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I finish the paper. There are still a few miles to go, though, so I read the first few chapters of Don Quixote. The Fake It! Notes tell me that Cervantes is satirizing the culture of idealism. The only thing I know about Don Quixote is that he and his sidekick go off and have imaginary adventures, battling windmills disguised as giants and that sort of thing. No windmills outside the bus window. Just rows and rows of houses that all look pretty much the same. Sure, some are two stories; some are ranches. A few even have that big round turret for a garage like some kind of ridiculous suburban castle. But they’re the same house spaced out every five houses or so by other houses that have matches throughout the neighborhood. When I was a kid I was always afraid I’d wander into the wrong house and the wrong life by mistake. Now that sounds pretty good.
The sky’s amazing, though. Bright blue, like paint right out of the tube before you water it down. The clouds are bouncy little mattresses up there. Something flutters past my window, making me jump. It’s a flock of birds taking off for the cloud beds. They must have come a little too close to the bus for comfort. I watch them till they’re nothing but specks. And for a second, I see something else in the sky, a flutter of wings too big to be anything I can name.
CHAPTER FIVE
Wherein I Have a Very Strange Encounter While Stoned and Employ a Frying Pan in My Defense
There’s a note on the fridge: Cam, home by 10:00. Lasagna in freezer. If you use the toaster oven, unplug it afterward. It overheats. Mom. There’s a hastily added Love you squeezed in before her name in a different-color ink. It’s the personal touch that means so much.
Mom teaches English comp, single-celled organism level, at the community college. She could be teaching a challenging English lit class somewhere good, but she never finished her dissertation or whatever it is you need to become a bona fide PhD. Mom has trouble finishing stuff. The house is crowded with half-scribbled-in crossword puzzles, books with the bookmarks in the middle, bags of knitting, scarves she got halfway through and then abandoned.
The lasagna is totally freezer-burned, cold and inedible, so I dial up a pizza. True to their ad campaign, Happy Time Pizzeria delivers within thirty minutes—complete with bonus mega-ounce sodas and cinnamon-frosted-bread dessert product—and I’m camped in the recliner, scarfing down my slices in the middle of our large, empty family room.
I have a special relationship with the remote control. I like to think of it as my own personal divining rod, taking me safely past nighttime soap operas, used car commercials, televangelists, and medical trauma shows. It stops briefly on a repeat showing of Star Fighter, the cult metaphysical action movie all kids between the age of nine and thirteen have to see at least ten times before they can pass into puberty. No kidding—there are kids who can quote the whole damn thing.
I let the screen idle on the news while I roll a J. Quick pictures stretch out across our TV’s full forty-two inches: young guys in camouflage holding guns while guarding a desert. Bloody kids crying in the blown-up streets of some foreign city. A follow-up story on a store bombing last Christmas. A commercial with Parker Day’s suntanned face hawking Rad XL soda. Back to the grim report and a local story, a fire in a neighborhood across town. The flames make me think about my weird dream in Spanglish class today, and I get a funny feeling inside, like when you’re driving around a sharp curve on a one-lane road and you can’t see what’s coming. The reporter says something about similarities to another fire and the authorities’ fears that an arsonist is on the loose. And then they switch to a story about celebrity baby names and some starlet who named her bundle of joy Iphigenia.
I smoke just enough to make me slow down inside, like I’m part water bed. Then I hide the roach and spray a toxic amount of air freshener just in case anyone gets the crazy idea to come home early for some “quality time.” Finally, I flip on the ConstaToons channel so I can watch a marathon of my favorite animated classic, the one where a poor, bedraggled coyote chases a roadrunner around a tumbleweedy landscape. Every single time, this poor guy gets his ass handed to him by TNT gone wrong or falling anvils or other backfiring ruses. But he never stops chasing that damn roadrunner.
I’ve seen this one a million times. The coyote rigs a skewed-perspective backdrop of a long hallway with many doors painted on it. It’s just a painting, but somehow, the roadrunner zooms right into the picture as if it’s real, opens one of the doors, and escapes. The coyote’s got a big “Wha … ?” on his face. He runs into the painting, and they chase each other in and out of doors, just missing each other. Finally, the coyote opens a door and a train runs him right over, poor bastard. Even though I’ve seen it a zillion times before, I laugh my ass off, because I’m stoned, and it’s my right to laugh at things that, in the cold hard light of day, would not be all that funny.
A blur of white zips past the open doorway into the kitchen. It takes my weed-fogged brain two seconds to register what this means: Somebody’s in the house.
“Mom?” I call. “Dad?”
Nothing.
“Jenna, is that you? You better cut it out. I’m warning you.”
Shit. I hope I sprayed enough Citrus Rain to take away the pot odor. From the kitchen comes a faint rustling sound.
“You should know we’ve got an alarm system!” Our alarm system is basically me screaming my head off if I see this guy, but he doesn’t have to know that. Quietly, I slip into the kitchen. Nobody’s there. I do a quick scan for a weapon. Plastic napkin holders. Place mats. Steak knives so dull they can’t cut through butter. I grab the frying pan soaking in the sink and slink into the living room just as something darts up the stairs.
Oh shit, man. My blood pounds the sides of my skull, and I feel woozy. Should I call the cops? My parents? What if I’m just stoned and paranoid?
Be cool, Cameron. Just check it out first.
I creep up the stairs with a fry pan as my only defense, and despite the fact that my heart is beating like a hummingbird’s, it strikes me as funny. Greetings, ax murderer! I was just wondering how you like your eggs?
I reach the landing. Mom and Dad’s room is empty. So’s Jenna’s übergirl lair. No doubt any serial killer would take one look at the lavender walls covered with sensitive girl songwriter posters and dive out the window anyway. Bathroom’s clear. That leaves my room.
The door’s half closed, so I kick it open with my foot. My room is exactly the way I left it: Rumpled clothes on floor. Stereo equipment and miscellaneous computer wires lying about. Unmade bed. Stacks of LPs, CDs, comic books. Closet doors are open. Okay, weird. I don’t know what kind of pot this is—Imagine There’s Some Badass Dude Coming to Kill You pot—but never again, man.
Something catches my eye. The window’s open. That’s new. And there on the windowsill is a feather. I pick it up. It’s huge. Bigger and thicker than any bird’s feather I’ve ever seen. Soft and white with pink at the edges. Huh. I turn it over in my hand and I swear, I must be going mental, because there on the snowy surface of that gigantic feather is one word, a greeting.
