralding the approach of a king.

My image in the mirror was not pretty. My jaw looked like I had been clawed. I picked off a few black bits of parking lot gunk from my chin. My lips seemed swollen, but after staring at them I decided they might normally be that large. I washed off my wounds and used the clean part of my pant leg to dry them, to avoid bloodying any towels. I used hydrogen peroxide and Neosporin for my flayed skin. The last thing I needed was an infection from flesh-eating bacteria leading to an amputation. Days later, I considered whether being an amputee might make me a unique and more desirable Caltech applicant. But losing a limb was too high a price to pay, even for Caltech.

Now bandaged, I told Eddie we had arithmetic to do, and that his solar system mobile should not include Pluto because it had been demoted to non-planet status. His science textbooks, I said, were woefully out of date. “Astronomers realized it’s just an icy rock with no purpose.”

“Nooooooo! Pluto is not a rock.” He jumped up and down on the bed, causing his gadgets to fling themselves onto the floor.

Sun shouted from downstairs. “You scream and I come!”

“Apologize about Pluto,” Eddie demanded.

“Pluto is officially a planetoid, a cross between a planet and an asteroid,” I said. “And you can’t hurt its feelings.”

“Take it back!” He kicked me in the leg. Fortunately, it was in an area I hadn’t scraped too badly. Unfortunately, it still hurt.

“I take it back,” I said, grimacing. “Now do your arithmetic or you’ll have no future.”

Eddie behaved for the rest of the session. I almost reconsidered my vow to fire him again.

When I left, Sun met me at the door. “You feeling your legs and face good?”

“I do. They are. Better. Thanks.”

“We see you coming next week, okay?”

“The problem is, the commuting time is longer than the tutoring session itself. And I don’t like having to dress up for Mrs. Kim when she isn’t even here to see me. And what I’m being paid, given Eddie’s antics and the commute...”

I was using complex sentence structures and too many unfamiliar words. Sun stared as if I were giving an oral report about nuclear fusion. I had given an oral report on nuclear fusion in eleventh grade. I was not unfamiliar with the look.

Sun thrust the pay envelope at me. Inside was a check for fifty dollars, which was our agreement, plus three twenty-dollar bills, which was not.

“For your broken bad clothes.” She probably meant the rips stemming from my bike mishap, but it could have been a value judgment on my fashion sense.

“Okay we see you coming.”

I thanked her, and agreed to return the next week. I was flustered by the extra cash, so I mistakenly mimicked her syntax.

“Yes, you see me coming.”

THREE

September 7. Things that are annoying:

·         The sound of ch combined with k, in words like chunk or checking, or the k sound twice in a row, like credit card. It is particularly bad when a chicken commercial comes after an ad for a bank with a credit card and free checking. This is one reason I don’t watch much TV. At any given time you can hear sounds that are like nails on a chalkboard. Actually, the sound of nails on a chalkboard doesn’t bother me, but many normal people are disturbed by it. The sound of someone saying chalkboard, especially when combined with another CHK word, would be far more upsetting.

·         Stupid names for Thai restaurants, like Thai Foon or Thai Away Home, or Thai Me Up, or Thai One On. Thai Me Down is the worst, because that is where my BiMo had her last supper.

·         Shirts with sayings like Do unto others… then split. A smelly, wobbling guy with this exact shirt sat next to me on the bus yesterday. I worried that he would do something unto me, like barf on my new Converse sneakers.

·         When FoPas put pointless restrictions on you.

**

I began taking my lunch to the biology lab because I wanted a quiet environment for working on my Caltech essays. It was empty except for the teacher, Mr. Proudfoot, who graded papers or read a book while clipping his fingernails.

As I unpacked my ham and cheese sandwich, I noticed a phrase carved into the lab table. Proud Feet Suck. I assumed it was a slur against the teacher. But I didn’t understand why it was plural, unless it was not about him. It may have been a deeper social commentary about hubris and feet.

Mr. Proudfoot stood behind me, breathing onions. I slapped a pile of college brochures over the engraved aspersion, lest he accuse me not only of slandering him, but of doing so with bad grammar.

“Looks like it’s that time again.” He pointed to the early admissions application. “Did I mention I attended Caltech?”

“No.” We hadn’t spoken more than ten words since the first day of class. But his point in bringing up Caltech was not to make chitchat. It was coercion. He said he remembered my name from the past two science fairs. Firebird High had gone seven years without placing in the state science fair, he said, and he hoped I would end the school’s losing streak. He was tired of the tech and science magnet schools claiming all the prizes.

“You’ll help out your new school, won’t you?”

The truth was, I hadn’t planned to work on a science fair experiment. After one win and two honorable mentions, any more science fair achievements would be overkill. Plus, I was thinking of getting a second job. Then again, a recommendation from a Caltech alumnus was worth ten from non-alums.

“Of course,” I told him.

Though I still hated the name of the class, Creative Soul was turning out to be not terrible, partly due to the presence of a certain student who was almost too beautiful to be human, and I mean that in the best way. I shall describe her later. First, I should explain why I chose to enroll.

The Foster-go-Round transferred me to Carl and Janet’s house close to the start of my senior year, in their typically capricious and nonsensical way. By the time I registered, most desirable D-level electives were full, including an astronomy class, which might have been excellent. Still open were Gangsters, Gamblers and Growth, the history of Las Vegas, In Stitches, a sewing and needlepoint class, possibly with intermittent laughter, and Creative Soul.

Mrs. Bates, the administrative assistant, called Creative Soul “a hybrid of games and interactive techniques to tap the wellspring of creativity.” When I pressed her for more information she said it was “a mishmash of music, acting, visual arts, and writing.” That sounded awful, and I still didn’t understand what soul had to do with creativity. At least the class could be taken pass/fail. I didn’t have time to make a cost/benefit analysis, so I made the decision on the spot.

I had a bias against anything creative. On more than one occasion, my BiMo responded to a put down—be it from a boyfriend, her own mother, or a kid at a supermarket who made fun of her orange hair and wooden clogs—by saying “I’m not crazy, I’m creative.” In my mind, creativity and craziness, or whatever afflicted my BiMo from time to time, were the same.

The Creative Soul teacher didn’t seem crazy at all. Ms. Gurzy had an unruly dark perm and wore enormous peasant skirts over ample hips. She made exaggerated O sounds, which made her seem Canadian. After a week, her good humor grew strained with the barrage of questions about our required daily journals. What is maximum length of the entries? What should not be included? How personal should we be? Will you read them or skim them? Do we have to write on Saturdays and Sundays? Can we get extra credit for writing more? Are lists still all right?

Ms. Gurzy’s answers became increasingly curt. “I want you to get in touch with your feelings. The journal will let them floohh freely. There is no wrong way to do the daily pages. This is nooht a writing class. They will nooht be graded. Just do them, oohh-kaay?”

The aforementioned girl with otherworldly beauty and hypnotic, brown eyes addressed the class without being called on. “I’ve been writing journals for years,” she said. “It’s fabulous and it has helped my acting immensely. I did three journal pages before I auditioned for the role of Dorothy in a production of ‘The Wiz’ and I got the role. And great reviews.”

“Thank you, Zoe.” Ms. Gurzy said this in a tone people use when they don’t want to hear any more. I must have been staring at Zoe, because she smiled at me. Or maybe she was smiling at the guy next to me. Or it was a smirk.

When I say Zoe’s eyes were hypnotic, I do not mean they literally hypnotized me. I do not believe in hypnosis. If I were a poet I could better describe what her eyes did to me. Technically, they made my pulse race, my throat tighten and my intestines gurgle.

I was on my way to the library when I saw Janet in the kitchen. She was caressing a mug that said Realtor of the Year. She sold houses. I made a mental note.

“You can run but you can’t hide,” she said. I hadn’t been running or hiding.

Janet looked at my arms and chin, and grimaced as if I had been in a bike accident, which I had, as I’ve mentioned. I gave her an abridged version of how my bike missed the SUV and hit the pavement. I thought it was an upbeat story of triumph. She was appalled.

“You ride around on a bike in Las Vegas traffic? It’s a wonder you’re not dead.” I thought she was being overly dramatic, and I was uncomfortable with her gaze, so I said I had to go. But she wasn’t done with me.

“Dinner at last? Or do we still have the cooties?”

I had never suggested they had “cooties.” But a few days before this, on the refrigerator white board, I had seen what I considered to be an ominous message, written in Janet’s handwriting. Tyler, we’re not contagious. I knew what she meant. They wanted a “family” dinner. There was no need for it. I was not family.

I said I would be free next Tuesday, even though I didn’t know my work schedule. I told her I could make eggless pasta primavera, but I would have to stop at the store for ingredients.

“No. Don’t you dare cook! What would you like us to make?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“A hint?”

I was silent.

“Time?”

I shrugged.

“Okay! I guess it’s a plan for mystery food at seven on Tuesday.” She sounded ticked. “And no more riding your bike in traffic.”

I obeyed her command that night because my bike was still in the shop. But on the long walk to the library, I decided that, unless she were willing to drive me around, she couldn’t put restrictions on my commuting practices.

**

September 13. A list of FoHos, from worst to least-bad:

·         FoHo number three. The couple ran a part-time business collecting foster children and cash from the state of Nevada. The place was a mess. One time, a huge shelf of junk toppled over and smashed the coffee table, which was also covered with junk. I took responsibility for the mishap just to be able to leave.

·         FoHo number two. They collected biological children. One of them stole something from my Box o’ Crap, and nobody believed me.

·         The first FoHo. This ex-preacher listened to Christian radio too much and didn’t bathe enough.

·         FoHo number five. For some reason I can’t remember anything except Pumpkin, the dog. It was a Pomeranian. Pumpkin and I got along well.

·         FoHo number six. I got the heave-ho after the FoMo became pregnant and needed more “space.” My case manager told me not to take it personally. All case managers say this.

·         FoHo number four. I can’t remember anything. I can’t even remember their house. They must not have been terrible.

·         Number seven, Carl and Janet. It has only been three weeks, so this could move up the list. Upside: I have my own room. Upside: a fifteen-minute walk from school and the public library. Upside: not violent or religious. Downside: highly invasive.

**

I was riding the bus to Covenant Catering when I had a disturbing thought. It was even more disturbing than the possibility that the feral-looking man standing nearby would start stabbing me with his corkscrew. Not only would I have to write two superior essays, save piles of money and keep my grades up, I would have to become a football player or trombonist or cheerleader, or do something special to impress Caltech admissions.

Here’s why. Earlier that day, in German class, I overheard a guy talking about his application to Stanford. Jann-Otto—that was his German class name—complained about how Stanford wanted “all-around superior students.” He didn’t think his straight-A average and near-perfect test scores would be good enough. “If I graduate summa cum laude, and I will, it won’t be enough.” Was Jann-Otto right? Would my perfect grades and near-perfect scores be good enough for Caltech? Could the admissions committee be so demanding as to insist on applicants being stellar in every aspect of their lives?

They could. My evidence was on the application at the top of page four.

Caltech is committed to attracting students who will enhance campus life. Please list activities that show your leadership, growth, or diversity of interests.

My interpretation. What makes you think Caltech would want a geek like you?

It wasn’t enough to have the grades and science fair accolades. It wasn’t enough to explore macroevolutionary changes in spore dispersal in basidiomycetes. That was my tenth grade project. Those achievements were the bare minimum for admission. I was one in thousands.

There were only eight weeks until the application deadline. Eight weeks to cultivate diverse interests and leadership skills that would make me an enhancement to campus life. Finding the right club and making time to participate and excel would not be simple, but it would be necessary.

**

As you on the Caltech admissions committee are probably aware, applicants who have measured the effect of bee pollen on probiotic bacteria, as I have, are a dime a dozen. But how many of those applicants have also mimed pollen? I have done that in my Creative Soul class. And how many of those students also have been a leader in (EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITY TBD) as I have?

**

During Creative Soul class, I had an idea about how to present myself as someone Caltech might not dismiss. This came as a result of a miming exercise.

Ms. Gurzy put mime ideas on scraps of paper, placed the scraps in a bowl and passed the bowl around. These weren’t traditional mimes, like being trapped in a box. They were more bizarre, like a giraffe tap dancing and an electric can opener with a can of pinto beans. Ms. Gurzy was sitting with her knees and apart ankles crossed, which, with her huge peasant skirt, made the chair disappear. For each performance she had a wide-eyed expression, as if she were seeing the aurora borealis for the first time. We weren’t given any time to prepare. We just grabbed a slip of paper and started performing. I picked my slip of paper—pollen in the wind—and sat on a wooden folding chair while the entire class stared at me, waiting for my dramatic interpretation. To buy some time, I scrutinized the quote painted on the wall. I shall create! If not a note, a hole! If not an overture, a desecration!

I should point out that I cough when I’m nervous. When I’m extremely nervous I dry heave, so it was a good thing my anxiety level wasn’t higher.

My effort in suppressing my cough was ineffective. I sputtered like an old car engine straining to turn over. In addition to this, I had a sudden, spastic eyelid tremor. When I was able to suppress my cough reflex for a few seconds, though not my twitching eyelid, I looked at Ms. Gurzy. I was about to admit I had no idea how to mime pollen. Ms. Gurzy clasped her hands together and said my performance was very inventive. “Tyler portrayed the effects of poooooh-len. Wooooon-derful.” The class displayed their agreement through vigorous head nodding.

I’m going to digress a bit more and say that most of the mimes were a blur to me, partly because Zoe’s washing machine mime wiped everything out of my memory. It involved stretching out her arms to form a square as she made various clicking, whirring, and churning noises. The most remarkable cycle was final spin. She was wearing a tight fitting t-shirt and no bra.

When class ended, Zoe and I reached the door at the same time. I stood back, allowing her to go first and ignore me. Instead, she turned and addressed me. “Gurzy really loves the less-is-more stuff, and you do practically nothing.” I let her sashay away.

For the rest of the afternoon I imagined myself responding in a variety of ways.

Thank you.

Thank you. I like your smile and dark eyes. They’re like huge hazelnuts. Your eyes, I mean, not your teeth.

Thanks. You gave me a new appreciation of the spin cycle.

Here’s my point. My “success” in the miming exercise, and Ms. Gurzy’s compliment and Zoe’s pseudo-compliment, gave me the idea to join drama club. Science and theater! That would impress Caltech!

Ms. Gurzy was thrilled that I was approaching her. But she said there was no longer a formal drama club at Firebird High. “It’s so typical,” she said. “Plenty of money for a losing football team. Dooohn’t get me started.” It seemed to me that she had already started.

I returned to Carl and Janet’s after a long evening at the library. Partly because I had just been chased by a crazy man who, inexplicably, wanted me to sniff his hand, I was in no mood to see the note on the refrigerator white board.

Tyler, we did plan dinner tonight, didn’t we? We left it for you, in the refrigerator. Are you all right? Reschedule?

Scheizen. I wrote, Sorry, thanks, yes, and I’m free Thursday.

In the morning they were both gone, but there was a response. Thursday dinner, and we need to talk. I hoped they meant we would talk at dinner. In my experience, an official talk with FoPas included variations on the phrase, “we believe you stole it,” and “we’ve contacted your case manager,” or “it’s not you, we need the space,” or “blasphemer!”

Carl and Janet didn’t need the space and they weren’t religious at all, as far as I could tell. They did have some Buddhist art around the house, but that could have been for decorative purposes. Possibly they could accuse me of stealing. I was pretty sure that a black metal table in their living room had once supported a vase, but I could have been wrong about that.

I did not want to leave this FoHo. Not yet. If I were tossed back onto the Foster-go-Round, I would probably end up near Nellis Air Force base, in another school district, in a house with hooligan biological children. Or worse. I could end up in a group home.

I called my case manager. He spent the first minute badgering me with generic questions. I answered the way he expected. “I’m fine, I feel fine, doing fine, things are fine.” I asked him if he had any new information. I heard papers shuffling, a cough, and someone’s cackling laugh in the background.

“Nope, everything’s awe-some.”

I didn’t believe him, so I asked him, point-blank, whether Carl or Janet called him recently. More paper shuffling, a squeak, a sniff, and finally, “yee….ahhhh… no.”

“They didn’t?”

“Doesn’t look like it. Yes, they did.”

“What did they—”

“Gotta run. Keep blowing that sax.” For the record, I had never played a saxophone in my life. Stupidly, I told him I would keep blowing.

Later that day, I wondered whether blowing a sax was a metaphor or euphemism, like blowing one’s horn. I decided he had, like the case manager before him, mixed up my chart with some other foster. Which meant that, possibly, everything was far from awe-some.

FOUR

Unlike many students who apply to your university, (LOOK UP STATS) I have held some kind of job since I was in my early teens. Impressive? Perhaps. Necessity? Absolutely. I don’t rely on anyone, although I will not turn down financial aid or grants, and I feel that is one of my strongest attributes. It also explains why, with the exception of my science fair achievements, I do not have an impressive array of extracurricular activities. While others have wasted spent time on meaningless pointless ridiculous various pursuits, I have been working and saving money for your inflated tuition college. Call me a geek, but don’t call me pampered.

**

My catering hours had been reduced to less than ten per week, but at least I still had one regular, non-crazy tutee. Levi Butler was ideal in many respects. I didn’t need to commute to his house. He was a lazy student and never seemed to learn much, which meant he would always need my services. The only drawback was, he was sixteen going on eleven.

I met Levi at Covenant Catering. When were preparing for a funeral reception by carving flowers out of radishes, I mentioned that I did tutoring on the side. Later in that shift, Levi whispered, as if he were being stalked by an organized crime ring, “I totally need you.”

Levi was home schooled, and he was certain his mother had been keeping important facts from him. To prevent her from learning how he was “cheating” on her, Levi always called me whenever he had a convenient excuse to get away. He made me promise to never call his house. Today I regretted picking up the landline.

“It’s Levi. I’ll be there in twenty.”

“Please give me more notice when you need a tutoring session, because—”

CLICK

I was pressed for time because Carl and Janet and had planned an important dinner.

I waited for Levi on front doorstep. His ancient white Lincoln Continental pulled up to—more like docked at—the curb. He hopped out and loped toward me. It didn’t look like he was going to stop. He was all bone and sinew, like me, but he was about half a foot taller. He misjudged distances between himself and other objects, like a dwarf who had magically been transported into a giant’s body and was still getting used to it.

“Check it out,” he said, thrusting an iPod at my nose.

I leaned away from the device and reminded him that he already had several iPods.

“I used to. Gravy got inside one and I lost the other, but that’s okay because this one holds more music.” Levi maniacally touched icons with his index finger, as if he had a time limit.

I couldn’t help myself. I had to ask about the gravy.

“Oh that. It was last Friday at work. I was in the middle of training this new girl, you know the kinda hot one? And the phone rang. I had to answer it because nobody else was around and I wasn’t wearing underwear because mom forgot to put the clothes in the dryer again. I was all out of boxers and the swim trunks I was wearing were binding and I was listening to this new band. What’s their name? I forgot the band’s name. Here maybe I can find it…”

This happened often. The more Levi talked, the further away from the point he veered. I digress from time to time, but my digressions do have a purpose.

“Okay I’ll find it later,” he said. “But anyway, I reached for the phone and I knew it was one of the birthday clowns calling to cancel.”

Ordinarily I let him ramble on, but I was expecting Carl and Janet any minute and Levi was no closer to disclosing the point of impact between the gravy and the iPod, so I cut him off and informed him the lesson would be very brief. He didn’t mind. It occurred to me that he called a tutoring session because he was bored.

We went to the patio and sat on the cold iron chairs. The blinds of the neighbor’s house pinched open and closed twice. I began a lecture on cell stabilization. I picked up where we left off in the last session. I introduced the concept of homeostasis. Before I uttered the word, I knew how Levi was going to react.

He leaned forward and cupped his hand to his ear. “Homo stays where? Huh?”

When Levi became bored, he would pretend to be a dirty old man with a hearing problem. The first time I was mildly amused. Then I simply tolerated it. Levi laughed at any attempt at humor, especially his own, and sometimes for no reason at all. It was not a real, ha-ha laugh. It was a rumble-laugh, more like a nervous tic or a vocal murmur.

I closed the textbook and asked him what he planned to do with his life. He said his parents expected him to go on a mission next year. After that he would come back to live with them. I asked him if he thought his parents would support him forever. He was quiet for a few moments, like he had never thought about it. Then he said he might star in porn videos.

I told him he was full of scheizen.

“What’s scheizen?”

“A German swear word.”

“What does it mean?”

“Fecal matter.” He stared blankly. “Tell me you know what fecal matter is,” I said.

“Of course.” He was probably lying. “I don’t see why you can’t use simpler words for stuff.”

That comment made me snap. It was my own version of snapping, which didn’t involve violence, like when other people snap. My snapping was merely snappish. I told him he was drifting through life, flush with his parents’ cash, yet unconcerned about what would happen if the money spigot were shut off, while some people—me, for example—worked our proverbial butts off. I warned him that someone who didn’t know Etruscans from atoms shouldn’t expect his future would always be full of free i-crap. “Don’t assume the world will be your oyster.”

He looked down as if trying to find a speck of sand on the cement patio. It was the same look Nathan Niedermyer had when I informed him he would never be an engineer if he couldn’t comprehend signed integers.

In his old man voice, Levi replied, “Hoist her? I hardly know her.” Rumble-laugh.

At that moment I saw Carl and Janet though the sliding glass doors. They had brought bags of take out food.

Levi turned. Janet pointed to the food. Levi assumed it was an invitation, and it probably was. He said he was “starv-a-ling.” He hopped up and went inside, nearly knocking over a clay planter in the process. It annoyed me how he comically changed the word starving, but I was more peeved by the fact that he thought of Carl and Janet’s house as his own.

I followed Levi inside. Suddenly, there was an even bigger problem.

“I hope you like Thai,” Janet said. “No time to cook.”

I stood there, mouth open, like a fish on dry land. I couldn’t say that it was too spicy, and that my BiMo killed herself with Thai food. Nobody wants to hear something like that. Janet didn’t wait for my answer. She asked Carl what one of the dishes was called. Carl hesitated but finally announced it was prik king. Janet laughed and said she loved doing that to Carl.

Carl and Janet sat across from Levi and me. As I nudged the chili peppers and noodles on my plate, Janet asked me to tell her about my friend.

“I’m his tutor,” I corrected.

“Okay, don’t tell me.” She leaned into Levi. “What’s your story?” It almost sounded seductive, the way she said it, possibly because her cleavage was showing.

Levi looked down at his plate made his rumble laugh. He told her there was nothing interesting about him.

“Two guys who don’t talk,” she said. “Might as well talk to myself.”

“I’m here,” Carl said.

“I see that.” She took a long gulp of wine. Levi rumble-laughed.

I loaded up my plate with plain rice. Carl waved the phrik king carton menacingly in my direction. I shook my head. He put the carton back on the table and turned back to Levi.

“I take it that’s your Continental outside,” Carl said. “Seventy-nine?”

“Seventy-eight. The Cartier edition.” Levi started another of his five-minute monologues. Here’s the short story. Levi polished the car every week and kept it covered when he wasn’t driving it. Some guy offered him twelve grand for it. He wouldn’t sell because his grandfather wanted to keep it in the family.

Free car, must be nice.

Carl declared that his father also drove a Lincoln. “A sixty-two with suicide doors.” He went on about how it had been a technological marvel in its time. Levi was listening to him as if he were giving out instructions on diffusing a bomb that would go off in two minutes.

Janet butted in and declared that she hated cars. “I lease a Lexus because clients don’t want to be driven around town in some Nissan Sentra. Six hundred a month just to entice people to buy something they don’t need and will end up getting into a fight over when they’re upside down on the mortgage. A car is an appliance. A house is a box.”

“I hope you don’t use that argument with clients.” Carl smiled, as if expecting everyone to laugh. Levi did, but he rumble-laughed at just about everything, so it didn’t mean much.

Janet poured another glass of wine.

“Maybe you should go slower with that,” Carl said.

“Maybe you could get a job that pays a living wage,” she responded, perkily.

The muscles in Carl’s jaw contracted, as if he were chewing a baseball-size wad of taffy. Even Levi stopped rumble-laughing.

A witty anecdote or two from me would have lightened the mood. But I could only think of stupid jokes I heard at science camp, and they would have been useless because I always got the punch lines mixed up. Anyway, it was not my job to make jokes or prevent arguments. This was another reason why I didn’t want to have dinner with them.

Levi’s eyes opened wide. He said he realized that his parents expected him back at a certain time. He leapt up and made some kind of strange bow—strange because there was no need to bow, and also because he was six-foot-six. Carl and Janet barely noticed his exit. They were now engrossed in a full-fledged spat.

I caught up to Levi outside. “Forgetting something?”

“Oh yeah. Tell your parents thanks again for the Thai… um, thing.” Foster parents, I wanted to remind him. How many times had I told him this?

He shoved two twenties at me. It was more than I needed for an aborted session. I was about to inform him that I didn’t have change, but he had already wedged himself inside the Lincoln.

“They’re nice, your folks.” He said it like he actually meant it.

Later that night I saw a note on the refrigerator white board. We still need to talk. It was directed at me, of course.

The “talk” was impromptu and happened the next morning, in part because I hate defecating with an audience.

I need to make another quick, explanatory digression.

None of the stalls in any of the boys’ rest rooms at Firebird High had doors. To avoid needing to use the stalls during school hours, I made a plan. I set my alarm one half hour earlier and spent ten minutes drinking coffee. To improve morning momentum I would hum a song, “Urge for Going.”

Another digression. “Urge for Going” is a real song by Joni Mitchell, one of my BiMo’s favorite artists. The title has nothing to do with bodily functions. Though there was no scientific proof, my BiMo believed musical lyrics had a subliminal effect on our thoughts and even bodily functions. So I hoped I would not hear this song, which I now associated with defecation, at an inopportune time. Commuting on the bus would be such a time.

On the morning of the first day of my coffee/bowel routine, I ran into Janet in the kitchen. If I hadn’t been humming that song, I could have grabbed a cup of coffee and slipped away unnoticed.

“Do you have a minute?” Before I could respond, she said they had been out of line at dinner. “We shouldn’t drag you and your friend into our personal shit.”

Carl appeared in the doorway, behind me. I tried not to consider it an ambush.

“Things have been rocky for us lately,” Carl said. “Janet’s real estate business is slow, and of course, in this economy, the state is cutting back on education. I’m down to part time, unless I want to teach in Reno for two days a week. That wouldn’t be so bad, but the gas to commute wouldn’t be worth it. There is no high speed rail in this country and there won’t be for the foreseeable future.”

Carl had Levi’s inability to come to the point.

Janet cut him off. “We fight. It happens.” She was about to say something else, but her cell phone rang. She snatched it off the counter and started using some business terms and swear words.

While she was on the phone, Carl asked me about my long-term plans. I told him I planned to attend Caltech and follow an undergrad degree with a Master’s, a PhD, and then post-doctoral work.

“What about us?” he said.

“I don’t know what your plans are.” Was this a trick question?

“That’s not what I meant,” he said.

Janet slammed the phone down then looked up, like she had forgotten I was still there.

Carl continued. “Family services called us and asked if we wanted another foster. We wanted to run it by you.”

I felt sick. I began counting prime numbers in my head. But that would only work for so long. They were staring, waiting for an answer.

“I’d prefer not to move away. If that’s what you’re asking about.” My voice was constricted and weak-sounding.

Janet frowned. “We mean the department asked whether we would take an additional foster child. We’re considering it, but if you’re bothered, tell us.”

“Whatever is best for you,” I said.

“We’re asking you what’s best for you.” Janet was talking slowly, as if trying to explain the concept of kinetic energy to an eight-year-old. I had attempted that once in a tutoring session, so I knew the look.

“I like being the only one.”

“Settled!” Janet said.

Carl declared it a “healthy” discussion, and told me to have a good day.

I left the house, still wondering what exactly had transpired. By the time I was six blocks away, I realized their discussion had caused me to forget my morning ritual. Between first and second periods my coffee kicked in and I availed myself to a door-less stall in the boys’ rest room.

That night, I went to the kitchen for Cap’n Crunch, but the box, my box of cereal, was gone. I distinctly remember there being enough for at least a half-bowl. In its place was a new, unopened box of generic muesli.

A note was attached. Tyler, this is so much better than that sugary junk. See if you like it. Carl. There was a smiley face on the note.

I hated muesli. It was pebbles and things picked up from the bottom of a forest. On the refrigerator white board I wrote, Please do not throw out my things without asking! It seemed jerky, so I erased the note.

**

September 19. FoPas who take in the “less desirable” fosters—those with behavioral or physical problems and old ones like me—generally fall into two camps: young couples who want to practice parenting skills, and those who do it for the money. Carl and Janet need money to maintain their lifestyle. Carl said things were tough for them. I need a free place to live, until emancipation. It is an arrangement. Janet’s Lexus lease is exactly the amount they were bringing in from the state, $600. I am worth a luxury car. That should be encouraging.

**

Saturday morning, Carl and Janet were gone, but there was no note on the refrigerator white board telling me of their whereabouts. I went outside to study on the patio. The curtains and blinds in the neighbor’s windows kept opening and closing, which bothered me.

I went inside collapsed on the suede sofa. For several minutes I listened to nothing. There was a shelf of vaguely world art-like objects that may have been procured in Asia and Africa. There was a huge flat screen TV I never watched. A stereo was hidden in a rustic dark wood cabinet. On an ornate pedestal was a jade dancing Buddha with a maniacally happy expression and arms stretched upward. It was a goofy pose for a supposed god, in my opinion. I hadn’t spent much time in their living room. I couldn’t be sure whether some of their furniture was missing, but it seemed as though the room were becoming emptier. I was sure about one thing. They had no photos in any of the common areas. Usually FoFa photos were spread out on every conceivable surface. Everywhere I went, in every FoHo, there were reminders that I was a stranger.

I did find pictures when I accidentally-on-purpose drifted into Carl’s office. The door was slightly ajar. On a bookshelf were snapshots of Carl and Janet in younger years, all in frames and scattered randomly between books. There were other adults I didn’t know. There was a photo of a young woman in what looked like a skin-tight black leather jump suit. She had her arm around two shirtless guys in tight pants. Another person kept popping up in the photos, a kid, at various ages. He had sandy blonde straight hair. There was a picture of him posing in a baseball uniform. In another, he held a wet dog.

I heard Janet’s car pull up. I dropped a photo of the kid. The glass shattered on the floor. I shoved the photo, broken glass and all, under my shirt and waited in the office, like a cornered animal. When I heard Janet’s click-clicking heels on the kitchen tile, I snuck back into my room, as the broken glass poked my torso.

I would have to replace the glass before anyone noticed the photo was missing. I would do no more investigating. If I wanted them to respect my privacy, I had to respect theirs. I measured the frame and placed the picture in my Box o’ Crap.

FIVE

My well-rounded nature is best exemplified by my participation in Firebird High’s Polynesian Club. My efforts on the club’s (TBD) committee, in which I have succeeded in (TBD) show that I have, in addition to a scientific mind, a strong talent for (TBD). I have always been drawn to Polynesian culture. One of my biological mother’s favorite songs was a Hawaiian-sounding medley of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “What a Wonderful World” by (LOOK UP NAME OF HAWAIIAN SINGER).

CUT! DON’T WRITE ABOUT BIMO!!!!!

**

Polynesian club might have been an option if it had existed. The faculty advisor said it should have been taken off the official list of Firebird’s clubs, because there hadn’t been a meeting in over a year. She said I could petition to have the club restarted. I considered this for a day, but it was not clear what my participation would mean to the admissions committee. Did Caltech need a South Seas go-to guy who could make poi or a grass skirt? I surmised it did not.

There were other extracurricular possibilities. Over two weeks I rejected them one by one. Marching band? I couldn’t learn instrument in seven weeks. Literature club? Boring. Forget athletics. I hadn’t thrown a ball in years. No, no, no to nerd clubs, including After Math and Physics is Phun, which should be doubly rejected due to their names.

News reporter had potential.

I stopped by the office of the school newspaper, the Clarion, and met with the editor. He was a paunchy guy with trendy black-framed glasses and un-trendy greasy hair. I made the case that it was a small leap from writing research papers, in which I excelled, to reporting for a daily student paper, in which I had no clue.

I offered story ideas that were variations on articles I had read in Scientific American.

“Have you even read the Clarion? You want to report on the mystery of lupus? Give me a break.” I got the point but the guy kept going on and on about how reporters needed to be “plugged in” to school life. He added, with some perverse pleasure, that there was a long waiting list to get on the staff, so it was not worth my time.

Out of curiosity, I started reading the Clarion. There was story that exposed the reason behind the missing rest room stall doors. They had been removed to prevent drug activity. It was not clear how this would cut down on drugs. The reporter said it was Principal Nicks’ idea, and that he was on a “drug-rooting crusade.”

There was another story that piqued my interest. The Student Government Association vice president had been caught carrying painkillers, without a prescription. Consequently, Principal Nicks removed him from the organization.

Mrs. Bates, the administrative assistant, told me Principal Nicks planned to leave the SGA vice president position empty unless there was a groundswell of support for filling it. I asked her what a groundswell would constitute. She seemed peeved by my question and told me to stop by after she discussed it with Principal Nicks.

I returned after seventh period and received my answer. I would need a petition with 100 signatures for a special election. I promised to have the signatures in ten days.

I used a simple pitch to my classmates. “If you believe it’s important that Firebird High have an SGA vice president, sign here to hold an election.” Many students were ambivalent about the organization and the need for a vice president. I received a lot of blank stares. A guy who sat behind me in calculus unleashed a torrent of questions. “What has the SGA done in the last two years? Weren’t elections in the spring? Are you doing this for your college application?”

Answers. “Nothing that I’m aware of but I can change that. Yes, but the vice president had illegal painkillers. No, I am doing this to serve the school.”

After a week, my signature count was forty-one. Then, I hit the mother lode of signatures by accident. A pixie-ish, out-out-of breath girl bumped into me in the corridor near the band room. Even though it was a no-fault collision, she apologized profusely. I asked her to sign the petition. The bell rang. She panicked and ran with the sheet. At the end of the period, I rushed back to the band room and caught her coming out. She handed back the sheet filled with more than 50 new names. No explanation. She bolted down the hall before I could thank her or ask her name.

Once I had the requisite 100 signatures, plus an extra ten for illegibility and possible fakes, I dropped off the petition. Mrs. Bates warned me that there was no guarantee that Principal Nicks would schedule a special election. “It depends on the perceived need, and right now we’re up to our ears in registrations and PTA and NCLB,” she said.

In non-administrative-speak, my efforts were for naught.

The next application-padding possibility was woodworking club. There was a drawback. I could not be an officer in woodworking club because it had no officers. In fact, it was a bunch of guys making wood things alone in the same room. Another drawback. I didn’t care one bit about woodworking.

I stopped by the club “meeting” on a Wednesday after seventh period. Nobody acknowledged me when I entered the shop, unless one counted a barely perceptible head nod from the Easter Island statue of an advisor, Mr. Winter. After ten minutes of pretending to design a coat rack, I looked up at Mr. Winter and pointed to my watch. He nodded, expressionless.

