The hallways are noisy. I’m surrounded by older, louder, bigger kids, some with Jheri curls, some with short waves, some tall and foreboding in blue-and-black flannel shirts buttoned up to their necks and hair that looks like it’s been crimped at a salon. Some are dancing, spinning on backs or knees. They don’t look at me. I am invisible to them. They walk with heads held high, some fists locked at the waist. The girls look like women to me, with makeup and nails and big voices screaming down the hallway while I stand beneath them: “Hey, Tamika! Tamika! Girl, you know I need my notebook!” They have breasts. Real breasts. And butts in tight jeans with hips and heels and a sway that pings back and forth while they walk chewing gum with teeth covered in braces.
As I walk down the hall, everyone says, “Surf’s up, dude. Hey, dude, surf’s up” because of my long blond hair, even though I’ve never been on a surfboard. There’s music everywhere from radios carried around inside backpacks casually slung off one shoulder.
Even the handful of white faces seem different from the ones I knew in Oregon. Cleaner. Brighter somehow. Their clothes are new. They wear T-shirts with cartoons on them from T&C Surf Designs or Quiksilver. They use the word “radical” or the word “gnarly” or the word “awesome.” Everyone seems rich.
Chris Faraday is a tall redheaded boy with freckles in a white T-shirt with a picture of an ape on a skateboard. He’s got sleepy eyes and skin that looks like it’s been tanned from days in the sun. He sits next to me in social studies. He’s got a pair of thick British Knights sneakers on and a pack of purple Now and Laters open behind his book so our teacher, Mr. Schneider, can’t see it. He leans into me and says, “Hey, dude, where you from?”
“Oregon.”
“Oh shit, really? Damn. What’s it like?”
I picture rain falling on the rabbit barn, the muddy shore of the Willamette River under the West Salem bridge, the red rabbit blood splattered on the gravel path next to the shed, the campsite next to the big rocks on the Oregon coast, the snow in the sand, Billy and I planning our trip, Billy as a ghost, Paul lying still in a creek bed, the spit in Doug’s teeth, Mom crying on the floor of the wolf den next to the wood-burning stove.
“It’s cool.”
“Do you guys skate?”
“A little.”
“Can you ollie?”
“Almost.”
“What kind of board you got?”
“Nash.”
“That’s a little kid’s board.”
“Oh yeah, I know. My dad’s going to get me a new one. We just haven’t gone to get it yet.”
In front of me is a girl named Tanisha Campbell who smiles with a mouthful of braces. “Hi!” Her hair is pulled tight on her head in a bun with little pink flower clips and golden hoop earrings that look like two dolphins jumping together to kiss beneath her earlobe. “What’s your name?”
“Mike.” I’ve decided that I’m tired of being teased for being named Mikel, which sounds like a girl’s name, and if I’m at a new school nobody knows me anyway so I may as well go by Mike. Everybody knows at least five Mikes.
“Hi, Mike. You need a pen? Mr. Schneider gets mad if you don’t take notes while he talking.”
Tanisha likes Blow Pops covered in red Jolly Ranchers. She keeps a couple in the zip-up plastic pen case snapped into her three-hole binder notebook. At the start of class every day she lends me a blue Bic ballpoint pen for notes, saying, “When you gonna start bringing your own pen?”
“They weigh me down.” I blush because I have three in the small pocket on the front of my backpack. I just like the chance to talk to Tanisha. Sometimes she passes me notes over her shoulder that say, “If you could live anywhere you want, where would you live?” or “Look at that man stomach. Mr. Schneider need to eat more vegetables!” or “Daaaaamn a quiz! I didn’t study. Did you?”
As I walk into class one day, Donte Parker, who is nearly as tall as Jake, though still only a seventh grader, runs up behind me and pushes me into the door frame as he leans into the room to yell, “The big one coming, y’all! Watch out!” Everyone is scared of the Big One, the earthquake that will destroy Southern California. It lurks at the edges of our minds like the Night Stalker, the serial killer who was in the news for all those murders and rapes and something called sodomy. My aunt Jeannie discovered a victim one night. It was one of her first calls as a rookie cop. The father was killed, the children raped. She said it was “horrific.” Something about this place, despite the palm trees and warm weather, suggests there is a terrible, invisible rot that threatens the Good Life promised to the rows and rows of perfect houses with their perfect green lawns.
Tanisha yells at him, “You play too much! That’s my friend.”
At the end of the period, when the bell rings for lunch, Tanisha is standing outside the doorway waiting for me. “You got my pen?” I give it to her and she leans in to give me a hug. She puts her arm around my back, pulling me toward her, smelling of cinnamon and cocoa butter. I feel a warmth spread through my chest and radiate over my body, a feeling that marks her at that instant, like I could find her in my mind from then on as if on a map of the world. My first hug. “Bye,” she says as I watch her walk away, a blur of acid-wash jeans. Somewhere beneath the sky-blue cotton of her thin sweatshirt dances the white line of an actual bra.
At lunch I sit at a table with some of the other boys from pre-algebra: Stephen Perkins, who is tall, kind and studious, quietly observing us all. Ryan Church, also tall with glasses and brown hair, sarcastic and good at basketball. And my favorite: Drew. He’s blond and thin, smart like Jake and awkwardly dressed like me. He doesn’t seem to understand the rules against knee-high socks or Reebok knockoffs from Payless ShoeSource either. Like me, he doesn’t quite get the fashion code. He’s the only other kid at Orville Wright Junior High School who knows about the Cure. His brother, who is a college DJ, makes him mix tapes filled with the Cure and the Smiths, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. We decide to stick together, sensing a strength in numbers, trading tapes. I give him The Head on the Door. He gives me Some Great Reward by Depeche Mode. It feels like we’re the only two members of a club. Misfits Without Jackets.
It’s an unspoken pact we’ve made, for mutual protection from the humiliation of junior high life: me the white trash latchkey son of an ex-con, he the do-gooder son of the PTA president. There’s a balance struck. He makes me look more respectable. I make him look more reckless.
Chris Faraday comes and goes, floating between us and other groups, the kind of mouthy kid that no one likes but everyone tolerates for some reason. When he’s out of earshot, Ryan always says, “That kid’s an asshole.” Ryan seems to have the school down. He hangs out with us misfits but he seems to understand how to fake fitting in better than we do. Maybe it’s because he’s good at basketball.
The kids from class talk about trips to Palm Springs or Hawaii, their dads who work as engineers or lawyers at the big Hughes Aircraft building on the side of the hill next to the enormous white letters spelling out “LMU” for Loyola Marymount University.
When I mention my hug with Tanisha, Chris Faraday says, “Oh yeah, I hugged Tanisha tons of times. That’s my girl.” I don’t believe him. Tanisha has better taste than that.