Downers Grove (12 page)

“You've never clipped a coupon in your life,” I said.

“All right, so maybe I'm a bad example, but you know what I mean.”

D
OOMSDAY
strikes. Finals. The algebra test. With the added luck of multiple choice and the fact that we are being graded on the curve, I should definitely be able to slip by with a C or a D. The classroom was hushed in all-out brain fever. You could smell the synapses burning. I stared out the window, trying to remember the formulas of several equations—which seemed to be tangled together or linked backward or forward or worse—when all of a sudden the fire alarm sounded and a big cheer resounded through the hallways.

“Turn in your test unfinished!” Ms. Carson yelled.

I jumped up and set my test on the front desk, then hurried out of the classroom before anyone changed their mind. I couldn't wait to get outside and have a smoke. The weird thing is I could kinda smell smoke in the hallway, and I wondered, could this be for real?

The stairwell was packed and some rowdy boys were trying
to exascerbate the hysteria. I went outside and parked on the lawn, watching the fire trucks roll in one after another, their sirens wailing full tilt like it was the Towering Inferno or something. It was so beautiful outside I wanted to kiss whoever pulled the alarm and saved me from that mind-frying torture. I lit a cigarette and leafed through my math book, looked up some formulas for the algebra questions, then scribbled them on my wrist with a black pen. Math sucks. Trigonometry should be left to specialists. Why does everybody have to learn the formula that makes triangles? Unless you're planning on doing something totally irrational like riding on the space shuttle, there was very little need for big math.

We got beached in the grass for half an hour because apparently there was a small fire somewhere in the building. When the firemen retreated and the student body was finally allowed to return to their classrooms, I got clipped from the crowd by Vice Principal O'Leary. He led me into his office for questioning. O'Leary was a big man. Intimidating. He smelled like military aftershave. His office was so anal, even the photos on his desk were in formation. It looked like some kind of interrogation room; there was a black vinyl chair and a small white rug, but no coffee table or magazines. The only other furniture was a lamp at the edge of his large black desk. It was like the biggest desk you've ever seen.

“Listen,” I said. “I was taking a test, check it out, it wasn't me.”

“Yes, but it was your locker. Tell me, who would do such a thing and why would they do it to you?” He looked the other way, as if to make it easier for me to confess.

“What do you mean?” I was mortified, started sweating,
trying to remember what was in my locker, wondering if there was anything in there that shouldn't have been.

“The fire started in your locker.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Did you light your books on fire as some sort of practical joke?”

“I told you I was in math class taking a test,” I said.

“Maybe you had a timer device?” He leaned over the desk.

“What am I? The Unabomber?”

“That's what I'm trying to find out,” he said.

“Ever heard of random violence?” I kept my cards close to my chest. O'Leary was anxious to hang this incident on my neck.

“Young lady, you are in very serious trouble. We are talking about the destruction of government property.”

“I didn't do it!”

“I'm asking you who did!”

“How should I know?”

“Disgruntled boyfriend perhaps?”

“I wish.”

“Then who?”

I knew a thousand who's but wasn't exactly sure which one.

“You're the detective,” I said. “You tell me.”

“Don't get smart with me, young lady! I'm going to get to the bottom of this.”

“Can I see my locker?” I asked.

“Yes, of course. We'll walk up there together.” He led me toward the door. The receptionist stared at me like I was Charles Manson or something.

There was a small circle of gawkers pointing at me as I arrived with escort at the crime scene. My locker was history.

It's amazing what a shot glass of gasoline and a match will do to four years' worth of memorabilia. Everything was reduced to one soggy smelly
blech,
because what the fire didn't destroy, the firemen did. The door was only hanging by a single hinge, everything else was spilled onto the floor.

“Why was there a car battery in your locker?” he asked. “Were you trying to make a bomb?”

I didn't want to be connected to any car batteries. “It wasn't there this morning, sir. Those are my notes.” I pointed to a bunch of charred papers. “Why would I do that?”

