The Other Way Around (14 page)

Dylan plays some covers that are okay and then some of his own stuff, which is pretty drippy—a lot of love songs with obvious rhymes. G and I play spades until my eyelids feel like they're wearing lead aprons. When I roll out my Spidey sack and climb in, Emily still hasn't come back.

In the middle of the night I get up to pee, carefully stepping around the sleeping bodies. It's too dark to tell who's there and who isn't. Stumbling a little bit down the hallway, I catch my wounded big toe on a loop of carpet and curse softly as pain knifes my foot. I slap the tile wall to the right of the bathroom door until my hand finds the switch. The compact fluorescent bulb is naked and gives off a greenish glow as it hums to life. Something rustles the shower curtain, and I freeze as my heart jumps into my throat. The pressure in my bladder is gone, and I contemplate just turning around and going back to bed. It's probably just a cat. I reach forward and shake the curtain to see if I can scare out the offending feline. Instead I see a hand.

“Drew!” It's Emily. My brain manages to register this before my throat releases the girly horror-movie scream that was about to pass my lips.

“Jesus! You scared the shit out of me.” Her nose is red and her cheeks are tear-streaked. She's sitting cross-legged at one end of the giant claw-foot tub. “What are you doing in the tub?”

She sighs and wipes at her cheeks with the back of her hand. “Oh, I came back really late from my walk. You guys were all asleep, and I didn't want wake anyone fumbling around for my
stuff.” She looks at me, a faint smile on her lips. It occurs to me that I'm standing in front of her in my boxers and a T-shirt. Why is she smiling? Am I hanging out the front of my shorts? I try to casually adjust things to avoid that possibility and sit down on the toilet seat in front of her.

“So you couldn't find a couch or anything?”

“I felt safer in here.”

“Right. In case there's an earthquake?” I joke.

She gives me a sad half-smile. “Yeah, something like that.”

I'm not sure what to say to that. I'm not sure if she wants me to ask what she means. I sit there on the toilet, lightly tapping my fingernails against the porcelain cover. There's something blank and defeated about her sadness. It's something I recognize, maybe even relate to. I put my hand on her arm, but it's not enough. I want to be closer to her. “Well, I'm awake now. Mind if I join you?” I say it like I'm joking, but when Emily smiles for real and scoots to one side, I shrug my shoulders and step into the tub. “Kinda cold,” I note as I lean up against the wall of the tub. “Not so great for sleeping. You should come back in.” Emily looks like she's considering it, but then shakes her head with that same sad smile. “Well, we can't have you getting cold now can we?” I want to cheer her up. I want to be the one who makes her smile again. Which I guess is why I do what I do next. I reach over and turn on the water.

“Jesus, Drew. What are you doing?”

For a minute I'm afraid I'm the big jerk here. The water is cold and soaks my boxers and the bottom of my T-shirt. “Warming up?” I suggest and look hopefully at Emily.

It works. She laughs and flicks some of the water at my face with her fingertips. “You're crazy!” The water is getting warm
now. I pull the stopper on the drain and the tub begins to fill. Emily pulls off her sweater and her thick wool socks. I stand up and hop out of the tub, glad that my boxers are a dark color.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

“Surprise.” I open the wooden cabinet above the toilet, hoping what I want is in there. Bingo. I dump the contents of a plastic container of lavender bubble bath into the tub and step back in. Soon we are up to our chins in big fluffy white bubbles. We make bubble beards and bubble mustaches and smack the bubbles between our palms like little kids. Every time the water cools off we drain a little and add more from the tap.

“So you and Dylan know each other, huh?” I say all casual. As if I haven't been thinking of a way to bring it up for the last twenty minutes.

“It's obvious, isn't it?”

I nod because it's better than admitting to being an eavesdropper.

“Yeah,” she goes on, “it's total bullshit that he's even here. I'm the one who told him about it. And he said it sounded like a bunch of dumb hippie freeloaders.”

“Mmm.” I know better than to share my thoughts about the cleanliness of the place. “So you guys were together once?”

