Dreamland

  Still, there was something so strange and tender about those nights when I just sat with him in the car, my arms around him, wondering what had happened at home that brought him here, needing me so much. It reminded me of how I’d felt when Cass and I shared our room, the peace of mind that comes from knowing someone is so close while you sleep that the worst of the monsters and nightmares can’t get to you.

  Rogerson and I would stay that way until my father flicked on the outside light, bright and yellow and startling in my eyes. Then I’d wake him up, kiss him good night, and he’d drive off, drowsy, while I went back to my own bed feeling warm and content. I’d close my eyes, alone in my room, remembering him breathing and wonder who he saw, or found, in dreamland.

  Rogerson’s depth of knowledge continually surprised me. It seemed like there was literally nothing he didn’t know.

  One day, he was changing the oil in his car and I was sitting on a lawn chair in his garage, doing my homework. The Biscoe garage was jam-packed with stuff. His mother was apparently addicted to shopping, and there were boxes upon boxes, unopened, of laundry detergent, Tupperware, canned goods. In the back, where Mr. Biscoe kept his fishing supplies, was a graveyard of barely used exercise equipment, including a treadmill, a bike, and some strange contraption that looked like skis attached to a trampoline. Whenever Rogerson worked on his car I could spend hours just walking around, poking behind boxes, excavating things.

  But today I was trying to cram American history, as well as complaining out loud about my teacher, Mr. Alores, who gave trivia quizzes each Friday for extra credit. He didn’t teach the material on them; you either knew it or you didn’t, and lately I’d been falling into the latter category.

  “I mean, it’s so ridiculous,” I said to Rogerson, or rather to Rogerson’s legs, which was all I could see of him poking out from under the car. “How am I supposed to know this crap?”

  “It can’t be that hard,” he said.

  “Yeah, right. Okay.” I pulled out my last quiz—I’d gotten a zero—and unfolded it. “Here. Number 4. The Victoria was the name of the first ship to what?”

  “Hand me that wrench by your foot,” he said, and I kicked it under the car to him. “Thanks. Circumnavigate the globe.”

  “Do what?” I said.

  “The Victoria. It was the first ship to circumnavigate the globe. Magellan. Returned 1522. Right?”

  I glanced down at my sheet, where Mr. Alores had written the correct answer in his clear, block-style printing. “Yeah. That’s right.”

  Something clanked, hard, under the car. “Shit,” he said. “Damn screw’s practically rusted on.”

  I glanced back down at my quiz. “Rogerson.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who was the first person to climb Mount Everest?”

  “Sir Edmund Hillary. 1953.” He pushed out from under the car and stood up, walking over to his toolbox.

  “The Ojibwa Indians are better known as what?”

  He picked up a screwdriver, examined it, and dropped it back in the box. “Chippewa,” he said.

  I could not believe this. “The cluster of stars called Pleiades can be found in which constellation?”

  He crouched down, sliding back under the car. “The Seven Sisters,” he said.

  I looked down at my sheet.

  “Taurus,” he added, his voice muffled. “Also known as.”

  Right again. I put the sheet down. “Rogerson. How in the world do you know all this stuff?” I walked over and knelt down on the floor, peering under the car while he drained the oil into a pan resting on his stomach. “It’s, like, amazing.”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Come on. Nobody just knows stuff like the thyroid is located behind the breastbone. It’s insane.”

  “Thymus,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The thymus is behind the breastbone,” he explained, shifting the oil pan. “Not the thyroid.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “You’re like a genius or something.”

  He smiled at this. “Nah. I was just really into history and science as a kid. And my grandfather was a trivia addict. He bought me books for practically every birthday and then tested me.” He shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”

  But it was. There were moments—when Jeopardy came on, in the car during radio trivia challenges, or for practically any question I couldn’t answer in any subject—that Rogerson simply amazed me. I started to seek out facts, just to stump him, but it never worked. He was that sharp.

  “In physics,” I sprung on him as we sat in the Taco Bell drive-through, “what does the capital letter W stand for?”

