Eastlick and Other Stories Read online

  EASTLICK

  AND

  OTHER STORIES

  Shannon Page

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  Book View Café Publishing Cooperative

  October 22, 2013

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-329-4

  Copyright © 2013 Shannon Page

  Table of Contents

  Introduction by Janna Silverstein

  Eastlick

  Bane

  Night Without Darkness (with Mark J. Ferrari)

  By the Sea

  Water Proof (with Chaz Brenchley)

  Embers (with Jay Lake)

  Gil, After All

  Oh Give Me Land, Lots of Land, Under Starry Skies Above (with Mark J. Ferrari)

  The Hippie Monster of Eel River

  Bone Island (with Jay Lake)

  Home

  If This Were A Romance... (with Jay Lake)

  Mad Gus Missteps (with Mark J. Ferrari)

  About the Author

  Copyright & Credits

  About Book View Café

  A Bottle of Red, A Bottle of White

  In the time I’ve known Shannon Page, I’ve learned at least two things about her: she likes a good glass of wine, and she likes good company.

  Sure, we all like a drink. But for Shannon, native Californian that she is, there’s a savored pleasure in the sip, a singular experience that she enjoys for its ownself. She’ll take a moment to consider the complexity of the flavor and, yes, like most of us, to enjoy the buzz when the wine hits that sweet spot in the brain. She’ll share a glass if it’s worth the while. The wine, a pleasure when sipped alone, becomes an embellishment to the social experience when shared. The company makes a difference, and it becomes a sort of collaboration.

  Like a good glass of wine, a good short story offers complexity and buzz. When you finish a good story, you take a moment to savor the experience, to let the resonance of truth ring a bit before it fades. I know that, for me, there’s nothing like reading a last sentence that just nails the piece: reinforces a metaphor, adds weight to a conclusion. I can’t help but lean back and sigh with satisfaction when a piece just works.

  What I, what Shannon, and maybe what you get from a good glass of wine, I get from a good short story, too. And this collection brings all the complexity, all the buzz I could want.

  With the title story, “Eastlick,” a coming-of-age piece with a soupçon of dark magic, Shannon explores the terrible wonder of a girl discovering her own power. There’s fearlessness here. In “By the Sea,” Shannon goes there, that place that a writer has to go, that place where the stakes couldn’t be higher. It’s the situation that requires characters to make unthinkable choices. They take actions that make readers ask, Could I do that? Would I? And there’s the inevitability of being human and finding oneself trapped by one’s own opportunities. In “The Hippie Monster of Eel River,” her protagonist faces the awful potential of responsibility, of knowledge in the midst of a carefree and irresponsible life. It’s a gift; it’s also a little taste of hell—a lovely bit of dissonance that makes a story worth reading and a character’s journey compelling.

  And there’s more: the power of the well-chosen detail, the universality of human experience, the carefully considered insight.

  Shannon also enjoys the process of collaboration—and good writers collaborate with her because she’s that good. It’s like sharing wine with friends: clearly she enjoys it, but she has no real need for it. She’s got powerhouse storytelling chops all by herself. Still, she’s worked with some of the best writing partners possible, critically acclaimed authors like Jay Lake, Mark Ferrari and Chaz Brenchley. The results are impressive.

  You don’t just come to this kind of ability as a writer by accident. I’ve watched Shannon make a point of working at her craft, hammering the damn thing into shape. These stories are evidence of her success.

  I’ve always thought that reading is a kind of collaboration: a collaboration between writer and reader. The writer offers up thoughts and stories; the reader suspends disbelief and consents to join the adventure. With this collection, Shannon’s offering a glass of wine and asking you to collaborate with her, to take the trip with her. Having tasted from the glass myself, I’m here to urge you: accept the invitation, sit down, sip the wine, and turn the page. You’ll be glad you did.

  — Janna Silverstein

  Seattle, September 2013

  Eastlick

  After we fled a failed back-to-the-land commune in the late seventies, Mom rented us a small apartment in town, at the dead end of a one-block street called Eastlick. We did have a neighbor named Dru, and I was an awkward preteen (with a Hallowe’en birthday). The rest is pure fiction. This story first appeared in Black Static magazine in May, 2009.

  _______________

  I first see the guy up close when I’m coming home from school. Junior high. I’m wearing purple corduroy pants and a white blouse with lace ruffles at the top and on the sleeves. It itches, but it looks cool, so I wear it anyway.

  Although we don’t say ‘cool’. That’s what hippies say, and I am not a hippie.

  It looks fine.

  The guy is working on a mustard-yellow Datsun, or Toyota maybe—modified, with big chrome wheels and exhaust pipes, and a super-shiny paint job. He’s taken the badges off the back. It’s two-door, with black interior, and looks very fast. I’ve seen him driving it around before, but this is the first time I’ve seen him out of the car.

