“Girls, hey,” he says. “Wait a minute.”
Please, man, I think. Please don’t do something gross and ruin this.
He fishes into his jeans pocket and hands us each a rumpled twenty-dollar bill. I feel a lot of things: mad at myself for assuming the worst, happy that my assumptions were wrong, depressed because I know I wasn’t crazy to make those assumptions, guilty about taking his money. Grateful that he offered it, because we need it. We each stuff our bill into our coat pockets.
“Good luck to you, girls.”
I squeeze his hand, which feels as huge and dry and calloused as a wolf’s paw.
“Ready?” I say, turning to Vera.
“Ready.”
We swing open the passenger side door and step out into the icy morning, the sound of honking traffic all around us like the landing of a thousand geese.
52
THE EARLY STRAGGLERS to the Hennepin County Library are people like us, people who look cold and lost and in need of the balming effects of central heating and good Wi-Fi. We shed our layers of winter gear and pull two chairs together in front of an open computer.
“You do it,” Vera says, pointing at the keyboard.
“Fine.” I wiggle the mouse and the screen comes to life. I click over to Gmail and await her instructions.
“Um,” she says.
“What?”
“I can’t remember my password.”
“That’s fine, they can send you a new one. What’s your email address?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Seriously?”
“Shut up! It’s been forever. Try Facebook. Do people still use Facebook?”
“I mean, most people still at least have it, I think.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Well, I do.”
I log in to my account. After eight weeks away I am inundated with a stream of notifications. Birthdays of people who I don’t care about, invitations to events that have long since passed and that I probably never would have attended anyway. Over one hundred of them, and yet, when I do a quick scroll through, I feel that I’ve missed out on exactly nothing.
Despite having been her roommate for a whole year, Vera doesn’t know Jenya’s last name. I’m about to make fun of her for this until I realize that in a place as small and insulated as Red Oak, last names are superfluous, and I couldn’t for the life of me tell you Madison’s last name, or Trinity’s, or anybody else’s besides Vera. It’s okay, though, because even though there are several more Jenyas in the Twin Cities metro area than you’d think, there’s only one with a profile pic of a Barbie doll with a shaved head.
“That’s her,” Vera says. “Has to be.”
I message her.
Hi Jenya,
My name is Mia Dempsey and I am currently sitting in the Hennepin County Library with your old roommate, Vera. Yesterday the two of us ran away from Red Oak Academy, and we just got in this morning. We’re writing because Vera says you once told her that if she ever found herself in Minneapolis, she should look you up. Well, here we are now—looking you up. If you could let us crash with you for a few days, just until we figure out our next move, we would be forever grateful. We’re just gonna hang out here at the library, maybe go take a nap on the lovely green papasan chairs in the teen reading section, and wait for your reply.
Your friends (we hope),
Mia and Vera
“Now what?” Vera asks.
“Now, we wait. Probably for a while.”
“Why?”
“Because most people in the real world aren’t up before eight thirty in the morning on a Saturday, anxiously scrolling through Facebook messenger.”
“Hey, you know what we should do while we wait?”
“What?”
“Get more coffee.”
Four hours after we send our message, after not one but two runs to a nearby coffee shop, after we’ve perused the entire teen section of the library, after we’ve performed dramatic readings for each other from a Sylvia Plath collection I discover on the poetry shelves, after we’ve puttered around on Google and discovered a news article about Madison’s bomb and the injuries her ex-girlfriend sustained on the freeway, after I pull up Xander’s Instagram account and Vera declares him to be an unfortunate cross between Joe Jonas and an emaciated raccoon, after the librarian has gently asked us if we need help with anything, then, less gently, asks us to be aware of the volume of our voices and the tenor of our language, we log back into my Facebook account, and there, like a beautiful wrapped gift, sits a brick of text below my own message:
HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS DID THE IMPOSSIBLE YOU ESCAPED RED OAK YOU ARE MY HEROES I NEED TO KNOW EVERYTHING COME TO MY APARTMENT IMMEDIATELY I LIVE IN NORTHEAST HERE IS MY ADDRESS IT’S THE ONE RIGHT ABOVE LA COLONIA RESTAURANT JUST RING THE BUZZER STAY AS LONG AS YOU WANT DO YOU GUYS WANT TO COME TO MY SHOW TONIGHT???
