Where I Belong Read online

  I seriously wonder if they drug Broken Spokers immediately after birth. Who would leave this place and then come back? I wonder if there is a cult here that I don’t know about. I’ll have to be extra careful around any Kool-Aid. But I use my filter since Grandpa’s been nice and patient, even though I almost killed him and Billie Jean the Second twice today…. And my mom had a boyfriend named Dusty? If page six only knew…

  “Dusty?” I start to cackle until my head feels dizzy again. “My mom dated a Dusty. And then broke his heart? Really?”

  I almost snort, which reminds me that I have forgotten what it feels like to laugh.

  “I always thought Mom was boring as a teenager. I didn’t know that she dated, let alone was some high school heartbreaker.”

  I pause and think how to phrase this.

  “When Mom does actually talk about Texas, she makes it out like she was the perfect girl who never did anything wrong, who never hurt anybody.”

  “Dustin’s his full name,” Grandpa says as he fidgets with the radio. “Your momma was quite…well, quite exciting, though Grandma didn’t always think exciting was a good thing. Boring girls don’t move from Broken Spoke to New York to become models, Corrinne.”

  “Is that why Grandma’s mad?” I ask as Grandpa flips from one country music station to the next. “Because Mom left you guys behind to become a model?”

  “No,” Grandpa says. “The modeling was your grandma’s idea. She always wanted more for Jenny Jo, until she found out that getting those things meant leaving us and Broken Spoke behind forever. Grandma’s not mad just at your mother, she’s also mad at herself for pushing Jenny Jo to go.” Reaching over the stick shift, Grandpa turns up the radio really loud.

  “Really?” I shout over the radio, trying to put these details together. All my life, I thought it was my mom who carefully concocted her escape from Texas and that’s why she never talked about it. I knew she came to New York to model, but she only did a few catalogues for swimsuits. “Didn’t have the heart for it,” she always said. I thought she meant she couldn’t take the constant rejection like you see on shows like America’s Next Top Model, where even your forehead is never perfect enough. But maybe Mom quit because it wasn’t her dream ever—it was Grandma’s.

  “Really, sweetie,” Grandpa says, turning down the radio. “Your momma cried like a baby the whole way to the airport when she left. She was twenty-one, and I felt like she was my little girl leaving for the first day of kindergarten again. Dusty cried the whole way back to Broken Spoke. Men don’t usually cry in front of other men.” Grandpa focuses his attention back on the radio. “Enough of the past though. The past is the past. Let’s find a good driving song.”

  I didn’t feel like driving at that moment. My mom crying? She never cries. She didn’t even cry A.R., After the Recession. And crying because she didn’t want to leave her parents, Dusty, and Broken Spoke? Who was this Jenny Jo Houston? When I leave, I am not going to even look out of the rearview window.

  Grandpa opens up the glove compartment, and he pulls out what I believe is called a cassette. “I found this in Billie Jean the First before I sold her. It’s your momma’s old mix tape. I haven’t listened to it in years.”

  “I only know what a mix tape is from eighties movies,” I say. “Let’s hope it’s not a makeout sound track.”

  Thinking about my mother making out makes me want to puke. Turning toward the passenger seat, I see that Grandpa’s blushing too. Filter, Corrinne. Filter.

  “You know what song this is?” I ask, changing the conversation.

  “It’s her song,” he answers, and turns up the volume.

  “Mom’s?” I ask.

  “No,” he says. “Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean.’ Oh, Jenny Jo, how she couldn’t get enough of this song. She even named the truck after the song and she’d make me drive around town while we listened to it over and over,” Grandpa says. “And this is back before there was a repeat button. We’d listen once and then have to rewind it to listen again. She’d dance for hours in the kitchen and it drove Grandma crazy because she danced a lot more than she helped cook and clean.”

  “Danced?” I repeat. I’ve never seen my mom even sway.

  Grandpa laughs.

  “There are lots of things you don’t know about Jenny Jo,” he says. “And I reckon there’s a lot she doesn’t know about you.”

  He jingles the key chain—a longhorn, University of Texas mascot charm.

  “Let’s get Billie going again because she hates to idle, especially when we’re playing her song,” Grandpa says.

