I'll Be There

by Holly Goldberg Sloan

  Where Sam was tall and lanky, Riddle was short and compact. Sam had dark hair. Riddle was pale and looked faded. Riddle understood only the detail of an object. Sam saw the big picture. And that was important, because he could figure out what they needed to do to get through the day.

  Riddle couldn’t. He spent his time drawing intricate pictures of the insides of things, strange mechanical sketches with his left hand twisted tightly around the pen. He didn’t need blank paper to satisfy his compulsion, which was a good thing, because he rarely had any.

  Riddle had an AT&T phone book from Memphis that had been with him for two years, and every single page had the details of something sketched across the original printing. There was the inside of a radio. The grid of the back of an old truck’s radiator. A busted toaster with the bottom off. And all this was drawn on top of lists of people’s phone numbers or advertisements for plumbing-supply places and Italian restaurants.

  Riddle, for the most part, did not speak. He relied on Sam to get his ideas across, especially when it came to their father. Their father didn’t like to listen to other people, so having a kid who was on mute most of the time suited him.

  The two boys spoke with one voice – it just came out of the older kid. Clarence wasn’t a deep thinker. There was a reason he called his second-born child Riddle.

  Sam walked down the dirt driveway and passed by the old truck. His father was asleep in the front seat. The truck was packed, but that’s how Clarence always kept it. He wanted to be able to leave on a moment’s notice. And he never took the stuff they cared about with him.

  When the voices inside Clarence’s head told him to expect danger, he took a blanket and slept in the front seat. He was on high alert. He often stayed up all night, finally giving in to fatigue as the sun came up.

  Sam looked in through the side window. He could tell by the angle of his father’s head that he’d be immobile for hours. One less thing to worry about.

  When he got inside the run-down house, Riddle was, of course, drawing. He squinted and a half smile lit up his face when he saw his big brother. Sam stayed in the door frame and said, ‘Pizza ends or tossed tortilla chips?’

  Riddle, as could have been predicted, just shrugged and wiped his runny nose. Sam answered for him. ‘We’ll hit the dumpsters and then head over to the mini-mart.’

  He dug into his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins, mostly pennies. A lot of them were greenish-looking copper.

  ‘I scooped up change from the fountain in front of the bank. So we’ve got some choices.’

  Riddle was really smiling now. He lifted a ratty-looking backpack off the floor, shoving his battered Memphis phone book inside with a pen, and the two boys started out the door.

  No one knew who he was.

  Mr Bingham, who was the self-appointed permanent usher at First Unitarian, thought that he was Nick Penfold. When Emily explained that Nick was in Florida at his grandmother’s funeral, Mr Bingham only scratched his head.

  Her investigation continued. No new families had joined the congregation. Mrs Herlihy in the office confirmed that. He didn’t go to Churchill High School, that much was certain. And there was only one other high school in town.

  Emily had her friend Remi drive her over to César Chávez High that afternoon, because she heard they had a Sunday basketball game that attracted a large crowd. She hung around pretending to watch, but she literally was scanning the group, face by face. Nothing.

  The next morning, she told her best friend, Nora, ‘Okay, so you know how I puked at church yesterday?’

  Nora nodded but continued checking something on her phone. She didn’t look up as she said, ‘After you sang.’

  ‘Right. But there’s something I didn’t tell you.’

  Emily shared everything. So this was surprising. Nora’s eyes lifted to meet her best friend’s. ‘What?’

  Emily took a deep breath. ‘I know why I got sick . . .’

  Nora’s head tilted slightly to the side. Nora liked medical things. ‘Because you were so nervous?’

  Emily exhaled. ‘It was because of a guy.’

  Nora looked confused. Emily never got to the giddy place about boys. ‘What guy?’

  Emily felt her face flush. ‘I don’t know who he was.’

  ‘Start over. I missed something.’

  ‘I sang to this guy. In the back. I was singing just to him. And he was really listening.’

  Nora peered at her friend. She now looked concerned. ‘And that caused you to puke?’

