Weird Girl and What's His Name Read online

  From over at one of the gas pumps, a fat trucker burst into applause and whistled.

  “Forget the bus, okay? Buses suck. Let me give you a ride,” Trey said. “I’m bored. I could use a little adventure. Hey, look, I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not fucked up. Crazy, maybe, but I don’t do drugs anymore.”

  “I think that trucker over there might beg to differ.”

  “Well, you just gotta take my word for it that I’m not on anything. Unless you wanna go find a narc to get me to pee into a cup.”

  “Gross, no.”

  “Then let me give you a ride,” his voice softened. The cool spring breeze blew across the parking lot. The dark smell of a muddy field mixing with the sharp tinge of gasoline.

  “Trey. Why should I trust you?”

  “Because I’ve been through some shit, and I know what it’s like to wanna get out of town.” His eyes were clear. He wasn’t fooling around.

  “I don’t know what I want.” I bit my lip. I kind of just wanted to be back in my bedroom, where it was safe. My guts felt hollow, churning at the mere thought of the trip I was about to take. I felt like I was falling off into nothingness. But then I thought of Rory, and all the anger in me swelled up again, filling my chest. “All I know is I’m sick of being lied to. I’m sick of everybody treating me like I’m some little kid who won’t understand anything. I’m sick of this place and I’m ready to get the hell out.”

  “I hear ya,” Trey nodded. “But still. You don’t wanna walk through Northside alone in the middle of the night. Unless you’ve got some hardcore death wish.”

  Dammit. He had a point.

  “Trey, have you ever seen our nation’s capital?”

  three

  IT WAS A SUNNY TUESDAY AFTERNOON, unseasonably warm for mid-September, but I was inside at Jay’s. Music thumping out of her ancient, paint-splattered ghetto blaster, TV on mute, Jay scribbling away with a bunch of crumbled pastels, me, on the couch beside her, on beer number two. Or three. Wondering if maybe Leo was right.

  “Don’t let your granddad get to you,” Jay said, reading my mind. “At least he cares.”

  “Whatever,” I said, burping. Leo and I barely said two words to each other anymore. But before I left for Jay’s that day, he lit into me. Didn’t I care about my future. Wasn’t I supposed to be working on finding a job, or a volunteer position, or blah blah blah. What happened to peer tutoring down at the computer lab. If this is what you’re going to do with your life, sit around all day and drink beer with your friends, maybe you should just go on back to New Mexico.

  “He’s got a point, though,” I said, knocking back some more of my beer. I kind of didn’t like beer at first. But now that I’d tried a lot of different brands, I’d discovered that . . . well, that I still didn’t really like beer. I guess what I did like was being able to fuzz out and not think so hard about stuff for a while. The problem was, when the beer was gone, the stuff was still hanging around. Waiting to be thought about.

  “And his point is?” Jay asked, looking up from her sketchpad to watch a Beyoncé video.

  “Well . . . I mean, look at him versus me. When he was my age, he joined the Navy. By the time he was in his early twenties, his main job was to chopper wounded soldiers out of Vietnam under heavy fire. Like, forget working at the computer lab—that was his first job. He’s still got shrapnel in his shoulder. Can’t go through a metal detector in an airport to this day.”

  “Really?” Jay, for once, seemed genuinely impressed. “Shit. That’s hardcore.”

  “I know, right? And here’s me. Just a . . . mooch.”

  “You’re not a mooch. You’re a kid.”

  “I’m a mooch. I’m the mooching granddaughter of his ungrateful daughter, taking advantage of all his hard work and sacrifice. I’m eighteen now, you know. He could kick me out on my ass, and he’d be totally in the right.”

  “No, he wouldn’t,” Jay insisted. “By the way, how hot is Beyoncé in this video?”

  “She’s okay, I guess.” Beyoncé was dancing, incongruously, to one of Jay’s old mixtapes of girl bands from the nineties. Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, The Muffs. I had to admit, Beyoncé dancing to The Kelley Deal 6000 kind of worked.

  “She’s okay, you guess?” Jay took the beer out of my hand and set it on the coffee table. “That’s it. I’m cutting you off.”

  “Huh?”

  “Clearly, the alcohol is affecting your vision.”

  “Pfft,” I laughed and grabbed the rest of my beer.

