A Certain October Read online

  Sometimes I’d like to find a quiet place in the woods—except there would be bears. And if there are bears in the woods not just content to take your picnic basket and be happy, then you’d have to have guns out there too. A few rounds shot in the air hopefully would scare a picniceating bear away.

  But I live in a good neighborhood. I wouldn’t say safe, ’cause you could seriously get run over by somebody in an SUV late for something. And there’s always the fear of candy-selling kids coming to the door while their parents wait at the end of the yard waving and smiling at you to buy their kids’ candy so they don’t have to make their coworkers do it.

  Anyway—if we hadn’t fallen asleep on Falcone’s couch watching a dumb reality show I would never have had to think about any of this.

  I wake up to Misha drooling and Falcone on his cell and it’s pitch dark outside. I was supposed to be home two hours ago. We’d been talking about going to see Gina, then I’d eaten something with noodles and cream of mushroom soup that put me in a coma.

  “You two up? It’s getting late. I’d give you a ride if Papi was home. Let me walk you.”

  We say . . . “And who’s gonna walk you back?”

  Falcone looks insulted.

  Damn—boys and their egos.

  So we walk. Falcone lives about fifteen blocks from my house. Misha lives eight blocks past my house. Once you walk out of the side streets with the family homes, you know you’re in the city. (We could stay on the side streets but what fun is that? Dogs barking and people putting their recycling out—boring as hell.) So we all walk past the bodegas, bars, fast food, and we’ve gotten about two blocks when a cruiser flashes its lights and a siren. Then we hear the loudspeaker tell us to stop.

  Misha yells, “Awww hell, mutha, no!”

  Jacks. Misha’s cop aunt. Well—one of them. And here we are on a school night walking in the dark. Falcone, Misha, and I grab hands, step into the headlights, and smile. Jacks gets out of the car. She’s almost six feet tall and wears a plait twisted around her head. She spots us with her flashlight and shakes her head.

  “Get in.”

  We do. And just as we close the door and Jacks closes hers and starts to rant at us about being out—a report comes in over the radio and Jacks takes off.

  The difference between the quiet neighborhood Falcone lives in and the quiet neighborhood I live in is about fifteen blocks. But in between for about seven blocks—Dodge.

  We pull up to a bodega and Jacks calmly tells us not to even think about moving. How can we? We’re in the back of a cop car.

  She’s walking up to the front door of the convenience store with her hand on her holster when a man runs out yelling. I don’t know if it’s at her or the world. But he’s got a little girl about five or six with him and is carrying a golf club, swinging it. Falcone, Misha, and I are pressed against the back passenger window, watching. Jacks yells at him to put the golf club down, he doesn’t, she tells him again, he doesn’t. She tells the man to send the little girl over to her; he doesn’t do that either. The little girl presses herself against the garbage can by the door of the bodega.

  Jacks Tasers the man. The golf club flies back and hits the window of the bodega and a gun falls out of his jacket.

  Misha says—“He got off lucky. I just ate her kiwifruit and she lectured me for an hour. I’d have preferred the shock; it’s over quicker.”

  THE LITTLE GIRL WEARS A Winnie the Pooh sweatshirt, pink sweatpants, and high-top tennis shoes that light up. By the time the man has stopped twitching on the sidewalk, there’s two more cruisers with flashing lights and loud radios.

  Jacks carries the kid towards the cruiser. The little girl looks like she’s in a dream. Then Jacks opens the cruiser’s driver’s door, reaches underneath her seat, and pulls out a bag. She opens it and lets the little girl reach in it to pull out a stuffed pink pig. Then she and Jacks lean against the cruiser, waiting.

  Three nights ago I got taken home in a cop car. You never know when you won’t just come home at all, I guess.

  What would Anna Karenina do? Probably plot some sort of drama not to be found out—but I’m too tired. I really need to get on with that book report.

  WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE THE TRAIN . . .

