Weird Girl and What's His Name (12 page)

“Hey, Trace, can I ask you a personal question?”

“Shoot.”

“What made you decide to live with your dad? Instead of your mom.”

“Easy.” Tracy picked at a stray pepperoni. “He gives a damn about me. My dad always supported me, whether it was Drama Camp or the college I chose. Even all his crazy business about keeping me away from computers and cell phone radiation and stuff is just him trying to take care of me. All my mom cares about is herself and what she wants. When she ran off with that car salesman, I was like, forget it. Back in the day, you married this guy. My dad. You took vows. And now you're just gonna break 'em for Mr. BMW of Akron? No way. My dad may be kinda crazy, but he's for real.”

“Huh.” It had never even occurred to me to go looking for my father. I mean, I knew a lot of kids in school who either lived with their mom, like Rory did, or lived with their mom and stepdad. Tracy was one of the few friends I had with divorced parents who actually chose to live with her dad and he let her. Come to think of it, I hardly knew anybody who lived with their real mom and dad in a regular
Leave It to Beaver-type
situation. And, except for my mom, it's always the dad who leaves.

“Are you gonna try and find him, too?” Tracy asked.

“My dad?”

“Yeah.”

“I dunno. I never really thought about it,” I confessed. “I know even less about him than I do my mom. Janet only met him once, when she and Leo went out to LA to visit my mom. She said he seemed like such a nice guy, she couldn't figure out what happened. But . . . I guess I figured, even if I found him, why would he care? Guys are always walking out on their kids. It's what they do. Dads bail. Why should mine be any different?”

“My dad didn't bail. He fought hard to get custody of me,” Tracy said.

“Well.” I shrugged. “Mine didn't.”

four

J
ANET AND
L
EO WERE GONE TO
Tango Night at the Y, and I was in the kitchen, heating up leftovers, when Rory called. It was the first time I'd heard from him since the Terrible Birthday, over a month ago.

“Hey,” he said when I picked up. “It's me.”

“It's you,” I said. “What's going on?”

“Is it still Tango Night?”

“Yeah.”

“I was wondering if I could stop by.”

Right then, the microwave went
bing!

“Yeah. Sure,” I told him. “Come on over.”

That was it. He hung up the phone. I made a mad dash upstairs to pick my dirty clothes up off the floor. I took a quick look in the mirror. Yikes. The refresher dye job Jay had given me a couple of weeks ago had already faded to a dull strawberry and my roots were showing, big time. I tried brushing it back, to no avail. Maybe I could raid Janet's closet for a hat. . . .

No time. The doorbell rang. That was
fast.
I raced down the stairs. Took a breath. Opened the door. Rory.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” he replied. He wasn't smiling. He was wearing a Fighting Eagles sweatshirt, and his hair was damp and flowery-smelling. He must've just gotten out of the shower. I felt even more self-conscious about my hair.

“I'm guessing you're not just here to build a tower of furniture,” I said, quoting one of his favorite episodes of
The X-Files.
He didn't even crack a smile. Uh-oh. This was not good.

“I just wanted to give this back to you.” Rory had something in his hand. He held it out to me. My mother's backpack.

“Where did you get that?” I'd lost it somewhere on the trip. I figured I'd left it in Trey's car, or at Tracy's.

“They found it at the Flying J. The cops did. After you disappeared.”

“Oh.” I took the backpack. It seemed like something from another age. In a way, it was.

“You know, I didn't mean for it to get so crazy down here,” I told him, forcing a chuckle. “I mean, I figured they'd just think I ran away, and . . .” I shrugged. “I didn't know they were gonna bring in the police.”

“Huh.” Rory jammed his fists into his sweatshirt pockets. “Well, that's what happens when somebody disappears without a trace. Police get called in. People freak out.”

“Honestly. I thought Trey was on his way back down here. He was supposed to tell Janet and Leo that I was okay.” I didn't know why I was going into all this again. I had already tried explaining myself on the phone and in an email. Little did I know, Trey never made it back to Hawthorne. According to the story I heard later, he took my forty dollars, drove to Princeton, and hooked up with some of his old druggie friends. Halfway to California on a stoned pilgrimage to find the Divine Burt Reynolds, his car broke down. After the drugs wore off, he spent the rest of the summer with his second cousin, working the Greyson Hot Dog stand at Kauffman Stadium, home of the Kansas City Royals.

“Yeah, that guy was reliable,” Rory concluded.

So both of us were standing there, not saying anything.

“You wanna hang out for a while?” I asked. “I was just heating up leftovers.”

“No, thanks. I just figured you'd want that.” Rory turned to go.

