Poster Boy (2 page)

“Yeah, really,” agreed Erin.

“You, too, Ciel. With your eyes, you could definitely do short.”

Ciel kept on reading.

“You want to cut everybody's hair off,” said Hughie. “You're like a serial hair killer.”

Davis laughed and we laughed at him laughing until Natalie shushed us. “Shut up, I want to hear this.”

Ciel, surprisingly, blazed with us guys. She had one hit while the rest of us had two. The stuff was pretty strong, and after about ten minutes I realized one hit would have been plenty.

Huey, Parm and Davis went outside to the tub, but Natalie's half-naked body beckoned me to the couch. My hand rubbing her shoulder, I made wishes on her golden skin while on TV, someone named Miss Jay ran around in a nurse's costume. She had this deep voice and was sincerely ugly. Was she a he? Then these skinny girls were naked except for straitjackets and Natalie, in high-whine commentary, was saying something about one of the girls being autistic.

I was trying to figure out why autistic people would have to wear straitjackets when I stopped hearing the TV and noticed this super sad tune coming out of my guitar. Ciel was sitting in the far corner on the floor. The turquoise of her pants seemed to pulse against the neon-yellow walls behind her, and I was tempted to get my camera. A curtain of brown hair covered her face, and her slender body curved around my guitar.

The sounds coming from that guitar were suddenly the only sounds in the room that made any sense. That is until I heard Davis laughing outside.

And then I started to laugh, though I didn't even know what was funny.

2
The Family

I was dragged out of sleep by the sound of people arguing. Then I remembered it was Saturday. The Russian roulette team was here.

Since she was getting more silkscreen jobs, Mom had hired, at a neighbor's recommendation, Sergei and Dasha to help with the housework. They were Russian dissidents — asylum seekers, we were told, crimes against the government. I imagined they were spies. The kind that could kill you in seconds with a matchstick or a spoon.

Sergei did the heavier work like the sweeping and mopping, and moving the furniture to vacuum, while Dasha sprayed things. She loved her aerosols, wore them like pistols in a tool belt around her waist. He had a scar across the bridge of his off-centered nose, a buzz cut and a wiry but muscular build. She had big hair with bangs that trailed into black eyes that looked passionately depressed.

They both scared the shit out of me.

The vacuum growled into gear and I checked the clock. Noon. Mom had probably sent them down here just to wake me up. She wouldn't allow them to clean the bathrooms — “too demeaning” — which meant I'd have to clean mine today. And yes, it was demeaning.

I slipped on some clothes and opened the door, my hair blown back by a bomb of ammonia and Lemon Pledge. Dasha was on her knees crop-dusting the coffee table.

“Morning.” I raised a nervous hand.

Dasha lifted her sad eyes to me and Sergei shot me a dark look.

I escaped into the bathroom, locking the door behind me.

* * *

Upstairs, Mom, Dad and Maggie were in the kitchen. Mom ironing fabric, Dad and Maggie at the table hunched over some book. The brightness of the room hurt my eyes. The kitchen walls were the color of tangerines, the counters turquoise, the cupboards white with yellow trim. Mom had silkscreened curtains that, according to her, blended these sketchy colors together.

Mom was into color, claimed it stimulated brain-cell growth, though Dad said that study was directed to infants. A new cell was an infant, Mom said. Whatever, Maggie's bedroom was praying-mantis green, Mom and Dad's firecracker red. The living and dining room were bronze with royal blue curtains. The rec room downstairs a painfully cheery yellow. There wasn't one room in the house that didn't stimulate.

My old bedroom upstairs was bright purple. When I moved downstairs, Mom said I could choose the color for my new bedroom. I chose black. Mom changed her mind. We compromised on one black wall, the other three a blue-gray covered with black-and-white posters of my fave bands. With the sharp end of a compass, I'd etched the words of “Californication” into the black wall. My room rocked.

“This picture's amazing,” said Maggie, squinting over her book.

“You just getting up?” Dad asked. I grunted in the affirmative.

“There's batter in the fridge,” said Mom. “I left the waffle iron out. Just plug it in. And have a nectarine.”

I plugged in the waffle iron. “Stink.”

“Nail polish,” said Mom, sliding open the deck door.