  I sometimes wonder if everything happened because I can’t drive. I’ve only been trying for a couple of months, but I’m telling anybody who’ll listen—I can’t drive. And even though Matt from North Coast Driving School is a good teacher—he taught Falcone and Misha (at the same time)—I actually made the man cry. He’d never admit it and he was wearing dark glasses, but I saw the tear running down his face.

  It wasn’t sweat, either. My dad sweats when I drive with him. I think Matt from North Coast was frustrated with me and didn’t know what to do. He secretly knew I was hopeless. That’s something they won’t cop to. Laura says most driving schools take pride in the fact that they can teach anybody to deal with a car.

  Well, they can’t. And normally none of this would bother me. I mean, I’m not one of those people who dreamed of a car sitting out in the driveway for my sixteenth birthday. I never dreamed of driving down the highway, CD player blasting out whatever . . . I’ve only ever wanted to drive so I could drive fast in reverse. That’s all I ever wanted to do.

  There’s this picture of my mom sitting in a car waving to my dad—who was taking the picture. What the picture doesn’t show is that she’d just scared about five years out of him a few seconds earlier by driving them both in reverse for two blocks through alleys. And she wasn’t going slow, either.

  I like the way my mom’s laughing in the picture. I can’t remember what she sounded like in real life, but I like the way her head is thrown back. She looks like she’s laughing her head off. Dad said she was laughing her head off—at him. She’d scared him in the alley. He couldn’t believe how fast she could drive backwards.

  When I was ten he framed the photo for me. It sits on my bedside table. I’ve been wanting to drive backwards ever since. But try telling that to Matt from North Coast Driving School, who only wants to teach me how to stay on the road, obey signs, stop at the right times, not speed, and finish the course as a responsible driver. Sooooo . . . It’s hard for me to stay on the road because they don’t make cars skinny enough—I think. It’s all right if you have a Mini Cooper, but normal cars are just a little too wide. The manufacturers need to do something about it.

  The sign-obeying is just plain hard. STOP, CHILDREN AT PLAY, MERGE, ROUGH SHOULDER (okay, I didn’t get what that meant at first—but totally knew there probably weren’t people standing around near the road putting lotion on their shoulders). None of this made me want to drive, but all of it made me want to just drive backwards.

  So I’m keeping my bus pass and will just get used to walking a few blocks to catch the Rapid like I always have. Mass transit is good for the planet. It’s also good for anybody who might have to be on the road when I’m driving. So I’m thinking about not being a driver. It’s a way big decision to make before you’re sixteen years old—but hey. Maybe I’ll change my mind.

  I decide to talk to Falcone about it. He’s sitting with Jason, DJ, and Kris. I’d like to say I’ve forgiven Kris. Well—I’d like to say that, but it would be a big-assed lie.

  I sit down beside him and pretend he’s not there.

  Falcone eats pizza and says, “Want some, Scotty?” when he sees I’m not eating anything. “There’s not any tofu anywhere on the crust.”

  Jason, DJ, and Kris look at Falcone, then me.

  “What tofu?” Kris says. “Where?”

  “There isn’t any,” I say.

  Kris gets all confused like the conversation has suddenly been dubbed in French and the subtitles are gone.

  Falcone eats more pizza and with his mouth full says, “No tofu today, dude.”

  But now Kris is confused and a little bit scared.

  “Yo, I eat in this cafeteria every day and they have never and I repeat never served tofu here
.”

  I guess since I’ve had that bald-headed gum thing hate going on for Kris all these years I’ve never really sat back and looked at him. A lot of girls would think he was hot. Pretty brown eyes, tall, works on the school paper. And he tries to be nice to me even though I psychopathically love to carry grudges and won’t give him a chance to get too close to me. I still fear hidden gum.

  And now he claims to not know he’s been eating tofu (cleverly disguised as everything) in his beloved school lunches. But this pizza has real porky pig on it.

  Now a good person would just drop it. You know, people have food issues. Some food issues will never be fixed. Misha can’t eat mushrooms because of the texture, my dad can’t eat cranberry sauce because he was frightened by a beet thinking it was a slice of cranberry sauce when he was Keone’s age at Thanksgiving, and, well—we all know Keone’s thing. It shouldn’t be allowed to be called food unless it’s a cookie.

