The Green Man Page 22

  I think it’s a masterpiece. Especially considering what I had to work with.

  I picked Eminem from an unbiased study of the T-shirts in Mr. Kuyper’s geography class. Two Jennifer Lopez, one U-2, two Bone Thugs’n’ Harmony, three Led Zeppelin (and isn’t that sad?), four Eminem. The Ms. Keating thing I just thought was funny. As for the world problem—oh, excuse me, “the problem in the world”—how am I supposed to pick one? Global warming, poverty, war, torture, nuclear waste disposal, the whole damn government, everybody else’s government. I was sitting next to the trash can, and I had an inch left before the margin, so I settled on “pollution.” If you cross the margin lines on your notebook paper, Ms. G. takes points off. It’s as if we’re figure skaters and she’s the Russian judge.

  I take it back about not being able to write your autobiography at sixteen/seventeen. I just realized I know everything that will happen in Ms. G.’s class on Monday. I’ll pass my homework over Luis Perez’s shoulder, and he’ll make a big deal of reading it and laughing before he passes it up. (I was going to write that I wanted a career as an exotic dancer, but then I remembered Luis. He stifled my creativity.) Piper Amendola will toss back her Pantene Pro-V hair and hand in twenty typed pages with the comment that she found the assignment “really useful and interesting.” Ms. G. will tell the front of the room that they’re all clever and going to heaven or college, whichever comes first, and the back of the room that we don’t seem to be trying.

  And if I know what will happen Monday, why shouldn’t I know what will happen next month, in ten years everything right up to when I die? I can write my whole life story now. But some things are too big a waste of time even for me.

  Monday went as predicted, except I forgot to mention the hangover from Janelle’s birthday party. I knew I’d have one; I just forgot to mention it.

  The party Janelle told her stepmom about was on Saturday. But Sunday we went over to Little Mike’s rec room for the real thing.

  When I was a kid, and I thought about what I’d have when I got my own place, it looked a lot like Little Mike’s. It’s embarrassing to write that. Black-light posters, for godsake. A couple crisscross strings of Christmas lights “for atmosphere” (of what? Trailer-park holiday cheer?). A black vinyl couch that makes fart sounds when you move around on it, no matter what you’re wearing. A red shag carpet that smells like dog pee when you’re close enough—like when you sit on the floor (I only did it once). And the incense, of course. “African Love.” I think he bought it at a truck stop.

  But Mike’s okay. He’s always up for hosting a party, as long as you give him money for the beer. If you want pot, though, you have to bring your own. He doesn’t want to violate his parole. I don’t have the heart to tell him that supplying alcohol to minors has got that covered already.

  I really thought I’d get through Sunday night without a crappy moment. TLC was playing loud on Mike’s stereo, my third beer was in my hand, Janelle was sitting beside me singing along, Barb and Nina were dancing and pretending they didn’t notice the guys watching them.

  Then suddenly, boom. Everything sucked. I have no idea what set it off. Nina was shaking her big butt and her big boobs, and I could tell that in her head she looked like Lisa “Left Eye.” But she really just looked sloppy and sad. Barb’s water bra bounced up and down, and the guys watched like the young males in the herd watch the female who’s going into heat, planning to be first with the most when she’s ready (in this case, after one more beer).

  Suddenly everyone in the room seemed to be on the fast track to pregnancy, jail, or a seasonal job on the line at a fruit packing plant. Including me.

  I looked at Janelle, and she wasn’t singing along anymore. For a second I thought maybe she felt it, too. The crappy mood almost lifted. Then I realized what was actually up with her face, and helped her outside to puke.

  Little Mike’s place is at the edge of town. His backyard is basically miles of sand, rocks, and mesquite. There’s even a Joshua tree right behind the garage, a pretty sickly-looking one (though how can you tell with Joshua trees?) with its two branches twisted like rejects from a grade-school pipe-cleaner project.

  I held Janelle’s hair out of her face while she did the deed. Janelle never just throws up and gets on with her life. It’s a big production number that goes on forever. The motion sensor light over the back door had turned off by the time she got serious about it.

