Total Constant Order (13 page)

I
n Dr. Calaban's office on Friday, I saw Thayer in the waiting room. I felt funny acknowledging him there, but he saluted me.

“Hey, shortie. What's shaking?”

“I wondered if you'd show up,” I blurted.

He laughed, despite the half-dozen patients glaring at us. Or maybe because of it.

“I'm getting my prescription refilled,” he said. “I need it to get through today.”

“Sounds like you're psychologically hooked on Ritalin,” I told him.

“Probably,” he agreed. “Hey, there's something I gotta tell you. I'll give you a ring later.”

Give me a ring? In my mind, I saw a diamond with a cartoony sparkle. It took me a minute to realize what he meant.

When he finally called after dinner, I saw “Pinsky” on the machine and picked it up before Mama got in the way.

“Thayer?”

“I knew you were psychic,” he said.

“Yeah?” I said. I hated talking on the phone.

“Just thought I'd give you a shout and tell you I'm alive. Well, almost alive. I'm in sinus confusion land. I've been taking Benadryl, like, on the hour.”

“Well, it's nice to know you weren't abducted by aliens.”

“I wish,” he said. “Did you know Benadryl was developed as a sedative for mental patients? Mom uses it to drug the dog when our neighbors set off firecrackers on Cinco de Mayo.”

I nodded, though nobody could see me nod.

“I tried shots, decongestants, antihistamines, nasal sprays,” Thayer said.

In the living room, Mama was watching TV, as usual, calling out answers to a Weather Channel quiz. “What is atmospheric pressure?” She sat in the wicker chair wearing her “South Beach” sweatshirt and jeans. What I really wanted to do was grab her skinny shoulders and tell her to shape up.

“Fin, did you get that?” she yelled.

I picked up the phone and snuck outside. Cordless phones are a miracle.

“Where are you?” Thayer asked.

I closed my eyes. The rainy smell of the leaves drifted to me. “I'm on the porch.”

“Let me hear,” he said.

“Huh?”

“What does it sound like?”

I lifted the phone and let him listen to the bufo toads croaking in alto.

Thayer coughed a long, rattling cough. He was already in the middle of some randomness.

“Okay. So let's just take tonight, for example, okay? My mom's all attitudey. She caught me smoking pot in the garage and took away my weed, which is actually hers. She's all up in my face while I'm petting the freaking dog. So I go outside to find Bozo's Frisbee. And Mom's all like, ‘Thayer, get in here.' God, it's so freaking annoying. She just can't let me be.”

I waited for him to finish.

“Are you there?” he said.

“Yes.”

“I want to tell you something.”

“What?”

I hugged my knees and felt my heart thumping fast.

“I got suspended,” Thayer said.

“Again?”

“This time it's bad. Real bad,” he said. “I got caught writing up my desk. Then smartass Sharon Lubbitz is like, ‘That looks like the graffiti in the girls' bathroom,' as if everyone hadn't already seen it. So basically I'm screwed on many levels.”

“How many?”

“Suspension is the least of my problems. My mom's talking military school. And though camouflage is my color, I ain't going.”

I was quiet for a minute. Then I opened my mouth.

“I could take the blame. I mean, Sharon's two-faced buddies have caught me doing it.”

“Whoa, shortie. You'd front for me? That's mad sweet. But I've got another plan. I'm getting out of here.”

I squeezed tighter. He had to be joking. So I joked back.

“Russia is recruiting volunteers to Mars?”

“Uh-uh,” he said. “Do you know where I want to go?”

“No clue.”

“To New York. That's where my gram lives. Up there, I could finally get something going with my art.”

“You mean, like art school?”

“No. I'm going to hook up with a crew and tag all the trains in Brooklyn. School blows. Going to school for art would tell me that, number one, I'm not original, and number two, I'm just a toy. Bottom line, it would be like going to school for breathing.”

I thought I was going deaf. “New York is really far away,” I said.

“I'll hitchhike. Or take a bus. Hell, I could be there in two days.” I heard him suck in a raggedy breath. “I'd give anything to be out of school and on my way to NYC.”

Light slipped across the lawn. Mama stood in
the door, watching. I sat up and smoothed the wrinkles in my jeans.

“What are you doing alone in the dark?” she said. “Who's that on the phone? You're going to get eaten alive by mosquitoes.”

“It's someone from class,” I said, “asking about homework.”

