Meili said “rubber” was a word for eraser. (“Yes, I know it means condom here in the States.”) You rub out your pencil mark with a rubber. So she called the Rubber Room the Erasing Room. It erased us from school, erased our days slowly, grindingly.
“Now we have Manny’s permission,” I said.
We had both confronted Manny to say we wanted to see each other. Wasn’t that a bond, a commitment?
“What a relief.” Bored as hell.
“And, in case you’re wondering, he half kicked my ass.”
“He’s like that.” She looked up, swerved. “Where’s your mother?”
“Right now? She’s at work,” I said.
“Mmm. Bullshit. Where is she?”
“I don’t know. Probably at work. Or shopping.”
“I’ve been ’round your house a dozen times, and I’ve never seen a car in the driveway or anyone inside but you. Where is she?” Meili said.
No one was supposed to know about my mother. My probation required living with her. But more important: A dozen times? That was interesting.
“So you’re a stalker and a finger breaker.”
“I think you live alone.” She paused. I didn’t deny it. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell. And…” she added quietly, “I’m jealous.”
“Don’t be. It’s not great.”
The bell rang for fourth period, and the hallway was instantly clogged.
“If you get tired of reheated macaroni and cheese, you should come by the house for a proper meal. Served by some utterly uptight people.”
Had she seen me eating mac and cheese, or was that a guess?
“You’re serious,” I said.
“Rarely. But yes, you should come by Sunday. I’m sure my aunt and uncle would love to meet a real live firebug. And you’re very cute for blushing. I mean, it would be cute if you were twelve. At your age, it’s a bit sad, isn’t it?”
I didn’t care. We had gone from not speaking to a dinner invitation.
The endless boredom of the Rubber Room, the lunch I’d forgotten to bring, the aide’s loud, wet breathing (did she need medical attention?), none of that could touch me.
Meili had invited me over.
* * *
I waited for her after school. Meili had to stay in the Rubber Room until Laura Fenton was on her bus home. Nobody made the guys who threatened me wait in the school building. I’m just saying.
The kids with trucks and SUVs lingered in the parking lot, cranking their music. Preppies drove off in their Hondas, but rednecks flaunted their rides.
“Look who it is,” Meili said. “Six and a half hours not enough time together?”
“I thought we could go read near each other without talking.”
“Promise you won’t keep staring, though? ’S a bit unnerving after the first four hours.” Joke? Flirtation? I pretty much did look at her every chance I got. “And I’m ’fraid I’m booked today. Little trip with my aunt, who’s right over there.” She pointed at a silver Toyota. “Wave, Firebug. Now you’ve ruined my carefully planned introduction to my custodials. It was going to happen at dinner, remember? Nice, controlled environment, everybody polite and done up.”
Done up. “Yeah, should I bring something or, like, wear something?” That didn’t come out right.
“Definitely wear something. At least a thong and some boots, yeah?” She stepped back and eyed me. “You’d do alright in a thong, wouldn’t you? Make a fortune dancing at a gay club. Is there one in town?” I didn’t mind being checked out by Meili. It was only fair, given how much I stared at her.
“Seriously, should I dress up?”
“Please, Bug, come as you are. You’re not going to fool anyone.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you, Mr. Firemaniac, are a somewhat good-hearted human being. Shockingly and rather tragically for your sake. And people can tell. Now, no mushy goodbyes, ’K? I’d hate for my aunt to see me kiss a felon.”
If Meili wanted to get inside my head, if she wanted me to do nothing but wonder about her, she was succeeding.
* * *
The third time I saw Manny, and the last time I saw him calm, we were in his hoopty old Ford Tempo. Guy knew cars, and he drove a faded family sedan. Go figure. To make it even more pathetic, he had four-point restraints in both front seats, serious racing stuff, like: “Hey, I can’t afford a decent ride, but I have fierce seat belts.” I didn’t put mine on.
He came by my house Friday afternoon, said he needed help. I figured this was progress—there were no blindingly painful holds involved—and, of course, anything related to Meili came first.