  Janelle sounds like she’s dying when she pukes, so I tried to distract myself, but the desert in the dark doesn’t provide much material. I pretended the tree was a psycho killer with two heads sneaking up on a houseful of naughty, naughty teenagers. A psycho killer with shaggy, spiky hair. Stupid hair. Stupid psycho killer, making your big move on a bad hair day. Don’t you want your picture in the paper?

  Janelle and I became best friends in fifth grade. Actually, we became twins. I stole Mom’s paring knife, and we cut our thumbs and pressed them together in a sacred ritual in Janelle’s garage. We wore the same clothes, loved the same bands, crushed on the same TV stars, had the same opinions—I bet it drove everyone nuts.

  We recruited Barb and Nina to the posse the next year. It was girl heaven. Sleepovers at my house, when my mom would give us manicures at the kitchen table. Parties at Nina’s, whose dad works in the bakery at Costco. Afternoons riding Barb’s uncle’s horses. Saturdays when we’d dress up in clothes Janelle’s stepmom was giving away and pretend we were making a music video.

  It was at Nina’s quinceañera that I first made a joke that Janelle, Barb, and Nina didn’t get. It didn’t happen again for a while, but that was the first one.

  I handed Janelle a couple of tissues and let her swish her mouth out with my beer (then let her keep the bottle). “Thanks, Beth,” she said, “you are the best friend ever. I just really love you.”

  I don’t know why, but the puker/hair-holder relationship generates these feelings of intimacy. It wears off in about an hour, or sooner if you screw it up.

  “Do you ever think that growing up isn’t as good as it was supposed to be?” I said.

  Our moving around had turned the light back on, so we could even see each other. Her face was still blotchy and pale, and the dark liner around her lips was smeared. “What?” she said.

  “When we were little kids, it just felt like we were on this big adventure. Now it’s like we’re on a guided tour of a landfill. Do you know what I mean?”

  She frowned. “If you don’t want to be at my party, you don’t have to stay.”

  “It’s not the party! But don’t you ever feel like there’s something really important out there, that we aren’t getting?” You’d think I’d have learned to cut my losses by now.

  “Oh, God, Beth, I get enough Jesus crap from my step-mom.” She took a big swallow of beer and said, “I’m going back in.”

  Of course, I did, too. Everything was swell. I had another beer, and we were all laughing and happy. Wahoo.

  Here’s what I think I’m having trouble with: this is what happiness is. When I was a kid, I thought I’d just get happier and happier as I got older, and have more things to be happy about. I based this theory on observation of select adults. The problem with my results is that I couldn’t tell the difference then between happy and fake-happy. Now I know you pretend to be just frigging ecstatic over everything, maybe because you’re so glad it’s not worse. Pleased to meet you! means, Thank God you’re not a cop! or, I love this car! means, At least it’s not a ’78 Datsun with bald tires and bad hoses!

  But sometimes I can still have these moments of total happiness. And I feel as if every time I pretend to be happy, I’m scaring that real happiness off.

  I rode my bike home from the party. Randy Nesterhoff offered me a ride, but the car smelled like Southern Comfort from six feet away. I’m stupid, but at least I’m selective about it.

  I don’t know why I’m still writing this shit down. If I wanted to keep a diary, this wouldn’t be the way I’d do it. And f
or sure no one is ever going to see this. Unlike the masterpiece version, which I turned in Monday morning. (Got it back today. C–, with my carefully omitted commas written in, in red. Got to give Ms. G. something to do.)

  Maybe what I’m doing, writing this, is what Piper’s crew do when they’re crammed in front of the girls’ room mirror before first period (and just incidentally, hogging the sinks). “Eeuw, is that a zit?” “Is my hair too straight?” “I just got this lip gloss, is it, like, okay?” I’m holding up these words to my face so I can check myself out. Looking for normal in there somewhere, or even a good sort of abnormal.

  Piper and Co. take that whole “the few, the proud” thing pretty seriously—their folks are officers, so they’re sweetly condescending to the base kids whose fathers are mere grunts, and treat the townies the way the Spanish missionaries treated the Indians. Make yourselves useful and don’t talk back, or we’ll shoot you. I’m pleased to say that Piper hasn’t once figured out a way I can be useful to her.

