Where I Belong Read online

  “Actually,” Kitsy says, getting a bit pink, “Mr. Chin prefers if we don’t; we always get the table disgusting and the floor becomes a rice field. And as a waitress, I get it because it’s pretty gross to clean up others’ messes.”

  “And what makes you the expert in chopsticks?” Bubby asks. “Did you learn it at the Chinese Embassy or something?”

  “No,” I say, and shake my head. I don’t mention that at cotillion we did learn the proper way to eat pasta using both a spoon and a fork in case we were ever invited to an Italian villa.

  “Well,” Bubby says, waving over Mr. Chin to get a round of chopsticks, “How did you learn, then?”

  Taking chopsticks from Mr. Chin, I say: “It’s embarrassing.”

  I unravel, snap, and hold up my chopsticks. “My friend Sarita did a chopstick diet,” I confess. “Someone proved that you eat, like, forty percent less if you use chopsticks, so we all went through a chopstick phase. I can pretty much eat anything with them, even ice cream.”

  Bubby rolls his eyes: “Is there anything New Yorkers won’t do to get skinny?”

  Kitsy smiles and looks over at me. “Okay,” she says, “I am ready for a lesson. Then if I come to New York, we can go to Chinatown, eat, and buy fake purses.”

  I let that one slide. No way, even in the recession, am I getting caught with a knockoff.

  “If you can hold a pencil, you can use a chopstick,” I say. With my hand over Kitsy’s, I show her how to grasp one chopstick like a pencil and practice “drawing.” Then I show her how to use the other as the fixed stick.

  “Okay,” Kitsy says, looking down at a dumpling. With a swoop motion, Kitsy picks up the dumpling.

  “Can you teach her again?” Hands says. “That was surprisingly hot.”

  Kitsy playfully pokes her elbow in his chest. “Now teach the boys,” she says. “If you can teach these jocks, we won’t have any more rice fields issue. And then Mr. Chin won’t have any more conniption fits.”

  Bubby turns out to be a natural, and even Hands, despite his large-fingers handicap, gets it after a while.

  After Mr. Chin clears our table, the boys pull out cash to pay the check.

  “Another formality?” I ask, feeling sorta bad that Bubby has to pay for me even though we’re not actually a real couple. “I can pay my share. I do have a job these days.”

  “No worries,” Bubby says, and he even maybe smiles at me. “This is for the chopstick lesson.”

  Once he puts down cash, Bubby pitches each of us a fortune cookie.

  Kitsy tosses hers right back.

  “I am done with fortunes from this place. I’ve never gotten a single good one. Why would they even make bad fortunes?”

  “Who needs a good fortune when you got me?” Hands says, and kisses Kitsy on the cheek. “You can only ask for so much luck in a lifetime. I am opening mine, though—it might say something about us winning State.”

  “Fine,” Kitsy says, grabbing hers back. “We’ll all open them. Maybe for once I’ll get a halfway decent one.”

  Filtering, I don’t say the only good fortune to receive in Broken Spoke is “You will soon move somewhere better.”

  Reading over Kitsy’s shoulder, I see her new fortune: “Accept life’s struggles.”

  Wow, she really does get bad fortunes. I didn’t think those even existed. Usually I get the one that says “You like Chinese food.”

  Kitsy crumples it up without even reading it aloud. “Typical,” she mutters.

  Cracking open mine, I find the best fortune ever: “Everything will come your way.” Score: I am a believer. This must mean that my life is going to be restored, I will get Rider, this will be my only meal at Chin’s, and my time in Texas will soon be just an anecdote. Catching Kitsy’s eye, I notice she looks seriously depressed, shocking since it’s a football-win weekend and a pre-dance Saturday. That’s about as good as it gets in the B.S.

  “Hey, Kitsy,” I say. “Do you guys play white elephant with fortunes?”

  I can’t believe I am about to do this, but seeing Kitsy upset is like seeing a kitten frown.

  “What’s that?” Bubby says. “Is it some New York society game?”

  “No,” I say. “It means that everyone reads their fortunes—”

  Hands interrupts, “And adds ‘in bed’ to it. Yeah, Texans do that too.”

  Bubby and Hands grunt and elbow each other.