The next day, I had a new idea—debate. I barged into the windowless triangular debate team office, which was slightly more capacious than a storage closet. The lively conversation stopped dead. There were six students, three guys and three girls. A guy with a beaked nose asked me if I was sure I wanted the debate office. I supposed it was a kind of debate hazing. If I could present a well-reasoned argument for being in the room, I would be allowed to stay. I told them I was great at research and I couldn’t wait for the opportunity to start winning tournaments. Five of them cast their gaze away from me. The beak-nose guy informed me that if I came up with enough material on abstinence-only sex policies, they might let me “audition.”

I spent two nights in a row at the library, cramming on sex-ed, faith-based sex counseling, teen pregnancy, and anything related to teen sex. Quite a bit of drug information came up as well, so I cross-referenced that. I knew from writing extra credit essays, the more statistics I could find, the better. The only difficulty would be the public speaking part. For three nights in a row, I practiced presenting my sex and drug findings to my bedroom wall.

**

September 22. At the supermarket, I skipped over the Cap’n Crunch and all highly sugary cereals. Muesli was unacceptable. Honey Nut Cheerios seemed like a reasonable alternative. But in light of the colony collapse syndrome, the happy cartoon honeybee on the box was troubling. It appeared to be making fun of the crisis. I chose Honey Bunches of Oats, with no bees on the package.

I haven’t seen Carl or Janet in a few days. Today there was a note on the refrigerator white board. How are the bees? I don’t know who wrote it.

I wrote back. Still dying. I almost informed them of the research I had done for my science fair proposal and how I was exploring the link between cell phone antennas, noise pollution, and pesticides, but it was too much to write in a small space.

**

The debate audition became moot when Principal Nicks had a change of plans. The special election for vice president of SGA was going to happen. But first I would have to present my case to the student body. Before I describe the disaster that was my unplanned campaign speech, I’ll back up and say I strongly dislike ambiguous messages, whether they are spoken, or, in this case, on a yellow slip from the principal’s office.

Friday in physics class I received such a slip. Special election next week. Be at pep rally. Will introduce. In my opinion, will introduce, as Principal Nicks phrased it, should have meant this: Tyler is running for office. There’s Tyler. Stand up Tyler. Thanks, Tyler. Okay you’re all dismissed.

But that’s not how it went down.

Seventh period, Friday, as it was every Friday throughout football season, students were herded into the auditorium to GET! FIRED! UP! The chant was rather macabre, I thought, given that Firebird High’s symbol was a phoenix. Even worse, a flaming bird did not suggest a formidable sports team. It was not a dominating figure like a bear or a leopard. The raison d’être of a phoenix was incineration. For this pep rally, the marching band was being directed by the mascot, a large person in a bird suit, which was, fortunately, not on fire. Actually, it was a nondescript amalgam of an eagle, buzzard, and parrot. Its open mouth could be construed as a frozen shriek of agony.

I stood near the stage, where Principal Nicks could find me. The marching band played a jazz version of the Firebird fight song. Principal Nicks walked up to me and squeezed my shoulder with one of his oversized hands. “Keep your comments to three minutes. Tell them your platform and don’t ramble.” It almost seemed like he was expecting me to give a speech, which couldn’t be right.

Principal Nicks strode in front of the marching band and made a rolling motion with his hand. The band squeaked and bleeped into silence. He grabbed the microphone as if strangling a goose.

“All right settle down. Before we get righteously crraa-zyyy we have some business to attend to.” That was met with some boos and hisses. This was probably because students don’t like hearing about business when they GET! FIRED! UP! In my opinion, he deserved boos for his dangling participle.

“There’s an opening for vice president of SGA, and in accordance with the bylaws of Firebird High we must fill that vacancy, provided there is a student who is willing to run. There is one. Tyler… Super…an…askadid…ia. Tyler. Come on up and say a few words. Tyler?”

As if magnetized, my legs carried me to the middle of the stage. There was lethargic applause, and a few hoots. Some girl shrieked like her hair was being pulled. Principal Nicks leaned in and grunted. “Three minutes and out.”

The microphone was heavier than I thought, and when I grabbed it from the bottom, it flopped over and hit my chest with an amplified thump. My nervous cough started, and this led to screeching feedback from the mic and angry groans from the crowd.

I looked at Principal Nicks. He gave me what appeared to be a go on you idiot head nod. I knew a three-minute coughing fit was no substitute for a real campaign speech. But coughing would have been better, as it turned out, than what came out of my mouth.

“Firebird High has a host of issues to be addressed. For example…” I hacked, then I took a deep breath and continued. “How many of you are content with no doors in the rest room stalls?”

There were boos, laughs, and an impromptu cheer of, “Tyler, Tyler, he’s our man.” Principal Nicks made a karate chop motion at the crowd. The noise stopped. I resumed my stump speech.

“We shouldn’t suffer from a lack of privacy, just because of drug incidents in which we played no part. I don’t think anyone wants to relieve themselves with onlookers. If I am elected…”

My mouth was moving, but it was becoming harder to hear what I was saying, due to the roar of blood through my ears. I could not continue speaking about stall doors. There wasn’t enough to say about wanting to defecate in private, and that really wasn’t much of a campaign platform.

I had just spent days practicing my debate audition, so I used a bit of that. But my facts got mixed up. My speech became a rambling mess as I tried to tie statistics gleaned from my research to my ability to affect change through student government. In my defense, it was not easy to transform a debate audition into a campaign speech on the fly. I am sure I said nothing specific about my own experiences with drugs, sex, and disease, because there was nothing to tell. I did use a few Latin phrases.

I clearly recall the last thing I said. “With me, student government will be a font of information. Latex and facts, not fear and platitudes.”

The crowd roared.

The microphone was jerked out of my hand. Principal Nicks snarled something at me. I couldn’t hear him clearly. He made a spastic, up-and-down arm wave, which probably meant for everyone to shut up. The drum major took that as a sign to start up the marching band.

The fight song played. The crowd parted. I walked off the stage to a cheering throng. I attempted to return a hi-five, but I hit some guy in the head.

Not knowing where to go, I continued walking out of the auditorium and into the corridor.

A flash. Temporary blindness.

I refocused and saw the photographer, a thin girl with alabaster skin hidden by a halo of dark, flyaway hair. She lowered her camera and looked at me as if she were an anthropologist and I, a rare fossil. She said something but I couldn’t hear her. I rapidly shook my head.

She shouted slowly. “I’m. Rachel. From. The. Clarion. Are you prepared for the consequences of what you’ve unleashed?”

I nodded. I continued walking past her into the great empty hallway with no destination in sight, having no clue about what I had unleashed.

SIX

September 26. Talking points for when I see Carl and/or Janet:

·         Please don’t throw away my food, even if the box is nearly empty.

·         I don’t like muesli and I never will.

·         You can save a lot of money and prevent harsh chemicals from being absorbed into the ground and water systems if you make your own fabric softener out of baking soda and vinegar.

·         How is work? (Use only if they are in a good mood.)

·         Who are those neighbors who keep looking out their window?

·         Who are the people in your photos?

**

I found replacement glass for the picture frame I dropped, and put the frame back on the bookshelf in Carl’s office. I don’t think they noticed its absence. They said nothing about it, either in person or on the white board.

I was about to head to the library when I heard a clink-clink-clink sound coming from the dryer in the laundry room. Someone had left coins in their pocket, or that there was an exposed zipper hitting the sides of the dryer drum.

I was surprised to see Janet in the laundry room. I was even more surprised to see her wearing skimpy running shorts and a clingy, sweaty top. It suddenly seemed like I was interrupting something private, even though she was only folding towels.

“How’s school?”

“Fine.” I wanted to do something about the metal clanking in the dryer. Was she not bothered by that?

“Just fine? Nothing new with you?”

“There’s going to be an election.”

She groaned. “Throw the bums out. Our mail carrier could do better job than those idiots in Washington.” I was going to inform her that I meant my SGA election, not the national one, but she kept talking. “My tax dollars for war, but fat cats get all the benefits. Nobody even listens to us—”

“I don’t like muesli.” I sort of shouted this. “I’m sorry,” I said, softer.

She stopped folding a dark green towel. “I told Carl not to do that. But you don’t have to buy your own food. That’s what the state is paying us for. But if you do spend your own, we’ll just save whatever we don’t spend and give it back to you.”

“I switched to Honey Bunches of Oats,” I said.

“Give the muesli to Carl. I hate it, too.”

“I have to go.” I bolted out of the laundry room, having done nothing about the dryer clanking.

The implication of what Janet said didn’t occur to me until later that night. They were going to give me the money from the state? I didn’t believe it. What was the point of having a foster child if they didn’t benefit?

**

Unlike many students with scientific accomplishments who may apply to Caltech, I also am comfortable explaining challenging topics like HIV and other STDs in front of an entire student body. A scholar, leader and a public speaker, Tyler Superanaskaia is a triple threat man of many contradictions too good to be true (TBD).

**

Monday, in homeroom, on what should have been the special election, there were no ballots. The monitor was a sub, and she spent most of her time telling everyone to stop using their phones. I saw a couple students reading the Clarion. The lead story featured the headline, Maverick SGA Candidate Vows Reforms. There was picture of a guy with a clenched fist raised in a defiant salute. I didn’t recognize the person as me until I saw the photo caption. Advocate for closed stalls and open discussion on sex and drugs.

My physics teacher was unimpressed by my stall door campaign promise. In the middle of explaining error analysis, Mr. Zirke told the class, apropos of nothing, that western society was too afraid of excrement. “We anesthetize everything about our bodies, hide in shame, irradiate our food. I’ll tell you something. I love to take a dump in the woods. I feel alive when I’m doing it. I mean we don’t have to be like Angola, but stall doors? Gimme a break.”

In English lit, Mrs. Yglesias asked the class the meaning of canard. Her question was met with open-mouth stares. She informed them canard was a lie told often and universally believed to be true. “Tyler used it well in his campaign speech. Abstinence-only sex education is a canard. Thank you, Tyler, for saying what needed to be said.”

Student reactions to my presence included whispers, furtive glances, exaggerated pretend-laughs, and “hey, condom guy.” One creepy guy in physics stopped me after class and asked whether he could get HIV from oral sex. Reflexively, I asked whether he meant giving or receiving, because there was a difference in risk factors depending on how it was performed. He became angry and told me to forget it. That was fine. I didn’t want to be talking about that subject with anyone, especially him. As he rushed away, I told him to talk with the school nurse.

The most annoying reactions were guys who squatted down and comically pretended to have a painful bowel movement.

This was not popularity. Notoriety was more like it. My reputation was, at that moment, somewhere between football captain/prom king and black trench coat/army boot types. This was far more attention than I had received after my science fair achievements. But it was not something Caltech would care about. Their admissions committee wanted an elected class leader, not some guy who gave a scheizen mixed-up speech about sex and drugs and toilet stalls.

But the promised election wasn’t happening. There had been no announcement of it, and none of my teachers had heard anything.

During biology II, a goth-looking guy came to Mr. Proudfoot’s class with a pink slip. Mr. Proudfoot waved the slip and said, “for our speechmaker.” The class laughed. I felt a familiar tickle in my throat.

By the time I reached Principal Nicks’ office the tickle had turned into a cough. I was experiencing the beginning of acid reflux as well. To calm my nerves I began making a grocery list in my head.

Principal Nicks tossed me a heavy document, Guidelines for Student Government. He explained that the role of SGA leaders was to improve the lives of the constituents, AKA students. The point he made, over and over, was that SGA was a governing body for those who are serious about government, and, therefore, it was not the SGA candidate’s role to advocate for sex lit or condoms.

He leaned forward. “Capiche?” I could smell menthol lozenges and aftershave.

I nodded. I couldn’t say anything because I was trying to suppress my coughing.

“And in the unlikely event you ever speak in front of the student body again, you’ll run it by me.”

I nodded vigorously. A bark-like cough slipped out.

He wasn’t done. “Did you know I was a member of a task force on drugs in schools, in the Bush administration? The first Bush, the better one.” He segued into a monologue about keeping kids off drugs. “So many lives lost. For what? Freedom? Fun? While pushers profit and kids suffer.”

His extended rant reminded me of a poem written and performed by Thor, a strange guy with a nose ring, in the Creative Soul class. “I am your cowboy, your muscle man, your lover, your fighter, your savior. Do you like my stirrups? My smoking gun?” When it was all over Thor did an elaborate curtsy. Ms. Gurzy cooed and students murmured enthusiastically. Zoe snickered silently, her shoulders bouncing. I enjoyed watching Zoe bounce.

“I said am I making myself clear?” Principal Nicks was glaring at me. Or maybe he wasn’t. It was hard to tell with his tumbleweed eyebrows. “The stall doors will stay off, and you will stay off the ballot.”

“Who’s on the ballot?”

“Nobody. There’s no special election.”

I still had the guidelines for student government in my lap. Why had he shown me this book when I would not be in the SGA? What I really wanted to say was there had been no time to run the farking speech by him, and the whole thing had been his farking last minute idea.

He emitted a breathy cough. I could feel the moist wind on my face. Great. He was going to give me a virus along with a lecture. He snatched a box of lozenges from the desk and tossed one into his mouth. “And you’ll walk back your comments on pot,” he said, while loudly clearing his throat. “Marijuana is a dangerous drug HACK-HOC-HOC so what you’re going to do is aaarUUGHAHH write an op-ed in the Clarion denying everything you said. Capiche?”

I gave up trying to suppress my cough. Now we were both coughing. I didn’t bother covering my mouth, because he wasn’t covering his.

During a break in his hacking, he reminded me I was on thin ice, as if that weren’t already clear. “Twice in a month I’ve seen you in my HACK-HACK office. That doesn’t CARRUGH-KA-KA bode well, does it?”

I shook my head. Counting a short visit to drop off the election petition, I had been in his office three times. I didn’t correct him.

I had made an enemy of Principal Nicks. But Mr. Proudfoot was pleased with my predicament. Being banned from student government meant I could devote more time to the science fair. He loved my idea about investigating the cause of the massive bee die-offs. Even though the proposal wasn’t due until November 15th—and that was only a suggested deadline because the fair wasn’t until February—he wanted me to start working on it right away.

“Forget about viruses,” he said. “If it’s bacteria killing the bees, then it’s bacteria that will save the bees.”

He wanted me to work on the project every lunch period, with him. I told him I did my best thinking alone.

“A lone wolf with a he-uuuuge ego. You’ll be right at home at Caltech.” I liked the term right at home. It was confirmation that I belonged somewhere.

SEVEN

Contrary to the figures I presented in my campaign speech, many studies show that marijuana has a profound effect on the still-developing adolescent brain, including memory loss and permanent impairment of motor skills and reasoning. As for frank discussions about sex and distribution of condoms and safer sex literature, I’m informed that such activities cannot be conducted under the auspices of the Student Government Association. Please discuss matters with the school nurse, your own doctor, or faith practitioner.

**

I submitted the op-ed to Principal Nicks for his approval. He made a few changes, mostly deleting references to his drug czar work in Washington. I thought we were done, but he still wanted to know what I had against open toilet stalls.

“I believe everyone deserves privacy.”

“Try spending time in the Navy if you think you deserve privacy. No stall doors, no stalls. Sleeping quarters? Bunks were side by side and head to head. You get used to it. Learn to like the smell of sweat and feet. And you take your crap where and when you can.”

I thanked him for the information, and asked whether he wanted me to include his Navy experiences in the op-ed.

“What do you think?”

“Yes?”

“No!”

Rachel, the Clarion’s photographer, had something to say about the whole sordid matter. I mean about the op-ed I wrote, not the sordid matter of Principal Nicks’ Navy ship experiences. She thought I was wrong not to stand up to him, and she waited by my locker after seventh period just to tell me this. Her hair was even wilder than on the day of the assembly. She looked like the cartoons of someone who had been given an electric shock. She smelled good though, citrus-y. I didn’t notice her eyes at first, because she was standing very close, and I had a habit of not looking people in the eye, no matter how close they were. I realized that I was looking at her chest, and girls don’t like that. I forced myself to look into her eyes. They were green.

I told her that if I hadn’t written the op-ed, Principal Nicks would have made my life hell. He could kill my chance of being admitted to Caltech. She was sympathetic, to a point, but she was still under the illusion I was some kind of freedom fighter.

“You did what you felt you had to do, but I think it’s never wrong to speak truth to power. That’s why I’m a journalist. Well, a photographer. I’m trying to write for the paper. It’s such a boy’s club. I have a shot if I come up with a great scoop.”

“I didn’t mean to say whatever I said at the rally.”

She didn’t hear me. “Even more than promoting safer sex and drug use, you took on the establishment. A progressive leader does change lives by bucking the status quo.”

I wanted to say that it was a stretch to call me a progressive leader, since I didn’t have a real platform aside from restroom privacy, which was not so much a platform as a simple right. But I couldn’t get in a word. It was astounding how Rachel could say so much without taking a breath.

“People who run for office give the most boring speeches. Or they’re jocks and they just smirk and sway. But you have something special. Most candidates would say ‘don’t do heroin’ if they even mention it at all. But encouraging needle exchanges, that’s bold.”

“I did that?”

“Yes! And STD testing. A girl wrote an anonymous letter to the paper and said your speech made her think about getting tested. She said if it weren’t for you, she would have gone around spreading Chlamydia.”

Rachel had an even bigger agenda than praising me. She wanted to do a feature story on me. She would need three interviews, minimum. “This way you can do an end run around the administration. You can say what you want. Tell everyone the principal made you take back those things. And I think everyone wants to learn more about your life. At the risk of sounding selfish, this could be a career-making story for me. By career I mean my high school journalism career. If I do a great job they’ll have to make me a regular reporter.”

I said I wouldn’t make a good subject because I wouldn’t be SGA vice president, because Principal Nicks called off the election.

“That’s one more reason to do the story. Vindication. I promise I won’t write anything deleterious about you.”

“But you wouldn’t be writing a hagiography.”

She leaned in as if murmuring to a hidden microphone in my vest pocket. “You’re probably the only person in this school who knows the word hagiography.”

I agreed to meet her for one interview, with the option to do more if it didn’t go badly. Assuming she was truthful about wanting to write something semi-positive about me, I could use it in my application materials for Caltech.

Plus, she was likely one of a precious few at Firebird High who would use the word deleterious, let alone use it correctly.

The plan was to meet at lunch in the outdoor courtyard. Rachel insisted the interview would only take half the period. I expected her to show up during the first part of the period, but this didn’t happen. While I waited for her on my shady bench, I heard some guy shout, “Where’s our stall doors?” I knew it was directed at me. I raised my head and squinted at a group of students lounging in the sun at the next table. A girl in a halter top smiled—flirtingly?—at me. “Can we recall him if he doesn’t deliver?”

I informed her I was not in SGA, and, therefore, I could not be recalled.

A guy with spiked black hair talked with his mouth full. “Who beat you out?”

“He was the only one running.” This was from a girl who was draped over a muscular guy’s shoulder like a slutty squid.

“There was no election,” I said. I don’t think they heard me.

“Can you still distribute condoms and pot?” the muscle guy said.

“The administration won’t allow it,” I said. “But they are open to distributing sex toys and heroin.”

Three seconds passed. Then they laughed. It was like I had given the secret password to their club. The halter-top girl waved me over. I scooted to the end of my table, close enough to hear them, but not close enough to invade their turf. The halter-top girl proclaimed me too funny, and then she shifted to oral sex. I mean she started talking about oral sex, not performing it.

It became clear after a minute or so that the conversation would no longer involve me. I knew this because nobody asked me anything or even looked at me. My tenure in the cool kids club could have been measured with a stopwatch.

I returned to my previous perch in the shade. When it looked like Rachel wasn’t coming, I commenced with my lunch. About five minutes before the bell, Rachel bolted to my table. She wore beige overalls and a black t-shirt. Her hair was different, tamed. I could clearly see her face. Pretty, I thought.

“News room crisis,” she said, out of breath. “Is it still okay?”

I told her it would be fine. But in reality I was a little miffed. Rachel plopped her notebook and recorder next to my pickles and immediately asked what made me decide to “rock the boat on drugs.” I was momentarily confused, because the way she phrased it made it seem like I was a drug-addicted sailor.

“Your speech? You did try to rock the boat, didn’t you?”

“I cited statistics, that’s all.”

“What about STDs?”

I stuffed two chips into my mouth and considered what she was asking. Surely she didn’t want to know whether I had any STDs. As I’ve said before, I dislike ambiguity.

She was staring at me, pen poised.

“I was researching drugs and STDs for an audition for the debate team,” I said.

“You’re joining the debate team?”

“Probably not.”

She spent the next minute writing. She used one of those oversized grippy pens that made her look like a preschooler trying to write for the first time. Then she asked me to describe a typical day. By that time I had already taken a bite of my pickle. She turned off her recorder and waited patiently for me to finish chewing.

“I go to the library,” I said, after swallowing.

She turned on the recorder. “Every day?”

“Not on Sunday.”

“And drugs? Do you use them?”

“Only allergy meds.”

“My mother and I are both allergic to peanuts,” she said. “Isn’t that strange? Allergies are hereditary, I think.”

I didn’t tell her about my BiMo’s food allergies. That would have led to the revelation about how she died, and that was a box that didn’t need to be opened.

“What are you eating?”

I showed her what had not been consumed. I told her I brought the same lunch every day.

“Fascinating,” she said, in a tone that suggested she thought it was more odd than fascinating. Then she leaned in.

“Tell me about little Tyler.”

I coughed.

In sixth grade, there was this kid, Charlie, who referred to his male organ as “little Charlie.” It was an irritating and juvenile way of referring to one’s privates, which, in my opinion, should not be referred to at all. I was fairly certain Rachel was not asking about my genitals. Rather, she was fishing for information on my childhood, which was almost as bad.

“I read a lot of books,” I said.

Rachel jotted down far more things than I had stated. I wanted to pivot off the topic, so I cleared my throat and made some exaggerated fidgets, which may have made me look like I had poor muscle control.

“Tell me five things you’re carrying in your safari vest right now,” she said, looking up from her pad.

Across the courtyard, two guys shouted, “hands off my…” and “…yours, dude.” Students jumped up, and action rippled out beyond ground zero. Then, just as suddenly, the fight stopped. Students sat, one by one, like the wave at a football game. Rachel hadn’t noticed the truncated fight. She was staring at me.

“I prefer to not talk about personal matters.” It came out harsher than I had intended. But she had pushed me into it with her big green eyes and compliments and proper grammar and talk of “little Tyler.” Mostly, the problem was my childhood. There wasn’t much good about it, and I didn’t want her to share it with the school.

Rachel clicked off her recorder with a touch of peevishness. Before she left, she tore a piece of paper out of her notebook and wrote her number on it. From the way she pressed hard, I assumed she was ticked at me.

“If you decide to open up, call me,” she said.

I hated my lunch, suddenly. The Swiss cheese was slimy and warm. The mustard was runny. The chips were compressed sawdust. Why did I choose to consume this five days a week? I wanted to tell Rachel that I was tired of being such an obtuse clam, but I had no practice being anything else. I wanted to be like the guys at the next table, with slightly less overt machismo. I wanted to be, if not exactly a cool kid, and not necessarily the firebrand who advocates sex demonstrations and drug dialogue—or drug demonstrations and sex dialogue, or whatever I had advocated—then, at least, a guy who did not spend his formative years hiding out in library stacks. I wanted to be a guy who wasn’t afraid to share things about his life when a pretty girl paid him attention.

That’s what I might tell Rachel if I ever saw her again.

**

September 21. Things I usually carry in my safari vest:

·         Sunscreen. The sun causes skin cancer.

·         Sunglasses. The sun can damage retinas.

·         Tissues.

·         Ibuprofen.

·         Claritin.

·         Antacid.

·         Pens.

·         A small bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

·         Eye drops.

·         Saline spray.

Dry eye is a problem caused by living in the desert. That’s why I carry eye drops and saline. A doctor told me once that tear ducts can dry out in below 10 percent humidity. One would think tear ducts would produce more moisture to compensate. But in some people, they don’t. My ducts seem to be barren.

**

Even though I needed the money, I would have preferred to let Levi have my shift at Covenant Catering. With me was a new co-worker, Tina, who was hired for her ability to drive a van and be pretty. We were catering a party for a nine-year-old. The parents were not home. It was just me, Tina, and a strangely Zen-like housekeeper. It was bound to end badly.

I knew there would be a problem the moment we pulled up to the house. It was not unlike the Kim’s—new, fake-opulent, with way too many vases, enormous paintings and glass items. The kids, all boys, were Satan’s spawn. As boys tossed pepperoni, gouged furniture with forks, and basically recreated scenes from Lord of the Flies, Tina whined, “I neeeed you to stop doing that.” This only made the brats worse. The housekeeper stared at the scene as if she were watching a sunset, on downers. It was only my quick reflexes that managed to save a lamp from crashing into a window. And I don’t think it was my job to save the lamp.

The crowning touch of the event was when the birthday boy emptied the contents of his stomach—three glasses of grape soda, pineapple pizza and coconut cake—directly onto a Persian rug. I watched the event unfold, as if in slow motion. The kid stopped running, like he just had a sudden, deep thought. His hands made a fast, quivering motion, as if playing an accordion at triple speed. Then the purple chunks flowed and splashed.

As Tina and I unloaded the serving trays back at Covenant Catering’s kitchen, Mr. Ferguson told me the birthday brat’s parents were unhappy. He would be forced to deduct the cost of the damage from my pay. But not from Tina’s, because she was new and she had been attending his LDS indoctrination meetings. Given the amount of destruction to the house, it would be weeks before I was in the black. I could have asked him to consider the cost of the lamp I saved, but I knew that would be useless.

When I was about to punch out, I decided to quit. There was no pen or paper anywhere, and Mr. Ferguson was in his office, on the phone. I wrote my resignation letter in fresh guacamole on the side of a stainless steel refrigerator. It read, simply, Tyler quits. The guacamole letters began running seconds after I wrote them. I left anyway. Mr. Ferguson would have to figure it out.

EIGHT

I started my job hunt at Starbucks. Their rest rooms were cleaner than any food establishment I had ever encountered, and they were open early. A downside was their essay question. Tell us about yourself. It occurred to me that I should write and memorize one essay for Starbucks, for Caltech, for Rachel, and for everyone who wanted the Quick-and-Easy Guide to Tyler.

The manager, a very pale white guy with a nose ring and asymmetrical hair, kept glancing at me as I struggled to produce an essay, which was becoming a mess of crossed-out sentences. I gave up after twenty minutes. I told him that I spilled coffee on the application, even though there were no liquids anywhere near me, and even though spilling coffee would suggest clumsiness or carelessness, which should be disqualifying traits for a barista. I requested a fresh application for the road, but the manager said he couldn’t allow them to leave the store. I told him I would be back.

The other businesses on my list served up no such application dilemmas. That’s because not one was hiring.

I returned to the house at three. It was a good thing I didn’t stay out longer, because Janet had planned a party for me. Though it was technically not a surprise party, I was surprised that she was going through with it. No FoPa had ever thrown me a party for any occasion. None had given me an iPod, or a cake, or anything. Occasionally, I would receive a birthday card from whatever case manager was assigned to me, often with my name misspelled on the envelope.

A week earlier, Janet had brought up the possibility of a birthday party. “We’re thinking of throwing you a party. What would you like?” I laughed a little bit and said, “enchiladas and strawberry cake.” These were the first things to come to mind. I don’t like enchiladas or strawberry cake. I assumed by the use of the word thinking that Janet had asked a hypothetical question. For example, if I said, I’m thinking of doing sexual things with Zoe from my Creative Soul class, that wouldn’t mean I was planning to act on those thoughts. Because I didn’t believe Janet had been serious, and because I was busy working on my science fair proposal—it was not easy to save the bees—I invited nobody to this “party.”

As I entered, Carl saw me from the living room and pointed, as if I were a fugitive or a celebrity. “There he is!”

Janet shouted from the kitchen. “Carl, put on that song.”

He shouted back. “Can you be more specific?”

“The woman who sings about being seventeen.”

“Janis Ian? The song is about how she has no friends. Isn’t it?”

“Put on something. I’m grating cheese.”

Carl cursed at his CD collection and finally decided on sitar music.

In the kitchen there was a large cake, stacks of paper party plates and trays of rolled up things with cheese. Janet was chopping, stirring, pounding, tossing and rinsing. “I’m making fifty enchiladas, in case your friends are hungry,” she said.

I told her she didn’t have to go to all the trouble.

Janet stopped grating. “I know that. We discussed this.”

Technically we had not discussed it. The previous day, she had asked, via the refrigerator white board, how many friends I might invite. I wrote back. Twenty. As with the original query about the party, I thought it was a theoretical question.

“I don’t think that many enchiladas are necessary,” I said.

“How many friends did you invite?”

I said nothing. I detected her lip curl.

“Your sister will be here,” Carl said, somewhat optimistically, to Janet.

They shared one of those married couple looks. In this case their thoughts were easy to discern. Tyler has no friends, so cue up that pathetic “seventeen” song.

My birthday wish was for the enchilada ingredients to fly apart and return to their original containers. I left them alone while I made last-minute phone calls to previous science lab partners, former teachers and any number I could find. Nobody was home and they probably wouldn’t have traveled across town to the party of someone they barely knew, anyway. I could have called Levi, but he made me swear to never call his house, and his parents wouldn’t let him have his own phone. I didn’t even think of calling Rachel, though I had kept her number in my Box o’ Crap.

After I finished calling everyone in my book, I told Carl and Janet I had to run a quick errand and that I would be back in a half hour.

“Now where are you going?” Janet snapped.

“He said he’d be back,” Carl said. As they began arguing over whether it was right for me to keep taking off, I escaped. I walked around their neighborhood, looking for guests. If I could round up at least two people, Janet’s work would not be completely in vain.

Half of the houses in the neighborhood either looked empty or were empty. The next-door neighbors, the ones who often stared out from their windows, were home. I knew this because they were staring out at me as I passed their house. I almost didn’t stop, because, frankly, their constant snooping was creepy. But I needed guests.

They were Bob and Betty Hansen, who were grandparent-aged. They wore matching white pants and floral shirts, and scowled even when saying something pleasant. There wasn’t time to invite anyone else. This would have to be good enough.

I introduced the Hansens to Janet. They seemed to already know each other and were not on the best of terms. I could tell this by the way Janet said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you over,” and by Mr. Hansen’s derisive snort.

On the patio, the Hansens and Carl sat in a semicircle, stone-faced, as if in the waiting room of a dentist’s office with nothing to read. I felt a nascent headache. This “party” was stressing me out.

A strange woman walked in without knocking. She was large but more muscular than porcine, and younger than Janet. Her red hair was tied in a ponytail. She wore tight white jeans tucked into red cowboy boots and a t-shirt that said Eat the Rich.

“Hello bee lover.” She thrust an envelope at me. Inside was a year’s subscription to Scientific American magazine and a $30 gift certificate to a bookstore.

Janet introduced the woman as her sister Fiona. They spent a minute catching up. I surmised that Fiona had spent several weeks touring India and experiencing food poisoning. “Good news is, I lost seven pounds,” she said.

Fiona turned to me, smiled, grabbed my arm, and led me to the patio.

For ten minutes Carl played talk-show host with the Hansens, prompting them to share the highlights of their lives. We learned they moved from Phoenix to Las Vegas because the weather was drier. Mr. Hansen retired from a company that made dog supplies, but they never had pets of their own. Mrs. Hansen found Las Vegas to be not as dry as she hoped. They paid too much for their house, they agreed.

Then, the Hansens ended the Q and A session. Mr. Hansen declared that Janet’s real estate business must be in “the crapper.”

“Janet says the market is coming back,” Carl said.

“Look around,” Mr. Hansen said. “All these new houses sitting empty. The black family left in the middle of the night.”

“They seemed shifty,” his wife added. “Guy had one of those Porsche-cars.”

Mr. Hansen corrected her, as if for the hundredth time. “Mercedes.”

“What’s a guy like that doing with a Mercedes?”

“Drug money.” This exchange seemed they had rehearsed it.

Fiona turned to Carl. “Are they serious?” He shrugged and looked up, helplessly, at Janet in the kitchen window.

Mrs. Hansen turned to Fiona and asked what she did for a living. Fiona took a big swig of iced tea and waited about ten seconds before answering. “I teach English as a second language to immigrants. They don’t pay me. The state does. Through your tax dollars.” She appeared pleased with herself.

That’s when all pretense of civility ended. Mr. Hansen was irate that his taxes were going to Fiona to teach those “illegal Mexicans.” He used the term “giver-mint,” instead of government, which was probably intentional because he said it three times. His wife overlapped him, going off about how Medicare was being overtaken by Socialist forces, and about some kind of terrorism plot. It wasn’t a discussion so much as a two-person anger aria.

Carl sat silently, looking pained. Fiona wore a beatific look on her face.

This was my fault. If I had told Carl and Janet the truth, that they should plan nothing for me because I had no friends, none of this would be happening. Carl and Janet would be doing their Saturday thing, Janet’s sister would be doing her thing, and I would be job hunting or trying to save the bees.

Fiona calmly reached into her bag and pulled out a cobalt blue glass pipe. She took out a pill bottle, pulled out a few buds and squished them into the pipe. Pot, I presumed. The Hansens stopped talking and watched Fiona light up. She inhaled and blew a cloud of smoke in their direction.

Mrs. Hansen sputtered. “Is that…?”

“Don’t worry,” Fiona said. “It’s from northern California, and no illegal Mexicans picked it.”

The sliding glass door thwomped open and Janet stuck her head out. She gave Fiona a withering scowl. Fiona followed Janet’s non-verbal summons to come inside. She took the pipe with her.

I stayed outside and listened to the Hansens as they berated Fiona as a “moonbat” and “illegal appeaser.” Carl weakly defended Fiona, but the Hansens weren’t having any of it. I began to wonder why the couple was staying. Maybe they really wanted the enchiladas and cake I’d promised.

Behind the kitchen window, Janet and Fiona were shouting at each other and using exaggerated gestures, like actors in an Italian movie with the sound off.

This was why I didn’t like to celebrate birthdays. Like my eighth birthday, when my BiMo suddenly decided to drive to Disneyland. She ran out of gas on the freeway. She sunk into a depressive funk for the next two days. We never made it to Disneyland. It would have been better if she hadn’t tried.

Fiona came back to the patio long enough to wish me happy birthday. “Big sister is sending me away because I peed in the punchbowl again.” There was no punchbowl at the party, so I hoped that to urinate in a punchbowl, like to clean someone’s clock, was a type of euphemism. She apologized to Carl and ignored the Hansens.

“Walk me out?” she said to me.

I escorted Fiona to the front door. In the foyer she leaned in and whispered to me. “Be good to those two. They’ve been through a lot.” She meant Carl and Janet, surely, not the Hansens, but for a few seconds I wasn’t sure.

She backed away from me, cocked her head and squinted. “You know who you look like?”

I waited for her to tell me.

