Breakfast with Neruda

by Laura Moe

  Rumi

  Earl and Dot are officially Annie’s foster parents, and they have not tossed me out yet. My mother didn’t even try to fight giving them custody of my sister, but she went ballistic when Social Services showed up at her house to talk her into cleaning it up. She called me and screamed expletives I didn’t even know she knew. And now she’s not speaking to me.

  I go over every few days to talk to her, but she won’t answer her door. Last time Jeff came with me, and I thought she’d come outside since she’s not mad at him, but she shouted from her bedroom window, “You people are trespassing. You go away or I’m calling the sheriff.”

  “I’m not giving up, Mom,” I yelled from the lawn. “One of these days you’ll come down and talk to me.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” she screeched.

  Later, Jeff and I talked to Paul about it. “She may end up losing everything,” he said. “She doesn’t own the property, so if she doesn’t clean it up, the landlord can throw her out. She could end up homeless.”

  Earl went with me once and offered to help her, but she threatened to call the cops on him too. He threw his hands up in the air and said, “Sorry, kid. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.”

  One thing I know for certain is I can ever tell my mother I found out the truth about her and my father.

  At school Earl still treats me like a stray dog, but he only has Shelly and me another week, so he and Hess are getting as much bang for their buck as they can. This week we are painting the hallways. School starts in two weeks.

  Rick and I don’t hang together like we used to, but we’re friends again. The four of us went out for pizza together last weekend. Ashley and Shelly get along surprisingly well.

  “You do realize both of us have dated you,” Shelly said to me.

  Rick laughed. “So both of you have had major lapses in sanity.”

  I puffed out my chest. “No, it means the women at this table have amazingly good taste in men.” Ashley and Shelly both rolled their eyes, and Shelly made a gagging noise.

  Maybe someday Rick and I will be tight again, but right now things are still stiff between us. He and Ashley are both headed to college in a few weeks. He’s majoring in theater and music at University of Chicago and she’s going to Wright State to major in art. Maybe distance and time will heal all of us. Odd to think I’m still technically in high school for another year.

  And I’m looking forward to school this year. I could have taken the GED and been done with high school, but I like the idea of spending senior year with Shelly. We won’t even be on the high school campus. The principal and guidance counselor suggested the best option for us odd ducks is to do postsecondary options where we take classes at the local branch of Ohio University. We will avoid the awkward high school drama, get our high school diplomas, and also receive college credit. So in a way, I’m headed to college too.

  Since I’m eating real food every day I can lay off the donuts and junk food, and now I easily run five miles without feeling like I need oxygen. I’m not training for anything. Running just keeps the craziness of my life from detonating inside my head. Besides, I need to work off all the food Dot force-feeds me. Best of all, Shelly says I have a rocking body now. “Your abs look like you’re made of Legos.”

  Shelly, Shelly, Shelly. I’ve never known anyone like her. She is light and wind and thunder and ocean, and I can’t imagine I would have survived this summer without her.

  Shelly and I are sitting here at Starbucks, drinking lattes, using her laptop to find information on colleges and majors, even though I clearly told her I am not going to college after this year.

  “You’re going away to college, Neruda,” Shelly says. “I’m not going to be associated with an ignoramus.”

  “But I come from nothing.”

  “So did Lincoln, and he ended up becoming president.”

  “Maybe I like being nothing,” I say. “Maybe my biggest ambition is to manage the theater at the mall.”

  She sneers at me. “You’re going to college.”

  “Okay, I’ll stay here and take classes locally.”

  “You’re getting out of this town. Far away from here, Neruda,” she says. “Far, far away.”

  “But what about us?” Shelly is a big part of my life now, and it makes me sad to imagine not seeing her every day. There are infinite reasons to stay, and only one selfish reason to leave.

  She sighs. “If we are meant to remain us, we’ll find a way to make it work.”

  “I can’t leave now,” I say.

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve never even been to another state.”

  She rolls her eyes at me.

  “And then there’s my job. It doesn’t pay much, but I’m not totally dependent on Earl and Dot. I can pay my own way.” I fidget with the stir stick. “Most of all, I’d be leaving behind the people I love. The idea of not being able to see my brother and sister anytime I want punches me in the gut. My family needs me.”

  She narrows her eyes at me. “Neruda, you can’t forfeit your life in order to solve your family’s problems.”

  “But I’m afraid my mom will go off the deep end if I leave.”

