Ballads of Suburbia (7 page)

T
HE DAY AFTER THE FIRE,
M
AYA
sauntered into Scoville like she owned the place. I followed, not feeling nearly as self-assured. We joined the same people from the day before. Harlan gave us both bear hugs, and Shelly smiled widely, but that was to be expected. I was certain the others would continue to ignore us. I couldn't have been more shocked when moody Christian welcomed us into the fold.

“Hey, Firestarter,” he said, tossing a wicked grin my way. “Thanks for the giant ashtray.” He flicked his cigarette butt into the bald patch hemmed in by scorched grass. Beneath a few cigarette butts, the ashes of the tracts mingled with the dirt. I proudly realized that they'd moved into the center of the park to sit around the remnants of my fire.

Craig reached across the fire pit to hand Maya and me some flyers. “You should come see our band Symbiotic next weekend. Our old frontman is gonna be back in town. It should be pretty cool. Maybe you could provide us with some pyrotechnics to give Shelly's basement that genuine arena-rock feel.” He chuckled at his own joke.

On the flyer, Symbiotic was drawn as a late-eighties cock-rock supergroup, their names even written across their pictures as Christian aka Slash, Quentin aka Nikki Sixx, and Craig aka
Rikki Rockett. In bold letters, it also touted the return of Wes aka Sebastian Bach.

“I love Symbiotic, but Wes is not going to be happy when I tell him that his band has started doing Skid Row covers,” Maya remarked with a smirk.

A chorus of voices responded to her statement. Craig, who didn't get Maya's sense of humor, explained that the flyer was a joke. Christian, thinking his band had gained notoriety all the way down in Florida, wanted to know how Maya'd heard Symbiotic. But Harlan shouted over everyone else, “Whoa! Maya, how do you know Wes? He left Oak Park before you moved here.”

“Oh,” Maya answered simply, “he and Cassie are my cousins.”

This quieted everyone. Finally I asked, “Why didn't you ever mention that?”

Maya shrugged and gave the response I should have expected, given her tendency to antagonize religious zealots and our fellow chemistry students: “I love social experiments. I wanted to see who was friendly to strangers”-she smiled at Harlan and me-who wasn't”-she honed in on Jessica and Mary and kept her focus on them as she finished “and how that all changed once everyone found out who my cousins are.”

Quentin, the one with the shy smile and the black braids, softly admitted, “I knew. Cass talks about you all the time and I see the resemblance, very similar eyes. Not the color, but—”

“Are you kidding?” Jessica interrupted. “They don't look alike at all. Maya's obviously playing some weird game. Hello? Cass and Wes are black.”

“Cassie and Wes are biracial,” Maya corrected. “Our moms are sisters. I'm not playing any game. Why would I?”

Jessica looked to Mary to back her up. I'd noticed that Mary was sitting as far from Christian as possible that day and her expression was even more dour than before. Mary shrugged and told Jessica, “Cass does have a cousin named Maya. Remember
that picture on her dresser from when she went to Florida in second grade?”

Jessica grimaced at Mary. “No. But if you recognized her, why didn't you say anything yesterday?”

“Yeah, Mary, isn't it your job to keep Jessica up on all the latest gossip?” Maya mimicked snapping a whip.

Everyone laughed except Jessica and Mary. Mary crossed her arms over her chest, ignored Maya's remark, and replied to Jessica, “I didn't recognize her. She was a cute little blond kid in the picture. Besides, why wouldn't Cass tell
us
about her cousin moving here? We've been best friends since kindergarten.”

Jessica nodded, sitting up straighter. Clearly this was the defense she expected from Mary.

“Best friends'?” Maya questioned coldly. Her gray eyes shone like freshly sharpened knives. She forced her mouth into a straight line and said no more.

An awkward silence descended until Christian filled it, asking Maya, “Did Wes send you the Symbiotic demo? What do you think of my band?”

“Of
your
band?” Maya laughed. “I thought Symbiotic was
Wes's
band.”

Christian shrugged. “When he comes home and visits, sure, but when he left I stepped up. I play lead guitar and sing now.”

“Ah,
you're
the cocky sophomore he told me about.” Maya watched Christian's face flush. Then she smirked and added, “He says you're pretty damn good.”

Shelly nudged me and whispered, “Maybe Harlan's right about those two. I see some potential sparks.” Speaking at a normal volume, she asked, “Are you coming to my party on Friday? It'll be Wes's big homecoming.”

“I didn't know about it.”