“A drummer I knew. Animal.” The way she said animal, I wasn’t sure whether it was a good thing or bad. She forced the breath out of me with a sudden hug that was more like a frontal Heimlich maneuver.

The Hansens stormed out a few seconds after Fiona left. I thanked them for coming. Mr. Hansen responded by swatting the air with his hand as if shooing away a fly.

Janet followed them out. “You’ll miss the cake,” she said in a tone that was too perky to be authentic. Mrs. Hansen stopped for a moment, reconsidering, but her husband grabbed her arm and pulled her along with him.

Janet turned to me. “That went well.” It was clear that she was being sarcastic.

Later that night, Carl and Janet showed up at my bedroom door. Janet held out a wrapped gift and told me to open it. It was a new cell phone.

“Maybe it will help us talk,” she said. “I think you’re the last kid in America over thirteen to not have one.” I didn’t know the statistics, but I knew she had to be exaggerating.

Then something quite extraordinary happened. Carl handed me a check for $550. “It’s for the amount we didn’t spend on you for a month,” he said.

I kept staring at the check. No FoFa ever turned over any money the state gave them. I hadn’t asked for it. I didn’t expect it. I wondered whether it might have been a trick.

I thanked them for the check, the party, and the phone. I didn’t need the phone, but I wouldn’t ask them to take it back or exchange it. They had done enough for me already.

**

September 30. In Creative Soul, students expressed more confusion over the daily journals. Ms. Gurzy explained, again, the purpose of doing them. When they continued questioning her, she snapped and told us we didn’t have to do the journals at all. Therefore, this is my last journal. Bye.

September 30. I can’t sleep. In chemistry class last year, I wrote a paper that laid out the dangers of everyday devices and substances used in millions of households. I pointed out that preliminary research on the link between mobile phones and brain cancer was inconclusive. There was no proof that cell phones caused cancer, but no proof that they didn’t cause cancer. How will I tell Carl and Janet this?

September 30. I don’t understand why they threw me a party. I don’t understand why they’re not keeping the state money. I don’t see what’s in it for them.

**

On October 1st, I received a letter from the Foster-go-Round with my emancipation trial date. I was to appear on December 14th, right in the middle of finals week, a day before I was to receive my verdict from Caltech. In legalese, the letter told me to bring character witnesses and job references. And, of course, I would have to write another farking essay.

I put the letter in my Box o’ Crap.

NINE

October 3. Terrible jobs I’ve had:

·         Twirling a sign at an intersection to promote a new condo development. I learned the importance of a high SPF sun block.

·         Washing dishes at a restaurant. Lasted until another dishwasher sabotaged me by planting dishes in my backpack. Final paycheck withheld. Can’t use as reference.

·         Working for Clownfish Lady. I started out watering her plants and walking her dog. The job morphed into cleaning her toilets, negotiating with her bill collectors, spying on her ex-husband, and looking for an exact replacement for the expensive pink skunk clownfish that she said I killed. Can’t use as reference.

·         Bagging groceries. For each rest room break, pay was docked a half hour. Forced to do unpaid overtime. Can’t use as reference.

·         Covenant Catering. Can’t use as reference.

**

It had been a frustrating evening of job-hunting. The closest I came to a legitimate offer was at a small bakery. The owner said he would give me a few weekend hours and free massage. I declined both.

In a sliver of time between homework, saving the bees, and job hunting, I was at the house, resting on my bed. Carl came to my bedroom door and announced that Sun would bring Eddie Kim to the house for tutoring. “At least I think she said that. She was hard to understand.”

I imagined the Sun-Carl conversation.

“Eddie happy for make Tyler the teaching so now, okay?”

“Come again?”

“I come. Okay byebye.”

“I wish you would speak with her directly,” Carl said to me. “Your cell phone has voice mail.” He said this not in a sarcastic way, but in a manner that made him appear helpful. I had been keeping my cell phone in my Box o’ Crap, partly because of the brain cancer risk, but mostly because I didn’t have anyone to call.

I met Eddie at the front door. I was not certain he wouldn’t have an impromptu tantrum, so I steered him away from the living room—Carl and Janet were sitting there and having a low-grade argument—and marched him off to my bedroom.

“Who stole all your stuff?” I hadn’t thought about it until Eddie brought it up. There were no wall hangings, no posters, no photos. The only bit of color in my room was Eddie’s red and blue rugby shirt. He was bouncing on his knees on my bed, flapping his arms. A tropical bird in a cage came to mind.

Eddie insisted on candy before he studied. I left him alone in my bedroom while I searched in the kitchen for something that might satisfy him. I was on a health kick, and Carl and Janet never kept sweets in the house. When I returned with dried cranberries and green tea, Eddie was on the bed with his face in my Box o’ Crap.

He turned to me, holding two Petri dishes up to his eyes. “Come closer, I can’t see you.”

I calmly explained the importance of not touching someone else’s personal belongings. Either he didn’t listen, or he considered this to be a merely academic lecture, because he began fishing around for more treasures. He pulled out a photo of my BiMo. She was standing in front of the ocean, wearing a big yellow hat that was about to blow off. I liked to remember her that way, a little silly and carefree, and not, for lack of a better word, crazy. I had taken the photo. I must have been Eddie’s age.

I told him she was my biological mother.

“Where was this? Did you sleep on the beach? How far away is that? If you fly there how long does it take? If you drive there how long does it take? Did you see a meteor there?”

“I lived in Los Angeles for one year,” I answered. “I didn’t live near the beach, but in a place called the San Fernando Valley. It was 300 miles away, roughly, a 50-minute plane ride, and an unknown but long period of time by foot. No meteor sightings.”

Eddie pulled out some avocado pits from the box. Pre-empting his question, I told him my biological mother was going to use them to plant trees.

“Why didn’t she?”

“She lost interest.”

He dropped the pits and pulled out a publicity post card with my BiMo posing in front of a combo of musicians. She had a microphone in her hand. “Is she a singer? Did you make her mad? Is she nicer than your new mother? Where does she live? Why aren’t you talking? Are you in a bad mood?”

I ripped the post card from his hand with a force that surprised me. I told him the lesson was beginning.

Eddie finished his arithmetic homework with nary a peep. The sensory depravation of my empty bedroom may have been helpful. “You’re my best teacher ever,” he said, unprompted, before he ran out to meet Sun. He seemed sincere about this. I didn’t feel obligated to say he was my best student, because I would have been lying.

Later that night, I went to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal. Janet cornered me and said what a polite little boy Eddie was and how nice his mother was. I informed her that Sun was his housekeeper/nanny and that Eddie was usually a hellion.

“Does his mother work? Why does she leave him alone? Where is his father? They just leave the kid alone all day?” With every “I don’t know” I uttered, Janet grew more exasperated.

I wanted to change the conversation, so I told her I was on the verge of a breakthrough in the honeybee colony collapse syndrome. This was a wild exaggeration, but it didn’t matter, because Janet ignored what I said. She opened a bottle of wine with a fancy battery-operated cork extractor.

My BiMo never drank. I suppose that was a good thing. Adding alcohol to her mental and emotional turbulence would be like adding amine to sodium hypochlorite, or possibly acetone to chloroform in the presence of a base. That’s a chemistry analogy.

“Can you tell me why you’re not using your new phone?” Janet said, blocking my exit. “We both left messages for you.”

I promised her I would listen to them and use the phone to call her.

“I’m here now. Anything you’d like to talk about?”

There wasn’t, and for a moment I thought it might be a trick question. One FoMa approached me in that way, thinking I would confess about stealing money from her drawer. I hadn’t even gone in her room, ever. One of her sullen and pierced biological daughters had taken it. Or she had misplaced it. My denial didn’t sway her. I was moved to a new FoHo within days.

“How is… business?”

Janet uttered a growl of annoyance. It was kind of a no-win situation she put me in, demanding to talk, yet not informing me of off-limit topics.

“Last year was bad, but this year has been a shit storm. Sellers are turning to section eight. Good luck with that. They’ll find their places trashed. It’s not going to end until they bulldoze some neighborhoods. This area could end up looking like it did a thousand years ago. Might not be a bad thing.”

I saw an opening. I informed her that what was now the Las Vegas valley was, millions of years ago, the ocean floor. Thick deposits of Ordovician mudstone could be seen in the nearby deserts, which was evidence of a great flood. I had covered all of this in a 7th grade geology report, “Soft Rock and Heavy Metals: What You Didn’t Know About Nevada’s Geology.” I added that they shouldn’t worry about flooding from global warming either, because the city was more than 2,000 feet above sea level. But the heat may make the valley uninhabitable.

Janet drained her glass. “Interesting,” she said, as if she didn’t want to hear any more. She poured another glass of wine. I stayed in the kitchen, in case she wasn’t done with me.

“Carl’s dad moved out here and bought this place because he thought the weather would be good for his health. But the desert doesn’t heal cancer. You probably could have told him that.”

No, because I didn’t know him then. That’s what I almost said.

“Then he dies and leaves the place to Carl and his other son. Carl bought out his brother at the top of the market. Then the market dropped and we couldn’t sell the house in California, and this place is worth a third of what it used to be.”

“It’s a nice house,” I said.

She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke toward the window, which was closed. “Hollow doors. Drywall had mold. Mold in the desert. But this stucco box had to stay in the family. Sentimental value. If Carl was so sentimental, why didn’t he buy the old man’s house in Michigan?”

It wasn’t clear whether I should answer the question. I didn’t know a lot about real estate. It was a personal matter anyway.

She stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette in a wooden African bowl. “What I said on the voice mail was, if you need a ride, ask us. I asked you not to ride your bike. There are no bike lanes and the drivers here are idiots. And you don’t have to pay us for gas.”

I was momentarily miffed that she was still forbidding me to ride my bike. But we had begun to have a nice conversation. It seemed unwise to ruin it. I thanked her and promised to ask her for a ride sometime, knowing I wouldn’t ask her.

I should have studied that night. Instead I rummaged through my Box o’ Crap while I listened to one of my BiMo’s CDs on my laptop computer. There was a medley of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “It’s a Wonderful World” that I listened to every year on the anniversary of my BiMo’s death. I hated the song. Listening to it was an act of self-abuse.

My BiMo would not have stayed put like Carl and Janet. She moved once a year, at least. Sometimes it was her choice, sometimes the landlord’s, sometimes her boyfriend of the moment. She thought the most important thing was being in motion. One time, we even moved from a great place with a pool, though I still didn’t swim in it, just because she thought the building’s “vibe” blocked her creativity. But she didn’t have any better luck at the next place. She began keeping things in boxes, in case she needed to move again suddenly. At times I wondered if moving was more of a compulsion than a joyful act of seeking freedom.

“Don’t end up like me,” she said. “Find out what you’re good at and do everything you can until you succeed at it. Don’t let anything stand in your way.” She gave a lot of advice about life. Some of it was useful, like the many times she told me to study hard, go to the best school, and “you get what you settle for.”

I started culling from my Box o’ Crap. I removed some of the obviously useless stuff, like the avocado pits and the dead pens. Then I went for some of the BiMo stuff, like the take-out menu from Thai Me Down. I didn’t need to look at any of that, ever. It went into a manila envelope and into the trash.

I said I wasn’t going to bring up my BiMo anymore, but I’m afraid it’s going to be necessary.

TEN

Guten morgen! Guten tag! By initiating the first German club in Firebird High School’s history, not only have I shown leadership qualities, I also have experienced the joy thrill ecstasy pride that comes from saving the day picking up the gauntlet blazing a trail taking the bull by the horns padding my application.

SCHEIZEN. CUT.

**

College application padding was complete.

Firebird High’s fledgling German program consisted of two small classes, but Caltech wouldn’t need to know that. Our teacher, Frau Soto, thought the German club idea was wunderbarste.

One person showed up on time for the kick-off meeting, a slightly pudgy brunette with a doughy complexion. Her German class name was Annette-Barbel. She was a little bit too excited about the club. “We’re like the Continental Congress of Firebird’s German program,” she gushed.

We agreed that I would be chancellor and she would be vice-chancellor. Choosing officers was my only agenda item. I was about to adjourn the meeting when a guy ran into the room, out of breath and wild-eyed. It was Jann-Otto, the one who had complained that he wouldn’t be accepted to Stanford on grades and SAT scores. When Annette-Barbel informed him that we had chosen officer titles, he became irate. “You couldn’t wait till everyone got here?” His voice was nasal and screechy. I made a mental note to keep my voice low, clear and resonant, just like Ms. Gurzy taught us in the Creative Soul vocal exercises.

“Everybody was here and I don’t think it’s fair to interrupt a meeting already in progress,” Annette-Barbel said. “If you had a conflict, you should have informed Helmut.” Helmut was my German class name.

Jann-Otto wouldn’t let it drop. He told us he was going to graduate summa cum laude—as if that mattered—and said he had the idea for German club weeks ago. She told him he should have expressed his idea at the time.

He kept clicking his pen fast enough to cause a thumb sprain. “So we’re going to be undemocratic? We’re just going to let this guy run things?” Again, he meant me. I never appreciated being referred to in the third person.

I stood and told them both that I would iron out issues such as what title to give Jann-Otto—I was thinking of some very special titles—at the next meeting.

“I should be an officer right now,” he said. “My application deadline to Stanford is in less than three weeks.” I really, really hated his voice. His insistence on padding his application, as I was doing, made me suddenly want to run the club for real. But I had planned nothing for the first meeting. I needed to get out of there and look for a job.

“Meeting adjourned!” I slapped my hand on the desk. This was the new Tyler, powerful and assertive, ready to slam his hand down hard enough to make it sting.

As I rushed toward the nearest exit I passed the Clarion office. The door was open. I slowed down long enough to glance inside, acting nonchalant in a way that suggested I’m walking very slowly and there’s nothing else to look at in this hallway, so I might as well take a peek.

I stopped. Rachel was sitting at a desk, reading. She had a way of biting her lower lip when she was writing or thinking. She was doing it now. I found it appealing.

Her shirt said, Why don’t hedgehogs just share the hedge?

I laughed. Just a quick, ha.

Rachel looked up. So did the two guys at the desk behind her. We were all frozen in time. I know that’s not scientifically possible. It’s just an expression I heard once. Rachel stuck her tongue out. I pivoted and fast-walked out of the building.

**

October 13. Activities with FoPas, in no particular order:

·         FoPa Three. Helped them wash the dogs. It was my idea because they smelled. The dogs smelled, I mean. I also joined them and their four other fosters and three biological children at an interminable UNLV basketball game. Was almost left behind.

·         FoPa Two. Went to their biological daughter’s middle school band concert. As they bleated out a noxious rendition of some current pop song, I considered how many pints of blood might gush out of my body before the concert ended, if I should stab myself in the throat. It was difficult to estimate. There were three variables: whether I was standing or sitting, the length of the concert, and the tightness of my shirt collar.

·         FoPa One. Went to his Pentecostal church three Sundays in a row. On the third visit, I went through the motions and even spoke in tongues, which pleased him until he realized that I was loudly reciting the periodic table of elements. He never dragged me there again.

·         FoPa Five. Joined them on several trips to an upscale furniture store when they were redecorating their house. Learned the differences in colors and fabrics.

·         FoPa Four. I can’t remember any.

·         Carl. A driving lesson???

**

On Saturday morning, I passed Carl in the driveway when I was on my way to the pharmacy. He was sitting in his red VW GTI and staring straight ahead, as if his mesmerized by the steering wheel. He didn’t notice me, and I didn’t want to disturb him in case he was in deep mediation. I was concerned that surprising a person in a deep trance could cause a heart attack or other bodily trauma. I walked by him without waving.

Down by the strip center, Carl pulled up to the curb next to me. He asked me if I needed a ride. I almost told him no, because I was so close to the store. But he seemed extraordinarily eager to help me out. I agreed to let him take me the final hundred or so feet. I thought he would drop me off and be on his way. But when I left the store, he was still sitting in the car, with that same look of concentration. I tentatively got in the car. He perked up again, as if he were a child’s toy and someone had just shoved new batteries in his back.

“How about that lesson? Do you have time?” Several times over the past three weeks he had offered to give me a driving lesson. As with the birthday party Janet threw for me, I thought these invitations were theoretical.

I told him I had a little time.

As he drove toward the I-15 freeway he explained displacement, torque versus horsepower, the value of manual transmissions in sporty cars, and other finer automotive points. It was becoming clear that Carl was a bit of a nerd, like me. If we ever could agree on a topic, we could conceivably maintain a long conversation.

He stopped the VW in the middle of an enormous lot near a motorist pit stop. He was shockingly cheerful. “Rrrrready when you are!”

I walked around to the driver’s side. Carl hopped into the passenger seat. He guided me though the process. “Don’t put your foot on the gas yet… keep the clutch in, and shift into first… now put your foot on the gas, just a little bit.”

After a few gear grinds, I got the hang of it. The rhythm—clutch-shift-accelerate—was like a dance. When I was in sync, the VW would repay me with a satisfying engine buzz and seamless gear changes. Other times it gave me a head jolt and a growl of protest.

Carl started talking about his life, cars, and his life in cars. In college he had an unreliable MG convertible, and then a 71 Cutlass, which was a “babe magnet.” Fifteen minutes and several automotive anecdotes later, I was ready to thank him and call it a day. Carl asked how the college application process was going. I told him it was fine. In reality, I had 190 pages of essay slush and about two usable paragraphs.

He asked whether I was still set on Caltech. I told him I was.

“It’s good to have fall back schools,” he said.

I forgot to take my foot off the gas. The engine revved. I stepped on the brake and the car lurched to a halt. The red and yellow lights stayed on, shaming me.

Carl told me to “start ‘er up again.” I turned the ignition and depressed the clutch. I shifted to first, and then to second, then third. When I settled back into the rhythm, Carl said he and Janet had always planned to pay for their son’s college and they still hoped to do that. Strange, I thought, as I tried to concentrate on shifting. Why was he planning to save money for a son? They were much too old to start having babies. They had to be at least in their mid-fifties.

Carl kept talking while I tried to concentrate on the clutch-shift-gas sequence. It was starting to annoy me. It’s like he had taken me out there not only to teach me how to use a manual transmission, but to bore me with his life story. “We’re going through some financial problems, as you’re probably aware. But you’re welcome to stay with us after you age out of the system. It could be helpful if you want to stay around here and go to UNLV.”

Clutch, shift… something… gas petal, shifter. I was confused. Carl waved his left hand. I shifted, skipping a gear. There was a grinding sound. The engine revved with ferocity. Carl gestured helplessly at the gearshift. My left leg had gone rigid and pushed the clutch all the way to the floor. I did a ninety-degree turn going forty. The car skittered off the pavement and onto a dirt embankment.

I slammed on the brakes. The car lurched to a stop. The instrument panel lights glowed. We sat in silence for a few seconds as dust settled around us.

“My grades and scores are good enough for Caltech,” I said.

“I’m thinking in terms of practicality. Since I teach in the system, there might be some financial incentive for you to go there.” That made no sense to me, because I was not his son. There was, as far as I knew, no discount for foster children of part-time professors. “Of course, you have the smarts to go anywhere. It’s amazing what you’re doing. A little quiet but I think we’re working on that.”

We’re working on that? It occurred to me that, for two people who insisted on having conversations with me, they were just as bad at conversing as I was. They both could talk a lot of scheizen. And then he said one thing I hate almost as much as smile, it’s not so bad. “Considering what you’ve been through, you’re doing great.”

I told him I had to study, even though I really didn’t. I thanked him for the lesson and said I didn’t need another one.

On Sunday, Carl and Janet left the house early. I sat at the breakfast nook with my cup of coffee. Because I was alone, I felt comfortable loudly humming “Urge for Going.” I noticed the message on the white board. It was in Janet’s slashy handwriting. Nevada Child and Family Services called about your “emancipation.” Is this a mistake?

It wasn’t a mistake. The letter with my hearing date was still in my Box o’ Crap. The Foster-go-Round was expecting me to call back and confirm. I had neglected to do so because… well, I wasn’t quite sure. If I could have some kind of guarantee of not being uprooted again, and if Carl and Janet didn’t try to act like they were my real parents, then I wouldn’t mind staying in the foster system, and staying with them.

I couldn’t explain all that on the white board, so I wrote no.

ELEVEN

Moments after I left a pet store with an application for a non-existent job, the sky opened up. The desert storm was short, more like a like a violent cloud sneeze. It lasted just long enough for the rain to plaster my shirt to my torso, making me look as skinny as a freshly shampooed cat. I ran for shelter in the wrong direction.

I stopped to get my bearings at a nursing home called Colonial Gardens. The receptionist, Kate, smiled at me Mona Lisa-like, and asked how I learned about the job opening. I looked at her blankly. She informed me they had just fired two aides on the night shift, and more were going to get the ax. “I haven’t even had time to advertise for the positions and I’m not looking forward to sifting through a bunch of applications.”

I hadn’t planned to seek a job there. I didn’t even know the place existed. Of course, I asked to apply.

As with the Starbucks application, there was an open-ended question and half a page of blank space. I rewrote part of a Caltech essay attempt from memory, and it seemed to fit the question well. What are three examples of your consideration for others? My knowledge of germ-fighting techniques came in handy. I had just read an article on MRSA, the antibiotic-resistant bacteria common in hospitals and nursing homes. I wove my knowledge of that together with the techniques I would use to keep surfaces clean and keep the residents safe. When I finished, Kate told me that the staff of Colonial Gardens did God’s work. “Unfortunately God’s pay scale starts at ten dollars an hour.”

That was more than I had hoped for. It was thirty-eight hours a week, because they had to provide benefits at 40 hours. Three eighty a week, minus taxes, FICO and social security, for ten months would give me approximately fifteen grand for tuition, room, and board. Patients would be asleep on the night shift, wouldn’t they? I could do homework and get paid for it. I wanted that job.

“We’re like family here,” she said. “That’s what we strive for.”

“Me too,” I said, dumbly.

I assumed Kate would tell me to come back for an interview at a time when I was prepared and not dripping wet. Instead, she said the executive director, Mr. Wofford, was waiting for me. This was peculiar. To my knowledge, she hadn’t told him I was there. She had been sitting in front of me the whole time I filled out the application. If she had let him know about me, it was via telepathy.

Mr. Wofford wasn’t much taller standing than sitting. His handshake was surprisingly firm and he seemed intent on crushing my little finger.

“You made quite an impression on Kate.” He led me into his office and gave my wet clothes a quick glance. He turned to the window. The sun was shining. I fought the urge to explain that it had been raining hard, for exactly four minutes.

He asked me to sit. I perched on the end of the guest chair so my moist clothes wouldn’t dampen the entire seat. The A/C was on full blast and blowing against my wet shirt. I heard squeaking coming from somewhere in the office.

He scanned my application. “These are some impressive academic achievements. You’re planning on college?”

This was a gotcha question. What if they were looking for aides who would stay around more than a year? They wouldn’t want to train someone who would leave.

“Probably UNLV,” I said, choking a little.

“You say you’re a helper,” he said. “Can you elaborate?”

“I’ve helped many people. I helped my... I saved my BiMo…biological mother’s life a few times.”

“You know CPR?”

“Yes, I do.” But I couldn’t save my BiMo when it really mattered. “I learned it when I was ten.”

Mr. Wofford smiled. “So young, yet so pragmatic. But what we’ve been missing in our aides is empathy. Many of our residents are tossed aside. Ignored by society. Some are ignored by their families. Might as well be flotsam.”

“I can relate,” I said, too eagerly.

He blinked rapidly.

“I’ve never been in a nursing home, but I will be,” I said. “Eventually. I wouldn’t like to be… flotsam.”

I recognized the source of the squeaking. My legs were pumping up and down, causing the chair to protest. Mr. Wofford asked if I wanted hot tea. I politely declined even though my shivering threatened to devolve into a body quake. It must have made him uncomfortable, because he cut the interview short.

“I can c-c-come back with r-r-recommendations,” I said, through chattering teeth.

“Not necessary. I’d like you to start next week.”

“O-k-k-kay.”

The job came with conditions. Within six months of my start date, I was required to complete two courses in nursing at a local community college. And there would be a probationary period. For one week I would be shadowing an experienced aide in the afternoon. If I didn’t screw up, I would start on the third shift, starting at 11 p.m. and ending at 7 a.m. I was told never to call it the graveyard shift, for obvious reasons.

**

The genesis of my interest in science was a comment my fifth grade teacher made. He said people believe that if they drop food on the ground it is safe to eat, if the food doesn’t stay there longer than five seconds. But science has shown that the rule is true only if the food is dry. If it is moist, bacteria cling to it immediately. My initial fascination with bacteria has now morphed moved on exploded grown evolved to include the study of immunology. Having a close family member die from what should be harmless substances really made me think is a tragedy that needs to be solved  is bound to make anyone a little crazy can be a blessing in disguise, if not for me, then for all the people whose diseases I will cure.

SLUSH FILE.

**

The incongruity of Colonial Gardens’ architecture had not been apparent when I interviewed there. But on my first afternoon of shadowing, I was somewhat amused by its red brick façade, high portico and white columns. The name and the building made perfect sense in a warped, Las Vegas way. On the Strip there was an Egyptian pyramid, an Eiffel Tower and a fake New York City skyline, so why not a nursing home that evoked Monticello? There wasn’t anything remotely fecund in sight.

Kate asked for my driver’s license. It was formality, she said. I had listed my age as 18 on the application, not 17. Fortunately, I had a fake I.D. Levi had given me in lieu of payment for a tutoring session. The license said I was eighteen, which was perfect for lying about my age on a job application. It gave few other benefits, because the Nevada drinking age was 21. Unfortunately, the photo wasn’t me. Levi insisted that the photo he used—an actor, Christian Slater, who had a lot of hit movies as a teenager in the 80s—looked exactly like me. I made a mental note to watch some of the guy’s films.

Kate photocopied my fake license and my Social Security card without looking carefully at them.

My shadowee was Carmella, a plump and dour Latina whose uniform sleeves squeezed her upper arms like blood pressure cuffs. She explained that the four wings at Colonial Gardens corresponded to the residents’ level of functioning. The A wing had the highest functioning residents. The D wing had the largest percentage of residents who, for whatever reason, were incontinent, immobile or in some stage of catatonia.

I noted that we were on the D wing.

The call buttons lit up constantly. Carmella would be explaining a certain form or procedure to me, then she would break off, mid-sentence, and rush to a resident’s room. By the time I followed her to the destination, she had already solved the problem. Twice I bumped into her as she was coming out of a room. It must have been getting on her nerves, because she sent me to a tiny, windowless room and told me to watch a new trainee DVD. It was nearly three hours long. The content fell into two categories—inspirational, with shots of very old people doing the Hokey Pokey, and informational, including how to fill out the myriad charts, how to feed people, how to roll them over, and how to react to a medical crisis. They were called residents, not patients. The implication was that they were staying at Colonial Gardens until the very end.

Carmella retrieved me for the “dinner rush.” Rush was an inaccurate word because the whole feeding process took up a large part of the second shift. Many of the residents on the D wing needed assistance. Some had forgotten how to use a fork or swallow.

Room D221 housed two women. Milagro Sanchez was emaciated. Edna Brown was enormous, as if she had been stealing Milagro’s flesh. The volume on TV was turned up high. Carmella turned it down.

Edna asked who I was, but not in a curious way. More like a go away way.

“Tyler is going to take care of you on the night shift,” Carmella said. “As long as you don’t scare him away.” The corpulent woman grabbed her plate and eyed me suspiciously.

Carmella used baby talk to coax the frail woman, Milagro, to eat. “You don’t want to be stubborn for Tyler. He wants you to eat so you’ll be strong.” Milagro’s gaze was like a searchlight, starting at my knees and ending at my forehead. She opened her mouth. The spoon full of spinach goo went in. Her withered lips surrounded it. All the time she was staring at me.

“There you go,” Carmella cooed. “Let’s see you do that again.” Milagro consumed more than half of her dinner before Carmella had to move on. “She likes you,” Carmella said as we left the room. “Too bad you’re not staying on the second shift. We may have to put her on a feeding tube.”

At 9:30 p.m., Carmella said a resident had made a mess. From watching the DVD, I had a pretty good idea what the mess would be. In room D209, a small, gnome-ish white man was jabbing his finger at his roommate, a large black man who was in bed and staring straight ahead with arms folded. “He does this on purpose,” the gnomish guy said.

The soiled man rolled onto his side, as if he knew the drill well. I lifted the sheet while Carmella cleaned him. I helped Carmella hoist him onto a gurney while we changed his bed. Carmella moved so efficiently that I didn’t have time to think about what we were doing. I just matched her, move for move. She wasn’t grossed out by the stench, so I decided I wouldn’t be, either.

“We’ll see you later,” Carmella told the man after the ordeal was over. “This is Tyler. He’s going to be on the night shift.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said. Neither man acknowledged me.

On the second evening of shadowing, the button for room D221 lit up as soon as I arrived at my station. Carmella said I should go. It was the room with Milagro Sanchez and her angry, porcine roommate, Edna. I asked both of them how I could help them. Milagro made a come here motion with her bony hand. I approached her bedside. “Is the A/C too high?” She said nothing. “Tu quieres algo…”

“She don’t talk Spanish,” Edna said. “She don’t talk at all. Works out good for me.”

Milagro gestured to a book on the table next to the bed, the Bible, with a worn leather cover.

“She wants you to pray,” Edna said.

Milagro closed her eyes. This was like nothing I saw in the training DVD. Without knowing what else I could do, I pretend-prayed. I thought of my most immediate concerns, finishing the farking essays on time and being admitted to Caltech.

When I opened my eyes, Milagro Sanchez was smiling. I put the Bible down and told her if she needed anything, she knew where to find me.

Back at the nurses’ station, Carmella offered some advice. “We’re here to make residents happy, but you don’t have to do anything that would violate you.”

Over a week of shadowing, I poured 45 glasses of water, turned down the A/C 63 times, turned up the A/C 32 times, assisted in giving 140 meals, and cleaned up eight accidents. I spent my breaks developing a list of casual conversation topics. Mr. Graciella wanted to talk about sports, which I knew nothing about, so I often just agreed with whatever he said. I informed several residents about the plight of the bees, but I don’t think they appreciated the urgency of the situation.

At the end of the week, Carmella said she would recommend me to begin on the third shift. “The residents really seem to like you,” she said. “Especially Milagro. If you can get her to talk that really would be a miracle.”

There’s something about genuine praise and the promise of steady income that makes a bus ride more pleasant. I had a job. I had money. Money meant freedom and autonomy. I could even list this job in my Caltech application. That should be impressive.

My good mood lasted until three seconds after I entered the front door. Janet stomped in from somewhere and berated me for not cashing the $550 check. She informed me they had opened up a checking account for me and would be depositing the unused cash from the state into it. “It will be your college fund. You won’t be able to touch it.”

I said nothing.

“And I understand you’re leaving us.”

Silence.

“You couldn’t have said something?”

“I thought you knew. My case manager—”

“Of course. The case manager, who can’t even get our names right.” She stood with her arms on her hips in a Superman pose. “So where does this leave us?”

I told her they would need to testify at the emancipation trial. Then I would be on my own, if all went according to plan, by February.

“It’s terrible living here, isn’t it?”

“No, not really.”

“You can’t wait to get away, can you?”

Silence.

She looked like she was about to cry. But I could have been wrong, because the lighting was low.

“All right then,” she said. “Don’t be a stranger.”

I went to my room, closed my door, and settled in for a night of culling and un-culling items from my Box o’ Crap.

**

October 26. Here’s what I wanted to say to Janet, and I would have if I had time to think about it and prepare:  You’ve done much more for me than I ever thought possible. That scares me a little and I don’t know why. Maybe because it seems like a trick. You are the ones with all the power. You can send me away at any time. If you’re serious about keeping me around, then don’t pretend to be a parent. Because it’s too late for a parent. It’s just too farking late.

TWELVE

I started my first night shift on Halloween. Technically, the shift began at 11 p.m. on the 30th. Half of the staff sported costumes like hasty afterthoughts—a hat here, a nose there. One nurses’ aide painted her face like a lion, which could have been frightening to some residents with more advanced dementia.

I shared a station with Courtney, a blonde and very thin woman with a perma-sneer. She was not in costume, unless her fingernails, which were painted purple and covered with tiny metallic beads, were a nod to the holiday. She wore the standard green-gray scrubs and an expression of constant exasperation. In the first hour she said five words to me; no, there, don’t, touch, and that. Two nurses’ aides sitting across the corridor, Ruth and Darla, wore matching Raggedy Ann makeup and wigs. Darla was also pretending to be pregnant. The next day it would come as a surprise that Darla’s enormous belly was real and that she was actually six months pregnant.

Overhearing their conversations, I learned about several deviations from normal patient care. One resident on the A wing, a guy named Trent, was having sex with several female nurses’ aides. Darla and Ruth agreed they would “do him” if they had the chance. I was appalled until it became clear that Trent was actually 28 years old. He had been partially paralyzed from a motorcycle accident. The A wing, I remembered, had several young residents on Medicaid. Still, it didn’t seem right to be having sex at work. I made a mental note to avoid doing that.

**

To: all staff

Re: new pet policy

Be advised that Colonial Gardens has revised its policy regarding animals. Effective immediately, live animals will no longer be permitted in the facility. This includes dogs, cats, birds, reptiles and rodents. While this will not affect third shift workers, please know that some residents are quite unhappy about the policy. If questions arise, please reiterate that we are looking out for their safety in the wake of the unfortunate clawing incident last week.

Cecelia Platt

**

Just after midnight, the D wing head nurse, Mrs. Platt, stopped at my station. She was a short, plump woman with a red bulbous nose, and a red greasepaint clown smile. She spoke in a high-pitched pseudo-cartoon voice. I thought she was producing the voice intentionally to go along with her costume. It was a good thing I didn’t laugh. Later that night Ruth told me Mrs. Platt always sounded like that.

“I hope you won’t find the hours too difficult,” Mrs. Platt said. “No, erase that thought, erase.” She waved her hand in the air as if she were trying to erase an imaginary chalkboard.

“I know you will love the job despite the hours. No, erase. It’s not a job. It’s a calling. You’ve been called, Tyler.”

Mrs. Platt was right about the job being a calling. I was literally called by residents twenty-two times in eight hours. Eighty percent of the time, a call light meant a resident wanted the A/C turned up or down. Sometimes a resident would want it turned up and down at the same time. In those cases, pretending to adjust the temperature setting satisfied them. Ten percent of the time they wanted water. Mrs. Platt told us we could only give them a half-cup per night to prevent accidents. Accidents happened, regardless. When changing urine-soaked sheets, Courtney huffed and groaned and sometimes called the resident a baby. I wasn’t aware that these tactics worked in stopping incontinence. I suspected they didn’t. It just seemed mean. In the other ten percent of summons, residents either forgot what they wanted, or they called me close and stroked my hair.

Twice a night we rotated residents to prevent bedsores. Regulations required two aides to do the entire procedure. Courtney viewed her role in our “team,” as standing in the doorway and barking orders. Milagro Sanchez was wide awake for rotations, even though the second shift nurse should have given her two milligrams of Estazolam, a powerful sleep inducer and muscle relaxant.