  “She still has Jeff and Annie,” Shelly says. “And your sticking around here won’t make your mother less screwed up,” she says. “You have to let yourself be the kid, not the parent.” She pauses and looks at me. She reaches across the table and takes my hand. “You have to go find what you’ve been looking for all these years.”

  “What if I show up in Seattle, and my father turns out to be the biggest asshole in the world?”

  “That’s not possible,” she says. “You're already the biggest asshole.”

  I raise my middle finger at her. She blows me a kiss.

  “Isn’t it enough just to know he’s out there?” I say. “The option for me to go out there someday exists, but I’ve earned the right to settle down and be average. Until a few weeks ago my life was a mess, but it’s pretty boring now, and I’m kind of okay with that.”

  She leans back and studies me. “What are you really afraid of, Neruda?”

  “You’re a pain in the ass,” I say. I look away and take a deep breath. Haven’t I spent my life looking for him? Yet now that I have a chance to meet my father, I’m paralyzed, like those prisoners trapped in Plato’s cave who, after learning they can leave, must be thrust into the light and possibilities outside the cave. I look back at Shelly and say, “I’m afraid he won’t want to know me.”

  “That’s the chance you have to take.”

  I sigh. “Yeah. Uncertainty sucks.”

  She looks at something on her screen. “You’ll miss me when you head west, but deep down in that weird-ass soul you won’t be happy unless you take the risk. Besides, I’m not even going to be here in Rooster. I could end up in college in Seattle or wherever myself.”

  Shelly is applying to colleges and universities all over. On the Common App she applied to thirty different places. The closest one to here is the University of Chicago. “You need to go to college and it needs to be in the state of Washington.”

  “But what would I major in?” I say. “I have no skills.”

  “You have plenty of skills.”

  “None of them useful.”

  “You write,” she says.

  “Grocery stores and coffee shops are full of English majors. Like Theo. Isn’t he working in a coffee shop?”

  “He chooses to do menial labor as part of his research.”

  “I already work a crappy job,” I say. “Why torture myself with even more school just to keep working crappy jobs?”

  “You could teach classes in survival,” Shelly says.

  “Is that a major?”

  “Maybe.” She types on the keyboard and slides her laptop across the table toward me. “Outdoor studies.”

  I laugh.

  She takes her computer back and starts tapping on the keyboard again. “You know, you have a uni
que advantage,” she says. “We both do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Our stories make us freaks,” Shelly says. “It’s almost unfair the advantage you and I have on the ‘Describe the Challenges You Have Faced’ question.”

  I nod. “But do you really think any sane university would take a chance on either of us?” I ask. “I mean, you’re a car thief and big flight risk, and I might clutter up the dorm.”

  She crosses her eyes at me and sips her vanilla latte. “Colleges will be recruiting us for our fascinating diversity,” she says. “Both of us could end up at freaking Harvard or Yale.”

  “And how would I pay for it?”

  “I already told you,” she says. “Colleges will be throwing money at you. You’re from Appalachia, your mother is nuts, and you have a book-worthy life story.”

  So I am sitting in Starbucks, drinking a mocha latte, looking at a legal pad containing a list of five colleges where I plan to apply. All of them are in or near Seattle.

  Acknowledgments

  Many people have helped bring this book to fruition.

  Thanks to David Greenberg, who showed me I had started my draft in the wrong place. Thank you Amy Gibson, Cynthia Rucker, Debbie Hardin Day, Cindy Sterling, Logan Paskell, and Brandi Young, for reading and commenting on early drafts. I’d like to thank Mark Malatesta, Elaine Miller, Les Edgerton, and Krista van Dolzer for their writing tips and encouragement, and Leslie Skoda for giving me Pelee Peugeot. Thank you Deb Stetson and Jackie Mitchard for your editorial insight and encouragement, and Meredith O’Hayre for your eagle-eyed copyediting, Chris Duffy for answering my endless questions, and Peggy Gough at University of Texas Press for help with the permissions process.

  Much appreciation goes to Giacomo’s Bread & More and Starbucks in Zanesville, Ohio, for supplying me with coffee and sustenance as I sat, tethered to a corner table wearing my headphones, writing and revising this novel. I’d also like to give a shout-out to the Aloha Cafe in Lynnwood, Washington, for feeding me as I worked on my final edits.

  I owe a special thank you to Elizabeth Juden Christy, who loves my characters as much as I do and doggedly corrected my numerous typos and inconsistencies.

  And, of course, this novel would not have been possible without Pablo Neruda.