“I've heard every excuse imaginable from students trying to weasel their way through exams.” He rubbed his forehead, then pointed at me. “If you fail your exams
you will
be back here next September.” Mr. O'Leary turned and shuffled back to his office. “I can't help you unless you help me.”

I pillaged through the wreckage. There wasn't anything I wanted anyway.

Tracy came running up with her camera. “Hold it right there,” she said.

Flash. Flash. Flash.

T
RACY
and I parked ourselves as far away as possible from everyone in the cafeteria. Strictly a playground of freshmen and sophomores, it was a good place to lay low. All the cool people usually drove to McDonald's or one of the other cowfrys. It just seemed like a good day to ground our usual flight.

“What if the world were to end today?” Tracy asked.

“Then all this would be meaningless. You're just looking for a way out of finals,” I said.

Tracy unwrapped her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I squirted some mustard on my veggieburger to give it a little flavor.

“Did you pass your history test?” I asked.

“I have to go to my teacher's office for some extra credit,” she said.

I shot her a look.

“I'm just kidding.” She rolled her eyes, acted unapologetic, as if she was sleeping with him anyway, and aren't I such a prude to have my nose so high in the air. “Any new clues as to who firebombed your locker?”

“What I want to know is how come I got torched and you didn't?”

“You obviously hang out with arsonists,” she said. “Maybe the Magic geeks cast a spell on your locker, or maybe it was instantaneous combustion. I saw this special on
Mystery Theater
about it.”

“This was not a divine event, Tracy.” I sipped my milk carton. “You know exactly who would leave a car battery in my locker.”

“It might have been somebody you don't even know: a sophomore with a crush and a few minor psychotic tendencies.”

“It's a bad omen and you know it.”

“Listen, it's finals, we're under a lot of stress, everyone is prone to be a little hysterical.”

“I am not being hysterical!” I shouted.

“What about the curse?” Tracy asked.

“What about it?”

“Have you heard anything?”

“Can we please talk about something else?”

“Like what?”

“Like what we usually talk about. I don't care. Pick a topic. Men. Movies. Music. What about hair? We haven't talked about hair in a long time.”

“Will you get real? God. You are so bent out of shape. It was just a prank, lighten up will ya? Or I won't share my good
news.” Tracy dug around her purse until she pulled out a newspaper clipping and handed it to me. “Have you seen this?” It was an article from the
Downers Grove Reporter
about the Miller 100. “Guess whose name is listed in the entries?”

“He's racing tonight?” I glanced over the article, scanning for Bobby's name.

“I think it starts at eight.”

“When can you pick me up?” I whispered.

“Excuse me?”

“Please,” I begged.

“Well.” She paused. “I'll have to take a shower and—”

“That could take hours.”

“Or years if you don't shut up.”

The buzzer rang and it was time to go take another final.

“I'm still grounded, so let's do a Patty Hearst at the mailbox at seven. Okay?”

“Whatever you say, Tanya.”

A
FTER
school I went home, laid on my bed, and tried to do some studying, but was too distracted by the day's events to concentrate, so I cleaned out my drawers and sifted through my memorabilia instead. Whenever I'm depressed I tend to spend hours trying to make sense of my life by putting it in some sort of chronological order. Organizing photographs in a time sequence helps me estimate whether I'm overdue for some climactic change like a broken leg or another doomed love affair. I found a picture of Mom when she was in high school during the sixties. She was doing a flower child number: miniskirt, beads, and rose-tinted glasses, wearing the same mysterious glare she does today. I wondered if Dad took the picture. Mom rarely talked about any of her other old boyfriends.

I looked out the window and saw her picking weeds out of the sprouting garden. I always wondered what Mom was
thinking when she was all alone. I wanted to be inside her head and know everything about her, but it was impossible, because I was me and she was she and after so many years the boundaries were built to last forever. It's so weird that I'm old enough now to feel both the pain of her struggle and the radical impulse to avoid all her mistakes.

