Rogue

by Lyn Miller-Lachmann

  When it rains hard for a long time, that usually means a warm front is passing through—at least that’s what Mr. Internet says. When the rain stops, the weather turns hot, record-setting hot for mid-April. I raise the blinds and open my window.

  Music outside my window wakes me up early on Sunday morning. Not only Dad’s guitar but new notes too. A banjo. The guitar and banjo carry on a conversation. Normally, I’d go back to sleep at eight thirty on a Sunday morning, but it’s been a long time since I’ve heard music in the park.

  I quickly get dressed, dash across my backyard, and slip through the fence. I recognize the skinny man playing banjo as Chad’s father. The man who said they had no time for chitchat when they moved in last week. He and Dad are playing the song from the old movie Deliverance, the one where the guy with the guitar plays the riffs and the kid on the banjo repeats them. Dad nods in time to the rhythm and smiles while picking the notes of his turn. I smile too, listening to the lively tune so different from the sad melodies Dad plays in his pantry.

  When the song ends, Dad looks up at me and over to the banjo man. “Chad, this is my daughter, Kiara. Kiara, meet Mr. Elliott.”

  Mr. Elliott holds out a weathered hand with brown-stained fingers. “Chad and Brandon’s dad, right?” I say, hands frozen at my sides. Something about his fingers makes me not want to touch them. The stench of concentrated onions from black plastic garbage bags comes back to me.

  Mr. Elliott gives me an open-mouthed grin. He’s missing some teeth. Gray strands run through his ponytail like silken threads. There’s stubble on his hollow cheeks and pointy chin. “Guilty,” he answers.

  I don’t know what to say next. This is the guy whose signature I forged for my latest ex-friend. I sit on the concrete platform next to my father and wait for Dad to whisper to me not to be rude. I think of how Mami always warned me in Spanish, so most people wouldn’t understand that she was letting me know I messed up. But Dad doesn’t say anything. Instead, he hands his guitar to Mr. Elliott and takes the banjo from him.

  At first, Dad’s fingers are less confident on Mr. Elliott’s banjo, but he seems to settle into playing an instrument with five rather than six strings. Mr. Elliott appears equally lost on Dad’s guitar, which surprises me because Dad once told me the banjo is a harder instrument to play than the guitar. They play “John Henry,” both of them singing along, neither winning any awards for vocals. Mr. Elliott’s voice is gravelly and slightly off-key, Dad’s thin and reedy, the result of the chemo they gave him for his cancer, which damaged his vocal cords. That’s why Mami did all the singing.

  After four more songs, they switch instruments again. Mr. Elliott lights a cigarette and leaves it between his lips, picking and smoking at the same time. “You play Béla Fleck?” he asks, the first thing they’ve said to each other since Dad introduced me. Dad nods and segues into the rhythm line of “Big Country.” The sound of Mr. Elliott’s three-fingered plucking sails over Dad’s guitar chords. Several of his fingernails are missing, and I wonder how he can pluck the strings so fast with those damaged fingers.

  I listen. The music makes me think of spring, buds bursting, leaves and flowers popping out in brilliant colors. I stand behind Dad and Mr. Elliott on the concrete stage, shuffle my feet, shake my hips, and finally spin in circles like Chad, my arms outstretched, letting the music vibrate throughout my body and the wind cool my face. I’ve left behind the confusing world of words.

  After two more Béla Fleck songs, I sit, breathless from dancing. Dad checks his watch. “Time for breakfast.” He taps my shoulder.

  Even though I hate for the music to end and my real life to return, my mouth waters. Sunday morning before Dad goes to work is our special time. It was our special time even before Eli and Max went to college and Mami simply went. Dad would make pancakes from scratch with chocolate chips in the batter, more chips between each stacked pancake, and vanilla ice cream on top. He said it was our reward for all the traveling a family of musicians had to do.

  Mr. Elliott sets his banjo on the platform and lights another cigarette. “Listen, I gotta ask a favor,” he says, then adds, “Do you have any Sudafed? We ran out, and my little boy caught a cold.”

  Duh. He was standing in the rain for hours on Thursday.

