Me, My Elf & I Page 8

  “Why do you have to go underground to follow him?” I ask.

  “I mean secret.”

  “But it’s all over the computer.” I point to the screen.

  Ari drags his fingers through his hair. “Okay, not secret, but not mainstream. You know, he’s on an indie label and he still tours by van and plays small clubs but he has a lot of fans.”

  “Really?” I ask.

  “Yes, really.” Ari drops back against the wall behind the bed as if explaining all of that exhausted him. “And I want to be just like him. My career, I mean.” He repositions the computer on his lap. “Here, check out some of these sites, you’ll see what I mean.”

  I move closer to Ari’s side and roll my finger over the little black ball at the bottom of the keyboard (which Ari calls a mouse for some strange reason). I click on a Web site. Up pops my dad on a stage with his guitar strapped across his body. “Wow,” I say as I study the picture. He’s wearing a short ochre-colored tunic with bright red embroidery that my mom made and soft buckskin pants and boots. His hair has come loose from his normally tidy ponytail and whips across his open mouth as he sings. I look more closely at the picture, trying to find a glimpse of my older brother, Grove. I think I see one of his arms and his foot off to the right side.

  “I miss them,” I say to Ari and lay my head against his shoulder. “My mom and Willow are great, but I’m really close to my dad.”

  “God, seriously? I wish my dad would skip town every once in a while. He’s always here. The man’s never heard of a business trip.”

  “Mine’s gone too much.” I realize then that I haven’t hugged my dad in over a week. “Every time he calls, he can talk for only a minute. He has no idea what’s going on in my life. And he’s the only one in my family who gets why I want to be here and go to school and try new things. He would be so excited about the audition.”

  “But aren’t you used to it by now? I mean, isn’t he gone all the time?”

  “He used to go on the road before we moved, but that was different. Everything was familiar at home and we were with all our family and friends, so having him gone was no big deal. Here, though, when Grove and Dad are gone, it feels like there’s a big empty hole in our house.”

  “Don’t fall in!” Ari says with a snicker.

  “What?”

  “The big hole in your house.”

  I jab Ari in the side. “You’re as funny as a snakebite,” I tell him, but I’m laughing.

  “Want to hear him sing?” Ari clicks onto another page and my dad’s mellifluous, deep voice fills up the room.

  “Ugh, I hate this song. It’s so dramatic.” I stand up on my knees beside Ari and I sing along to “Raven Call,” exaggerating my dad’s voice. “And the RAVEN, watching SILENTLY, wings beating HUM and THRUM!” I stop singing. “What’s ‘hum’ and ‘thrum’ anyway? That’s so annoying.”

  “Some people think the hum and thrum means a beating heart,” Ari tells me. “That maybe your dad is referencing Poe.”

  “What’s a poe?” I ask, flopping back down beside him.

  “As in Edgar Allan. The poet? The guy who wrote ‘The Raven’ and ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’? Tell me you know Edgar Allan Poe!”

  “I’ve heard of him,” I say. “But I’m sure my dad hasn’t.”

  “Of course he has!” Ari nearly yells, but he’s laughing, too.

  “It’s not like my dad sits around reading poetry, Ari. He’s more into, like hunting, and fishing, and telling stories when he’s not playing his guitar.”

  “I don’t care what you say, Zeph, your dad definitely knows Poe because your dad is a poet.”

  “No, he’s not.” I push Ari. “He’s a singer.”

  Ari buries both hands in his hair, as if I’m driving him crazy. “Have you even listened to his words?”

  “Of course,” I say. “I’ve been listening to him all my life.”

  “No, his songs, Zephyr. His songs! He has such amazing things to say. There are entire Web sites where people discuss the meaning of his lyrics.”

  “What people?”

  “Like this site, DrakeAddict.com.” He pulls up a Web site and more pictures of my dad, some old and some new, fill the screen. The soft guitar part from the beginning of his song “West Wind Blowing” plays.

  I grab Ari’s shoulder and yell, “I love this one! ” My dad’s voice comes in quietly, humming for a few bars.

  “So you do like your dad’s music?”

  “This is his best song, don’t you think?” I ask with a sly smile.

