Who Put This Song On? Page 7

  Because this is not a Bible story, Kelly’s test is negative. We allow her to put on a show of relief before Meg moves our lives along: “Now can we talk about boys?”

  “Ooh!” I jump up, remembering. “Let’s see what music David sent.”

  “Da-vid,” Meg teases, and I feel myself blush brown.

  “It’s not like that!” I connect my laptop to my little portable speakers and pull up David’s email. Kelly and Meg giggle and make faces behind my back. The subject line is love lockdown. “Oh, it’s the new Kanye West. I haven’t heard it.”

  “Put it on,” says Meg. “Kelly?”

  “Kelly doesn’t really like rap, right? We don’t have to if you don’t wanna.”

  “No, I’m, uh, down! I like Kanye West I think.”

  Kelly is hilarious. “K.”

  I join them back on the floor, knee to knee on our little island of school supplies and massive cans of tea, cell phones and ponytail holders. Meg starts pulling books and binders out of her bag and we all strategize our various homework assignments or whatever, a little getting-stuff-done montage, scored by David Santos and Kanye West.

  After a while I blurt, “We don’t have to keep listening to this,” because I am not enjoying this album at all.

  KELLY ISN’T PREGNANT so I’m gonna talk about David and his stubble

  You guys, our lives are so ironic! When I talked to Adam he was happy and relieved. But he felt embarrassed that I told you guys that his penis was big and that doing it was difficult.

  I still haven’t thrown away the test. It’s in my car, and I don’t know what to do with it!

  James writes:

  Congrats Kelly. Use condoms!!!! : )

  Meg writes:

  UM, THROW AWAY YOUR TRASH

  This is the beginning of the end with Kelly, as far as I’m concerned. The thing about a Kelly is they will always be fine. They want whatever they already have. I want that other thing, whatever it is.

  MAKE A LIST OF THINGS YOU HATE ABOUT YOURSELF

  It’s getting a little bit better. Like I’m not bursting into tears every day, but every once in a while, something totally random—forgetting to roll up my car window, the question How are you—sends me into a whole spiral thing, like: I’m worthless, I’m ugly, I’m weird, no one likes me, no one understands me, what is the point of all this.

  At therapy this week, I told Susan I wish I could be more like other girls. Marissas and Kellys and Jennifers and Ashleys. They never seem to worry about more than the usual high school stuff. Surface-level stuff, worries that will eventually go away. They’ve always been like that; their mothers are like that. They won’t change. They could never carry what I do.

  I really just want to be one of those wispy-haired, flat-chested girls from the dELiA*s catalogue who probably never poops or aches, doesn’t have to tug and twist at clothes to fit right. (Having my boobs just means I can’t wear basically any dress from Urban Outfitters. It’s all T-shirts from Goodwill for me, my too-heavy, too-adult boobs stretching out the cotton in front.)

  “What do you think is the difference between you and them?” Susan asked. (Being a psychiatrist looks pretty easy to me; it’s just asking hella trick questions.) “How are your struggles different?”

  “Well, I guess I think I must deserve it.”

  It wasn’t the right answer, I could tell.

  STRANGE, FRUIT

  Saturday begins like a Rilo Kiley song, twinkling and sunbathed. The world around me is full of promise and faith. When I wake up to the sound of a lawn mower and feel my body, I’m an interruption, a pock ruining the whole scene. Out in the perfectly content cul-de-sac, my dad is cutting the grass at the same time as the neighbor dad. My dad and the Smith dad discuss types of fences and gossip about other people on the block. Boring stuff. The neighbor dad gives my dad advice on how to trim the ivy around our doorway. I rub my eyes and breathe before swinging myself from the bed. I can do this.

  I really hope my dad doesn’t trim the ivy, no matter how good it is for the house or the plant. I want to keep something growing wild around my window, almost creeping in through the sill to choke me. Or rescue me.

  Downstairs, I go straight for the coffee pot. Dad’s now on the couch slurping cut fruit from a paper plate, Nike T-shirt soaked with sweat, socks and tennis shoes in a little pile on the carpet next to him. I wonder if he went to an early morning spin class on his way home from the fire station.