  Grandpa even lets me put her into fourth. And when I do, he holds his hand out for a high five.

  I might even miss him a little when I wake up from this nightmare.

  Grandpa drives back since he didn’t think I was quite ready for the one stoplight in town or interference from other cars. In fact, I never actually made a right-or left-hand turn, but I still can’t wait to text Waverly about driving. For once, since I arrived in Texas, she might be jealous of me.

  Tripp’s skateboarding in the driveway when we arrive home. Leaving his board behind, he runs toward the car.

  “Hey, Corrinne,” Tripp says, sticking his head through the car window. “How many accidents did you get in? Next time, I am coming with you, but I will wear this for protection.” Tripp knocks on his helmet. “Someone in this family needs to have brains that work.”

  I ignore the brains comment.

  “No helmet required,” I say. “I am an excellent driver—even Grandpa thinks so.”

  Grandpa nods at Tripp. “It’s true, especially for a city girl. Tripp, what did you and Grandma do today?”

  “We went grocery shopping, and I am going to the skate park to meet up with friends later. That’s why I’m practicing. And guess what?” Tripp says, and raises his eyebrows.

  “What?” Grandpa indulges.

  “I learned what we’re called.” Tripp smiles like he’s in a TV commercial. “A grandfamily. I heard it on the Today show.”

  “Grandfamily,” Grandpa repeats. “I like that, Tripp.” Turning to me, Grandpa says, “Great job, Corrinne. Next time we are going to take her on a spin to Main Street.”

  I smile, get out of the car, and walk into the house. Grandma’s at the stove, baking something that smells like Dylan’s Candy Bar on the Upper East Side. I feel friendly enough to give her a wave and a “Smells great” before darting into my room, where I find my phone. Four new texts.

  Mom: Call me. I miss you.

  Dad: How’s my little girl? I hope you are being good for your grandparents.

  Waverly: How’s my cowgirl? Sorry I missed you last night. Beach party, totally wasted. College guys. Wish you were here.

  Waverly: You’ll never guess who just Facebooked me. Smith!! How’s the plan to still make it to Kent? Time is running out. I don’t want a weirdo for a roommate.

  Smith never even responded to my message about “my year abroad.” And now he’s moved on to my best friend? Besides why would Waverly tell me that when she knows I claimed him first? Sometimes I feel like she’s missing a sensitivity chip.

  I turn from feeling like a Driving Diva to a Deflated Debbie. I know that calling Waverly would just be a sinkhole into a deeper depression. I’d have to hear about her actually exciting life; then I’d remember that Driving Miss Billie Jean the Second isn’t remotely thrilling unless you are an ex-Manhattanite trapped in small-town hell.

  Lying down on my bed, I glance at my nightstand picture of Waverly and me at the beach in Nantucket. And my mind drifts back to this past summer.

  Click, clack, click, clack, echoes through the entryway.

  “That must be Waverly,” my mom says.

  And I roll my eyes. Of course it’s Waverly. Some people make their presence known with a signature scent, like my friend Sarita, who goes through a bottle of Gucci Rush a month. You can smell her from blocks away. It’s Waverly’s gold charm bracelets, stacked up her a
rm, that announce her arrival. She has a charm for her first step (a foot), her first day of school (an apple), and even her first kiss (lips). She’s only fifteen, and she already has four charm bracelets. By the time she’s ready for college, she’ll have run out of room on her wrists and need to wear charm anklets, except Waverly would never wear something that tacky.

  “I am here,” Waverly says, emerging into our blue and white living room. She’s wearing Bermuda shorts and a cardigan. For being totally un-conservative (she got that first kiss at eleven), she dresses more like a mother who summers than a girl who summers.

  “Did you miss me, Mrs. Corcoran?” Waverly asks.

  My mom fakes wiping sweat from her brow. “Those four hours you were gone were unbearable, Miss Waverly.”

  “I missed you, Waverly,” Tripp says, looking up from his lighthouse puzzle. Of course Tripp would do a puzzle. He even started the chess club at his school. If he weren’t so good-looking, I’d be sure that he was switched at birth.

