Exile (5 page)

We find common ground on Arcade Fire, Passion Pit, Deathcab, Particle Board. Our first big disagreement comes as we wait in line to order from the window, over Radiohead. “They haven’t made anything good since
OK Computer
,” I say.

“Tuh,” says Caleb. “Everything they’ve made that’s good has been
since OK Computer
. That’s when they started acting like a real rock band, not giving a crap about what anyone thinks.”

“But they don’t write songs anymore.” As I say this, I wonder if it’s my opinion or Ethan’s. Radiohead was a band he got me into. Now here I am acting intelligent about them. Except I do know them. Except it feels like I’m faking it.
Oh my God, stop worrying!

“They already wrote some of the greatest songs in music history.” Caleb runs his finger through the air. “Check.
Their newer music is like a trip into a post-apocalyptic future, into the ruins of their own success, but in a good way.” He glances sideways at me. “Did that make sense?”

“Maybe you’re like Radiohead and you don’t need to.”

“Touché.”

We order. Caleb gets a burrito and I waffle and settle on fish tacos, and instantly regret ordering the same thing I so often ordered with Ethan. Both band boys like Mexican. Is that a sign?
Stop it!
Most people like Mexican. Ugh. I’ll be lucky to make it through this without driving myself crazy.

We get our paper plates of food and then turn to face the array of metal tables surrounding a modernist fountain. It’s like a coral reef, dotted with brightly colored yoga moms and strollers, and the occasional barracuda with his or her jacket off, crisp white shirt glaring.

“Want to go eat at the center of the solar system?” Caleb asks.

“You mean this isn’t it?”

Thankfully, Caleb gets that I’m joking. “Not even close. In fact, there’s Venus.”

I follow his pointing finger to a little pedestal off on the side of the dining area. It’s cone-shaped and at the top is a tiny model of a planet. “Ahh, right.”

Back when we were in elementary school, the town Arts Council installed this scale model of the solar system all over town. Each planet is represented by a model on a pedestal, all at their exact relative distances from the sun. They
printed maps, and I remember thinking it was so cool, how you could travel the solar system, but somehow I never got around to seeing them all. The inner planets are all in this mall, but then Jupiter is like a mile away, and Saturn even further, and so on.

We weave back through the strip mall, passing the pedestal that holds Mercury outside J.Crew number two (the one that sells only cardigans, belts, and sandals) and reach the giant yellow sun. It stands ten feet tall in the center of another consumer courtyard, surrounded by a ring of grass, which is then enclosed by home decor shops.

We sit in the oval of shade off to the star’s side. The grass is immaculate, like no one’s ever touched it, let alone dared to risk staining their khaki on it.

“Center of the Mount Hope universe,” says Caleb.

“All the upscale housewares you could ever want,” I say, looking around. I rub my hand over the painted metal curve of the sun above our heads. It’s bumpy with sunspots. There used to be a big solar flare arcing out of the side, but it’s been broken off, its two endpoints sticking out with jagged edges.

“Have you ever been to them all?” Caleb asks after his first bite of burrito.

“No. I’ve always wanted to, but who has time with all the dumb movies to see and Facebook posts to read?”

“I went once,” says Caleb. “My fifth-grade teacher loaded us in a bus and we drove all around town and saw
every one—well, except Pluto. It had been downgraded to dwarf planet that spring—”

“An unspeakable injustice,” I say. “Pluto will always be a planet.”

“Always and forever,” Caleb agrees. “But we skipped it.”

“Was it cool? Seeing the others?”

“I guess? I mostly remember eating Cool Ranch Doritos and getting harassed because I sat next to a girl named Lin Yee and everybody said I loved her.”

I grin. “Obviously because you did.”

Caleb shrugs, but smiles too. “She was good at kickball and didn’t mind playing Bionicles at recess so, obviously. Anyway I guess I learned that if space travel is anything like a school bus trip, it’s too long and too cramped. Still, the models are worth seeing.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re there, and, like you said, you don’t have to buy anything or ‘like’ anything to see them. Also, even though they took Pluto off the map, people say it’s still out there somewhere, because the town couldn’t afford to send a welder out to remove it.”

“That I’d like to see. The lost ninth planet. I feel for it.”

And I feel Caleb looking at me. “Maybe we will sometime.”

