1
EXILE WITH A K-TEL
SOUNDTRACK
June
2010
For the very first time in her entire life,
Jordan West hated summer. Summer usually meant freedom—from school,
at least. She wasn’t the school type. Her mom had always told her
that these were supposed to be the happiest years of her life,
which was so not comforting. In Jordan’s opinion, school was an
extralong basic training for life as a brainless office
hemorrhoid.
But summers had always been great. In
summer, the only classes she’d had to worry about were the ones
that her mom had always arranged for her, and they were fun. Last
year she’d gone to an arts camp, which had been a little like boot
camp, too—but boot camp for art freaks and weirdos. Her
people.
In summers past, she’d only had
piddling little responsibilities to tend to—like taking Dominic and
Lily to the pool or movies, or baby-sitting them when the ’rents
weren’t around. Actually, Nina had been the one who usually did the
baby-sitting while Jordan hid in their room, drawing, or
occasionally sneaked out to a friend’s house. But Jordan always got
equal credit for baby-sitting because Nina never narced on her.
They’d been a perfect team, she and Nina. Jordan could be bad,
knowing Nina would drag her back from the dark side when necessary,
and in return, just enough Jordan had rubbed off on Nina to keep
her from being a nauseating Little Miss Perfect.
But now there was no Mom, no Nina, and
summer stretched before her like a long, hot prison sentence. She’d
thought getting out of Austin would bring some relief. She had
begged her father to let her stay with her grandparents this
summer. But bad as her life in Austin had become, with memories and
guilt assaulting her everywhere she looked, it was beginning to
seem like heaven compared to living with her grandparents in Little
Salty.
What had she been
thinking?
She hadn’t been thinking. That was the
problem. No one was thinking anymore—just reacting, and she was the
worst of them all. For the first time in her life she slept
fitfully in rooms all by herself, going to bed crying, waking up
headachy and dazed. Life was something she never could have
imagined a year ago, or even a few months ago. Even her
grandparents’ house and the little town they lived in, which when
she was a kid had seemed fun to visit, now felt suffocating, almost
unbearable.
The first thing each morning, her
grandmother checked the newspaper for coupons. Coupons ruled their
world. A coupon could mean a trip to Midland, even if it was just
to buy canned green beans, two for ninety-nine cents. Granny Kate
refused to let Jordan stay in the house alone—as if Jordan was nine
years old again—and so they both had to pile into the Ford Focus
and drive thirty miles of dreary country road listening to
The Best of Bread and Barry Manilow,
because Granny Kate’s musical taste, which apparently had never
been cutting edge, had fossilized sometime around
1978.
Jordan knew there was good music from
way back then because Jed Levenger, her really cool art teacher at
camp last year, had played the Rolling Stones in the studio all the
time. But no way you’d hear Mick Jagger coming out of Granny Kate’s
car speakers, any more than you’d hear Cannibal Corpse or Rancid.
The Ford Focus was an easy-listening bubble of pain.
During these drives, Jordan sometimes
wondered if Jed was still teaching at arts camp. It wasn’t that she
had a crush on him or anything—Jed was as old as her father and
sort of sloppy and grizzled looking. But he was the first—and
only—real artist to say that she was talented. Although maybe a guy
teaching at a rinky-dink arts camp couldn’t be considered a real
artist. Still, he wasn’t a hemorrhoid. He wasn’t a normal adult who
was all food-work-food-sleep.
Once they arrived in Midland, she and
her grandmother would hit the grocery stores. “Stocking up,” Granny
Kate called it, though it was hard to figure out what calamity they
were preparing for. After shopping, they would splurge on lunch at
Applebee’s. Big treat. Granny Kate was usually unnaturally chipper
as the waitress seated them. She’d hum “Copacabana” as she
inspected every single item listed on the menu, even though they
both knew she was going to order the pecan crusted chicken salad.
She always ordered the pecan crusted chicken salad.
The worst part came after the ordering
was over, when the two of them would sit across the table from each
other, straining for something to say. Once, right in the middle of
the noontime crowd, Granny Kate had stared into Jordan’s face and
burst into tears. It had been awful, and so embarrassing. People
had actually turned in their chairs and gaped at their table. And
then Granny Kate had wailed out an apology to the room and honked
her nose into her napkin like some kind of crazy
woman.
And Midland days were the good
days.
When they didn’t go to Midland, they
stayed in Little Salty. Jordan would crawl out of bed, usually
sometime during The View, and Granny Kate
would jump up and pop a couple of Family Dollar frozen waffles into
the toaster, all the while fussing about what a late sleeper Jordan
was. Then the day’s schedule would be laid out—usually involving
some grisly combination of bridge club, errands, church, and
Jazzercise.
As far as art was concerned, the best
Jordan could hope for was that Granny Kate would be taking her
afternoon nap during the Bob Ross reruns on PBS. The show would
lull Jordan into a trancelike state as she sat on the couch and ate
bowls of ice cream. Bob Ross was the best company available in
Little Salty, and he was certainly more effective than that stupid
counselor she’d been sent to back in Austin, after the accident.