Around three o’clock, Milagro’s room light came on at my station. Courtney didn’t even notice, so I went to the room with a half-full glass of water. Edna appeared to be asleep. When I set the glass on her nightstand, Milagro gestured to a stack of books.

I held up the Bible. Milagro nodded. It was bookmarked at Genesis. I started reading quietly. I was hoping for some kind of sign that she wanted me to stop, because the Bible was pretty long, and Genesis was at the beginning. I had medicine trays to re-stock.

After I read, “I will not let you go until you bless me,” Milagro held her hand up.

“Should I stop?”

She fluttered her hand as if trying to work out a cramp. Then she closed her eyes. I put the Bible back on the stack. I made a note of insomnia on her chart.

There were two unanticipated drawbacks to the third shift. First, we could only sleep on breaks. Second, we couldn’t do homework. We could browse trashy magazines, as Courtney did, but we couldn’t engage in anything requiring real brainpower during downtime, unless it was related to nursing. I supposed the management feared we would become so engrossed in our business that we would miss call lights or cries for help, although Courtney successfully ignored both.

The problem was not boredom. I was able to keep busy. I pulled each resident’s chart make sure no new orders were missed. I checked the crash cart, checked the temperature in the fridge in the med room’s kitchenette, reconciled orders for discharges, printed W-10 forms for Mrs. Platt, and folded and refolded the laundry.

The problem was, my Caltech deadline was less than 24 hours away, and I had planned to polish the essays during free time.

During the first break, several aides were in the employee lounge, watching a television infomercial about exercise equipment. I took my essay draft and a red pen to the men’s rest room. I sat in a stall, but didn’t close the door. I figured, if there were a sudden rush to use the stalls, I would leave.

A guy in dirty aqua scrubs sauntered over to the urinal. He was of ambiguous Latin/Asian/Caucasian ethnicity, with a faux-hawk hairstyle. His arms were so thoroughly covered with tattoos they looked like ink sleeves.

He half-turned and caught my reflection in the mirror. “Didn’t mean to intrude in your office, bro. Anyone die tonight?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Hear about that study? Showed people die within three weeks of an important event. Birthday, new year, whatever. Their minds go, ‘get me out of here I don’t wanna to live another year.’ And boom. Gone. Not suicide. Natural causes.” He zipped up and flushed. “Stay brutal, bro.”

I recalled that my BiMo died less than a week after my thirteenth birthday.

On my third break I took a walk through the C wing to find a vending machine. I heard giggles coming from room C234. I peeked inside. Two nurses’ aides, women about college age, were fitting a sleeping woman with a giant bouffant wig. The woman had hooker-red lipstick and garish dangling earrings. She looked like a ravaged showgirl. The aides covered their mouths to muffle little snorts.

The old woman stirred and uttered a low moan. Her would-be beauticians scrambled out of the room, making peeps of suppressed laughter. The woman’s eyes fluttered open. I went into the room and removed the earrings and wig and placed them on her vanity table. I asked if she wanted me to adjust the A/C. She said nothing. She had no idea who I was.

While the bulk of the night shift was downtime and busywork—transferring residents’ information from one form to another to another—the last hour made up for it. In sixty minutes, each two-person team had to shower ten residents. This broke down to two minutes of pulling residents out of bed and wheeling them, even if they could walk, to the shower room. We had two minutes to put residents inside a free standing shower curtain—not for their modesty, but to prevent us from getting soaked—and spray them with a hose. Soap was optional, depending on the time. There was never enough time. We had another two minutes to dry them off and sprint them back to their beds. As with cleaning up accidents, this process was so fast I didn’t have time to contemplate how degrading it must have been for them.

After classes, through which I basically sleepwalked, I went back to Carl and Janet’s to make final changes to the admissions essays. I put a Do Not Disturb sign on the bedroom door. I had pressed my luck by waiting until the last minute. I was taking an even bigger risk, because I had spent the last 36 hours awake. By 6:20, I had reread the first essay twice and fixed every typo. It was pedestrian, but passable. The second essay was better, and I didn’t hate my opening sentence.

It has been said that it takes a village to raise a child. If that is true, then it can be said that it takes a university to raise a scholar.

I couldn’t decide whether the closing statement was brilliant or not.

Scientists studying colony collapse syndrome—and I count myself among these scientists—are still baffled by the disappearance of the bees. What’s fascinating is not that they all die together, but that they all leave the hive together and then die, as if they had made a choice. It is more like a mass suicide than a pathogenic bee pandemic. But it makes sense if one realizes that the bee world is based on a complex, interconnected web. They stand or fall together. And though we choose not to believe it, homo sapiens stand or fall together. And I, as a scholar and a human, choose to no longer stand alone. It is time for me to immerse myself in the community of scholars at Caltech.

The essays were pretty good, but not brilliant. Good essays were not enough for Caltech. And admission into Caltech would make up the chain of FoFas and the case managers-of-the-month. It would make up for my biological grandmother and her Jesus fetish. It would make up for my BiMo, her undiagnosed mental illness, every man who dumped her, and everything that had gone wrong in her life. Caltech was supposed to fix everything.

At 7:02 I deleted the whole bee essay. I chose to use the adrenalin rush to create a masterpiece in three hours. Here’s some advice when applying to a highly selective college. Don’t do what I did.

By 7:45 I had written a new opening paragraph.

I read a fascinating news story that suggests mayonnaise is not the reason so many people are sickened by potato salad at picnics. It may be the onions. Sliced onions are bacteria magnets. Within hours, raw onions have attracted every nearby airborne pathogen. My point is, scientists should always question assumptions. Now, about me.

At 7:50 I looked up “successful college essays” on Google, with the intent to lightly borrow from one of them. I saw no examples worthy of the greatest scientific university in the nation.

At 8:30 I smacked my forehead with my biology II book.

At 8:50 I composed a short letter explaining why I could not submit my essay along with the application.

Dear Admissions Committee,

It is impossible to complete the essays on time due to the chemotherapy I am undergoing. You may be asking, why, if Tyler is capable of typing this letter, is he not capable of typing out an essay? Good question.

At 9:05 I began to rewrite my original essay from memory. I finished at 9:25, and proofread until 9:55. I attached it to my application at 9:56 and pressed send. I was calm for one minute. My fate was sealed. I changed into my work scrubs.

Some say they feel a sense of elation after meeting an important deadline. That’s not what I experienced. I felt a cluster of emotions that I could not identify. But I was pretty sure none was positive.

I found a fifty-dollar bill on the refrigerator, held with a cartoon cactus magnet. There was a note on the white board, in Carl’s handwriting. Money is from Mrs. Kim. Didn’t want to disturb you. Took Eddie trick or treating. Had fun!

Then, a note in Janet’s writing. I think we’re a good influence on Eddie!! Check messages!

I pulled out the phone from my Box o’ Crap. I turned it on and it tinkle-tinkled to life and then beeped. Two voice mail messages were from Sun. I surmised that she wanted me not to tutor Eddie, but take him trick-or-treating. One was from Carl, saying he had given Sun my cell number.

I had received $50 for nothing. I could live with that.

But something was wrong. Eddie’s mother paid to have someone take him trick-or-treating. Not even his nanny/housekeeper could be bothered to take him. Did real parents do that kind of thing? I couldn’t process this, because I was brain dead. But it didn’t seem right.

I was starving and it was too late for a real dinner. I was out of Honey Bunches of Oats, so I settled for a packet of Carl’s organic instant hot muesli. I was still staring at the note about trick-or-treating when I realized the microwave had been beeping for a long time. I had fallen asleep standing up.

I took my not-quite-so-hot-anymore oatmeal out and stirred it. Seconds later the oatmeal was splattered against the stainless steel refrigerator. I stared at the glop long enough to question why I had just thrown it. Then I cleaned the refrigerator and the floor before leaving for Colonial Gardens.

THIRTEEN

To: All Staff

Re: Tabitha

If you hear cooing sounds coming from the commons, be aware that it is our newest addition to Colonial Gardens: Tabitha, a ten pound baby seal. Have we reversed our pet policy? Not exactly! Some residents may want to pet her. By all means, let them! Tabitha is loving and gentle, but she will fuss if you touch her eyelashes. You’ll be surprised to learn she’s not real. This animatronic seal is a gift from the Herbert Kling family. But don’t tell Tabitha she isn’t alive!

Cecelia Platt

**

On the second night at Colonial Gardens, Milagro Sanchez did not ask me to read from the Bible or any other book. She insisted on showing me photos from her own Box o’ Crap, an ancient pink makeup case covered with little mirrored diamonds and crusted with dirt. The first photograph was of a small boy sitting on a horse. There was a woman in a red sleeveless dress next to him. I inquired whether the photo was of her and her son, even though the woman didn’t look anything like Milagro. She pointed to me.

In my short time at Colonial Gardens, several residents had mistaken me for other people. Mr. Tate thought I was a kid he beat up in grade school. Mrs. Ambrose was certain that I was her grandson. Mrs. Chernyk was convinced I was coming to evict her from her house.

“That’s not a picture of me,” I said. But Milagro didn’t think I was the boy in the photo. She wanted me to have the photo. I understood this when her roommate, Edna, snarled, “take the picture ya dumb flapjack.”

I put the photo back in her box and replaced the box on the nightstand. “You need your rest, because…” I was going to add something she had to do the next day. But there was likely nothing she had to do the next day.

I took my last break in the outdoor courtyard. The tattooed guy I met the first night in the rest room was sitting on a bench, half lit by a dim security light. I saw a tiny orange glow in front of his face.

“Hey, my man,” he said.

I looked closer. He was taking a drag off a pipe, which was definitely not filled with tobacco. He held the smoke in his lungs and introduced himself as “Kel.” He volunteered a lot of information before I said so much as “hello.” I learned he had been in trouble with the law and might go back to school to study pharmacy. Even if he didn’t go back to school, he would not be a janitor in a nursing home for long. He said all of that before exhaling, which indicated to me that he was somewhat of a pro at pot smoking.

In an attempt to find some common ground I informed him about my infamous sex and drugs campaign speech at school.

Kel held out the pipe. I leaned back a bit and told him I couldn’t smoke because I needed to stay awake. There was another reason, which I didn’t tell him. I had never smoked pot before. I know, shocking.

“Got it,” he said. “If you need a little sumthin-sumthin to help keep you going, you know where I’m at.”

“Where are you at?”

“All around,” he said, making a rolling motion with his hand.

The rest of the shift was a blur, including shower time. I was about to clock out when I heard an animal squawk coming from the end of the corridor. I rushed to the source of the sound, nearly doing a summersault over an empty wheelchair. In room D119, Mrs. Hotchkiss appeared to be accosted by an enormous fuzzy turd. After closer inspection, it was clear that the turd was the animatronic baby seal, Tabitha. The robot-seal made another sound, this time a more contented wwwwAAAAAAAAAA. Its head turned and eyelashes fluttered.

Mrs. Hotchkiss informed me that Tabitha wanted me to pet her. My shift had been over for five minutes and I didn’t feel like bonding with a fur robot. But Mrs. Hotchkiss insisted. I approached the thing tentatively. I reached out just as Tabitha’s head moved toward me, causing me to accidentally jab my finger in its eye. The thing made a mewing sound and jerked away.

“You’ve hurt Tabitha,” the woman said.

I informed her that the seal wasn’t real. This made her angry. “I know she isn’t real,” she snapped. She continued petting it and apologizing for the “rude and angry young man.”

I looked over at her roommate for moral support. But she was gazing forward at the soundless television, mouth agape, at a commercial for a pasta maker.

On the third night, Milagro Sanchez’s light was flashing as I arrived at my station. When I reached her room, she was already holding the pink box on her lap. She offered me a photo of a large family at a wedding. I asked her if that was her wedding. As usual, she didn’t answer.

She handed me another picture. This one was a girl with crooked teeth standing behind a cake with seven candles. The girl wore a Hello Kitty shirt. Milagro made a Catholic cross gesture with her hand, kissed the photo and handed it to me. This time, instead of putting the photos back in her box, I placed them in the breast pocket of my scrubs.

Later, I explained the situation to Ruth and Darla. I asked them what I was supposed to do with Milagro’s photos. Ruth took a closer look at the wedding photo, squinted and cocked her head. There was something wrong. Not only did nobody look especially Hispanic, there was a Star of David on the wall. “She’s giving you pictures of someone else’s family,” Ruth said. Darla said that wasn’t surprising, because Milagro had advancing dementia. They offered advice. Ask questions about the people in the pictures. That would stimulate Milagro’s mind, even if she couldn’t answer.

The lounge appeared to be empty on my last break. On the TV was an infomercial on how to profit through real estate, hosted by two brothers who were also midgets. I’m not making this up. I flopped down on the leatherette sofa with soft pfffft—that was the sound of the sofa, not me—and closed my eyes. I didn’t even look for the remote to mute the midgets. That’s how tired I was. My last thought was a book report I once wrote on Hans Christian Andersen. He feared being buried alive and he kept a note by his bedside. I am only sleeping, do not bury me.

I awoke when something fell in my lap. Kel stood over me. He had given me a bag of yellow pills.

“I feel your pain, dude,” he said. “These oughta help.”

“Speed?” Darla’s voice came from the vicinity of a recliner facing the wall.

“Yellow jackets,” he said. “The real stuff with Ephedra. They don’t sell it over the counter anymore. The new stuff is all caffeine.”

“If they don’t sell it anymore then it can’t be legal. It’s speed and speed is a drrrrr-ug!” She was now peeking from behind the recliner.

“You smoked out with me.”

“That’s different. Pot is organic. Did you get Tyler stoned?”

On the word stoned, Mrs. Platt entered, as if on cue. Kel grabbed his mop and bolted. Darla hoisted her pregnant body out of the chair and waddled out. I was left holding the bag, literally. There was no way I could quickly stuff the pills in my pocket without looking suspicious. I considered tossing them onto the sofa and pretending I hadn’t even seen them.

Mrs. Platt collapsed on the sofa. It protested with a squeaky puff that was nearly indistinguishable from the sound of her sigh. She stared blankly at the midget brother infomercial. This allowed me to make a quick getaway. I took the bag of pills that I hadn’t asked for.

After four days on the night shift, I still had not informed Carl or Janet about my work schedule. My sin of omission became salient in the morning, during a brief interregnum between my shift and school. I found them sitting at the breakfast nook with two cell phones, a notepad, a box of tissue, and Janet’s sister, Fiona, between them. Janet’s typically well-coiffed hair was askew and her eyes were slightly puffy. For a moment all of the air seemed to be sucked out of the room. I know that’s impossible—although I once observed a science fair experiment that sucked all the oxygen out of a box—but that’s how it seemed.

I was in trouble. I was anxious. I made a list of grocery items in my head, starting with antacids.

Janet stood. “Tell us the truth. We deserve it. Are you in a gang?”

“A gang?” Carl said. “Janet, that’s just silly.”

Throat lozenges, toilet tissues, Honey Bunches of Oats, soy milk…

Janet stood. “Where have you been at night?”

They were looking at me. “I work at a nursing home,” I said, meekly.

“There,” Fiona said. “Have I offered enough support? Can I go home and sleep?”

“Thanks for telling us.” Janet directed this to me, in a tone that indicated she wasn’t thankful. She sent her cigarette flying into the sink.

“You probably should have told us,” Carl said, in a gentler tone.

“That accounts for nights,” Janet said. “Where are you after school?”

“Nursing class.”

Janet made some puffing sounds that indicated she was appalled. “When do you sleep?”

“Weekends.”

“I used to live like that,” Fiona said. “Except I slept during the week and stayed up all weekend.”

“You were a groupie,” Janet snapped. “I don’t think that’s a good role model for him.”

“I was a music publicist,” Fiona said, as if she’d had this conversation a hundred times.

Janet pointed at me. “You have to quit.”

“We can’t make him quit,” Carl said.

“And you rode your bike. At night. When I asked you not to. How many nights have you been gone? Do you have any concern for anyone else? You skulk around here, write notes and never answer your phone. What are we supposed to think?”

Bananas, saline solution, tissues…

“He’s almost an adult,” Fiona said.

Janet folded her arms tight against her torso. “But he’s not an adult. We’re responsible.”

“I told you,” Fiona said. “You can’t make up for the past.”

Janet spun on Fiona. “When you’ve raised a kid, then come back and tell me how to do it.”

“Oh, lovely,” Fiona said. “So glad I rushed over here at the butt crack of dawn for a verbal spanking.”

“You didn’t raise me,” I said to Janet. Nobody heard me because I said it softly, and because a three-person argument had already started. I was going to be late for school, so I backed out of the kitchen and let them continue.

After I finished my morning business, Fiona was gone and Carl and Janet were waiting at the front door. My brain couldn’t sensor my mouth as quickly as it usually did. “I need this job!” I ran out the door, past the lawn sprinklers and the For Sale by Owner signs. It was the first time I had talked back to a FoPa, with the exception of the time I told the preacher that all religion was bunk, and in that case I had been calmly telling the truth.

FOURTEEN

Dear Carl and Janet,

In my working life I have been propositioned, berated, screamed at, lied to, scalded, cheated, proselytized, and demoralized. At Colonial Gardens, the only negative experience was being urinated on, and that’s because many residents on my wing are incontinent. The important point is, Colonial Gardens is by far the best place I’ve ever worked. The cost of tuition, room, board, and books at Caltech is nearly $50,000 a year. Even if I receive the maximum financial aid through loans and grants, I will still need to cough up nearly ten grand for just the first year. My dream has been, for years, to attend Caltech. I will need to keep this job in order to accomplish it.

Sincerely,

Tyler

I sent the letter in a series of text messages to Janet’s cell phone. They couldn’t deny me the chance to earn income. They were supposed to make my life easier, not harder.

I thought about what they might do to me and how I should respond. I thought about this in every class, except for three times. Two times were during Creative Soul, when Zoe did an interpretive dance in a very revealing top, and when she did a face-buzz vocal warm-up that involved humming and shaking her fist, which caused other parts of her to shake.

The other time I didn’t think about Carl and Janet was after German class, when I was ambushed by Jann-Otto and Annette-Barbel. The confrontation had the makings of a bloodless coup. They gravely made the case that I had fallen down on my duties. It was true. As the leader of German club, I hadn’t scheduled a meeting since the kick-off. I hadn’t planned to convene any more.

“If you don’t care about the club, then you should at least care about the German program,” Annette-Barbel said. She breathlessly informed me of budget cutbacks that would likely lead to the elimination of all underperforming programs.

I told them I would schedule a meeting in a few weeks.

“We figured you would say that, so we worked everything out,” Jann-Otto said. He handed me a sheet of paper with a list of bullet points. How to Save German. Under the headline was the first item. Increase enrollment. They were a verbal tag team, rattling off the agenda for carrying out their plan. There would be a party, with an Oktoberfest theme. Each of us would invite 50 students who were not already taking German. Jann-Otto would be delegating most of the responsibilities, in turn for the titles of social chair and co-chancellor. “I already put it on my application to Stanford,” he said.

I told them it was fine. I had already put German Club chancellor on my application. Whatever they wanted to do now would be irrelevant.

I was checking my messages at lunch in the courtyard when I heard a girl’s voice behind me. “Very un-cool, what you did to your parents.” It sounded like Rachel. Because I didn’t have any parents, I assumed the comment was not for me. I didn’t turn around.

“Not talking to me either,” she said.

I turned. Rachel stood with her hands on her hips. I dropped my pickle. It rolled under a nearby bench. Some jock kicked it under the next bench.

“Your mother called me this morning. She was wondering where you were.”

“Um, wha—?”

“I said I didn’t have any idea where you were. I thought it was interesting, to say the least. She was pretty upset. If I stayed out all night, my mother would have a fit.”

I tried to put it all together. Janet had called Rachel, which meant she would have dug into my Box o’ Crap to find Rachel’s number. Possibly she phoned other numbers in my box, like my old science teacher and Levi. And Janet may have passed herself off as my biological mother. This was so wrong. To top it off, Rachel blamed me for the call, which would have been maddening if I hadn’t been caught off guard by her green high-top sneakers. One lace on each shoe dragged on the ground. I had a momentary compulsion to re-tie them.

Rachel sat on the bench next to me and stared into my eyes. “Are you on drugs? You can tell me honestly. Consider me a person and not a reporter.”

“Wha—? No.”

“Because your mom thought you might be, and I have to say it’s kind of unnerving having that conversation at six in the morning.”

I needed to tell her two things—that Janet was not my real mother, and that I worked nights—but I couldn’t decide which order to say them in, because now I was distracted by Rachel’s hand, which gently rested on my forearm.

“At least you kept my number. I didn’t think you would. I’m glad you did.”

The bell rang. I picked up my stuff quickly and promised Rachel that nobody would call her house again. As I walked away, I thought I heard Rachel say,  “I don’t mind if you call.”

I kept my cell phone in my upper vest pocket all day. By the end of the day I had received no response from Janet. No text, no voice mail, nichts. So I sent another text. We should talk.

After school I went back to the house. Janet sat at the dining table, facing away from me. There was a sweating glass of wine in front of her. Her arms and legs were crossed tightly, as if she were a human washcloth attempting to wring herself out. You can’t do anything to me because I’m emancipating. This was at the top of the talking points I created during downtime in English lit class. The second talking point was, my Box o’ Crap is private.

I didn’t say any of this.

On the walk back to the house I considered what my BiMo might have done if I had started a night job without telling her. The conclusion I reached was, nothing. More likely, I would be the one questioning her for staying out all night. “I trust you, honey.” That’s how BiMo explained not hiring a sitter for me. I always told her it was all right, just leaving me alone like that. But it wasn’t all right.

Janet turned but didn’t look directly at me. “Fiona and Carl said to go easy on you. They think we should let you do whatever you want. Fiona always did what she wanted. I was the responsible one.”

She turned away and snatched the wine glass. She took a gulp, almost like she was using the glass to stop her mouth from saying anything else. She was still not looking at me. I decided to stay out of her line of vision. It just seemed like a good idea.

“I should have told you about the job,” I said.

“We can’t stop you from working but you need to find an earlier shift. And you have to cut back to part-time.”

I told her there were no openings on the second shift. It was the most popular and I didn’t have seniority. First shift was impossible because I had classes. And there were no jobs at Colonial Gardens with less than 38 hours a week. I crossed my arms, because that’s something that people do when they refuse to give in.

“Then we’ve reached an impasse,” she said. She stared at her wine glass for a long time. I had nothing more to say.

“You can keep working nights as long as you don’t endanger your health or your grades. If we see any signs of you falling behind, you have to quit.”

“Okay,” I said, not certain whether I’d won or not.

I couldn’t remember being scolded by my BiMo. It must have happened, though. This was what parents did, wasn’t it? My BiMo must have disciplined me, at least when I was very young. But I usually stopped myself from doing bad things. I did this to avoid turning her good mood bad, or her bad mood worse. Now, here I was, with someone not related to me who was making demands.

“And I’m driving you to work,” Janet said. “Don’t tell me I don’t have to do that. I know I don’t have to.” She made a gesture with her arm and accidentally knocked the glass off the table. It shattered on the tile floor. I made a lunge for it.

“Leave it,” she said.

“You’ll take me to work and pick me up?” She looked at me as if I had just started quacking.

“Yes. Both ways. And if I can’t, Carl will.” She started picking up the glass, less gingerly than I would have recommended.

“So I don’t have to leave?”

She swiveled to face me. “What are you talking about? If you have somewhere to go, leave.”

“I mean, you’re not kicking me out?

“You’ll be leaving us in a few months. Isn’t that your plan?”

I nodded.

“Until then, you’re stuck. If you can stand it.”

“I can stand it.”

“Oh. Good.” I recognized her tone as sarcasm.

I thanked her. The conversation started off as a reprimand and ended up with free chauffeur service, so I guessed I’d won. So why did it feel like I had lost?

FIFTEEN

November 6. Emancipation, a cost/benefit analysis.

Benefits:

·         No more check-ins with case managers.

·         A prelude to adult life, living alone.

·         No chance of the Foster-go-Round sending me to another FoHo.

·         No rules or demands or expectations.

Costs:

·         Living expenses for nine months.

·         Savings potential for Caltech (or other college) significantly reduced.

·         Preparation for the emancipation trial.

·         Writing the emancipation essay.

·         No more free money from the state.

**

On Saturday afternoon, after my morning routine, journal writing, and two hours of productive research about honeybee viruses, I walked past Carl’s office. The door was ajar. I wouldn’t have peeked in—I had avoided the room ever since I replaced the broken glass in the picture of the mystery kid—but I couldn’t help myself. Carl was strapped to a board and hanging upside down. It looked like a torture device.

“Come on in.”

I pressed the door open, tentatively. He swung right side up with a thwump.

“Don’t worry about Janet,” he said. “After what happened with Scott, well. She’s concerned about you. We both are.”

I was trying to think of a response, but couldn’t come up with anything. “If she puts up any more fuss, let me handle her,” he said. He went upside-down again, and I took this as a sign to leave. I was a little uncomfortable with the idea of him “handling” his own wife on my behalf. I had no idea what that entailed. But if he could keep her from restricting me, that wouldn’t be so bad.

I did make a mental note to ask him who Scott was. I assumed he was a previous foster kid who caused trouble.

For some reason, my interaction with Carl gave me unanticipated optimism. Or maybe it was the cooler weather, or the fact that my polo shirts came out of the dryer without needing any ironing. Instead of heading to the library, I dug Rachel’s number out of my Box o’ Crap and punched it in to my phone.

I panicked. I hadn’t rehearsed anything to say. I pressed END after the second ring. Ten seconds later, my phone surprised me with a loud marimba sound. I nearly tossed it across the bedroom.

Rachel sounded mad. “Did you just call and hang up?”

“No.” Dummkopf. “Yes. I was afraid to wake you up.”

“At eleven thirty?”

“I thought you’d be at church.”

“It’s Saturday.” She laughed. I should have prepared for this conversation.

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry that Janet called you the other day. Even though it wasn’t my fault, technically. I thought they knew my schedule.”

“You should talk more with your parents.”

I was momentarily irritated by this comment. I considered hanging up. “How’s the Clarion story?”

“Let’s see. You study a lot in the library and you bring the same lunch to school every day. Not enough for a story, is it?”

“And allergies.”

“Right. That’s all I know. And now it doesn’t matter because too much time has passed since your speech, and the editor probably won’t give me another chance to write.”

I told her I had started Firebird High’s official German club and we were throwing a big party. I said she should write about that.

“How can a reporter write about German club when the founder won’t open up?”

“I don’t know.”

There was a long pause. I wondered whether she had hung up, until I heard a small sigh.

“Maybe I can open up a little,” I said.

She said she was stopping at Baja Fresh on Green Valley Parkway and that lunch was on her.

“You mean, you’re inviting me? Today?”

“Yes.”

“To join you.”

“Yes.”

I was silent.

“So are you coming?”

“Yes.” I pressed END.

There was no place to chain up my bike outside Baja Fresh, so I removed the front wheel and wrapped my chain around the back wheel and the frame. I carried the front wheel into the restaurant. I kept an eye on the bike, except for a few seconds when I was blinded by the place. Every seat was either in the sun, reflecting sun or reflecting the reflection. I kept my sunglasses on.

Rachel bounded through the door, out of breath, as usual. She was wearing light green baggy drawstring pants and a very tight pink top, as if she couldn’t decide whether to do acrobatics or belly dancing. “You know what you look like?” she said.

I was getting tired of people telling me what or who I looked like. I waited.

“A hip safari guide. Or a photographer, a safari photographer in a witness protection program.” She laughed. I convinced myself she was laughing with me, not at me, even though I was not laughing.

She ordered a burrito. I asked for a taco salad and made sure they knew I wanted no mayo. I was pretty strident about it. The counter person said that it didn’t come with mayo. From experience, even things that weren’t supposed to come with mayo were mysteriously slathered with mayo. It was a universal mayo conspiracy, against me.

“What’s your grudge against mayonnaise?” Rachel asked, as we found a table.

I told her about my concern with food poisoning, the fact that mayonnaise goes rancid easily, and that I hated the taste. I left out the fact that it was made with eggs.

“You have strong opinions,” she said.

“Some. Other times I’m ambivalent.”

I noticed Rachel hadn’t brought a recorder or a notebook. I had thought she convened the meeting to get information on me for the Clarion story. Apparently not.

“Do you ever want to get crazy?” she said.

“Crazy? As in… what?”

“You know… wild.”

Oh. Wild was all right. Crazy made me think of my BiMo. I never wanted to be crazy. Never.

“Why do you ask?”

“You’re wound up a little tight. No offense. It’s kind of… not endearing exactly. Anyway, forget I asked. It’s stupid.”

She was one to talk about being wound up tight. She moved like a hummingbird. Her eyes darted between me, the fattish people at the counter, and a table of rowdy kids. She seemed embarrassed now. I had reacted defensively. That’s not the Tyler I wanted to be. I wanted to make this situation all right.

“I ride my bike fast. Sometimes I yell at drivers. In German.”

“In German?”

“So they don’t know I’m cussing at them.”

“What if they speak German?”

“Then I guess I’d be in trouble. But it’s a wild thing to do, isn’t it? That I would risk my life that way?”

She found this amusing. She snorted a little when she laughed. With anyone else this trait would have been grotesque. Not with her. She could snort all she wanted to, as far as I was concerned.

“What about you?” I said.

“What about me?”

“Do you… get wild? Or crazy?”

“I might if I had time.” She explained that she worked forty hours a week checking in guests at the Luxor spa. She booked massages while attempting to “up sell” them on facial treatments and body waxes. “About once a week we have an incident where someone gets a massage and wants a happy ending. We have to ask him to leave. But it’s not so bad, because one of the masseurs has been giving me tips on how to give massages. Without the happy ending, of course. I could give you one if you want.”

I didn’t know whether she was serious or not. I was about to ask her what happy ending meant, but I didn’t have a chance. She was already on the next topic. “I have to work because my mother has this disease. Fibromyalgia.”

“I know what it is.” I had written a research paper on it, for fun, in tenth grade. I had an urge to share some findings from my research. There was some dispute in the medical community about whether fibromyalgia was a legitimate ailment or not. It had a variety of symptoms and was different in every person. A few scientists thought it was a name given to an assortment of ailments that couldn’t be identified.

But what I really wanted was to tell her something about me. I wanted to share this with her for weeks. I thought it was more important than fibromyalgia. “If I say something personal do you promise not to print it?”

She stuffed a triangle of burrito into her mouth while staring at me. I took that as a yes.

“That wasn’t my mother the other night. She died four years ago. I live with foster parents. My BiMo… biological mother was allergic to eggs and shellfish. That’s how she died. I don’t know anything about my biological father.” I stabbed a wedge of avocado with my fork. My pulse was elevated. I felt flush. I concentrated on my salad.

“I see.” That’s all she said. Under the table she touched my knee with her hand. It wasn’t accidental. She had to go out of her way to do something like that. Kicking me or stepping on my foot might have been inadvertent.

She was about to cut another wedge of burrito. She stopped and looked down in disgust. At the bottom of her plastic basket, a triangle of the burrito had been cut out. In that triangle, where there should have been wax paper, was the red plastic tray. “I’ve been eating my wrapper.”

I told her the amount of waxed paper she consumed was harmless. She was grateful for the information. She began cutting her burrito daintily, as if it were spring-loaded. She examined the next forkful carefully. Finally, she gave up and stared at the thing.

“What’s wrong?”

“I forgot that I don’t like burritos.”

Just then, I wondered whether I might be falling for her.

A noisy family sat down next to us. Rachel’s eyes got big and she made a deliberately fake smile. She asked if I wanted to go. I told her we should wait a minute. I had just figured out what happy ending meant, and the thought of Rachel giving me a massage with a happy ending had made me aroused. Standing up was not the best idea. When my arousal subsided, I told her we should go.

Outside, Rachel stood over me as I replaced the front wheel on my bike.

“I’m sorry about your parents,” she said.

I could have continued sharing the whole gory truth about my BiMo’s death, but I didn’t want to push it. That was enough revelation for one afternoon. I had a momentary urge to reach for her hand, but my hands were dirty from the bike wheel. I had already used my last moist towlette.

The bus arrived just as we approached the stop, something that never happened when I was trying to catch one.

“Are you coming to the German party? It’s next weekend.”

“I think I can,” she said.

The bus door opened and a large man waddled out, squinted at the sun and aimlessly wandered away. Rachel was standing directly in front of me, almost too close, saying nothing.

“The doors are going to close,” I said. “It’s twenty minutes until another bus comes.”

“Okay.” She sounded huffy. She turned and sashayed onto the bus.

I yelled thanks for lunch, in German, just as the doors hissed shut. She looked back at me from the window. I couldn’t decipher her expression. She might have thought I was swearing at her. I made a mental note to clarify that, next time I saw her.

Around 1 in the morning Milagro Sanchez wanted to show me more photos of her non-family. This time I had a plan. I was armed with my own photos. I was already on a roll, personal revelation-wise, having started with Rachel.

I pulled out three photos from my breast pocket. One was of my BiMo, dressed as a cowgirl waitress. I told Milagro that she enjoyed the job because she was able to sing. I couldn’t remember whether the job was in Texas or New Mexico, but I told Milagro it was Texas. “She didn’t hate being a waitress most of the time,” I said. “She said it was like being on stage. She liked people.” I gave her another photo of my BiMo holding a fishing pole. It must have been Colorado, because there were snow-capped mountains in the background and she was wearing a parka. Maybe one of her boyfriends took it. I told her my BiMo—I called her mother for Milagro’s sake—liked to fish, and was good at it. This was not true, as far as I knew.

The third photo was of me at my tenth grade science fair. I was standing with two older men, in the process of explaining my exploration of spore dispersal in basidiomycetes. My BiMo was dead by then. She only attended one fair, my first, in seventh grade. She didn’t even stay the whole time. Later, she explained that she felt intimidated by all the “smarties.” She was very smart, just not book smart. I didn’t invite my BiMo to any other fairs, to avoid sending her into a depression.

I was beginning to experience something like a negative emotion, so I told Milagro I had to go. Her arm shot out and snatched the photos. We played a tug of war for a few seconds. I won, but in the process I spilled her box onto her bed. Some things—a ticket to a concert by someone named Paul Anka, a Jesus coaster, lipstick—fell onto the floor.

I began picking up the items, and when I reached for a lump wrapped in aluminum foil, Milagro fluttered her hand. I assumed that meant she wanted what was inside. I unwrapped the lump. Inside were pills, dozens of them. I recognized a few from the med carts I re-stocked. Milagro stopped fluttering and looked straight ahead, like a kid waiting for punishment.

I rewrapped the pills and placed them in her box. I told her I had to get back to my station immediately, which was a lie. I didn’t want to break the doctor-nurses’ aide bond—there was such a thing according to my nursing class—but I couldn’t ignore a cache of pilfered pills.

I told Mrs. Platt what I found in Milagro’s box. She showed no emotion when she thanked me.

At approximately 2 a.m., I convinced myself Milagro Sanchez hadn’t been planning to kill herself with an overdose. She was a collector, like me. The pills I saw may have been amassed over the years, from drawers in her house. They could have sentimental value.

