The Boy and Girl Who Broke the World Read online

  Grandma’s Sloat Travel and Local Tours office is in downtown Rome, with a pawnshop on one side and a failed pet grooming place on the other. The front window has a crack in it and needs cleaning. A dusty rack of old, faded brochures for exotic vacations lines one wall. On the other side of the room is a table with information about local excursions and attractions—hiking, river rafting, mini golf, whale watching, salmon fishing tours, the annual razor clam festival, and the Quillalish Indian Casino and Cultural Center. In the middle of the room, on the coffee table in front of the drooping floral-print couch and wicker armchairs, are her handmade, xeroxed pamphlets about her own signature boutique tour packages.

  The irony is not lost on me that my grandmother runs a travel agency and I’ve never been outside western Washington State.

  Lydia drops her backpack on the floor and flops onto one of the wicker chairs. It makes a brittle, squeaking sound as she leans backs and puts her feet up on the coffee table. “Where’s your grandma?” she says.

  “Probably at her friend Shirley’s salon down the block,” I say. “I think that’s where she spends most of her time when she’s at work because she usually comes home with a lot more gossip than money.”

  Lydia leafs through a brochure about the Logging History Museum. “So how’s business?”

  “Honestly, not great. Most of her clients are old people who don’t know how to use the Internet to book their own flights and stuff, but they’re all dying off. So Grandma’s trying to get her local tour business off the ground. She named me her director of online marketing, but our Facebook page only has eleven followers and she never pays me.”

  I pull one of Grandma’s handmade brochures from the display on the coffee table and hand it to Lydia, the one for her Caleb Sloat, Lead Singer of Rainy Day Knife Fight, Childhood Tour™, which includes a drive past the hospital where he was born, the elementary school he attended, the wall where he got arrested at fifteen for spray-painting INBRED INFRAREDNECKS, the water tower in the Rome Hills where he claims he slept for a while, and his old friend Gordon’s house, where he lived for the last two years of high school after Grandma kicked him out. One of the tours even caught Gordon on the front porch in his boxer shorts smoking a cigarette. Many photos were taken. I posted one on the Facebook page, and it got four likes. Grandma finally drove away when Gordon whipped out his penis and started peeing in the tour’s direction.

  Lydia looks up at me in disbelief. “She has a tour about her own son?”

  I nod.

  “No offense, but isn’t that kind of . . . sleazy?”

  “They’re estranged.”

  “I can see why.”

  “The tour ends at our house,” I say. “My bedroom is the grand finale.”

  “They go in your room?” I can tell Lydia is less than impressed with the Caleb Sloat, Lead Singer of Rainy Day Knife Fight, Childhood Tour™.

  The look on her face is making me feel a weird mix of relieved and defensive, like I’m sort of grateful she’s seeing all these things about me, but also scared of her opinions about them. “It was Caleb’s room growing up, so it makes sense the tourists would want to see it, right?” I say, and my voice seems to have gone up an octave.

  “But it’s your room now,” Lydia says. “Shouldn’t you have some say in the matter? I mean, aren’t you, like, pissed?”

  “I don’t really mind,” I say. I don’t tell her that Grandma stands at the bottom of the stairs while the tourists are up there completely unsupervised because she developed a debilitating fear of heights right around the time she kicked Caleb out, or that I’ve noticed something missing after each tour—a postcard of the Space Needle I taped to the wall, an almost-empty tube of lip balm, a pair of (dirty) boxer shorts. What would someone want with my dirty underwear? I don’t even want to know.

  I guess it bothers me, but I’ve never said anything. Grandma would probably smack my chin for telling her how to do her job. “You can start having opinions when you start paying rent” is one of her favorite sayings, except I can’t pay rent because she won’t let me get a job because that would mean I wouldn’t be around to help her all the time.

  Lydia pulls her books out of her backpack with a sigh. “I guess we should do some homework or something.”

  I want to tell her more, but I also don’t want to tell her more, and I have no idea what this feeling is.

