Blues for Zoey (11 page)

32

DeWinter Hills

F
rom what Mom tells me, when Nomi was born, I was dead jealous. Here was this precious
blob that sucked up every drop of my parents' attention. I was eight y
ears old, not at all accustomed to sharing.

One day, maybe to prove to me I was still wanted, Dad came home with a basketball. It was a green and white one printed with the Celtics logo, a little leprechaun leaning on a stick. I loved it in spite of being tragically inept at any spo
rt involving equipment—especially a ball. I could run and I could swim, but throwing? Catching? Kicking? I was useless.

It was the same with a basketball: I sucked.

I went out on the driveway, where I bounced it too high. I jammed
my fingers. I tripped over my feet. Three
dribbles and the ball stubbed off my toe and went bounding
into the street. I rallied after it, of course—like an idiot—and I probably would have died that day if Mom hadn't yelled at me thr
ough the window.

“Kazuo!”

She was just in time. This sleek, black, nuclear sub of a luxury car torpedoed around the corner, right between me and the ball. Mom came running out with the little Nomi-blob balled up in one arm. She was furious, but all she did was hug me with her one free hand.

“You
have
to be more careful.”

I just stared at her.

“
Promise!
”

I nodded.

After that, Dad started taking
me to this park in Rosemount called DeWinter
Hills. There weren't any hills the
re and I had no idea who Johnny or Jenny
DeWinter were. All I knew is that off in one corner
, there were three pristine basketball courts.

“This is a game of
misdirection
,” Dad explained to me the first da
y. “You know what that means?”

No, I didn't. I was, like,
eight
.

“You pretend to do one thing while y
ou're really doing something else.” That was how
Dad summed up basketball: an exercise in fakery. “All
you have to do is be
able to fake—a pass, a shot, just
a step with your foot—and
POW!
”
He dribbled straight for me, faked a shot
, then twisted past for an easy
hoop. “See what I mean?”

I did. Dad was never the most athletic guy in the world.
He was short and stocky, with pudgy cheeks and
a bit of a gut. But he had strong
legs and dextrous arms, and these—along with a good fake—got
around me every time. (Also, did I
mention I was eight?)

It took me a couple years to master the
art of shutting him down. I remember clearly, just after my eleventh birthday
, the first time I stuffed him. He was as surprised as I was.

“I think you're getting the hang of this,” he panted afterward, a massive grin on his face.

I improv
ed even more. It wasn't long before I could flat outrun him. I guess I started to get bored with it. Calen and Topher and some of the other guys f
rom the neighborhood played pickup and (for once in my life, thanks to Dad) I was decent enough to join them. We'd stopped
going down to DeWinter Hills by then, but occasionally we still did.

“No
w,” he said, after a long hiatus of not
playing with me, “let's see if you still remember what I taught you.”

“Maybe I'll teach
you
something.”

I was up twenty to nothing when
Dad sucked in a screeching breath and, in this slow, horrifying collapse, went do
wn on his knees.

“Dad! What is it?!”

He couldn't even answer
me. He just coughed and waggled his head like he needed to shake something loose.

“
Dad!
”

“I'm okay
,” he sputtered. “Just dizzy.” He smiled at me. “You're really good
.”

I watched limply as he climbed back to his feet. As soon as
he got there, he slapped the ball out of my useless arm and, only using his right hand, dribbled up the court for a layup
.

All the way home, he kept saying, “I'm fine. I was only faking. Remember? What did I teach you? That's what it's all about. Misdirection.”

I wanted to believe him. It was just a fake, just something he'd pulled so he wouldn
't get shut out. I didn't tell Mom about what happened, and a week after we played, Dad was dead.

33

Dave Mizra's Secret

The next night, Calen, Alana, and I wanted to see a movie. Before we could go, I had to put in a shift at the S
it 'n' Spin. Midway through the afternoon, it started to rain, so when Dave Mizra came jogging across the str
eet, he held a plastic bag over his head. It did little to keep him dry.