You could convince yourself of a lot of scheizen at two in the morning.

For three days, Janet had been waiting for me at the end of my shift. She parked at the back entrance of Colonial Gardens. The commute was always quiet—she kept the radio off and a death grip on the wheel. She was the opposite of my BiMo, who basically did everything one could do safely, and sometimes not safely, while driving. She would punch in radio stations, re-do her makeup, pull back her hair, talk on the phone, seemingly all at the same time. When she was depressed, she didn’t drive. She didn’t see the point. It was remarkable that she was only involved in three accidents that I knew of. She never had an accident when I was with her. I believed it was my mental powers that kept us safe. I know that’s not likely or scientifically verifiable. It’s what I chose to believe.

Janet’s car was so quiet, it took all the strength I had not to fall asleep. Sleeping would have led her to assume, correctly, that the job was a strain on my body.

“I’m not going through with emancipation.” I just blurted it out. I had been thinking about this for several days, but I hadn’t actually made the decision until I heard myself say it.

Janet said nothing for about a minute. She must have heard me. I said it pretty loudly.

“It makes sense financially to stay in the system, and preferably in your house,” I said. “So if everything is working out to your satisfaction, I would prefer to stay.”

“I’m glad we make sense to you. Financially.” Her tone was snippy.

She was ticked about emancipation, before, and now she was ticked that I wasn’t emancipating. There was no winning with her.

SIXTEEN

November 12. Highlights of my romantic life:

·         Mika (a girl’s name) gave me a necklace for Valentine’s Day. I gave her nothing. Ten years old. Doesn’t count.

·         Sky (also a girl’s name) was my science lab partner in eighth grade. Relationship lasted half the school year, in my imagination only.

·         Jasmine, girl I met at the science fair in ninth grade. She was outside the auditorium, crying. She told me her no-bake asphalt cookies didn’t win anything and her parents would be disappointed. Without thinking, I hugged her. Also without thinking, I told her, “at least your parents aren’t dead.” Relationship lasted four minutes.

·         Sara. We had one date and might have had another, but the Foster-go-Round moved me across town the following week.

·         Zoe, in imagination only. May be ending.

·         Rachel, today  ?

**

The German party was official school business. I was granted permission from the office to paste fliers on the poles in the courtyard cafeteria. As with my tutoring fliers, they were defaced within minutes. German Sux was written on one. On another was a swastika and Hile Hitler. Not surprisingly, heil was misspelled. I invited a few random students from my classes. Most were uninterested. I would not be bringing fifty guests as Jann-Otto and Annette-Barbel demanded. It didn’t matter. Since the coup, it was mostly their club.

Before I left to set up for the party, I informed Carl of where I was going and how long I would be. He asked if I needed a ride. I said I didn’t.

“Janet doesn’t want you riding your bike at night,” he said.

Silence.

“That’s all right. I’ll cover for you. She’s… you know. After what we went through with Scott…”

I kept forgetting to ask who Scott was. But now was not the time.

Carl followed me all the way to the front door. “I’m very glad, we both are. About you staying. I think this is working out. We have our issues. But who doesn’t?”

I remembered Jann-Otto’s other request. I asked Carl if he had any kind of German music, preferably danceable. He was thrilled to help me out—at least for a minute, until he realized he had nothing fitting that description in his collection.

I took some of his non-German CDs and said they would be fine. When I was half a block away, Carl called me back and said he found something. He was waving a CD case. I rode back and snatched it.

“It’s Janet’s. There’s a song about nuclear war, and you can dance to it.”

The party pad belonged to Jann-Otto’s parents. They bought it as an investment, but couldn’t rent it. It was all tan carpet, beige walls and generic plastic blinds. I noticed a hot tub in back, on the patio.

Jann-Otto had demanded that we come dressed as Germans. I chose to believe that if I were German, I would still wear khakis and a knit polo shirt. Jann-Otto was miffed at my sartorial nonchalance, even though his only nod to the occasion was a dorky green Bavarian hat with a feather. When I arrived, he was in the process of hanging crepe paper streamers and being a dervish of neuroses. He was not impressed with Carl’s CDs. “Paul Simon? Leonard Cohen? They don’t sound German.”

“They’re not,” I mumbled.

“Did you at least bring the strudel? Tell me you brought strudel!”

Oops.

In my defense, I couldn’t have brought a tray of strudel on my bike, even if I had remembered it. That would be dangerous. Janet would have been very pissed about that.

Jann-Otto crossed the line from churlish whining to a full-blown temper fit. He shredded the crepe paper streamers until it rained confetti. He screamed he always had to do everything himself. Nothing he did was good enough. His father went to Stanford, and he could not end up at UNLV. And if we couldn’t have decent music, we needed beer.

I informed him that I couldn’t get beer.

He made some kind of high-pitched scream, and threw his feather hat at the wall.

I wanted him to shut up. I agreed to look for beer.

“German beer,” he shouted, as I left.

In a planning meeting I had stupidly informed him I had a fake I.D. I don’t know why I told him this. The I.D. didn’t look like me, and it said I was 18, not 21, so it would be useless. I fully expected to come back empty-handed. This would make Jann-Otto even crazier.

I went to a sketchy-looking liquor store and picked out two six-packs of beer, because that was all I could carry safely on the handlebars. Yes, I realize the only safe way to travel is with no bags of beer dangling from one’s handlebars. I handed over my fake license, fully expecting the counter guy to shake his head and shove it back to me. That’s not what happened. He barely glanced at it. I think it may have been attitude that made him choose not to look closely. I must have displayed no sign of nervousness, thinking that there was no chance I would get away with it.

Back at the party house, Jann-Otto threw a two-minute tantrum because it was not enough beer. He pacified himself by grabbing a “Hiney” and consuming it as if it were the last drip of water in the desert.

Annette-Barbel showed up at the door, dressed as a garish Bavarian prostitute. She wore a push-up bustier and a mane-like platinum blonde wig. When she saw that we were not dressed as Germans—at least not as bizarrely German as she was—she became irate. “If I’m the only one in costume, I’m going to look stuuu-pid.”

“But you look good,” Jann-Otto said.

“And you look like der pimmel,” she said.

I covered up a laugh by making it sound like a sneeze.

The first official guests were two girls from German class and two girls I didn’t know. The quartet tentatively took steps into the living room, moving like an eight-legged giggle monster. Next, three guys who seemed too old for high school sauntered in with bottles of booze. A few minutes later two more guys—one wearing UNLV sweat pants—strutted in without knocking.

When there were about two-dozen people, Jann-Otto put on Janet’s German techno album. Almost everyone started shouting and jumping. Some guy pushed the sofa aside to make a dance floor. The “99 Luftballons” song went over well. Some partiers even sang along in German. If I knew how to dance, I might have joined them.

Around nine o’clock there were at least forty people. I assumed the party was at its apex. I turned down the music and asked for a moment of everyone’s time. I was ignored until Jann-Otto, now drunk, sprang up from the sofa and shouted, “Achtung!” The crowd gave me their reluctant attention while I explained about how joining German club would look great on college applications. I mentioned the importance of the German language. I even read a passage from Goethe, which bored everyone, so I cut it short. I wrapped up by promising more hot tub parties if at least 25 students pledged to sign up for German class next semester.

One person applauded. Rachel. She was standing in the back of the living room behind a cluster of students. I was glad to see her.

Someone put on one of Carl’s CDs, something that was more appropriate for burying the dead than for dancing. Still, one guy tried, alone, moving as if he were trapped in gelatin. It would have been a good mime for the Creative Soul class.

Now Rachel was standing in front of me. “Are we dancing? Slow dance?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to. But the music…”

She fake-cringed. “I know.” She brushed her hand against my arm said she would be right back. She went around snapping pictures, causing most people to groan or shield their faces. A few guys posed by giving her the middle finger.

Jann-Otto was next to me, suddenly. He steadied himself by putting his hand on my shoulder. He apologized for being such a prissy twit. At least that’s how I interpreted it. What he really said, slurring, was, “you’re nice guy and everyone loved your music, at least the first album, but this album sucks donkey dick, and I shouldn’t tear up streamers and throw them at good people. I should throw them at aaaaaassssshoooolllllles.” He shot a glance at two of the UNLV guys.

Across the living room, Rachel pointed her camera in my direction. I covered my face with my hand. She stuck her tongue out at me. Jann-Otto asked if Rachel was my girlfriend and if I ever “did her.” I didn’t answer. Then he told me, for at least the fifth time since I had known him, he planned to graduate summa cum laude. “You know the meaning of summa cum laude? It means some cum loudly.” I didn’t even attempt to laugh.

I walked out to the patio. Five guys were sitting around the rim of the hot tub, passing around a bottle of whisky. Six girls were in the tub, chatting and smacking each other. I turned to see Jann-Otto staggering toward me. I turned away and scrunched up my face and stared at the hot tub crowd.

I felt a hand on my back. It was not Jann-Otto, to my relief. It was Rachel. She said she was done with photo taking. She asked what else she should do. Her fingers began making circular motions.

“Is it a conflict of interest to put your hand on the back of someone you’re interviewing?” I instantly wanted to snatch the words out of the air and put them back in my mouth. I know that’s not possible, but that’s what I thought.

She removed her hand. “I like you. Do I have to spell it out?”

“But why?”

“Um, well. You’re smart, and cute. And definitely one of the more interesting people I’ve ever met. And very funny.”

Cute was the salient word. Funny and smart were not traits that led naturally to romantic relations. Hideous, brilliant clowns didn’t have a lot of sex, as far as I knew.

“I like you, too,” I said.

Apparently that was the correct response. She brushed her finger against my neck, and said she would give me a “tour” of the upstairs. I had a general idea of what this meant, and it had nothing to do with real estate. I told her I would meet her at the top of the stairs.

I hadn’t planned for it. I had brought no condoms. In fact the only condoms I possessed were in my Box o’ Crap. A student—me—who had given an impromptu campaign speech about the matter would be a fairly bad role model if he had unprotected sex. Perhaps I was being presumptuous. I hadn’t even fantasized about sex with Rachel. Zoe was still the object of my fantasies. But that wasn’t going to happen. This, whatever it was, with Rachel, was going to happen. And the chance might never come again. I would have to improvise.

The whole house was wired for sound, and the low raspy voice of the singer followed us everywhere. Rachel led me upstairs and peeked in each room as she pretended to be a realtor. “And here is a bathroom, resplendent with… fixtures and a mirror. Here we have a perfect nursery for all of the children you didn’t plan to have.” She opened the door to a bedroom where a couple was making out. She closed the door and gave me a sly grin.

She escorted me into an open bedroom. We stood there for a half second, peering into the darkness.

“So, here is a room.” She put her arm around my waist. “You can do a lot with it.”

My German club co-vice chancellor’s dad owns this place. It’s great how the music is everywhere. Sorry about the selection. I never heard of this Leonard Cohen guy before. He’s not good for dancing but I think the lyrics aren’t bad.

That’s what would have said, if Rachel hadn’t attached her lips to mine. The only thing that actually escaped my mouth was, “My Germ—”

Sometime while I was suctioned to Rachel, one of us had shut the door. The room was empty, lit only by a streetlight shining through the blinds. Rachel leaned into me, hard enough to almost make me lose my balance. I took that as a sign to lie on the scratchy acrylic carpet.

“My muscles are pretty tense.” I said this as a prelude to a massage, and I hoped she would get the hint. I was always pretty tense, so this was not a lie. Rachel climbed on my back, straddled me with her legs, and told me relax. Ordinarily I wouldn’t provide details about what went on next. I am not the kind of person to kiss, or do other things, and tell. But in this case I don’t think I would ruin Rachel’s reputation.

Over the course of four songs, she massaged my entire back. It was great, but I was tired of having my face smooshed into the rough carpet. I needed to aim higher on the physical intimacy hierarchy. I told her to stop. I sat up. I touched her face, gently. She didn’t object, even when I removed a strap on her top, and then the other one. She reached for the front of my jeans and began a more unorthodox massage.

Suddenly a shaft of light sliced across the room. The door was open. Some guy said, “Entschuldigen Sie mich.” That means excuse me. The door closed.

Rachel groaned. “I thought you locked it.”

“I… hmmm.”

She stood up and replaced the straps over her shoulders. “I always move too fast.”

“I have time. I don’t have a curfew.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Stupid interrupters! Why hadn’t I locked the door? It was one simple thing to do. I was always looking out for details. When you plan to have sex, or near-sex, you don’t want to overlook that detail.

She reached for my arm. I let her pull me up. She was surprisingly strong. She kissed me gently on the lips. “You’re funny.”

“Does that mean there will be a progression to more?”

“I suppose so.”

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

“I like certainty.”

“Deal with it.” She kissed me again.

So that was it. There would be no “happy ending” that night. Then again, if someone had told me we would do as much as we had, I wouldn’t have believed it. But I would have appreciated knowing in advance.

Downstairs, the party was dying. Annette-Barbel was picking up stepped-on fliers while wiping down the coffee table. There were dangling streamers, a forlorn sausage on a paper plate, a strand of sauerkraut hanging from a lamp, and a sleeping guy in the corner. There was an argument coming from the patio. Male voices.

Rachel said she had to leave. “My mom needs me.”

We walked out together and stopped at her bike, which was chained to a tree. We were the only two who didn’t drive, I realized. We kissed again, for about a minute. She told me the party was a big success and that I should be proud. I was proud, but not about the party. I watched her pedal away. I stood there on the sidewalk until she disappeared into the blackness.

I heard a scream and a crash inside the house. I decided to leave. If Jann-Otto and Annette-Barbel wanted to run the club, they could clean up. Oktoberfest had been their idea.

Carl was sitting on the sofa in semi-darkness with his eyes closed. I walked past him on my way to the kitchen. I hadn’t eaten anything at the party. Walking back to my room with a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats, I looked up for an instant and caught his eye.

“How did the music work out?”

“Great,” I said. He looked somewhat morose, so I repeated myself, with more vigor.

“I haven’t heard that Nina album since… when? I was finishing my dissertation at Berkeley. I had just met Janet. We were crazy in love. This was before our careers. And Scott.”

I held my cereal bowl and sat on one of the hard Indonesian wood chairs across from him. I decided to eat right there. I knew his one-sided conversation would last longer than the cereal’s crunchiness. I regretted my decision to sit down once Carl segued from 1980s nostalgia to 1990s nostalgia. He said he wanted to make a mark in the world, and he almost did that by taking his first software company public. But he was on the wrong side of the dotcom boom and the company went bust. Then there was another company, and another...

The longer I stayed with Carl, the more of my night with Rachel dissolved from my memory. In my head, I began listing the things I liked about her. The way she frowned when she concentrated, her smell, the way she tossed her head around in a small circle before her eyes came to rest on me.

My attention returned to Carl when I heard him apologize for Janet flying off the handle about my job. “She’s worried that we’re making the same mistakes we did with Scott. It’s been hard for us as you probably can guess.”

It had been a while since I had said anything, so I asked how long Scott had been their foster.

Carl was surprised. He said Scott was not a foster, but their son. That made sense. Scott must have been the kid in the photos.

I told him I had to get to bed.

“Thanks for not staying out late.” He jerked his head toward the bedrooms. “She’s… you know.” I wished he would stop saying you know in terms of Janet. I didn’t know.

Back in my room I forced myself to concentrate on Rachel. I tried recreating our abbreviated encounter, but her image was constantly eclipsed by Zoe’s. Worse, my mind kept drifting back to Carl’s statement. They had a biological son. Scott may have moved across the country, gotten married, and forgotten to write or call. They may have had a falling out. I had heard this was common with real families.

But there was one thing that bothered me. Carl chose his words with precision. That partly explained why it often took him so long to come to the point. So it was perplexing that he hadn’t used is to identify their son. I was sure that Carl used the past tense of the verb.

SEVENTEEN

November 19. A yellow jacket is an ephedra-loaded stimulant. Neon yellow is most common, but they also come in pink/purple, yellow/purple, and yellow/black. Side effects include irregular heartbeat, nausea, tingling, chronic sleeplessness, irritability, sweating, indigestion, tremors, numbness, loss of appetite, weight loss, diarrhea, and the possibility of heart attacks. I certainly don’t need any of those symptoms, and at 130 pounds I don’t need to lose any weight. Diarrhea would be especially unwelcome. Then again, wouldn’t diarrhea be uncommon? Kel said it was commonly known as “trucker speed.” Truckers can’t afford to stop often. Besides, Kel said he took yellow jackets and he insisted they were a mild stimulant. I will keep them and only use them for a worst-case scenario.

**

It was a good thing that Ms. Gurzy wasn’t reading our journals carefully. It was also a good thing that I was taking the Creative Soul class, because I would need some acting skills to cover up how much my schedule was endangering my health. Since starting at Colonial Gardens I had been experiencing an ever-growing sleep deficit. At times my limbs were like wet sand. When I was not concentrating on a quiz or dodging traffic on my bike, I often fell into a netherworld between REM sleep and full consciousness.

Even exercises in the Creative Soul class were not enough to keep me stimulated. During air catch, I faded into a microsleep, and didn’t realize that someone had sha-roomped me the ball. A guy next to me gave me a nudge, and I said, “woof,” an inappropriate noise for catching an air ball. During an exercise where we had to be animals, I improvised a cheetah napping on the jungle floor, a performance that involved lying on the ground and actually sleeping for a minute. Ms. Gurzy was not so impressed with this less-is-more performance. She said there was a difference between cleverness and laziness.

I told Carl and Janet, via white board messages, that I received near-perfect scores on my calc and physics midterm exams. That would be true only if the standard for “near-perfect” was pretty broad. I scored a 90 in calc and an 88 in physics, my worst scores in any math or science course in my high school career.

On Monday after the German party, I suspected something was wrong when Jann-Otto showed up to class with a bandage over his nose. He wouldn’t look at me and neither would Annette-Barbel. They both ran from me when I stopped to talk with them after class.

During the next period, I was summoned to Principal Nicks’ office. Without taking his eyes away from a paper in his hand, he commanded me to enter, close the door, and sit. Behind the door was my German teacher, Frau Soto. Next to her was Carl.

I sat in the empty chair. Principal Nicks leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “I’ve spoken with Mike Woodcock and Jennifer Blanchard.” I was stumped for a second because I had forgotten the real names of my club officers, Jann-Otto and Annette-Barbel. “They both testified that you procured alcohol at a school event.”

“I told him no alcohol at any German party,” Frau Soto said. She was lying, but Principal Nicks wasn’t paying attention to her. I noticed for the first time she had a faint Latin accent.

I was too nervous and mortified to have a coughing fit. I did consider the possibility that I would vomit.

“I don’t see the problem,” Carl said. “Nobody was hurt.”

Steve Nicks said yes, in fact, someone was hurt. “Mr. Woodcock testified that he broke up a fight between two UNLV students. He tried to stop them from vandalizing the house and he ended up with a broken nose.”

“Are you suggesting Tyler punched someone in the nose?” Carl said.

“I would not approve of college students at a German club party,” Frau Soto said.

“I’m suggesting,” Principal Nicks said, “that he created the atmosphere where danger could flourish.”

“Are you kidding me?” Carl said.

“May I say something?” Principal Nicks gave me permission to speak by raising his bushy eyebrows. I admitted that there had been a lot of alcohol flowing, but I insisted that I had not approved of it and that I had not bought most of it. I explained that it was a big house and there were a lot of people. I couldn’t watch over everything. Jann-Otto drank the lion’s share of the booze. Jann-Otto invited the jerks from UNLV. It was probably Jann-Otto who incited a fight with them.

“You bought two six-packs of beer,” Principal Nicks said.

“But how are the other things his fault?” Carl said.

I was watching a game, Carl against Principal Nicks. I was rooting for Carl, naturally.

Principal Nicks leaned back and flared his nostrils. “It’s about rules. And Tyler has been flaunting them.” He meant flouting. I thought it wise not to correct him. He informed Carl of my sex and drugs speech, and about my willful neglect of rules about posting fliers on school property.

“Tyler is one of the finest kids I’ve known,” Carl said. “Unless you have something other than alcohol—”

Principal Nicks cut him off. He started a monologue about his experience as a drug czar in the Bush administration—”the first Bush, the better one”—and about how a no-tolerance policy for substances saves lives and blah, blah, blah. The veins on Carl’s neck bulged and his face had turned red-orange. I no longer rooted for Carl. I liked how he stood up for me, at first. But he wasn’t going to keep me from being punished. If he continued to confront Principal Nicks, it might worsen my sentence. That, plus my queasy stomach made me long for a shorter meeting. I cut to the chase.

“I did a stupid thing and I deserve whatever punishment you think appropriate.”

That punishment was a two-day suspension. It was less severe than I’d expected. Carl said it could ruin my chances to be admitted to Caltech. I hadn’t considered Caltech until he brought it up.

After the meeting, in the hallway, Carl said we should keep the suspension from Janet. His idea was for me to pretend to go to school, but instead spend the day at the library. That would be ideal, because my science fair proposal was due, and I needed to do some extra research on pesticides. The only problem was, if Janet found out, she would be not only mad at me, but at Carl as well. I wasn’t comfortable being a wedge between them. They didn’t need any more strain on their marriage. I had overheard at least three arguments in as many weeks. And I wasn’t there very much, so I imagined they argued a lot more.

The plan worked. Janet had no idea. I finished my proposal, which was brilliant. Without going into too much detail, I’ll say it was an investigation into whether a new pesticide played a role in the honeybee colony collapse disorder. I was able to get around the issue of having live bees in the fair—they were a risk to the attendees—by tracing the migration path of the honeybee.

I always thought that a suspension was a gift to the goof offs who got into trouble, like rewarding a diabetic with an enormous hot fudge sundae. But despite giving me time to save the bees, and sleep a little on the library desks, the suspension was a net negative. It would be on my permanent record.

On my first day back at school, between second and third periods, I saw Rachel in the hallway, rushing in the opposite direction. She breathlessly asked where I had been. Before I could respond, she told me, as she ran backwards, to look for the German club story in the Clarion.

At first glance, Rachel’s article made me seem like the savior of the German program. There were also statistics about how many schools in the U.S. still teach German, plus a graph of declining enrollment over the past twenty years in Las Vegas. There were a few quotes. “German is a venerable language and if it goes, what goes next? Killing programs is a slippery slope toward an academic abyss.” It sounded like me, although I didn’t remember saying any of that.

There was a picture of me giving a speech at the party. I didn’t even recognize myself at first. I was holding up a German textbook. I looked non-geeky, like someone a girl might want to date. Maybe I really did look like that actor guy, or like he did in the 80s. I made another mental note to check out Christian Slater’s films.

There was some activity in the background of the photo. Two UNLV students were behind me, laughing. Behind them, a couple was making out. At the edge of the photo was a guy’s forearm. And in his hand was a bottle of beer.

Principal Nicks oversaw every aspect of the Clarion’s publication. I had no evidence that Rachel had given him the photographs. I had no evidence she hadn’t. I didn’t call her that evening. I needed to think things through, and write down a few cost-benefit analyses of what she might gain by betraying me. I waited one more day before deciding that Rachel had betrayed me by informing Principal Nicks about the beer.

Yes, it was an absurd supposition. But, in my defense, I came to believe this only a few hours after I had begun a rather regrettable amphetamine addiction.

EIGHTEEN

Ever since Kel dropped the “gift” in my lap, I kept his yellow jackets in my vest pocket and vowed to use them only if absolutely necessary. Nodding off during a calculus quiz was a “break glass in case of emergency” situation.

The pills worked well for the first hour. I was alert and mildly warm. The side effects began the following period in the form of sweating and fidgeting and indigestion. The anger side effect kicked in during German class, when I learned that Jann-Otto and Annette-Barbel had not been kicked out of German club. In fact, Jann-Otto made an announcement for everyone in class, except for me—he singled me out—to come to the next German club meeting. Snake. I imagined him breaking down in tears and telling Principal Nicks that he begged me not to bring alcohol to the party. Principal Nicks would have been too busy to launch an investigation into what really happened. It was easier to go after the low-hanging Tyler-fruit.

After class, I stopped Jann-Otto in the hallway. His lip twitched and he backed up a step. He was afraid of me. I wondered for a moment whether the yellow jackets were making me appear aggressive or whether Jann-Otto really was that much of a wimp.

“You invited UNLV guys. You got drunk. You fought with them.” I was shouting now.

“It’s your word against ours.”

The bell rang. My right arm went up, not to hit Jann-Otto or even scare him, but as an exasperated reflex. He flinched. I almost made the gesture again, on purpose. I was enjoying the illusion of being threatening.

On my way to calculus, I had a revelation. If I had to choose between being like Jann-Otto and attending Caltech, or being a pseudo-normal person and attending UNLV, I would actually take the latter. That was one of the last rational thoughts I had that day.

After fifth period, I experienced yet another negative effect of the speed. My stomach gurgling became a cramp, which became an urgent need for the rest room. I made it in time, but I spent the better part of the lunch period there. As I waited on the toilet for the next wave of intestinal contractions, with my pants at my ankles, some guy stopped by my open stall and smiled. “Glad we have someone on SGA fighting for stall doors,” he said. That, I recognized as sarcasm.

By biology class my bowels had stopped threatening to detonate. My lab partner was irritated by the noises I was making—grinding my teeth and tapping my foot. I had experienced nearly all of the possible side effects of the yellow jackets except for the heart attack, and there was still time in the day for that.

After class, I asked Mr. Proudfoot to convince me that the suspension hadn’t ruined my chances for admission to Caltech.

“They’ll only learn about the suspension if Steve Nicks tells them. He’d only do that to be an ass. I give that a better than fifty-fifty chance. If that happens, just leave that to me.” He promised to write a second letter of recommendation on my behalf, explaining what a farking idiot Principal Nicks was. He didn’t use the word farking. I asked him to not write swear words in the letter.

The seventh period class was coming in and Mr. Proudfoot still hadn’t talked me down off my metaphorical ledge. I asked him whether it was too late to begin more extracurricular activities to satisfy Caltech’s need for diversity.

“Tyler, that’s not the diversity they’re looking for.”

“Then what?”

“Nobody has any idea what they’re looking for. They have unofficial quotas for everything. Extra points if you’re from BF Nowhere. Extra points if you’re an Eskimo. The only thing Caltech demands that you spend at least one year studying a college level subject. But it’s for the university’s benefit. So they’ll look at some kid and say, ‘hey this guy’s worked on robotic limbs for two years and that’s great because we can use him to get a research grant.’ That kid gets a free ride.”

“I should do a project on robotics?” I said, with urgency.

Mr. Proudfoot shook his head. “Robotics was how I got in. They want a full year of research with a college professor. Research on what? Nobody knows. It changes year to year. Depends on what kind of grant they’re going after. It’s a racket and it’s all about the school, not about you.”

“How can you have a year of research with a college professor when you’re in high school? Isn’t that what college is for?” My voice was whiny and petulant. I sounded like Jann-Otto, but at least I had the excuse of taking speed.

“I don’t know why you think Caltech is the be all, end all. What about M.I.T?”

“I don’t know,” I said, my voice pinched. “What about it?”

He sighed. “Have you ever been to Caltech?”

“No. I’ve been busy. I’ve been trying to save the bees and—”

“Go there. Take a good look at the campus and see if it’s a place you really want to be. Don’t be intimidated. And whatever you do, don’t ask about their meth labs.”

The second bell rang. “What?”

He winked. “Scandal back in the eighties. I’ll tell you about it sometime.” Ghoulish laugh. Sideburn tug. Bulging eyes.

His seventh period students were in their seats, staring at me. One guy in the front raised his eyebrows and made a toke-up gesture with his thumb and forefinger. My reputation from my campaign stump speech had not completely dissipated.

By the end of the school day I was less jittery and angrier. I was suffering from a worsening headache. Coming down from a yellow jacket buzz was not the optimal time to confront Rachel about the photo.

She was inside the Clarion office, laughing with two other guys. She saw me and waved. “There you are. I’ve been leaving messages. Where have you been?”

“Where have I been? Being betrayed. That’s where.” I blame the withdrawal from the yellow jackets for my stilted syntax.

Rachel wanted talk in private. She called me out into the hallway in a soothing tone of voice that adults use when they want their children to stop making a scene.

I informed her I had been suspended because of the drinking at the party, and all of that would destroy my chance of attending any good college, and I hoped she was happy for setting me up. I was rambling and being overly dramatic. The more I talked the angrier I became.

“Slow down. What did I do?”

“The photos you took in the Clarion. Beers in hands. Beer, evidence.”

“Wait. You were suspended because of my photos?”

“Look at the picture,” I said. I didn’t have a newspaper in my hand. If I had one I would have waved it at her. “In the photo. People are drinking beer. You took the picture.”

“I’m not the editor.”

“Good excuse! Did you take a picture of me smoking pot, too?”

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I love pot! And heroin!” For the record I hadn’t tried heroin or pot. At the party I did inhale some secondhand pot smoke. Someone at the end of the hall heard me and gave me the thumbs up.

“Tyler, I was extremely careful not to photograph anyone with alcohol because I was afraid of just that.”

“Well! Not careful enough, it would appear!” I sounded like a bad Shakespearean actor.

She shook her head. “Wait. You were suspended Monday but the story was published yesterday.”

“So?”

“Tyler, I’m sorry about what happened but I’m not to blame.”

“Doesn’t Steve Nicks approve every story that goes out? Maybe you gave him the photographs on Monday. Was this whole thing a set up? Invite yourself to the party so you’ll have some dirt to write about?”

“You invited me.” I could tell she was becoming angry. “I don’t like this conversation.”

I didn’t like the conversation, either. If I could have split into two people right then, the rational Tyler would have slapped the crazy, spittle-spewing Tyler. But those things only happen in movies. Or maybe they don’t happen in movies. I don’t see many films.

Rachel spun and stormed back into the Clarion office.

Here’s why I was angry, the real reason. I understand this now. It wasn’t just the speed I took, although that didn’t help. I had been trying to please everyone. Not just Caltech’s faceless admissions committee. There was Milagro Sanchez, Mr. Proudfoot, Principal Nicks, Carl and the ever-unsatisfied Janet, and every other FoFa. Who had cleaned the floors of every FoHo and kept the bathrooms spotless when the biological children left their garbage all over the place? I had. Who was polite and respectful when the biological children were insolent? I was. Who made an effort at innocuous chitchat when the biological miscreants spent countless hours in their rooms playing video games? Again, it was I.

Furthermore, who cooked and cleaned for his BiMo? Who stayed up all night to make sure she would arrive home safely? Who called the hospital when she had one of her episodes? Who turned his entire life inside out for her? That would be me.

None of this had anything to do with Rachel. She was just someone who foolishly cared about me for a while.

**

To: All Staff

Re: Inspections

Two weeks until state inspectors arrive. Things have been pretty sloppy. We need better habits. Starting tonight, you will be assigned to a clean up crew. The instructions will be included in another memo. See me if you have any questions.

Cecelia Platt

**

After a night of triple disinfecting, I could eat a meal off any surface at Colonial Gardens. I almost did just that, in fact, after I dropped a piece of cherry pie on the table in the lounge.

Even Kel was cleaning, which was his official job, though I had never seen him doing it until tonight. I caught him in the B corridor, mopping the same spot over and over. I told him about my reaction to the yellow jackets and how I flipped out at Rachel. The implication behind my words was that he had given me some stronger stuff, possibly laced with poison. He was more stoned than usual. He didn’t catch my subtle accusation. He leaned on his mop and gazed at the flickering overhead light. “Sucks about your girlfriend,” he said. “Probably ought to get her something nice. One time my girl caught me having sex with her sister and this other girl. But it turned out all right because next day I bought her tickets to this concert—”

I cut him off. “You said you used yellow jackets.”

“Many moons ago, my friend.”

“Maybe the potency has changed. Am I going to have any long-term effects?”

“Chill. It’s not like acid. But if you want some acid, it’ll cost ya.”

“I don’t need acid!”

We both saw Mrs. Platt at the end of the corridor. That was the end of the conversation.

Beyond the stricter adherence to cleanliness, the upcoming inspections had brought other changes in the third shift routine. We were not allowed to simply check off boxes on patients’ charts. Courtney was apoplectic at having to write detailed notes on each page and log them into the electronic files, something I had been doing all along.

Nurses’ aides on other shifts were under closer scrutiny as well. They had to see that residents were actually taking their medication. I learned this during rotations, when it was apparent that Milagro Sanchez had been heavily sedated. The pills in her Box o’ Crap were gone.

At five o’clock, as I scrubbed the corridor handrails with bleach for the second time, Mrs. Platt approached.

“Thank you for alerting us to Milagro,” she said. “Nobody on the second shift actually watched her take her pills. Typical. Sometimes I think you and I are the only ones doing our jobs around here.” She handed me a heavy, photocopied document, then she peered into my eyes.

“I’m fine,” I said, a little too defensively.

Milagro was awake, barely, at shower time, and kept slipping out of our arms. If I didn’t know better—and I didn’t know better—I would say she was trying to throw herself to the floor. Courtney became so frustrated she literally tossed Milagro at me and told me to “handle it.” I couldn’t hold up a slippery woman and the shower curtain and the water nozzle at the same time. I placed Milagro in her wheelchair and rolled her to her room. When I eased her into bed, she wouldn’t look at me. She knew I had told Mrs. Platt about the pills. I wasn’t going to leave it at that. I would have the last word, at least. That wasn’t so hard to do, given that she was unable to speak.

“There are rules. I was doing my job. I need this job. Do you know what the economy is like out there?”

As I was clocking out, Kel approached and asked me what pills I had taken that day. I told him Claritin, a multi-vitamin, Sudafed, and two yellow jackets in the morning, and one yellow jacket and Sudafed before work. With coffee.

“Sheeee-it man. You only hafta take one yellow jacket.”

“You said two. I heard you. Two. I remember.”

“Not with Sudafed. That’s a fuckin’ speed ball.”

“Sudafed is for congestion. I get congestion.”

“Bull-sheeeeit.”

I was shouting now. “I have allergies and I need to stay awake because my grades are falling and I can’t do homework on my shift.”

“You shoulda said so, bro. Brain meds. Take Ritalin. I can get that for you. Yellow jacket and Ritalin.”

“One Ritalin and one yellow jacket.”

“Twice a day.”

“Both twice a day?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“And what about B vitamins and Sudafed?”

“No bro.”

“No bro what?”

A nurse’s aide from the A wing approached. Kel shared a flirty look with her. We all stood there in silence until the woman clocked out. When she left, Kel said, “my man you’ll just hafta…” He lost his train of thought.

Uber-dummkopf. After all those years being wary of others, I had trusted a tattooed stoner who gave out free pills.

Janet picked me up on time, as usual, at 7 a.m. The ride back to their house was silent. I probably could have made some small talk, but I was brain fried from my shift. I had to clench and unclench my butt muscles in order to keep from falling asleep. By the time we reached the corner of Flamingo and Sunset, I became miffed that I had to worry about staying awake for her benefit. And since the night of the German club party, I had been miffed about how they kept their son, Scott, a secret.