  Bigots are people who say, “I don’t hate all [fill in the blank] people. Why, some of my best friends are [ditto].” I’m proud to say I’m not a bigot. None of my friends are kids from the base.

  As far as I know, the only good thing that ever came off that base was Steve. Mom dated him (“dated” meaning “slept with”) for nine months, when I was twelve/thirteen. He didn’t treat me like an adult, exactly. It was more that I was a real person to him, not someone he had to impress on the way to impressing Mom. He figured out that I really wanted a mountain bike, and gave it to me for my birthday.

  Then he got transferred. I didn’t find out for almost a year that he asked Mom to marry him when it happened. He wanted to take us with him.

  Obviously, we didn’t go. Mom had a huge fight with him instead. Don’t ask me to explain that.

  He’s in Saudi Arabia now. Another desert.

  I think sometimes I should do with Piper what the Indians did with the missionaries. Be polite but stupid to her face, and sabotage the hell out of her when she’s not looking. But I can’t keep my mouth shut. Today she and Kristin Gold and Amber Janeke were hanging around Piper’s locker, which is annoyingly close to mine. I passed them on my way to get my geography book, and Piper said, “Do you smell something?” Smothered laughter from Kristen and Amber.

  So I stopped. “Probably,” I said. “Your locker door’s open.”

  It took her a second to get it. By that time I had my locker open and my book out. (Being fast on your locker combination is a survival skill.) I smiled at her, slammed the door, and hauled it for class. I was so proud of that one that I raised my hand when Mr. Kuyper asked where Mongolia is. Adrenaline is a dangerous drug.

  And of course, I came back after class and found the entire contents of my locker on the hall floor. Note to self: check door after slamming to ensure latching has occurred.

  There are at least two sets of Rules for Life, as far as I can tell. There are the ones that get you picked up by the cops or taken to the assistant principal’s office if you break them: Don’t leave school grounds, don’t spray paint stop signs, don’t drink, don’t drop firecrackers in the toilets.

  But there’s a different set that you really can’t break if you don’t want your life to suck relentlessly. At the head of the list, Rule Number One: Don’t get noticed. As long as you stay exactly the person everyone thinks you’re supposed to be, you’re fine. Piper can answer questions and get A’s on homework because that’s who she’s supposed to be. I’m supposed to be someone else. Usually I have that person nailed. But sometimes I lose perspective and do something inconsistent.

  Then I have to put my crap back in my locker, get my gym shoes out of the toilet, prove to Janelle that I’m not dissing her party, and give the wrong answer to a question I shouldn’t have stuck my hand in the air over anyway. But that’s fair. High school exists to teach you the rules, and I figure I’m getting a solid B average.

  Ring ring! Life changes. How can you not love telephones? For better or worse, ring ring! and presto, there’s something different in your ear from what you were doing or thinking a second ago. Even if it’s about replacement windows or something.

  But it might not be. What if it’s NASA, and they want you to know the shuttle is making an emergency landing, and it looks as if touchdown is going to be somewhere around your bathtub, and you might want to evacuate your neighborhood?

  Raves are not on the list of approved uses for national monuments, I bet. But it’s tough to police a national monument that’s hundreds of thousands of acres wide, full of blind canyons and dry washes. What makes Joshua Tree a monument, anyway, like the Lincoln Memorial? And why is it a national monument and a national park? Who decides this stuff?

  Anyway, now Saturday night is spoken for.

  Mom answered the phone, so after I hung up, she had to know who it was. It’s hard to explain a phone call from a stranger who asks for you by name, then only has fifteen seconds of things to say. I told her it was the library, and a book I’d reserved was in. Thank god she has no idea when the library closes.

  Mom shares the school district’s expectations for her daughter. I think that’s because the school district is her most dependable source of information on me. We aren’t home together much. It makes the library excuse risky, though, since she has no idea how much I read, and based on my grades, I shouldn’t know when the library’s open, either.

