As we walked through the park in the direction of downtown, Rhodes chattered away. It was obvious he was trying to talk about anything but school, and for him, that was easy. I learned that he was really into biotechnology and he was hoping someday to do post graduate work with this biotech genius in California named Dr. Saval Patel, but the guy had recently vanished into thin air.
“Can you believe that?” he said. “I’ve spent the past two years coming up with science fair projects with the sole purpose of getting this guy’s attention, and then he drops off the face of the earth. Not even his wife knows where he’s gone.”
It was the first time I’d realized that Rhodes was not just eccentric. He was smart. Scary smart.
He bought me coffee in a funky little place downtown called Cafe Amsterdam. I’d never even noticed it was there. The whole place smelled of coffee and warm bread. None of the tables matched the chairs, and the walls were covered with weird little artifacts. There were plastic dolls stuffed in birdcages, a typewriter with sharp nails glued to every key, and dismembered mannequin parts stuck to the walls with picture frames around them. There were a few college students hunched over their laptops, and a small collection of bohemian types sketching on pads or, more importantly, engrossed in books. I smiled. Members of my secret society.
I followed him over the creaking floorboards to a small back room where an aging punk rocker with dyed-black spiky hair sat at a corner table and played the guitar.
“Hey, Frankie,” Rhodes said to the guy as we settled at a chipped wooden table nearby. It was a repurposed old sewing table, with the pedal and all the drawers still intact. The man smiled and nodded. Rhodes looked at me. “That guy’s stories will blow your mind.”
“So you hang out here?” I asked.
He tipped his chair back as if he owned the joint. “It’s my antidote to the social androids at school. Do you like it?”
“It’s great,” I said.
Rhodes grinned, relieved. He dropped his chair back to the floor and leaned over the table, as if he were going to tell me a secret. “These are my people.”
I stared at the décor, thinking how much my mom would love it. She was always happiest around writers and artists. The only reason she lived in Colorado Springs instead of San Francisco or New York, she always said, was because that’s where dad found gainful employment.
“So, what’s with the locket?” Rhodes asked.
I hadn’t realized I was playing with it. “What do mean, ‘what’s with the locket?’”
“Is it a family heirloom or something? It looks old.”
“It’s just a locket. I got it at the flea market.”
“Is there a picture inside?” Rhodes asked, leaning closer. “I mean, it obviously means something to you.”
I let it drop and picked up my coffee cup instead. “Not really. I just think it’s pretty.”
I drank my coffee. Rhodes watched me expectantly, as if at any moment I would burst into song or something. He nudged my foot under the table, impatient.
“Paulette,” he said, leaning in close again. “You can tell me about it if you want.”
“About what?” I asked.
“Your mom.”
I frowned. “That’s really personal.”
“What if I tell you something personal first?” he asked. “Then we’ll both be sharing, right?”
I shrugged.
“Okay, here goes,” he said, tipping his chair back on two legs again. He thought for a moment. “Did you know that the odds of death due to injury or accident in a lifetime are one in 23? Your odds of getting killed in a car wreck? One in 247. The odds of death by drowning? One in 8,942. Falling off of furniture? One in 5,031. Being caught between objects? One in 31,836. Suffocation in bed? One in 8,099. Choking on your own vomit? One in 8,571. Your pajamas catching on fire? One in 738,585.”
He took a long sip of coffee, as if he were preparing to go on forever. I stared at him with fascination.
“You’re more likely to die in a flood than in an earthquake, you’re more likely to get pushed off a cliff or out of a high rise window than to get killed by a swarm of bees, you’re more likely to get mauled by a dog than…”
“Rhodes,” I interrupted. “What’s your point?”
“My point,” he said, “is that I’m a freak. Why else would I have all that stored up here?” he tapped his head with a finger. “I’m terrified. I’m sixteen years old, and I lie awake every night thinking about death. Not just thinking about it. Imagining it. Worrying about it. I can’t stop looking for stories about it. Statistics. I’m telling you. It’s hell.”
“That’s it?” I said flatly. “You call that personal? So you’re obsessed with death. Who isn’t?”
At that moment, there was a loud commotion at the back door. A middle-aged man with a scruffy beard and a dirty suit burst into the room. On his shoulder was a white cockatiel draped in a little crocheted shawl with a hood. The man was carrying a wooden cane carved with a totem of gargoyles.
“Is he one of your people, too?” I asked.
Rhodes rolled his eyes. “That’s Sampson. He’s nuts.”
Before he could say another word, the man limped up to our table and leaned in close. He smelled of stale liquor and pipe tobacco. “They have discovered the secret of eternal life!” he exclaimed, eyes wide, his head wobbling on his neck like a bobble doll. “If you’re not careful, they may take yours!”