I had spent too much time and mental energy on non-important things, on making chitchat with Carl and Janet, on Milagro’s photos, on my doomed romance with Rachel, and on the plight of the honeybees. I had been worrying about all of that too much. Caltech was still the ticket to my future. I decided to visit Caltech, as Mr. Proudfoot suggested. Not just for a campus tour. I would do damage control. I would schedule an interview. I would explain the suspension. I would make up for my mediocre essays.

That was the plan. The interview was the only thing that mattered now. I needed to not care so much about the little things. I had to keep my eye on the big thing.

NINETEEN

Interviews were optional at Caltech. Originally, I opted to not participate, because of the time and expense of traveling, and because I thought a face-to-face with an admissions officer could only hurt me. Now, the interview was my possible salvation. If admissions knew about the suspension, I could explain the circumstances. And maybe I could wow them with my effervescent personality, ha-ha. I would bring Mr. Proudfoot’s letter. Before presenting it to admissions, I would need to discreetly determine whether they knew about my infraction, without spilling the beans. The letter was more about Principal Nicks than about me. It was a laundry list of jerky things he had done to Mr. Proudfoot and the Firebird High faculty over the years.

I had a plan and talking points. According to Mr. Proudfoot, my Achilles’ heel was not my suspension, nor was it my lack of extracurricular activities. It was the fact that I had not spent a full year doing college-level research with a professor. There was no way to make up for this deficit at the last minute. But I could spin the experience I did have to my advantage.

More importantly, I could show admissions that I was unique. I could not transform myself into an Eskimo, but my life history, which I had avoided on my essays, could be an asset. How many refugees from the Foster-go-Round applied to Caltech? I had no statistics for this, but I could assume it wasn’t a large number.

I packed a bag with two of everything, in case something got ruined. Two pairs of khaki pants, two pairs of socks, two boxer shorts, two striped ties, and two dress shirts. I had only one pair of dress shoes. The trip would take four hours, driving at the speed limit. We would leave on Sunday to allow me to miss no more than one day of school. The admissions office was gracious enough to schedule my interview for Monday morning. Colonial Gardens was gracious enough to give me time off. Levi was insistent enough to drive me.

In our last tutoring session, I brought up the fact I was going to Pasadena. For the rest of the session Levi wouldn’t stop talking about how great it would be if we could go together. He said he had never been to California, and he would love to go to Disneyland. His offer did make financial sense. We would share a motel room. He would pay for everything, including gas, and I would tutor him as he drove. I hadn’t decided whether I would charge him for the tutoring session. If I did charge him, I might come out of the trip ahead a few bucks.

I spent the entire day looking for signs that the trip and the interview would turn out well. Levi arriving on time was a good sign. Janet’s hectoring was an inconclusive sign. “Where will you eat? Do you have enough money for the motel? Do you have enough money for food? What will you do if you run out of gas? You will call when you get in. Do you feel safe letting Levi drive?”

I politely told her I had everything under control, and there was no reason to panic. Then she became snippy. “Pardon us if we want to see you arrive alive.”

Janet and I stood in the foyer and I wasn’t sure what else she wanted from me. It occurred to me that she wanted to hug me goodbye, but that would have been strange.

She gave me a quick, half-hug and a pat on the back. “Have a good trip.”

“You, too,” I said, reflexively.

As soon as Levi pulled away from the curb, I received a bad sign, not about the interview and my chances for admission, but about my life expectancy. It was instantly clear that Levi was a terrible driver, far worse than my BiMo. She never nearly sideswiped a telephone pole while bending down to reach for a spilled soda. As his float-y old car weaved indiscriminately over the center line, my body went rigid enough to mimic rigor mortis.

“You have to keep your eyes on the road,” I shouted.

“If you’re going to act like that, it’s not going to be a fun trip.”

If we end up dead, the trip will be less fun. That’s what I wanted to say. But I decided not to say anything until he was able to stay in one lane for at least ten minutes. Tutoring him while he drove would be out of the question.

After he reached cruising speed on the freeway, I asked what he was going to do with the camping gear in the trunk. He told me he gave his parents a story so they would let him go to California. He was going camping, alone, so he would be able to pray in nature and be closer to God. They bought it, surprisingly.

Twenty minutes out of Vegas, we passed an outlet mall with an incongruous roller coaster. Levi said, again, how much he was looking forward to Disneyland. I informed him that it was at least sixty miles from Pasadena, we wouldn’t have time, and that it was expensive. He said he would pay for both of us.

“It’s far,” I repeated.

“Not that far on the map.”

“Map distances are misleading.”

“You said you’d think about it.”

“I said I’d think about another tourist attraction. Anywhere but Disneyland.”

“Disneyland is the happiest place on earth.”

“That’s a slogan and it’s idiotic,” I said. “A place can’t be happy because a place has no feelings.”

“People are happy when they go there.”

“Then that should be the slogan.”

Levi punished me by putting in a CD of nothing but pounding surf and seagull sounds.

After thirty minutes, his driving improved. It seemed likelier that we would live. When we passed the last exit in Nevada, Levi frowned at the terrain. “Nothing much changes when you cross the border,” he said.

I informed him that the state line was an arbitrary dividing point and that California was huge enough to contain every kind of climate and geological formation.

“I was making a joke. You take everything so literal.”

“Literally.”

“I’m not stupid.” He slammed his fist on the horn. No sound came out.

The Lincoln cruised up a steep incline, past the rocky outcroppings pocked with dry dots of sagebrush. The high desert terrain looked like old poppy seed buns.

I tried to call the motel to reconfirm our reservations. I didn’t realize until Janet picked up that I had accidentally dialed her cell phone.

“What’s wrong?” she said, panicked. “Where are you?”

I told her nothing was wrong and that we were still in the desert.

“What’s that screaming?”

“Seagulls,” I said.

“Put me on speaker,” she demanded.

I obeyed her.

“Drive safely, Levi.” Her voice was so loud over the speaker it was making my phone buzz. “And call when you arrive, all right?”

Levi said he would call.

“She meant me,” I said.

Janet put Carl on the line, which was totally unnecessary. “What I wanted to say before was, good luck and have a good time,” he said. “And be careful of those college women.”

“I’ll be careful,” Levi said.

“He meant me,” I said.

“Who’s screaming?”

“Seagulls,” Levi and I said at the same time.

“Fine, you don’t have to tell me,” Carl said, disappointed. I ended the call.

The hum of the road and Levi’s seashore sounds and enveloping pillow-seats put me to sleep. I woke up when Levi swerved suddenly, throwing me against the side window.

“I almost didn’t see that truck,” he said.

I informed him, as politely as I could, that a clean windshield would help. He turned on the wipers. An anemic jet of blue spray drizzled onto the glass. The wipers smeared the bug carcasses.

I remembered the time my BiMo moved us to Nevada. She was driving her ancient blue Subaru, “blubaru” she called it, while singing to a Joni Mitchell CD. There was a splat. She screamed. Suddenly the window was opaque yellow. I knew right away it was a thick swarm of bees meeting their untimely end. I urged her to pull over to the side of the freeway. She did, and I scraped off the wings and pollen. She had no cleaner, so I had to make do with some Gatorade and a snow scraper. When I finished the job, she was nowhere to be found. I searched the rocks by the side of the freeway. The contrail of a plane over a mountain range, the hiss of traffic, and faraway train tracks were the only signs of life. I wandered around in the brutal sun for ten minutes, calling her name. She emerged, smiling and waving, from behind a giant rock. “The bees got me to thinking, so I went to look for something.” I didn’t ask what she was looking for. She was always searching for something, and often she had nothing particular in mind.

A little after six o’clock, when we attempted to check in to our motel, I received a very bad sign. Suspecting that we were underage, the clerk asked to see identification. He rejected my fake license and made a sarcastic comment about enjoying my films. I was rather dismayed that it was easier to score alcohol than shelter with a fake I.D.

It took another two hours to find a motel that accepted minors. We got lucky with a dump that had the advantage of being overpriced, far from campus, and featuring only rooms with one bed instead of two. While I signed the registration form, the cadaverous clerk referred to Levi as my friend. I didn’t like the way he said, “friend,” especially when we would be sharing a bed at a motel that had a condom machine in the lobby.

“He isn’t my friend. I tutor him.”

When we reached our musty, nicotine-stained room, Levi flopped on the bed and  began languidly flipping through my Caltech brochures. “In loco parentis. Is that German?”

“Latin.” I pulled out my green striped tie from the overnight bag. It had an unidentifiable stain. This was a very bad sign.

“It means ‘parents are crazy,’ right?”

“It means ‘in place of the parents.’ The university takes care of you.”

“Loco means crazy in Spanish,” he said.

“But the phrase is Latin,” I snapped. I examined my other tie. It, too, had a small stain. I uttered several cuss words in German and English.

I found the source of the stains. An ancient protein bar had ricocheted around the bag, creating grease splotches on everything, including both pairs of dress pants, almost like it had an agenda to sabotage my entire wardrobe.

I walked around the drab neighborhood looking for a store that sold stain removers. I found none. Fortunately, the front desk clerk had plenty. I wouldn’t have guessed this from the many discolored patches on the blankets. When I gave up trying to de-stain my clothes—I basically blended the grease blotches into the fabric rather than lifting them off—Levi had fallen asleep, face up, mouth open. I was not about to spend an evening a dingy room with a drowsy tutee that smelled like orange chemicals and mold. I mean the room smelled that way. Levi always smelled like bacon and pine deodorant. I said I would be back sometime before midnight. He grunted his approval, or disapproval. Or maybe it was a half-snore.

I took a bus to campus. My self-guided tour of the university was exhilarating. I had no idea there were so many styles of architecture—consistency was the hobgoblin of small universities. Hello, Beckman Auditorium, where I will hear fascinating lectures by visiting scholars. Hello, stream by the library where I will kiss a girl at dusk. Hello, Asian guy who looks like a grown-up Eddie Kim.

On a kiosk near one of the cafeterias I saw a flier for a dorm party. There were fliers on walls and doors as well as kiosks. How’s that for an advertising policy, Principal Nicks? I made a beeline for the dorm. The building was accessible only with a student card key, but a guy held the door open for me, as if I belonged there. That was the best omen so far.

Inside, a dozen guys watched a basketball game on a TV in a corner. A table stocked with wine and cups suggested more might arrive. I stood a few feet away from the guy-cluster so they wouldn’t think I was intruding. Then, I decided standing alone made me more conspicuous, so I went back to the wine table. I expected someone to say, hey, you’re a high school kid. You don’t belong in this dorm and you aren’t old enough to drink wine. Someone call security! Nobody said this.

More students arrived, including a few women. College women. I attempted to paint, through strands of conversation, a picture of what my life would be like. “It’s a debate of ideas without ideas. Why does it smell like that? They couldn’t make a basket if their lives depended on it. I’m all about milk thistle these days.” The picture was cloudy.

Someone very interesting arrived. She was short and thin, with a dark complexion. Indian, maybe. She wore a Caltech t-shirt, running shorts, and flip-flops. She headed for the wine table, her footwear slapping. She glanced at me as she poured a cup of red wine from a jug. She looked around at the room. Deciding there was nothing of interest—though she hadn’t looked at me yet—she pivoted and flip-flopped away.

I ran over and pretended to walk directly into her. I apologized.

“I don’t know why people say they’re sorry when they bump into you,” she said. “It’s like we’re all afraid of touching.”

“I’m not afraid of touching,” I said, too eagerly.

“I see that,” she said, taking a sip and stepping back.

I told the truth. I bumped into her so that I could talk.

“Okay,” she said, expressionless.

“I threw a better party two weeks ago.”

“Here?”

“No.” Scheizen! She was not supposed to know I was in high school. And if I said I threw a party on campus, she would be suspicious. I stood there, unable to talk, imagining what might happen if she took me to her room. The room would be filled with stuffed bears and smell like baby powder and lilacs. I would to reach out and kiss her. But would I be cheating on Rachel? No, of course not. We were an item for less than 24 hours. A night of kissing and intimate touching did not a relationship make. Even I knew that. And she probably wouldn’t talk to me after my speed-fueled tirade. I was free to play the field.

The thick metal door clicked with finality. The flip flop beauty had left the party. I threaded my way between clumps of people for another ten minutes, like some dummkopf ghost. I tried not to view the party as a bad sign for my collegiate social life.

Levi was gone when I returned to the motel. His car was gone, too. It was eleven. I assumed he had gone to Disneyland after all. He had not returned by eleven-thirty, or by midnight, or by the time the couple next door—or maybe it was a trio—decided to have vigorous, wall-thumping sex.

Sometime in the night I migrated from the chair to the bed. I woke up to a shaft of sunlight hitting the figure of Levi, next to me. There was crusted blood on his pillowcase and a scab just above his left eye. It looked like he had been in a fight. I must have hovered too close. He jerked awake as if a bomb had gone off in his solar plexus, sending all parts of his body in different directions.

“Are you all right?”

He muttered something unintelligible and pulled the blanket over his head.

“What day is it?” No response. “Who’s the president?”

His voice was muffled by the blanket. “I’m not stupid!”

For the record, I was asking these questions to check his mental functions. My nursing class instructor said people can die from even minor head traumas. Memory loss and disorientation are the first signs of trouble.

It was almost nine and my interview was at ten fifteen. I told him to go to a clinic. He groaned.

“If you die of inter-cranial pressure, I will not take the blame.” No response. “I’ll meet you at the designated spot. Which is… where?”

“Bridge.”

I took no yellow jacket—I was already pumped with adrenalin—and headed to campus. Outside the admissions building I checked my voice mail messages. There were four.

“It’s Janet. You said you would call. It’s after seven. You should be there by now. Call us.”

“It’s Carl. Janet was worried that you were… well… she worries too much, but it is after ten, and you said you would call when you arrived. Call us and let us know you’re all right. You don’t have to talk long. A text message is okay. We’ll stay up for a little while.”

Carl: “We’re both concerned now. It’s eleven. Just give us a ring. Okay?”

Janet: “Inconsiderate. That’s what it is. You may be smart, but you have a lot to learn.”

I found the men’s room and took care of my morning business. All of the stalls had doors. Caltech cared about its students’ privacy. Chew on that, Principal Nicks! I splashed water on my face and dried off with two paper towels. I stuffed paper towels into my shirt, one under each arm, to prevent pit sweat from causing unsightly damp spots. I certainly didn’t need any more splotches on my clothes.

I stared at my face in the mirror and forced a smile. This was the moment I had been waiting for. All of my problems could be spun into assets, all of my losses into victories.

I popped a menthol cough drop in my mouth as I strode down the hallway. I stopped at the door of the admissions office. I pulled out my cell phone and typed a message to Janet. Don’t worry. I’m fine. Then I added, Doing great!!! The act of sending that text made me believe I had created my own good fortune. I believed that for at least thirty seconds.

TWENTY

The admissions receptionist seemed helpful and kind. When I told her my name, she acted like she had been expecting me and was glad to see me. Excellent sign. Then, she told me, “smile, it’s not so bad.” I thought I had been smiling. Less-than-excellent sign.

She said they were running late and I should have a seat. I asked whether any new correspondence had arrived from Firebird High.

“Transcripts?”

“A letter from my high school. From the principal?”

She smiled meekly and told me I should ask Mr. Bingaman, the head of admissions. Bad sign?

The paper towels under my pits were making scraping noises. I considered removing them, but the receptionist would notice that, surely. And where would I put them?

A mother, father and son sat on the other side of the waiting room. The son wore a tie and a blazer with a prep school insignia on the pocket. His clothes had no grease spots that I could see. His parents kept casually touching his shoulder and his arm. They probably spent thousands of dollars for SAT prep courses. I scored in the 95th percentile without a single prep class, thank you very much. Father of Blazer Boy leaned over and muttered something. They all laughed. They annoyed me. Annoyance was better than panic, but not as good as confidence, and I was running low on confidence. I tried to rehearse my interview talking points, but they were getting jumbled up in my head.

I picked up an alumni magazine. After scanning the same first paragraph seven times, I focused on title of the article, “Caltech scholars try olive-growing.” I attempted to turn it into an anagram. I came up with Call: Tyler saves two gringo choirs.

“Tyler.” It was a deep baritone voice. A hefty man with gray, curly hair stood in front of me with his hand outstretched. He introduced himself as Mr. Bingaman. As I rose and held out my arm, a clump of damp paper towel fell from my armpit and became lodged between my shirt and my torso. This made me pull back a little. Mr. Bingaman’s hand caught only the ends of my fingers, as if I were a queen allowing him to kiss my ring. I made a mental note to shake his hand vigorously on the way out.

He led me into the office and gestured to a chair across from him. I walked in sideways to avoid showing off the granola grease on my pants. He dropped his bulky body into an expensive-looking leather chair and asked whether I had any questions for him.

“What correspondence have you received from my principal?”

He frowned and moved some papers on his desk. Each time he held up a paper he pursed his lips and set it aside. “I have some recommendations.”

“From the principal?”

“No. Your chemistry teacher had some great things to say.”

“But not the principal?”

“Was he supposed to send something? You might want to ask him to send it again.”

“I’ll do that. Don’t call him, please.”

He leaned back and asked why I was interested in Caltech, as if he had asked it ten thousand times.

I was prepared for this one. I threw out all of the statistics I knew. I explained how it would fit into my life plans. “Most of all, I like the idea of a community of scholars. That’s a phrase in one of your brochures. As a foster teen I have experienced a lack of a permanent home. I feel that Caltech is welcoming, a place where I can have a sense of belonging.”

That should have been a slam-dunk. Perhaps I had dropped in the foster teen remark too casually. Mr. Bingaman didn’t appear to be intrigued. He was expressionless. I continued.

“I’m drawn to research. I’ve done quite a lot of it, under several mentors. It hasn’t been under the same mentor and not at the college level. That’s because I’ve moved around so much. Did I mention I’ve been in the foster system for four years?”

His eyes were unfocused but generally aimed at a piece of paper in his hand. I suspected it was part of my application letter. I was becoming uncomfortable with the silence. I laid out the basic facts—father unknown, BiMo dead, many FoFas, many schools, and that my BiMo was the reason for my interest in biology.

“You say in the essay it was your fourth grade teacher who introduced you to biology.”

He’d actually read it. I should have been encouraged.

“My fourth grade teacher was the catalyst for my interest in science, but my BiMo, I mean my biological mother, spurred my interest in biomedical engineering and immunology.”

Mr. Bingaman shifted in his seat. I assumed he wanted me to go on, because he wasn’t telling me not to go on. I already played my diversity card. If I were to reveal any more, I would have to explain how my BiMo died. I didn’t want to go there.

I went there anyway.

“My biological mother had allergies. Shellfish and eggs were the worst.”

Mr. Bingaman was looking at me now.

“She died eating Thai food with shrimp and egg. She thought she had cured her allergies through some kind of pseudo-science. But she hadn’t. That’s why I am committed to real science. She was found a few blocks from the restaurant, on the sidewalk. She might have been saved if someone had found her sooner, but they didn’t because nobody walks in Las Vegas. Except for me.” I made a spastic arm gesture and the paper towel under my other armpit slipped down my shirt. Now there was a clammy, moist roll at the top of my beltline.

“That must have been traumatic,” he said, without emotion.

“I’m sure. I mean it was. For me.”

I wanted to take it all back. I didn’t want to be admitted based on pity, though I would have reluctantly accepted it. Why the fark wasn’t he asking any questions?

“I want to know why people kill themselves,” I said. “I mean why our bodies kill us. Why our immune systems go on overdrive and react to things that should be benign, like pollen or nuts or shellfish, and treat them like invaders. Dust. Think about it. Dust is mostly flakes of human skin. So in a way, we’re rejecting ourselves.” I had just enough saliva to keep talking for another thirty seconds. I switched topics.

“My biology II teacher went to Caltech. He liked it. Mr. Proudfoot. I don’t know his first name. He says he had a great time.” At that moment I realized that the meth lab Mr. Proudfoot mentioned may have been something he participated in.

Mercifully, Mr. Bingaman’s phone rang. He apologized and took the call. This offered a minute-long opportunity to reflect on how I was doing. I judged myself harshly.

He finished the call and re-focused on me. “Sounds like you’re set on Caltech. Any questions for me?”

I had none. Everything was clear. My clothes were spotted with protein bar oil. I was too skinny, my handshake was feminine, my voice was squeaky, and my shirt had two growing orbs of sweat. I didn’t come with biological parents. I had spoken a bunch of scheizen and revealed that my BiMo died in the stupidest way possible.

I hurried through my closing statement. “My biological mother called me ‘the genius of little things’ because I paid attention to detail. Science is a lot of little things that add up to big things. But you can’t see the big things until you understand the little things. I forgot to mention, I’m saving the bees. In a science fair. But, maybe, I’ll be saving the world’s food supply if I can pull it off.”

He scrunched up his face in the way people do when they think they might have heard something profound but don’t really get it.

He stood and thanked me for interviewing him. He extended his hand. This time I didn’t pull back, but I forgot to be vigorous. His hand enveloped mine and squeezed it to the point of pain. On the way out, I stopped at the receptionist’s desk and thanked her for her help. Even though she hadn’t helped. At that point nothing could help.

I spent the next two hours fast-walking across the university quads and gazing at people I would probably not see again. Bye, guy with big silver thermos. We might have been roommates. Bye, professor-looking man with white hair. I might have enjoyed your course. Bye, sarcastic flip-flop wearer, wherever you are. I hope you get an A on your sociology paper.

I found Levi sitting on the low, concrete bridge. The bandage on his forehead was too small for the scab it was covering. He looked up, then back at the water.

“How did it go?”

“Could have been worse,” I said. I was tired, suddenly. My feet hurt. I sat down next to him. “We can’t go to an amusement park. But there’s a great museum in Pasadena. It’s close.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather head back. I’m sort of not feeling a hundred percent, so to speak.”

“Did you go to a clinic?”

“Nah, the front desk guy gave me a bandage when I checked us out.”

I hoped it was a clean bandage. Given the look of the motel, that was not certain.

In the parking lot, Levi’s car came into view. The front fender was smashed and it looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to the hood. There was a web of cracks in the windshield. He said nothing about the damage and didn’t notice my what’s going on expression.

Our first and last tourist stop was Denny’s. I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich and Levi ordered a California burger, which was, as far as I could tell, a regular burger with avocado. I asked why the presence of avocado made something “Californian.” Levi didn’t know. For the record, I wasn’t expecting an explanation. I was just making conversation.

For five minutes he noisily sipped his iced tea and stared out at his wrecked Lincoln. I was getting ticked.

“Are you going to tell me what happened last night?”

“Why do you care? You’re not my friend. You’re my tutor, right?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You keep saying ‘Levi’s not my friend. He’s this idiot I teach.’”

“When did I call you an idiot?”

“I’m not his friend. I’m Tyler and I’m so smart. I would never be friends with him.” He used a singsong tone to mimic me. I never sounded like this.

“I don’t think you’re an idiot,” I said.

“I wouldn’t be around if Levi wasn’t paying me, or driving me. Tutor, tutor, tutor.” His voice was annoying me.

“I’m both, okay?”

“You’re both what?”

He could be so dense. “Tutor and friend. But you look like scheizen and so does your car.”

“What’s scheizen? Oh. Right. Thanks.” He emptied sugar packets on the table and made little white mounds. If I were his therapist I could wait fifty minutes for him to say something important. That’s a therapist’s trick. They think you’ll get tired of saying nothing, and then you will burst out with some teary confession at the last minute. It never worked on me. I was able to run out the clock, every time.

But I wasn’t a counselor. I wasn’t being paid by the hour. I was impatient. I brushed the sugar mounds off the table. “Are you going to tell me where you were last night?”

“I went sightseeing.”

“At night?”

“Yeah, at night. I drove.”

“And you hit your head?”

“On a tree.”

“With your car?”

“No. I hit my head using my head. I drove to the tree.” He said this like I was an imbecile. But, frankly, his storytelling abilities left much to be desired. He was harder to follow than The Iliad.

“I drove up the hills, except I kind of got lost. But I found a place high up where I could get a good view, except there were no lights up there. So when I get out, I bump into a tree. Then I hit my head on the tree on purpose because I’m so mad at hitting my head by accident. And just then I understand something. I don’t want to be LDS. I want to have a real life, like you.”

“Like me?” I half-snorted.

“You’re going to do all those things at Caltech. Be a scientist and whatnot. And what will I have? I’ll go on a mission for some religion that believes stupid things. You’re right about that.”

“I never said your religion was stupid.” I probably implied it many times.

“You think religions are stupid.”

“I don’t feel like taking the blame because you’re leaving the church and going around hitting your head on trees.”

“Not the blame,” he said. “You deserve thanks. For showing me a different way.”

“What different way?” I was almost laughing now.

He went on about the things his church believed. Some of these were new to me. He said if it hadn’t been for me he would never have seen the world.

“You’ve only seen Pasadena,” I said.

“Yeah but I’m going to see more. And they can’t stop me.”

When our food came, I scraped the mayo from the top bun—I had specified that I didn’t want mayo—and Levi put his hand to his head. I feared he was going to barf. I feared it even more when he said, “I think I’m going to barf.”

He left the table and spent several minutes in the rest room. I used this time to switch out the buns on our sandwiches. They had put no mayo on his. He came back to the table and practically inhaled his California burger, as if nothing was wrong.

“Even if I go to Caltech, that’s no guarantee of a great life,” I said. “It might suck no matter what I do. I might end up in some nursing home. Nobody to visit me. Everything I own in a box, sitting in urine.” We were silent for a minute. Levi swallowed a mouthful of burger and looked up at me. My words surprised me. But they didn’t seem inaccurate. It was the first time I’d said that to anyone. One thing bothered me about what I’d said, besides the possibility that my prediction would turn out to be right. “I mean I’d be sitting in urine, not the box.”

“Why would you be sitting in—?”

“Never mind.”

“That’s kinda grim. You’re depressing me.”

“Yeah. Well. Life can be depressing. Sorry.”

We were quiet for a few minutes, until Levi had an important thought. He talked with food in his mouth, which grossed me out a little. “Did I tell you? I can’t work anymore. The parental units made me quit Covenant Catering. They say they’ll pay for everything I want. Well, what I want, dad, isn’t money.”

“You told him that?”

“No. I do want money, just not his.”

“Okay. You hit your head and had a revelation. What happened to your car?”

“I’m getting to it. Keep your pants on.” I had given no indication I would remove any clothing. “There’s deer up in the hills. So I’m driving and I slow down for this deer standing in the street. You know the saying that someone has a deer in the headlight look? Well in my headlights, this deer looked evil. And he doesn’t run away. He jumps on my hood. And then he does this deer tap dance. He jumps up and down on the hood and kicks the windshield. And then… he takes a piss right on the windshield! I’m just sitting there watching the stream of deer piss cover the glass. Like he was angry with me. But he shouldn’t have been angry, because I stopped for him. That’s the thanks I get.”

“Did you provoke him?”

“Provoke him? No. I honked. That was after he turned my car into a toilet. So, he jumps off once he’s satisfied and runs into the woods. Now my windshield is broken and covered with deer piss. And my wipers aren’t working well, so I can’t see. I’m driving down the hill and I don’t see this car coming.”

“You hit the car?”

“No, I cut the guy off by accident. He honks and flashes his brights and he starts tailgating me. I remember hearing these stories about how when drivers get mad they shoot at you. Now I’m panicking because I think he’s got a gun. I speed up and that’s when I miss the curve and hit a tree. The second time I hit a tree last night.”

Levi’s tale of compounding problems reminded me of a children’s song about a woman who swallowed a fly. She swallowed progressively larger insects, and then animals, to catch whatever she’d just swallowed,  until, not surprisingly, she died. She had ingested the fly for no reason. Or maybe it was curiosity or the need for a new experience. The fictional woman reminded me a little bit of my BiMo. If the song were about her, it would have extra verses about her son being in tears as he begged her to stop swallowing things.

Traffic crawled all the way through the Cajon Pass. By the time we reached a high desert town that appeared to be nothing but chain stores hugging the freeway, Levi was having trouble staying in his lane, even more so than usual. I demanded that he pull off. He drifted onto the off ramp and swung lazily into a parking lot. I used my cell phone—I had to admit that thing was coming in handy—to find the nearest clinic. It was at a strip mall at the next exit.

We sat in the waiting room for over an hour. In lieu of a doctor’s diagnosis, I was about to explain how he could have killed himself by hitting his head on the tree. But I was tired of lecturing. He didn’t need any more of my advice.

“I’m glad you didn’t kill yourself,” I said. After about a minute, I said, in an old man voice, “I killed my elf? I don’t have an elf.” Levi didn’t laugh. He hadn’t laughed in a long time. I was starting to miss his stupid rumble-giggle.

The examination took about twelve minutes. He had a concussion. The doctor told him dizziness and blurred vision would subside sometime in the next week. He said Levi shouldn’t drive. I already assumed this.

Driving an old Lincoln was more like commandeering a rolling house. My driver’s ed cars and Carl’s GTI had been like second suits of clothing compared to Levi’s land barge. I stayed in the slow lane of the freeway because the suspension was so loose it made me seasick to make turns. The biggest problem was the windshield. The deer urine was gone, but the spider web cracks provided only a small un-shattered space to the left of the steering wheel. I had to contort my upper body in order to see the road. Every so often I nudged Levi to make sure he wasn’t slipping into a brain-injury induced coma. He reacted with irritation every time.

A few more things can be said about driving a bludgeoned Lincoln through the desert at night. First, I don’t recommend it. Second, it gave me time to think. I no longer envied Levi’s money and stable, if fanatical, family. I felt sorry for him. If this was friendship, then I guess we really were friends.

As we descended into the Vegas valley, I saw the shaft of white light shooting from the Luxor’s pyramid into a cloud. I was glad to be back. It wasn’t exactly home, whatever “home” was, but at least there were people waiting for me.

When I parked in front of Carl and Janet’s, Levi confessed that he was afraid to go home. “They’ll know I wasn’t camping. They’ll find out. They have their ways. Even if they don’t, they’ll know I’m an apostate. Yes I do know what apostate means. I looked it up.”

“You told me you don’t want to be LDS. When are you planning to tell them?”

“I haven’t worked that out yet.”

“You’ll have to tell them sometime. They’ll suspect something when you don’t go on the mission.”

Levi sat back and stared out the cracked windshield. “One kid on my street was acting up a couple of years ago. I don’t know what he was doing. Nobody said. His parents hired these people to take him away to a camp to straighten him out. A van shows up in the night and just takes him. He stayed away a year. A year. And he came back all happy, like they’d wiped away his mind or something. That’s what they’ll do to me.”

It sounded farfetched. But what did I know? I told him he could stay with Carl and Janet for the night.

Carl blew up an air mattress and placed it in my bedroom while I repeatedly assured him Levi was all right. I told Levi to help himself to anything he needed. But there wasn’t anything in my room except a dresser, a desk, a bed, and my Box o’ Crap. He fell asleep immediately.

In the kitchen, Carl asked me about the trip. I made the interview sound better than it really was. He perked up when I told him it probably would have been fun if he had driven me.

“That’s nice to hear,” he said. “I would have enjoyed that too.”

I nuked a Hot Pocket and gave the abridged version of what happened. Janet stormed in as I was explaining how Levi was afraid his parents would have him deprogrammed. She started using swear words in interesting combinations. “It’s hard enough to have one kid and keep him safe, but snake handlers like them squirt out babies by the dozen. And that little boy, Eddie Kim. Where is his mother? Does anybody give a—”

“Mormons don’t handle snakes,” Carl said, calmly.

“Someone handles them!”

“You may be thinking of Pentecostals,” Carl said.

“It’s not important who handles them!”

When it was clear they were not going to chastise me for not calling them back, I excused myself. They were already deep into an argument about how to raise children.

I didn’t have to work that night. Levi was gone when I woke up in the morning. I analyzed the note he left on my desk, looking for clues about where he might have gone or when I might see him. There was not much to decode. Thanks a lot for everything, L. I didn’t like the finality of it.

I recalled the last correspondence I had with my BiMo. The note she left for me the day she went to Thai Me Down was remarkably similar. Hey genius, thanks for being an awesome kid. She hadn’t expected to return alive.

I put Levi’s note on top of my BiMo’s note, deep inside my Box o’ Crap.

TWENTY-ONE

November 20. A list of things I can ask about Carl and Janet’s son:

1.      Are those his photos in Carl’s office?

2.      Where does he live now?

3.      How old is he?

4.      Do you have any other kids?

5.      Does he know about me?

6.      ???

**

Janet drove me to work as usual, and she gave me a delayed scolding for not calling from Pasadena. “Anything can happen when a kid is away.” I apologized, but she kept going on about what kinds of bad things can happen with two teenagers on the road. If I stayed silent, she would keep haranguing me all the way to Colonial Gardens. It was up to me to change the topic. Thanksgiving was coming, so something like, Thanksgiving is a nice holiday would have been a good opener. Or, I read that turkeys are raised in horrible conditions.

Instead, I asked whether their son, Scott, would be coming for Thanksgiving.

She braked hard. My backpack flew into the dashboard. Two cars honked. One car passed and flipped us off. I thought Janet would have cussed him out from the confines of the Lexus. Instead, she calmly accelerated and said nothing.

Around midnight, after nightly rounds, I received a series of text messages from Janet.

First Message: You may be confused and angry. I thought Carl would have explained. But I’m not blaming him. We both dropped the ball.

Second message: When Scott was 17, the little boy we raised and cherished began a transformation that we could scarcely comprehend.

Third message: He would be 25 years old if he were still alive. We lost him to a drug overdose six years ago.

Things were beginning to make sense. It was disappointing that someone with a supposedly scientific mind—me—wouldn’t have observed the evidence sooner.

TWENTY-TWO

November 25. Top ten things Carl and Janet have communicated to me in the past two days:

·         Are you working on Thanksgiving? (Carl in person)

·         Janet will be at her mother’s in San Francisco. (Carl on white board)

·         My flight information is on the refrigerator. (Janet in person)

·         I sold my last clock, hooray. (Carl in person)

·         Fiona says hello. She asked about your school. She likes you. More than she likes me. (Janet in person)

·         You didn’t need to hose off the patio, but thank you. (Carl text)

I can’t even list ten comments because we’ve hardly communicated at all. I wouldn’t mind if they asked how I was doing, or even scolded me about something. I would still be annoyed if they said, “smile, it’s not so bad.” They have been spending a lot of time away from the house. It’s like our roles had been reversed, and now they are avoiding me.

I have been working on essays for my fall back schools, but it isn’t any easier than the process for Caltech. It occurred to me that selective colleges might be nothing more than purveyors of propaganda to lure wealthy parents into giving them buckets of money in exchange for the promise of open doors for their precious snowflake children. Still, I would prefer not to have to fall back on UNLV.

**

On Saturday morning I decided to make waffles with real eggs. It was my BiMo, not I, who was allergic to eggs. There was no reason for me to keep treating them like kryptonite. Janet was out. Carl was in the kitchen, sitting at the breakfast nook. A newspaper covered the top third of his body. He didn’t lower it when he heard me come in to root around in the refrigerator.

“How’s your friend doing?”