“Well, consider yourself invited. Every Friday night from now on, come to my house. I get a keg, everyone comes over.”

I thought about the last party I'd been to at Shelly's, and the uncertainty I felt must have shown on my face, because Harlan threw his arm around me and implored, “You
have
to come, Kara. It won't be any fun without you.”

“It won't be any fun if Harlan takes over the stereo again with his terrible techno,” Craig interjected.

Harlan turned to me for support. “Sorry, not a techno fan,” I told him.

Craig gave me the thumbs-up. “What bands are you into?”

And a conversation about music started up. Soon we were on to movies, then books, and by the time evening crept in, we all seemed like old friends-at least Maya, Shelly, the guys, and I did. Mary and Jessica managed not to speak directly to me or Maya and went home an hour before the rest of us. But I didn't care about them. I was too pleased that suddenly things were happening for me. I had new friends. I had plans for Friday night. I had a life.

O
N
F
RIDAY
I T
OLD MY PARENTS
I was sleeping over at Maya's so I could do whatever I wanted that evening. Maya and I hung out at the park for a few hours before returning to her hotel room to get ready for the party. The plan was to walk to her cousins' house and catch a ride with them.

We walked a few blocks northwest, the houses getting bigger and bigger the farther we went. Maya murmured, “Wide lawns and narrow minds. That's what my grandma said about this town when my dad told her we were moving here. My grandma speaks mostly in clichés.”

I chuckled and told her, “Your grandmother was actually quoting Ernest Hemingway's opinion of Oak Park.”

“Hmm, if it's really like that, no wonder Wes is so happy to have gotten away.”

“So, is he coming home from college on spring break or something?”

“College?” Maya laughed so loudly that someone in a house across the street flicked a light on and peered out the window at us. “Wes got expelled in November for setting off a smoke bomb in the caf.”

“Holy shit,
that
was your cousin? They evacuated the school for half an hour!”

Maya smirked. “Yep, that was Wes. Between that and his drug dealing, my aunt and uncle were fed up. They sent him to California. He's working on my uncle's friend's farm and getting his GED. I guess he actually likes it out there, but Cassie misses him. She's going to be so happy…” Maya trailed off, squinting at a shadowy figure crouched in a driveway two houses down. “Cassie!” she shouted, but the girl didn't look up. She sat with her head in her hands.

Maya rushed to her cousin, kneeling behind her and embracing her in a Harlan-style bear hug. Not wanting to intrude, I approached slowly. Cass's tears glittered in the light that shone down from above her garage. She swallowed back sobs, stuttering, “He's not coming home…Mom's flipping out again…she has been all week…that's why I haven't been at school or the park…but I hoped he would still come home. I'm sick of dealing with this alone.” Then Cass noticed me. She blinked, summoning her strength, and said, “Oh, hi.”

“Hi,” I replied awkwardly, shifting my weight from one foot to the other.

Cass rose and wandered down the driveway toward me, Maya following. Dabbing at her darkly lined eyes, Cass allowed a tentative smile, asking softly, “I met you before, right? At North Riverside Mall?” She furrowed her brow. “Kara?”

“Yeah,” I said, studying her.

Cass was a willowy, caramel-skinned girl with dreadlocks in shades of brown, red, and blond spilling from a black bandanna down to her waist. Three years ago she'd been a good six inches shorter, slightly pudgy, and those dreadlocks-all her natural coffee shade-had hung just past her shoulders. Regardless, Cass was unforgettable. Etched in my mind as part of a rare cool moment Stacey and I had had in junior high.

“I still have the necklace you stole for me.” I pulled a metal pot
leaf from the mass of black cords, silver chains, and beads that decorated my neck.

“How do you guys know each other?” Maya demanded. Even though she thrived on being secretive about her life, she didn't like being kept in the dark.

“We shoplifted together once,” Cass told her, asking me, “When was that? The summer between seventh and eighth grade?”

“Yeah.”

That summer Stacey and I had taken the bus to the mall practically every day to bum around the food court and steal crap because we were bored. We kept seeing Cass there with two other girls-Mary and Jessica, I realized. Stacey liked Cass's skull-and-crossbones bandanna, so she decided we should introduce ourselves. She'd always been the more social one. She walked right up to Cass and said, “Nice bandanna.”

Cass replied, “Nice hair wraps,” reaching out to touch one of the many braids wound in colorful string that Stacey wore in the undermost layer of her hair.