  “No,” I say, and roll my eyes. “That’s not the game. That’s like a seventh-grade game. White elephant is where everyone reads his or her fortunes silently. You can either keep or give away your fortune, which of course is a gamble since you don’t know what anyone else has.”

  Quickly retrieving her fortune, Kitsy extends her hand. “I’ll switch,” she says. “Anyone, anyone…?”

  Both Hands and Bubby look away. “We can’t be taking any chances with your bad fortune,” Hands says. “This is our year for State.”

  “I’ll switch,” I say. “I’m not much of a believer in fortune anyways. Plus, I like a gamble,” I lie, reluctantly handing Kitsy my royal flush of fortune cookies.

  Reading the slip aloud, “‘Everything will come your way,’” Kitsy squeals. “Thanks, Corrinne. But God, I feel bad. My fortune’s awful, and now it’s yours.”

  “Read yours, Corrinne,” Bubby says, eyeing me strangely.

  “‘Accept life’s struggles,’” I say, pretending to be surprised and disappointed. Grandma would so want to embroider that one on a pillow.

  “What’s your fortune?” I ask Bubby. “I bet it says, ‘You are a life struggle.’”

  “Funny, Manhattan,” he says, and pauses. “It says, ‘Someone is not who you think.’”

  “That’s creepy,” I say. “Does that, like, mean someone you know is a serial killer? You’d better sleep with one eye open.”

  “Maybe it’s not a bad fortune,” Bubby says. “C’mon, y’all, let’s get out of here. There’s a dance waiting. Let’s hope that the amps break and we don’t have to listen to that Rider kid whine.”

  OMG, Rider. All that MSG must have distracted me. Even if I did give my awesome fortune to Kitsy, I am still looking forward to the one good thing in Texas: Rider. And something tells me tonight’s totally going to be our night.

  Inside the gym, gray and white crepe paper haphazardly strung encompasses the bleachers. Cutout Mockingbirds of all sizes and varying artistic accuracy hang on the walls. I am used to theme parties: astronauts and aliens, bungles in jungles, Madonnarammas. But the theme at this dance is the same tired theme of Broken Spoke in general: There is one god in this town: Mockingbird football. To top it all off, there’s a balloon arch where you can get your photo taken with Mack, the Mockingbird Mascot. And there’s already an extremely long line for this photo op when our group arrives. I try to forget my old school dances where passed hors d’oeuvres and mocktails in the theme colors were staples and where professional party planners carried around walkie-talkies to make sure the party unfolded perfectly. Those parties didn’t have Rider; they had pretty boys who prided themselves on their father’s portfolios and access to prescription pills.

  Trying not to look too obvious, my eyes scan the room for Rider and his band. On a makeshift stage, I spot Rider playing with the amps. Unlike Bubby and the rest of the football boys all dressed up in what seem to be their fathers’ suits, Rider looks positively rock star in a pair of jeans and a black Hanes T-shirt.

  I grab Kitsy’s hand. “Let’s go say hi.”

  Rider barely looks up when Kitsy and I approach the stage.

  “Hi, Rider,” I say a bit too loudly.

  “Hey, girls,” he says, looks away, and turns the amp way up. When I imagined this very scene—about a hundred times in my mind over the last week—this outcome never occurred to me. In my mind, Rider would nearly fall off the stage when he saw me. Or do a little solo dedication right then and there. But never ignore me. Maybe he really isn’t into girls. Or maybe as the one good thing in Texas he do
esn’t need game. I see Bubby watching, so I turn up my own prowess. Corrinne sees, Corrinne gets. This whole recession isn’t going to ruin my love life. I can control at least that, right?

  “You going to the field tonight?” I ask, and turn to my side, hoping to show off my sculpted back.

  “Maybe,” Rider says, and he doesn’t even look up.

  “Y’all playing your new stuff?” Kitsy asks.

  Rider stops fiddling with the amps, picks up his guitar, and is suddenly totally engaged. “Yeah, we are practicing our new set for the Battle of the Bands,” he says.

  Bingo. I should’ve remembered that trick from Waverly: Talk about what they like, Waverly says. She got a ton of boy advice from her late grandmother, Wilhelmina, one of the first gossip columnists for the Post. Even the Marilyn Monroe took heartbreaker lessons from Wilhelmina. Whatever the boy situation, Waverly has always had good advice.

