Schooled (6 page)
I don’t think I ever would have learned to understand regular school if it hadn’t been for
Trigonometry and Tears.
It was Sophie’s favorite show. I watched it with her every day after school when I didn’t have something else to do, like being under arrest.
There was no TV at Garland, and it wasn’t just because our generator barely had enough power to run the lights and refrigerator. Rain said television was a vast wasteland that lowered our standards until we couldn’t tell the difference between bad and good. I would never disagree with Rain, but I thought
T & T
was fantastic. When I watched it, everything around me seemed to disappear, and the whole world was happening on that little screen. Those people were so
real
, with true-to-life problems and big decisions that had to be made. I kept wishing that the characters had someone like Rain to turn to in times of trouble, but they didn’t. They had their parents, who were even more messed up and confused than the kids were. It was a perfect symbol for life outside Garland—huge, complicated, and full of hidden traps and pitfalls. Plus, every now and then, the program stops and the TV tells you about all the great things you can buy, like a miracle cream that makes it scientifically impossible to get a pimple.
If it hadn’t been for the show, I would have been really bewildered by the huge fuss everybody was making over driving one little school bus less than five miles. The adults on
T & T
were always going bananas over something, so I wasn’t surprised when the police, the superintendent, the principal, the bus company owner, and Mrs. Donnelly all took turns screaming at me. They even made Rain call from the rehab center, and gosh, it was good to hear her voice.
“I’m supposed to talk some sense into you,” she told me. “But what I really want to say is congratulations. You did the right thing.”
“The police don’t think so.”
“Typical,” she clucked. “Getting hung up on the numbers on your birth certificate when you probably saved a life.”
“They made me lie on my stomach while they cuffed my hands behind my back,” I complained.
“Does that bring back memories!” she exclaimed. “Every time I protested the Vietnam War, I wound up in the same position. Those were the days!”
“It was horrible.”
“Don’t worry, Cap,” she said comfortingly. “I’m getting stronger every day. In no time at all, we’ll both be back to the sanity of Garland.”
Just the thought of it warmed me all over. Maybe we could get a stronger generator so we could watch
Trigonometry and Tears
there. I knew someone as smart as Rain would appreciate it if she’d just give it a chance.
I’d been doing tai chi since I was five. Rain was my teacher. She explained that if you concentrate to the point where your mind and body become one, all outward awareness melts away.
It was the first day after I drove Mr. Rodrigo to the hospital. I was halfway through my routine, when there, performing the moves beside me, was that girl Naomi. I recognized her instantly—she was one of the fifty-four names I had managed to learn so far.
“Extend your fingers,” I whispered. “The energy should begin in your core and flow out through your extremities.”
She made the adjustment. “Thanks.”
She turned out to be a natural, but I had to cut the workout short. Zach had scheduled another press briefing for that morning. Hard experience had taught me to leave extra time to find the room.
“Well, uh, good-bye.”
“Wait!” she exclaimed.
“But I have to go to a—”
“I know.” She looked unhappy. Maybe she understood how difficult these briefings were for me. How I could never answer any of the questions, yet the reporters kept asking more and more.
“Cap, there’s something I need to tell you.”
I assumed she was going to give me directions to the journalism lab. Instead she said, “Watch out for Zach and Lena. Watch out for all of us. We’re not as nice as we pretend to be.”
“You’re nice,” I told her.
“You’re the nice one, Cap.” And she ran into the school, leaving me wondering if I would ever understand people outside Garland, or if I even wanted to try.
I was a little late for the briefing because no one had heard of the journalism lab, which turned out to be just an ordinary classroom. Even more surprising, in addition to the usual reporters—Zach, Lena, and Darryl—there were at least twenty kids seated at the desks.
“Where did you learn to drive a school bus?” came the first question, from a dark-haired boy in the second row.
“Nowhere,” I said honestly. Then I realized that this could be a chance to learn some new names. “And you are—?”
“Trent Davidoff.”
I took out a small notepad and wrote it down. “I usually drive a pickup truck. That’s why I had a little trouble on the corners.”