Cass and I exchanged smiles, but didn't actually speak for half an hour. Not because I was being snotty like Cass's friends, who ignored us. I was just shy as usual. The first thing I said to Cass was “Thanks,” after she handed me the stolen pot leaf on a black leather cord. She gave Stacey a bandanna, but didn't give her friends anything. Even though I didn't smoke pot yet, I added the necklace to the growing menagerie of jewelry that made undressing preshower quite a ritual.

Stacey and I looked forward to seeing Cass the next time we went to the mall, but we never saw her again.

Cass explained the reason for her disappearance to Maya: “It was the day before Jessica got caught stealing from Claire's. She refused to go back to the mall after that.” Cass turned to me. “Hey, do you still hang out with that girl, what was her name…Tracy?”

“Stacey,” I said, privately pleased that Cass had remembered my name but not hers. “I don't see her that often anymore. She moved to Berwyn.”

“Right, Stacey…” Cass's smile faltered and she nervously played with her hair. “Sorry, I'm a little…flustered tonight. My mom's nuts and she freaks out like once a week…and my brother was supposed to come home, but he decided—My parents decided,” she quickly corrected, “that he couldn't given Mom's state.”

“It's okay.”

Maya and I followed Cass's gaze up to a bedroom window. The silhouette of a woman's figure was visible, her fingers prying apart the slats in the blinds to stare down at us. Maya's face grew stony.

Catching sight of Maya's expression, Cass decided, “Let's go. Shelly's is only a six-block walk. I need to get over there and break the news to everyone.”

 

Shelly lived in a huge Victorian house set back from the street on a double lot. Her neighbors either didn't notice or didn't care about the parties she hosted every Friday night, and her parental situation allowed for big, teen-movie-style bashes. Shelly's dad was a big-time attorney in the city who went straight from work to his girlfriend's Gold Coast condo on Friday nights. He provided his daughter with a hefty chunk of change to amuse herself with on the weekends, which Shelly, in turn, used to amuse the rest of us.

Shelly's mom was MIA. Her parents had met back in the sixties when Shelly's dad still had “ideals,” and when he'd sold out, her mom bailed-apparently her “ideals” didn't involve taking her kid along to the commune in Oregon she'd joined.

“That's why hippies suck,” Shelly told Maya and me as she
led us upstairs on the grand tour of her house. I could imagine her mom, though. Except for her raver wardrobe of huge Jnco jeans and sparkly shirts, Shelly embodied my mental image of a hippie with her insanely long, sunshine-colored curls.

Shelly showed us her room first. It had pale blue carpet and lilac walls-a lot more pastel than I'd expected. “Dad's girlfriend thinks she's an interior decorator,” Shelly explained. “Wait till you see the bathroom.”

“Ugh!” Maya and I groaned in unison upon poking our heads in. The walls, toilet, sink, and tub were all pink.

“My dad insisted on earth tones for his bedroom, though.” Shelly led us farther down the hall, but when she pushed the next door open, she shut it again immediately, calling, “Sorry, Adrian!”

Maya and I hadn't glimpsed what was going on, but Shelly herded us back to her room, giggling. “Lesson number one about parties at my house: if a door is closed, knock.” She reached under her bed for a bottle of Absolut Citron. “If you do happen to see too much of Adrian Matthews-the person you are most likely to find behind a closed door-this is where the secret hard liquor supply is kept. Shots?” she offered.

“Yes!” Maya and I answered.

Maya was probably drowning her disappointment about Wes. Everyone we encountered bemoaned the fact that his parents had kept him from coming home, acting like he was a war hero whose tour of duty had been extended.

Personally, I needed a drink to loosen up. As soon as we'd entered Shelly's and I'd found it just as packed as it had been the last time, I got a bit queasy. I didn't normally like parties. When I went to them with Stacey, I stayed glued to her side, and when she inevitably ditched me, I retreated into a dark corner until it was time to go. I was determined to be part of this crowd, though. I swilled three shots of liquid courage in quick succes
sion before Shelly put the bottle away and said, “Let's continue the tour.”

The first floor was mostly empty. There were a couple people, including Cass and Quentin, sitting on the back porch, but Shelly's basement was the epicenter of her parties. Down there, the beer held a central location across from the foot of the stairs, dividing the long, rectangular room into two sections. To the left of the keg, people shot pool on an expensive-looking pool table. Behind that, a polished wooden bar lined the entire wall. In the farthest corner, there was a large booth like something you'd see at Denny's, except the table had storage for poker chips and cards built into the center of it. I would have suggested that we sit there, but Mary and Jessica had already laid claim. Jessica fawned over a skater boy while Mary glowered across the room at Christian.

