Supergirl Mixtapes

by Meagan Brothers

  St. Mark’s Church was somewhere downtown, I knew that much. I remembered Mom pointing it out when we were walking somewhere, maybe the time we went to the movies. Or maybe it was when we bought all those clothes. I walked and walked, thinking I might recognize where I was. Wishing I hadn’t left behind the Manhattan diary that Nina gave me, the one with all the maps. Finally, I stopped enough people on the street until I found someone who knew where I was going. He pointed me in the right direction, but when I got there, the doors were locked. According to the sign, the all-day reading didn’t start for another two hours.

  I didn’t feel like I could walk another step, but I did. I walked, losing track of the blocks, until I came to another church. A real church. The doors were wide open. I walked in and crossed myself. Sat down in a back pew. I knelt down to pray, but I started crying again instead. The only words I could think of were “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” But I couldn’t remember the rest. I sat back in the pew and fell asleep.

  It seemed like only a few minutes later that someone was shaking me back to consciousness.

  “Wake up, dear.” I bolted upright. There was an elderly priest standing over me. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I only wanted to tell you that we have a shelter, if you’ve nowhere else to go.”

  “No, I’m sorry, I just fell asleep. What time is it?”

  “It’s half past four.”

  “Oh, no.” I grabbed my backpack.

  “Are you sure I can’t help you, miss?”

  “No, Father, but thank you.” I ran out into the street. The streetlamps were on. It was dusk. I’d slept almost the entire day.

  The all-day reading was going on into the night, but my mom wasn’t there. I didn’t have enough for the admission, but the door guy let me in to look for her. I came back outside and found a place against the low stone wall to sit and lean and wait. I found an open side door where I could sneak in and out every once in a while to use the bathroom. It was the only reason to leave my post, besides going to the pay phone to call the apartment every hour. I got Lee’s number from 411 and tried calling there, too. No one picked up but the machines.

  It was almost ten o’clock and it was freezing outside. I ran to the deli down the block for a hot chocolate and tried the apartment again. Still no answer, and I was down to the last of my change. I hugged my jacket around me and shivered. Leaned back against my clothes-stuffed backpack, but it was hard and uncomfortable. Then I remembered—I still had that stupid record in there. The George Harrison one, from Gram.

  I unzipped my backpack and took the record out. I held it flat in my lap. Leaned back against the bag and closed my eyes to rest for a moment. A gust of wind caught the edge of the album cover and flapped it open. I snapped awake. The wind made my eyes tear. But when I went to close the album cover, I saw something I hadn’t noticed before. Faint green letters, tiny, slanting across the inside of the box.

  For Victoria. With all my loving. Al.

  I closed the cover and wiped my eyes. That poor sap. My dad.

  “Hey.”

  I looked up, thinking it was my mom. My eyes blurred again. Another woman stood over me, wearing a black wool cap and jacket. The man beside her wore an old fedora and carried a guitar. They looked like gypsies. Both of them with their hair in their eyes.

  “That’s a great album,” she said.

  “Yeah. I know.”

  She kind of nodded at me and smiled, then reached down and dropped a quarter into my near-empty hot chocolate cup. I fished it out, wiping the chocolate off on the leg of my jeans. I looked down at the album cover, at George alive among those jolly, grinning gnomes. Those fake, frozen gnomes. And George, alive and sad and real. I traced his faded gray hat with my cold fingers.

  “Oh my God!”

  I jumped, looking up. Another woman I’d never seen before bent down, her alarmed face close to mine. “Was that her?”

  “Who?”

  “Was that Patti? Patti Smith? Wasn’t that her, talking to you just now?” The woman looked almost angry. “What did she say to you?”

  “I—uh—”

  “Rachel, hurry up! Get the camera! I think I just saw Patti!” Another girl caught up to the first one, and they ran after the woman in the black cap, toward the church. I looked down at the quarter in my hand. Stood up, my legs stiff and aching. I packed the record back into my bag. I was going to make one last call.

  “Maria!”

  Finally, my mother.

  “You made it!” She threw her arms around me. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I know.” My voice was muffled in her hair. I was so glad to see her. I wanted to keep holding on to her, to keep her close to me. But she pulled away and looked at me, her eyes full of tears.

  “Hey. I knew you’d forgive me,” she whispered.

  I shrugged and tried to smile.

  “I want you to meet some people. You remember Paula, from Travis’s show at CBs. And this is Kelly, Andrea, and Maureen. They’re all friends of mine from the Patti shows. Guys, this is Maria.” They said their hellos. I didn’t say anything. She sent them on ahead to find seats.

  “Is everything—Are you okay?”

  “I’m great! The show was amazing. I was just so unhappy thinking you were mad at me. I’m so glad you’re here now!”

  “I mean—do you … feel okay?”

  “I’m great.” She put her hand on her hip and gave me a knowing look. “Come on, kiddo. You don’t have to worry about me. Just a momentary freak-out. You know how those are.”

  “Yeah.” I bit my lip. “So you haven’t been home yet? Since last night?”

  “No. Honey, what’s wrong? You look like a ghost.”

  Like you’ve seen a ghost, I started to correct her. But then I realized that I probably did.

  “It’s, uh—” Where should I begin? It’s everything. It’s Travis. It’s Nina. It’s me. It’s you.

  But she didn’t know anything. She was still innocent. And all of a sudden, I understood. I understood why my dad didn’t want me coming up here. Why everybody wanted to keep their secrets to themselves. It was nice to be innocent. To not know. It was peaceful. It was good.

  “It’s Travis,” I told her. “He’s fine now, but he’s in the hospital.”