  “Energy,” he said, handing me my burrito.

  Sitting in front of my parents’ house as he kissed me good night: “Which two planets are almost identical in size?”

  “Duh,” he said, smoothing my hair back, “Venus and Earth.”

  “Rogerson,” I asked him sweetly as we sat watching a video in the pool house, “where would I find the pelagic zone?”

  “In the open sea,” he said. “Now shut up and eat your Junior Mints.”

  Rogerson, for the most part, didn’t like any of my cheerleading friends. Rina was the only one he could tolerate, and her just barely. He said she was too loud, but he liked her spunk nonetheless. Since she was still hot and heavy with her quarterback, not to mention a developing situation with a college-boy shoe salesman she’d met at the mall, I didn’t see much of her other than at practice. When I wasn’t there, I was with Rogerson and his friends.

  We’d been together about a month when he took me one Sunday afternoon to an old farmhouse out in the country. It was yellow, and kind of ramshackle charming, with a big yard and a dopey looking yellow Lab, curled up in the late winter sunshine, that yawned, uninterested, as we walked up the steps. There were two cars—a yellow VW bug and a pickup truck—parked in the driveway, and when Rogerson knocked on the heavy wooden door I could hear the TV on inside.

  “Come in,” a voice called out, and as I stepped in behind Rogerson I saw it belonged to a girl with long, straight blond hair who was sitting on a big couch in front of the TV, her feet tucked up under her. The room was small, with bright white walls, sunshine slanting in through a window with a bunch of plants crowded on the sill. The coffee table was an old trunk, covered with magazines and packs of cigarettes, some bracelets and a flurry of envelopes. There was a fish-bowl on top of the TV with one bright orange goldfish in it, circling.

  The girl on the couch was smoking a cigarette and watching the Home Shopping Network, which I recognized instantly from my mother’s newfound doll addiction. The jewelry segment was on, with some woman talking up a cubic zirconia bracelet she had draped over her fingers, modeling it this way and that.

  “Hey,” Rogerson said to the girl, who looked up and smiled at him. She had a pretty face and cat-shaped eyes.

  “Hey yourself,” she said, reaching over to lift a stack of magazines off the couch beside her. “Have a seat. Dave’s in the kitchen making lunch.”

  “Is that Rogerson?” a guy’s voice yelled from the next room.

  “Yeah,” Rogerson said.

  “Get in here, man. I need to talk to you.”

  Rogerson stood up, squeezing my shoulder, and walked to a swinging door, leaning into it to push it open. I caught a glimpse of a guy in his early twenties, in cutoffs and a long flannel shirt, barefoot, standing over a frying pan. On the wall behind him there was a huge velvet Elvis, hanging by a row of cabinets. When the guy saw me he lifted his spatula, smiling, and waved at me before the door swung shut again.

  “That’s Dave,” the girl beside me said. “He’s making Hamburger Helper. I’m Corinna.”

  “Caitlin,” I said, and she nodded, smiling at me. “Rogerson has problems with introductions.”

  “No big deal. We’re definitely not formal here,” she said, flicking her wrist absently, clattering the thin silver bangles she wore there. Then she reached forwar
d to stub out her cigarette in an ashtray shaped like Texas, picking up the remote with her other hand to flip channels. She cruised by MTV, a political news show, and two old movies before finally landing on an infomercial about acne medicine, where they were interviewing a kid with horrible skin, all red and splotchy and riddled with bumps like the surface of the moon.

  “Oh, man,” she said, reaching over the arm of the couch, feeling around for something, and coming up with a blue ceramic bowl and a bag of pot. “That poor kid. Look at that. Like high school isn’t bad enough, you know?” She opened the bag and quickly packed the bowl, pressing down on it with her index finger. “I had acne in high school, but it wasn’t that bad, thank God. And I still couldn’t get a date. But you probably don’t have that problem, right?” She fumbled around on the coffee table, moving a TV Guide and two emery boards to unearth a lighter. “I mean, you have great skin.”