“Just some shirts today.” He piled three dam
p button-down Oxfords on the counter.

I was surprised, once again, there were so few. He often did ten at a time. I br
ought up the pad of Premium Service receipts.

“Actually, no thank you. Just regular today.”

“Regular dry cleaning?”

This just wasn't the Dave Mizra I knew.
He looked worn out. Maybe it was only the rain, his fine black hair dripping down to narrow his face, but he definitely looked thinner.

“Are you sure?” I asked him. “Not Premium?”

He didn't answer the question. He just asked, “How much for your regular se
rvice?”

“You mean, when
I
do it? You pay
by the pound.” I picked up the shirts, mentally
weighing them. “This won't cost much.”

“Good. Let's do that.”

“Really?” It seemed odd that the guy running the most successful business on the block suddenly wanted by-the-pound laundry service instead of Pr
emium Service. “Doesn't seem like you.”

“Cutting back. You know how it is.”

“But you're Dave Mizra.”

He laughed, but it didn't end right. The sound trailed off and he stared at me for a long time, as if he genuinely needed to be reminded who he was. Then, taking me completely by surprise, his eyes welled up and he started to cry.

“Whoa-whoa-whoa, are you okay?”

He shook his head, because (obviously) he wasn't. He covered his face with both hands.

“You want some water?” I ran to the bathroom on the far side of the dry-cleaning booth and filled a glass from the faucet. “Did something bad happen?”

He didn't say anything
for a while, just dabbed his face. “I have some troubles.
”

“You do?” I always thought of Dave Mizra as the cheeriest guy in Evandale.

“My wife,” he said. “In our home, near Algiers. S
he was in a car accident.”

“Oh, no. Is she okay?”

“She's fine.”

“Injured?”

He shook his head and spread his arms wide. “Completely unharmed.”

“Wait—so what's the problem?”

“Because of the other person in the accident. He is an important businessman f
rom our town. It's a lot of trouble for us. He intends to pr
ess charges—even though this accident, it was all his fault. Now my wife is going to court; the papers have been filed; and because of this, she will not be allow
ed to come until the case is settled. It's a g
reat delay, and if something goes wrong, she may
no longer be able to come at all.” H
is eyes went glossy again. “It's not
right for a man and wife to be apart so
long!” I thought of how often Mr. Rodolfo
called this man a faggot. How stupid was that? Ob
viously, Dave Mizra was crazy about his wife. “The man from the accident, he is asking for a bribe. I
t's blackmail.”

To me, the solution was simple. “Pay him off and get it over with. If it'll get your wife here, just pay the guy.”

He threw up his hands. “
How?!
”

“Wire the money.”

“What money?”

“Duh!” I pointed across the street. “The money you make over there.
”

Dave Mizra shook his head. “I make nothing,” he said.

“No way.” I almost
laughed in his face. “Famous people come to your shop. V
eronica Heller, even.”

Dave looked out the window for a while, not saying anything. “It was a lie,
” he whispered.

“What?”

“The Wild Blue Bounce. I don
't even know them. The music sounds like whining
to me. No spirit. But I know this is wha
t's popular nowadays, so … ” He shrugged like he was weighing a grapefruit in the produce section. “So I chose her.”

“
What do you mean, you ‘chose' her?”

“I made up that story.
She never came to my shop. You
really think someone like that would come to this neighborhood? Why do you think there were
no pictures? Don't you think I would ha
ve taken pictures? I told the man at the
Chronicler
she was ‘a private person' and he believed me.
Ha!
Journalists.”

“You mean she never came?”

“Does it matter? No one reads
this newspaper, the
Chronicler
.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“
Perhaps I'll have to sell the shop.
I think I should become a lawyer. They make
all the money. A doctor, perhaps.” H
e laughed when he said that, but it was all wrong again. It was the kind of laughter that made you think of being alone.