  “Sure.” Dad glances at me. “Kiara, you know where the cold medicine is.”

  I bring back what’s left in our box of cold medicine and hand it to Mr. Elliott. “I hope Brandon feels better soon,” I say.

  Mr. Elliott flips the blister pack up and down. “That all you have?”

  “Sorry,” I mumble, my eyes fixed on his fingers. The onion smell returns.

  Mr. Elliott shoves the medicine into the back pocket of his stained and baggy jeans. “You were playing with Brandon last week, right?”

  “Yes, sir.” I stare at my own hands, smooth and perfect except for the bitten-down fingernails.

  “He said he had fun. That you built a wrestling ring in the dirt.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s over there. By the fence.” I point to the mound of dirt in the corner next to the fence and the sidewalk. The two-day rainstorm filled in the holes and hollowed out my tidy walls.

  “My other boy said he saw you too.”

  I nod, eyes again downcast, wondering how much Mr. Elliott knows about everything that happened last week.

  “I’m going to send Little Chad over this afternoon. He got a new bike when we moved, and maybe you two can take a ride. Show him the town.” He pauses. “You ride bikes, don’t you?”

  “I don’t have one,” I mumble, seeing my second chance with Chad slip away. Dad gave me a choice for my birthday. A bike or my own computer. No way we could afford both—even with his employee discount at Tech Town.

  “Take Max’s old bike,” Dad calls out from the concrete platform.

  I snap back, “It’s rusted ’cause it got left out in the rain. It goes, like, two miles an hour if you pedal hard.” And I know Chad isn’t going to slow down for me. Not after he said he didn’t want to be my friend.

  “It didn’t look rusted to me,” Dad says.

  “Did you ride it? No.” After answering my own question, I say, “So don’t tell me how Max’s bike works if you don’t know.”

  Dad turns away, as if I’d slapped him. And for a moment I wish I could have. I hate it when people tell me stuff that’s not true, just to shut me up.

  “If your mother were here …” Dad’s voice trails off.

  Heat rushes to my face. Eli and Max were right. If she were here, Mami would have talked to me—in Spanish so no one else could know that I ruined something. That I misbehaved in front of someone who Dad wanted as a friend, someone whose banjo chatted with his guitar in their special language that said, We understand each other, in a way that doesn’t need words.

  “No problem, J.T. We have an extra bike,” Mr. Elliott says.

  Dad returns his guitar to his case. I know he won’t yell at me for whining and acting like a brat, but when we eat our pancakes in silence, it’s going to be even worse.

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAD KNOCKS ON MY FRONT DOOR THAT AFTERNOON. “WANNA ride bikes?” he says without enthusiasm. He points at the two red mountain bikes leaning against the tree in our yard.

  I take a step backward. “I don’t know. You were mean to me.”

  “My dad says you gotta show me around. ’Cause I’m new here and don’t know where things are.” His words don’t match his tone of voice, and it makes me think he’s not going to act nice if I do ride with him.

  Still, I want another chance to be his friend—and to behave well for his father, since he’s Dad’s new friend. I messed up, complaining about Max’s hand-me-down bike in front of Mr. Elliott, which made us look poor and Dad look like he didn’t raise me right. After breakfast Dad apologized for not being able to buy me things other people have. He said that when Mami gets home with the money from her singing job, they’ll buy me a new bike.

  “Okay.” I lock the front doo
r and put the key on its University of Vermont lanyard, around my neck. The lanyard was a birthday present from Max. I won’t wear the BC lanyard Eli gave me.

  The bikes gleam in the sunlight, inviting me for a ride. I run my hand along the shiny top bar of the smaller one. “These are, like, new.”

  “Yeah, we got them last week.” He pats the seat of the one I touched. “This is mine. The other one is my mom’s.” I glance down and notice his mom’s bike has the slanted bar, rather than the one straight across.

  I ask him, “What makes you think I want to ride a girl’s bike?”

  “Because you’re a girl.”

  “That’s sexist.”

  “That’s sexist,” Chad repeats in a high-pitched voice. Mocking me already. He lifts his leg over the top bar of his bike. “Let’s go.”

  I stand stiffly. “Not if you’re going to make fun of me.”