“Hey, Rory!” I called after him. He stopped. He didn't turn around. “Come on. Don't be like that. I'm not mad at you anymore. So why be mad at me?”

“You're
not mad? Why were you even mad at me in the first place?” Rory turned around.

“Why was I even—” I threw up my hands. “Because you lied to me! And you were mean to me about it. Do you even recall standing on your front porch, telling me to fuck off and stop playing Mulder and Scully?”

Rory was silent, staring at the ground.

“You were acting so weird and secretive and I didn't know what was going on with you. I was worried about you! And you were running around behind my back for who knows how long—”

“Six months,” Rory said softly.

“Six months!” Six months! Half a year! “Geez, Theodore, I knew I was behind the times, but I—”

“You know, Lula,” he interrupted. “Unbelievable as it may seem, not everything in the world revolves around you.”

“But we—” I stopped.
We were best friends.
Rory looked hard at me, his brow furrowed.

“I didn't tell you about Andy and me because I was afraid you wouldn't understand. And I was right. Were you upset because I didn't tell you, or because you finally had to deal with the fact that I was never going to ‘go straight' for you?”

Ouch, right in the heart. I opened my mouth, but I had no comeback at the ready.

“Forget it,” Rory said, turning away. “Enjoy your leftovers.”

He walked off into the night. I went back inside. In the kitchen, I took my plate out of the microwave. I scraped all the food into the trash and went to bed without wanting anything.

R
ORY KEPT EMAILING ME AFTER
I left Hawthorne, but it was a while before I read anything he wrote. Mostly because I was still upset with him over lying to me. Upset over the fight we'd had. And, anyway, I was too busy working to deal with Rory Drama. I needed more money to make the trip to my mom's. I made up a minor lie and told Tracy's dad that I'd already graduated and was taking a gap year, traveling around and experiencing life, so he wouldn't get weird about me not being in school. (Tracy told me I was on my own with that one.) He offered to pay me to run errands for him, make copies at Kinko's, staple pamphlets, and make fundraising calls for this project he was working on called—get this
—The Campaign to Arrest Dick Cheney for War Crimes.
(I'm still not sure how anyone could arrest the Vice President, even if they wanted to, but Mr. Perry was quite adamant that someone should. I did mention that his office looked like the Lone Gunmen's hideout, right?)

When I finally convinced Mr. Perry that the leaflets could benefit from a more streamlined design and it wouldn't kill us to use a computer just this once, I got online and took a peek at my inbox. I saw all of Rory's messages, but I left them unopened. What did he care if I gave him the silent treatment, anyway? Let him go frolic in the woods with his boyfriend, or whatever they do. Actually, the boyfriend was probably too old to frolic. He could break a hip.

I really did feel bad about Janet and Leo, though. I knew they'd be worried even if Trey the lawn hippie had told them that he'd taken me to stay with Tracy and I was okay. But I was afraid that if I actually called them, they'd drag me home before I even had a chance to find my mom. And, truthfully, as much as I love Leo, he does have his nuclear moods. I just needed more time. Okay, let's be honest—I was more than a little bit scared. Scared of Leo, but also scared of the trip I was about to take. It seemed too sudden, even after all this time. To show up at my mother's door. Just like that.

Then, one day, about three weeks after I'd left, I decided to finally read Rory's emails. And I immediately felt like a massive jerk. Everybody was freaking out in Hawthorne. The cops were involved and everything. I figured out that either Trey never made it back, or they didn't believe him, because they all thought I'd been abducted or something. And, I mean, I got it. To me, being out on my own, exploring a new city and everything, it felt like I'd barely been gone at all. But to my grandparents, just sitting around the house, waiting to hear from me, it probably felt like I'd been gone forever. I knew I really needed to call Janet and Leo now, but I was even more scared than before. And, to top it all off, my mom actually showed up in Hawthorne. By the time I read the emails, though, she had just left to go back to Santa Fe. I couldn't believe that Rory had met my mother, and I still hadn't seen her since I was a toddler. It made me more determined than ever to make the trip.

