Anywhere but Here (2 page)

“I was thinking film.”

I clamp my jaw shut. How did that get out? I mean, I
was
thinking it, but I must be losing my mind to share something like that with Ms. Gladwell. It's as good as saying I'm going to be a performance artist or an astronaut. It's just not something that happens for regular people, especially not people from a small town like Webster. The population of serious doc fans in this high school is probably one: me.

Damn Lauren for turning my head inside out today.

Grimacing, I tug the front of my hair and spin in the chair a bit. At this rate, I'm going to end up in a nuthouse, not a frat house.

“That's wonderful,” Ms. Gladwell says. She's smiling. Maybe she really does think it's wonderful. At least it's different. She probably listens to ten kids a day tell her they're going to be farmers or loggers. Greg wants to be a mechanic. I know Dallas will get a job on the pipeline with his dad. And Lauren has
some sort of teacher/mom-of-the-year dream job in mind.

My friends call Webster “the Web,” which is fitting. The town traps people like a giant spiderweb. They get married, get jobs at the mill, and pretty soon they have wrinkles and curved shoulders and are on the waiting list for the Blossom Valley Retirement Home.

Turning away from me, Ms. Gladwell rummages in a big black filing cabinet. “I have a catalog here for you. I know they sent me some. I haven't had anyone ask, but I thought maybe some of the drama students—ah! Here's one!”

Waving it in the air as if she's found the answer to all my problems, Ms. Gladwell steps toward me—and trips on the wheeled leg of her chair.

It's strange how things can happen in slow motion and in double speed, simultaneously. In slow-mo, her toe catches on the chair leg and her body arcs forward, the pamphlet flying out of her hand like a paper airplane.

In skip frame, without thinking, I stand up and catch her. Her chest hits mine and her head lands on my shoulder. She's as light as she looks. It's like hugging a child.

When Dallas swings open the office door with a cheerful “Howdy,” that's how he finds us. Me with my arms wrapped around Ms. Gladwell, her hair brushing my neck and her breasts pressed against me.

He stops, his smile frozen on his freckled face. “I'll wait for y'all outside,” he says.

The door closes.

“Damn,” Ms. Gladwell and I say at exactly the same time. Then, as she scrambles to compose herself and I pretend I didn't notice her breasts touching me, we start to laugh. Obviously, Dallas won't be able to resist describing this scene. Tomorrow, the whole school will hear about Cole Owens making out with the counselor in her office. We both know it's going to be excruciatingly embarrassing for the next forty-eight-hour Webster High gossip cycle, and there's something funny about the situation.

“I'm such a klutz. Sorry about that,” she says.

“No worries. But I'm gonna go.”

“It might be best.”

I try to look nonchalant as I pass Dallas in the hall, but he gives me a “you dog” kind of grin. It's definitely going to be all over school tomorrow.

“Cole? Cole?”

My shoulders tense. Is she crazy? Why is she calling after me?

When I turn, Ms. Gladwell hurries from the outer office into the hallway, her hair still mussed as if we
did
just make out. She's waving the film school pamphlet in her hand.

“Don't forget this.”

“Sure. Cool. Thanks, Ms. Gladwell.”

“Thanks, Ms. Gladwell.” Dallas's falsetto, mimicking me, follows me into the foyer and out the door.

It's no big deal, I tell myself. This is just one more opportunity to implement my new life strategy: Concentrate on the future. Pretend the past never happened.

Our house has smelled different this year, since Mom died. It's not that I miss her perfume. I don't even think she wore perfume. No, it's more that the house has taken on a sort of mildewed, dirty laundry smell. If you wore a sweat sock, then dipped the toe in beer and stuffed it under the carpet in the middle of your living room, leaving it there for a few hot, almost-summer days, people wouldn't necessarily know where to look, but they'd know that something wasn't right. That's the kind of smell I mean.

I used to come home and smell dinner, not the frozen pizzas that Dad and I throw in the oven. Not “some damn decent guy food, Cole,” as Dad calls it. I mean real dinner, like roast chicken.