  “Sor-ry.” Chad bounces on his seat. “Coming or aren’t you?”

  Telling myself he sort of apologized, I push the girl’s bike onto the sidewalk and slide on. Both bikes have a plastic shelf behind the seat and a pair of black saddlebags attached to the shelf. Some of our neighbors don’t believe in cars, and this is how they go shopping. They tease Dad because he drives a crew cab pickup truck that uses a lot of gas. It would hurt my feelings, especially because I like his truck, but he just laughs and says, When the band gets back together, I’ll be ready.

  Signs reading NED LAMONT, U.S. SENATE have sprouted up amid the weeds and unraked, decomposing leaves in our old-hippie neighborhood. My yard’s had one for two weeks, and when Chad and I turn onto busy Washington Avenue, I see one in front of his house. I figure Mrs. Mac put it there, but I ask Chad, “Your parents for Lamont?”

  Chad doesn’t answer, so I repeat the question.

  He grunts. Maybe his parents don’t vote. I tell him Mami isn’t a U.S. citizen, so she can’t vote, but Dad always took me with him to the polling place and let me pull the lever. “Straight Democratic ticket,” I add.

  “Where’s the drugstore?” he asks, glancing back at me.

  “What’s that got to do with voting?”

  “Nothing. I wasn’t listening because you’re boring.” He slows down to let me catch up to him. “I need to buy cold medicine.”

  My lower lip trembles, and I quickly ask, “For Brandon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, follow me.” I lead Chad through the four-block downtown, past boarded-up shops and a new restaurant that was once a post office. On the block after the restaurant is a shabby drugstore with streaked windows and garbage on the sidewalk. We lock the bikes to a parking meter, sharing one meter and one lock. Chad takes a wad of bills from the side pocket of his cargo shorts and slaps a twenty and a five into my hand. For a moment, I stare at the bills. I don’t get to hold much money these days, with the band broken up and the record store gone. I don’t get to sell CDs after the concerts or stacks of old 33s and 45s in the store and impress the customers with my ability to calculate amounts in my head.

  “You want me to buy it?” I ask, confused.

  He nods. “They sometimes keep it behind the pharmacy counter. Buy as much as you can. And bring back the change.”

  “What about you?”

  “I wait here. With the bikes.”

  But he already locked the bikes. He doesn’t need to watch them. Still, I go into the drugstore alone. If I do a good job, Chad will be nicer to me. He will want to be my friend.

  A musty odor greets me as soon as I pass through the door. The fluorescent lighting makes my eyes throb, and I hear buzzing overhead. I read the signs for the aisles. First Aid. Hair Care. Cold and Flu.

  The shelves in the middle of the Cold and Flu aisle are bare except for a little handwritten sign. For Sudafed, Contac, and generic pseudoephedrine, please see pharmacist.

  Just like Chad said.

  On the back wall is the sign for the pharmacy, and I don’t know why they would keep cold medicine behind the counter. All I know is that I’ll have to look some grown-up in the eye and ask for it.

  I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans and force my shaky legs to take one step after another. Past the cough syrup and throat drops. Past the cookies, crackers, and potato chips in the next aisle.

  A notice taped to the countertop says they only sell two boxes per person, and I have to sign a logbook. I ding the bell on the counter. The pharmacist is bald, with a mustache and square, rimless glasses. I glance into his eyes and say quickly before looking down, “Two boxes of Sudafed, please.”

  He hands me a clipboard and asks me for an ID.

  “ID?” I had one for school, but now that I’m not in school, I don’t carry it anymore. “I … I left it at home. Didn’t know …”

  “New law. Went into effect a while ago.” He points to a blank line. “Sign it and remember next time.”

  I sign my name, pay for the medicine, and take the boxes out to Chad.

  “Why didn’t you tell me I needed an ID?” I ask him.

  Chad shrugs and pushes open the glass door, leaving me waiting on the sidewalk. Wondering what this new law is and why it was passed. He returns with two more boxes, quickly unlocks the bikes, and wraps the chain around his seat. “Hurry up,” he says. “We have to find another place.”

  “Another drugstore?” I ask as I lead Chad toward the river.