  “Oh, well,” I said, watching as she lit the bowl, drew in a deep breath, and held it a second before slowly letting out a long stream of smoke. “Not really.”

  “Oh, you do, though. It’s all genes. Does your mom have good skin?”

  It was strange to think of my mother, here, but her face popped into my head instantly, smiling, lipstick perfect. “Yeah, she does.”

  “See?” She tapped the bowl with the lighter. “Genes.” And then she handed it to me.

  Up until that point, I’d only smoked a few times: with Rina, experimenting ; at one or two parties with the more rebellious of the jocks; and the night I’d seen Rogerson’s dad hit him. I’d never cared one way or the other for it, but being in that little farmhouse, on a sunny afternoon, sitting in the corner of that big comfortable couch talking to Corinna, it just seemed right, or as right as anything technically wrong could be.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking it, lighting the lighter and drawing in a big hit of smoke, which immediately set me to coughing like crazy. The next one went down easier. And by the third, I felt like an old pro.

  Afterward, Corinna lit a cigarette and offered me one, too, which I took, lighting it and smoking like I’d been doing it all my life. We sat there together, smoking and watching the acne doctors work their magic. By now they’d moved onto a cheerleader with bug eyes and skin so bad it seemed like she was wearing a big red mask.

  “I admire her so much,” Corinna said, picking up the ashtray and moving it onto the couch between us. “I mean, being a cheerleader and getting up in front of people with that face. She must really have some self-esteem, you know?”

  “I know,” I agreed, tapping my ash and pulling my legs up underneath me, like Corinna. “Plus cheerleading is so awful anyway.”

  She looked at me, tucking a few blond strands behind her ear, her bracelets tinkling against each other, like music. “You think so? I always wanted to be a cheerleader. And a prom queen. And I was, like, neither. Not even close.”

  “I’m a cheerleader,” I said, taking another drag off my cigarette. “And I hate it.” And there it was, the truth, popping out when I least expected it: I did hate cheerleading, always had. And this girl, this stranger, was the only one I’d ever told.

  “Wow,” she said, laughing, “that was, like, so direct. I love that.”

  I laughed, too: It seemed funny to me now, almost hysterical in fact. My head felt fuzzy and relaxed and the fish on top of the TV just kept swimming, around and around, and Corinna flipped her long blond hair, smiling that cat-smile. Something smelled good from the kitchen and it was a lazy Sunday and everything was okay, suddenly—as okay as things had been since Cass left and the summer ended—even if just for an instant.

  We sat there, watching the infomercial and talking, for what seemed like a long time. Corinna told me she worked at Applebee‘s, waiting tables, producing her ASK ME ABOUT SOUP ’N’ SKILLETS! button from under a couch cushion. She and Dave had been together since high school—they’d gone to Jackson, too, graduating five years earlier—and sometime soon, they were planning to move to California.

  “Palm trees, movie stars,” Corinna said with a smile. She was so nice, I felt like I knew her already. She reminded me of Cass that way, the kind of person you felt friendly with at first sight. “I can’t wait to get the hell out of this place.”

  A few minutes later, as they were showing the After pictures of both acne victims, the kitchen door swung open and Dave and Rogerson came in. I’d forgotten, temporarily, that they were even in the house. Dave was carrying the frying pan, Rogerson a stack of plates.

  “Dinner is served,” Dave said, kissing Corinna on the top of the head as he sat down beside her.

  “It’s lunchtime,” she told him.

  “Lunch then. Whatever. Anytime is a good time for Hamburger Helper à la Dave,” he said, passing his hand over the frying pan with an exaggerated flourish.

  “Which means,” Corinna explained to me, “that we didn’t have money for hamburger this week so it’s just noodles.”

  “Better for you anyway,” I said. “A diet heavy in meat causes heart disease and high blood pressure.”

  Dave raised his eyebrows at me and smiled. He had short brown hair and bright blue eyes and looked, strangely, a little bit like Mike Evans. “I like this girl,” he said to Rogerson, handing me a plate and a fork.