“Yeah.” She holds up some bubbles in the palm of her hand and blows them toward my face. “Back when I believed in monogamy.” She says it like she's forty years old, and I would laugh if she didn't look so sad and so serious. She's staring at her knees, which rise up out of the bubbles like two cloud-piercing mountain peaks. “I actually thought I loved him.” For just a moment I can see it in her face—how much she did love him and how hurt she is. “He totally knew it too. And he used it to
manipulate the crap out of me. Don't ever fall in love, Drew, if you can help it.”

“Seriously?” I say.

She shakes her head. “No. You're right. Love is a good thing. A really good thing. Just don't ever fall in love with a self-centered musician.”

“Okay,” I agree, hiding my smile with the back of a soap-bubbled hand. What about a dreadlocked Hula-Hooper with a slight flair for the dramatic?

“He would say he was going to be somewhere and then purposely not go. I'd show up looking for him, and when he wasn't there, I'd confront him later and he'd act like I misheard him, like I was the one being all crazy. And then other times he'd be so loving and amazing and he'd tell me how amazing I was. It was back and forth like that, and it made me feel completely psycho sometimes. I don't know if I'll ever love anyone ever again.”

“What about Lyle?”

“Yeah,” she says, and sighs as if this is an answer we both understand. “Sorry, Drew. I'm sure you don't want to hear all this crap.”

“No, I do. I really do.” Maybe I'm a bit too insistent, because she looks at me funny and then holds up her fingers to show me.

“Pruned,” she says. She reaches over to show me and gently ruffles my hair. I feel a flicker of annoyance at being pet, like a dog or a younger brother.

“Yeah, we should probably get out before we get hypothermia or something,” I say. But neither of us moves.

“Thanks, Drew,” Emily says, and it sounds pretty sincere.

“Anytime.”

“Anytime I want a bath?” she jokes.

“Uh-huh.” I want to add more, but I don't. She can take it however she wants. We both stand up in the tub, soaking and covered with bubbles. There's one threadbare towel hanging on the rack.

“Here,” Emily says and throws it to me. “You go first. Dry off, and I'll meet you in there. Can't sleep in here now that you soaked my bed.” She turns around, and I strip down and towel off as best I can. I wrap the bath mat around my waist and leave my soaking clothes hanging over the edge of the tub. Thankfully I'm using my backpack as a pillow, so I find my extra boxers easily and slip back into my sleeping bag. A few minutes later I see Emily's silhouette as she slips quietly into the room. I lie there for a while thinking about how much has changed in the last thirty-six hours. A girl touched my knee. I took a bath with a girl. Not just any girl; a hot girl I actually like. Or at least I think I do. Is it wrong to want her to feel about me the way she felt about Dylan, even if it made her crazy? Maybe it's the bathwater; the wrinkling and pruning of my fingers stretching my skin. I feel closer to the world in a good way, on the inside looking out instead of the other way around.

Jesse guesses it's about four hours to Cleveland from where we are, and from there we'll keep heading south. The festival they keep talking about isn't for another couple weeks, but Jesse seems to get a little antsy whenever they have a bad show. It's the only time I see him look anxious at all. So we leave Buffalo the next morning after oatmeal and more Alien Garlic Bread, which truly is incredible, though not the greatest combination for taste or breath.

I feel like I've been away from home for months instead of days, and I have to keep reminding myself that it's only Sunday and that Mom expects I'm arriving home sometime tomorrow. This thought is like a book that keeps falling from its shelf. Rather than look at it, I simply put it back on the shelf and keep moving on.

The two shows in Cleveland and the next day in Louisville barely yield half of what the Freegans made in Rochester. I'm beginning to understand why Lyle was interested in staying another night. Having a draw, like an artist's open house or a street fair, makes a huge difference in the number of people who turn out and are willing to cough up a couple bucks for entertainment.

We're hanging out around the van between shows in Louisville, and I keep looking at my watch as if the time passing is going to change what I know I need to do. I know Mom is out there somewhere, pacing the house, waiting for me to call and say I'm coming home. It's two o'clock, and then it's ten after, and then two thirty. Finally, at quarter of three, I stand up suddenly and announce that I need to find a pay phone.

“Do you want company?” G asks.