After a quick Google Maps search, we bundle ourselves back up again, toss our empty coffee cups, and push through the glass front doors into the cold white city.
53
IT’S TWO MILES TO JENYA’S APARTMENT, and it’s also absolutely freezing, but after our coffee purchases we now have forty-five dollars between us and it needs to last indefinitely, until we can find some other source of income. No matter how biting the wind and how sore our legs, a taxi is out of the question. Even bus fare would be too much. We’re hoofing it.
“So. Which kind of Red Oak girl was this Jenya chick?” We’re huddled into our coats as we hurry past barbershops and bodegas, our bodies pressed together for extra warmth. “Bad, or just not good?”
“Oh, I mean, I adored her, but she was a classic case of not good. Rage issues. Threw shit around in our bedroom. Got all shaky and screamy whenever Mary Pat tried to single her out in group chat. But I always got the sense that her troubledness was just a phase, you know? I figured she’d eventually outgrow it and one day I’d come across her on YouTube, wearing pumps and a wool blazer and giving, like, a TED Talk on corruption in the dental industry or something. I found it all a bit . . . not fake, exactly. Just exaggerated. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah.” I’m thinking of my freshman year friend Marnie, the time she pierced holes all the way up my ears, our weed-fogged afternoons in her bedroom; he totally wants to bang you!; and of how, when people started to whisper about how crazy I was, what a slut I was, she couldn’t drop me fast enough. “I do.”
We reach a street called Central Avenue NE and turn right, following the instructions of our Google search.
“She was one of those girls where the problem wasn’t even her at all, it was her parents. They sounded like a couple of super-high-achieving assholes. You know the type, the ones who basically see their kid as a walking college application with gaps in its résumé instead of an actual human being with, like, an inner life. I always figured that once she got away from them, she’d be fine.”
“Well, I guess we’re about to find out.”
The narrow doorway next to La Colonia is jammed with coupon mailings, plastic utensils, crushed cans of energy drinks and beer, cigarette butts. We press the buzzer. The coffee has pulsed through me, been absorbed, and dissipated, and I now feel overwhelmed with exhaustion, like I just got off an airplane that flew all the way around the world. I can feel every muscle in each of my legs, and they all throb with dull pain.
When Jenya comes skipping down the stairs to greet us, it’s very clear that if she was due to make the switch from punk-rock riot girl to power-suited businesswoman, the transformation has not yet occurred. She’s nineteen but looks much younger, with a small, spare body and huge dark eyes. She wears her black hair in a buzz cut, hewn closely to her perfectly shaped head, and she’s got so many piercings on her face that it’s almost like she’s trying to distract the world from how shockingly beautiful she is. It doesn’t work, though, because I still see it very clearly. Her clothes are all black—tight black jeans, black combat boots, and a baggy black T-sh
irt with white letters across the chest that read: THERE IS A VOID IN MY GUTS WHICH CAN ONLY BE FILLED BY SONGS.34
But when she throws open the door and grabs first Vera into a hug, then me, the smile on her face is genuine—and even though I’m only meeting her right now for the very first time, I feel a surge of happiness, too. And of hope. Maybe Vera and Soleil were wrong when they told me that a Red Oak girl rereleased into the world is basically doomed. Maybe if we just figure out how to forge our own path, away from all the shitty people in our past, away, even, from our own parents, we can have a shot at happiness after all. And isn’t this exactly what we’re doing by running away?
Jenya leads us up the stairs, peppering us the whole time with questions about Mary Pat and Dee and the therapists and Coach Leslie’s dodgeball league and Chef Lainie’s beef stroganoff, barely waiting for one answer before asking about something else. We follow her through a small front room, bright with winter light and crammed with third- and fourth-hand furniture, and into a yellow-painted kitchen in the back of the apartment.