“How did you know Mr. Rodrigo was having a heart attack?” queried the girl next to Trent.
“And your name is—?” I prompted.
“Caitlin Rankin.”
I wrote that down too. “I couldn’t be sure it was a heart attack. But he was lying on the floor, unconscious, and that can’t be good.”
A boy near the back spoke up. “What did the police say to you?” He added, “I’m Trevor Mardukas.”
I scribbled it at the bottom of the page as I recalled the arresting officer’s exact words. “He said, ‘Keep your nose clean or next time you’re looking at Juvie.’”
“Didn’t you explain about Mr. Rodrigo?” asked Caitlin.
“No, I blew my nose and wiped it very carefully.”
Zach was looking annoyed, which was odd. After all, these press briefings had been his idea in the first place. He raised a hand. “Is it true that you haven’t even started planning the Halloween dance?”
The dance again. The entire entrance foyer was taken up with a floor-to-ceiling poster about it. There was even a picture of me, with a dialogue balloon coming out of my mouth, saying:
QUESTIONS? ASK ME!
It was probably unrealistic to hope that nobody would.
“Yes, it’s true,” I admitted.
“Aren’t you worried that you won’t be ready when the time comes?” he persisted.
“I don’t know anything about parties,” I said honestly. “I only know fifty-seven people, including you guys.”
Luckily, the bell rang, saving me from having to answer any more questions. But as we headed into the corridor, Trent approached me.
“You know, if you’re looking for party music, my cousin’s Bar Mitzvah had this deejay—the guy was amazing! Even the blue-hair crowd was getting down with the hip-hop moves.”
I frowned. “How about the people with regular hair?”
“Kids were going nuts!” Trent assured me. “They loved it!”
I thought of something Rain once said. Back in the sixties, when Garland was a working commune, the biggest jobs went to the people who were best qualified to handle them. Why should I make decisions about a party when I’d never been to one?
I faced Trent. “You should look after the music.”
He was amazed. “You’re putting
me
in charge of hiring a deejay?” he asked breathlessly.
“Not ‘in charge.’ Authority is a power trip. A community thrives when each member does what he or she is best at. Your strength is the music.”
Trent nodded. “But how do I pay the guy?”
“It’s a shame that money has to enter into everything,” I lamented.
“Don’t worry about that,” Caitlin jumped in. “The school must have a budget for the dance.” She turned to me. “Right?”
I had absolutely no idea. Rain used cash to buy supplies for the commune, but I’d never even held a dollar bill in my hand. We believed that the money-crazy mind-set was a big part of what was wrong with the world.
So I said what Caitlin and Trent seemed to expect to hear: “Right.”
I hoped it was the correct answer.
The freakazoid just might be my good-luck charm. A few days after my first driving lesson, Dad resurfaced. His job involved a lot of traveling, but this time he said he was going to be around for a few months.
“So now we can see about turning you into a licensed driver.” He beamed at me.
My mother gave him the Look. “Sophie was really disappointed when you didn’t show up last week.”
“Mother—” I said warningly. I didn’t need a trained social worker nagging interference for me.
Dad chose not to pick up on the vibe. “Well, I’m here now,” he said cheerfully. “Let’s go.”
And we did. I have to say, I wish he was as patient as Cap. But now that our houseguest was on the cops’ A-list for grand-theft school bus, it would probably be too risky to go out driving with him anymore.
Cap was doing his tai chi under the weeping willow when I maneuvered Dad’s Saab into the driveway.
“God bless America!” Dad was astonished. “That’s the stray your mother brought home?”
“The very same,” I sighed.
“Does he have to do that right out in the open in broad daylight?”
“He used to stick closer to the house,” I admitted. “I persuaded him not to. Three buckets of water did the trick.” One thing about Cap—it
did
take a brick building to fall on him.
Dad laughed. “You’re a saint to put up with it, Soph. This is cruel and unusual.”
We agreed on that, especially the part about me being a saint. That was another advantage of having Dad around. Mom was so nice, so kind, so understanding that she made the rest of us seem like insensitive jerks. But Dad took one look at Cap Anderson and instantly understood my side of the story. Moments like this really made me miss him when he was away, which was most of the time.