  ‘Let me finish.’

  ‘Sorry . . .’

  Emily continued. ‘We connected.’

  Nora waited. Emily seemed to be done. Nora said, ‘Are you okay? A lot of people are getting the flu.’

  Emily obviously wasn’t getting her point across. ‘Nora, listen, I know it sounds weird . . .’

  Nora’s face scrunched up on the left side. Emily knew that meant something was bugging her. ‘Did you talk to him?’

  Emily felt herself get defensive. ‘He came outside to help me. He pulled back my hair. He touched my shoulder. He told me it was going to be all right.’

  Now Nora seemed to be getting bored. ‘And?’

  Nora had been together with Rory Clerkin for almost four months. And before that she’d been with Terrance Fishburne. She had real boyfriends. When Emily hesitated with her answer, Nora continued, ‘Guys really like you. And you’re not interested. But some guy you don’t know watches you puke, and you’re into that? Bobby Ellis is hot. I don’t know why you won’t go out with him.’

  Now it was Emily’s turn to scrunch up her face. ‘What does Bobby Ellis have to do with this?’

  Nora shot back, ‘Everything. If you’d just hook up with someone, you wouldn’t be so worked up when a random cool guy looked at you.’

  Emily seemed to hear only two words. ‘Cool guy? I didn’t say he was a cool guy.’

  Nora shrugged. ‘Cate Rocce told me. She said there was a cool guy in church who left as soon as you sang.’

  Emily’s eyes were wide.

  Cate Rocce had seen him. Emily hadn’t thought to ask Cate Rocce. Because she didn’t like Cate Rocce. The girl just wasn’t very nice. But Cate Rocce had called him cool. Maybe Cate Rocce knew who he was. Emily couldn’t stop smiling.

  But unfortunately, when she tracked down Cate Rocce in PE class an hour later, the girl knew nothing.

  Sunday finally arrived.

  Since her solo, she’d been allowed to quit the choir. Emily figured her father finally knew for certain that he hadn’t passed along his musical talent to either of his kids, because her little brother was even worse at singing than she was. It happens.

  Now, as she climbed into the car, she realised she’d been counting down the days. How ironic that church, which was the most boring part of her week, had become the focal point of all her efforts.

  But he didn’t show up.

  For an hour and a half, she basically stared at the back doors and hated herself for doing it.

  That afternoon she tried to push it all out of her mind. Was she mixing up the emotions of bombing in church with something else? What was happening to her? She was turning into one of those girls who made her crazy.

  But if she felt this way about a stranger, she should be able to work up some emotion about someone she actually knew.

  Right?

  5

  The next day before class, when she first saw Nora at her locker, she said, ‘I thought about what you said . . .’

  ‘About what?’ Nora asked.

  ‘About Bobby Ellis. He’s kinda nice, I guess.’

  Nora smiled wide as she grabbed Emily by the arm. ‘Really? I can’t wait to tell Rory! So do you wanna do something – we could all go to a movie! Or maybe go get food and watch a movie at Rory’s house – you know, if his mom’s going to be out – or maybe —’

  Emily interrupted her. ‘Slow down. I only said he was okay . . .’

  Nora’s face fell
. ‘You said he was nice. He’s one of Rory’s good friends. He’s perfect for you.’

  Emily tried hard to sound enthusiastic. ‘I want to get to know him better. That’s all I’m saying . . .’

  Nora was back to her wide smile. ‘Right. You set the pace. I’m going to tell Rory to have Bobby call you.’

  Emily felt a tidal wave of dread wash over her body as she nodded. Maybe in the next hour she could change her number or lose her phone.

  The idea of talking at any length to Bobby Ellis was second in creepiness only to the notion of sitting next to him in a movie theatre. What was wrong with her? Plenty of girls thought Bobby Ellis was totally great. She guessed they didn’t notice how he laughed at just about anything anyone said. Or how he got too close when he was talking.