  “Hey,” I mutter sleepily, feeling awkward for no reason. I try to be careful with my family. I understand that over the past few months, I have inadvertently put them through hell.

  “Hey, Morgan, have some of that fruit salad. The honeydew is bitchin’. Super sweet.”

  “Oh, nice. I’m fine for now. I’ll have some later, though.”

  I take my mug into the family room and fold my legs underneath me on the other side of the sectional. He smiles at me with his mouth closed, jiggling one of his legs, an annoying habit. When I make a face at them he says, “Sorry.” We don’t know how to be, with each other.

  (My dad and I could not be more different. When he’s at home, and not at the fire station, we don’t talk much. He used to be home more, when Malcolm and I were little, and Mom worked full time. He drove on all our field trips, the lone dad among all the moms. He took us to Baskin-Robbins after school, our little routine—Gold Medal Ribbon for Dad, Rainbow Sherbet for Malcolm, Mint Chocolate Chip for me. Now Mom stays home, and Dad takes all the overtime he can. Last year he worked on Thanksgiving, and we went to the fire station to eat store-bought pumpkin pie with all the other guys on duty and their families.)

  (I’m pretty sure my dad hoped his first child would be a boy, or at least a different kind of girl. Kelsey was the other frontrunner for my name. I can’t imagine being that girl.)

  “How’d you sleep?” He sucks at his teeth, some lingering piece of citrus or pineapple.

  “Pretty good I guess. You? Were you on calls all night?”

  “It was up and down. I got a few hours here and there. Wasn’t too bad.”

  “That’s good.”

  Between our silence, a grid of talking heads blares from the TV. First, it’s SportsCenter or something, then there’s some election coverage.

  “What’re you watching?”

  “Nothing. You can change it.” He sends the remote gliding over the couch’s leather.

  “I just really hate Sarah Palin,” I announce, my voice too defiant.

  “I’m so sick of her, man.” He shakes his head. “Guys at work, you know, they’re all about the guns, they love the whole ‘maverick’ thing. They’re just scared to have a brother in the White House.”

  “I know. Racist white people are always so scared,” I sigh, going to GUIDE. “There’s probably a Law & Order on.”

  “You know there is!” (There always is.)

  Munch has just made a one-line quip about murder, and the iconic song begins. We both bob our heads to it instinctually. (Our family kinda loves this song. Malcolm and I sometimes play the air flute during the bridge.)

  Our relationship isn’t one of contempt or anything; it’s more like my dad looks at me with total confusion. As I get more and more depressed, as I move further and further inward, toward books and punk politics and thick black eyeliner, I think he’s less and less able to understand me. It’s not my fault or his—to him, I just do not compute.

  (“The only thing I know about is sports and hard work,” my dad likes to say. “That’s my thing.” And even though I’ve told him—almost accusingly—I know that’s not the whole truth, it’s another reason I just wish I were regular, easier to understand. Another thing I hate about myself.)

  “I better go get showered.” I stand up and stretch as the show ends on a super-long close-up of Olivia Benson’s steely, out-of-breath c
ountenance.

  “Hey, what are you doin’ today? I gotta drop Malcolm off at the skate park later, thought we could go get some mochas at Starbucks.”

  It’s totally random, but then again so is everything about how my family treats me since the incident.

  “Oh. I’m actually hanging out with my friend from art class in a little bit.”

  “Oh good, good. That’s cool. Maybe we can go tomorrow then.”

  “Sure, yeah.” I nod too many times. “Okay.”

  He pops a watermelon square into his mouth, slurps mercilessly. It makes me giggle to myself all the way upstairs.

  * * *

  —

  I still have a couple of hours before David picks me up. I should do homework, but instead I’m listening to Cat Power and researching curses, fingers crossed the internet will be like You’re totally crazy everything’s fine high school just sucks. I search “types of curses” and click the second result, because I irrationally believe that the second result is always more credible than the first. It looks academic enough.

