Crimes of the Sarahs (22 page)

And what is the truth about that? Where would I start? Fourth grade? Sarah A saving me from the bus? The lip gloss? The contest? How can I help him comprehend
anything
, when I’m so confused about
everything
?

“It’s your friends who determine your course!” my father yells after me.

I don’t know why he keeps referring to my friends. If anyone has ever been a ship alone at sea, it’s me. Friends? They’re gone. And I wish he could at least try to see the importance of the duck. My own father took Sarah A’s suggestion over mine. It just proves how flimsy I am. My own father doesn’t want to go along with my idea. How many things have I ever picked out? None. Never. Would it have been so hard? Would it have been that difficult?

King Kong changed the equation
.

One side of my brain: I can’t believe he said that.

Other side of my brain: Maybe I do need different friends.

Chapter 19

I attach John Glenn to his newly established dog run outside. The line runs between two trees. He seems to like this. His tongue unfurls out of his mouth like a flag as he zooms back and forth. This was my father’s idea. He doesn’t think it’s healthy for a dog to spend all day inside. He’s probably right.

As we drive to the car lot, neither one of us speak. Last night, right as I was falling to sleep, I heard my mother come into my room. She didn’t say anything. She walked to where I was pretending to sleep and raised the blankets to cover my shoulder. She also patted John Glenn on the head. She might be coming around.

We pull into my father’s car lot and I catch my first long look at Godzilla. It’s hideous. In addition to listing to the right, it’s got these enormous yellow claws. I have no idea how such a monstrous beast is supposed to drive up sales. Maybe a passing driver might see it and, startled, careen off the road and strike a telephone pole, thus requiring the accident victim to
purchase a new vehicle. But that seems like a risky way to drum up business.

“What should I do?” I ask.

My father lets out a long sigh.

“Stay out of trouble,” he says.

“So I shouldn’t do anything?” I ask.

“They could use your help in the detailing area,” he says.

That means more cleaning. I’m sick of cleaning. I’m a teenager. We’re used to a certain level of filth in our daily lives. In fact, we prefer it.

“I’ll need to be home by four to feed John Glenn,” I say.

“We’ll be leaving at three.”

Great. I’m going to spend the next three hours polishing cars. I hate wax. It’s always been a substance that’s difficult for me to appreciate.

“Your Godzilla is crooked,” I say.

“No, it’s not. You’re just looking at it from an angle.”

I shake my head. And walk off to the detail shop tucked at the back of the car lot.

“Lenny,” I hear my father yell. “Is the lizard leaning?”

I don’t turn back around. I hope Godzilla falls on its fire-breathing face. Big-time.

***

“Q-tips work well for cleaning crevice dirt,” Johanna says.

Johanna Izzo is a plain-looking brunette. She’s always
been kind to me. I think she had a crush on Liam. But I don’t think Liam crushed back. She’s worked at my father’s car lot since she graduated from high school three years ago. Just like those woolly mammoths that wandered into the tar pits during prehistoric times, I think she’s stuck. Why else would she be here? This place reeks of glass cleaner.

“You’re great at polishing tires,” Johanna says.

She knows I’m miserable. She’s trying her best to cheer me. Really, all I’m doing is spraying a thick foam coat onto the tire’s surface and watching the white fluff melt away.

“Are you excited for your senior year?” she asks.

“I guess,” I say.

“I know what you mean. It’s not the big deal that everybody makes it out to be. It’s just another year.”

I nod, but really, I think she’s wrong. It’s a HUGE deal. After senior year, you aren’t in high school anymore. Unless you fail, you’re booted out into the real world. Or if you’re lucky, you land in college for a few years until you get booted out into the real world for real.

“So you like it here?” I ask.

I think it’s a dumb question. But I don’t realize this until after I ask it.

“It’s okay. I’m saving up to move to Florida.”

“Do you have family there?” I ask.

“My grandma lives there. I want to work at a resort.”

“Doing what?”

“Anything. I want to live in a warm climate.”

“You and alligators,” I say.

She looks up and laughs. When she does this, she comes across as less average, almost cute.

“How much money does it take to move there?” I ask.

It seems like in three years that she should have been able to save up enough funds for the journey. How much is bus fare?