On the Sunday after my accidental post-breakup sex scene, I start thinking.
Making real food can't be
that
hard.
If I'm going to focus only on the future, I'd like my future to include meals. And Sunday's when people are supposed to have family dinners, right?

Dad's nowhere to be found, so I grab his pickup keys off the kitchen table and drive down to the grocery store.

I do pretty well, at first. I find a bag of carrots and some tiny potatoes—the kind with the flaky skins. Then I hit the meat section. The chickens squat there wrapped in plastic like bald, alien life-forms. Scenes from
Food, Inc.
start scrolling through my mind. Factory farms and slaughterhouses and birds so top-heavy they can't walk . . .

“Whatcha lookin' for, hon?” A woman nudges her cart alongside mine. She looks like an aging diva with big blond hair, dangling silver earrings, and enough turquoise eye shadow to paint a house.

“I wanted to roast a chicken.”

“You gonna make it yourself? Special occasion? That's real sweet.”

“Thanks. I, um . . . don't really know how, though.”

As the woman leans against her grocery cart, her breasts hang all the way down to the handle. I try to focus on her face. She has a nice person's eyes. I'll bet she's one of those people who can make little kids laugh.

“It's real easy, hon. You wash that bird under cold water—inside and out, mind—then pop it in a pan and rub it with oil and salt. Put your potatoes and veggies around the bottom. Half an hour at four hundred, then maybe two hours at three twenty-five. You got that?”

“Half an hour at four hundred, then two at three twenty-five,” I repeat.

“Wiggle the leg around when you think it's cooked. If it feels like it's gonna fall right off, you've done good.”

When I get home, I do exactly as she said. I wash the thing, I dig out the bag of guts and toss it in the garbage, and then I smear the bird with oil. She didn't say whether to cover it or not, so I leave the lid off the pan and hope for the best.

Once the chicken's been in the oven for an hour, the whole house starts to smell like Christmas in June. I sit on the couch in the living room waiting for the timer to buzz, my mouth watering.

Just in time, I hear Dad stomp in the front door and grunt as he pulls off his boots on the landing. He comes into the living room like a bloodhound on the scent of a body. I can actually see him sniffing. He's a big guy, built like a wrestler. At the lumberyard, I've seen him heave boards as if they're toothpicks.

“The neighbors bring somethin' by, Cole?” he asks. For a couple weeks last summer, right after Mom's funeral, the neighbors
left casseroles on our front stoop every night. Only for a couple weeks, though.

“I cooked.” I try to sound casual.

Dad's eyebrows shoot up, and he goes straight to the kitchen to investigate. “Looks done,” he calls. “You going to carve?”

He's using his hearty voice, which is fake enough for reality TV. Dad alternates between sessions of complete immobility on the couch and sessions of pretending everything's perfect. I'm pretty sure the latter are for my sake.

I shrug from the doorway. “You can carve.”

“No, no. You should try.” Dad pulls out a cutting board and a knife. He waves the blade to motion me over, then he shows me how to twist off the wings and slice into the breast meat.

“That's some good chicken,” he says once we're sitting at the kitchen table. It
is
good. The skin's nice and crisp, and the meat . . . well, it tastes more like meat than the pepperoni on frozen pizzas does.

After that—after we both finish saying how good it is—we run out of things to talk about. I glance at Dad now and then, watching the glow of the kitchen light reflect off the dome of his head, noticing the squint lines around his eyes. He glances at me, noticing . . . I have no idea what. I don't know what we're doing sitting at the kitchen table, anyway. Dad and I always eat in the living room.

“Want to turn on the TV?” I ask finally when there are only smears left on our plates.

“May as well,” he says.

There's nothing left of the chicken. We scrape the bones into the trash and stick the roasting pan in the dishwasher. Add two plates. Two sets of silverware. When we flick off the kitchen lights, it's as if dinner never happened.

Then we crash on the couch and watch World War I repeat itself on the History Channel. Everything and everyone coated in gore and mud.

•  •  •

Later that night, when the dishes are done and Dad's snoring on the couch, I find myself roaming the house. I flick on the TV again, then turn it off. I pick up a book, but I can't concentrate.