  “Hey. Seriously, though. You can always stay here.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I mean, you can always crash on my couch. But if you really wanna move out, I’ve got a spare room. I’ll rent it to you cheap.”

  “Thanks, but I can’t even afford cheap.”

  “Whatevs,” she picked up her pastels again. “It’s there when you need it.”

  I should have been flattered that Jay wanted me for a roommate. But it scared me a little. What if I really did just end up in Jay’s dank little spare room, spending the rest of my life drinking too much crappy beer? Yikes. How un-Scully of me.

  The truth was, I didn’t want to move out of Janet and Leo’s, even if it was weird and tense. I wanted to fix it, to make it like it was before, but I had no idea how to get us all back to normal. I sort of wished I’d never left. Sometimes you can’t see how the stuff you do spirals out, like octopus arms, destroying everything in its path and . . . okay, that’s a crappy metaphor. Octopuses don’t really destroy anything. I had to do a biology report on octopuses once. Octopi. Anyway, they’re actually really smart, loving animals, even if they do look like blobs. I’m no octopus. I’m more like a . . . like a big dumb puppy. Whipping around with its tail and its giant paws, making a mess, destroying everything without even meaning to, just trying to jump up on everybody’s lap and see who loves me best.

  TREY GOT WIRED ON RED BULL and drove all night. His car was an ancient Mercedes sedan with a Phish sticker in the back window. Tracy was in class until late afternoon, so Trey and I made a day of it in DC. It was a lovely spring day, the cherry blossoms in full bloom. I, of course, wanted to tour the J. Edgar Hoover Building, aka FBI Headquarters, but they weren’t open to the public.

  “Bummer, man,” Trey lamented as we parked our tired selves on a bench out front. “We should just tell ’em we’re friends with the Cigarette Dude.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know, like on The X-Files? Did you ever see that TV show with the FBI agents, the dude and the chick, huntin’ down UFOs?”

  As it happens, Trey was a huge fan of The X-Files back in the day. Once he found out that I was a fellow Phile, I couldn’t shut him up.

  “Or, or—dude! Remember the one with the circus freaks, where Scully eats the bug? That’s probably like, my favorite one of all time. Or, no, wait! Remember the one with Burt Reynolds? Oh, man. I saw that when I was tripping and I seriously thought Burt Reynolds was God.”

  “I think that’s Tracy.” I waved. We had agreed to meet outside the Hoover building, but I suddenly felt embarrassed. Me lugging Leo’s old Navy duffel and Trey with his dreadlocks pontificating about how Burt Reynolds might actually be the Almighty. Everyone else around us seemed so professional. Dark suits. Neat haircuts. Briefcases and ID badges. Badass Feds.

  “Tallulah Monroe! Girl!” Tracy swept me up into a hug. “I can’t believe you’re here!”

  “I know! It’s been forever!” Tracy was somehow even more beautiful than last time I saw her. She always called herself a mutt, because her dad was half-white, half-Filipino, and her mom was half-black, half-Colombian. But Tracy was, like, J. Lo-level gorgeous. I could tell Trey was checking her out. And what’s weird was I was sort of checking her out, too. Ever since the thing with Sam, it was like I was running every girl I met through some test. How about this one? Are you into her? How into her are you? But even though I could see how beautiful Tracy was, she didn’t make me feel like I felt
around Sam Lidell. Like I just wanted to talk to her forever. Good gravy—even after the Humiliation, I still kinda felt all wavery, just thinking about Sam. What’s your deal, Lula, anyway?

  “Look at you! All grown up! And I love the hair!” Tracy was only two years older than me, but it felt more like she was my aunt or something. She finally noticed Trey. “Is this the infamous Rory I’ve heard so much about?”

  “Ah, no. Tracy, this is Trey Greyson. He gave me a ride. Trey, Tracy.”

  “Hey! We sorta rhyme!” Trey exclaimed. “My pleasure, m’lady.” Trey took Tracy’s hand and bowed deeply. Tracy laughed.

  “So, uh.” I turned to Trey. This was going to be awkward. I wasn’t sure how welcome I was going to be at Tracy’s dad’s, let alone with a guest in tow. “I guess I’m good here. Thanks for the ride.”