All the shrink had ever done was stare at her in a condescending
way that absolutely convinced her that everything was all her
fault.
Bob Ross was better. That soothing
voice. Snowy white mountaintops and happy little trees. Happy
little world where nothing bad happened.
At six-fifteen every night, her
grandfather would come home. Pop Pop was a pharmacist who had been
on the cusp of retirement as long as Jordan could remember. She
suspected his reluctance to hang up his white smock had something
to do with the coupon-and-Jazzercisey alternative. It seemed
unlikely that he would ever quit now that his home had become
funereal as well as tedious.
When Jordan had first arrived in Little
Salty, after that first wince of greeting, Pop Pop had tried to put
a happy spin on things. “I’m sure you’ll liven us up!” he’d said,
giving her a big bear hug. It was the first time anyone had touched
Jordan in three months.
But she hadn’t livened things up. In
fact, she had a hunch that her arrival had actually bumped up the
gloom quotient. The grandfolks tried to hide it, but she could tell
her presence made them uncomfortable. And sad. She occasionally
felt their eyes on her, searching for someone who wasn’t there.
When she met their gazes, they would snap to and guiltily turn
away.
Jordan despaired. Was this how it was
going to be from now on, forever? Were people always going to look
at her and remember someone else?
One night she finally lost it. The
eruption occurred during a typically silent dinner. Nothing but
cutlery against china and the loud ticking of her grandmother’s
kitchen clock could be heard. No one talked here during meals.
There was nothing to say. Jordan started to feel stir-crazy and
punchy. The tension of it all caused her to giggle.
Granny Kate, who had been lost in
thought, glared at her. The glare seemed horrible because there
were tears standing in her grandmother’s eyes. It wasn’t hard to
guess what—who—she’d been thinking about.
Jordan sprang suddenly from her chair.
“I’m sorry!” she yelled, tossing down her
napkin.
“What for?” Pop Pop asked, mystified,
like a man who’d just been shaken out of a dream. “What’s going
on?”
“I’m sorry that I laughed!” she raged.
“I’m sorry that I’m me! I’m sorry that I’m here!”
Even as she shouted the words, Jordan
couldn’t believe this was her. But she couldn’t help herself. Anger
and sadness had been corked up inside her for months and spewed out
in a Krakatoa of fury.
“We wanted you
here,” Pop Pop argued.
Granny Kate remained noticeably
purse-lipped and mute.
“But now you’re sick of the sight of
me,” Jordan said. “Don’t you think I am, too? Do you know what it’s
like to not be able to look at myself without thinking about my
dead twin sister? I wish I could break every mirror in the
world!”
She ran to her room and slammed the
door, but immediately felt sorry. And so dumb. This wasn’t her.
This was some screwed-up teenager throwing a melodramatic fit, like
in one of those hokey old after-school specials. She needed to
strangle her inner Kristy McNichol and get herself under
control.
This was when she needed Nina. Nina had
always been able to shake her out of these emotional explosions. If
Nina were here, she would have sat on the edge of the bed,
cross-legged and calm, while Jordan stomped around the room
punching pillows and howling about how screwed up everybody was.
Then, after Jordan had tired herself out a little, she would have
ventured a thought or two.
What are Granny Kate
and Pop Pop supposed to do, Jordan? It would be really weird if
they didn’t look at you at all—that would
piss you off even more. They can’t help it.
Jordan snorted, as if Nina had actually
spoken to her. “They probably can’t help blaming me,
either.”
She lifted her head, tilting it to hear
some reply. But Nina’s voice was gone.
Of course it was gone. She would never
know what Nina felt. Nina was dead. Their mother was dead. And it
was all her fault.
She flopped on the bed and cried
herself to sleep, and she slept right into the next day. When she
finally staggered out to the kitchen again, Barbara Walters was on
the television talking about Lasik surgery, and her grandmother was
just dropping two Family Dollar waffles into the toaster and
singing “Can’t Smile without You.”
Nothing had changed. Nothing was ever
going to change. It was so depressing that she sank down in front
of her plate and almost started crying again. If only there was
someone to help her. If only Nina were there.
If only she could stop thinking about
Nina.
Then she remembered. In junior high
they’d had to write a paper on a historical figure they admired.
Jordan had picked John Adams from a list of suggestions, scribbled
a few boring paragraphs about him during lunch before class, and
had received a D. Nina had picked Gandhi, and she hadn’t just typed
a five-page paper including pictures and an index of links to Web
sites, she’d also spent weeks talking about him, and watching that
boring movie, and plastering the room they shared with
inspirational quotes. For a month “Be the change that you want to
see in the world” was taped to their closet door.
At the time, Jordan had rolled her
eyes, because the only change she’d wanted to see was a world where
she didn’t have to do dumb papers. But apparently the quote had
penetrated her thick skull, because it came back to her
now.
If she wanted her life to be different,
she was going to have to make the changes herself.
As she gnawed on waffle number two, she
started to devise a plan for the next trip to Midland.
“Any good coupons in the paper today?”
she asked her grandmother.