He wagged a ruddy finger at me, the nail yellow and crusted with dirt. I nodded, and tried to look concerned. The bird on his shoulder shrieked and did a shuffle step back and forth. It looked like a little monk with a beak.
“We’ll be on the lookout, Sampson,” Rhodes said. But the man didn’t look at him. His blazing eyes were fixed on me. After a few more finger pokes at the air, he staggered over to a corner table and sat down.
“I’m going to amend what I just told you,” Rhodes said under his breath, “I may be morbid, but that guy is a bona fide freak. A lot of crazies from the Albion next door hang around here. You get used to it.”
I watched the man mutter and shake his head, engaging in a conversation with some imaginary friend. “What was he talking about?” I asked. “UFOs?”
Rhodes shrugged. “He says he can talk to dead people, stuff like that.”
“I told you. Everybody’s obsessed with death.”
I watched the man chatter away while his bird nibbled at its claws. The strange thing was that instead of rambling on in a constant monologue, this guy actually stopped and listened, too. When I turned back to Rhodes, I realized he was staring at me.
“What?”
“I told you something personal about me,” he said. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Your thing wasn’t even very personal!”
“So tell me something minutely personal. I don’t care what. Just tell me something.”
I made a face. “I’m really not that into sharing.”
“Come on, Paulette. Tell old Rhodesy your secrets. You’ll feel better if you do.”
This was the problem with people. It wasn’t enough to hang out, to drink coffee and do your homework together. They were always digging around for little nuggets of personal information to sock away, as if it gave them some kind of claim over you. I didn’t mind if others bared their souls in the name of friendship, but I liked to keep my inner life to myself. It was the last thing in the world I could control.
“Fine,” I said, holding up my hands in a gesture of surrender. I leaned over the table, so close that our heads were practically touching. Rhodes waited, an eager smile on his face. “Okay,” I said. “You promise not to blab?” He nodded. “If you tell anyone, I’ll skin you,” I said.
Rhodes held up one hand. “May I go blind from syphilis if I tell.”
I nodded earnestly. “Rhodes, I…” I bit my lip and looked down at my hands.
“Come on, Paulette!”
“Okay, I…I…”
“Tell me!”
“I like to wear boys’ superhero underpants.”
Rhodes leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. There was a strange expression on his face that I couldn’t quite read, as if he were trying to figure out a magic trick I’d just performed.
I smiled. “I swear on my life it’s true. Today it’s the Hulk. He’s one of my favorites.”
“You are inscrutable,” he said.
“And you are nosy.”
He smiled. “Hey, Paulette.”
“Hey, what?”
“I think we should, you know, hang out sometime. Maybe watch a movie at my house. My parents are pretty hands-off people.”
I smiled. It was just what I needed while dad was away: a place to be that wasn’t home. And even though Rhodes was a little strange, I liked him. “Okay,” I said.
He nodded slowly, his expression unchanged. “Tomorrow night?”
“I’ll pencil you in.”
It was past three when we finally headed home. The sky was clear and the sun was slipping quickly toward the mountains. I pulled Rhodes’s big coat around my shoulders and thought about the homework I would miss, having left my bag at school. Dad would not be pleased. At my turnoff point I pulled the jacket off and handed it to Rhodes, but he waved it away.
“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “Put it back on before you freeze.”
“Thanks.” I threw it around my shoulders again. He lingered there, kicking at the dead grass in the sidewalk cracks, clearly not wanting to go. “Okay, sport,” I said, reaching up to fasten the top two buttons on his shirt. I flipped up his collar, like a mother about to send her child into the cold. “Now get out of here.”
Rhodes turned to go. Then he stopped and turned back. “Don’t worry about school, Paulette,” he said. “I’ve got your back.”
I smiled, genuinely grateful. “That’s Paulie to you.”
As I trudged home alone, pulling the jacket tight against the cold, I couldn’t help but feel the dread. I wasn’t invisible anymore. It was out there now. My family’s painfully public secret had been hoisted up the flagpole for the whole school to see, and I would have to get used to it.
That night, the house felt bigger and emptier than ever. Dad had taken the day off work and gone down to Canyon City to visit mom. I was about to get mad that he’d gone without me, but when he returned he looked so depressed, I left it alone. When I asked how she looked, he just shook his head, which I understood perfectly. Then he heated a TV dinner and disappeared into his study. I wasn’t hungry. I sat in my room and played around on the guitar until I heard his study door open, and his weary footsteps shuffle down the hall to bed.
When the branches of the maple tree rustled outside my window, my stomach fluttered. I realized that I was waiting for the sound of footsteps in the snow and a rapping on the storm window. But that night there was only the wind.