  There are three types of curses: (1) Biblical curses (2) Witchcraft curses (3) Curses by people.

  Ugh, I don’t know what’s going on with me. I read the site until I can’t stand the terrible grammar anymore, click around for a while, somehow end up at “see also: if the world hates you.” Slam my laptop shut.

  Meg texts a single link to a five-minute video of hippos eating watermelons.

  I hope you have fun today dude, she follows up. Wear the good bra. I grin idiotically, with my whole heart. (Maybe this year will be okay?)

  I am just friends with David Santos and so I am really trying very hard not to completely flip out about hanging out with David Santos. I keep reminding myself about his ex, how she’s probably quiet and uncomplicated, with long white-girl hair and lip gloss. Still, he’s so cute and cool, I know that hanging out with him will give me big fat restless butterflies.

  The story about David Santos has a pop-punk soundtrack: moody, earnest, energizing, fun. He’s a junior at Highland Valley, a public school and a completely different world, but our tectonic plates click together with snarky texts about Wes Anderson movies and guacamole recipes (which is a very intimate and important topic for Southern California natives). Sometimes we chat all day, about nothing special. It’s like we’re always hanging out.

  I wear: my Smith’s T-shirt from Hot Topic, with the green lettering; camel-colored wool pencil skirt from the vintage store in Riverside; black Dr. Marten’s Mary Janes that barely pinch my feet (but they were seven dollars!). I flip my hair with my mom’s biggest curling iron. Put on purple eyeliner. Say my affirmations. I am in control. I am not crazy. I am cute. I feel good. Take my medicine. Slip my bottle of Xanax into my tote bag just in case.

  I go downstairs to look out for David from the living room window. I don’t want him to ring the doorbell and have to do A Whole Thing. My dad’s wiping the kitchen counters and half-ignoring the Law & Order marathon. When I hear a car parking, I rush a goodbye hug and run out of the house.

  David’s walking up the driveway when I intercept him. “Hi!” I squeak. (So awkward.)

  “Hello, madam. You ready?” He is wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt and is adorable.

  I give a thumbs-up and my signature exaggerated smile.

  “Nice shirt.” He nods, and I’m too liquid to respond.

  David Santos is driving his mom’s old station wagon, unironically. With his Ramones bumper sticker and the yellowed paperbacks strewn in the backseat, it actually looks cool.

  After he opens the passenger-seat door for me (!) and we both buckle our seat belts, I sit quietly, buzzing with nerves and trying desperately not to move. My goal is to be stone. He whistles something while he fusses with the knobs for the AC, the CD player, the side-view mirrors, the seat back. And finally, he starts the car.

  “This is an excellent song,” he says as we pull away from the curb. He fist-pumps the air.

  It’s the White Stripes. “You’re Pretty Good Looking (For a Girl)” from De Stijl.

  “Ugh, I know, this whole album is so good!” (Dude, relax, I chant to myself.)

  David drums the steering wheel. His energy is like a fourteen. I don’t know where we’re going or what we’re about to do, and that is totally freaking killing me, but I’m way too nervous to ask anything.

  “So. Morgan. Are you ready for the mission?”

  He smiles as we slow to a stop sign. He looks over at me, and I make it a point to look back at him. His eyes are an annoyingly calm blue, crystal and sort of gray, the foggy waters of another world. I fall in.

  “Let’s break this curse.”

  THE EXORCISM OF MORGAN PARKER

  My good old panic, this familiar terror. I wish I could explain, but it’s like there are no exact words. Every single interaction is potentially hazardous. Medicated, unmedicated, important, frivolous—everything could be a second away from destroying me. I swear we can both totally hear my heart pounding with nerves.

  But the day has decided to be epic.

  “Okay, first thing’s first,” David takes a deep breath, flings a hand off the wheel into the middle console, and starts rummaging. It’s full of all kinds of random stuff. Candy wrappers, supermarket discount cards, sticky pennies. The car is brimming with stuff, evidence of aliveness.