I feel like bawling in a way I haven't cried since I was probably three years old. I miss Mom so bad it's as if someone has cut through my chest with a chain saw.

It's not just because of the chicken, either.

Usually, at a time like this, I would call Lauren. She'd come over for a while, or I'd pick her up in Dad's truck.

Once last year, after we'd heard bad news from the doctor's office, I couldn't handle staying in the house anymore. I didn't want to hear Mom say, “We just have to take it one day at a time,” or Dad say, “Those doctors don't realize how tough you are.”

That night, I picked up Lauren and we went to the park and sat on the swings. She didn't ask any questions. And then we were swinging. When you're as big as me and you swing on kids' playground equipment, it feels as if you're going to lift the entire metal frame from the ground and soar out into space.

It feels good.

Calling Lauren's not an option anymore, though. I slip outside and walk down the hill to Greg's house instead.

By the time I get there, it's too late to ring the doorbell. I bang on his bedroom window. Greg's family lives in one of the 1950s bungalows that line most of Webster's streets. They're perfectly rectangular, with windows all the same size, like a picture drawn by a little kid. Greg's has stucco on the top half and then a stripe of orange boards, then more stucco. It's butt ugly, actually.

Greg's twelve-year-old sister turns on her light and squints outside. I wave. She sends her eyes skyward, a perfect little copy of her mother, and flicks her light off.

When Greg finally pokes his head out, his brown hair is sticking straight up. There's a red crease on his cheek where it's been squished against the pillow.

“This better be good,” he says.

“It is. It is,” I assure him. “I've come to celebrate the freedom of man. This man, in particular. You are looking at a newly single Cole Owens. Bring out the girls and let's have a toast!”

“I have no girls,” he grumbles. “And you have no drinks.”

Then the rest of my words slowly worm their way into his sleep-dulled head. “You and Lauren broke up? Are you serious?”

“Serious as a train wreck,” I say. “Now get out here. And bring something to drink.”

A few minutes later Greg emerges with a bottle of rye and an extra jacket.

“That's why you're my best friend,” I tell him after an hour of committed drinking. I flip over from where I've been sprawled on the community center field to slug Greg on the shoulder. Blades of grass stick to me. The ground is still spongelike from the spring rain, and I can smell the dirt clinging to my hair. “How many guys would get up in the middle of the night, provide alcohol,
and
think to bring me a jacket? You're quality, man. Quality.”

“Yeah, right. And you're drunk,” he says. “So how come Lauren dumped you, anyway?”

“She didn't dump me.”

He looks doubtful. “Who started the conversation?”

“I did!” I'm forging into the future here. Deciding my own destiny. I thought this would be more obvious.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

“What do you mean, what was I thinking? For months I've been telling you that things aren't the same.”

He nods. “I just figured . . .”

“You figured what?”

“I figured you were still feeling down about your mom. I thought you'd get through it.”

Get through it. Is that what I'm supposed to do? I can't ask. My voice will come out wrong.

“Nope,” I say instead. “Time for a change.”

Greg rubs his forehead. I know what he expected. Lauren and I would keep dating and eventually get married, buy a house, then hatch mini-Coles. Everybody thought that. I'm screwing with an entire town's worldview right now.

There's a pause in the conversation while I pick hunks of grass from the field and take a good look at Greg. He isn't as big as me, but he's wiry. He no longer has the round cheeks from our kindergarten monkey-bar days. In fact, as I peer at him in the dim glow from the community center's streetlights, he looks almost exactly like his dad. Under his farm-boy mop of hair, he has the same round brown eyes and broad nose—even the same cleft in his chin. I wonder if he's going to stay in town like his dad, take over the auto shop, spend his spare time overhauling that RX-7 he's so proud of. Maybe he will.

He obviously thinks I'm making a mistake with Lauren, and that irritates me. I try to think of a way to explain.

I admit, Lauren's great. She's one of the sweetest people
I've ever met, in that can't-pass-a-dog-without-petting-it kind of way. Once, we'd driven a few hours to the mall in Spokane, and there was this old woman at the top of the escalator, frozen. Her daughter was at the bottom.