  “Duh.”

  “But we have four boxes. Isn’t that enough for Brandon?”

  Chad seems to hesitate for a moment. “We’re all going to catch it, you know.”

  The town park along the river has a paved bike path, and we ride next to the water, bits of sunlight flashing from the rippled water, wind blowing our hair in all directions. Chad and I turn right to get onto the bridge. I point out the four identical bronze statues of mermaids atop rocks, two at each end.

  “The mermaid is the symbol of Willingham,” I explain to Chad when we stop at a traffic light on the other side. “They say the early settlers drank too much ale when they went fishing, and they thought they saw mermaids swimming in the river.”

  Chad pushes his blond hair out of his eyes and stares at the river, as if mesmerized by its sparkling surface.

  I add, “Some of the fishermen drowned when they dived in to catch a mermaid.”

  The light changes, and Chad says, “Skip the tour. Where’s the drugstore?”

  “That’s the only one in Willingham. We have to go to College Park.”

  He groans. “How far?”

  For once, I’m glad I’ve had to ride Max’s beater bike around town because it’s kept me in shape. “Couple of miles,” I answer.

  We cross the river and follow the state highway to College Park, the town next to Willingham, where the state university is. Cars whiz past, but the shoulder is wide, making it safe for us to ride one in front of the other. We pass a gas station, a Dunkin’ Donuts, a highway overpass, and the large blue WELCOME TO COLLEGE PARK sign. A half mile later I point out the sledding hill and behind it the mountain bike trail where my brother Max used to ride with some of the College Park kids. At the sledding hill the College Park kids wore expensive name-brand ski jackets with lift tags and acted like the place was only for them and not for us, but they always seemed to make an exception for Max.

  “A good bike trail?” Chad asks.

  “Yeah.” I smile at Chad’s first show of interest in any place I’ve mentioned to him, even though I’ve never been on the trail and wouldn’t know a good trail from a bad one. “My brother says there’s also a BMX track where kids do stunts.”

  “If we do this again …” Chad pants, his bike zigzagging on the uphill road that parallels the trail. I have to slow down not to leave him behind. “You gotta … take me … there.”

  I wish he said when instead of if. But at least he gives me a chance.

  • • •

  The shopping area of College Park has three drugstores, and only one of them keeps the Sudafed behind the counter. Chad and I
split the stock on the shelves at the other two. I buy first, and he follows. Outside the last drugstore, we count our change and divide up six dollars and seventy cents, leaving three dollars and thirty-five cents apiece. We pack our boxes in the saddlebags—a total of twenty-four—and return to the store.

  Chad runs to the magazine rack and lifts a copy of Ride BMX from the bottom shelf. On the cover is a picture of a boy with one of those helmets that covers the back of his head. He hangs in the air, legs outstretched, holding the handlebars of a bike that dangles beneath his body. Chad leafs through the pages, stopping to read from time to time, his lips moving slightly. I’m surprised to see him read, especially since I couldn’t get him to look at his science textbook for more than fifteen seconds.

  Farther down the aisle are the comic books. I leave Chad to his BMX riders and search the rows of Iron Man, SpiderMan, and—my heartbeat picks up as I draw closer to it—X-Men. I skim the one with Wolverine on the cover, looking for Rogue, but this time for Gambit too. My Gambit has returned, I tell myself. Maybe he’ll be my friend since I helped him, just like I helped him when he needed his father’s signature on that note from school.

  Maybe I won’t say something stupid to lose him this time.

  Gambit appears in battle fighting alongside Rogue on one two-page spread, but most of the story is about Wolverine. That’s okay with me. I like Wolverine too. He’s strong and smart and knows his way. He was one of the first X-Men. He helped Rogue when she deserted Mystique’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, haunted by the people whose minds she stole and who she left in a coma.

  None of the other X-Men comics contains either Rogue or Gambit, so I take the issue with Wolverine to the register. Chad no longer stands next to the magazines, and I find him outside the door, tapping his foot on the sidewalk.

  “About time,” he says when I join him.

  “Look what I got.” I flip to the spread with Rogue and Gambit.

  “Comics are dorky,” he says.