He drove us out to the fairgrounds, empty until August when the rides and the show pigs and the demolition derby gave Unionville its two weeks of glory. It started raining as we rolled into the parking lot behind the grandstand, a great place to find drugs or fights on summer weekends, but deserted today. What could Manny need help with back here?
“Buckle up, Jason.”
“What are we doing?”
“Buckle up.”
I reached back and pulled the harness over me. “No offense, man, but the seat belts are a little over the top. Around here, people are gonna laugh if you—”
The car roared to life, and I was pinned against my seat. We rocketed across the parking lot as I strained to fasten my harness. We were heading right toward a row of stables. My first real makeout session, in sixth grade with Allison Robbey, was in those stables. We were about to demolish them.
I braced against the dashboard.
“Manny!”
He popped the emergency brake and cut the wheel hard left. The car spun a precise 180, and we were heading back the other way.
This was a “bootlegger’s turn,” the kind of spin you see in movies. Turns out, it’s a real thing.
“Yeeeeeeeah!” Manny yelled. He had his mature side, but, in a car, dude was a redneck thirteen-year-old.
I caught my breath. Manny floored it again. He looked over at me, which was a terrible idea.
This time he braked hard (brake pedal, not emergency brake) as he turned left, and we started a controlled skid, a rubber-burning donut, three times faster than I’d ever seen a donut done, Manny grinning at me the whole time. I was pinned against the passenger door, the blood in my head rushing to one side.
The car straightened and stopped short. My organs returned to their assigned seats.
“What?! What the hell is this?” I meant that in every sense.
“Not bad, right?” He put the car in neutral, revving it and listening closely.
“I take back what I said about the seat belts. In fact, I want a helmet. And a fire suit.”
Manny laughed. “That’s good. I like your sense of humor.” He turned the car off, got still. He talked to the dashboard now, a little speech he had rehearsed, probably while talking to that same dashboard. “Seriously, I like you, Jason. And I trust you. So does Melissa. But. She is in a difficult situation. If you expose her in any way, if you tell anyone about her, I will burn you.” Weird word choice. “You’re on probation. One phone call to the police—maybe you hit me or stole my money or grabbed Melissa’s knickers—one phone call and you’re back in jail.”
“You’ve done your research.” Knickers. That meant underpants, right? Meili’s underpants. Sexy.
“But it’s not going to come to that. I just need you to understand, if you’re going to be with Melissa, you must be careful.”
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on,” I said, hoping he might enlighten me. He didn’t. “But, yeah, I would never do anything to put her in danger.”
Still facing the steering wheel, he said, “She is already in danger, Jason. We all are. Know that.”
The toughest thing about a bootlegger is going for it. It feels so wrong to turn hard at full speed, my whole body fought against doing it. But once you do it, and pop the hand brake at the right moment, it’s like skid-stopping a BMX bike. You use the car’
s weight to stop and turn at the same time. Manny called his car a sleeper, a boring sedan modded out for high performance, a rocket hiding in plain sight. It had excellent tires (the most important mod, he said) so it was easy to get the right amount of cut to make the 180.
“Alright! That’s it! You feel that?” Manny yelled when I finally nailed it, flooring it out of the spin.
“Yeah, I get where the weight is.”
“Exactly. Feel the weight of the car, and you can make it do anything.”
I stopped by the boarded-up concession stands. The adrenaline, the speed, the screw-it-go-faster, it all made me blurt out a question. The question.
“What is this all about?”
“What is what all about?” He leaned out the passenger window, checking a tire.
“Melissa, the danger, all that.”
He came back in, faced his friend the dashboard again. “I can’t tell you. Obviously. It puts Melissa and me at risk, but even more, it puts you at risk. I don’t want you to know anything valuable enough that someone might”—he paused, and my mind inserted a variety of horrifying verbs—“come after you, so to speak.”
So to speak? That was a creepy phrase to put there.
Manny was a sleeper. A quiet mechanic who was really what? A bodyguard? A spy trained in evasive driving and hand-to-hand combat?