  “Oh, yeah. Thanks for the trip. I must say, I’m inspired by our nation’s capital, and I never would’ve come here without you.” Trey laughed. “Maybe I’ll run for Congress!”

  “Just tell them you didn’t inhale. Here—take this for gas.” I handed him forty bucks. It was a lot of my private investigator money, but gas was expensive.

  “Seriously? Far out.” Trey pocketed my money. “Well, I best be hittin’ the horizon.”

  “Will you tell Janet and Leo that you saw me and I’m okay?”

  “Sure thing, kiddo.” He laughed. “Leo the Enforcer! Bet he’s gonna be happy to see me again.”

  “Trey, you need a place to crash for the night?” Tracy interjected. “It’s gonna be kinda full with us at my dad’s, but I know some guys from school who could probably hook you up with a sofa.”

  “Nah, I’m good. I’ve got the travelin’ bug now. Might truck on up to Jersey, see some of my old peeps at Princeton. Hit P. Rex for some car tunes and motor on back down the coast. I’m a free man, babies.” Trey skipped off down the sidewalk, waving back at us. “Later days, T and T!”

  “Okay,” Tracy said when he rounded the corner. “When you told me you were coming to DC on the bus, I didn’t think you meant the Grateful Dead bus.”

  As we took the Metro up to her dad’s apartment in Cleveland Park, I told her the truth. An abbreviated version, because I was still humiliated. I told her that school was rough, I was having a hard time dealing with one of my teachers, that I’d had a falling out with Rory, and I had made up my mind to go live with my mom, who was probably up in New York. I just needed some money for a PI, and then . . . well, probably more money for the train or the bus or whatever. Traveling was more expensive than I’d realized.

  “Wait, why do you need to hire a private investigator?” Tracy asked, unlocking the three—three!—locks on the apartment door.

  “Because Leo won’t tell me where she lives. I’ve tried every kind of computer search I can think of, but it always deadends. I need some kind of . . . next-level clearance.”

  “We could ask my dad.” Tracy took my duffel bag and set it at the foot of the sofa.

  “What good is that going to do?” Tracy’s dad worked for the newspaper. He was the guy who had to read the articles and make sure all the punctuation and grammar was correct. I’d never actually met him before, but I imagined he was a boring old guy with glasses halfway down his nose and a perpetual disapproving look.

  “Trust me.” Tracy led me down a narrow hallway to a closed door. She knocked.

  “What’s the password?” A muffled voice called out.

  “Vote Nader!” Tracy called back. Another lock flipped and the door opened. Wow. I am not kidding—Tracy’s dad’s office was like the Lone Gunmen’s hideout on The X-Files. All this old reel-to-reel recording equipment, stacks of dusty books everywhere, mostly with “conspiracy” in the title. Piles of camera equipment, VHS tapes, notebooks, maps. A picture of Richard Nixon shaking hands with Elvis hung on the wall. Tracy’s dad was typing on an actual typewriter. I felt a lonely pang in my chest—my first thought was Oh my gosh, Rory, you have got to see this. Then I remembered that Old Rory had recently been replaced by new Attack Rory, who had told me to fuck off and stop playing Mulder and Scully, so he probably wouldn’t care, anyway.

  “Dad, you remember Lula? From Drama Camp in Hawthorne?”

  “Vaguely,” he shook my hand, peering intensely over the rims of thick glasses. He was short, with spiky black hair and long, graying sideburns. “Welcome to our humble abode. Make yourself at home.”

  “Thanks for letting me stay.”

  “Dad, Lula’s looking for her mom. She hasn’t seen her in . . . how long?”

  “Since I was three.”

  “Lula’s done all the computer searches and nothing’s turned up. Now she’s thinking about hiring a private investigator. You got any advice?”

  “Yeah, save your money. I’ll do a search for you.” Tracy’s dad shoved a pile of papers aside to reveal a laptop computer.

  “Dad! You said no computers at home!” Tracy exclaimed.

  “Yes, I did. I’m trying to keep you from becoming completely zombified like the rest of your generation. Not to mention I don’t want you meeting some maniac on Facelist or whatever.” Tracy’s dad pushed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. “But, computers do have their practical applications, even outside of the workplace.” Mr. Perry booted up the laptop and began typing faster than I’ve ever seen anyone type.

  “All right, I’m in. What’s your mom’s maiden name?”

