Be Good Be Real Be Crazy Read online

  “Oh. Oh. Oh. Mmmmmm.

  For one more night I’m in your heart. . . .”

  The bearded guy held up a six-pack of beer and tiptoed into the kitchen, while the woman in a metallic green jacket who had come in with him hugged Renata. When the woman broke free, she pressed a finger to her lips, stepped out of her heeled boots, and tiptoed across the warehouse floor.

  “That’s Katie,” Renata whispered to Homer, Mia, and Einstein. They’d all drifted into the kitchen area after the doorbell rang. “We sing at the same club three nights a week. Voice like an angel.” Renata made a zipper motion across her lips and they all turned to watch.

  “Da. Da. Da. Do. Do. Do.

  And you’re the whole of mine.

  Oh. Oh. Mmmmmm.”

  Then, “Hey, Einstein,” Sid shouted, bringing Katie to a halt about a foot from the bathtub. “What’s the next—”

  “But till then, we party like rock stars—”

  Katie’s voice was low and smoky.

  Sid’s shriek, however, was high enough to shatter glass. “Oh. My. God. Are people here? Do they know I’m naked?” A bar of soap thumped on the side of the tub, then slid across the floor, followed by the water shutting off and more shouting. “I’m going to kill you guys! Not Mia, but—”

  “And I’ll keep your hand in mine . . .”

  Katie kept on singing as she turned and bowed.

  “’Cause tonight’s the last song of our lives.

  Oh, tonight’s the very last song of our lives.”

  The shower curtain billowed as Sid scrambled around inside. “Whoever’s singing out there, I think I’m in love with you. But—” He flung open the curtain. He had a faded blue towel wrapped around his waist and streaks of soap across his skinny chest. “A gentleman puts on pants before singing a duet.”

  Katie started laughing so hard she had to clutch her stomach with one hand while offering Sid the other, which he gallantly accepted as he stepped out of the tub.

  The doorbell rang again just moments after Sid shut the bathroom door behind him. The DJ had arrived. After that, the guests kept pouring in, glittering wave after glittering wave.

  A couple of hours in, Homer was grateful to find a spot to lean against. He settled on the arm of the tire-mark sofa, sighed, sipped the fruity drink Katie had made him, and watched the shimmering crowd. Homer knew he was the opposite of a chatty, cool-at-parties person, but Renata had introduced him to practically everyone who’d come through the door and he’d found himself standing with strangers in circles and talking to them as if he went to parties like this all the time on Wednesday nights.

  How am I going to describe this to anyone back home? Homer wondered as two women, one in boots that laced up to her knees and the other in an elaborate dress the color of grape cold medicine, walked by. I won’t get it right, but Mia will. She’ll be able to tell the stories. The thought made Homer start to smile, but then he remembered. Mia could tell the stories, but she won’t be there. After tomorrow, she’s gone.

  He’d gotten so caught up in the trip that he’d let why they were driving in the first place hide behind the Now Happenings, the Present, the Right-This-Moment-No-Thoughts-About-Tomorrow. Maybe there’s still time. Maybe I can still change her mind. Homer took a gulp of Katie’s drink, grimaced at the aftertaste, and willed his brain to shut down. Just for one more night. Just one more night off from thinking. He focused on people watching instead.

  The crowd was unlike any other Homer had ever been a part of. Most of Renata’s friends were like her: singers, artists, and performers. Their outfits had sequins. Their high heels were super tall. Their hairdos eccentric. Each person Homer talked to was working toward something spectacular, grand, world-changing, mind-bending, or—his favorite description—life-altering.

  To listen to them, you’d think that without a doubt they were all destined to be the next big thing. They were all geniuses and unrecognized talents of unknowable proportions. They were stars waiting in the wings, celebrities tapping their toes for their turns in the spotlight.

  Even if some of them don’t make it, Homer thought, as he sipped his sweet but burning drink, at least they’ll know they wanted something.

  Renata caught Homer’s eye as he was watching two women, both brunettes, and both would-be dancers by all appearances, compete to see who could spin the fastest without spilling her drink. By the time Renata had made her way to Homer, a winner had been declared. The shorter brunette hadn’t wasted a drop of whatever was in her red plastic cup. In response to the decision, her opponent threw back her head, finishing whatever was left in her cup, and conceded defeat with a wobbling curtsy.