  He has dark hair that feathers back perfectly, like Scott Baio.

  I smile at him as I walk by. I wish I had books to hold to my chest, but we don’t get homework. That’s for high school. If I had books to hold, then he wouldn’t see my tiny breast-buds, one bigger than the other. Maybe he can’t see them under all the ruffles anyway. Maybe they make me look bigger in the chest than I am.

  Maybe not.

  He doesn’t smile back, but he does look at me. I walk a little slower, letting my hips move. I can feel his eyes on me as I go, and I even know when he finally turns back to his car and picks up a crescent wrench. It’s weird: I just know.

  At the end of Eastlick, our one-block dead-end street, I see Dru on her porch, and say hi to her.

  “How was school?” She’s painting her toenails.

  “All right. We get to go on a band trip.”

  “That’s great!”

  I linger on our tiny porch, leaning on the metal pipe rail, but she doesn’t invite me over. So I get my key out of my pocket and let myself into our apartment.

  Mom says we won’t live here forever, she’ll buy a place once she gets the money from Bruce, but I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen. We moved here after school had already started, just picked up all of a sudden one day and left. We had to leave a lot of stuff out at his place. She keeps saying we’ll go back, but we don’t.

  At least there’s Dru. She lives next door all by herself, in an apartment the same size as ours. She goes to the community college. She’s half Chinese and half white, and all gorgeous. She’s nice to me, when she isn’t busy with school or work or stuff. She taught me how to feather my hair, but mine doesn’t work like hers does. Hers looks all smooth and sleek and, well, feathery. Mine is lumpy. The best I can manage is some weird-looking rolls down the sides, the shape of the curling iron. Then it all gets messed up in the wind.

  I wish I lived alone. I wish I was in college.

  ~o0o~

  The guy with the yellow car talks to me the next time I see him. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” I say. I slow down, but I don’t stop.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lara,” I say.

  He says he’s Dana, which I always thought was a girl’
s name. “How old are you?”

  “Thirteen,” I say. I’ve stopped walking now. I’m leaning against a tree, wishing I had the purple cords on. That whole outfit was much cuter. Today it’s just jeans and an old yellow blouse from the Salvation Army. But he likes yellow, right?

  “Thirteen!” He smiles. “Jailbait.”

  I smile back. “My birthday’s next month.”

  “Still jailbait.” Then he turns back to his engine. He’s got a bunch of parts spread out on the sidewalk. It seems like they should be greasy, but they’re not.

  “Halloween’s my birthday,” I tell him.

  He looks up again. “Halloween? Wow. Are you a witch?”

  “No!” I almost stomp my foot, but remember not to at the last moment. That’s childish. Instead I slowly spin on my heel, turning to go, flipping my hair behind me. I’ve seen women on TV do this. I’ve learned a lot in the month since we moved here. We didn’t have TV at Bruce’s. We didn’t have a lot of things. I know it’s better here. But I still hate it.

  ~o0o~

  I lied to Dana. I told him the truth about my birthday, but I’m not going to be fourteen next month. Or even thirteen. I’ll be twelve. It’s like I’m almost twelve already, really. And twelve is almost thirteen, which is a teenager. Eleven sounds like a baby. Eleven and eleven-twelfths doesn’t sound any better.

  My name isn’t Lara either. It’s Laura. But Lara sounds more interesting, exotic. Like Dru. Dru is short for Drusia, pronounced Dru-sha. Lara sounds like a better friend for Dru than Laura.

  ~o0o~

  I’m so excited about the band trip. I pack a week early, gathering clothes and my sleeping bag. I’ll put my flute in later, after the last practice. In the bathroom, I pack my hairbrush and curling iron and shampoo and cream rinse, and then I stare for a long time at the pink box under the sink. The one Mom ordered for me. It says “Now You’re a Woman” on it, and it’s full of all the supplies for when you get your period. A little sample of everything, so you can try them all and see what you like. Should I bring it? I don’t want the other girls to make fun of me. I have no idea who’s gotten theirs and who hasn’t. I’d rather die than ask.

  ~o0o~

  I’m not innocent. I’m not naïve. I know about sex, and periods, and boys, everything. I know how much things cost. Mom makes $800 a month, but she gets less than that in her paycheck. Our rent is $250, and the payments on the Subaru are $98. Then there’s utilities and water and stuff, insurance, other things. Groceries should be less than $10 a bag, but sometimes they’re not. There’s never enough money. Gas is almost a dollar a gallon. Mom got a lot of stuff at garage sales, and her boss sold her some old dining room furniture, but we still had to fill the apartment with everything—the beds, dressers, the couch, the TV. You hear on the news all the time about inflation, so it’s only going to get worse. There’s still a lot more we need—more dishes, pots and pans, a desk.