  “Okay, Mom,” I say, standing up from the rocking chair. “We’re going to touch up our makeup, and then we are going to bounce.”

  “Wait, Corrinne,” my mom says. “Maybe you girls would like to have some lemonade first and then tell me exactly where you are bouncing to.” My mom stands up and heads to the kitchen.

  “Mom,” I say, “I don’t drink lemonade. Empty calories. Besides, the island is only fourteen miles long. Does it matter where we are bouncing to?”

  Waverly just gives her best parent smile and says, “Aren’t you going to the Barefoot Gala?”

  My mom looks down at her jeans and white T-shirt. “Nope, Waverly, my date is working, so I am going to take it easy with Tripp.”

  The truth is that my mom’s not much for galas. Despite being beautiful and glamorous, she’s always sidestepping opportunities to hobnob. I think growing up in small-town Texas socially stunted her. Other Manhattan parents have known one another since the days of elite nursery school.

  “Oh!” Waverly says. “My mother will be so disappointed. She hasn’t seen much of you this summer!”

  I lock eyes with my mom: We know that the only thing that disappoints Mrs. Dotts is when someone is slow to refill her drink.

  Holding up the pitcher, my mom asks, “Are you sure about the lemonade?” Waverly and I shake our heads.

  “Okay, no lemonade. I got it. You are too old for that. But I do remember just a few summers ago when you and Waverly made a killing with your lemonade stand.”

  “Ugh, don’t remind me. We were so juvenile,” I say, thinking back to our curbside stand where we harassed every biker and jogger into paying a dollar for a cup of Country Time Lemonade.

  “Hey, Mom,” Tripp says. He doesn’t even bother to look up from the puzzle, which he’s completing in record time. “Can I do a lemonade stand?”

  “Sure, Tripp,” Mom says.

  Waverly tucks her long, blond hair behind her ear. “Good luck, Tripp. No one’s going to buy lemonade in this shaky economy, even from a heartthrob like you.”

  Tripp immediately blushes, highlighting his already apple-colored cheeks.

  “C’mon, Waverly,” I say, itching to get out of this living room. “Let’s go see these outfits in a full-length mirror.”

  “Corrinne,” my mom says, and she stands to block our path upstairs. “First you will tell me where you are going and with who.”

  “Whom,” Tripp pipes up, head still in the puzzle.

  “A small gathering at Bronson McDermott’s,” I say, which is the truth.

  “Will his parents be home?” my mom retorts with the sentence I most dread.

  “Yup,” I lie, and look my mom in the eye so she thinks I am telling the truth. I learned that in psych class.

  “Waverly?” my mom asks.

  “Totally true.” Waverly confirms my lie.

  “Okay, girls,” my mom says, opening the way for us to pass by. “I want you to remember a thing called island mentality. Just because we are on Nantucket, thirty miles to sea, doesn’t mean that the rules don’t apply. It seems that children and adults get on this island and think it’s high school all over again.”

  “But Mom,” Tripp says, “they are in high school.”

  “Yes,” my mom says, sitting down again, “that’s exactly what I am afraid of.”

  Bronson lives way out in Madaket, which is known both for its sunsets and the fact that the dump is there. Luckily, Bronson’s brother, Dennis, at twenty-four, has yet to become employed, so he drives us around for free. I think it gives him purpose, which he lacks as he eats up his trust fund.

  We meet him in town near Orange Street and jump into the back of his hunter green Jeep Wrangler. There are more SUVs in Nantucket than anywhere else, even Colorado. I am sure of this.

  “Hey, ladies,” Dennis says. “Looking good for underage girls.” Dennis often says creepy things like this, but he’s totally harmless.

  “Thanks, Dennis,” I say. “You are looking good for being Bronson’s brother.”

  “Hey, hey, Miss Corrinne,” Dennis says, and looks back at me from the front seat, “as I remember it, I caught you and him making out on our couch just last summer.”

  “Last summer,” Waverly says. “That’s a lifetime when you are fifteen.”

  I can always count on Waverly to say the genius thing and defend me. She’s been like that since we were little girls playing in our fenced-in nursery school sandlot.