  I try to work on my American Patriotism project for exactly twelve seconds before changing my Internet search from the assigned topic of “why political resistance is unpatriotic” to “Caleb Sloat interviews.” It’s like an addiction, the way I watch the videos of my uncle on YouTube. I’ve seen most of them so many times, I have them memorized. I know the whole timeline, how in the first few months of interviews, Caleb is freshly shaven, his enthusiasm showing through his signature snarky angst. But over time, he gets more pale and hunched over. His hair is greasy, his skin all blotchy and pocked. You can practically smell him through the screen. His eyes, when not covered with sunglasses, are bloodshot, unfocused. He stares out into space like a dead doll.

  I’m watching one of the earlier interviews because I’m in no mood to get more depressed on purpose. This one is from a few months before Rainy Day Knife Fight’s second album You Can’t Go Home Again came out, before they made it big. The whole band is together, backstage after a show, and very drunk. Even with the sound off, I know every word by heart. The interviewer keeps trying to ask them questions, but they keep making jokes and hitting each other over the head with empty pizza boxes. Eventually Caleb sits down and lights a cigarette while the two other guys continue wrestling behind him.

  The camera zooms in on his face. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this close-up of him so relaxed and smiling. His dirty-blond hair is out of his fluorescent blue eyes. He’s arching his eyebrow the way he does, which everyone says makes the girls go wild. “So what do you want to know?” he says, and even though I have it on silent, I swear I can hear his voice.

  “How does it feel?” I know the woman behind the camera says. “The Seattle Times just named Rainy Day Knife Fight the band to watch out for next year. You’re the darlings of college radio stations. There’s a lot of buzz about you guys.”

  “Yeah?” Caleb says, taking a long drag of his cigarette. “Well, I can tell you it sure beats getting my ass kicked every day as a kid.”

  And then someone pours a beer on Caleb’s head, and he jumps over the back of the couch to join in the wrestling, and the interview is over.

  Even though the Caleb in this interview is happy, I’m still depressed. Because that Caleb doesn’t exist anymore. It’s like watching a ghost. I haven’t seen that Caleb, or any Caleb, for a very long time.

  I change my Internet search again. Quick, before the sadness has a chance to seep in too deep. Before the tears come. I type “cute kitten videos.” I put a smile on my face. “Hey, Lydia, look at this.”

  But she was already looking.

  Lydia takes the bus back to Carthage, and I get a ride home with Grandma. What I really want to do when I get home is turn on the AA channel and check in with Lynn A., but that’s just not an option with Grandma here. Lynn A. is my secret. I don’t want Grandma anywhere near her.

  We’re eating fried chicken while the news is saying something about the new miniature ponies the King bought for the White House so his grandkids from his third marriage can have something to do when they come over. His grandkids from his second marriage have already covered the walls of the East Sitting Hall with crayon. A government TV channel will have a twenty-four-hour live video feed of the ponies’ barn.

  “Oh, how sweet!” Grandma says, grease dripping down her chin. “The King has the best ideas.”

  “Didn’t he take your health care?” I say.

  The Styrofoam tub of mashed potatoes falls off her lap gravy-side-down on the rug. “Dammit, Billy, look what you did!”

  I run to the kitchen for paper towels. When I get back, Grandma is
staring at the TV with her hand over her mouth, completely still. She is watching a grainy video of Uncle Caleb onstage, taken with someone’s phone at a show. The caption BREAKING NEWS scrolls across the bottom of the screen. Caleb’s tiny, sweatpantsed figure is swinging a guitar around, chasing his bandmates, who are fleeing off the stage. The audio is a bunch of muffled voices, some nervous laughter. Then he throws the guitar into the audience, then the mic stands, then the drums, and the muffled voices turn to screams. Someone says, “Holy [bleep]!” Someone else says, “I think someone’s hurt.” Someone else says, “Are you getting this? We have to put this on YouTube.”