  Ari shrugs. “It’s okay, I guess.”

  “Ari!” I slap his arm. “Listen to the words.” I sing along. “‘The west wind carried you in, tiny flower, you floated on the breeze, growing up tall and sturdy, among the alder trees . . . ’” Ari looks at me blankly. I grab one of his pillows and swing at him. “It’s about me, you loser!” I yell, but I’m laughing so hard that I keep missing him with the pillow.

  “Oh my God, I get it now!” Ari grabs the pillow from me and I collapse back on the bed, as if exhausted. “Zephyr means west wind! It is about you. I’m totally going to post that.” He starts typing furiously.

  “Wait! Stop!” I grab his hand. “I don’t want everybody to know that.”

  “Why not? It’s so cool. Your dad wrote a song about you.”

  “No.” I squeeze his hand. “Seriously, please don’t. My family is very private.”

  Ari sighs but he stops typing. He pushes the cancel button and the Web page disappears. Then he leans back against the wall. “Tell me about where you’re from. What’s it like? Do you miss it?”

  I lean back, too. Our shoulders touch. “In some ways it’s amazing. So beautiful and quiet. There’s hardly anything there, no stores, no cars.”

  “Whoa,” says Ari. “You didn’t have a car? How’d you get anywhere? ”

  “There’s a town next to ours called Ironweed where our clan, er, I mean family, keeps a car that we use when we need to bring in supplies. Plus, my dad has his own van that he drives to gigs. But mostly, we walk.”

  “Do you go to that town a lot?”

  “No.” I smooth the soft linen of my tunic over my knees, then yank out a tiny brown thread that’s come loose from the hem. “The people in Ironweed don’t like us.”

  “Holy crap. I’d shoot myself if I had to stay in the same place all the time. Didn’t you get bored?”

  “Sort of, I guess, but really there’s plenty to do. We study during the day and then we do chores and then we can go do whatever we want. All my brothers and sisters and cousins on my mom’s side are there. My dad’s whole family is just an hour’s walk away, so it’s not like we ever get lonely. Plus, we have lots of celebrations. There’s always some kind of party or special holiday to plan for or go to. And lots of people from different clans, um, families I mean, get together for those.”

  As I say this, I think of the fun I’m missing in Alverland—birthdays, full moons, planting festivals, berry picking, bird-call competitions, overnights on hidden uninhabited islands with my cousins and friends from other clans where we practice magic all night, zapping one another with silly spells like uncontrollable laughter or farting hexes. I sigh.

  “But you like it here, right?” asks Ari.

  “I do. That’s the thing, I love it here!” I tell him. “I’m a lot like my dad and my brother Grove. We’re a little bit different from everyone else in Alverland because we have dreams that could take us away from that life. That’s why we came to New York. So my dad could record a new album and tour with a full band, not just my brother. Plus in New York he can meet record-label people. Maybe get on TV. All the things he wouldn’t get to do in Michigan.”

  “And so you could go to BAPAHS,” Ari says.

  “Yeah! When he and my mom decided we’d all come to New York for the year, I begged them to let me go to school. My dad is the one who found BAPAHS for me. Even though my mom was really worried and didn’t want me to do it, my dad kn
ew I’d love it so he supported me.”

  “You know, BAPAHS saved my life,” Ari says. “Middle school was really rough for me. There were only two other kids in my whole class who liked music. Everybody else was into sports. All I wanted to do was play my piano and write songs and perform. Now I get to do that and it’s cool. But it was all right being unhappy, you know? It made me understand the dark side of things. How to be a cynic and find humor in what hurts. That’s what a lot of my songs with my band, GGJB, are about.”

  “I’d like to hear your music sometime.” I put my hand in his and I squeeze.

  Ari turns his head toward me. “Zephyr,” he says slowly. I look up at him and I smile. “Listen, I hope you aren’t expecting something . . .”

  “Expecting what?”

  “You know . . .” He drops my hand. “Something between us.”

  “You mean like boyfriend and girlfriend?” A flush crawls up my body.

  He nods. “Because I don’t think . . . you know, you and me, and well . . .”