  I think quickly. WWWD? What Would Waverly Do? Waverly recommends pretending that talking to a boy is just a pit stop on your way to somewhere better.

  I push out my chest for effect. “See you later,” I call over my shoulder. Declarations versus questions, Waverly also always says. “You like me,” not “Do you like me?” I flex up my muscles a bit. I don’t look back, but I am pretty sure I feel Rider’s eyes following me to Bubby and the rest of the football squad.

  “You ready to dance, Manhattan?” Bubby says before he attempts an only somewhat accurate Justin Timberlake Sexyback move. Except Bubby isn’t bringing sexy back; he’s bringing lame back.

  “I am not much of a dancer, Bubby,” I lie to avoid any up-close-and-personal moments with him.

  Not only did I take ballet, tap, and jazz as a child, but I am also well versed in the waltz and the tango from cotillion.

  “But I am sure there’re plenty of jersey chasers who would love to get up close and sweaty with you,” I say, pointing to a flock of girls checking him out. “I am more into the artistic type.”

  “Your loss, Manhattan,” Bubby says before making his way to the cookie buffet.

  Kitsy and I spend the next ten minutes in the bathroom drinking wine coolers out of Gatorade bottles.

  “The one benefit of having a mom on the sauce,” Kitsy says, and cringes.

  Because I don’t know to respond to that, I just put my hand on Kitsy’s shoulder.

  “Red really is your signature color,” I say, changing the subject.

  “Thanks,” Kitsy says, and passes the Gatorade bottle back without taking a sip.

  The pink wine cooler (tropical fruit flavor) isn’t Dom, but it makes my head fuzzy all the same.

  When we reemerge, Rider’s on the microphone. “We’re Friday Night After the Lights. Enjoy us while you can. Soon we’ll be out of this two-star town.”

  “They started in Rider’s garage,” Kitsy says as we edge up to the front. “What if they do make it? And you are his girlfriend?”

  Kitsy and I play groupies for a couple of songs and hang out at the front of the crowd. But as it turns out, Friday Night After the Lights music is one hundred percent undanceable.

  “Um, Kitsy, do they have any songs that you can—as my grandpa calls it—groove to?” I ask.

  “No.” She shakes her head. “But everyone hires them for all the dances anyway because they are cheap and Rider’s hot.”

  Ugh. Even though I’ve never been to a séance or a human sacrifice, I am pretty sure this would be the type of music that’d be played. This is terrible music for a dance, even a humdrum Broken Spoke one.

  I give up trying to dance and start to just sway back and forth, but even that seems too energetic.

  So I focus my attention on the words. Maybe Rider’s genius is in his lyrics. Let’s hope because he’s most definitely not going to have a song that anyone ever requests in da club.

  I look up at Rider, whose eyes are completely closed as he alternately croons and yells into the microphone:

  “It’s over

  There ain’t any cover

  I don’t have even a lover

  This world’s nothing but a heartless abyss

  HEARTLESS ABYSS.”

  Wow. You would think that Rider grew up on the streets without shoes rather than in Broken Spoke. Don’t get me wrong, Broken Spoke is torturous, but these lyrics have even me, a refugee from the recession, wanting to tell Rider that the world’s not that bad. But so what if the music’s a total downer; no rocker girl ever chose a musician for the music. It’s the lifestyle that’s sexy. Plus, Rider looks good, even when he’s playing the wounded soul role.

  After an hour of slow swaying with a few bathroom wine cooler stops, Kitsy and I are still standing up front and I’m still unsuccessfully trying to get Rider to open his eyes and notice me. Then Bubby and Hands make their way up to us.

  “Okay, girls, we’re out now. Let’s listen to some real music rather than this suicide sound track,” Bubby says, and he grabs my hand. “As Kitsy would cheer, P-A-R-T-Y time.”

  I want to argue to stay and watch Rider, but WWWD? Waverly advises never to wait on anyone and to be sure to leave before the curtain falls, so I follow the group out.

  We climb into Hands’s truck and head to the field, the same one as before. It’s not even completely dark when we arrive; a bunch of kids have already beaten us there and are gathered around the three kegs. Apparently, the school dance is just a front for the actual party. At least that’s one common thing between here and New York.

  “All right, Manhattan,” Bubby says. “Let’s get our party on.”