  She’d read that good memories pushed out the bad ones. But what if it was the other way around? What if bad memories pushed out the good?

  Bobby Ellis had always sort of bugged her. It was hard to think that was going to change.

  Sam thought about going back to the First Unitarians. But it wasn’t possible.

  When you spend ten years being invisible, when you no longer know where you were born and are not even sure when you were born (it had to have been the summer, because there were memories of an ice-cream cake and running outside through a sprinkler), when your father changed your last name and you can’t remember clearly what your mother even looked like, a room with that many strangers was as terrifying as a bed of sharp knives.

  So was it just a coincidence that he took Riddle and went to Superior Cuts for free haircuts? The sign in the window said they needed volunteers. Had they ever volunteered before for anything? They weren’t supposed to talk to people. Wasn’t that the rule?

  Their father had cut their hair when they were little, whacking it off as if he were cutting cord. For the last few years, they’d been doing it themselves with a pair of scissors Clarence kept in the glove compartment of the truck. Who cared if there was any kind of style to the whole thing?

  Sam didn’t put together his thoughts of the girl singing with his desire to look different. He just saw himself in the reflections of store windows and realised that he and his little brother looked strange. And suddenly that seemed to matter.

  Neither of them had ever been inside a hair salon before, at least not that they could remember. After Sam explained that they wanted to volunteer, the process began with a ‘before’ picture taken with a digital camera.

  Riddle made Crystal, the stylist-in-training, anxious. He didn’t look her in the eye or acknowledge anything that she said. With his stubborn, bone-straight blond hair, he stared at his feet when she took a photo. His attention, as always, was on Sam, who stood, like the parent, only two feet away.

  It wasn’t going to be easy.

  Riddle made it clear, in his own way, that he didn’t want his hair washed. And then when Crystal used her foot to make the salon chair rise, he jumped out. He’d had enough of a problem with the plastic smock that snapped shut in the back, not the front.

  Sam took Riddle to the corner of the salon, where they huddled together in front of the bathroom door. When they returned, Sam looked apologetic and explained that his brother didn’t need any kind of styled cut; he just wanted to have his head shaved.

  Instead of being upset, Crystal was thrilled. She buzzed his hair in what seemed like sixty seconds, and Riddle, now looking unrecognisable, took his Reno phone book and happily went to wait outside with his pen.

  His ‘after’ picture was taken against the exterior of the building. He was squinting up into the lens with a head of yellowish peach fuzz. Riddle spent the next hour drawing an intricate picture of the hydraulic lift at the base of each of the styling chairs.

  Sam was up next.

  With Riddle out of the way, Crystal now took her time. She started by washing his hair, not once, not twice, but three separate times, working her fingers into his scalp as she leaned straight over his body. Her blouse somehow opened up an extra button, and Sam shut his eyes to keep from staring right at her pink push-up bra. Suddenly he felt like Riddle; he just wanted out of this place.

  But Crystal didn’t seem to notice.

  After she’d done what seemed like an eternity of washing, she rubbed special conditioner deep into his scalp. Then with him back in the regular chair, she began to work on his haircut as if her life depended on the outcome. It took a while before Sam realised that the other two stylists in the salon were now watching.

  Sam had a lot of hair. It was thick and dark and wavy. In the past he’d tried to cut it all the same length. Crystal had other ideas.

  She layered the front and part of the back. She thinned and she clipped and she feathered. For forty-seven minutes she worked with total focus and commitment. When she was finished, it would not have been an exaggeration to say that the haircut was her greatest artistic achievement.

  That’s when the salon owner got involved. He covered Sam’s face with wet towels and then warm shaving cream. The owner then pulled out the sharpest blade that Sam had ever seen, and the seventeen-year-old was now certain that he was going to die.

  Feeling powerless to do anything, he closed his eyes, and then the salon owner took the steel straight edge and shaved off the fuzz that grew on Sam’s chin and his cheeks and parts of his neck.

  It struck Sam as interesting that when he thought the man was going to slit his throat, he felt a resigned sense of peace and didn’t fight back.

