Everybody Knows Your Name Read Free Page B

started saying that it was because she didn’t have a husband or at least a steady boyfriend.
    â€œBut you had Dad,” I said, and she shot me a look like I’d gone crazy. Dad died when I was eleven, but he’d left her when I was ten, and so she liked to act like he’d never mattered.
    Next thing you know, she was secretly taping me. Then a few weeks ago she was jumping up and down in the kitchen after our phone rang.
    â€œYou’re on the cast!” she shouted, and I said, “Of what?” and she just said, “Oh my God, you’re one of the ten!” and I said, “Ten who?” and we went back and forth like that for at least a couple of minutes before she finally calmed down enough to explain to me what she’d done.
    â€œYou’re going to be famous,” was the last thing she said to me before I went to bed that night. “Even if it’s just for a minute.”
    But being famous is not really what I’m concerned about. What I want is to get out from under the weight of my current existence. It’s not that my life is so terrible beyond certain sadnesses. My dad being gone. Scott at a distance. The loneliness I feel, especially in the presence of other people.
    It’s not that stuff. It’s me. I’m sick of myself. I’m sick of looking out from this head. Sometimes I imagine it like my own perspective is a concrete slab that flattened me down. I mean, it didn’t just pin me like a bug—it trampled me: That’s who you are. Don’t move . I did it to myself, and my understanding just adds that much more heaviness. I cemented myself somehow, and now I can’t see myself any differently.
    But I had the realization that going on a TV show could be so disorienting that I’d forget what (I’ve come to believe) I’m incapable of. Police officers had an assembly at our school last year to talk about teenagers on drugs. One officer said that he’d seen a kid on PCP land a four-story jump like a cat. This kid just thought he could do it. And it worked for him! Not that I’m looking to acquire a drug problem, but I think this show could take my head between its hands and shake it up. I want to be a little dizzy. I want to give up my old securities.
    I pick up the phone on the desk and dial Scott’s cell number. I have done this way too much.
    â€œHello?” he answers, sounding groggy. I can practically hear him wrinkling his eyebrows together.
    â€œHey,” I say.
    â€œWhere are you, Tiny? What number is this?” he asks.
    â€œIn a hotel room in downtown LA. Don’t ask.” I stare at a drop of water on the other side of the window. “Where are you?”
    â€œAt this guy’s house in Malibu, in a sleeping bag on his living room floor. We’re getting up early to hit the water. You and me aren’t that far away right now.”
    I’m going to be outgoing. I’m going to have energy. I’m going to entertain. I’m going to picture all those people out there boogie boarding naked, even picture their genitals chafing against the plastic foam, and I’m going to be something new to them. And then maybe I can be new again to myself too.
    I say, “I called to ask you to stop calling me.”
    â€œWhoa,” Scott says. “What?”
    My mom opens the curtain with a luxurious robe on and her hair wrapped in a big towel. “Is that the producers?” she asks breathlessly, like she’s just gone for a swim instead of a shower. “Have they been waiting a long time?”
    â€œWhat?” Scott is saying.
    â€œSo, no more calls. I’m serious. I’ve got to go,” I tell him, and then I hang up the phone.



5
    I’d never seen a desert before yesterday, and now it feels like I’ll never see the end of this one. My old Triumph motorcycle has already made it a thousand miles farther than I thought it would. If I break down out