  My uncle, Caleb Sloat, lead singer of Rainy Day Knife Fight and best thing to ever come out of Rome, Washington, is on the huge stage, completely alone, screaming into the microphone. All I can hear are the TV bleeps over his curses. Then Caleb throws the microphone into the audience, and the screen cuts back to the newscasters. They’re barely even trying to look calm and neutral like they’re supposed to. There’s a twinkle in their eyes, like the look Grandma gets when she hears juicy gossip from one of her chain-smoking old lady friends. People love bad news about other people, especially famous ones.

  I don’t feel gravity. The house feels like it’s floating, and I’m floating within it. Everything is on pause.

  “Details are still coming in, but this is what we can tell you now,” the news lady says, a dramatically lit head shot of Caleb in the little video box by her head. “It appears that Caleb Sloat, lead singer of Rainy Day Knife Fight, suffered some sort of mental breakdown during a live show in New York City this evening. It was the band’s first show since Sloat’s most recent rehab stay, where he was reportedly being treated for heroin addiction. Several videos were posted online moments after Sloat left the stage, showing the lead singer attempting to assault his bandmates just seconds into their hit song ‘You Can’t Go Home Again.’ Eight people were rushed to the hospital for injuries suffered after Sloat threw musical equipment into the audience.”

  The video starts playing again, this time zoomed in closer on the grainy blob of my uncle. “At this point,” says the newsman, “no one knows where Caleb Sloat is—not his bandmates, manager, or his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Shannon Smear, lead singer of the band Olympia’s Consent. Sloat is arguably one of the most recognizable celebrities in the world, so there’s no doubt he’ll be located soon.” The reporter looks into the camera gravely. “Hopefully alive.”

  I look at Grandma, and her hand is still over her mouth. “Grandma?” I say.

  The phone in the hallway starts ringing. “Should I get that?” I say.

  She doesn’t say anything. Why isn’t she telling me what to do? Am I supposed to answer the phone? Am I supposed to ignore it? Last time I answered it she got mad at me. But it keeps ringing. “Grandma?” I say again. Nothing. How am I supposed to know the right thing to do if she doesn’t tell me?

  I finally run to the hall and answer the phone because the biggest thing on my mind is maybe it’s Caleb, and the possibility of hearing his voice is way more important than the possibility of getting in trouble.

  “Hello, may I speak to Tammy Sloat, please?” the voice says. It’s definitely not Caleb.

  “May I ask who’s calling?” I say.

  “This is Ronda Rash from KING 5 News in Seattle.”

  “Grandma!” I yell into the living room. “Someone from Channel Five wants to talk to you!”

  “Tell him to kill himself!” she scream-cries.

  The phone starts ringing again as soon as I hang it up. So does Grandma’s cell phone buried somewhere in the living room.

  “Turn it off!” Grandma hollers. “Turn them both off!”

  I run back into the living room. Grandma has picked up the fallen tub of mashed potatoes and is wiping off the rug-contacted layer with a napkin. She sets the tub back on her lap and digs in with her plastic spoon. The same grainy video of Caleb is still playing, now with the caption ROCK STAR HAS MELTDOWN ONSTAGE AND DISAPPEARS.

  “Grandma?” I whisper. “Are you okay?”

  She squishes the spoonful of mashed potatoes in her mouth. Is this when she starts crying? Is she finally going to break from the years of watching her only son, her only living child, destroy himself on TV? Is she thinking about all the times he’s nodded off in the middle of interviews, all the reports of him destroying hotel rooms and being violent with fans, all the rumored overdoses and near-deaths, all the stories he’s told about how horrible his childhood was, how horrible she was?

  Her face is still. It could go either way.

  Then the loose skin on her cheeks starts moving. “This,” she croaks. I hold my breath. Then the rest of her face jiggles as her mouth transforms into a crooked smile. “Is fantastic!” A glob of mashed potatoes sprays out of her mouth and sticks to her lip. “This is going to be great for business!”

  The house shakes. I have to hold on to the wall to keep from falling.

  “Shouldn’t we call him?” I say, even though I know she doesn’t have his number. He changed it a few years ago and never told us the new one.

  “Grab me another drumstick,” she says as she digs back into the mashed potatoes.