“Maybe.” I meet his gaze. It’s a quick thing, a passing of eye contact, half smiles, as we both move to our next
bite, but suddenly in that moment I feel a little quake in my heart, and realize I’m probably done for. No! Too soon! I tell myself to calm down. Jaded, professional, unflustered. This isn’t a date, it’s a job interview, for
Caleb
, not me. But oh, I am probably lying to myself. Still, I am not going to let him see it.

We eat for a bit. The small talk is done. Now my tacos are, too. I’m not sure what to say next.

“Back to Radiohead,” I try. “That new song you were playing before sounded like a real song, like well-crafted in the . . . you know, pre-post-
OK Computer
-way, but not like wannabe Radiohead, just . . . the . . .”

Caleb grins. “I’m curious to see how you pull this out.”

I am a flushed fool. “What I mean is that it might be a really great song.”

“Well, thank you.”

Annndd . . . back to silence! But this time I wait. It’s your turn, Mr. Caleb.

Finally: “It’s kinda personal.”

“Do I get the big story now?”

He sees my hopeful gaze, but his face darkens. “I don’t know why I want to tell you this.”

“But you’re going to. That was the deal. I come space traveling with you, you spill the beans. Besides, you’ve turned me to a life of crime. Now pay up.”

“Right . . .” Caleb shifts. He wraps the unfinished half of his burrito back in foil. “I live with my mom. I never
knew my dad. She always told me that he didn’t want to stay around. That she didn’t want him around. I asked her sometimes if I could meet him, or contact him, but she said she didn’t know where he was. I could have called BS on those excuses but our life has been fine. Mom’s a social worker and she makes enough money and it’s cool. She supports my music. We could live even better if we weren’t in Mount Hope, but Mom tries to keep up with rent here so I can go to PopArts.”

“She sounds pretty great,” I say.

“She is, definitely.” He half unwraps his burrito again, his fingers jittery, then wraps it right back up. “What’s your parent situation?”

“Oh, I got the standard package,” I say. “Two, mixed gender, mostly annoying, but admittedly making some good points now and then, and providing me with the material necessities and then some.”

Caleb nods. He takes a deep breath. “So, August fifteenth was my eighteenth birthday. I had a party planned, but my uncle Randy came over the night before. That’s Mom’s younger brother. She wanted to have a birthday dinner, just the three of us. And so we’re at the dinner table and Mom’s been acting strange all day and I know something’s up.”

He pauses again. Tears off a corner of foil and crinkles it into a tiny ball.

“She told you something about your dad,” I guess.

Caleb nods. “Mom decided that now that I’m eighteen I
should know that my dad was the lead singer for Allegiance to North.”

“Whoa.” I can barely believe what I just heard. “Really?
Your dad
was Eli White?”

“The one and only. Guess he and my mom had a fling one summer, hot and heavy, but then it didn’t work out. I mean, I worked out, but they didn’t. And then . . . you know.”

“He drowned.”

Caleb flicks the foil ball, a little shooting star. It lands in the grass, gleaming in the sun. He starts making another. “At first, I almost felt like, whatever. I mean, he was never a part of my life. They both wanted it that way, and he sent money. We still get money from his royalties or estate or whatever.” Caleb shakes his head and glances up at the sky. “But I think I liked it better not having a dad.”

“Why?” I ask. “Doesn’t this make you the son of a rock legend?” I can’t keep my band-manager brain from spinning ahead. “I mean, just from a publicity point of view, that’s—”

“No,” Caleb snaps. “That’s exactly what I don’t want.” Before I can even react, he’s getting to his feet. “Shit. What was I thinking? I shouldn’t have told you. You, of all people . . .” He spins and walks off.

“Caleb . . .” I hurry after him. “Why
did
you tell me?”

He stops, shrugs and stares at the ground. “I felt like I had to tell
someone
.”

“FYI, telling a girl she’s just
someone
is not the best way to make her feel special.”

Caleb throws up his hands. “That’s not—look, I’m not good at saying things right the first time. You just seem, I don’t know, not that you like me, but that you’re
like
me in some way. Both of us have ended up alone for a reason. And I needed someone to trust. I don’t know—”

“It’s okay.” I touch his shoulder. “I get it. Now listen, I promise I won’t tell anyone, but why are you keeping this a big secret?”