  “We are all rock stars and prizewinners here. Poets and activists. Waiters and baristas, all meant for grander things.” Renata motioned for the guy Homer had been trying not to elbow to move over, which he did, and she leaned next to Homer, against the armrest of the couch. “It’s a beautiful desperation, really, to need to believe, to actually believe, that it’s right there, just on the horizon, and it will be ours someday.”

  “What will be yours?” Homer tried to turn his head so he could see Renata’s expression, but that would mean bracing one arm behind the guy Renata had moved. So he continued looking forward, watching the many performances popping up throughout the crowd like bubbles rising in a fizzy drink. A guy who had to be older than Homer’s dads was demonstrating yo-yo tricks to a group by the door. The taller dancer who’d lost the spinning contest was now showing a guy in tight jeans and a fedora how she could slide into a split. Someone juggled fruit in the kitchen while someone else by the windows sang the chorus of an old show tune.

  Renata didn’t reply. She was quiet for the length of a long exhale, enough time for the DJ to change from a jazzy oldie to a mash-up of the Apollo Aces song Sid had been singing earlier and a hip-hop song that’d been popular when Homer was a sophomore. The room erupted, bodies scurried to the makeshift dance floor, jumping, spinning, dipping, and twisting, shouting the chorus like they wanted all of Hopeville to know they were here.

  Homer shook his head. “Why does everyone love Apollo Aces?”

  “I don’t know about everyone, but Sid definitely does,” Renata said, pointing to the far corner of the dance floor, where Sid seemed to be trying to shake every part of his body simultaneously. Einstein, dancing next to him, was lost in his own groove, as was Poncho, who was swaying side to side languidly behind them. “Looks like he’s having a terrible time.” Renata underscored her irony with a smile.

  “Sid’s not going to want to go back to his old life.” Homer laughed. “And Einstein can dance? Wow. He might not want to go back either.” Homer watched his little brother trying to teach Sid how to bounce in rhythm before he spoke again. “Thank you again, by the way. You don’t really have any—”

  “It’s passing along a kindness,” Renata interrupted. “You say ‘thank you’ one more time, I’ll turn red, and embarrassment does not look good on me. Understand?”

  Homer pressed his lips together and nodded.

  Renata sighed happily. “Did you know, there are eighty thousand people in this city? That’s eighty thousand stories to tell and hear and each of them as different from the other as one snowflake from the next.” She tipped sideways suddenly, putting an arm on Homer’s wrist for balance. “Phew. Thank you, darling. I told Rudolph not to be so damn cheap, but he always gets this terrible plastic-bottle rum. Gets me drunker than a skunk. Renders me utterly useless in the morning.” She shook her cup and took a deep drink. “What were we talking about?”

  “Um . . .” Homer’s voice trailed off when he saw Mia in the corner by the windows. She was sitting in one of the beanbag chairs among a small group of guys so oddly dressed that they had to be either musicians or performance artists. When Mia noticed Homer looking at her, she tilted her head to the side. “Okay?” She moved her mouth with careful exaggeration, giving each silent syllable its own moment across her lips.

  “Okay
,” Homer replied in turn, mimicking her deliberate movements.

  Renata pushed against Homer’s forearm to get to her feet. When she wobbled, he jumped up and caught her elbow. Once she was steady, Renata looked knowingly at Homer over the top of her drink; the fake eyelashes she had methodically reapplied hours earlier were long enough to graze her cheeks when she blinked. She raised her cup as if she were making a toast. “To love—that indomitable urge, that leap into the abyss.” She slid an arm around Homer’s shoulders and turned him so they were both looking at the dance floor. “Look at those beautiful stargazers. Each and every one of them dreaming a separate dream, but all hoping for the same thing.”

  “Love?” Homer asked.