  I curl my knees up tightly to my chest. “Why would you think that, Ari?”

  “Well, you’ve been touching me a lot. You put your head on my shoulder. And then you were holding my hand.”

  “Sorry! ” I’m laughing but I cover my face with a pillow so he can’t see how red I’ve become. I peek over the top of the pillow and try to explain. “We’re very affectionate with one another where I come from.” I realize that up until now I’ve spent every day of my life with the people who love me and know me. We thought nothing of holding hands, or giving each other piggyback rides, or curling up together like puppies or kittens for a nap. And although I’ll admit that sometimes that got old and I just wanted something new and different in my life, now I kind of miss it.

  “Good,” says Ari. “Because I should tell you something. I think that I might be, you know, gay.”

  I look at him, puzzled. I know I’ve heard that word before.

  “You do know what ‘gay’ means, don’t you?” Ari asks.

  I scratch my eyebrow and bite the corner of my mouth. “I think I do, but I’m not really sure.”

  “Gay is when a guy likes a guy or a girl likes a girl,” he says slowly, as if I’m slightly stupid. “Instead of, you know, being straight, when a guy and girl get together.”

  “Oh right!” I say. “Now I remember.”

  “Let me guess, you don’t have gay people where you’re from?” He sounds angry.

  “Oh no,” I tell him. “We do, we just don’t call them something different. People just love each other, it doesn’t matter who. Most people get married and have big families, but then there are some people who spend their lives together, two men or two women, and we call them a word that means something like Always Uncles or Always Aunts because they don’t have their own kids.”

  “God,” Ari lays back against his pillows as if he’s woozy. “That sounds like the coolest place in the whole world. I bet even a goth, gay, Jew boy like me could get along.”

  “Now you’re a goth, gay, Jew boy?” I tease.

  “That’s what my band’s name means. GGJB, goth, gay, Jew boy.”

  “I like it!”

  Just then a little screen pops up on Ari’s computer. “Hey, cool. It’s Mercy. She’s IMing me.”

  I read over his shoulder, but as usual, parts of the message seem like they’re in code:

  —Is Z there? B’s blogging smack about her again. Uh-huh, such a nice girl!

  “You see that? ” Ari asks then he types back to Mercedes:

  —Checking it out now. Back in 5.

  “We told you, Zephyr, they’re mean, mean, mean.” He jumps over to the latest entry on Bella’s secret blog:

  Went to the ELPH aud 2day. Snap. O’Donnell luvs me. Y bother w/ this ruse. Give me the part already! Nobody WTE there. All cactus.

  “What’s WTE mean?” I ask Ari.

  “We think it means ‘worth the effort,’ but they change their slang all the time,” Ari says. “I don’t know what ‘cactus’ means, though. Hang on.” He opens the I-Hate-Bella blog where there are new nasty comments about Bella and her friends.

  “Goodness, I feel bad for them!” I say as I skim the horrible things other people are saying. “Who do you think does it?” I ask.

  “Some people say it’s Timber’s ex-girlfriend Tessa. She moved to Jersey last year and lots of people think she does it from there. But I doubt it,” says Ari. “She doesn’t strike me as the vindictive type. Plus, how would she know what happens at BAPAHS, unless she has a spy?”

  “Who then?” I ask.

  “Beats me, but I’d like to shake the hand of whoever’s behind it.”

  “That’s mean, Ari. Nobody deserves to be hated that much by other people.”

  “God, Zephyr, you just don’t get it, do you? You shouldn’t feel sorry for them.”

  “I know what it feels like to be picked on and hated for no reason, Ari! Every time my cousins and I walked into Ironweed, the people who lived there yelled hateful, stupid things at us. Sometimes the kids would throw rocks and sticks and we’d have to run away into the woods like scared little chipmunks because our parents wouldn’t let us fight back. It was awful.”

  “I got called a faggot every day of junior high,” Ari says. “I know what it feels like. But I’m telling you, these girls bring it on themselves.” He types in a question:

  —Anybody have the 411 on ‘cactus’ from Bella blog 2day?

  Posted by: gothboi.

  We wait for what seems like a full minute, although it was probably a lot quicker, then a message pops up:

  —Cactus from Sept 15 BELLA / LadyBug exchange:

  —Anybody in calculus?