“I painted the nails on Dad's new girl hand,” said Maggie, picking it up and thrusting it in my direction. “Need a hand with those waffles?”

Dad was a bio-mechanic up at the university. Prosthetics. Made myoelectric hands. A creepy way to make a living, but somebody had to do it. We had a lot of bad hand jokes in our family.

Maggie scratched her head with the nails of the rubber hand.

“Dad thinks I should do my science project on how negative and positive intention influences the vibrational level of matter.”

I had no clue what my sister the geek had just said. I was allergic to science fairs and glad as hell those days were behind me. Dad, Mr. Myoelectric, used to be keen to help with my projects, too. He'd come up with something using hot wires and electric currents — things that could kill you if you touched the wrong ends. As he did the bulk of my project, I would stand real close as if I was doing it, too. He'd explain stuff and I'd not understand it but write it down word for word. I'd get a blue ribbon and feel like a guilty-ass cheater.

“This Japanese scientist, Dr. Emoto,” explained Dad, “has experimented with exposing water to various stimuli and taking microscopic photos of the crystals that form when that water's frozen. It's really pretty fascinating.”

I caught Mom's eye and she smiled.

“I bet you didn't know trees are eighty percent water?” said Maggie.

“Did,” I lied.

Like Dad, Maggie went gaga over the factual world — why bees swarmed, why leaves changed color, how tiny worms set up house at the base of each eyelash, Guinness world records.

Like Mom, I preferred the abstract. She'd gone the art college route. Used to be into drawing and painting, but when I was maybe two, she got turned onto silkscreen — a method of printing ink designs on fabric. She started off selling scarves and stuff at craft fairs, later to boutiques. But in August she scored her first big commission: a dozen silkscreen banners for the new bank coming to Jackson Street in the spring. Danced around the house for a week.

My thing was photography, though I didn't know if I was any good. I went roaming with Davis, took pictures of whatever caught my eye. Clouds were cool, doorknobs, close-ups of rusted things, and trees at night. But then, smoking a little weed made everything look cool.

“He's exposed water to Beatles music, Beethoven, Elvis, acid rock,” continued Dad. “You should really see some of these photos, Gray.”

Later, I thought, not responding. Not responding was often simplest.

“The acid rock photos didn't form any crystals at all,” said Maggie. “They're just these blobs.”

“What are you up to today, Gray?” asked Mom.

“Stuff.”

“What time do you work?”

“Five.” I worked Wednesdays and Saturdays at the Cineplex. Selling tickets, filling bottomless buckets of popcorn and Coke, sweeping candy wrappers off the floor. The job was a job but I got to preview movies, invite a friend. I was saving for some beater van, seventies style, mattress in the back. Wanted a car you could travel in.

Only problem was I always needed stuff — clothes, shoes or delish foot-longs from Safeway — so hadn't saved more than a few hundred.

“Need a ride?” asked Mom.

“Sure.”

“You can practice driving.”

I grunted. I'd just got my Learners.

“Take a vitamin C with your breakfast. Maggie's coming down with a cold.”

“My leg aches.” Maggie rolled her eyes. “You don't get a cold in one leg.”

“Just to be safe.”

Mom was an involved parent. Had the maternal instincts of a moose, claimed Dad. Mother moose, according to him, were the most deadly animals on the planet.

Mom turned to me. “How was the party?”

“Fine.” I was concentrating on filling all the squares of the waffle iron with just the right amount of batter, otherwise it spilled over when you closed the top.

“Don't forget you have to do your bathroom before you go anywhere.”

“Yeah.”

“My son speaks in single word sentences,” sighed Dad.

“Chimpanzees can give single word responses,” said Maggie.

“My point exactly.”

“He's sixteen,” said Mom.

“You'd think he'd have learned to speak by now,” said Dad.

“Just remember when you were sixteen,” said Mom.

“I was a nerd, remember?”

“Was?” I said.

Dad and Mom both laughed and I couldn't help smiling. For some reason it feels dope to make your parents laugh.

“Good one, Gray,” said Dad. “A single word with some punch. Nerds made your precious computer and Xbox, don't forget.”

“Cool nerds,” I said.

“Ooh, two words together,” said Dad. “He gets a banana.”

“I don't know why people think being dumb is cool,” said Maggie. “Like what Hughie did last night.”