Dad waved to our houseguest as he walked me to the door. “Nice moves, kid. I used to do a little kendo in my younger days.” He could make conversation with a brick wall—part of his salesman DNA.
Cap looked disapproving. “That’s with swords, isn’t it? Rain would never teach me anything that uses weapons.”
Dad nodded in agreement. “We trained with padded sticks so no one got hurt—purely ceremonial. It was all about pressure points and energy flow. I’ll show you, one of these days.”
To me, he said, “Gotta run. But first—” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small jewelry box. “—belated birthday present.”
Yeah, seven months belated.
I took it from him, thrilled. It was a silver bangle, set with multicolored stones. “Love it. Thanks, Dad.”
I was about to try it on when he snatched it back. “Not so fast. I just wanted to make sure you like it before I have it engraved.”
Cap stared at the bracelet, hypnotized. “That,” he said in a hushed voice, “is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Leave it to him. The kid grew up surrounded by wooden planks and fertilizer—the shiniest object in his life was probably an old pitchfork. No wonder he took a few rhinestones for the crown jewels.
Dad tried to make it into a joke. “I guess you don’t get out much.”
“I didn’t get out at all until I came here. We never left Garland except to lay in supplies.”
Dad looked profoundly interested. “I forgot—you’re from Garland. Sophie’s mom grew up there. What’s it like these days?”
There followed a description of this year’s turnip crop that would have put a Tasmanian devil to sleep. Dad was classy. He looked totally fascinated by the whole thing. But every now and then he would shoot me a smirk that had me thinking sad thoughts just to keep from cracking up.
Oh, it was great to have Dad back again!
It was true that I now knew 129 people. But in a school of 1,100, that hardly made a dent.
Rain always said, “Don’t give up, and don’t give in.” Of course, she was talking about civil rights or protesting a war or something. But I was sure it counted for this too.
The good news was that more students were coming up to me, which was a chance for me to ask their names. Usually, they wanted to talk about the time I drove Mr. Rodrigo to the hospital. I was amazed that people seemed less interested in Mr. Rodrigo’s recovery than the details of how he got to the emergency room.
Rain explained it to me the last time I spoke to her on the phone. “That’s society for you, Cap. Following rules is more important than living your life. The law says you can’t drive until you’re sixteen. So if somebody does it, it’s a huge deal. You should feel sorry for these poor kids. They’re prisoners, and they don’t even know it.”
“That explains why Sophie is so obsessed with getting her license,” I concluded.
“Exactly. What’s a license? A piece of paper. That’s the
real
story, Cap—that we’ve allowed ourselves to be enslaved by our own laws.”
She was so sensible. I wish I could have talked to her twenty times a day. It was almost like I was piloting a ship through a blinding fog, and Rain was an experienced captain. I wished I could have asked her how to play every wave. But it just wasn’t possible.
“Are you feeling better? When can we both go home?”
“Soon, Cap,” she promised. “And in the meantime, you stay true to yourself. Don’t change because everybody around you is spiritually handicapped. I don’t know this Sophie girl, but her mother, Floramundi—well, let’s say that she wasn’t one of Garland’s bigger successes. They say the apple never falls far from the tree, you know.”
“Rain,” I reminded her gently, “that sounds like a negativity trip.”
Rain taught me that when people are negative, they’re trying to put duct tape on their own damaged souls. And while we were all for using duct tape on a drainpipe or a fender, it could never hold together something as important as a soul.
“You’re right,” she admitted with a sigh. “It’s hard to stay positive when you’re surrounded by psychic zombies. I find myself slipping back to the Dark Ages before Garland. Yesterday I made a hand gesture to one of the so-called doctors—let’s just hope it was muscle memory from my taxi-driving career.”
It made me feel weird to hear Rain speaking ill about Sophie without even meeting her. Of course, I was partly to blame for that. I’d told Rain some of the mean stuff Sophie had said and done. I had to tell her the
good
about Sophie, but it was hard to nail down. Like when Sophie smiled, just for that instant, there was almost no such thing as sadness. Would Rain even understand that? I wasn’t sure I did myself.
