Strays (8 page)

Just then, Cindy arrives.

“Oh,” she says. “I’m so sorry. He gets away from me sometimes.”

Astin stands up so she can get a look at all of him. “Not a problem.” He holds out a hand. “I’m Astin. This is Ted.”

She doesn’t even bother to look at me. She’s seen enough from a distance. I play with the dog while Astin writes down a phone number. I try to remember what he talks to her about in case I ever have a conversation with a girl. But it’s nothing special: where she goes to school, her part-time job at the mall, his motorcycle. Like my English teacher would say, I guess — it’s not content, it’s style.

I point toward the parking lot. “I’ll meet you.”

“Be right there, Teddy.”

The dog is mad at me and looks the other way, so I go and lean on the Harley. I think,
So this is Blue’s.
People talked about it like it was the Parthenon.

Now I’ve got a Blue’s story of my own — I almost got in a fight there once. Yeah. These two jerks from Alhambra. But this buddy of mine kind of stepped up, and I didn’t have to get a bloody nose over nothing.

This buddy of mine.

Astin comes jogging up. “Cindy works out.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Did you see those abs?”

“Everybody saw those abs, Astin.”

“Yeah, but I’m the one with her phone number.”

“That you know of.”

He swings one leg over and starts the Harley. “So you’re saying . . .”

“You probably aren’t her first boyfriend.”

“Yeah, you’re right. You got condoms at home?”

“God, no.”

He eases us onto Huntington. “I’ll pick some up. Good call, Teddy.” He reaches over and around and knocks on my helmet.

I like riding toward home behind Astin. There’s a bar to lean back on, and since we’re not going very fast, I put my hands in my pockets. When we come to a stoplight, I put my feet down, too.

Astin’s all in leather, and I’ve got on a windbreaker and khakis that never need ironing. Scott McIntyre called me a retard, and I probably look like one.

But I like it, anyway. The ride, I mean. People look at us — guys, especially. It’s Astin they admire, not me. Or maybe not. Maybe they’d just like to park their big dumb cars and tag along like I’m doing.

I lean with him as we make the turn at Wayne Street. He knows how to use the clutch and make the pipes rumble even when we’re not going very fast.

“Hey! Isn’t that C.W.?”

Sure enough. He’s sitting on the retaining wall at the corner. Every now and then he dribbles his basketball.

Astin glides right up in front of him. “What’s happening.”

C.W. slides off the wall, glances around, and comes right up to us.

“Guess who just gave his statement to the police?”

“What statement?”

“I’m playin’ ball with the brothers down at Marengo when four hairy guys in an Acura pull up. The next thing I hear is
pop, pop, pop,
and everybody but me is facedown on the asphalt.”

Astin turns off the engine. “They shot at you?”

“They shot at somebody. Scared the crap out of me. I’m telling you, man. If I could stay as pale as I was an hour ago, I’d get a scholarship to the University of Alabama.” He tugs at his baggy shirt. “I’m through with this ghetto shit.”

I dismount and point to the motorcycle. “Get on. Ride home with Astin.”

He shakes his head. “They not lookin’ for me in particular. Probably one of them’s sister said a brother made fun of her mustache, so they all get their pieces and start drivin’ around.”

I tell him, “So go home and lay low.”

“All right. Maybe you’re right. You gonna be okay?”

“What are they going to do, shoot me for being drab?”

He holds out his fist, and I tap it with mine. He says, “Thanks, man.”

“I’ll come back for you,” Astin says.

“Get serious. It’s like four blocks.”

“No, Teddy,” he says. “I’ll be back.”

I’m on my way to school when I see Gus and his dog, Paperboy. They’re on the corner with the stoplight. Gus has a cup in one hand and a sign around his neck:
HELP ME FEED MY DOG
. Girls stop to pet Paperboy and usually drop a quarter or two into the soggy Starbucks cup.

I haven’t seen them for a couple of months. They used to camp up by the trailhead that leads to Mount Lowe, then panhandle Santa Mira for a while.