  “Yes. Love. The greatest man-made disaster in a world that’s full of them.” Renata squeezed Homer’s shoulder and shifted so her back was to the crowd and she was looking straight at him. “Poets say love is forever. Country singers, that it’s something you drown in beer and cheap whiskey. Meanwhile, the men in white coats blame love on hormones, evolution, and chemicals in our brains. You could ask every person here what love is, and you’d get a different answer each time.” Renata sighed. For no longer than a heartbeat, the smile on her bright-pink lips didn’t match the feeling in her dark-brown eyes.

  “But I think you’re doing just fine coming up with your own understanding,” she added. “I’ve monopolized you enough. Go. Rescue your lady before they start strumming those guitars. Sweet boys, but between the five of them, they couldn’t play a kazoo.”

  Renata turned and started to walk toward the dance floor. “Take her to the park on the river,” she called over her shoulder. “This time of night, there’s always an officer camped out. Safest place in Hopeville.” Renata handed her cup to a guy with dreadlocks, who took it without protest. Then she disappeared into the crush of dreamers, all of them dancing with abandon because they needed to lose themselves—if only for the length of a song—in something other than their dreams.

  It took ten minutes of conversation about four-string versus five-string guitars before Homer was able to rescue Mia from the circle of aspiring musicians. It took three more for them to make their way to the corner behind the bathtub where they’d stashed their coats and bags, and an additional forty-five seconds to weave between the dancing bodies to the exit.

  “Sweet molasses! This feels good,” Mia shouted as soon as she stepped out into the street. “It’s hot in there.” Her coat flapped like a half-opened parachute as she half ran, half skipped around the side of Renata’s building, calling, “Watch out for the glass!” just before she disappeared from Homer’s sight.

  After a beat, Homer followed her, stepping over the broken glass that trailed from the street into the park they’d seen through Renata’s window. Mia was already leaning against the metal railing that overlooked the river by the time he caught up.

  “Look at the water. It’s like a whole other city is down there—a softer one.” Mia stepped onto the railing’s bottom rung, which was just high enough to make Homer nervous. He moved closer, ready to catch her if he needed to.

  Only once Mia straightened did Homer allow himself to look down. She was right. There was a second city floating on top of the black, slow-moving water. The lights coming from all the bright apartment windows on land were dazzling, but their reflections were muted, the sharpness of the buildings hazy. Even the river’s smell was subdued, brackish instead of oily, soil and decaying leaves instead of pavement and rubber. It was nothing like the turquoise water of La Isla de Plátanos, but it wasn’t bad—just different.

  “When I was in the first place with Dotts, there was a small creek behind the house.” Mia stepped down from the railing. “She and I would go back there and pretend it was a river. She was obsessed with boats, so we’d imagine that a big one was going to come chugging along and it’d stop and we’d get on and go wherever it took us.” Mia bit her lip and smiled, but it was a wistful smile, equal parts longing and loss.

  When Homer leaned next to her, Mia slid her arms across the railing, until her side was touching his: shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, hip to hip. She reached for his hand and slid both their hands into Homer’s coat pocket. “Your coat is bigger than mine. That means you’ve got more room to share.”

  “I’m a big guy.” Homer swallowed. Now was as good a time as any to bring up the future. “When was the last time you saw Dotts?”

  “Hmmm.” Mia shifted from one foot to the other. “Two years ago. She wasn’t in Glory-Be, yet. I remember because I’d just gotten my out-and-out check—”

  “Out and out?” It was just cold enough for Homer’s words to turn into puffs of white.

  “When you turn eighteen, you age out of the foster system and you’re out on your own, but the government gives you a check to get you started. Dotts and I and the others called them ‘out-and-outs.’”

  Mia could easily have listed her favorite foods or talked about the temperature with the same tone that she used to explain her life. No self-pity. No anger. Homer wanted to wrap his arms around her, but also didn’t want her to stop talking. He settled for squeezing her hand instead.

  “Look!” Mia pointed into the dark.

  Homer followed the invisible line from the tip of Mia’s finger to the gray shadow of a tugboat moving up the river against the current. Its steady chug, chug, chug was comforting. The other night sounds—horns honking, music ringing from open windows, shrieking tires on the bridge—seemed sharper, louder, in its wake.

  Homer waited for the wail of a siren to fade before he spoke. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Fire away.”