  Posted by: LadyBug

  —F*ing wasteland.

  Posted by: BELLA

  —Sahara Dessert?

  Posted by: LadyBug

  —“Desert” you moron. Me and a bunch of cactus.

  Posted by: BELLA

  —Cactus! F*ing hilar. LOL

  Posted by: LadyBug

  Posted by: BellaHater

  “Oh, now I get it,” says Ari. He thanks BellaHater, whoever that is, and clicks back onto Bella’s blog.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” I admit, but then again, I can’t stop reading Bella’s entry either.

  That yatchy nanc kissed A at the aud. Just give O’Donnell a b.j. already.

  And OMG! What was that thing she wore? Looked like it was made out of a bedspread.

  Below that, we read the comments:

  —Fo’ real! C calls it muumuu.

  Posted by: ZoEzOe

  —LOL! A muumuu! FNO she’s MooMoo.

  Posted by: BELLA

  —TLC liked it better than Prada.

  Posted by: CH3L-C

  —C u’r a slag & MooMoo will fall flat on her fat ass. ELPH is mine. End-o-story.

  Posted by: BELLA

  When I’m done reading, my heart races and my palms are sweaty.

  “Do you understand what they’re saying?” Ari asks me.

  “They’re making fun of my tunic.”

  “Yep and they’ve given you one of their illustrious nicknames. ‘FNO’—from now on—you will be known as ‘MooMoo’ to them.”

  “They’re going to call me that?” I ask, horrified at the thought of walking through school while being lowed at like a cow.

  “Not to your face,” Ari says. “Only behind your back, which is how they do everything.”

  I skim the entry again, understanding it better this time. “And Bella thinks I’m no competition, right?” I ask.

  “Right again.”

  I’m furious. It’s the exact same feeling I used to get walking down the dusty street in Ironweed, trying to ignore the taunts hurled at us from erdlers in their cars. “Burn in Hell, Satan Worshipers!” “Go back to the commune!” “We don’t want your cult here!” So many times, my cousins and I planned the hexes we’d like to cast on those people, making their hair fall out i
n clumps, giving them all diarrhea for forty days, turning them into goats if our magic ever got strong enough. But our parents always told us no. That’s not what our magic’s for. It would be wasted on revenge. And we’d do ourselves harm in the end because if you cast spells only for evil, you can make yourself sick or lose your powers for a while or worst of all, you have to leave Alverland forever because your heart becomes dark.

  I never thought anything could make me feel that bad, but this is a thousand times worse because Bella pretended to be nice and she lied, saying she’d help me. I want nothing more than to plague those mean girls with the Curse of Wrinkled Butts, Contagious Belching, Bloody Tears, and Swollen Tongues. I want their noses to grow long and twist into their mouths. Their ears to blow up like cauliflower and their hair to turn to straw. And at this very moment, if I knew how to send a spell through the wires of a computer, I’d zap them with everything I’ve got.

  “So?” says Ari. “Still feel sorry for them?”

  “No.” I grind my teeth until my jaw aches.

  “You wanna kick some Bella butt? Waste her at the one thing that’s actually important to her?”

  “What’s that?” I ask, thinking for a minute that he means Timber.

  “The audition,” he says simply.

  “I don’t know, Ari.” I shake my head. “How could I beat her? She’s a professional and I’m just . . . me. What if I end up making a total fool of myself ?”

  “Look,” Ari says. “Mercedes and I are really good at this. I can make a résumé that would convince anyone to hire you and Mercy’s a great actress who could totally coach you . . .”

  “If she’s a great actress, why isn’t she trying out?”

  “Mercedes will have her chance someday,” Ari says. “But she and I both know this isn’t the time. The description of what the casting agents are looking for just doesn’t fit her. See, that’s the thing, Zeph. The biz, I mean TV and movies and stuff, is not just about talent or experience. These agents are always looking for something different. Something new. Something they’ve never seen before. You’re new. You’re gorgeous. You’ve got this quality, I don’t know what it is, but I’m telling you, you’ve got IT. Now, you just have to want it.”