  Figuring that I might as well loosen up a bit before Rider (hopefully) shows up, I head to the migration of students at the keg and collect a warm beer.

  Bubby walks up to Hands’s truck and pulls out a bag from the cab.

  “What about horseshoes?” Bubby asks.

  “Horseshoes?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Bubby says. “It’s croquet for the common folk. No manicured grass courts or whites required. But you probably wouldn’t want to get your fancy dress all dirty, would you, Manhattan?”

  I don’t bother to tell him that it’s a $24.99 bargain-bin find. Let him think I am a snob, what do I care? And I get that he’s not a fashion critic, but it’s still awesome that he can’t tell that it’s not expensive.

  Stepping up to Bubby, I take a horseshoe from his hand.

  “I like anything that’s a competition, especially when it means I can beat you. How do you play again?” I ask, examining the horseshoe, which is twice as large as a real one.

  Bubby walks about fifty feet away and twists a post into the ground.

  He walks back and puts his hand on my shoulder. “It’s me against you,” he says. “I’ll go first. Watch this because you are going to want to copy it.”

  Bubby, with an underhand toss, hurls the horseshoe toward the stake. It lands close, but not at the stake.

  “Don’t worry,” Bubby says. “You’re a beginner and a city girl, and so I won’t laugh. Or I won’t laugh too hard,” he says.

  With a horseshoe in my hand, I look to Bubby and Kitsy, who’s now standing next to him. “I am used to adapting; I think I’ve proved that,” I say.

  I toss it and it lands almost on the stake.

  Pointing at it, I say, “Pretty sure that means I win. Like they say, close only counts in horseshoes and grenades. By the way, I have played horseshoes, like, at least a dozen times in Central Park. Guess I am not the only one with stereotypes, Bubby.”

  “Touché, Manhattan. And I’ll admit you’re not bad for a girl,” Bubby says, and taps me on the butt. “Especially a city girl,” he adds.

  The liquid’s making me feel nicer, so I decide not to break Bubby’s arm. “And you aren’t so bad for a Neanderthal,” I say, and give Bubby a little hip check.

  A few horseshoe wins later, I spy Rider’s car drive into the field. Parking among the trucks, his two-door Honda sticks out. Perfect, I think, it’s just like him—standing out in a crowd. I don’t walk o
ver to him right away; I stay by the keg and wait for him to get thirsty. Finally, he walks over.

  “Hey, girl,” he says. “You left early.”

  I stumble as I sip my beer. “I was hoping that I’d get a private concert later, so I figured it would be okay to leave early. Want a beer before the football team empties the kegs?”

  “I don’t drink,” Rider says. “It’s too generic for a musician because it’s totally expected and it eventually ruins your career or your life. I am sober.”

  “Oh,” I say, dumping out the rest of my beer in the grass. “Me too, really. I was just thirsty.” I figure Rider’s no-drink policy must also keep those washboard abs intact, so I am grateful for his sobriety.

  And then Bubby walks up and edges between Rider and me. “So you don’t drink now, Manhattan?” he says, tousling my hair.

  Please, Bubby, I think, go back to your cave. Didn’t we both agree that it was an arranged date and haven’t we both fulfilled our contractual duties?

  Rider looks Bubby straight in the eye and says, “How about that concert, Corrinne? I got my guitar in the car.” And as if we are in a movie, he takes my hand and walks me away. Ohmigod, it’s all happening. I can hear Bubby making puking noises behind us, but I pay no mind. Corrinne’s finally got her groove back.

  Rider collects his guitar. We sit down around the deserted bonfire; Rider even lays out his corduroy coat for me to sit on.

  “Don’t want you to ruin your pretty dress, darling,” he says.

  “Oh, this old thing?” I drawl before I wink at him.

  “I wrote you a song,” Rider says, pulling his guitar out of the case.

  “W-what?” I stammer. I want to say I thought you were gay or blind or both, but I pull it together. Never look surprised that someone wants you, Waverly says. Why should that be a surprise?

  “Only one person’s ever done that before,” I lie between my teeth.

  “Well, you inspired me. The girls here are boring. No one thinks about anything besides the next game or the next party. Everyone seems content to just get old and die here,” Rider says as he starts to strum the guitar. “You seem different.”