“What homework?” she said.

“You know. Math and stuff.”

Mama didn't look convinced. I could hear the TV's applause before she shut the door.

“What about your mom?” I whispered into the phone.

“Like I said, we got in a fight. Besides, she's never around.”

Should I tell someone about his plan? Mama would freak out and call the cops. What if I went with him? I thought about it, thought about joining Thayer at the bus station, leaving school, my teachers, Dr. Calaban. I couldn't do it. I couldn't just get up and leave. Not when I was just starting to get a grip on things.

“Do you think I'm crazy?” he asked.

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means I don't know.”

“You think I'm mentally ill.”

“I never said that.”

“My mom says I can't think in a straight line. She's the one who needs a shrink.” He sighed. “I'm sick of school, all those fake people. It's a game. They buy it. I don't.”

“Stop,” I said.

I was just grasping his words, trying to make sense of it.

“Come with me. You're always saying you don't belong here, down south in the MIA.”

I saw the letters floating in my mind. Thayer's nickname for Miami sounded more like “missing in action.”

“We can't just leave,” I said.

“Man, I thought you were for real.”

“I take it back. You are crazy.”

“Just for a few days,” Thayer said. I could hear a dog barking in the background.

“Which days?”

“Starting now,” he said.

I was summoning my numbers when I remembered what Dr. Calaban had said. I couldn't keep everyone safe by counting.

“Please don't go,” I said.

I pictured Thayer roaming the streets and sleeping behind Dumpsters.

“I knew you wouldn't understand.”

“Thayer, listen to me.”

“I'm through listening.”

“There's nothing in New York that you don't have here,” I said.

Maybe even less.

I
snuck inside the garage. My bike was mounted on the wall. The night was sweltering. If I could get to the bus stop in time, maybe I could talk Thayer out of it.

I rolled my bike out and pushed off. There was a squeak as I tested the brakes, then the soft hiss of the grass. I looked over my shoulder. The windows in my house flickered blue. Mama was probably still watching the Weather Channel or the Food Network, although she hated to cook and never went anywhere. I pumped faster.

At the end of the block, I turned onto US 1. A car behind me honked. I rode past the abandoned house where I took my first dose of Paxil. The
FOR SALE
sign was gone. Somebody had trimmed the trees.

My legs burned. I rode past the playground, through intersections, and around burger joints. Cars zoomed off of the highway near school. A few older boys were playing basketball, but I didn't stop to watch.

“Hey, bike girl,” one of them called.

I kept riding. I saw a Greyhound bus and wondered if Thayer was on it. Traffic was thicker downtown. This is where the skyscrapers began. The gray buildings pressed against one another—perfume outlets, Sunglass Hut, secondhand radios, wholesale jewelry. Homeless people camped near the Miami River Bridge, huddled under cardboard boxes, within spitting distance of the ancient stone Circle.

I focused on the bus station's address, which Thayer had told me. My obsessive-compulsive habits were actually good for something. Four, one, one, one, Northwest Twenty-seventh Street. Twenty was an even number. Seven was odd. I didn't care whether they went together anymore. I had to keep them in place.

A military green truck raced past me. The
driver flicked a cigarette out the window. Sparks crackled on the road.

All this time, I had felt invisible. Now it seemed like everybody was watching.

I eased onto the sidewalk. The green truck was speeding beside me. I could hear the radio squirting out beats. I pedaled harder.

“Want a lift?” said the driver, leaning out.

I shook my head.

“Are you lost?” he asked. He was wearing a denim jacket, oiled gray with dirt. “Need some money?” The guy dangled a balled-up dollar bill.

“No, thanks. I'm going to a friend's house.”

The driver laughed. “Sure you are.”

I waited for the traffic to thin out, then swerved behind the truck. I pedaled toward a cafetine, a Cuban restaurant where people stood on the sidewalk, sipping high-octane coffee from thimble-sized cups at a window.

There was no place to chain my bike, so I left it leaning against the concrete wall. The cafetine was surrounded. Rows of elderly Hispanic women with plastic bonnets circled like hens at the window.

I stood in line as if buying tickets for a movie. A waitress slapped down a sticky menu in a language that I couldn't read. On the counter was some Nutella, a hazelnut spread.
ANNA
, read the waitress's name tag.

“What do you want, baby?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I mean, do you have a phone I could use?”

She fixed her gaze on me. “There's a pay phone across the street. But it's broken.”