  “That’s Caitlin,” Corinna said, digging into the pile of noodles on her plate. “She’s a rebel cheerleader.”

  “Ah,” Dave said. “My favorite kind.”

  “Mine, too,” Rogerson said, sliding his arm around my waist and forgoing the food as I leaned back against him, eating my Hamburger Helper—which was, quite honestly, one of the best meals I’d ever eaten.

  “Oh, Jesus, Corinna,” Dave said as he looked at the TV, where they were showing the Before picture of the cheerleader again. “Why do you always have to watch this crap?”

  “Hush,” Corinna said. “Eat your food.”

  “She’s obsessed,” Dave told us. “This acne commercial, it’s on every single time I come home. I don’t get it.”

  Corinna smiled at him, reaching to smooth one hand over his face. Her bracelets fell down her arm, one by one. “Just one more time,” she said, putting her now empty plate on the coffee table. “I just love to see a happy ending.”

  So we all sat there, silent, our eyes fixed on the pock-faced cheerleader, watching the Before and After as the acne medicine worked miracles, smoothing over bumps, wiping away scars, changing her face, her future, her life.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  As December began, when I wasn’t in photography class with my mother and Boo, continuing my rapid falling out of favor with the cheerleading squad, or listening to Rina wail about her love life, I was at Corinna’s. It was the only place I felt like I got some peace of mind, and I found myself drawn there whenever things got crazy. I’d creep up the front steps and knock softly, always worried I was interrupting something, and she’d yell out for me to come in. When I pushed the door open I usually found her sitting on the couch with a cigarette in one hand and the remote in the other, smiling as if she’d been waiting for me to show up all along. We’d sit on the couch, smoking, and watch soap operas, eating frozen burritos and talking while the world outside went on without me.

  I’d discovered that Corinna and I had a lot in common. Besides the fact that we’d both gone to Jackson—she was three years ahead of Cass—her mother and mine were each Junior Leaguers, and she’d grown up in Crestwood, a subdivision on the other side of the highway from mine. She said she’d been a geek her freshman year, doing time in student council and dance committees, until she met Dave, who was two years older. She fell in love with him and became, in her own words, a “burnout,” spending more time in the parking lot than in class. In her yearbook, which she kept on the coffee table, there was a picture of her sitting on the hood of someone’s car in cutoff jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt, barefoot and wearing sunglasses. She was laughing, beautiful, even then.

  For graduation, she’d gotten a tiny green v
ine tattooed around her left ankle, and Dave had given her the first of the thin, shiny silver bracelets she wore on her left wrist. He had continued to give her one for every Christmas, birthday, and Valentine’s Day since. They clinked against each other whenever she walked, or gestured excitedly, or reached to brush her hair out of her face—Dave said it was her theme music.

  But what I liked most about Corinna was that she liked me. She was pretty, smart, and funny but I didn’t feel like I faded out when I was with her, like I always had with Rina and Cass. I loved her easygoing manner, hanging on every one of her horror stories about waitressing at Applebee’s and her own wild high school years. She seemed to have the perfect life to me: independent, fun job, living with a man who loved her in their tiny, funky farmhouse. I could see me and Rogerson like that, someday. Us against the world. It was the way I imagined Cass living in New York with Adam, starting over all on her own. Being with Corinna always made me miss Cass a little less.

  She didn’t talk to or see her family much, even though they lived right in town. One afternoon we went to the grocery store and bumped into her mother, leading to a strange, awkward exchange in the frozen food aisle that made me so uncomfortable I slipped off to the produce section. Her mom looked a lot like mine, with the blond bob, khaki skirt, conservative V-neck sweater, and pearl earrings. She was buying salad dressing and scallops, and when she asked Corinna about Dave her nose wrinkled just slightly, as if she’d gotten a sudden whiff of something rotten.

  Afterwards, riding home, Corinna chain-smoked cigarettes, hardly talking except in small argumentative spurts, as if her mother was still there, arguing back.