“People are after her,” I said. A statement, but actually a question. Something I’d picked up from Meili.
Manny spoke carefully. “People have threatened Melissa’s family. More than threatened. So we had to disappear. And to disappear, you have to be careful.”
“And Melissa isn’t careful,” I said.
“Not always.”
“She broke that girl’s finger.”
He shook his head, closed his eyes like the memory was physically painful. “And this isn’t the first school where we’ve had an incident.”
“She’s tough,” I said, meaning both senses of the word. Let him choose.
“She is. Very strong. I wish she’d save it for the real fight.”
Good phrase. Save it for the real fight. I’d wear that shirt.
“Hopefully, it all gets … resolved, and we can start over.” He stared out the window. “We don’t want to live like this forever.”
Like this. In Unionville, pulling donuts in the drizzle behind the gray metal grandstand.
Really, he meant: “We don’t want to live like you forever.”
I felt the same way.
FIVE
I parked my motorcycle down the street. I know, I know, come as you are. But I remembered dropping Meili off several blocks away so her aunt wouldn’t see my bike.
They lived in a ranch house with a well-mowed lawn. Extremely well-mowed. The lawn mower made perfect lines parallel to the street, with no stray tire tracks. Did they pick the mower up and carry it back when they finished?
I rang the bell, stood up straight in my light-blue UHS sweatshirt and my cleanest black jeans (which had little holes in the back, hopefully covered by the sweatshirt). I had showered, shaved, and, weirdly, flossed. Combination of sprucing up for the aunt and uncle and dreaming of making out with Meili. I even cleaned my house on the astonishingly optimistic hope that Meili and I might end up back there. Meili got me to do what parental lectures and Life Skills classes never did: I was taking care of myself.
“You must be Jason,” Meili’s aunt said, opening the door, more accusation than greeting. Like: you must be kidding. Like: you’re that Jason.
“Hello,” I said, forcing a smile.
“You’re early,” she said.
I was. It was Sunday, and I couldn’t sit home for another minute anticipating this dinner. I had to jump in.
Mrs. Jenkins, like her husband, looked white and sounded American. That intrigued me but didn’t shock me. In my world, “aunt” and “uncle” can mean people you’re related to or people you’re staying with.
Meili appeared behind her and crossed her eyes. My smile became genuine. The aunt saw this and, annoyed, turned around to Meili, “He’s here.” Oh, really? “I suppose you can sit in the living room till dinner.”
“And you are?” I asked.
Caught in her own rudeness, she tilted her head at me. “I am Melissa’s aunt Sophie. But you may call me Mrs. Jenkins.”
Wow. This was gonna be painful.
“Thanks, Auntie. I think we’ll sit out back since it’s such a lovely evening.” Meili took me by the arm—she touched me—and escorted me out to a picnic table.
The grass under the table was, yes, mowed in perfectly straight lines.
“Isn’t she mahvelous?” Meili whispered.
“The bear hug was nice, but those kisses were a bit much,” I said.
Meili laughed. It wasn’t easy to make her laugh. She had a high standard for cleverness and cynicism. But when she did find something funny, she laughed her ass off. So gratifying.
“You can see,” she said, “how the Erasing Room is no big adjustment for me. I’m well used to living in the glare of the prison guard. Feels natural.”
“How long has it been?” I asked, leaving the question open.
“How long has what been?” she asked.
“Living with the prison guards.”
She didn’t love this question, so she changed it. “Been living here since January. And loving every second.”
I remembered seeing the new girl from overseas a few times before I was banished to the Rubber Room. But I had been preoccupied in January, scanning the halls for Ronny and his crew.
“How long will you be here?”
“Who knows? Somewhere between forever and a few more days. Especially if I keep annoying them by bringing rednecks around.”
The neighbors’ back door opened, and a tiny dog ran out, yapping through the chain-link fence.
“God, I still can’t believe how much space there is here,” she said. “In Hong Kong, this would be a fucking park, seriously, a nature preserve.”