“What did Hughie do last night?” asked Mom.

“Nothing,” I said, meeting Maggie's eye.

“Nothing,” said Maggie and gave me a you-owe-me smile.

Mom asked Dad what he thought of her fabric choice. He said something nice and she kissed his head.

When I compared my parents to my friends' parents, who criped and yapped at each other, had affairs or drank too much, half of them separated or divorced, I might say they got on famously. Davis, for example, had a total of three moms and two dads. Go figure. But according to him none of them got on any better than the last. His various parents would fight even in front of guests, namely me. And with their kids.

I once saw his dad slap Davis across the face for some “smart ass” remark — though I think Davis was sincerely trying to be funny. It was a hard hit, too. Davis's cheek was red for the rest of the day. Though it could have been from embarrassment. It's shitty enough to get face-slapped but a whole lot shittier in front of a friend. Davis didn't tell a joke for a week.

“Mag,” said Mom, “I'm going to have some leftover fabric. You could silkscreen some scarves. Would make nice Christmas gifts for your teachers?”

“I have only one female teacher,” corrected Maggie.

“Ties, then?”

“Sure.”

If it wasn't for the scary cleaning people, I would have taken my waffles downstairs to eat at the computer. Instead I was forced to sit at the kitchen table and look at a photo of a six-sided water crystal formed after being exposed to Elvis singing “Heartbreak Hotel.” It actually looked like two crystals mushed together.

“The crystal's broken apart,” said Maggie, awed.

“I'll be damned,” said Dad.

3
Girlfriends

Trig class. I was on top of it at the beginning of the year, sort of, but in the past few weeks I'd gone into a kind of coma.

The bell rang. I looked at the assignment on the board, then at my notes. There on the page were detailed drawings of sushi.

Trig was the last class before lunch. I looked back at the board.

I couldn't ask Hughie to decipher the assignment because I'd heard him snoring behind me during class. Then I noticed that Ciel chick copying down the homework as if she understood it. I went over to her desk.

“Hey, Ciel. How's it going?”

She kept writing.

“It's Gray, remember me from — ”

“I do.” She didn't sound thrilled by the memory.

“Great shirt,” I said before I noticed how plain it was. A black T-shirt.

She gathered her books to leave.

“Do you actually understand this stuff?”

“I do.” She razored me with those eyes of hers. Brown, I noted, with copper rings around the pupil.

“I kind of get it, but missed a few things today.” I put on my hangdog face. “Would you mind, horribly, explaining it to me over lunch?”

“Me, too?” said Hughie suddenly beside me, his hair all sleep-wrecked.

“If you buy me a Caramilk bar from the vending machine.” She smiled. A greedy sort of smile.

“Yeah, sure.”

She looked at Hughie. “Two.”

“Oh. Okay,” agreed Hughie.

She went on ahead and we followed like sheep.

“Two what?” whispered Hughie.

We had a “study-lunch” with Ciel once a week after that. The rest of the week's lunchtimes, I either played soccer Frisbee with the guys or hung with Natalie and her friends.

Ciel and Natalie had gone their separate ways. Ciel now hung with the band types and the environmental club — the Turn-Off-Your-Lights-to-Save-the-Marmot Club as Davis called it.

Lucky for Hughie and me, Ciel was Maggie-smart. Not a lot of humor going on, but she had a very clear way of explaining things. She didn't linger, didn't take questions, and never ate her Caramilks in front of us. I imagined them stacked under her bed like gold bars.

Just before Christmas break we had a major quiz worth twenty percent of our mark, so I invited her to my house to “study” with me and Hughie. Sounded less desperate than “teach us everything now.” Our books spread out on the floor of my sweet, she summarized trig facts as if it was idiot proof and then tried, not very successfully, to hide her impatience when we needed stuff repeated.

But I found studying her more interesting. The way she held her head so erect I wanted to balance a book on it. And how her brown hair had these hidden gold strands when the light hit it, and the slight hollows under her cheekbones held tiny shadows. As she explained the differences between sine, cosine and tangent, I thought how Natalie's body curved like hill and valley while Ciel's was like water flowing gently downhill. How Natalie's body was pop music and Ciel was that lyrical jazz stuff Dad listened…