“It's an emergency.”

“You hiding from someone?”

“Not really,” I said.

She dug into her pocket. “Here. Use my cell.”

“Thanks,” I said. She stood there, watching.

The phone was heavy. I stared at the Tweety Bird sticker peeling above the screen. Normally, I couldn't stand to touch somebody's germy phone, but it didn't matter anymore.

I punched the digits and waited.

The phone clicked and rang a few times. It was Yara on the answering machine, peppering her speech with “please” and “thank you.” Mama said
Dad always falls for a woman who says “Bless you” after a sneeze.

Then Yara picked up for real. “Hello. Sorry?”

I heard outer-space noises crackling and Yara saying, “Fin?” Then the cash register jingled.

“Fin? I can hardly hear you. Are you in trouble? Your mom keeps calling. She's frantic.”

I nodded, even though she couldn't see me. “I'm okay.”

“Talk to me, chica. I promise not to get angry.”

I stared past the highway. “I'm at a cafetine. On the corner of Second Street and First Avenue.”

“What?” she said. “You ran away?”

“Listen,” I said. “There's this boy, my friend, Thayer. He was trying to get on a bus. He's probably gone by now. I tried to find the station but everything is so confusing downtown, all those one-way streets. Then there was this truck driver…” I couldn't explain. I had run out of words.

“Stay put. I'll call your mother.”

When Yara hung up, I kept holding the phone. I listened to the dial tone, as if it could tell me what to do next.

Y
our family's coming?” the waitress asked.

“Yeah.
Gracias
,” I said, handing back the phone.

Seconds later, she returned with a Styrofoam cup of café con leche and a napkin heaped with sugar-dusted guava pastries. I sipped the coffee, which seemed to glow inside my stomach. I couldn't stop watching the street. The urge to count simmered in my fingers.

I asked Anna for a pen. She reached into her apron and pulled out a blunt felt-tip marker. I flipped over the napkin and started doodling. I drew spiky, punk-style tags and roller-skating robots. I drew Dr. Calaban tangled up with her African violets, Mama sitting in front of a grinning television,
Thayer blowing three perfect smoke rings—zero, zero, zero—with a skinny girl in a bandanna. The ink bled through the paper, ripping into dandrufflike shreds. I didn't feel like tearing the corners to make them even. I kept drawing.

After I had eaten the pastries and filled another napkin with doodles, a Nissan pulled up to the curb. Mama got out with an umbrella, although it was only sprinkling. She yanked me into a hug and held me a long time. When we finally let go, she licked her finger and wiped sugar off my face. Usually this would've sent me over the edge, but I didn't move.

“Well,” she said. “You gave me a fright.”

“I didn't mean to,” I said.

Mama grabbed a fistful of napkins and patted down my hair. She looked at the empty cup of coffee but didn't mention it stunting my growth. She peered over my shoulder and flashed an off-center smile.

“You're quite an artist,” she said. “Are you going to be the next Frida Kahlo?”

“Who's that?”

“One of the world's greatest women painters.” She crinkled her nose. “Don't they teach you anything in school?”

A ripple of embarrassment shot through me. “I haven't taken art in a while.”

“When I was your age, I wanted to be a painter. Even won a scholarship for art school. My father thought it was a waste of time, so I never went.”

I nodded. She had never told me this before. I guess there was a lot about Mama that I didn't know.

Mama rubbed her eyes. She took out her pack of cigarettes, then put them away.

“I'm going to quit,” she said.

“Really?” I wasn't sure what to believe.

“You want to tell me what this is all about?” she asked.

“It's my friend. Thayer. He's gone on a bus.”

“Gone? Where?”

“I don't know. He wanted to run away.”

“My Lord. What was he thinking?”

Mama waited for an answer I couldn't give. I leaned back, liking the fact that she was listening.

“Where was he planning to go?”

“New York, I think.”

“New York?” She clucked her tongue.

For a moment, we said nothing. Mama looked so exhausted. She hardly ever drove anywhere at night, much less in the rain. It must have been a big deal for her.

“Which bus stop?” she asked. “The one downtown?”

“Yeah. He might be there already.” I thought about Thayer riding the Metrorail, snaking above the traffic.

“So why didn't you tell me about this? And why did you try to bike over? Do you realize how dangerous that was?”

I closed my mouth tight.

“Let's go,” she said, grabbing her keys.