So, while it was a lot of fun eating Ethiopian takeout and listening to Tracy's dad rattle off all his theories about how the growth hormones in milk are turning us into a nation of supersized freaks, or how all the lore about aliens crash-landing at Roswell was just Cold War propaganda to make the Soviets think we were using ET technology, I knew I had to get a move on. And in another week's time, after half the DC phone book had hung up on me, and I'd folded so many Dick Cheney pamphlets that I was folding Dick Cheney pamphlets in my dreams, I had enough money to buy myself a one-way train ticket from Washington, DC to Santa Fe, New Mexico. I promised Tracy and Mr. Perry that I'd write, and I headed west, into the sunset, toward what I thought might be home.

five

I
WAS DOWNSTAIRS WATCHING A MOVIE
with Janet and Leo.
Hud,
the story of these cowboys on a ranch in Texas who . . . uh . . . have some cows or something. I wasn't really following it, to tell you the truth. Well, except for all the innuendo-y stuff between Paul Newman and Patricia Neal. Talk about UST—Mulder and Scully had nothing on those two. But, really, the fact of it was, I didn't want to sit in my room alone.

“So, what does your friend Jane study?” Janet asked me.

“Jay. Like the bird. Psychology, but she's also an artist.”

“Oh, really? What kind of art? Painting, sculpture?”

“Painting and drawing, mostly. Although she has one of those pot-throwing things, out on her back porch.”

“Oh, I always wanted to try that,” Janet exclaimed. “What do you call those pot-throwing things? Leo, honey? Do you know?”

“You know,” Leo growled. “Somebody in this room is actually watching this movie.”

“Tsk.” Janet patted Leo's arm. “Well, whatever it's called, it's nice that you've made friends at your new school. You should invite her over for dinner. I bet she doesn't get much home cooking.”

“I'll ask her. Thanks.” My attention was back on the TV. Leo was right; the movie was getting kind of interesting. How the strict grandfather wouldn't tell the boy, Lonnie, why he was so mad at Hud. And Hud seemed like such a cool guy, even if he was a total womanizer. Wonder what his big secret was. The silvery Texas clouds moved across the hi-def TV screen, and I thought about Santa Fe.

“It's called a potter's wheel,” Leo muttered as the scene ended, fading to black.

After all those years of endlessly typing her name into every Internet search engine ever invented, finally, all I had to do was take a cab from the train station to my mother's address, written on the back of a Dick Cheney flyer. As the cab bumped along, I took in my new surroundings. I couldn't get over how everything in Santa Fe actually looked like all those cheapo art prints of the southwest that you see at Bed Bath & Beyond. With the blue windows and chiles hanging up on strings and everything.

It was weird how suddenly not-nervous I was, walking out to my mother's house. My. Mother's. House. This was huge. I hadn't even seen her since I was three.

There was a long driveway that went up a hill, fenced on either side. There were horses in the fields. The air smelled like woodsmoke and some kind of sweet, piney flower. I knocked like they were expecting me. Some old guy answered the door, and I felt a flash of panic—did I have the wrong address somehow? I mean, my mother was forty-three now. But this guy was practically Leo's age. His hair was totally gray and his face was tanned and creased. He looked like the Marlboro Man.

“You must be the daughter.” He didn't even say hello.

“Um. Yeah. Lula.”

“Lula. I'm Walter. The husband.” His voice sounded like a growl. “Well, come on inside. Your mother'll be home late.”

I walked into my mother's house, closing the door behind me. It was clean and cool. It smelled like bread baking. I followed Walter into the kitchen.

“You hungry?” Walter opened the oven door and grabbed a frayed blue dishtowel. He slid the top rack out and, sure enough, there was a loaf of bread sitting there. He folded the dishtowel in his hand and took the bread out of the oven, sat it on a painted tile on the kitchen counter. Before I could answer, he gave me a stern look.

“Now, right off the bat, I ought to tell you.” He slapped the dishtowel against the counter. “I'm not your father. I met him once. But I'm not him. Maybe you already knew that. But . . . in case you didn't.”

“No, I, uh—” Okay, pause, please. My brain was already exploding. First of all, who
was
this guy? Second of all, this guy knew my father? “I don't know anything about him.”

“He was an actor. Friend of your mom's. I reckon she can, ah. Tell you more about him than I can.”

“But, um—” Work, brain, work! “He's an actor? My father?”

“Not anymore. Last I heard, he's a teacher. Lives in Nashville, Tennessee.”

“Oh.” Huh?

“That's how your mother and I met, you know. Movies. I train picture horses. She was a set PA.” He waved his hand. “These things, uh. Things happen.”

“Oh,” I said again. What was I supposed to say to all this? I was so completely floored, I was practically lightheaded.

“But it wasn't my idea for her to leave you.” Walter looked me square in the eye. I was suddenly afraid to move. “Let's get that out of the way up front. I told her she could move you out here any old time she wanted. I still tell her, every year at Christmas, why don't you invite that little girl of yours to come on out here? But she's got her ways and I've got mine and we both learned a long time ago when to push and when to pull. You understand?”

“I . . .” I felt myself nodding, but I don't think I understood anything anymore.