  “Oh my God—what happened?”

  “He OD’d last night.”

  “What?” She clapped her hand over her mouth.

  “They took him to the hospital near us. They said he’s going to be okay. But he’s still there.”

  “Oh my God.” She shook her head and looked up at the sky. “Oh my God,” she repeated.

  “Vic, everything okay?” One of her friends, Maureen, was back at the gate.

  “Everything’s fine.” Mom put on a broad smile.

  “Hurry up, willya? We got great seats, and Patti’s gonna read soon.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Maureen went back inside. Mom was still shaking her head, muttering. “Travis, you idiot.” She bit her fingernail and looked up at me. “He knows better. He was trying to quit. That’s the junkie mistake, you know? You try to quit, and your body forgets what it’s like. Your resistance is gone. Then you try to take the dose you used to take, and … pfft.”

  And pfft?

  “I guess you would know,” I said. She looked at me. I looked back at her. No more joking around.

  “Maria.” She rolled her eyes. “Maria.” She threw up her hands. “Okay. What do you want me to say? Because I don’t even know where to start.”

  “You should probably start with Travis.” I slung my backpack over my shoulder. Mom glanced back toward St. Mark’s, toward the warm orange lights in the doorway. “But you’re actually thinking about staying here with your friends, aren’t you?”

  She kept looking at the church, then back at me.

  “You think Patti Smith gives a shit if you’re there in that audience tonight?” My voice came out sharp.

  “What?”

&n
bsp; “Because Travis needs—” I exhaled. She was blinking back tears. I softened my voice. “Travis needs somebody to take care of him.”

  “I know he does.” She nodded. Her voice was small. “I just don’t know if that person should be me.”

  I took her face in my hands and kissed her on the forehead. Then I hugged her tight. I probably looked like a little kid, but I didn’t care. I pressed my ear to her chest, right below her collarbone. I could hear her heart thudding its rhythm. She seemed fine. She was going to be fine.

  “Hey, kiddo …” My mother patted my head.

  I pulled away from her. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Where are you going?” she called after me.

  “Just going off by myself for a while.”

  I didn’t have to walk very far. I found my phone booth and shut myself inside. Jammed my quarter into the slot and dialed. The voice on the other end of the line asked for more quarters. I consulted the secret pocket in my bag and found enough to oblige. The phone rang. I prayed that I was right. That he’d taken today off to watch football, at least.

  “Hello?”

  “Dad?”

  “Maria?”

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “Well, happy new year, honey. How’s everything up there in the big city?”

  “Oh, it’s uh—” I sniffed. But I was done crying. For now, anyway. “It’s been better.”

  “Sugar pie? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, Dad. I was just wondering if we could talk a little.” There was a lot I wanted to ask him. A lot I wanted to say.

  “Sure, let me just turn this ball game off.”

  “Would you just promise me one thing, though?”

  “Anything you want.”

  “Just … promise me you won’t say ‘I told you so.’”

  And in weird shadows rhyming, plucked like lyres

  The laces of my martyred shoes,

  One foot against my heart.

  —Arthur Rimbaud

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Not to get all country music on you guys, but first things first: I want to thank the fans—yes, that means you. Thanks for reading, thanks for coming to the readings, thanks for the positive Internet messages, and thanks for frequenting your local libraries and bookstores. On that note, I’d like to thank the Ocean Township Library and the Asbury Park Public Library for the free writing space and reading materials, respectively. Thank you to the staff, nurses, doctors, and management, past and present, at New Jersey Urologic Institute (formerly Shore Urology) for being cool about the time off I took to finish this thing. Thank you, Jackie Sheeler, for the trip to Seattle, and thanks to Michele Angelo for appreciating the finer points of both Gram Parsons and Johnny Thunders. Thanks to Tony Sabo for being a cooler drummer than the one in this book. Extra gratitude to Heather, Liz, Hannah, and Flip for nearly twenty years (twenty years!) of being the Support Team. Thank you to Ryan for sharing your love of Bone Thugs and Jim Nabors, and to Mike and Wendy, who are still showing up. Thanks to Dr. Brown’s 100-sentence grammar exam, to Lee Vasbinder for the typing lessons, and to Margaret Sullivan Howie and Jo Woodyard for years of support. Biggest thanks to my family in the Southern states, who put up with a lot of shenanigans but keep inviting me back for the holidays anyway. Extra thanks to my grandmas, my brother Chris, and my mom, who gave me most of her best records and who bought me a copy of Horses when I was sixteen, not to mention Led Zeppelin IV back in junior high. Apologies in advance to Manya for the “salt and pepper.” Thanks to Emily and Kate for hanging in there with me. And most of all, thanks to Jeff for suffering the early drafts, and for bringing it all back home.

  Copyright © 2012 by Meagan Brothers

  All rights reserved.

  Henry Holt and Company, LLC

  Publishers since 1866

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, New York 10010

  macteenbooks.com

  Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

  eISBN 9781466816725

  First eBook Edition : March 2012

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Brothers, Meagan.

  Supergirl mixtapes / Meagan Brothers.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Sixteen-year-old Maria leaves her father and grandmother in Red Hill, South Carolina, to live with her mother, an artist, who lives with her young boyfriend in a tiny apartment in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

  ISBN 978-0-8050-8081-0

  [1. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 2. Family problems—Fiction.

  3. Single-parent families—Fiction. 4. Drug abuse—Fiction.

  5. Artists—Fiction. 6. Lower East Side (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction.]

  I. Title.

  PZ7.B79961Sup 2012 [Fic]—dc23 2011025738

  First Edition—2012 / Designed by April Ward