  “Okay, then,” Dennis says. “You girlies are going to have to get a professional driver for the way back. I am going to the Box tonight.”

  No shocker there. Everyone goes to the Box, the local dive bar. Everyone, that is, with a really good fake ID that will scan or the privilege of actually being legal.

  “Think you could sneak in two hot girls?” Waverly asks as she locks eyes with Dennis in the rearview mirror.

  “Not a chance,” Dennis says, gunning the car once we hit the main road to Madaket. “I am in enough trouble there for a bar fight that my friend started.”

  After a few more minutes of banter with Dennis, he pulls up to the seashelled driveway to their house.

  “I’d tell you girls to be good,” he says, “but I know you won’t listen.”

  We both laugh and jump out of the Wrangler. Walking toward the front of the house, I see that a bunch of our summer friends are already there and hanging out on the porch. On the side yard, croquet’s been set up, and a drink cart is overloaded with top shelf booze.

  “Hello, lovely ladies,” Bronson says, approaching in madras with a denim button-down. He looks decent, and I can almost see why I made out with him last summer. “How about a life-is-good?” Bronson says and points to the drink cart. “As you may know, it’s the signature drink of the island.”

  “Sure,” Waverly says, and grabs my hand. “After all, life is pretty damn good to us.”

  Bang!

  The sound of pots and pans clanking around snaps me out of better times, B.R., Before the Recession. Glancing at the photograph of Waverly and me one last time I realize that times like those might never happen again. If I want to feel happy, my memories might be the only place to go. Searching out a mysterious smell—a cross between street chestnuts and the cotton candy at Yankee Stadium—I get up and go to my grandparents’ kitchen.

  “There’s Texas’s newest driver,” Grandpa announces in his game show host voice.

  “Your grandfather says you’re a natural,” Grandma says from the stove. “I guess you and your mom are different, because she cost us a fortune to get insured. Three accidents with a learner’s permit. Maybe she always was a city girl in her core.”

  “What are you baking, Grandma?” I ask.

  Tripp pipes up from the couch, “Cherry-chestnut cobbler.”

  “Your grandmomma has great news, Corrinne. She just called up an old friend of your mom’s, Ginger,” Grandpa says.

  I do not believe that Grandma, “news,” and a woman named Ginger mean anything
good for me. But I indulge my grandfather.

  “Really? What is it?” I ask.

  “I got you a job,” Grandma says as she douses the crumble with brown sugar. “It isn’t healthy for you to just mope around the house after school. You need some fresh air.”

  “I don’t remember saying I need a job,” I remark with my hand on my hip. “It’s not exactly like I have anywhere to shop.”

  Only my friend Sarita worked. That’s because she had to buy a second cell phone. Her parents were monitoring her every call and even had a GPS detector put in her phone. If she never got her own cell phone, her parents were going to ruin her life.

  “It’s a job with horses,” Grandpa interjects as he turns the TV volume down. “We know how much you miss your horse. You’ve got his picture plastered all over your room like he’s a movie star.”

  “Sweetbread is a she,” I whisper. “Thanks for the concern, but I don’t want a job even with horses—unless it’s my horse and it’s in Connecticut.” Saying Sweetbread’s name loudly would cause a breakdown of epic proportions.

  Grandma stops her sugar dousing. “Corrinne, I know your parents let you do pretty much whatever you want, but in this house you will do as we say. We’re in charge here.”

  She takes a step closer to me and locks eyes with me. “So you will be helping out at Ginger’s stables, and you will start Monday. Otherwise, you’ll be grounded.”

  “Grounded from what?” I challenge as I inch toward her. “You mean I won’t be able to see my totally awesome Broken Spoke friends and go to happy hour at Sonic? Being grounded sounds just fine. This whole place is a prison; I might as well just stay in my cell.”

  “You are being dramatic, Corrinne,” Grandpa says, and stands up from the couch. “Maybe this winter you’ll try theater, but this fall you will try working at Ginger’s. Your momma used to ride there.”

  “I think cleaning stalls and shoveling manure might do you some good,” Grandma says, and turns her back to me. “You’ll build some muscles and maybe even some character while you are at it.”