“Levi? I haven’t heard from him. He won’t let me call.”

“He seems like a good kid.”

“He is.”

“It’s going to be just you and me for Thanksgiving. Janet’s leaving me.”

I dropped an egg.

Carl didn’t even notice me cleaning yolk off the floor. He folded the newspaper and gazed out the window at the bright slice of sunlight on the Hansen’s orange house. The curtains in their window fluttered. Mr. Hansen’s scowling face appeared and then disappeared.

“I sold the GTI and bought a used Sentra,” Carl said. “It’s economical. I hope you’re not disappointed.”

I told him I wasn’t. I waited for him to get back to the Janet issue. I knew they were not spending the holiday together, but Carl’s comment made it sound like a permanent separation.

I decided to heat up frozen waffles. After I watched them not absorb syrup for a minute, I became impatient—not at the waffles, but at Carl. I asked him how long he expected Janet to be away.

“She’s going to stay with her mother for a few weeks. And then we’ll see. Nothing will change for you. No need to worry. You have a lot on your plate.”

What was on my plate, literally, made me want to hurl. I tossed the waffles in the trash and cleaned out the crumbs from the toaster.

I went to my room and worked on essays, but I couldn’t focus. Around one o’clock, I heard some rustling and thumping. A few minutes later there was the click-click-click of heels on the terra cotta floor and the murmur of conversation. I burst out of my room. Janet was in the foyer. There were three suitcases at her feet.

“Oh, Tyler, I’m glad you’re here. My taxi will be here any minute.”

Before she could ask, I picked up all three suitcases—my anger was giving me extra strength—and stormed out to the curb. Janet click-clicked behind me.

“Maybe you shouldn’t carry all those at once.”

I crashed the suitcases onto the sidewalk. She was right. My back already ached.

“I assume Carl told you about us.”

I spun around to her. “Yes. It’s great to have advance warning.” That was my attempt at sarcasm.

“Nothing will change for you.” They had rehearsed this line, I was sure of it.

A yellow and lime green cab approached but it didn’t stop. Janet turned and waved. The cab kept going. This was peculiar. There was nobody else standing outside with suitcases.

“Were you going to leave for good without telling me?”

“It’s not necessarily permanent,” she said. She was still waving at the receding cab.

“Are you still mad that I didn’t tell you about the emancipation?”

“No. Tyler, our problems are not about—”

“Maybe I should have told you about it. Maybe I should have told you about my suspension—”

“Your what?” The cab had turned. It was moseying back from the other direction. It looked like it would cruise by again. Janet screamed, “Hey!”

“First it’s Scott, and now it’s this. I deserve a little consideration. I’m not some…” Foster child was what I almost said. “Carl goes on and on about how I should stay in Las Vegas, and how you’re going to help me out with college and give me money. But you don’t have any money.”

“We have money,” she said.

“You’ve been selling off furniture.”

The cab drifted lazily to the curb in front of us. The driver got out. He was the hairiest man I’d ever seen. “You going to the airport?”

“No, thanks,” Janet said. “I’m just standing here with suitcases because that’s my hobby.” I might have laughed if I hadn’t been so peeved. Janet watched the driver grab the suitcases and fling them into the cavernous trunk.

I had more to get off my chest. “Carl keeps saying, ‘a family does this,’ and ‘a family does that.’ Real families don’t keep big secrets.” I wasn’t sure that was true. Maybe real families did keep big secrets. But it sounded right. I didn’t take it back.

The cab driver opened a rear door and glared at her. Janet turned away from both of us. She put her hands to her face. I could tell she was crying. She was like this for about a minute. The driver raised his arms and looked at me as if he expected an explanation. I held up my index finger to let him know it would be a minute.

“We don’t know what we’re doing with you,” she said with a phlegm-y voice. “We didn’t know what we were doing with Scott. We were shitty parents and now we’re shitty foster parents.” She wiped the tears from her face and turned back to me. “But we’re keeping this house. You can stay in this shitty house because it is not being sold and we are not giving it up. We’re going to do one thing right.”

I didn’t feel like saying any more and, frankly, I was surprised I had said so much. I was starting to forget why I was angry with her.

It was the tears. They threw me off. It bothered me to see people cry. I never wanted to cry in front of another person, or cry alone, and I definitely didn’t want to witness anyone else’s tears.

She turned to me and scowled, as if I had farted loudly. I hadn’t. “You said you were suspended?”

“Lady,” the furry driver groaned.

“All right,” she snapped. “We will discuss this later,” she said to me.

She didn’t hug me goodbye, which was good, I suppose, because I’d never been a hugger. She did wave when the cab pulled away. Next door, the curtains in Hansens’ living room window shimmied and shut.

TWENTY-THREE

November 29. Thanksgiving. Age one: don’t remember. Age two: don’t remember. Age three: don’t remember. Age four: don’t remember. Age five: don’t remember. Age six: don’t remember. Age seven: don’t remember. Age eight: BiMo made a turkey and was very happy about it. Age nine: BiMo was depressed. I read a book about insects. Age ten: BiMo was in a manic phase. She and her boyfriend drove me out to the country for a picnic. They didn’t accidentally leave me there, and I was grateful. Age eleven: don’t remember. Age twelve: BiMo was depressed after breaking up with another boyfriend. Age thirteen: BiMo had just died. Not happy. Age fourteen: not happy. Age fifteen: not happy. Age sixteen: thoroughly miserable. Age seventeen: alone with Carl, not unhappy.

**

Thanksgiving day was dry and warm. I was sluggish because I was down to five yellow jackets and I was trying to ration them. Carl bought most of the food. He allowed me to pay for ingredients for the pumpkin bread. He initially refused to let me help in the kitchen. After I stood in the doorway for a few minutes, he began giving me little tasks, such as handing him a bowl that he could have reached. Pretty soon I was taking over, grating carrots and mashing potatoes. Cooking was preferable to doing research or watching TV or listening to Carl’s moribund acoustic guitar music. Carl eventually decided he was no help. He went to his office to do some “power yoga.”

As I minced garlic, the landline rang. I answered, because it was close to me and I didn’t want to shout for Carl. It was Janet. She seemed shockingly chipper. She wished me a happy Thanksgiving. Fiona butted in and wished me the same.

“You’re staying out of trouble?” Fiona said.

I told her I was trying to.

“Don’t try too hard. You need to have some fun.”

“Is Carl there?” Janet was talking now.

“He’s in the other room. Do you want me to get him?”

“I want to talk about your suspension first.”

It had been weeks since the suspension, and several days since I let the cat out of the bag. I thought there might be a statute of limitations on scolding, but apparently not. She demanded an explanation. I said the German club party got out of hand and it was no big deal. I gave her the abridged story and emphasized that I didn’t drink anything at the party.

“And you think this kind of behavior is acceptable?”

“I don’t.”

“You thought you could get away with it?”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

“You used a fake I.D.”

“Levi gave me the I.D.”

“And that makes it all right?”

“No.” It went on this way for a while. I thought she would run out of serious accusations and start reprimanding me for innocuous things. And you ate cereal that day, didn’t you? And wore… khaki pants? In the back of my mind was a question. Why do you care, if you’re not coming back? Finally, she said I could not drive Carl’s car for a month. This was excellent punishment, because I had no desire to drive Carl’s car.

Janet was winding down her censure when Carl entered. I handed him the phone and left him alone to reconcile, or not, with Janet.

I thought dinner would be a fast, glum affair. But the phone conversation with Janet had perked Carl up. He didn’t say what they discussed, except for the fact she was angry that we hadn’t told her about the suspension. “That’s a good sign,” he said. “Don’t you think?”

“A good sign of what?”

“She wants to come back. She’s concerned about you. She’s worried.”

We ate in silence for ten minutes. Then, I blurted out, “I’m sorry about Scott.” I had been waiting for the right time to say that. There was no right time.

I didn’t expect Carl to go into the whole story, but he did. He explained how Scott had “slipped away” from them. They were busy with their careers, both working sixteen hour days. Carl was starting a company. Janet was a rising star at a bank. Scott had become addicted to drugs, and they hadn’t seen the signs until there was little they could do. First it was speed, and then it was heroin. He died choking on his own vomit. They were living in California at the time and Scott was in New York.

“We had given up on him. It was exhausting, chasing after him, putting him in rehab. We felt helpless. We convinced ourselves after his last relapse that the best thing was to let him get clean on his own. We cut him off. We’ve been reconsidering that decision…” He paused long enough to finish his yams. “But, you can only chew over mistakes for so long.”

Then Carl answered something that was on my mind. “It’s not about you, our break up. You just brought up issues that would have stayed buried. We’ll work it out. Janet can’t stand her mother. By Christmas, she’ll be back. And don’t worry about her punishment. You can drive the Sentra if you really have to. But you can’t touch her Lexus, I’m afraid. She would have a conniption.”

During dessert the landline rang. Again, I was the closest person, so I answered.

“What’s up?” It was Levi. I hadn’t heard from him since we returned from Pasadena. He wasn’t calling from a Mormon indoctrination camp, unless the camp had slot machines. The dinging and electro-deedling almost drowned out his voice. I informed him he was way behind in geometry.

“Can’t afford tutoring,” he shouted over the din. “I have sixty dollars and it has to last.”

“Until when?”

“Until I move back home.”

“You moved out?”

“Chased out.”

“Where are you now?”

“Paris.”

“Ha.”

“The Paris Hotel. On the Strip.”

“You can afford that?”

“The garage is free.”

I coaxed out the basic facts and demanded that he come to the point. There had been no mysterious van waiting to snatch him in the middle of the night. But there had been a confrontation with his family. He told the truth about the deer. That made his camping story more plausible. The problems started when the emergency clinic sent the bill to Levi’s house. His dad became suspicious. He checked the Lincoln’s odometer, which led to more questions. Instead of coming up with a plausible lie, Levi confessed to driving to Pasadena and seeing a tutor—me. He told them he was questioning his faith. They proclaimed him unwelcome in their house. He ran out with a change of clothes and two hundred dollars in his pocket.

If he had that much money on hand, why was he always short when it came to paying me for tutoring?

“I’m using this guy’s cell phone and he wants it back now. I’ll find a pay phone and call you back.”

“No,” I said. “Stay there. I’ll meet you at the front entrance.”

“Wait.”

I cut him off by ending the call. I always wanted to do that to him.

I put on my winter vest and told Carl I was meeting Levi. He offered the Sentra, but I declined. I reminded him I had to work and would see him in the morning.

“I can drive you to work.”

“It’s not necessary.”

“Janet will be upset if I don’t.” A grin crossed his face. “That’s another good sign. Means she’ll be back.”

I should have waited for Levi to finish what he was saying on the phone. He might have informed me about the many possible front entrances to the Paris hotel. After bouncing between the middle-aged, glassy-eyed, drink-in-hand tourists for fifteen minutes, I ran into Levi by a craps table near the Arch de Triumph. He had lost weight, quite a feat for someone already so skinny. He told me he had spent the last two weeks sleeping in his car and wandering hotel casinos. He had an acquaintance who worked at the UNLV student gym and let him shower there for free.

“Did you eat today?” I said.

“Of course.”

I assumed that was a lie. I told him I was buying dinner.

We zigzagged through indoor fake-Parisian streets, past gambling tables and roulette wheels, drinkers, coughers and women in skimpy outfits handing out drinks. Most people had a look of pressured amusement, as if someone were forcing them to act wildly happy. Some people stepped out of the way, probably because I was wearing my work scrubs under my winter vest. They may have assumed I was there to resuscitate someone.

We stopped at an indoor sidewalk crepe vender. I ordered two crepes for Levi—a ratatouille and a Nutella—and sodas for both of us.

“Cola has caffeine. My religion doesn’t allow it.”

I turned to him and attempted my best you’ve got to be kidding look.

“Cancel the sodas, please,” I said to the clerk. “Two coffees. Black.”

We sat at a café table where the din of the slot machines was nearly tolerable. Levi put a positive spin on his situation by insisting he was getting the culture fix he had been missing. “Paris is the best so far,” he said. “It’s like a whole city here. Security hasn’t hassled me for sleeping in my car for two whole nights.”

I asked him about his plans. He gave me a vacant-happy look, just as he had when I asked him, months ago, what he was going to do with his life. Now the situation was dire.

“I’ve lived my whole life in Las Vegas, except for that time in Utah. And, oh, we were in Idaho for a year, but I was too young to remember. Anyway, I’d never seen the inside of a casino. You always said I need to get out of my rut and see things.”

“I’m not sure that’s what I meant.”

“But you were right, whatever you said. Here I get to eat stuff my mom never thought to make. Crepes! Just about every day she makes chicken. For real. Chicken and potatoes, chicken casserole, chicken tacos, chicken at Easter, Chicken at Christmas, Chicken on Memorial Day—”

“You can’t wander around casinos forever,” I said.

“Chicken for birthdays, chicken for lunch, chick-en for dinner—”

“I get it.” The Ch-Ck sound grated on me.

“CHICK-en, CHICK-en, CHICK-en—”

“Okay!” I swiped my hand across the table, causing my coffee to topple onto the floor. I mopped up the spill with my stack of napkins while Levi kept talking. He said he was running out of money and needed to get the dents in his Lincoln fixed. It was bewildering how he could be more concerned about fixing the scheizen car than about securing shelter or food. He never fully understood that he might never be able to depend on his family’s beneficence. It was a lesson I had learned earlier than most. This guy, this awkward tower of gawkiness, had no survival skills. His job at Covenant Catering hadn’t taught him much, except to not use his iPod around a vat of gravy. He was without a home.

Levi was where I was supposed to be.

How many teens were dragging around Las Vegas, homeless and looking for a place to land at that very minute? I didn’t know, but it was probably many. If the stories I heard were accurate, some of them were turning tricks. Some were on drugs. Some were pregnant. At least I learned how to be an adult while I had a BiMo. For the last two years of her life, I was her parent. I cooked for her, cleaned, and made sure she paid the bills and got to work on time. It was quite an achievement for a nine-year-old to balance a checkbook. My BiMo would have never kicked me out of the house. She couldn’t. She needed me.

Levi tried to cut through his ratatouille crepe, but the plastic knife was too dull, and the sawing motion kept splattering sauce and mushrooms. I grabbed more napkins and announced that I would assist him, free of charge, in hunting for a job. I would take him around to look at apartment rentals. I told him I would help him find bargains in the store and pinch pennies. I would also help him prepare for the SAT—at deferred payment, because that was a lot of work. To cap off my offer, I said he could live with Carl and me for a few days until he got on his feet. I was fairly certain Carl would allow this.

“You have to forget your parents and learn to take care of yourself,” I said.

Levi looked down and opened his mouth wide, like he was going to swallow the whole crepe. Then he made a sound like the faraway shriek of a man falling off a cliff. This was followed by heaving shoulders and waterworks.

I offered him the last dry napkin, but his eyes were closed and spewing tears. I had to physically shove the napkin into his hand. I wanted to give him some advice, some statistic, some fact he could use. I could have told him I had spent the last four years on my own, even when I wasn’t technically living alone. I could have told him living without a biological family was just fine. I could have told him all that and more. But it didn’t seem right.

Suddenly, Levi’s crying turned off as if a timer had gone ding. He blew his nose in the napkin. “I’ll be all right. They’ll come around any day now. Holidays are coming up. I’m the one who always trims the tree.”

Fine. He could hold onto that fantasy if he wanted. I reiterated the offer to stay with me. He considered this, until he was distracted by two women walking past in revealing dresses. They were teetering on dangerous heels and sipping something from huge containers shaped like the Eiffel Tower.

“I think I’ll stay here,” Levi said. “And if I get kicked out, there’s other casinos I haven’t tried yet.” His eyes opened wide, with a new thought. “I’ve never even been to the Bellagio! It’s like a vacation in my own home town.” He smiled. “Yeah, that’s what this is.”

Sure. Whatever.

Levi couldn’t be helped, at least not by me. My shift started in forty-five minutes. We walked to one of the entrances, the one near a bar where a band played covers of old rock songs. The lead singer, a plump, youngish woman in a red shimmering dress punched up the lyrics to “Daydream Believer.” She was almost as good as my BiMo. She put a final flourish on the end of the song. The band stopped and she bowed, even though only two people were clapping, me and Levi. She put on a fake smile, pretending that there was a crowd who came only to see her. I wondered whether my BiMo experienced that kind of demoralization when she sang. She had performed at the old Frontier hotel for a while. Or maybe she sang just for her own enjoyment. I had no way of knowing. She never told me. But she did make it clear that her life had turned out to be a huge disappointment.

I locked eyes with the red dress singer. She smiled at me and blew a kiss. I was still clapping.

“He-loooooo?” Levi was waving his long arms in front of my face. “So, um, come see me sometime.”

I stopped clapping. “See you sometime? Where? In the parking garage of the Paris Hotel?”

“Or Bellagio. Or camping. I still have my camping gear.”

“Okay. I’ll look for you somewhere.” I was being sarcastic. He didn’t get it. I informed him that he had no phone.

“Yeah,” he said, as if he’d never thought of it.

Just then, I realized what I could do for him. I pulled my cell phone out of my vest pocket and told him to keep it. Janet would be pissed. She would have to get over it. I took off my vest and told him to wear it. I didn’t think to remove the saline solution, tissues, gum, Sudafed, and the last yellow jackets from the pockets before he took possession of it.

“Thanks man,” he said, stroking the fabric.

“One more thing,” I said. “Dine eltern sind arschlocher.”

“What does it mean?”

“I’ll tell you at our next lesson.” I thought this would make him more likely to see me again. It was like a cliffhanger at the end of a TV show. I’m not going to divulge what the phrase means, because it has a swear word. But I can say it combines your parents with an oft-maligned part of the anatomy.

I walked to Flamingo Road to catch a bus. As the dry wind scattered the noisy, dead leaves on the sidewalk, I momentarily regretted giving away my winter vest, even more so because my stuff was still in the pockets. A rumpled older guy got on after me and sat across the aisle. He leaned over. At first I was afraid he was going to cough or say something perverse. Instead, he showed me an iPod. “Found it in the trash and it works, too. God does miracles, and don’t you say he doesn’t.” I congratulated him.

Ten people were on the bus, none sitting together. Everyone around me except for the iPod guy appeared to be having a less than stellar holiday. By comparison, mine was great.

There weren’t any crazies on the bus this time. Just people going to and from work, with white shoes, smocks, hotel vests, and gloomy stares and slumped shoulders. Some were dozing. These were my people. I was thankful to be with all of them, on that bus, going somewhere. And I was thankful to have someplace to return at the end of my shift.

Just then I experienced something like an emotional swarm, several feelings at once, buzzing around, like bees. I pushed them all down. That’s what I always did.

I concentrated on what I would do next. I would punch in and do paperwork for Mrs. Platt. I would roll patients and clean their urine. I would make the place spotless for the state inspectors. Tasks. It always helped to think of tasks. Little duties and lists helped me put unidentifiable emotions back in the box where they could do no harm.

TWENTY-FOUR

I hadn’t seen Rachel since my paranoid rant at school, just before the Pasadena trip. I hadn’t called, either. But I had sent a text message. It said, simply, I’m a dummkopf, sorry. She didn’t write back.

I didn’t expect her to agree to date me, but at least I could put my jerkiness in context. She may not have known what dummkopf meant. That’s possibly why she didn’t respond. Or, more likely, she didn’t recognize the number, because I sent the message from a new, disposable phone after I gave my good one to Levi. She was probably trying to call me at the old number, and Levi was intercepting. Maybe he was talking with her. Maybe they were dating. Most likely, she was still ticked at me.

During a break in my evening nursing class, I called Rachel. “Did you get my message?”

“What?”

“I’m a dummkopf. It means idiot. I didn’t mean to say what I did and I’m sorry.”

“(static)”

“If you are not still mad, I’d like to meet for coffee later. Or tea. Tea is better because I don’t drink coffee, except in the morning. But it’s up to you.”

“(unintelligible) breaking up.”

“How can we break up if we’re not officially dating?”

“What?”

“At least meet me for five minutes.”

“I can’t (unintelligible) work until nine.”

“You start work then or end work?”

“(static) call me back!”

“Do call you back, or don’t call you back?”

There were three beeps, then nothing.

My nursing class ended at 9:00. I called Rachel back at 9:01. “It’s Tyler. Sorry about the bad connection. It’s my new phone.”

All I heard from her was, “(static) Starbucks (static) thirty.” The signal died before I could ask her which Starbucks. I called information and found the one closest to where she worked.

Rachel was sitting in an oversized leather chair with her legs twisted into some kind of yoga posture. She was sucking on something with a straw. I was happy to see her, but my mood was dampened by the fact that the farking “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/It’s a Wonderful World” medley was playing, just like the every time I had ever been to Starbucks.

“This must be the only song they play here.” I was off to a snippy start, and that was not my intent.

“It’s by Israel something,” Rachel said. “I can’t pronounce his last name. He’s Hawaiian. He died a few years ago because he was really fat. Well I’m not sure that’s the reason. But he was large. Isn’t it great?”

“Yeah, great,” I said, as chipper as I could pretend to be.

I began to explain why I had been such a jerk. I told her that Caltech meant so much to me, and I had been worrying myself sick about it. I was about to mention the yellow jacket usage when she told me not to stress out.

“Caltech would be stupid not to accept you. If they don’t, it’s their own loss.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way. I liked her attitude.

“About the photo,” she said. “You were partly right. Principal Nicks knew about the beer at the party before he saw the photo, but he confirmed it by looking at my picture. The editor, who will be forever named assface, turned over the beer photo without telling me. When I found this out I quit.”

“You quit because of me?”

“I quit because of the unprofessional cabal between the brownnose boys in the newsroom and the administration. But also because of you. So we’re fine?”

“I am. Are you?”

“Very.” She sat up and announced she had good news. She knew someone who knew someone at a popular blog that was interested in my sex and drugs speech. This sounded like bad news, but I let her go on. They also wanted to know why Principal Nicks considered me a troublemaker, which also sounded bad.

“But listen, this part is good. They want me to write about the stall door issue as part of a larger piece about student activism. I’m not going to get paid, but it’s great exposure, and the Web is where all the innovative journalism is happening. But we can’t have any more massages until I finish the story.” On the word massages, she used finger quotes. I didn’t ask her why writing the story would preclude physical contact.

She pulled out a manila envelope from her backpack and told me to open it. Inside were dozens of photos. The first twenty or so were from the party. In most cases, the subjects made faces at Rachel. One photo featured a guy with his hand in the air. He was smiling, almost vibrant. It took about ten seconds to realize I was the guy. “You can keep all of them. I have copies for my portfolio.”

For the next few minutes we listened to some lugubrious and unidentifiable soft rock. Rachel closed her eyes. My body was in the sweet spot between wired and catatonic. We stayed there, half asleep, then fully asleep, until the barista kicked us out.

Outside we stood between two SUVs in the strip mall parking lot, shielding our faces every few seconds from oncoming headlights. Rachel asked if I knew anyone who wanted to buy her camera. I told her not to sell it. She insisted she needed the money. “You probably don’t know what that’s like. My job at Luxor is keeping food on the table. Seriously.” She hadn’t shared much about her home situation up to that point. She used this time, under the unflattering greenish neon lights, to fill me in. Her mother used to work as a radiologist, but she had to go on disability when her fibromyalgia became too bad. Her parents divorced when she was two. Rachel wanted to study journalism at Columbia or Northwestern, but she didn’t see how she could move that far away when her mother needed so much help.

“You know fibromyalgia is…” I was about to tell her it was possibly a psychosomatic disease. I was going to share the research I’d done. But she didn’t want to hear that. People don’t usually want to hear facts and statistics. Usually they just want you to empathize.

“What?” she said.

I finished my sentence. “Pretty painful, I’ve heard.”

“Yeah. She’s had rotten luck.”

“If you look after her, who looks after you?”

She was stumped for a moment. As an explanation of where I was going with this, I told her I had looked after my BiMo because she was crazy, at least half of the time. I was beginning to understand that a mother shouldn’t need that much help from a kid.

“We look after each other, my mom and me,” Rachel said. She declared that we were both lucky. “You and I don’t have everything handed to us, so we strive harder.” I recalled writing something like that on one version of an admissions essay. It sounded better the way she said it. I didn’t think I could ever be as positive as Rachel. It would have been much easier if I had looked after someone with a simple case of fibromyalgia, whether the disease was real or not. But I wasn’t envious, not really.

Kel had no more yellow jackets. He recommended a combination of pharmaceuticals that would meet my need for optimal brain function and alertness, while maintaining a schedule of less than four hours of sleep a day—one Ritalin and two Sudafed tablets, three times a day, and one Sudafed at night with no Ritalin. I bought fifty Ritalin tablets from him at what I thought was a highly inflated price.

It worked, for a few days. I experienced no twitching, no teeth grinding, no runs. I was focused and awake, not too stressed out, and able to think clearly most of the time.

One night, I reconciled with Rachel just before my shift, I mistakenly took three Sudafed tablets with a tablet from an “herbal alertness formula” that I’d bought at an Asian health food store. It contained ginseng, which was supposed to produce more yang in the body. What it produced was a full-body freak-out.

At work I was a fidgety mess. My arm was twitching so vigorously that it caused a glass of water to slip out of my hand. Even Courtney noticed my lack of coordination, and she rarely noticed anything.

I looked for Kel in the courtyard. He was leaning against a Doric column with a pot pipe stuck in his face. I ran over to him and said something vague about needing to smooth out my rough edges.

“If you want a hit, just say so.” He held the pipe in front of my face. I did not need to get high, but didn’t feel like explaining what I really meant. It took too much effort to put words in the right order and I had absolutely no patience. I snatched the pipe and inhaled deeply. He offered his thoughts on the matter of illegal substances, while I rolled on the ground in a coughing fit. “Easier to get pot nowadays than it is to get cold medication. Big pharma wants to hook you on that crap for life. But this stuff is… Hey. You okay, bro?”

By the second break I was ravenous from the pot, still jumpy from the speed and frustrated at the lack of decent food in the staff refrigerator. Did nobody have leftovers from Thanksgiving to share?

I was not in the best state in which to handle residents.

Milagro Sanchez should have been easy to turn. She weighed eighty-two pounds and she was near catatonic from the Estazolam she was now being forced to take. When I turned her from her back to her left side, she continued rolling onto her stomach, as if her face and the pillow were magnetized. I didn’t want to hurt her—she bruised easily, and her skin was like crepe paper—so I stood back and analyzed how I could move her into proper position.

Courtney, who was observing from the doorway—this was her idea of teamwork—snapped at me. “Sometime, tonight?”

I asked Milagro whether she could breathe, forgetting that she was incapable of speech.

“Let her go!” Courtney shouted.

Milagro’s roommate, Edna, agreed and shouted a few swear words at me.

I left Milagro half on her side, with her face in the pillow, in the pose of a giant S. I promised to come back and check on her. But I didn’t check on her. Mrs. Platt gave me new forms to fill out and there were new surfaces to bleach. When my Sudafed-ginseng speed bomb wore off, I crashed hard. I spent my last break asleep in the lounge with the TV on.

Courtney’s demand to “get up” merged with the LIFT-AND-WORK command of the aerobics woman on TV. “Milagro Sanchez is dead, and now we have to fill out forms. There’s an inquiry and the inspectors are coming. Why do you always create more work for everyone?”

For the next few minutes I tried to will myself awake and make sense of what Courtney said. I sat and watched the unitard-clad TV exercise woman kicking like a maniac as I focused on the key words. Milagro Sanchez is dead.

TWENTY-FIVE

Because Colonial Gardens was in the middle of a state inspection, an investigation was opened in the suffocation death of Milagro Sanchez. The day after Milagro was found dead, Colonial Gardens went into safety overdrive. Effective immediately, all aides were required to do hourly checks on residents to ensure they had not rolled onto their stomachs, and that they were able to breathe without obstruction. One might have assumed this was already standard practice, but it wasn’t.

Darla and Ruth engaged in frantic speculation. Darla thought someone from Milagro’s family snuck in and smothered her in the night. Ruth insisted that Milagro didn’t have family, which I suspected was true, and that there was no way anyone could break in the building, which was totally false.

Courtney tried to dampen speculation with her unique brand of sourness. “People die here all the time, if you haven’t noticed.”

All of this finger-pointing did nothing to help my all-over body ache and a feeling that my sinuses were trying to eject my eyeballs from my skull. I hadn’t taken any Sudafed tablets that day because I was out of them and didn’t have time to stop at a store. On my second break, I judged the situation to be serious.

I found Kel in the B wing. I needed to ask him, again, for a new supply of yellow jackets, or perhaps something milder that would make me alert without the anger and anxiety. And it would need to work well with the Ritalin and be longer-lasting than the Sudafed. I didn’t ask him this with specificity. What came out of my mouth, as I held my hand to my forehead, was a Frankenstein-like groan.

“My man, I need to keep it cool for a while. Can’t share anything with ya. They got investigators with flashlights up my ass.” He probably didn’t mean that in the literal sense.

“Finals are coming up,” I said plaintively.

“Cry me a river, dude.”

He must have thought I truly would cry him a river, because he found me in the courtyard during my third break. He said he would work something out if I met him at his car at the end of our shift, in two days. Two days?

Just before shower time, Mrs. Platt called me to her office. She told me she had read my incident report and she wanted to verify some things. She asked me to clarify whether I had turned Milagro alone.

“I turned Milagro Sanchez. I was the last one to move her.”

“You turned her on her side?”

“Yes. I asked if she was all right, but she didn’t say anything.”

“She never says anything.”

“Right. When I received no verbal or non-verbal cue, Courtney assured me that Milagro would be fine.”

“How did Courtney know this?”

“I assumed… because she worked here longer… she had her ways… of knowing.”

“That’s what I thought,” Mrs. Platt said. “Seems to me you did everything you could. I’ve told Courtney she has to work with you as a team.” She adjusted her glasses and analyzed my face. I must have been grimacing from the headache, induced by the speed withdrawal. “Are you all right?”

“Fine. No. I’m sad. About Milagro.”

“We’re all sad. But let’s hope this incident doesn’t shut us down.” She informed me that we would have to wait a week, at least, until inspectors completed their report.

**

December 8. A preliminary list of new rules Colonial Gardens should institute for better patient care and safety.

1.      Double the number of glucose checks.

2.      Nurses’ aides should make one round per hour instead of four rounds per shift.

3.      Sponge baths for residents who are too frail to walk to the shower room. They can be given on the first shift to save time and prevent injuries due to rushing.

4.      Nightly meetings of all nurses’ aides, after first rounds, to identify the most troubled patients that night. This information can be gleaned from notes from the second shift nurses’ aides.

5.      More extensive notes from second shift aides.

**

There was a new janitor on the third shift. I learned from Darla and Ruth that Kel had been fired and arrested for stealing meds. I almost asked them whether he left any “presents” for me. Then I panicked, thinking that he might have told the inspectors—or the cops—that he’d sold drugs to me. I already had a possible manslaughter charge looming. I didn’t need to add drug possession.

That night, Mrs. Platt called me to her office. Her voice, always pitched comically high, was in the stratosphere. “Well, Tyler, I can say with certainty that the inspectors have been absolutely horrible to work with. At least one good thing came out of this mess. Your safety recommendations were excellent and some are going in the updated training manual.”

My right leg bounced like a jackhammer. I crossed my legs, but that only made both legs pump.

“The board ruled as I thought. Milagro’s death was due to negligence.”

Okay. Another reference I cannot use. Now for the firing. I had been expecting to be fired ever since Milagro was found dead. I didn’t assume my safety recommendations would act like an extra credit assignment at school. Keeping residents alive was the main job, and I had failed.

“So you’re absolved.” It took a few moments for the information to sink in. I asked her what she meant by absolved, even though I knew the dictionary definition. “Courtney should have helped you turn Milagro. She’s being let go, just so you know.”

My leg stopped hammering.

“But there’s another issue. I’m afraid it’s quite embarrassing for us.”

My leg started up again. I was going to be busted for drugs.

“The inspectors went through the files to verify the identity of everyone working here. I’m afraid we didn’t vet some of our employees as well as we should have.”

She meant me.

“You’re seventeen. On your application you stated you were eighteen. Your photo I.D. was a fake. Someone should have noticed. We’re in a bit of hot water over this.”

I was hoping that, just like being absolved of manslaughter, I would slip through this knot as well.

“So they’re going to let you go. I wanted to be the one to tell you.”

“Let me go means…?”

“Fired. Not working here. As of tomorrow. I begged the administration to let you finish today’s shift. We’re seriously short-handed.”

She took off her wire-rimmed glasses, folded them, and rubbed her eyes. She looked very tired. She shook her head and smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile. “Tyler, Tyler, Tyler. Why’d you have to do it?”

“I wanted the job.”

“Yes. Of course.” She uttered a sigh/laugh.

“I’m sorry.”

“No sorrier than I am.”

I had nothing to say in my defense. But I did share one thing that had been bothering me. Right after Milagro Sanchez died, I hypothesized that she had tried to kill herself, that it was a self-suffocation. She had been caught with a cache of pills. It seemed plausible. I put that in my report. But the following night, a new resident had been put in Milagro’s old bed. Her name was Flora. The roommate, Edna Brown, was awake during my first round. I hadn’t made much small talk with her while Milagro was alive, mostly because every time I spoke louder than a whisper, she told me to shut up. When I asked Edna how she was getting along with her new roommate, she said Flora talked too much and she might just have to kill her, too. She said too.

I realize I miss a lot of sarcastic humor. But I thought this was something Mrs. Platt should know. I told her, with strong suggestion that Edna Brown may have murdered Milagro Sanchez. If she had murdered Milagro, or assisted Milagro in killing herself, Flora could be in danger.

Mrs. Platt thanked me for the information, as if I had merely handed her the nightly bed check status.

“Oh, one more thing.” She opened a drawer of a filing cabinet and pulled out Milagro’s box. She handed it to me. “I think she would want you to have it. She had no next of kin. If you don’t want it, we’ll throw it out.”

When I was clocking out, Courtney approached and said, “nice knowing ya,” as if it hadn’t been nice knowing me.

Back at Carl and Janet’s, I put Milagro’s box next to my own Box o’ Crap.

TWENTY-SIX

My grades hovered precariously in the low-A range. I should have received a B on my biology II test, but Mr. Proudfoot ignored the two etymology questions I answered incorrectly, and gave me a 97. I was fairly certain he overlooked my sloppiness because he was happy with my science fair proposal and was counting on me to raise the profile of Firebird High—and him, by extension—if not save the bees. With extra credit projects and perfect scores on my finals I could still pull down a 4.0 for the semester. Less than perfect grades would be fine for UNLV. Not so much for Caltech or any of the other schools on my fall back list.

I wasn’t working anymore, and Janet forbade me from looking for a job. But my plate was still full. I had my nursing class in the evening. It wasn’t needed now that I had been fired by Colonial Gardens. But I had paid for the course. I couldn’t get my money back.

Plus, I still had to apply to my fall back schools. Most of the deadlines for general admission were January 1. This meant about a dozen essays to write within two weeks. On the upside, I had over 200 pages of essay slush from my Caltech attempts. Surely some of that could be used.