When I give Gus a dollar, he stares at me. He’s dirty, and with that beard he could be the ninth-place finisher in the Walt Whitman look-alike contest.

“Hey,” he says, “I know you.”

“Ted. From the pet shop.”

He points a grimy finger at me. “Dog Eat Dog World, right?”

“Close enough.”

“What’re you doing down here?”

“My folks are on vacation, so I’m staying with a friend.”

Gus holds out his cup as the students pile up waiting for the light.

“What really happened?” asks Paperboy.

“Car accident.”

“I remember your parents,” he says. “They treated you like a . . . well, you know.”

“I guess.”

“Did they leave you anything?”

“Not much.”

“That’s tough. What’s next for you now — Africa?”

I shake my head. “I have to finish school first.”

“So where are you staying?” the dog asks.

“With some people who take care of strays.”

“Like the pound?”

“Kind of.”

“Can you get adopted?”

“Probably not. I’m pretty old.”

“So then they put you to sleep.”

“I just age out. Then I’m on my own.”

He nods. “That’s cool. Excuse me.” Paperboy lays his ears back and growls as two or three boys in letterman’s jackets lunge at Gus and pretend to grab at his cup of small change.

Paperboy says, “I’d like to tear their throats out.”

“I know what you mean.”

“You could come with us, Teddy. We’re down by the L.A. River. It’s not bad. Ducks to chase. Place to sleep. Something new every day. Even the voices in Gus’s head are different.”

“I’m okay where I am for now.” I watch Gus rattle his cup. Two ninth-grade girls stop and pet Paperboy, who lets his big red tongue hang out. “Gus shares the money with you, doesn’t he?”

“Most of the time. We do okay. People think he ought to get a job, but with me along, they cut him some slack. He feeds me because I’m his meal ticket.”

Before I can say good-bye and head for school, Paperboy jumps up and puts his paws on my chest. I’m five four and a half and he’s a big dog — wiry-haired and barrel-chested. His muzzle is partly gray, his coat heavy and a little matted.

“Be careful,” he says.

“Well, sure. I’m just going to biology and English.”

“Don’t ‘Well, sure’ me, Teddy. There are lots of crows around. That’s never good.”

I put my nose to his. “I didn’t know you were superstitious.”

“Who’s superstitious? I know what I know.”

On my way to Mr. Fowler’s class, I pass Valerie Wynne, Pamela Choi, and Robin Hollander, the power brokers of tenth grade. (Megan is in eleventh. Astin’s going to graduate.) Valerie, Pamela, and Robin are, as my art teacher used to say, at the center of the painting. The rest of us — the stoner with the ring in her nose, the boy with the droopy Mohawk, the girl in the wheelchair — are just background. We might as well be trees and clouds.

If Valerie decides that a new teacher is okay, then everybody can like him and answer questions in class. If Pamela hates him, though, everybody has to hate him or be uncool to the ninth power. Like I care. I enrolled here already uncool to the ninth power.

I watch them stand there, preen, and rant. They are the kind of girls Megan was talking about that first day I met her and Astin outside the cafeteria: too cool to phone. I wonder if they’ve got a whole different set of sense organs or just a different way of processing sensory data, like elephants and their infrasonic sound waves or dolphins and their sonar.

I’ll probably never know. They are like a whole other species.

Mr. Fowler is my biology teacher. He’s big and bald and can’t shut up about himself. He worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. And then guess what? He got real sick and had to be flown to the City of Hope, just outside Los Angeles.

When he got well, he stayed in L.A. and presto, changed someone into Mrs. Fowler. Then had some little Fowlers. On his desk is a picture of his wife and two kids and a cat in sunglasses. My mother hated stuff like that. She thought it was disrespectful, and I actually kind of agree. Animals don’t like it; they just put up with it.

The other day Mr. Fowler whirled around, raised both arms, and hissed, “Creatures with wings.” Today he turns the lights off, punches a button, and up there on the screen is a bacterium as big as a Volkswagen.

E. coli
stares like it’s daring everybody to eat the mayonnaise. Mr. Fowler lectures. I watch the motes of light in a shaft of sun. “And in order to survive,” he says, “it’s completely adaptable.”