“You’re from Hong Kong,” I said.
She smiled, nodded, a little tense. “Mostly.” Was she not supposed to say that?
“And I’m here to annoy your aunt and uncle,” I said.
She grimaced and raised her shoulders to her ears. “Can I say: definitely yes, but also no. You are here to annoy them, obviously, and you’re doing a great job. Please continue. But that’s not the only reason.”
“What’s the other reason?”
“Because you are not a stupid, pathetic redneck like every other boy in this town.” I smiled, a little too early. “You are a smart, pathetic redneck. You can annoy my custodials and keep me entertained. Rare combination, that.”
So tricky, her cruelty. It drew me to her, and that made it hurt more.
Dinner was delicious and agonizing. Noodles, sorry, pasta with tomato sauce that was homemade and spicy. Garlic bread and salad. Did people eat this way every night?
Mrs. Jenkins said grace so fast I only caught “blessing” and “we humbly.”
Mr. Jenkins—thinning red hair, digital watch, and a huge appetite—made an effort. “So, Jason, what are you into? Sports?” he asked.
“Uh.” I stalled. What was I into? “Motorcycles, mostly.” That was a stretch. I mean, I rode a motorcycle, but was I into them?
“I trust Melissa isn’t riding on any motorcycles,” Mrs. Jenkins said, looking squarely at Meili.
“Certainly not,” Meili said, shaking her head gravely.
“Melissa did say she used to ride a lot,” I said. “Back in … where was that?”
Meili smiled a big “fuck you” at me and said, “You must be thinking of another girl.”
“Right, the other girl with the British accent.”
“The little one who died in that tragic fire?”
“After her grandmother got run over by a taxi.” I turned to Mrs. Jenkins and quoted Meili: “She went to hospital, she came back out, it wasn’t so bad.”
Meili’s eyes burn
ed from across the table.
I loved quoting Meili. I loved how my language got tangled up with hers. Even now, a sentence comes to me, and I think: Did Meili say that? Did I steal it from her? Did we both say it? Or did I make it up? Language was one way Meili captured my mind.
Mr. Jenkins sopped up sauce with his garlic bread. “Whareyoudarrsmember?” he asked with his mouth full. I liked that.
“Sorry?” I said.
“He said: ‘What are you doing in September?’” Mrs. Jenkins did full-mouth translation.
September. What happened in September? There was the Labor Day cookout I never went to, and “Hogs for the Cause,” a bike rally that benefited some kids’ disease.
Oh, college. Of course.
“That’s a good question,” I said. “Still working that out. Been talking to my guidance counselor a lot about … what’s next.” Factually accurate, totally a lie. “And what about Melissa? Is she heading off to college?”
Fun to talk about her in the third person. If nothing else, I could use this excruciating dinner to get more information.
“Melissa’s plans are also in flux. We aren’t sure what’s next for her,” Mrs. Jenkins said. She strained a smile, passed the salad.
“It must be hard, being a senior in a brand-new place,” I said.
“It’s an adjustment,” Mrs. Jenkins said.
“And it’s not the most welcoming school.” I was enjoying this.
Mrs. Jenkins sniffed. “Say what you will about the high school, they were very accommodating when Melissa arrived midyear.”
“Not everyone was,” Mr. Jenkins said, shaking the blue cheese dressing.
“Well, violence is hardly the way to make new friends,” Mrs. Jenkins said.
Oh, that. This was an opening for me. I spoke right to Mr. Jenkins now. He was the one to convince. “Look, I don’t know what Melissa told you, but I promise you that incident was a hundred percent the other kid’s fault. Melissa defended herself. And to be honest, at our school, if she didn’t stand up for herself, they’d keep coming after her. That’s the way these kids work, especially with someone new. They push and push until you fight back.”
Mr. Jenkins chewed and nodded. “I certainly remember that growing up. We used to throw hands sometimes.” Wow. Great term for fighting. Stealing it. “That was guys, though. Guess I’m naïve. I’m surprised to hear girls are fighting.”
Wilder Page 4