Mom was once a local beauty queen and did some regional modeling, but apparently all that did was attract a lot of trial and error, like my father. Dad was just back from Vietnam and they swung through the boogie-fever seventies celebrating life from the edge of a coke spoon. Their marriage was a dance that ended just as confused as it began. Without a dowry or a husband Mom charmed her way back into society using old connections from her pageant days and quickly snagged some part-time employment from the museum downtown. It's actually more like an old house stuffed with a bunch of junk you're not allowed to touch. Mom says the dust is giving hell to her allergies. Anyway, she bumped into the astronaut at one of the museum's functions, and it's been ground control to Major Dan ever since.

It makes me mad that Bobby didn't call and invite me to the track. Sometimes I worry he's just like Dad and I'm about to repeat all of my mother's errors. When I look into the mirror I worry about the reflection, but I guess I have to make my own mistakes. I just wish I'd taken better notes.

A
T
seven o' clock I wandered outside and slowly made my way down the driveway. Inside the mailbox was a recruiting letter from the U.S. Army addressed to my brother. Mom usually leaves them on the stairs to the basement, thinking a green uniform might help him channel his adolescent anger, but he sends them back with all kinds of idiotic rantings like “Will I get to fire nuclear weapons on worthless third world countries?” When the local recruitier came to our school, David and his friends all wore dresses. It was a riot. They keep sending him more forms, so I guess he's just the kind of guy they're looking for.

I stuffed the envelope back into the box, sat on the curb, and picked weeds out of the grass, watching the corner, cursing Tracy's lateness. Some little kids were playing kick the can at the other end of the block, chasing one another around, screaming at the top of their lungs. Jewels was out spritzing his
precious lawn in a white Speedo, pink thongs, and gold-rimmed glasses.

I picked a piece of clover out of the grass and pulled the leaves from its stem. “He loves me,” I chanted, “he loves me not.” Clover drives Jewels totally mad. He calls it Creeping Charley because it “spreads like communism.” I pulled out a handful of proletarians, tore their heads off, tossed them onto the driveway to shrivel up and die.

I finally heard the Eurobeep and saw the kids scattering. Tracy's VW hurled down the winding cul-de-sac. She rolled up slowly and popped the door open like a kidnapper. I jumped inside and slammed the door. Tracy sped up the block, beeping again, swerving between the little monsters, who swore and made obscene gestures with their miniature hands. When we pulled out of the subdivision, I sat up, lit a cigarette, nervous about what I'd just done and the evening still ahead.

“I've never run away from home before,” I said.

“Excuse me, but you're not running, you're riding.” Tracy flipped her hair back. “I hope you have some gas money.”

I took three dollars out of my pocket and slipped it into the ashtray.

“So how's it feel to be jobbing a car jacker?” Tracy asked.

“What exactly is ‘jobbing'?”

“You know, a day job, like where you work.”

“I don't have a job. My mechanic is not work.”

“Well he's not exactly a vacation.” Tracy shifted in her seat. “What's up with your mom? What got her so bent out of shape?”

“There's been a little trouble in paradise. I think the astronaut got dumped on the dark side of the moon.”

“Really? What happened?”

“Dan got loosey-goosey in Vegas. Mom caught him making eyes at some other church ladies. He lost a lot of Brownie points.”

“So she's taking it out on you.”

“I guess.”

“Did she find out about the party yet?”

“She's definitely suspicious. The cleanup committee missed a few empty beer bottles in the backyard.”

“Blame it on those kids down the road.”

“I already did.”

“What did you tell her about the mechanic?”

“He's not a mechanic.” I took a hit off the cigarette. “He's a race car driver.”

“And you're just the all-American girl he probably thought he'd never have. A girl from the other side of the tracks bursting with repressed fantasies.”