She shrugs and blushes.

“Well, I’m saving for me and my boyfriend.”

“I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”

Something about cleaning cars makes people confess everything. It’s a little weird. I even feel on the verge of telling her a bit about my criminal past. But I know I won’t.

“So how’s Liam?” she asks. “Is he still in California?”

“Yeah, he’s a sophomore now. At Stanford.”

I always feel a little pretentious when I mention that he’s at Stanford. But he is.

“He was a lot of fun to work with,” she says.

Immediately, I feel tense and on guard. I sense in her comment an implicit comparison, like she’s saying detailing cars with Liam was more fun than detailing cars with me. It always comes down to this.

“He was so smart,” she says.

“He’s not dead,” I say.

“What?” she asks.

“You referred to him in the past tense. He’s not dead.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean to,” she says. “It’s just my experience with him was in the past.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s so smart,” she says.

“Stanford thinks so too,” I say.

“No, I’m being serious. I feel like I learned a lot working with him. He was always talking about interesting stuff.”

I so wish Johanna would shut up immediately. I could be talking about interesting stuff too. If I wanted.

“Did he talk about books?” I ask. Because, really, that’s not a true demonstration of intelligence. That’s just a demonstration of his ability to read and regurgitate facts that he gleaned from reading. It merely proves that he’s literate and has a memory.

“I learned a lot about the Potawatomi.”

I feel my stomach tighten. I don’t like to think of Johanna knowing more about my own heritage than I do.

“Before Liam I had no idea that the word Potawatomi meant keeper of the fire,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say. I guess I learned that too, at some point. But foreign words and phrases are pretty easy for me to forget. I struggle to retain vocabulary in Spanish class too.

“And he talked about the different bands. You’re part of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, right?” she asks. “Or was it the Prairie Band Potawatomi? I mix those two up.”

“Pokagon,” I say. But I don’t even know if that’s right.

“We need more Q-tips.”

I point to a large pile that I’ve accumulated while swiping dust from the corners of the dashboard and vent slats.

“You can use them more than once,” she says.

“Oh.”

I start reswiping them.

“Are you going to come in every day until school starts?” she asks.

She’s rubbing the windshield with newspapers until the glass squeaks.

“I don’t think so,” I say. “I think it’s just today.”

I swipe too hard. A Q-tip breaks off and falls inside a heating vent. I can see the torn end of the white stick, but I can’t reach it. I don’t mention this to Johanna.

“So, are you like Liam? Do you take culture trips? Do you go look at historic markers?”

Nobody has ever asked me questions like these before. Culture trips? They sound like field trips, only nerdier. And I’d never really thought of visiting historic markers as a legitimate activity. It’s something you do while scouting for rest areas when driving cross-country with your family.

“I live in a historic house,” I say.

I flip the vent closed to further conceal the broken Q-tip.

“You don’t drive out and look at Indian stuff?” she asks.

Besides Liam, I have never met anybody so hung up on American Indians. I almost don’t know what to say to her. It seems culturally insensitive to harp on somebody else’s culture like this. When I hung out with the Sarahs this never happened. We were too busy planning our crimes to consider any of our heritages.

“No, I don’t drive around looking at historical markers for Indian stuff,” I say.

“Liam took me to the monument of Chief White Pigeon at the 12 and 131 junction. It was neat,” she says.

I have heard of Chief White Pigeon, but I have no idea what he did. I wonder if this outing with Liam was an official date. How cheap of him if it was.

“I’m not like Liam,” I say. “I’m not hyper-curious about any of that. I’m busy with school. And I’m in the choir. And I have a dog now.”

I feel Johanna’s hand on my shoulder. It startles me. I hadn’t realized she was standing right there.

“I think Native Americans are cool,” she says. “I’ve read
Ceremony
by Leslie Marmon Silko. And I’m a huge fan of Sitting Bull and Geronimo and Sacagawea. It’s terrible what our country did to you guys.”

She’s frowning down on me, her face filled with sympathy. This is so weird. I wish she’d stop talking. She’s behaving like a public service announcement and it’s creeping me out.

“I’m only one-quarter Potawatomi. None of my family grew up on reservations. We’ve been completely suburban for generations,” I say. “I consider myself white.”