  This is going to be too easy. Wrong, but easy.

  I could now avenge myself for months of people in stores saying, “What a cute little boy.” Or whispering when I had a skirt or dress on, “Is that little boy dressed as a girl?”

  It’s funny. All I sat down to do was tell Falcone my driving days would be over and when the bus or trains weren’t running he’d have to be my ride for life. Now this wonderful opportunity has presented itself.

  I smile at Kris—you know, like the Grinch.

  Falcone, DJ, and Jason shake their heads at me and start talking about algebra. Kris knows something is up, then. His eyes get all wide and he’s looking at his slice like it might attack him. He even pushes it away from him a little. I am seconds from the you’ve-been-eating-tofu-instead-of-(everything) attack when he says, “I guess I need to grow up. If they’ve made some of the meals out of tofu—I ate ’em. What’s the big deal, huh?”

  Then Kris smiles at me and asks if I want to join the school paper.

  Life’s like that. You go along plotting (even with only a minute lead time), hoping, and there it is—plans destroyed. So I decide to spend the rest of my lunchtime up in the earth science room where Ms. Bridges meets with the Greenpeace kids.

  There’s only about six of them, but I sit in the back of the room and listen as they talk about saving the oceans, and whatever comes with that. I have mad respect for anybody trying to protect the world from the worst of us.

  But I’m still trying to navigate the streets of East Cleveland without ever having a license. I have to take Keone to the pediatrician today. I think we’ll take the train.

  PART 3

  If I Could Tell

  What I Wanted

  IT’S LIKE ALMOST EVERY MOVIE YOU’VE EVER SEEN when someone who’s been involved in some kind of horrible crime, personal tragedy, or catastrophe shows up. The people part like biblical waters. (At least I think that’s what happened.) I spent one summer going to Sunday school with Troy Waters because we always went for ice cream with her parents afterwards.

  I got a cavity and no real information that summer ’cause I was too busy coloring the apostles and trying to stay within the lines. I loved the rainbow stickers the Sunday school teacher gave me.

  So now I’ve had four days of looking out the window and going to visit Keone, who’s in a coma. I hate the way the doctors keep saying his brain is just taking a vacation. How the hell do they know it hasn’t just moved out of the country and is never coming back? After all, it is Keone’s already complicated beautiful brain. This doesn’t make anything easier. Vacation my ass.

  I got off easy with just a severe deep bruising on my right knee and leg, basic body aches, and almost no memory of the train crash. Two other kids who had been on the train from our school died. Now walking through the halls is almost like trying to find a seat on the train, except everyone is watching instead of reading, looking out the window, or listening to iPods. People either drop their eyes when they see you coming or smile at you like you could go off at any minute.

  And all anybody wants to ask—but they don’t—is the truth about why Kris and I were on the train together.

  I thought the grief counselors would be gone by the time I got back to school. But I’ve never been that lucky. I never thought that I’d be part of the reason we’d have them in the school anyway. All I had to do was tell him I didn’t need help with Keone. That’s what I should have said. That’s all I had to say.

  Coulda, shoulda . . .

  Misha and Falcone show up at the end of each of my classes and walk me through the crowds. By the middle of the day teachers are letting me out five minutes before class breaks so I don’t have to walk through the sea of faces and they don’t have to see mine. By the end of the day I don’t think I remember anything anybody said to me. I just remember that at two o’clock Falcone’s ex-boyfriend Nick showed up at my locker, took my backpack and me by the hand, and drove me home.

  He played baroque music on a CD and didn’t try to talk to me.

  I love him and I wish he and Falcone would get back together.

  “You’re home now.”

  Nick walks me into the house and gets me situated on the couch. Laura texted me that her and Dad would be at the hospital. I watch Nick go in the kitchen to make me some tea. His hair is blond and burgundy this week. I used to wear his clothes—we’re the same size. He laughs when nobody else laughs, goes camping (which I don’t get), and used to love Falcone. Me and Misha had to basically give him up in the divorce. Not totally, but mostly.