  “Aren’t you worried about him?” I say, but she’s not listening. “Do you feel that?” The house shakes harder. Some old books fall off the top shelf of the bookcase. The hanging light fixture sways overhead and unleashes a thick cloud of dust. “I think we’re having an earthquake.”

  “We need to call them back,” she says.

  “Call who back?”

  “Channel Five!” she yells. “Billy, you’re my director of online marketing. You have to call them back!”

  “I don’t have their number!” I yell in response. I normally never yell at Grandma, but this is not normal. I’m feeling about a hundred different things all at once, and none of them are good. The house keeps shaking and I’m the only one who can feel it and my uncle is missing and I’m the only one who seems to care.

  LYDIA

  I HAVEN’T HAD MUCH EXPERIENCE with friends, but I’m pretty sure what I should do now is call Billy. All night long, whichever channel Larry turns to, there’s Caleb Sloat’s face staring out at the bar, with headlines like TORMENTED ROCKER ON THE LAM, and SUPERSTAR MISSING, and FANS FEAR THE WORST, and CALEB SLOAT’S 15 MINUTES MAY FINALLY BE UP.

  “What a shame,” Larry says, shaking his head sadly at the TV. “That kid had some talent.”

  “What’d you expect?” says one of the old guys at the bar. “With a family like his.”

  I pull out my crappy cheap phone and look at it. Maybe if I had a nicer phone, this wouldn’t be so hard.

  I have never called a friend on the phone, never mind a friend who might be emotional and needing me to know how to be a friend. What are you supposed to say to a friend who’s emotional?

  Hi, Billy, how are you feeling about your uncle disappearing?

  Hi, Billy, are you excited for everyone to harass you at school tomorrow?

  Hi, Billy, what do you think about everyone’s theory that when your uncle is finally found, he will probably be dead?

  What are you supposed to do with someone else’s feelings when you barely know what to do with your own? Does having friends mean having to do this kind of thing all the time?

  The TV is playing a clip of an interview from about a year ago, right before Caleb went to his second rehab. He’s with Shannon Smear from that band whose music I actually kind of like, but nobody in Fog Harbor will ever admit that out of some weird allegiance to Rainy Day Knife Fight and the suspicion that Shannon is responsible for Caleb’s downward spiral, but really it’s just that everybody’s sexist and Shannon dares to speak her mind and not worry about being “likable.” I have seen this interview before. Caleb is lying on a couch with his head on Shannon’s lap. She’s wearing some kind of vintage fifties pinup girl swimsuit and a cowboy hat, her thin arms covered with tattoos, her face made up in its usual drunk drag queen styl
e. He’s in old tattered pajamas and white tube socks.

  She’s doing all the talking, while he just lies there with his eyes closed and a serene smile on his lips. Shannon talks fast and leaves little space for even a breath, let alone someone else’s voice, like she lacks whatever mechanism filters and organizes thoughts between the brain and the mouth. She just talks and talks, first about how they met backstage at a show, about how they fell in love immediately and made out in the bathroom of the club, how the combination of piss and beer and toilet cleanser will now always be her favorite smell, how sex that night was amazing, how the next day he bought her a taxidermy vulture and that’s how she knew he was the one, how sex that afternoon was amazing, how they want to make a bunch of babies and populate the world with beautiful, intelligent, sensitive children who will become an army and bomb all of Washington State west of Olympia so they can give it back to the trees.

  That’s when Caleb lifts his head and says, “But if we bomb it, what will happen to the trees?”

  “We won’t bomb the trees,” she says sternly.

  “There will be tree collateral.”

  “There is always collateral in a war, dummy,” she says, then pulls his face up almost violently and starts kissing him, and then she straddles him right there on the couch and starts unbuttoning his pajama shirt, and then the interview is over.

  “That woman is not right in the head,” an old guy at the bar says, and everyone, including me, nods in agreement.

  And then my phone rings, and I know who it is without looking. No one calls me besides Larry, which is the only reason I can even afford having a phone, because I hardly ever have to buy new minutes. I consider not answering it.