  The salon owner took the ‘after’ picture himself, insisting that Sam stand by a mirror so that the front and the back of the cut could both be seen. Then the owner made Sam sign some kind of paperwork, which he called a release.

  Sam had no idea what he was talking about, but if signing a release meant he could leave, he had no problem scribbling his name on the form. He was starting to really get anxious. Everyone in the place seemed to now be involved.

  While the owner completed the paperwork, Crystal took a plastic bag and filled it with what she called ‘product.’ She put in more than two dozen small containers of samples – shampoo and conditioners, hair gel, and even some kind of skin lotion. Sam was silent. He sometimes used a bar of soap on his hair. Mostly he just stood under the water and hoped the dirt would wash itself out.

  Crystal pushed her card into Sam’s palm with the bag of hair-care supplies, which now also included a package of disposable razors.

  It wasn’t until they got home that Sam saw that she’d written her cell phone number in purple ink on the back along with the words, Call me. She’d signed her name underneath with a lopsided heart. Sam threw the card in the trash.

  Their father, as could be expected, was not happy when he saw the boys. Riddle’s shaved head didn’t alarm him as much as Sam’s new stylish one. The tall boy looked mainstream now. Better than mainstream, was the truth. And that unnerved a mind already unhinged.

  Sam ignored his father’s ranting and raving as best he could. But when it got to be too much, he grabbed his beat-up guitar and took Riddle and they disappeared into the woods. When they came back, it had been dark for hours and Clarence was gone.

  It wasn’t until the next day when he and Riddle went out in the afternoon looking for lunch that it hit him: maybe their father was right.

  Now they were no longer invisible.

  As soon as the two boys left, the salon owner gave Crystal her own workstation. The girl had talent. No question.

  The owner, Rayford, went to look at the release form. The older kid had signed his name, Sam Smith.

  When Sam Smith had walked out, he looked as if he’d stepped right off the pages of a European fashion magazine. His worn jeans and his faded T-shirt that didn’t quite fit right only made him somehow more appealing. The kid had an incredible look.

  Rayford knew it when he saw it. He’d lived, after all, in Manhattan for three years. And if Sam Smith were in a big city, people would be trying to exploit him. But here, in an out-of-t
he-way college town with its two closed lumber mills and its double-digit unemployment rate, not likely.

  So it was a no-brainer, putting together an ad with a ‘before’ and ‘after’ photo of Sam in the PennySaver flyer that was delivered to the mailboxes of the better houses north of Main Street on Fridays.

  People were so predictable. Rayford would bet his left arm that no one for five hundred miles looked like Sam Smith, but he could guarantee that most of them hoped all that separated them from doing so was a good haircut.

  Hours of being by themselves with a lunatic had made the boys strange. Sam knew that.

  His brother’s obsession with drawing wasn’t something that people easily understood. No one had ever told Riddle that there was a right way or a wrong way to sketch something or that he might consider subjects other than the insides of mechanical objects. And while Sam didn’t have Riddle’s disconnect with the world, he was sure he did things that gave him away.

  That was the problem with never going to school and never seeing how other people lived. You had no way of knowing how off you were in your presentation.

  Maybe that’s why most of the stuff Sam played on his guitar didn’t sound like what he heard on the radio, even though early on he had figured out how to imitate songs once he’d listened to them a few times.

  Sam could read well, and it was surprising how much stuff you could learn from magazines and newspapers. It was also surprising how many people threw interesting things away.

  Every day in the trash cans and dumpsters he found catalogues, letters and manuals. Recycling meant that paper was usually separated, and it was there that he found an even better selection of reading material, which often included actual paperbacks and hardcover volumes of all kinds of things. People tossed textbooks, yearbooks, old almanacs and even scrapbooks.

  No matter what town they were in, he and Riddle went at least twice a week to scavenge city dump sites. What was there wasn’t, to the two of them, garbage. It was just stuff that people didn’t want – and that you wouldn’t get in trouble for taking.