“Well, I figured I'd . . . clear up any confusion you may have. Your mom could tell you more about him. Your father, I mean. Anyway.” Walter coughed. “Go on ahead and make yourself at home. I've got a sick filly I gotta check on before it gets too dark. You can take that spare room down at the end of the hall, on the right. Bathroom's on the left, if you want to wash up before dinner.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Walter nodded at me, like if he'd been wearing a cowboy hat he would've tipped it. Was this guy for real?

“And eat that bread while it's hot. There's butter and jam in the fridge,” he called out as he walked outside, the door banging behind him.

I sat down for a minute on one of the barstools at the kitchen counter. Feeling dazed. Feeling totally knocked out by this new idea of a parallel life, completely away from not only the real one I'd been leading with Janet and Leo, but the one I'd always imagined, living in New York City with my mom, hanging out backstage at her plays, riding the subways together. Now here was a third option, a new existence in Santa Fe. And Walter was the one who wanted me there. This wasn't going to be like the kids I knew who hated their step-dads and had big fights all the time, threatening to move out. We could be a happy family.

Or a family, at least. I was still nervous about the happy part. Because, well, let's face it. My mother had never taken Walter up on his offer. What if she walked in the door, took one look at me, and walked right back out?

I
MEAN, IT WAS STILL JUST
weird. Leo sitting there in silence, swirling his scotch on the rocks around in its glass, while Janet chatted away. When I first came back to Hawthorne, I probably spent a solid month apologizing to them. Feeling genuinely sorry for how much I made them worry about me. I did every chore I could think to do: the laundry, the ironing, washing the dishes by hand. But Leo still wasn't talking to me. And Janet couldn't stop talking. Heaping pierogies onto my plate and asking me about my new college classes. Making this painfully obvious attempt at pretending that everything was totally normal when it wasn't, not quite. Normally I loved Janet's pierogies, but that night, they were just gumming up in my mouth like those wax lips you get on Halloween. The whole night had this melancholy in the air. It was getting cool and it would be autumn soon. I was missing someone or something or someplace, but I didn't know who or what or where. I felt a million miles away from Santa Fe. A million miles away from Janet and Leo, too, even though they were sitting on either side of me. Then I realized what it was. It had snuck up on me completely. It was Friday. The night Rory and I used to get together and watch
The X-Files.

Rory. Rory. Rory. I'd started writing him a letter, but I could never work up the nerve to print it out and put it in the mail. Did he have any idea how much I missed him? How sorry I was? Did he care?

“Do you guys mind if I turn in early?” I swallowed my mouthful of pierogi mush. “Been kind of a long week.”

“Are you sure you don't want dessert?” Janet asked. “I got Neapolitan and Magic Shell. Your favorite.”

“I know.” God, I felt awful. Magic Shell was my favorite when I was, like, four. Janet killed me sometimes. “Maybe I'll come down later and have some.”

“You know we're always open for midnight snacks. Come here, you.” I bent down and Janet smooched my cheek. I patted Leo's arm as I passed. He didn't say a word.

It was ten to nine. Back in the day, Rory would be making his place on the floor, propping himself up on pillows, and I'd be setting up the DVD player. The room was so quiet now. I could hear the train far off outside, a low, ghostly whistle. I looked at my solid row of
X-Files
DVDs and I turned on the computer instead. Maybe my fellow Philes at the Friday Night Live Chat would make the melancholy go away.

But first, a quick check of the email. And, I'm not kidding—right then, a split second after I'd opened my inbox, a new email popped up. And it was from Rory. The subject heading was
Season Five, Episode 20: The End.
The body of the email was just one line:
wrote this last spring. just rewrote the ending now.

There was a file attached. This was weird. If he was sending me his latest entry for the
Guide,
he was a good season ahead.

I opened the file. Good gravy, it was almost five pages long. Rory started his review by explaining how “The End” was the final, cliffhanger episode of the fifth season, the last episode before the summer when the first
X-Files
movie came out. Then, the usual plot summary—after a six-year-old chess prodigy narrowly escapes assassination, Mulder and Scully get involved and find out that the boy's a psychic. And he's psychic because he has alien DNA. So of course the Cigarette-Smoking Man and the rest of the Syndicate are after him. But, worst of all, Mulder and Scully are joined on the case by the mysterious Agent Diana Fowley. As the episode goes on, things get botched, the assassin gets assassinated, Mulder gets blamed and almost creates an international incident, and the whole X-Files might end up getting shut down. But that's nothing compared to how Fowley wedges herself between our beloved Mulder and Scully. Or, as Rory put it: