Strange Girl

“The kids . . . the girls and guys have lunch now?” Aja asked.

  “Yeah. It’s always after third period. Are you hungry?”

  “This bod . . .” She suddenly stopped. “Yes.”

  “Bring anything from home?” I knew she hadn’t because I’d seen the interior of her locker and it had been empty. She shook her head and for the hundredth time waited for me to go on. I added, “Then you should probably pick up something at the windows.”

  “Are you going to these . . . windows?”

  “Uh-huh. I can show you where they are if you want. If you don’t have other plans, I mean.”

  She flashed a smile. “I don’t have any plans, Fred.”

  I liked how she said my name and loved her smile; nevertheless, I groaned inside thinking how hard Janet would be laughing if she could see me now. Honestly, my nervousness made no sense. Sure, Aja was pretty, and, sure, I liked her, or at least I thought I did. But she was the new girl in town, a stranger from another country, and English was obviously a second language for her. She should have been the one stumbling all over the place.

  I assumed the language barrier was the reason she had almost referred to herself as “This body.” I was pretty sure that’s what she’d been about to say.

  I escorted her to the windows and if I’d been forced to critique my stride I’d have to say I looked like an extra on The Walking Dead. I was definitely taking time finding my cool gear. But eventually I began to calm down and by the time we’d waited in line and it was our turn to order I was feeling pretty good about myself. Why not? I’d just met Aja and already I was taking her to lunch. Not bad for a few minutes’ work. I’d decided to pay for whatever she ordered to show what a gentleman I was.

  “Hey, Fred, how’s the demo going?” Carlos asked from the other side of the glass. He was from Mexico and worked three jobs to keep his family of six out of the rain. He was also a genius when it came to playing the acoustic guitar and was helping me to lay down tracks on a new three-song demo I was struggling to put together.

  Yeah, I know, so I wanted to be a rock star.

  But tell the truth. Who didn’t?

  “It’s getting there,” I said honestly, turning to Aja, who was staring at Carlos and not bothering to look at the overhead menu. To his credit, Carlos acted like I showed up every afternoon with a pretty girl on my arm. “Know what you want?” I asked Aja.

  She looked at me. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Want a burger? A sandwich? A salad?”

  “I’ll have what you’re having,” she said.

  “I was going to have a turkey sandwich with fries. And a Coke. That sound good?”

  Aja nodded. “That’s good.”

  Carlos whipped up our sandwiches in three minutes flat and when it was time to pay Aja pulled out a wad of cash fat enough to buy a new car with. I hastily told her I had it covered and she put the money back in her pocket.

  Like the rest of town, Elder High was kind of old and kind of poor, and no part of our campus reflected those qualities more than our courtyard. It had no tables, no umbrellas to block the sun, no drinking fountains. Only peeling wooden benches that, if you were lucky, managed to catch the shade of a nearby tree.

  Of course we had trees, the whole state did, except for our infamous Badlands, which I, personally, happened to love. I steered Aja toward a shady bench located somewhere between where the jocks and the bad boys gathered. Like most schools, Elder High had a variety of clearly defined social groups, none of which had ever shown the slightest interest in attracting me as a member.

  For a few minutes I had Aja all to myself but I wasted them because all I did was eat and watch her eat. It was during this time I noticed that she seemed to be following my lead. When I unwrapped my turkey sandwich, she unwrapped hers. When I reached for a fry or a sip of Coke, she did the same. She didn’t take nearly as big bites as I did, though. If anything she chewed her food more thoroughly than anyone I’d ever met.

  But she only mimicked me for a few minutes before quitting.

  “Where are you from?” I finally asked.

  Aja pointed north. “I live with my aunt Clara. In a white house by a large pond.”

  I had meant where she was from in Brazil but her answer interested me. “You don’t live in the old Carter Mansion, do you?”

  “Carter? Hmm. Yes, the realtor told Aunty that was the name of the man who built the house. That’s where this . . . that’s where I stay.”

  “That’s one big house. Is it just the two of you?”

  “Bart lives with us.”

  “Who’s Bart?”

  “Bart is Bart. He takes care of things.”

  “Is he a housekeeper? A butler?”

  “Yes. He’s been with Aunty since before I met her.”

  “How old were you when you met your aunt?”

  “I was small.” Aja added casually, “I ran into her in the jungle.”

  “The jungle?”

  “The town where I was born is surrounded by jungle.”

  “And you just sort of bumped into your aunt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you saying she’s not your real aunt?”

  Aja sipped her drink. “She’s as real as you and me.”

  I frowned. “This was in Brazil?”

  “Yes.”

  I wanted to continue my line of questioning but we got interrupted right then by Dale Parish and Michael Garcia, two close friends of mine. Actually, two members of a band I’d formed—Half Life. Dale played bass and Mike was our drummer. Dale had only been playing a year but he was a natural and kept improving in leaps and bounds every month. Mike—he’d been banging on anything that made noise since he’d been a kid. No joke, he was like a force of nature onstage. We were lucky to have him. I kept expecting to lose him to a louder and more successful group.

  Yet Mike swore he’d never leave us. He had faith in my singing and songwriting abilities.

  Unfortunately, he also had a temper and was unpredictable. He missed plenty of practice sessions, even a few paid gigs. We never knew which Mike was going to show up. If he was loaded, on pot or beer, we knew the “Beast” was in the room and we’d better watch out. But when he was sober he was the nicest guy. The swings could be stressful.

  Worse, Mike caused Dale constant grief. Because Dale was in love with him and Mike didn’t have a clue. On the surface it seemed impossible, since they’d grown up together. But the truth was Mike didn’t even know Dale was gay. And Dale had begged me and our keyboardist, Shelly Wilson, never to tell him.

  Carlos had warned me—and Carlos never lied—that Mike often hung out with a Hispanic gang in Balen that controlled most of the area’s drug traffic. If anything was going to tear our band apart, I knew it was going to be the tension between our drummer and bass player.

  “Who do we have here?” Mike asked, straddling the bench beside Aja like it—or she—was a horse he was anxious to ride. Dale nodded to me and smiled uneasily in Aja’s direction but remained standing.

  Physically, the two couldn’t have been more unlike. Mike was dark-skinned, short and stocky, and could bench-press more than Elder’s heartiest jocks. If a swinging chick was looking for a bad boy who could rip holes in the sheets, Mike was it. While Dale—well, I never met a more gentle soul in my life but there was a reason his stage name was “The Corpse.” He was way beyond skinny and pale. Onstage, under a harsh spotlight, he almost looked transparent. But the boy sure could play. That was all that mattered to me.

  I spoke up. “Aja, these are two musician friends of mine, Mike and Dale. We’re in a band together. Dale plays bass and Mike the drums. Guys, this is Aja. She’s from Brazil. This is her first day at Elder High.”

  Aja nodded in their direction. “I enjoy music.”

  “But do you like musicians?” Mike asked, teasing. “That’s what I want to know. Besides, what the hell are you doing with Fred? Did he tell you he’s such a wuss that he won’t go onstage—and I’m talking prac
tically every single gig we play—without me swearing that I’ve got his back?”

  “I’m afraid it’s true,” I admitted. In the band, during shows, once Mike got going he created such a ferocious rhythm that he drowned out any flat notes I hit on my guitar or with my voice.

  “Fred has more talent in his little finger than the rest of us combined,” Dale added.

  Mike slapped me on the back. “Yeah, Fred’s the only one in this town that’s going places. Take my word for it. So how did you two meet?”

  I assumed Aja would remain silent, given her habit, and that I’d have to answer. However, she stared Mike right in the eye and said, “We met last Friday in the park. He was watching me pick flowers and I smiled at him but he ignored me. But today he’s a lot more friendly.”

  Her comment caused my heart to skip.

  She’d smiled at me?

  Mike was suddenly curious about her accent. “¿Hablan español en el lugar de Brasil de donde vienes?” he asked.

  “No muchos. Pero algunos,” Aja said.

  “¿Pero creciste hablando portugués?” Mike asked.

  “Sim,” Aja said.

  “What the hell are they saying?” I asked Dale. He’d taken four years of Spanish at school but his real knowledge of the language had come from hanging around Mike’s family. Dale leaned over and whispered in my ear.

  “Mike asked if they spoke Spanish in her part of Brazil. Aja said, ‘Not many, but some.’ Then Mike asked, ‘But you grew up speaking Portuguese?’ And Aja said, ‘Yes.’ ”

  “Why the sudden interest in Aja’s background?” I said. But Mike ignored me and continued to speak to Aja, who appeared to fascinate him.

  “Your accent—you remind me of my grandmother,” Mike said. “She could speak half a dozen languages. She sounded like she was from everywhere, and nowhere, if you know what I mean. Sort of like you.”

  Aja lowered her head. “Ninguém do nada.”

  “What was that?” I asked quickly.

  Apparently she’d answered in Portuguese, which neither Mike nor Dale understood. When I asked Aja what she’d said, all she did was shake her head like it didn’t matter.

  Dale flashed Mike a sign that it was time to split and Mike, knowing my bad luck with girls, bid us a quick farewell. When they were gone Aja and I returned to eating our sandwiches and fries. A long silence settled between us but to my surprise it wasn’t uncomfortable. I suspected Aja had spent most of her life alone and wasn’t bothered by quiet.

  “I apologize for Mike,” I said. “He can be a handful when you first meet him.”

  “He has a fiery spirit.”

  “I suppose that’s where all the smoke comes from.”

  Aja turned her big, brown eyes on me. “They look up to you. Are you that good?”

  I assumed she was asking about my musical abilities and shrugged. “As far as South Dakota is concerned, I could be the next Mozart. But if I performed at a club in Los Angeles or New York or Seattle I’d be laughed off the stage.” I took a gulp of Coke. “Trying to make a living as a singer/songwriter is probably the most irrational ambition a guy can have. One in a million—no, one in ten million—ends up making money at it.”

  “But it’s what you want to do,” she said.

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Then you’ll do it.”

  I chuckled. “You haven’t even seen us play.”

  The remark was far from subtle. I was hoping she’d bite and say she’d like to come to a show. Also, it wasn’t by chance that I’d switched from talking about me to talking about the band. If she didn’t bite, then she was rejecting Half Life, not me. So went my crazy logic. The truth was I’d brought up being a musician to impress her. It was shameless, I know, but I figured I had to play what cards I held.

  “Is it fun for you?” she asked.

  “Being onstage? Sometimes—when I forget what I’m doing and that people are watching me. Then I love it. But most of the time I’m way too self-conscious and can’t wait until the gig is over. Seriously.”

  Aja continued to stare at me and because she didn’t blink often, it was a bit disconcerting. “Play for me sometime,” she said.

  There. I’d practically begged her to ask but now that she had I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. I shook my head. “I’m not a solo artist. Better to see me in the band.”

  She nodded but I didn’t think she believed me.

  “How about you?” I asked. “What’s your favorite hobby?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t have any hobbies. I just . . . enjoy things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Bart told me to watch out for questions like that. He said they’d get me into trouble.”

  Her response caught me off guard. “Huh?”

  “I told you about Bart.”

  “I know, I heard you. But he actually told you how to behave while you were at school today?”

  Aja nodded. “He spent the weekend trying to teach me what to say and what not to say.”

  “Isn’t that a little weird?”

  If my question bothered her, she showed no sign. “Bart said he had to teach me so I wouldn’t appear weird to the rest of you.” As if to reassure me, she reached out and touched my arm. “He was trying to help.”

  The instant she touched me, I felt something odd, a lapse of sorts, where I had trouble focusing. The scene around us, the guys and girls walking back and forth across the courtyard, they didn’t stop but they did seem to slow down. I shook my head to clear it and the sensation eased up, somewhat. I noticed Aja had taken back her hand. I had to struggle to get out my next remark.

  “I should meet this guy. Maybe he can help me with my weirdness.”

  Aja suddenly stood, leaving what was left of her food behind on the bench. She wasn’t tall but at that moment she could have been standing on a chair and looking down at me. I worried that my peculiar sensation had not passed, after all. Again, I had to remind myself that she was new to the school, the stranger in a strange land, but right then I was certain I had it all wrong, that she was more at home in Elder than I could ever hope to be.

  “I’m glad we got to talk, Fred. I hope I see you again soon.”

  With that she turned and walked away.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THAT EVENING AT ten fifteen I got together with the band at Shelly Wilson’s garage. The reason I was so late was because the hardware store where I worked was doing inventory and the boss wanted me counting the stock on the shelves until exactly ten o’clock. I was flying high from my lunch with Aja but the joy dimmed as I slipped back into the usual grind of my life.

  Since a Walmart had opened in Balen, the hardware store was losing money and my boss was always tense and taking it out on us employees. He’d given me a dollar-an-hour raise at the start of summer but had since cut me back to minimum wage. The loss of the extra bucks hurt.

  Still, I looked forward to playing with the band. We usually practiced at Shelly’s garage since her parents were the only ones who’d allowed us to insulate the space. We’d fastened large bags of powdered cellulose—a fancy name for ground-up wood pulp—to the ceiling and walls so that we could play as loud as we wanted and a person standing right outside the garage door couldn’t hear a thing.

  Shelly’s parents had been supportive of her musical career from a young age. At sixty-one, her father was twenty-five years older than her mother and was retired, but in his prime he’d played piano with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—no small feat. He’d developed serious arthritis in his hands when Shelly was only five yet had persisted in tutoring her on his favorite instrument. As a result Shelly was the most trained musician in our band. Anything she heard, she could play back on any form of keyboard; it didn’t matter how complex it was.

  But despite Shelly’s skill and dedication, she had a major handicap. She never came up with anything new. Whenever we jammed, chasing one crazy riff or lyric after another, just throwing stuff out into the air, she’d
get lost. Though it pained her, and her father, she was devoid of creativity. The flaw showed itself in the lack of emotion in her playing. Yet, because of her technical abilities, most audiences didn’t notice the problem.

  But we did and so did Shelly.

  Janet was also at our practice. As our manager, the one who set up our gigs and handled our finances—for 15 percent commission plus expenses—she wasn’t required to be at the garage but I suspected she was more interested in cornering me on Aja than in reviewing how much I still owed on my Marshall amp. And sure enough her eyes lit up the second I walked in, which told me I’d better get her outside quick.

  The reason was Shelly. She’d had a crush on me since we were in middle school. I tried not talking about my love life around her. The short time I’d gone out with Nicole, Shelly hadn’t even come to practice, and it had been at her house.

  “I saw everything,” Janet said the second we were alone. “I followed you to Aja’s locker, and the windows, and was watching the two of you the whole time you ate on the bench. By the way, that was a smart opening when you faked sharing a locker beside her.”

  “Thanks. I assume you were able to read our lips so there’s no point in telling you what we talked about.”

  “Don’t you dare! I want to hear everything!”

  “On one condition. Get me her number.”

  “You don’t have it yet?” Janet asked.

  “No.”

  “Done. Speak.”

  Since the others were waiting, I gave her a condensed version of my conversation with Aja. Janet listened without interrupting; she was a good listener. When I was done she appeared puzzled.

  “Why’d you get dizzy around her?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “It was no big deal.”

  “It was probably nerves.”

  “I wasn’t that nervous.”

  “Fred.”

  “I’m telling you the truth. Look, I just met her. I like her, I don’t love her.” I added, “We’d better get back inside.”

  Janet nodded. “I’m proud of you. It took guts to go after her the way you did. It sounds like she likes you.” She paused. “Why the long face?”