“Because,” says Caleb, “I don’t want to be Eli White’s kid. I don’t want
that
to be the reason I get anywhere in music.”

We start walking again, weaving back through the mall toward school. I can barely keep up with his pace. “I get that, and for the record, I loved that song you were playing on the wall before I knew who your dad was. So why did you nuke your band? Was it because you were afraid of them finding out?”

“That was part of it. And . . . well, it’ll sound dumb.”

I grab his arm. We’re right near the doors to a children’s clothing outlet store, so there is a traffic jam of strollers around us. New moms eye us suspiciously, like we’re threats, or like they fear that if they don’t use the right kind of sippy cups or buy the right wooden toys, their little trophies might someday end up like us.

“Tell me.” When he hesitates, I remind him: “Life of crime.”

“I know.” Caleb searches the sky for words. “It’s just that, Eli might have been some kind of musical genius, but he was also a self-centered asshole, by all accounts. He treated my mom like crap, totally bailed on any responsibility to me other than cash, hooked up all the time, was into heroin . . . I just . . . I don’t want to be like that.”

“Not even the hooking-up-all-the-time part?” I hope that sounded like a joke.

It nearly makes Caleb smile. “I mean, I want to transcend. I want to do the big things, get all the way to the top, write the biggest song ever, but Neil Young was wrong.”

“About what? Aside from muttonchops.”

“He said it’s better to burn out than fade away. Kurt Cobain quoted it in his suicide note. But they’re wrong. I want to do all those things and then still be around later, like, get old, get a lifetime achievement award fifty years from now, to still be . . .” He throws his arms up as if to indicate the world. “In it. Does that sounds silly?”

Silly or possibly painfully romantic. “No,” I say.

“But now I find out that my musical genes come from someone who did his best to be out of it, who couldn’t survive his own success.”

I find myself taking his hand, and buzzing at what he’s saying, so much like the thoughts I’d had this morning, sandwiched between oblivion and optimism. And I’m thrumming with the idea of this boy, this dark, busy mess of a boy, and how both of us have ended up exiled together . . .

Now what, then?

“Caleb.” I see his eyes snap down, just as affected by the use of his name. “I know what you’re talking about. Well, not totally. My dad sells concrete and is home every night at six. But the rest . . .”

An absolutely screaming baby is wheeling by us, the mom shushing it. I want to get us to a more private spot but I don’t want to lose this moment. And also Caleb is taking my other hand. Now we are two people holding each other’s hands facing each other, which makes people notice us and give us a wide berth, and I am determined to finish what I was going to say.

“If you don’t want to burn out, then you need to stop deleting Twitter accounts and alienating everyone in PopArts, and playing guitar alone.”

Caleb looks away and shrugs, a touch sulkily. “I guess.”

From a business point of view, what I can feel myself about to say may not be a good idea. The grizzled, veteran me knows better. Throwing in with the mercurial head-case singer type? Never good. But maybe Caleb is just a singer of the average head-case variety who happens to be going through a really rough patch. I heard that song behind the school. Nobody at the Kickoff Concert had anything like it. I feel as certain as I can that I’ve found my next project.

“I can help you,” I say. “You can put together a band, and I’ll manage. I know what to do. Your job is to get”—before I can consider stopping myself, I reach out and touch
his chest with my index finger—“
this
out into the world. Then everything you’re talking about can happen.”

Caleb shrugs, but then he takes my hand. “Maybe this is why I asked you out. How do you make everything sound so
possible
?”

I want to ask Caleb if this is a line he’s used before. But no, I don’t really want to know. I don’t care to know. Maybe he’s another band boy but so what so what so what? Sometimes things happen and we feel things because we are who we are and we can’t control it.

“Because it is possible,” I hear myself saying, and I’m leaning forward, my body seeming to have already made up its mind about what happens next, and suddenly I’m terrified: am I really thinking about him as my next project or am I thinking about him as this cute, wounded beautiful soul, so honest on the surface, no games, no quoting his own lyrics at me, and getting hotter by the second?
Slow down! It’s too soon! Remember last time
— And I know, oh I know, this is so . . . Not. A good. Idea. Where’s one of those fortune-tellers made out of folded paper, a silly
Seventeen
magazine quiz, a flower to pluck petals, anything that would give me a sign that could make me feel certain about what to do next—