“Sure,” I say. This phone call will be harder, much harder, and not only because Mom is going to be livid when she realizes I'm not on my way back to Glens Falls. She's going to want answers, answers that are only starting to take shape in my own head.

There's a pay phone about a block and a half from the van, but the receiver is missing the cover, belching out a mess of multicolored wire. We wander around for a bit until we find a useable one near the public library. G takes a few polite steps away and pulls a set of juggling balls out of her pocket. I take a deep breath and make the collect call.

“Hi, Mom,” I say after she agrees to accept the charges.

“Hello, Andrew. I hope you're calling to tell me what time your bus gets in.” There is a long moment of silence that follows this declaration. In that moment I realize that up until right now I wasn't sure how this conversation was going to go. I wasn't sure if I was going to let her convince me that it was time to come home. A hot shower and a homemade dinner does sound pretty good. But not good enough.

“Mom, I'm really sorry if this upsets you, but I'm not ready to come home. I really like these people and I'm having a good time. And as weird as this sounds, I think I'm learning
something too.” I say this last part softly so G can't hear. I don't know why I bother, it's not like that part even registers with Mom.

“I don't believe this,” she hisses. “Andrew, we had an agreement. You said you would be home today.”

“Actually,
you
said I would be home today.”

“What about school? The quarter closes in less than three weeks.”

“I don't think I was going to pass this quarter anyways.”

“I can't condone this behavior, Andrew.”

“I'm not asking you to, Mom. Look, I know it's not ideal. You don't know exactly where I am or who I'm with but—”

“Do not minimize that!” For the first time Mom's voice breaks, and I can hear that she's crying. “You do not know what it's like to have you out there, god knows where, with god knows who, doing god knows what. You do not know what that's like as a parent, so don't pretend you do!”

“I'm sorry.” I pause for a minute. “I'll try and do a better job of checking in.”

“That would be helpful,” Mom says. Her voice is still tight. “You're going to miss your grandmother's funeral,” she adds.

“Yeah, I kind of figured that. I guess I'm hoping she would understand.”

My mother sighs loudly. “She probably would.” I know it takes a lot for Mom to say that, and I appreciate that she's not using Mima's funeral to guilt me into coming home. So I decide to pick on Dad a little to make her feel better.

“So Dad's back from his vacation?”

“Apparently.”

“He left me a jerky message.”

“He's worried about you too,” Mom says. Now I definitely need to get off the phone. My running away is not supposed to team the two of them up against me.

“I gotta go, Mom. We're leaving soon, so I gotta go.”

“Andrew, where are you?”

“Uh, Louisville.”

“And where are you going exactly?”

“I'm not really sure, Mom. South.”

“South? Where do you sleep?”

“In the van. It's really pretty comfortable. Listen, I really gotta go. I'll call you soon.” As I hang up I can hear her saying that she loves me. I walk over to where G is bouncing one of the juggling balls up and down on her foot, Hacky-Sack style.

“Hey,” she says. “How'd that go?”

“Eh, okay, I guess. She's not happy that I'm staying.”

G shrugs. “Why are you staying?”

The question catches me off guard. “I don't know. I'm having a good time, and I thought it was okay with you guys. I mean if it's not, just let me know,” I stutter a bit.

“Sorry, I didn't mean to freak you out. We're happy to have you hang out with us. I just wanted to be sure you weren't staying because of Emily.”

“Well, it's not,” I reply shortly.

“Sorry, my bad,” G says. We walk together for a while without saying anything.

“Why do you care anyway?” I ask. “I mean, what if it was part of the reason for me staying? Would that be the worst thing in the world?”

“No. And it still wouldn't be any of my business. I just wouldn't want to see you get hurt.”

“Why do you say that? What do you have against Emily, anyways?”

“Well, for one thing, she's a dry drunk.”

“A what?”

“A dry drunk,” G repeats. “Look, none of us drink, right? But I'm straight edge. I made a conscious choice to stay away from drugs and alcohol. I don't want it around me; I don't want it in my life. When we hooked up with Emily in Burlington, she was a mess. She had some boyfriend problem; she was drinking and probably other stuff too. Lyle helped her clean up her act, and she latched on to us and the whole straight edge thing too.”