  “This is good and hot.”

  “I remember you used to say that about someone I know.”

  He shakes his head. “Give it up, Scotts. That boat sailed, sank, and got towed.”

  “But . . .”

  “No. It ain’t going to happen.”

  He sits down next to me and I curl up next to him.

  “Nicky, it’s hard being a child of your divorce and probably the reason somebody is dead.”

  Nick raises my head with his hand and looks at me and smiles.

  “Life bites, baby girl.”

  “. . . and sucks.”

  Amen.

  I KEEP READING ANNA KARENINA AND DREAMING that my ten-page report on her will magically appear on my laptop tonight. It hasn’t happened.

  If it had been a perfect fall it would have been about homecoming—whining about homecoming, trying to make money for homecoming. And in my case ignoring the fact that I need to get a dress for homecoming. The pressure is off about a date ’cause we are going as a group; at least I think I might still be going.

  But now I just keep reading Anna Karenina and taking long walks, limping through the neighborhood and watching the neighbor’s lives.

  Mr. Sifuentes got hair plugs.

  Ms. Rankin’s terrier is still a yapper.

  Is Mr. Sutley getting taller and younger? I’m thinking vampire.

  If Mrs. Jacobs puts any more lawn ornaments out, one of her loved ones should have her committed.

  I’m loving Anna, but just got to the railroad tragedy and had to put the book down. . . .

  I keep walking and thinking how Falcone misses his sister. She’s been gone for ten years and he’s only seen her nine times. Gina always visits Falcone and his dad on Father’s Day. This year Falcone’s birthday fell on Father’s Day—but this was the first time in ten years Gina didn’t show.

  On all the holidays she goes to her husband’s family. So on Easter, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas she never eats the food Mr. Alguero bakes, grills, or roasts.

  For Mr. Alguero, food is love. Gina is missing the love.

  She never gets to hang out with Falcone and the rest of us as our music pounds all over the neighborhood.

  Now my family invites the Algueros over. Misha and her four hundred and fifty aunts invite them over too for card playing in their backyard, eating way too much, and—if it’s a year that Misha’s aunt Jacks made wine—line-dancing and playing drunken volleyball until people crawl
home exhausted and happy.

  When Gina didn’t come home this past summer she sent Falcone an e-mail. She never calls. I don’t even think she has a cell phone. That makes Falcone’s dad crazy. He worries she’ll be on the road broken down somewhere and won’t be able to call a tow.

  What he doesn’t know is that besides coming to visit them once a year, Gina doesn’t drive anywhere else. The car she brings to visit is always a rental. She doesn’t have her own car in Cincinnati and she’s never allowed to drive her creep husband’s unless he’s in it. She told Falcone and made him promise not to tell their father. I have a feeling there’s a whole lot of things Gina is keeping from Falcone, too.

  I miss her. I shouldn’t because I was only five when she packed up her beautiful clothes, got in her blue Sunbird, and took off to college. I shouldn’t even remember that much about her—but there are pictures and videos she took with us.

  Instead of coming back home for Thanksgiving the year she left for college, she sent Mr. Alguero and Falcone a picture of her standing beside a fountain in a lace dress with a man who looked like one of the models I always draw eating french fries. And then she was gone—except one visit a year and three e-mails a month to her father and brother.

  It’s like the laughing, lavender-scented, scarf-wearing girl who held me till I cried myself to sleep disappeared into a mist four and a half hours away. But the one thing we always knew was nobody was supposed to visit Gina. In her e-mails she’d say her husband Aaron didn’t like company.

  Well none of us like him.

  We only met him once. Mr. Alguero said Aaron had a look on his face that made you think he smelled something bad.

  All I could think was bad karma was all around him.

  Misha thought he could use a good shake.

  Falcone never says a word.

  Anna K.’s been sitting on my lap this whole time and I’m hoping it’s filled with the truth about love and other disasters.