“Sit!” she commands. “Are you guys hungry? Do you want breakfast? You two are my fucking heroes!”
She takes two glasses from the sink, rinses them, fills them with water, puts them down on the rickety wooden table and sits across from us before getting up again almost immediately. Her movements are trembling and impatient, like she’s a bird who’s accidentally flown in through an open window and can’t figure out how to get out again.
“Shit,” she says, opening the fridge and slamming it shut again. “The eggs are expired.”
She marches over to a cabinet above the stove and takes out an unopened bag of dehydrated organic strawberries and another bag, half-empty, of Cheetos. She opens both and places them in the middle of the table. I grab a handful of Cheetos and wolf them down. They’re so stale they’re as chewy as toffee.
“I can’t believe you guys actually did it,” she says, shaking her head and looking back and forth between us. “We used to joke about running away all the time—but nobody ever had the guts to actually try! I mean, how far is it to the highway?”
“Eight miles,” Vera says proudly. “Through a snowstorm.”
“Did I mention this: you guys are my fucking heroes?”
“Yes,” laughs Vera. “But seriously, Jen, you’re my hero. Every other girl at maturation swears she’s never going home again. But they always do. Not you, though. You’re here, with your own apartment, doing your thing. Starting your band!”
She shrugs. “It’s not like my parents gave me much of a choice. When I came out as queer to them after my maturation ceremony, they disowned me.”
“They disowned you?” I stare at her. “You mean, like, they don’t speak to you anymore?”
“Oh, this is an old-school disownment, Mia. Not only do they not speak to me, they don’t even speak of me.”
“God,” Vera says. “I guess in comparison, my mom’s not so terrible.”
“Or my stepmom,” I add.
“What’s ironic is that my whole life, they tried so hard to assimilate into their preppy little corner of Philadelphia Main Line society. To become real Americans, you know? But maybe they should have spent less time learning how to downplay their Russian accents and more time realizing that in twenty-first-century upper-middle-class America, homophobia is just fucking gauche.”
“I’m so sorry, man. You must hate them.”
“Not really.” She laughs, though there’s a curl of bitterness in her face. “When people ask me what my parents are like, I tell them: they’re immigrants—refugees, basically—who voted for Trump. The level of hatred they must feel for themselves is so much worse than anything I could direct at them.”
“What time is it?” Vera asks suddenly.
Jenya pulls out her phone. “One thirty.”
“Nice.” She smiles. “I’m supposed to be cleaning showers right now.”
“Mary Pat must be freaking out,” says Jenya, rubbing her hands together gleefully.
“Madison must be so mad at us,” I say. “Trinity, too. Whereas Freja must be completely relieved.”
“Who’s Freja?”
“Long story.”
“I doubt they even know.” Vera sips her water. “The staff probably got together and made up some excuse about where we are. They can’t have the other inmates knowing that escape is possible. There might be a fucking exodus.”
“Do you think they’ve sent out a search party yet?” Jenya stuffs a handful of Cheetos in her mouth. “Called for backup from all three members of the Onamia police department? Released the bloodhounds on your asses?”
“What I want to know,” I say quietly, “is when they’re going to call our parents to let them know we’re missing.”
There’s a brief silence. I can’t dwell on thoughts of my dad for too long, of him receiving that phone call. It might be enough to make me rethink this whole thing. Vera tries but fails to stifle a huge yawn, a shred of dehydrated strawberry threaded between her front teeth. Now I’m yawning, too.
“Oh, shit.” Jenya looks between us. “I’m such a dick. I didn’t even think about how exhausted you guys must be, after your little caper. Okay, so there are two couches in the Greenhouse—that’s what we call our back porch; you’ll see. Why don’t you two go lie down and rest up—and don’t worry about Mary Pat or your parents or anything else. We’re going to have a great night tonight. Our show starts at nine. We usually start pregaming around six. We’re opening for a band that’s pretty big around here—the Lobotomizers. Heard of them?”
We both shake our heads drowsily. I think to myself that I’ll have to tell Vivian about this band name, that she’ll appreciate it, before I remember that I am never going to see her again, and good riddance.
We follow Jenya out through the kitchen and onto a rickety sunporch built off the back of the apartment. The windows are high and warped and dripping with condensation. Along one wall is an old radiator pumping out huge blasts of hot, steamy air, and two filthy love seats face either side of it. Outside is the snow-covered city, but the glass is so fogged up we can barely see it. A long wooden shelf is crammed with little pots of sweet-smelling herbs: basil, sage, parsley, and cannabis.
“You guys make yourselves comfortable—I’m going to go get ready for work. Starbucks. Damn the Man and whatever, but they give me health insurance.”
We thank her as we both flop across our prospective couches.
“Oh! And just so you know—I have two roommates—they’re both still asleep. I’ll text them and let them know you’re here so they don’t think you’re, like, squatters.”
“Thanks so much,” I hear myself murmur. It’s so tiny and compact and warm in here that we don’t even need blankets. My eyes are so heavy.
“Okay, okay. You guys go to sleep. I go shill caffeine for corporate America. And later we reconvene. And we party.” She sticks up a sign of the horns with both hands and leaves us to our naps.
54
BY THE TIME WE WAKE UP several hours later, the sun has shifted and Jenya’s roommates have finally emerged, shuffling out of their bedrooms to inspect us before settling down to a shared late-afternoon breakfast of canned chicken noodle soup and the last of the Cheetos. Lucy, the band’s drummer, is pink of hair and Scandinavian of face. Esther is the guitarist, who greeted us wearing nothing but a mismatched and not-super-clean bra and underwear set, though she is now clothed, dressed in a vintage baby-doll lace tunic and applying bright pink lipstick in the selfie function of her phone.
The preparty before the show begins just as the setting northern sun begins to flood every space in the tiny apartment with its incandescent yellow light. Two punk boys, friends of the band, open the front door and emerge through this haze, carrying two huge Domino’s pizzas and a case of beer. Trailing behind them is a ghostly-looking younger brother who’s crashing with them for the weekend. He’s got lanky hair parted down the middle like a drummer in a nineties grunge b
and. His boots are flimsy and dirty, and his flannel jacket, with its matted gray fur collar, is too short on him at the waist and wrists. I sort of feel sorry for him.
The band’s bassist is Faduma, a third-generation Minnesotan Somali from Cedar-Riverside, who attends U of M and still lives at home. She arrives at the apartment right behind the boys, wearing a bright yellow down puffer coat and her instrument slung across her back. Jenya does the rounds of introductions, and the little brother is sent to the kitchen to get a paper towel roll, squares of which we all use as both plate and napkin as we attack the steaming pizzas. When we’re finished eating, the four members of Teen Fun Skipper gather in a row on the sagging paisley couch to iron out the details of their set list while one of the punk boys, Bobby I think is his name, begins skillfully rolling the fattest joint I’ve ever seen.
“Hey.” Vera, who smells unrecognizably floral after having taken her first private shower in two years, leads me by the elbow into the kitchen. She drops her voice. “Are you planning on partaking of the refreshments?”
“You mean the weed?” I ask. “Or the beer?”
“Both. Either.”
I glance down the hallway, where clods of swirling smoke are beginning to drift toward us, smelling like sweetgrass and most of my high school memories. “I was thinking about it,” I say. “I haven’t decided. Why?”
Vera chews her bottom lip. “Well, I was just thinking that maybe we could, like . . . not.”
“Really?”
“What?” She looks at me defensively, her freshly washed wet hair combed back from her face.
“Nothing! I’m just a little—surprised, that’s all.”
“Well, it’s been a long time for me. You were only locked away for two months. I’ve been at Red Oak over two years. That’s two years sober. And it’s not that I don’t want to get all kinds of fucked up, but I . . .”
“It’s okay,” I say, and I’m surprised to find that I mean it. After all, how many of my worst nights began with the snap of a lighter, the hiss of a cap twisting off a bottle? “You don’t have to explain. I got you. We’re free forever now, right? We can party whenever we want. Doesn’t have to be today.”
You Know I'm No Good Page 15