  “How are you so you all the time?” Homer took a deep breath. “I mean, you haven’t exactly had it easy. Like, I would probably hate my mom if she did what yours did. You have all these reasons to be mad at the universe, but you’re not.”

  Mia let go of Homer’s hand and folded her arms over the railing. She didn’t respond for so long that Homer was opening his mouth to apologize when she spoke. “She did the best she could, I think. She didn’t have a great life. Like, she really loved my dad. And then he left and she just wanted the pain to go away.” Mia turned her head to look up at Homer. “She tried rehab—a few times. But it didn’t work.”

  Homer twisted his hands back and forth over the top railing, ignoring the bite of the cold metal. “I guess what I’m asking is, How are you so happy? Your everyday attitude is ten times more upbeat than the tourists who come into the shop, and those are people on vacation.”

  The nearest streetlight buzzed loudly, then went dark, leaving Mia’s face half lit as she answered. “I don’t know. Part of it was me realizing that people like happy kids more. If you’re nice you stick out, but in a good way. People treat you better. They let you stay longer. The other part is probably just me. Just Mia. It’s the way I am.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “What?”

  “When you said ‘they let you stay longer,’ who did you mean by ‘they’?”

  “Foster parents, people who might want to adopt you, yada yada yada.” Mia made a dismissive motion with her hand.

  Homer pressed his chest against the railing. “Yeah. That makes sense.” It didn’t, but he wasn’t sure what else to say.

  “Now you have to tell me something.”

  “Okay.”

  “What’s the real worst thing you’ve ever done? I don’t buy the towel story. Not even from Mr. Nice Guy Finn.”

  Homer stared at the water, trying to look like he was thinking of an answer.

  “Earth to Homer.”

  “It’s more like something that I didn’t do.” Homer took Mia’s silence as an encouragement to continue. “When I was a sophomore, I went through this thing where I wanted to try out a bunch of religions. Weird, I know.”

  “I’ve heard stranger.”

  Homer smiled. “So one day, my friend Travis convinced me to come to his youth group. He’s probably my best frie
nd at school. A great guy, like help-old-ladies-cross-the-street great, so I went. And at first, it was fine. Just a lot of talk about community service schedules and winter break. But then this moron I’ve known since kindergarten, Tom Witherspoon, he gets up and starts saying stuff about needing to be ‘more proactive,’ and ‘moral values,’ and a bunch of other crap. Sorry, Tadpole.”

  Mia nudged Homer’s shoulder. “Keep going.”

  “Tom, who was wearing pleated khakis, by the way, like he was seventy instead of sixteen, worked himself up into a rant about ‘perversion’ and the ‘homosexual agenda,’ and suddenly I noticed that everyone was looking anywhere else but in my direction—including Travis. And even then, it took me another minute to get it.”

  “Get what?” Mia’s hair drifted over her face as she leaned toward Homer.

  Homer closed his eyes. “That this jerk was saying terrible stuff about gay people, about people like my dads. That he was standing there basically vomiting hate and he didn’t care who heard him.”

  “That’s—”

  “But the worst thing is, I just sat there. Like an idiot. I sat there for the rest of the meeting like a big, dumb rock. I could have said something at any point. I could have turned over a desk, broken some chalk, but I didn’t even leave. I. Just. Sat. There.”

  “Homer, I’m sorry. So many people—”

  “You would have said something. Einstein would have quoted some scholar or the Bible to totally prove Tom wrong.”

  “I would have cried. I’m a crier.”

  Homer coughed. “At least you would have reacted.”

  “What happened after? After the meeting?”

  “I picked up my bag and walked out. I saw Travis following me. I knew he was going to apologize or try to explain, but I didn’t want to hear him, so I practically ran away. Every time he brought it up for the next week, I changed the subject. Not because I was mad at him, but because I was so mad at myself.”

  “Guess you didn’t join the group.”

  “Ha.” Homer’s attempt at a laugh sounded like he had a pill stuck in his throat. “I took a break from all extracurriculars for a while. I tried a few more clubs a couple months later, went to synagogue with one of D.B.’s friends when he was visiting, but it wasn’t the same.”