34

How to Kiss
a Homeless Girl

Calen was giving me the
you've-morphed-into-a-manatee
look. “I can't believe you kissed a homeless girl.”

“Just a peck on the cheek. Not like it was a big deal.”

“Except she's homeless.”

“She's
not
homeless.”

Calen and I were sitting in the café around the corner from the Metro Valley Cineplex, waiting for Alana to show up. We were going to see
Sudden Conquest
.

Most kids from Rosemount, kids like T
opher with rich parents, talked about how they were going to grow up and make kick-ass investments or sta
rt the next Facebook. That's what I liked about Calen. He didn't care about any of that stuff. It suited me fine, because I was too poor to have an opinion. Calen was diffe
rent. He genuinely liked cars, girls, and baseball. He had always liked cars, girls, and baseball. He was the sort of person old people from the fifties meant when they said “straight shooter.”

Which is also why he thought it was strange for someone to play music on the street.

“I'm telling you, she's not homeless. Her dad teaches philosophy at Falconer.”

“Have you actually
seen
her home?”

“No.”

“So she
might
be homeless.”

“
She's not
.”

For a moment, Calen gave this some serious thought. “Maybe. I guess. She was kind of too hot to be homeless.”

I smiled. “Exactly.”

“If she's not homeless, you should call her and have her meet us,” Calen advised, suddenly changing his tune. “It'll be cool, like a double date.”

“You think? I just saw her last
night. What happened to not being needy?”

Calen shook his head at me like I was an infant with a spilled bowl of mushy peaches. “That only applies
at the beginning
. You
guys've already kissed, so that stage is
over. Now you'll screw it up if you
don
't
call.”

I took out the piece of the paper where Zoey had written her number. As I unfolded it, I was surprised to see a familiar symbol. A daisy with the initials
BC
. It was a flyer from Beauha
ven, complete with its familiar slogan:
Get Wellness!

“That's weird.”

“What?” Calen craned his neck to look at the paper.

“My mom goes here.”

“So?”

“It's, like,
way
out of town.”

“So?”

“I don't know.”

“Whatever. Just go call her.”

I went outside and dialed the number.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Zoey?”

I heard music in the background, the carnival-at-the-end-of-the-world melody of “Colt's-T
ooth Blues.” It was rapidly becoming our theme song.

The music stopped. “Who is this?”

Before I could tell her again, a man with a deep voice grunted something I couldn't hea
r.

“I'm on the phone!” Zoey yelled back at
him. “What is it?!”

“I said,” the man hollered, “don't switch it off! Listen to it again!”

That must have been Zoey's father.
His voice was gruff and aggressive. He was slurring his words. H
e sounded drunk.

“And
I
said,
I am on the phone
!”

The music came on again, but at a lower volume.

“Sorry,” Zoey whispe
red. “Who do you want to talk to?”

“
You
. It's me, Kaz. I took you for pho, remember?”

“
Kaz!
What's going on?”

“I wanted to see what you were doing.”

She lowered her voice again. “Not much.”

I told her where we were,
that we were headed for a movie. S
he said she wouldn't mind getting out of the
house for a while.

“Who're you talking to?” the man demanded.

“A friend of mine,” Zoey answered.

He laughed, but not in a nice way.

“Shut up,” Zoey told him.

I wondered what Mom would do if I ever told her to shut up.

“You're not going anywhere,” her
father told her. “You've got work to do.”

“If this isn't a good time,” I said, “we could always—”

“No. It's fine.”

Zoey's father said something else in the background, but I couldn't understand it.

“I know it already!” Zoey shouted at him.

There was a clatter of noise that might have been plates cracking or maybe a crescendo of percussion in the Shain Cope song. Then more crashes and bangs—definitely not any kind of music. Suddenly, Zoey's voice was right inside my head, a ragged whisper.

“Save me a seat. I'll be there soon.”