He sat on the other side of the basement. Over there, all the couches and chairs were pushed against the walls. A rug had been rolled up to reveal shiny black ceramic tiles: the dance floor. Shelly'd put a card table with a stereo in front of the big-screen TV in the corner of the room.

Shelly left Maya and me by the keg and went to settle an argument between Craig and Harlan about the music. Maya introduced me to Gonzo, a guy she'd met in her Spanish class. He was a big dude who looked like a lumberjack, with hair so unwashed it actually matted together.

“Gonzo knows everyone at the park,” Maya shouted over the throbbing techno. Harlan was winning the music war.

“Of course I do,” Gonzo replied. He had a booming baritone and didn't need to shout. “This is my second senior year,” he told me before signaling that Maya and I should follow him to the bar. “Let's go where it's quieter. Maya promised to share her sociological cigarette research with me.”

“Another social experiment?” I asked Maya.

“More of a social theory.” She sat down on a bar stool, Gonzo and I standing on either side of her. Maya lit a Winston and studied it. “I've been collecting data for a while and these are my findings. Punks and indie rockers smoke Winstons. Ravers smoke Newports. Skaters smoke Camels. Hippies roll their own or smoke American Spirits. Metalheads smoke Marlboro Reds. There have been anomalies, but let me tell you, only bitches smoke Marlboro Lights.”

A shrill giggle rung out above the music and I glanced at Jessica and Mary's table. Jessica sat on the skater boy's lap. She habitually smoothed her black hair, laughing at whatever he'd said. “I bet Jessica secretly smokes Marlboro Lights,” Maya concluded.

Gonzo tapped his pack of Parliaments. “What about me?”

Maya didn't even flinch. “You're like Switzerland. You're friends with everyone. Cassie's like that, too, and she smokes Parliaments. They're the neutral cigarette.”

“I like this sociological cigarette research.” Gonzo nodded, impressed.

I finished my beer in two gulps and headed to the keg alone, since Maya and Gonzo weren't ready for a refill yet. After I filled up, Craig and Christian waved me over.

“Harlan adores you, can you please sweet-talk him into putting some good music on?” Christian begged.

With a beer and three shots under my belt, I was feeling pretty persuasive, so I went over and asked Harlan to put some Social Distortion on. He agreed as long as I'd dance with him. I told him that would require more alcohol. Christian and Craig high-fived me on my way back to the keg. I beamed; I was part of the gang.

The last time I was at Shelly's, the cheap beer made me nauseous, but this time it was good. Really good. I swallowed three beers almost as quickly as I'd thrown back the shots upstairs.
And the more I drank, the more social I became. I felt like I knew everyone. Even though I'd only talked to about ten of the fifty people in Shelly's house, I'd seen them all at the park.

I flitted from group to group like a butterfly. Quentin had joined Maya and Gonzo and I philosophized with the three of them. I picked out music with Craig and Christian. I danced with Harlan and Shelly. I hung out with people I wouldn't later remember until they'd point out, “We met at Shelly's party,” and even then I'd usually fake recollection.

Around one in the morning the crowd began to thin. I went looking for Maya so we could head back to her place. Before I found her, I came across Cass sitting alone on the back porch.

I lowered myself beside her. “Have you been out here all night?”

Cass quickly closed the notebook she'd been writing in. Ransom-note-style lettering spelled out “Stories of Suburbia” across the ragged red cover. Clearly, I'd interrupted something private.

I rose again, apologizing. “I didn't mean to bother you. I thought you might know where Maya is.”

“You're not bothering me. Sit.”

So I did and I waited for her to answer me about Maya. Instead, she absently traced the letters on the cover of her notebook. “That's a cool journal you've got,” I said, trying to make conversation.

“It's not mine. It's Adrian and Quentin's. No…” She paused, carefully considering her words. “It's everybody's. It's for when you have a secret or a story you feel like you can't tell anyone. You write it in here. Quentin saw that I was upset tonight and thought the notebook would help. It did a little bit, but I don't know…”

“Maybe you need to talk to someone,” I suggested. “I know we don't know each other very well, but if you want you can talk to me.”

Cass's eyes met mine. Her pupils were huge, practically filling her brown irises, and it felt like she was looking deep inside of me. After staring at me for a minute, she said, “I don't know if it's the acid, but for some reason you seem like the most trustworthy person in the world.”