  “Allison Christine Monroe.”

  “Christine with a K or a C?” he asked. I spelled it for him.

  “Date of birth?”

  “April 18, 1965.”

  “Okay, hang on . . .”

  “Here comes your next-level clearance,” Tracy whispered.

  “Allison Christine Monroe, according to these records, changed her name legally in 1986 to Christine Alexander, married in 1996 in New Mexico, changed her name again to Allison Christine MacKelvey. Driver’s license, issued by the state of New Mexico to Allison Christine MacKelvey, vehicle registration, et cetera . . .”

  “New Mexico? Are you sure?” I asked. All this time, I’d been picturing her in New York.

  “I have an address here in Santa Fe and one in Los Angeles . . . the LA address has a suite number, though. Might be an office or an apartment.” Mr. Perry was typing at a maniacal speed now. “Here she is again, recent news item from the Santa Fe Reporter, ‘Christine MacKelvey welcomes Bill Wagner to Teatro del Santa Fe board of directors. . . .’ Looks like she’s some kind of administrator for a theater group . . . here you go.”

  He swung the laptop around. There she was. Just like in the Polaroid, but older. More beautiful. My mother, in a trim black blazer, smiling and shaking hands with a ruddy-faced man in a suit and a bolo tie. Her hair was the same ash-blond that mine used to be.

  “You’ve definitely got her eyes,” Mr. Perry said.

  “How did you do that? I’ve been trying for years . . .” I couldn’t stop looking at the picture. My mother. It was her. It really was.

  “Trade secret.”

  I was too stunned to do much else except thank him. I had just found my mother. And, as far as Tracy and her dad were concerned, it was no big deal. Tracy and I drifted back out of the secret lair. She ordered a pizza and turned on the TV, the bleeped-out version of The Big Lebowski. Her dad stayed in his office, typing furiously behind the locked door.

  “Hey, Trace, can I ask you a personal question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “What made you decide to live with your dad? Instead of your mom.”

  “Easy.” Tracy picked at a stray pepperoni. “He gives a damn about me. My dad always supported me, whether it was Drama Camp or the college I chose. Even all his crazy business about keeping me away from computers and cell phone radiation and stuff is just him trying to take care of me. All my mom cares about is herself and what she wants. When she ran off with that car salesman, I was like, forget it. Back in the day, you married this guy. My dad. You took vows. And now you’re just g
onna break ’em for Mr. BMW of Akron? No way. My dad may be kinda crazy, but he’s for real.”

  “Huh.” It had never even occurred to me to go looking for my father. I mean, I knew a lot of kids in school who either lived with their mom, like Rory did, or lived with their mom and stepdad. Tracy was one of the few friends I had with divorced parents who actually chose to live with her dad and he let her. Come to think of it, I hardly knew anybody who lived with their real mom and dad in a regular Leave It to Beaver-type situation. And, except for my mom, it’s always the dad who leaves.

  “Are you gonna try and find him, too?” Tracy asked.

  “My dad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I dunno. I never really thought about it,” I confessed. “I know even less about him than I do my mom. Janet only met him once, when she and Leo went out to LA to visit my mom. She said he seemed like such a nice guy, she couldn’t figure out what happened. But . . . I guess I figured, even if I found him, why would he care? Guys are always walking out on their kids. It’s what they do. Dads bail. Why should mine be any different?”

  “My dad didn’t bail. He fought hard to get custody of me,” Tracy said.

  “Well.” I shrugged. “Mine didn’t.”

  four

  JANET AND LEO WERE GONE TO Tango Night at the Y, and I was in the kitchen, heating up leftovers, when Rory called. It was the first time I’d heard from him since the Terrible Birthday, over a month ago.

  “Hey,” he said when I picked up. “It’s me.”

  “It’s you,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “Is it still Tango Night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was wondering if I could stop by.”

  Right then, the microwave went bing!

  “Yeah. Sure,” I told him. “Come on over.”

  That was it. He hung up the phone. I made a mad dash upstairs to pick my dirty clothes up off the floor. I took a quick look in the mirror. Yikes. The refresher dye job Jay had given me a couple of weeks ago had already faded to a dull strawberry and my roots were showing, big time. I tried brushing it back, to no avail. Maybe I could raid Janet’s closet for a hat. . . .