  “What book?” she asked.

  I was in the middle of dialing Bob Esquivel. I turned the phone off and tried to look dazed while I figured out an answer.

  I guess Mom and I really haven’t seen much of each other lately, because I was surprised at how tired she looks. There are two deep lines between her eyebrows and this heaviness around the corners of her mouth, as if she’s been having a bad day for the last 365. When I was really little and Dad still lived with us, she had cheerleader hair, blonde and thick and long. When people talk about hair like ripe wheat, I figure that’s what they mean. Now her hair looks more like dry grass before the fall wildfires, the life sucked out.

  “Just a book for school,” I said, then, thinking of Mr. Kuyper, “about China.”

  “Don’t they have the right books in the school library? You’d think they’d have what the teachers are teaching, for godsake.”

  “It’s not like you’re paying extra, Mom. The library’s free.”

  “Nothing’s free. Those books cost tax money.”

  What do you say to that? Better books than a bomber? Maybe I looked a little too stupid, because she stomped out to the kitchen.

  She cheered up after she found out there was lasagna in the fridge. It’s weird—cooking is the only thing I’m supposed to do well that I’m actually good at.

  And I cheered up because Bob was home and up for Saturday night.

  I don’t know how they do these things in cities, but out here, if you want to find the party, it helps to have a global positioning system. Seriously. Bob Esquivel’s the only other person in town I know who likes to rave. He has a GPS and a dirt bike, and a profile like Keanu Reeves. He graduated last year, and the high school halls are dark and drab since then. Okay, they were dark and drab before that, but for some of us, birds sang and the ceiling rained flowers if he met our eyes as we passed on the way to class. The “us” did not include Janelle, Nina, and Barb, who thought his hair was too long.

  Raving is one of the things I don’t have in common with those guys. The first rave I ever went to, Janelle went, too. After fifteen minutes, I was bouncy and breathless and felt like a little kid who’d just discovered a fully-equipped secret fort. Janelle hated the music, thought all the people were freaks, and was afraid to touch anything for fear of getting AIDS or TB. Janelle believes everything she reads on the Internet.

  Given that I’m not exactly the life of the party at parties, I suppose it’s weird that I’d drag my ass into the desert in the dark to hear some DJ spin for a bunch of X-heads wearing glow-necklaces.<
br />
  Well, surprise.

  The way to get through normal life is to pretend it isn’t getting to you. If you let on that you’re hurt, the other animals will turn on you and tear you to pieces. Don’t attract the attention of predators.

  But in the dark in the desert, with a pile of speakers the size of our house kicking out the groove, and everyone around me faceless and trancing, it’s different. Then I can scream loud as I want, and sometimes everyone around me does, too, as if for once I’m not the only one who wants to scream. I can stamp as if everything I hate is down there in the dirt and I can smash it to bits. I can jump up and down and flap my arms like a nut, just because maybe the DJ will see the top of my head and then I can imagine the groove is just for me.

  Most of all, when I’m out there banging up against dozens of strangers and sharing their sweat, I’m alone. Yes, alone. So I’m safe. I’m free.

  I should have mentioned the park earlier. I usually think of this place as being divided into two cultures, the base and the townies. But it’s really three parts, and the third one is the park. That’s a whole different culture.

  There’s the rangers, who live here but not quite here—I don’t know how to explain it. Then there are day visitors, campers, backpackers, rock climbers, driving through town on Highway 62 in shiny SUVs and rental cars. Lots of Eddie Bauer and Northface logos on clothes, lots of bright-colored nylon gear. They stop for breakfast at the Lucky Lizard or La Boule (the only places in town with real coffee, and I’m counting our house) and fill ’er up with premium, but that’s it for their contact with the other two cultures.

  If this were the Middle Ages, we’d be the peasants, and the Marine base would be the landowners. The park would be the Church, with its own walls and special rules, and the monks being contemplative in their monastery. With pilgrims in really nice wagons.

  The Marines ship people out, the tourists come and leave. But the peasants are forever. The only escape the park offers is the occasional rave, and that’s like getting drunk—it’s temporary.