With all that going on, I didn’t have time to get adequate sleep. And, frankly, I had become slightly addicted to my DIY speed regimen. Going cold turkey would send me into a spiral of sluggishness and headaches. Or worse. Without any way to contact Kel, I had no connection for real speed. So I maintained my regimen of over-the-counter cold medicine, Ritalin, Chinese herbs, and sometimes B vitamins. When I got the balance and timing right, the substances made me confident, capable, and focused. Other times they made me uptight and paranoid and scattered, like a headless chicken handling a nuclear warhead. That’s an example of a metaphor using incongruous imagery. I know this concept now because I used it poorly in an English lit essay, for which I earned a B plus.

Here’s an example of the twitchy Tyler. In the Creative Soul class, we played “the shakes,” where one person starts shaking a part of his or her body and “throws” his affliction to another member of the class. That person mimics the first shake and gradually moves it to another part of his body and changes it to a different type of movement. But we were not supposed to adopt all of the movements. I had zoned out for that part of the instruction. When a girl named Bree “threw” her head bob to me, I incorporated her bob and the shakes of everyone who came before her. I was a head bobbing, leg quivering, arm punching, hip thrusting psycho. I added a dog’s bark. Sound was not part of the exercise.

Ms. Gurzy stopped me after class and asked if I was all right.

“Fine!” I said, and sped out of the room.

The Caltech letter didn’t help matters.

On December 16th I received a thin envelope with a Pasadena return address. Thin envelopes didn’t carry letters beginning with “congratulations.” I put the letter, unopened, in my Box o’ Crap. The letter sat there like a stink bomb. On Tuesday I opened the envelope.

Dear Tyler,

We regret to inform you… blah, blah, blah, SCHEIZEN, SCHEIZEN you thought you would ever be admitted here? HA! Good luck in finding another educational bride, blah, blah, blah, SO FARK OFF LOSER. AND YOUR BIOLOGY TEACHER WAS A SCHEIZEN STUDENT.

Sincerely,

Caltech admissions

I’m paraphrasing.

I didn’t put the letter back in my box. It went into the trash, but only after I had ripped it into tiny pieces and scattered them on Carl and Janet’s patio. As I screamed and tore the letter, Mr. Hansen’s scowling head peeked out of their upstairs window. I suppose he was worried that one of the pieces would blow over the fence and ruin the value of his house.

Mr. Proudfoot was not sympathetic to my Caltech rejection. In fact he said it was probably for the best. He finally filled me in on the Caltech drug scandal in the 80s. He said there was a group of students who started a meth lab in their dorm. From his description it wasn’t clear whether they were simply experimenting, or whether they were so stressed out and overworked that they had to take the stuff to keep up. The students ended up selling meth to some of the janitors, who became hooked on it. Mr. Proudfoot was still coy about whether he was involved. “Let’s just say I was acquainted with one of the perps,” he said.

I also learned a fact may have been helpful to have known sooner. Mr. Proudfoot attended Caltech, but only for two years, before he transferred to UNLV.

If I could have spewed steam from my ears, I would have.

“I told you I went to Caltech,” he said. “I didn’t say I graduated.” Clever use of semantics, Mr. Proudfoot.

The panic over being jobless, the disappointment of the Caltech rejection, and the stress of approaching finals caused the cheese to slide off my cracker. My English lit teacher would call that a whimsical euphemism. That phrase was a five-point question I missed on an exam. The correct term for what I experienced that week was an acute, limited-time reactive disorder brought on by anxiety and/or depression. Most non-medical people call it a nervous breakdown.

TWENTY-SEVEN

The day of my breakdown began no less auspiciously than any other. I was not working anymore, so I was able to get a normal night’s sleep. My morning routine went fine. I performed my final project in Creative Soul. I did a dramatic reading of some of my Caltech essay attempts while another guy in class played a didgeridoo behind me. It was weird enough for Ms. Gurzy to gush over it.

I had a stable, pleasant lunch with Rachel. Several students waved at me—they were still referring to me as condom man. This made Rachel blush. She was even prettier when she was embarrassed.

My American history exam was going well until I hit several questions regarding the 1960s, which was not supposed to be covered, unless I had taken a micro-nap when the teacher mentioned that. I figured I would receive a low A. That meant I would have to write an extra credit essay to prevent the possibility of a B for the semester. There would be no time to write such an essay.

All of this would have made it a half-scheizen day—good and bad, up and down—except for two things that sent the day into full-scheizen territory. First, I had badly spaced out my Ritalin, Sudafed and ginseng. This made me angry and twitchy, and it sent my paranoia spiking. Later in the day there was a legitimate reason for the paranoia.

Between sixth and seventh periods, I saw Principal Nicks standing at an open locker—my open locker—with a pair of bolt cutters in his hand. A crowd had gathered. Principal Nicks turned and made a come with me hand gesture.

I had a hunch how Principal Nicks came to believe I was carrying illegal substances. The day before, during a game of catch in Creative Soul, I flung an air ball with such force that one girl reacted with an “ow.” Ms. Gurzy took me aside and asked how things were going in my life. I knew this was a diplomatic way of saying, what the fark is wrong with you? I informed her I was taking speed.

I know. Dummkopf.

In his office, Principal Nicks asked me to empty my pockets. I laid out three unused tissues, saline solution, Tums, ibuprofen, ginseng, aspirin and Sudafed. None of those things were reason to bust me. Then he found two Ritalin pills. Even they wouldn’t have been a problem if I had a prescription for them.

“Can you explain these?”

I couldn’t explain because I couldn’t talk. My mouth was moving but nothing came out but a thin wheeze. No amount of counting prime numbers or making grocery lists in my head would stop what was happening to my body. I tried using Zoe’s face buzz technique to open up my voice, but that made matters worse. The arm shake from the vocal technique turned into uncontrollable quivering. I collapsed on the floor. The last thing I heard was Principal Nicks. “You think this is funny?”

I awoke in room 3481 of Valley of Fire Medical Center. I was on some kind of drug that made me thick-tongued and pleasantly subdued. When I saw Carl sitting in a chair next to the bed, I assumed that I was hallucinating. Then he started speaking. He told me I would have to remain overnight for observation.

I considered apologizing for all the trouble I had caused, but Carl didn’t seem particularly bothered by the whole situation. And it took effort to form words and thoughts, so I let it go. Carl stayed around and watched junk TV shows with me. Occasionally he would say something like, “Rome went down better than this,” to indicate he thought the show was deplorable.

Around 8 p.m., a nurse came in with another pill, just in time, because I had begun to sweat and panic. Twenty minutes later, I returned to a gauzy dreaminess. A commercial for chicken came on, and the happy TV mother kept repeating, “CHICK-en, CHICK-en, CHICK-en,” as if her only goal in life were to annoy me with her insane buoyancy and that horrible C-K sound. But I wasn’t annoyed. Good stuff, that medication.

Around 9 p.m., Janet burst into the room. She regarded me with a curious lack of sympathy.

“You’re watching TV.” She said this in a tone that was relieved, disappointed and ticked off, all at once. Maybe she thought, after she had gone to the trouble to book a last minute flight, that I owed the courtesy of a serious infirmity.

“That man dancing used to be a congressman, because he’s fat, or maybe he’s an actor,” I said, dumbly.

Janet paced in a circle, her arms rigidly pointing to the floor. I thought for an instant she might start circling tighter and tighter, as if competing in ice dancing at the Olympics.

“I don’t think it’s a big deal,” Carl said.

Janet stopped circling. “He’s in the hospital. How is this not a big deal? Did you know Tyler was a drug addict?”

Not serious drugs. Just over-the-counter drugs and someone else’s prescription. That was what I was going to say. But my mouth was slow.

“He’s hardly a drug addict,” Carl said.

“Ritalin! Where did he get that?”

“From a nice janitor at work who has arm tattoos,” I said.

“How lovely!” she said.

“No, the tattoos are kind of bizarre.

She cut me off. “Why does Levi have your phone? I tried calling.”

“Oh. Yeah. I gave it to him.”

Janet plopped onto a chair and scowled at Carl. “He can’t work at that nursing home anymore. Not at night, not any time.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ve been fired.” My voice was light and whimsical, as if I had just said, I have a pet rabbit. For the record, I’ve never had a pet.

“Were you fired because of drugs?” Janet said.

“It was for a fake I.D.” I said. “Did you know I look like a 1980s Christian Slater? I haven’t seen his movies. Maybe there’s one on TV now.” I pawed the night stand for the remote, which remained out of reach.

They began arguing while I continued watching dancing celebrities. Over the sound of the TV, I caught phrases like, “you let Scott get away with,” and “Tyler is not Scott,” and “don’t try to scapegoat,” and “we are not going over this again.”

“Can I say something?” That was my voice. Both of them glanced at each other and did that eyebrow dance before their gaze settled on me. Seconds passed before I formed the thought, and then the words. “Thanks for coming.”

Janet blinked rapidly. “Of course we came. We’re glad you’re all right.”

“I’m fine, and you’re good parents.” I blame the sedatives for my use of parents. They probably didn’t even hear me because the TV was loud and the medication was making me talk softer and with the hint of a slur.

They lingered a while and discussed whether one of them should stay overnight. I was sleepier than I ever thought possible. Or maybe I was more content than sleepy. All those times I had been to hospitals—with my BiMo, and once with Levi—never once was I the patient. It was a good change of pace. But I wouldn’t want to do it again.

I received no punishment for my Ritalin infraction, unless one considered doting and excessive concern to be punishment. After a few days, I started getting used to having meals cooked for me. I stopped cleaning their house. I watched TV and read. It wasn’t a bad way to spend Christmas break. Janet stayed in Las Vegas. She even slept in the same bedroom as Carl. I didn’t overhear any of their conversations. Her reason for staying, she said, was that Carl’s permissiveness wasn’t serving me well, and she needed to be there to set boundaries. But it was possible that she missed Carl, and missed me a little bit, too.

TWENTY-EIGHT

The Weather Channel promised a Christmas rainstorm. I predicted it would not come to pass. This was a classic pattern where the mountains at the California border would wring out moisture before the storm reached Las Vegas. I had covered meteorological features of southern Nevada in an extra credit science report, “Extra Dry, With a Twist.”

My prediction was correct. The day was warm and dry, and the sun occasionally peeked out from the clouds. I sat in Carl and Janet’s living room while half-reading an article about neutrinos.

I was also texting Rachel. I had begun to appreciate text messages. Rachel hated talking on phones because she had to talk on the phone all the time at work. I liked this mode of communication because the cancer risk from texting was minimal, as far as I knew. I also began to use text slang, something that I had found appalling at first. It really did save time.

Ho ho ho. (that was me)

Who are you calling ho? (that was her)

Haha. Did you get anything interesting? (me)

Yay! I got clothes. I needed them. U? (her)

iPod and books.

Want to get together next week?

If U want 2.

You don’t mind seeing a crazy person?

U R crazy like a fox.

????

It’s an expression.

Rachel visited me twice while I recovered from my breakdown. She said she came to help me with my admissions essays, but once she realized Carl and Janet were gone and we were alone, we skipped the essay and made out on the sofa. This was a welcome development. It might have been my breakdown and hospitalization, and her need to “cheer me up,” that made Rachel abandon her waiting period and agree to commence a more physical relationship sooner than she’d planned.

Fiona arrived for Christmas dinner wearing cherry-red cowboy boots, tight black jeans, a leather vest and a black shirt. She handed me an enormous bowl of something that looked like dog barf, but was, she said, traditional Indian pudding. She sang “hel-loo-ooo” in the direction of the kitchen and then turned to me and mouthed patio. I joined her, and we sat on the iron chairs that faced the Hansen’s house. She asked me if I listened to a lot of music. She told me she needed a grammatically correct song for her ESL students. They learned best when she used games or songs, she said.

I knew immediately. I told her “Raspberry Beret” by Prince. “He sings ‘when a girl as fine as she walks in.’ Most people say ‘as fine as her,’ which is not correct.”

“You’re right!” she said. “Thank you.” She thought about this for a few moments. “The rest of the song isn’t smutty, is it?” I had to consider this. I wasn’t sure. I told her it wasn’t nearly as smutty as his other songs. That seemed accurate.

I have long appreciated grammatically correct songs. My BiMo loved Alanis Morissette. She used to play the album with the song “Ironic” whenever she wanted to lift her spirits. One year, on the anniversary of my BiMo’s death, I was playing that song and realized that it had zero irony. The chorus should have been, Isn’t it unfortunate, don’t ya think? Or, Isn’t it insufferably bad, don’t ya think? And, frankly, the don’t ya think part was unnecessary. This was one of many reasons I would not be contributing to the human race as a songwriter.

A set of eyes appeared at the Hansen’s upstairs window. “I hear you’re getting along with them.” At first, I thought Fiona meant the Hansens. But she meant Carl and Janet. I told her they hadn’t kicked me out, so things were good.

“You think they’d kick you out? Really?”

“I guess not.” Frankly, I hadn’t worried about that for several weeks. A FoMo doesn’t fly all the way from San Francisco to see you in the hospital only to send you packing days later. And the fact that my presence was, at least temporarily, keeping Carl and Janet together suggested that they wouldn’t be handing me off to the Foster-go-Round anytime soon.

Fiona began searching through her bag. I assumed she was looking for pot.

“I thought about having kids,” she said. “You can’t take care of kids when you’re touring with a band and partying naked in a hot tub. By the time I gave that up, the biological clock was about to run out.”

She dumped out her bag on the patio table. The junk fell out with an unholy clatter.

“I don’t want to make it seem like I was one of those groupie chicks. I was promoting. It was a job. I didn’t sleep with anyone in the bands. Do not believe what Janet says. Okay, I did sleep with a drummer. Half-slept with him. And I didn’t enjoy it. He kissed like he was trying to clean my teeth. I’m not naming names, because he’s famous. Thanks in part to my work.”

She found what she was looking for. I was surprised that it was a pack of gum, not her pot pipe. She waved a stick at me. I declined.

“I read someplace that if you chew gum you’ll eat less because you’re already tired of chewing before you get to the meal,” she said. “But as you can see, it hasn’t worked. I’ve gained and lost the same fifty pounds for so long. And now, the holidays. Oink oink!”

I told her she didn’t look overweight.

“Aren’t you sweet. Liar.” She popped two sticks of gum in her mouth. “Anyway, my ESL students are my kids now.”

The Hansens’ heads appeared and disappeared, separately, in different windows. Fiona saw them.

“I don’t know what they think they’re going to find,” she said.

There was something about Fiona that made me open up, just then.

“My biological mother was a singer. Her name was Terri Superanaskaia. She went by Terri S. She performed at some clubs in Los Angeles in the 1990s. She sang in a band called the Daisy Chain. But there was a more successful band with the same name, so they broke up.”

“Why didn’t they just change the name?”

“I don’t know.”

She thought about this for about a minute. “Was your dad in a band, too?”

“I don’t know. She indicated that it was a one-night stand.”

“Right. Sounds like a musician. A drummer.”

Fiona asked how I became a science wiz if I had come from musical parents. I shrugged. Except for my minor-league freak out and hospital stay, I wasn’t at all like my BiMo. I didn’t have a musical atom in my body. Possibly my BiFa was a science nerd who met my BiMo at a concert. Or, I took after some heretofore-unmentioned aunt or uncle. Perhaps I would come up with a breakthrough in this area. That could be my great contribution to the world—figuring out why we are the way we are. I guess people through millennia have been working on solving the mystery of personalities. It would be kind of arrogant to think I could do it. I would most likely stick to discovering the root cause of all allergies, and take satisfaction in winning a Nobel Prize for curing autoimmune diseases.

I felt like sharing more. I liked Fiona. She let me talk without demanding anything from me.

“My biological mother was disappointed that she never had a chance to contribute something important to the world. She never had a break.”

“She had you.” At first I thought Fiona meant that I had been standing in my BiMo’s way of success. It’s what I had believed for years. But that’s not what she meant. She meant I was the contribution.

Fiona jumped to her feet and said she hated the gum and that she needed to nibble on something in the kitchen. When she left, she made an oinking noise.

I stayed outside for a while, enjoying the low winter sun as it warmed my back. The curtains on the Hansen’s upstairs window moved again. Mr. Hansen’s head appeared and stayed there. My hand moved up to my face. I slowly unfurled a finger, my middle finger, and pretended to remove something from my eye. Then I let the finger slowly slide over my cheekbone and down. I kept the finger extended while it rested on my chin. The curtains moved again and Mr. Hansen’s head disappeared. I don’t know if a grin crept across my face, but I suspect it may have.

Dinner had an American Indian theme. That would have made far more sense at Thanksgiving. I had no idea why they did this for Christmas. Janet had prepared squab, wild rice, and purple potatoes. At one point I dropped a bit of squab on the table. I wrapped it in a napkin and set it aside. Fiona saw this and raised an eyebrow.

I explained. “If you drop food on the floor, if it’s wet, bacteria will cling to it. Everyone talks about the five-second rule, where food is good for five seconds after you drop it. But it’s only true if the food is dry and the surface is dry.”

“Is this what your science fair project is about?” Carl said.

“Actually, it’s on honeybees.” I was perfectly happy to go on about the science fair, but Fiona wasn’t dropping the squab, so to speak. She asked how many bacteria could be on the dining table. I explained that bacteria, even dangerous ones, lurk everywhere. Janet scowled at me. Then everyone started talking at once, overlapping each other.

Janet: “The table is clean.”

Fiona: You mean I could drop a hard roll on dry ground for five seconds and it would be safe?”

Carl: “Remember when we had food poisoning from those oysters?”

Janet: “If the table isn’t clean enough for you, you’re welcome to clean it.”

Carl: “You don’t have to clean it, Tyler.”

Fiona: “What if you drop it near a swimming pool, where the ground is wet but the water is chlorinated?”

Janet: “He just suggested my dining room is crawling with germs.”

Carl: “I think he was just making a point about science.”

Fiona: “I drank champagne out of a shoe once. Probably shouldn’t have done that.”

Janet: “That’s probably not the worst thing that crossed your lips.”

They should have taken the matter more seriously. Many people die from food poisoning every year. I don’t know how many. I would have to look that up. I said it would be safe if I overturned the bowl of Indian pudding on the floor and only ate off the top of it. Fiona burst out laughing.

“I could make that my science fair project,” I said. “Drop pudding on the floor and let everyone eat it and see what happens.”

It was an amusing image, eating blue-gray glop off the floor, like a cat. It was so funny I had to laugh, too. I laughed at the pudding. I laughed at Fiona’s tales of rock stars’ tongues and at the whole blithering absurdity of everything. I laughed until I was the last one laughing. Then I felt like a dummkopf, so I stopped.

TWENTY-NINE

March 16. I don’t have to write journals for Creative Soul, because the class was eliminated for winter semester, as were other experimental electives, In Stitches, Gangsters, Gamblers and Growth, and Starstruck. Budget cuts. The German program will struggle on for at least the rest of the year, no thanks to me.

I’m writing this very long journal entry because, a. I feel like it, and b. I have some important things to share.

Responses from my fall back universities have begun arriving. I applied to several highly selective institutions under their regular admissions deadlines. Before my breakdown in December, I met with my guidance counselor. She insisted that a Caltech rejection was not the end of the world and some great schools had better financial aid programs. If I were to apply to a second tier school, or even UNLV, I could even win a full-ride scholarship. I choked involuntarily when she said UNLV. I was relieved that she didn’t mention it again. But she did bring up the University of California at San Diego, a school I hadn’t considered. I applied there, and to Johns Hopkins, MIT, Duke, and Rice—basically the top schools for biomedical engineering.

Before I get into that, I want to share some of the things that happened over the past two and a half months. I think they’re important.

I received perfect grades for the fall semester. My teachers granted me dispensation, due to my breakdown and brief hospitalization, and I was able to take my remaining finals after Christmas break. I even did extra credit assignments in every class, something that wasn’t needed, because I aced every final. And I had the sympathy of every teacher, if not the sympathy of Principal Nicks.

Carl and Janet went to bat for me and prevented me from being suspended for the Ritalin. They had to go over Principal Nicks’ head to do so. Principal Nicks hated me even more after this, but he could do nothing about it. My previous suspension did not show up on any permanent record that my fall back schools would see.

Janet and Carl didn’t separate after all. I asked Carl how everything was going. That was my casual way of prying. He said they were still patching things up and it would take time. Janet opened a private practice as a life and career coach. To make ends meet while building up a client base, she took a part-time job as an accountant for some businessman. She was sure the guy was laundering money, she said, but she couldn’t prove it.

Between Janet’s jobs and Carl’s new class at UNLV, they have been doing better financially. They stopped selling furniture, which was a good thing. The place has become pretty empty. There is an echo in the living room.

I obeyed Janet’s command not to look for another job. This has been the longest period of my life, since I was fourteen, that I have not been employed. I haven’t even looked for new tutors. Eddie Kim and his mother moved to Korea, quite suddenly. He sent me a well-written note thanking me for everything.

I couldn’t tutor Levi, either. Right after Christmas, he begged his parents for forgiveness and reaffirmed his commitment to the church. They allowed him to move back. He didn’t want to risk his position there by coming over to see me. I still receive calls from him every so often, mostly status updates. He plans to go on the mission. I have offered no advice on this matter, because he hasn’t asked for any. I miss him and Eddie Kim.

My physical relationship with Rachel gave me impetus to accept Carl’s offer to borrow his Sentra. I have been taking her out once a week. She is a cheap date. I don’t mean to be disparaging. It’s the truth. Typically I will park at a restaurant, and Rachel will want to stay inside the car and “talk,” which means a little talking and a little making out. Then she will suggest a more private place to “talk,” which means more making out than talking. Then, she will say it’s too late to eat. Parking in Las Vegas is difficult. Many dark spots are kind of scary—at least Rachel thinks so—and the brightly-lit parking spots tend to be in casino garages. But there is a good thing about half-empty neighborhoods. We can park under street lamps for safety and not worry about being seen.

Rachel’s article was posted on a political blog soon after the beginning of winter semester. The piece contained only one paragraph about Principal Nicks’ stupid reasons for keeping the stall doors off. Rachel didn’t mention me by name. She told me it was a conflict of interest to write about someone she was romantically involved with. In the article she referred to me as an ambitious, sensitive senior at a Nevada high school who just wanted some privacy. I never thought of myself as sensitive, but whatever. She said my stall door stump speech put me on a collision course with an uncaring and authoritative principal. I might have just referred to him as a jerk who looked like a warthog. This was one reason news reporting would not be my contribution to the world.

The bulk of the article covered students who used Facebook to launch a campaign to stop genocide in Darfur. When I read it, it occurred to me that if others could stop genocide, the least I could do was bring back stall doors to the rest rooms of a high school.

I asked Rachel to help me organize a sit-in protest inside the faculty rest rooms, which had stall doors. I thought there would not be enough brave souls to do this, because it would mean a detention, or worse. But during the first lunch period, the faculty rest rooms were full. They stayed full for the second and third lunch periods, as students rotated in and out. I didn’t participate in the sit-in because I was working with Mr. Proudfoot on an eleventh-hour change to my science fair project.

I need to digress a little more. Someone at a high school on the east coast had taken first place in her science fair a month earlier, with a project very similar to my bee-pesticide idea. This wouldn’t have been a big deal if it hadn’t been reported in the New York Times. Mr. Proudfoot was apoplectic. He made me come up with another project, pronto. My experiment, “Cyanobacteria in Our Water: Every Day a Little Death,” merited an honorable mention. I should say congratulations to Charity Singh, who won the Nevada state science fair with “Cell Mutation in Marine Diatom Protoplasts and its Implications for Transformation and Nanotechnology Techniques.” It was highly accomplished, as cell formation from cell mutation in marine diatom-type projects go. I agreed with the judges that she exemplified the “qualities necessary for success in science.” If she were to ask me for advice, which she wouldn’t, I would tell her to choose better names for her experiments in the future.

Here’s the best part about the rest room protest. A local TV station did a short segment on the sit-in, complete with interviews. They didn’t mention my name, but Principal Nicks knew I was behind it. Everyone knew. He did not retaliate against me, because he probably didn’t want the station to do a follow-up story about how poor Tyler Superanaskaia was punished for trying to give fellow students a bit of privacy while they pooped. Within a week, stall doors were put up. For two weeks after that, I received daily back slaps and high-fives from my Firebird High brethren. How’s that for leadership skills, Caltech?

Speaking of colleges…

Thick envelopes began arriving on March 14. Thick envelopes.

The one that interested me most was from University of California, San Diego—ranked third in biomedical engineering, FYI. They offered me a full-ride scholarship, tuition, room, board, and books.

I have not decided where I will go. As much as I have trashed UNLV, I am seeing some value to staying in Las Vegas and going there.

I have one more thing to add. At the risk of anthropomorphizing a venerable institution of higher learning, I must say, IN YOUR FACE, CALTECH. In your freaking FACE.

Seriously. In your face.

THIRTY

September 14. Text messages:

Rachel: I can’t believe I have to work today. I want to see you off.

Me: You “saw me off” last night.

Rachel: Haha. Perv.

Me: You started it.

Rachel: Don’t make me regret it.

Me: Are you going to be all right with all those UNLV guys?

Rachel: Maybe. Are you going to be all right will all those UCSD girls?

Me: Maybe.

Rachel: You better come back at Thanksgiving.

Me: Is that an order?

Rachel: It is.

Me: Okay then.

“Glad to see you’re getting some use out of that phone,” Carl said, looking back at me from the front passenger seat of the Lexus.

Janet reiterated her disapproval of text messages. “Pretty soon the world will stop laughing out loud. We’ll just say L-O-L. When we have sex we’ll scream O-M-G.” Carl gave her a look and they were both quiet for a minute. Finally, Janet said as long as I kept in touch with them, voice or text was all right.

Janet rarely took her eyes from the road as she drove. Occasionally she would have a choice epithet for someone driving too slow in the fast lane. They set the music on shuffle, half her songs and half his. Her choices were 80s Brit pop bands. Carl had chosen all female singer-songwriters, heavy on the acoustic ballads. Janet once derided his taste as “menses music.” I thought that phrase was funny, but I chose not to laugh.

I didn’t expect them to drive me to San Diego. Janet insisted on it. She said she was stressed out from her jobs and needed a little vacation. They wanted to spend a day or so sightseeing and buying me some new things. I planned to dissuade them from spending money on me. There wasn’t much I needed. And I had just spent the last two days divesting myself of junk. As I packed, I went through Milagro Sanchez’s box and decided there was nothing of value. Throwing out her box started me thinking about my own Box o’ Crap. It was already overstuffed. I would be accumulating things at college and would need room. So I culled everything but the photographs.

Forty-five minutes from Las Vegas, the questions started. Did I know who my roommate would be? When would I choose my classes? Would I have my own kitchen?

“No. Already chosen. No, there’s a cafeteria in the dorm.”

Janet asked me whether I would miss them.

“I promise I’ll call,” I said, which was not really an answer to her question. I followed up with, “sure.”

In a few weeks, on my eighteenth birthday, I would age out of the foster system. My foster “relationship” with Carl and Janet would officially end. They weren’t taking in any new foster kids. They wanted me to come back for holidays. They wanted to pay for the expenses the scholarship didn’t cover. These were things parents did for biological kids, from what I’d heard. I still didn’t quite get it. But I didn’t complain.

Rachel needed to look after her mom, so she didn’t apply to out-of-state schools. She said she UNLV would be fine. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t the top journalism school in the country. Rachel basically insisted that I go to UCSD. She even said she would break up with me if I stayed in Las Vegas just to be with her.

So in April, I responded to UCSD with an enthusiastic, “hell yes.”

I should mention that San Diego had the best weather in the country. One of the best beaches in the world was within walking distance of the campus. Not that I would have much time to spend there.

Carl asked me why I had been determined to go to Caltech. I told him that a middle school teacher said I should consider going there. It was a passing statement, but it stuck in my head for years. This was right after my BiMo died, when I was in my first foster home. I guess I saw Caltech as the right place to land. Plus, at that point, I took everything Mr. Gurganus said as the gospel. Good thing he didn’t tell me I was destined to become a stripper.

As we crossed the Nevada/California border, Carl said the strangest thing, out of the blue. “It’s too bad your mother didn’t see this. She would have been proud of you.”

She certainly would have envied me living near the beach. Proud? That was not clear.

I’ve decided to call her mother from now on. BiMo sounds stupid.

My mother did love the ocean, which made me wonder why she ended up in Nevada. She never really explained that one. One time, when we lived near Houston, we took a trip to the coast. It had gotten dark. The sea was calm and the moon cast a beam on the ripples. She said she wanted to walk out on that beam, all the way to the end. I panicked and begged her not to try walking on the ocean, because she would drown. “I wouldn’t really do it,” she said. “Where do you get these ideas?”

We exited the freeway at Baker, California, home of the World’s Biggest Thermometer. Janet said she needed a restroom break and something for her headache. She stopped at a gigantic gas station/restaurant/convenience store. Carl spotted some tourist store across a dusty strip of nothing. There was a green alien head on the store’s sign. He asked if anyone wanted any “alien stuff.”

Janet looked at store’s sign and scrunched up her face in disapproval. “Alien-fresh jerky?”

“They have other things,” Carl said. He turned to me and asked what I wanted.

I felt a tickle in my throat. “Nothing, thanks,” I said, hoarsely.

They got out of the car at the same time. Janet left the keys in the ignition so I could enjoy the A/C and music. Alanis Morissette sang about being thankful, except the lyrics were about things that most people aren’t thankful for, like terror and disillusionment and dangling carrots. Thankful for disillusionment! My mother liked the song as I recalled.

Carl came out of the convenience store, looked at me and gestured toward the alien jerky store. Then he did the goofiest thing. He put his free hand on top of his head and with two fingers made a V while he bulged his eyes out. He was trying to be funny for my benefit, something my mother might have done in one of her better moods.

In the song, Alanis recommended “unabashedly bawling your eyes out.” I wondered whether this might be a message. My mother believed music had subliminal messages. Regardless, I blame Alanis Morissette for what happened next.

I experienced the beginning of one of those uncomfortable emotional swarms. Suddenly, the car was too small. I felt trapped. I couldn’t breathe. I got out and jumped up and down until I disappeared into a cloud of dust. I started coughing. The coughs turned into a chocking sob. For two minutes, maybe three, I bawled harder than I ever remember bawling. Now that I think about it, the words weren’t subliminal. For me, they were more of a command.

The song lyrics hadn’t told me to vomit, but that’s what I felt like doing. I dropped to my knees in the sand and dry heaved for a few moments. When it was clear nothing was going to come up from my stomach, I crawled back into the Lexus and continued crying.

A black SUV pulled up. Its darkened window rolled down. A woman with huge sunglasses stuck her head out and said something. I couldn’t hear. I suspected she was asking if I was all right.

I nodded. She kept staring at me. I mouthed, I’m fine. I aggressively shooed her away. By then I had stopped crying. I was a little peeved at having to explain myself to a stranger. Being peeved felt better. Familiar.

Carl and Janet came back the Lexus at the same, from different directions, as if they had choreographed their arrival. Janet huffed when Carl held up a bag of goodies from the alien jerky store.

“Two kinds of honey and an alien shot glass,” he said.

“Encouraging underage drinking,” she said. “Nice.”

“It’s decorative,” he said. Carl glanced back at me. I had wiped the tears from my face but my eyes must have been puffy.

“Desert,” I said, with a tight throat. “Allergies.”

Janet huffed. “The A/C in here is supposed to have a pollen filter. When this lease is up, I swear…” She didn’t finish her thought because she was merging onto the freeway and there was a long line of fast-moving trucks.

Carl showed me a jar of honey with a label featuring a cartoon space alien. He said it was local raw honey, and a spoonful every day would minimize pollen allergies over time. It’s something my mother might have believed.

I would try the honey. Couldn’t hurt. Bees were amazing, and even though I couldn’t save them, they would probably not go extinct for at least a few years.

“You said the honey has to be local,” Janet said. “That means it only works where it’s produced. He’s going to San Diego.”

Carl looked disappointed, so I lied.

“I read an article,” I said. “The author said the honey is effective if it’s made within three hundred miles or so.”

“That’s great,” Carl said. It was funny how the littlest things made him happy. I made a mental note not to break down for the rest of the trip. I wanted them to enjoy their pseudo-vacation.

Somewhere around Barstow, California, Janet vetoed Carl’s music. She said it was putting her to sleep. The rest of the trip was accompanied by vintage Brit pop. When “Walking on Sunshine” came on, I detected Janet bobbing her head. It was a good song. My mother might have liked it. The title wasn’t the best, because it suggested something scientifically impossible. But I didn’t mind that. The singer seemed very happy. Carl and Janet were not unhappy. And I was, for lack of a better word, fine.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I hope you enjoyed The Genius of Little Things. Please take the time to review it on the various retailers or your favorite blog.

Take a few seconds and visit my Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/larrybuhlwriter, and “like” it.

And feel free to let me know what you thought of Genius on my site (http://www.larrybuhlbooks.com), and tell me if there’s anything about the reading experience that could be improved. (I’m thinking of constructive feedback, not something like, “I wish you’d written a mystery instead.” Because I’ve already written a mystery.)

LARRY BUHL

Larry Buhl is a journalist, screenwriter and playwright. He is a long-term contributor to Art & Understanding magazine and Yahoo News. His writing has appeared in Written By, Wired, The San Francisco Chronicle, Liver Health Today, Monster.com, Career Builder, New York Daily News, The Advocate, and others. He has reported for KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles and Free Speech Radio News. His play, Pilgrims, and solo performance piece, Chain of Desire, were produced in Los Angeles. He won the Carl Sautter Screenwriting Award in 1999. He lives in Los Angeles, grew up in Ohio, and was graduated from Northwestern University. The Genius of Little Things is his first novel.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There have been many people who have encouraged me as a writer over the years. Here are some who have helped me with The Genius of Little Things in its many iterations.

Gail Hochman

Barney Karpfinger

UCLA Extension

Moose’s Purse

Kate Marciniak

Pamela Alster

Jenn Bray Weber

National Foster Parent Association

My family, and everyone who’s expected big things of me

Also from Larry Buhl

We’re Here to Help

a novel

Megan Armstrong, who supports a hearing impaired son and needy grandfather, needs a job in the worst way.

Then, she lands one—in the worst way.

While interviewing at Surge, Indiana’s only health insurance company, Megan witnesses a bombing that kills several employees. A week later, she’s hired.

As Megan uncovers clues to a potential cover-up, she fears that Surge is more than a rapacious, soulless, behemoth that overcharges for substandard products while grinding down its intimidated employees. Its depravity might be bottomless.

Torn between her need to support and protect her family and the drive to learn the truth about the bombing, Megan is offered a promotion that might put an end to all her fears, permanently.

We’re Here to Help is no ordinary “mom-in-peril fighting an evil corporation in a contemporary dystopia in Indianapolis” story. It is a dark comic mystery about how to serve your fellow man, while surviving in a world where it’s every woman for herself.

Available spring 2013

Please go to www.larrybuhlbooks.com for more information.

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