Johanna’s eyes widen. “Oh,” she says.

She walks away and resumes cleaning the windows. Things feel so weird. I wonder what she’s thinking? I’m not ashamed of being part Indian. It’s just not that important to me. I feel like I should explain this to her. But she’s practically a stranger. Why do I have to justify anything to her? I keep my hands moving. Sometimes a rote task can be a pleasant distraction.

“It’s time for my lunch break,” she says. “If you want, you can get started on the Subaru while I’m gone.”

She points to a green car parked outside the detail shop.

“Okay,” I say.

Johanna smiles at me before she goes. I almost smile back. She didn’t mean to be a weirdo. She was just trying to connect. She is such a nice, stuck person. Actually, probably most stuck people are nice. Most likely, that’s part of why they’re stuck. I wave good-bye to her.

“Oh, shit,” she says.

“What?” I ask.

“Godzilla,” she says. “It’s fallen on top of the Miata.”

“It has?” I ask. I find this fantastic. Finally, something has happened to cheer me up.

“That thing had been a catastrophe since day one,” she says.

I walk outside and watch Lenny and my father furiously pulling on the ropes, trying to lift his balloon body off of the shiny red car.

“A duck wouldn’t have tipped like that,” I say. “Ducks are sturdy.”

“What?” Johanna asks.

A guy pulls up in a turd-brown Buick and honks.

“See you in an hour,” she says. She climbs into the car and pecks the driver on the cheek. It seems automatic and unaffectionate.

I watch them drive off. The car looks old and heavy. Johanna’s hair flies out of the window in long wisps. I wonder if she’ll make it to Florida. Change is harder than it looks. “This is your fault!” I hear my father yell. “You slashed my line! You’re a cutthroat maniac!”

I walk toward the shouting. My stomach flutters with excitement. This is the most interesting thing that’s happened in a long, long time.

Chapter 20

My father is holding a thick yellow rope. He’s wagging it at a fat man in a gray suit.

“Sabotage!” my father yells. “Pure and simple.”

“You’re out of your mind, Trestle,” the fat man responds.

I look back and forth between the two. Lenny has taken hold of my father by the arm. Is my dad really going to fight the man in the suit?

“Your lizard’s too big and there’s a breeze. That’s your problem,” the fat man says.

“Big Don’s right,” Lenny says. “I think it’s the breeze.”

My father stares into the end of the rope like it contains some sort of answer. His face wrinkles in a pained disappointment.

“My ape may be shorter, but it holds its balance better,” Big Don says. “Lower center of gravity. It’s why squirrels don’t fall off roofs.”

“It’s the truth,” Lenny says.

Lenny lets go of my father’s arm and pats his shoulder.

Big Don twists his mouth into a smirk and turns on his heel to leave. “Only a dip would think a lizard would move cars,” he says.

My father springs forward. Lenny tries to grab his arm but it’s too late. This isn’t as amusing as it was five seconds ago. I don’t want to see my father assault the fat man. Big Don must be able to hear my father’s approach, because he tries to run. His belly wobbles over his pants.

“Dad! Stop!” I yell. “It’s not worth it.”

Amazingly, my father pauses. He ends his pursuit of Big Don and turns to face me. Big Don slows his pace and flips around.

“Your lizard isn’t the only unstable thing on your lot,” he says.

My father looks at him and looks to me. I think he might lunge toward Big Don again. That guy is a totally bloated jerk. But my father doesn’t. He shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head.

“Godzilla might be unstable, but he’s a helluva lot more attractive than your big, ugly ape,” he says.

Big Don takes a step back toward my father.

“All apes are ugly. They’re supposed to be, chief,” Big Don says.

My father looks away, like he didn’t hear the word “chief.” Normally, I might not have noticed it. But because of Johanna, because of my mother’s recent breakdown over my grandmother
and great-grandmother, my mind is tuned to a frequency where I hear the word “chief.” And it stings. I turn back to look at my father. His chin is lifted. It sort of doesn’t make sense that Big Don would call my dad “chief.” He’s not Indian. It’s my mother who is half Potawatomi. I guess bigots shoot at the most available target. Even if it strains accuracy.