Everything about Sophie had a kind of shine to it. After years of studying art with Rain, I still couldn’t remember a color as intense as the glitter polish Sophie painted on her toenails. Even her shelf in the bathroom was a wondrous sight—a skyline of bottles, tubes, and jars of all shapes and hues. And the names! Passion Fruit Heel Softener with Volcanic Pumice; Bird of Paradise Exfoliating Scrub; Honey-Infused Moisturizing Lotion with Ylang Ylang. I used her Pomegranate Shampoo with Giga-Volumizing Power once, and when I looked in the mirror, I couldn’t believe my eyes. My hair was standing up straight in all directions—a huge sphere of blond fuzz surrounding me like a giant halo.
I tried brushing it down, but all it did was crackle and stand even stiffer. Somehow this Giga-Volumizing Power filled your hair with static electricity as if you’d stuck your finger in a light socket.
To make matters worse, there was urgent pounding, and Sophie snarled, “Get out of there! You’re hogging the bathroom!”
When I opened the door, she stumbled back three steps and gawked at me. “I’ve heard of bad hair days, but wow! You look like your head exploded!”
“I tried your shampoo,” I confessed.
She was disgusted. “If you’re going to use the Giga-Volumizer, you’ve got to use the conditioner that comes with it. Otherwise you might as well be pumping ten thousand volts through your hair.”
I must have looked completely helpless, because she took pity on me. She grabbed a bottle, marched me to the kitchen, and shoved my head in the sink. As she wet me down with the vegetable sprayer, I could feel my hair collapsing from its planetoid shape.
“When was your last haircut?” Sophie marveled.
“I’ve never had one,” I replied.
“Never?”
“Well, there was the time I whacked my head on the pump handle of our well. Doc Cafferty shaved part of my scalp so he could put in stitches.”
She poured on some sweet-smelling stuff and started to massage it in. “Who’s he? Your pediatrician?”
“No, the vet.”
The massaging hands froze. “Do me a favor,” she said finally. “What you just told me—never repeat that to anyone. Especially if they have Child Services on their name tag.”
My hair was fine after that, and I never again used anything from Sophie’s beautiful bathroom shelf. But it wasn’t because she said I couldn’t. She even gave me some advice about cream for oily skin. I never touched it, though. I know when I’m playing with fire.
I think she was in a better mood because her father was in town, and her driving lessons were going well. Mr. Donnelly was a really nice person, although whenever he was around, his ex-wife looked pained and squinty, like she was trying to read something off a sign that was very far away.
Mr. Donnelly even took the time to teach me some of his kendo positions. I couldn’t wait to show them to Rain when we got back home.
Another reason more people were speaking to me at school was this Halloween dance.
Luckily, there was a dance on
Trigonometry and Tears
, so I sort of knew what to expect. It looked a lot like Rain’s description of riots back in the sixties—hundreds of people crammed belly to belly, waving their fists and shouting. I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to do that for fun. But they did. It was all they talked about.
“I don’t know what kind of food to get for the dance,” I said for at least the tenth time. “I didn’t even know people ate at a dance. I thought they danced.”
“Yeah, but you need snacks and drinks and desserts,” said Holly van Arden (No. 130). “My neighbor goes to St. Andrews, and at their last prom, they had Create-Your-Own-Pizza. You design the pie, toss the dough, add the toppings, and it cooks while you’re dancing. People are still raving about it.”
“Well, I think we should have that,” I decided. “Go ahead and set it up.”
“It’s not cheap,” she warned. “They have to bring in these giant ovens on wheels.”
I told her what Rain told me when I asked what would happen if we weren’t able to afford our monthly trips for supplies. “When you spend your life worrying about money, pretty soon money
becomes
your life.”
“Cool!” she exclaimed. And she took on the job.
In the identical way, people volunteered to handle drinks, desserts, posters, and decorations.
The next morning when I arrived at school to do my tai chi, Holly van Arden asked if she could join me. Naomi was already waiting for us.