Well, I’m at least as smart as Mr. Coli. I mean, I thought I’d never get used to that attic and I kind of have, and I wondered if I’d ever get along with C.W. or Astin and I kind of do.

When I get to my English class, there’s chaos. Somehow a bird flew in from the Pit, across the cafeteria, down a long hall, and finally in here. Girls are screaming, and boys swat at it with their books. It throws itself against the window until I get close. Then it sinks to the sill and waits for me to walk over and pick it up.

I tell Mr. Sterling, “I’ll just take it outside.”

“Thank you, Teddy. I’ll try and restore some order in here.”

A sparrow is the best hall pass ever. I just say that Mr. Sterling told me to set it free.

When I get back, it’s business as usual. My English teacher is also the yearbook adviser. And because it’s spring, someone from his staff is always popping in between classes with a question that just can’t wait or a sample from the layout table.

Right on the floor beside my desk is a page with captions but no photographs: Cutest Couple, Pest, Drama Queen, Work in Progress. That kind of thing.

Somebody took a digital picture of me for the yearbook, but what are they going to say underneath — Unknown White Male? I wouldn’t mind coming back here for a tenth reunion, though, lean and tanned, full of stories about bringing back another endangered species from the brink of extinction. Or maybe just with a job that isn’t in a pet store.

Today is Presentation Day for term projects. I don’t have to do that, thank God. I started so late that all I need is an extra essay.

First, Shimon Calabrese unveils his model of the Globe Theatre, which is mostly made from dry spaghetti.

“Shimon, why pasta?” asks Mr. Sterling.

“My mom’s on a diet.”

But he’s got a laptop, too, so we get a virtual tour of the Globe and some portraits of Shakespeare, Edward de Vere, Francis Bacon, and Christopher Marlowe — the four contenders for the title of True Bard.

Marlowe is the long shot since he was stabbed to death in a brawl before some of the plays were even written. But one theory is that his death might have been faked so he could go on writing.

I was so miserable in my other school that I fantasized about faking my death, then finding a veterinarian who takes care of exotic animals and offering to work for nothing. I’d put in twelve-hour days. I’d sleep on the floor.

I even thought of going to my own funeral, standing on a hill and looking down at the four or five people — or maybe just my parents and about eleven dogs — gathered around the grave with its empty casket.

Muriel Wegman is next. When she stands up, everyone stares at the diamond stud in her belly button. All the guys do, anyway.

She draws the blinds, turns off the fluorescent overheads, and lights a candle. Then she dons a black papier-mâché mask complete with beak and proceeds to recite “The Raven.”

The mask is pretty good except for the acoustics: “Ones a pond uh midnigh dearie, wile ah bondered, weeg un wery . . .” Poe with a cold.

I know some real ravens who live up by Santa Mira. They liked to fly along beside me when I went on hikes by myself. They liked to hear stories about themselves: the Norse god Odin had two ravens who helped him keep an eye on the world, and grouchy old Apollo turned ravens from white to black because one told him something he didn’t want to hear.

My superstitious mother believed that a raven with a red thread in its mouth meant there was going to be a fire, but more than once while I was microwaving a pizza for my dinner, I saw her spend an hour feeding baby ravens beef heart, oatmeal, and egg yolk.

When Muriel is finished (“Shelby livdud — devor-boor!”), we all applaud politely.

Mr. Sterling calls her name and Megan, who’s been sitting by the window wearing some kind of long dress, stands up, pads to the candle, and blows it out. Then she unbuttons the dress and takes it off.

That makes the athletes sit up. It’s not totally dark. Light seeps in around the blinds and from under the door.

I watch her drag a desk-size theater (proscenium, wings, apron, curtain) and set it up where Mr. Sterling usually sits.

Once, in my other school, an English teacher took us to a matinee at the Mark Taper Forum in downtown Los Angeles. There wasn’t a curtain, so between scenes people in black glided out from the wings to carry off the flowers, push the couch back and turn it into a bed, and generally get things ready for Act Two.