  David finally fishes out a jewel case and solemnly presents it to me. “I made you a mix.”

  (I am dying! But I try to hide it. This is unquestionably the first time a guy has ever made me a mix, and it is, in my book, significant. Above making out on the romance scale. Like, John Cusack in Say Anything level.)

  Scrawled on the notebook paper insert in he-did-his-best handwriting is: The Exorcism of Morgan Parker. David catches my eyebrows leap up at the title.

  “Not that you’re like, possessed,” he rushes. “Just like, you know, that movie. Maybe it was a bad joke. It’s just a weird thing I do.”

  I laugh; his tension escapes through the car windows.

  “No, it’s rad!” I flip over the case but it’s blank. “No track list?”

  “Well this is Wolf Parade, ‘It’s a Curse.’ Another stupid joke. Anyway, and I’ll write it down for you later, but every single moment starting now will be a surprise.”

  The sentence resonates in a super-deep way, like he’s not just talking about the CD, he’s talking about life. Our life, together. It occurs to me that he put a lot of thought into this, into today. Does he think I am “pretty good looking (for a girl)”?

  (Now playing: my spiral of self-doubt. Why would anyone want me when simple-minded, skinny blonds in flip-flops and jean skirts are running around everywhere like extras from The O.C.?)

  “Thanks so much.” I peel my hand from my lap and reach toward his arm but then chicken out. (How do you flutter your eyelids, by the way? Are we sure it looks cool?) Leaning into the headrest, I try to look softly at him—just smiling creepily. His warm tan complexion, that curly hair, how his eyes are always smiling. I watch the muscles in his arms as he steers.

  “You are super welcome! So, here’s my proposition,” he claps. “Soul Searching.”

  I nod. “Okay. Yeah, this sounds right. Where do I start? And also, where are we going?”

  “Two, I have no idea and I am literally just driving around until we get to the bottom of this. And one, well, if you feel like the universe has cursed you, you for sure need some kind of come-to-Jesus moment. Like maybe a baptism? Or a re-baptism or something, I don’t know your life.”

  I reply almost reflexively, practiced from years of probing from teachers, moms, youth group leaders: “I was baptized Catholic as a baby.”

  “So?”

  “Yeah, I don’t really know what that does. I didn’t do communion. We don’t really go to Catholic church anymore.”
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br />   Services at the Catholic church across town (closer to where we used to live, and closer to “the hood” as my parents say), where I was baptized, are extremely and intentionally boring, and no one can really understand what the priest is saying because he’s like two hundred years old. When our family went, mostly on holidays, Malcolm and I always fell asleep or played games too loudly in the pews. The congregation is mostly black and Mexican, people with major troubles asking for prayer. It’s real to them. When they say suffering, I understand. It isn’t about restriction, and it isn’t about threat. Everything’s not some episode of 7th Heaven. It’s life and death. It’s survival.

  I actually did go to one communion class but was disappointed in the lack of discipline among the other students, and plus, I didn’t know any Spanish. I was even in the choir, which I quit because I am a horrible singer, and also because the rest of the choir were senior citizens. I’ve given a lot of things a try.

  “I mean, it wasn’t bad, I guess,” I add, catching some breeze on my cheek from the open window. “It was just sooo boring. I didn’t really feel it, you know?”

  David laughs. “Jeez, yeah, I do know what you mean. It wasn’t for you.”

  “Nothing’s for me,” I mutter before I have time to censor myself. “Or maybe I just haven’t found my thing. Whatever it is doesn’t grow in this town.”

  I suck in a big, meditative breath, choosing my words. David stays quiet, nods.

  “But I need to believe in something. I have to believe something’s on my side. That’s how people do this life thing, right? At least I think so.”

  “Yes! Now we’re talking. Optimism looks good on you. I’ve never seen it before.”

  I laugh and kick my feet up on the dusty dash. He’s right. A teeny bolt of hopefulness darts up my spine.

  “So let’s expand that worldview, kid,” he says, business-like. “Find you some salvation.”