  The roller skates I want are $40. I’ll never get them. Or the record player. We listen to the radio a lot, when the TV isn’t on.

  ~o0o~

  The band trip isn’t as much fun as I’d hoped. It’s a long ride on a stinky bus, and then we only end up playing one song before the next band gets their turn, and we don’t win the competition, and nobody can hear the flutes play anyway. And the whole time I feel gross and tired, maybe carsick from the bus, I don’t know. Then we have to stay the night on the floor of a church basement.

  The chaperones go to sleep in one corner, and all the kids pretend to, but they don’t really. I lie there in my sleeping bag listening to the whispers and giggles. Everyone has a best friend but me.

  Then two girls are out of their sleeping bags and sitting in the far corner, near me. One of them pulls out a Ouija board. “Let’s play.” She looks at me, watching her. “You too, Flute.”

  Well, I don’t know their names either. She’s Clarinet, and the other one is French Horn.

  Clarinet has to show me how to use the Ouija, which makes her roll her eyes. I put my fingers on the little plastic thing, and she asks it a question, something about her grandmother. The plastic thing moves around a little, not really pointing at an answer, stopping between letters.

  French Horn asks about a boy. Same result.

  I didn’t really believe it would work.

  “You ask it something,” Clarinet says to me.

  “Um…” I have to think. What do I want to know? I want to ask about Dana with the yellow car, but not out loud, not in front of her. “Am I going to get an A in social studies?”

  The plastic thing jumps and moves under our hands, whipping out an answer: YES. “You’re pushing it!” Clarinet accuses, glaring at me. French Horn gets bored and starts talking to some other girls.

  “I’m not!” I protest. It felt like she was. I could almost see her moving it. I could feel it under my fingers, twitching, eager.

  “Okay,” Clarinet says, “if it’s so smart: ask it when am I going to die?”

  I ask it, and it’s like an alive thing. It quickly spells out: 1-4. Fourteen.

  Clarinet glares at me. “Cut it out. That’s not funny.”

  At that moment, in the dark church basement, with all the whispers and sighs around me, the smell of all the kids—their body odors, strawberry shampoo, bubble gum, hairspray—it all just hits me. I know Clarinet is going to die at fourteen, I just know it. I don’t even know her name, but it’s like it’s already happened, I know it so strong. I can see it: a terrible car accident, blood everywhere. A severed arm. People screaming, sobbing. Leaves everywhere, and a broken tree trunk.

  “Sorry,” I mutter, and yank my hands off the plastic thing.

  Part of me wants to play with it by myself, but mostly I’m too afraid. Clarinet shoves it back in her bag.

  ~o0o~

  In the morning, I go to pee, and there’s a dark red smear of blood in my underwear. Oh man I knew this would happen. Why didn’t I bring the kit? I’m so stupid, I hate myself, I cannot in a million years tell anyone. They’ll laugh me off the planet.

  I sit on the toilet a long time, trying to figure out what to do. I lean over and open the cabinet under the sink, but there’s only extra toilet paper, and Comet, and stuff like that. I look again at my underwear. Then I wipe, and drop the bloody tissue in the toilet, then wipe again. It’s not much blood, just a few drops. I take a bunch of toilet paper and fold it up, and lay it in the underwear. I’ll go get a clean pair when I get dressed, and hide these.

  I flush a couple of times to make sure all the blood is gone, then leave the bathroom and start packing my stuff. I can feel the toilet paper bunched up, moving around when I walk. I try to walk carefully. I just have to make it home.

  ~o0o~

  Mom asks if I need help with the kit. I tell her no, but then after a few minutes I call through the door.

  She comes in and shows me how to use the belt, how to hook the pad on and fit it around my hips, and position it so it doesn’t show over the top of my pants. I walk around the apartment testing it. It’s huge, the pad. I feel like everyone can see it between my legs. It slips around, too, though not as bad as the toilet paper did.

  I’m sort of thrilled to be a woman and all that, but at the same time, this feels super unfair and gross. And it’s going to happen every month till I’m fifty or something.

  Mom has terrible periods. She goes to bed and lies on her back and moans. I don’t have cramps yet, unless that’s why I was feeling so crappy and tired on the trip, but that was before the blood started, so I don’t know.

  ~o0o~

  “Hey Lara,” he says.

  I stop, heart pounding. I didn’t know he was there.

  He’s sitting on the porch of his house, hidden in shadows. Then he grins, flashing bright teeth. “Hi, Dana,” I say, leaning on the grubby picket fence, letting my bag slip down off my shoulder. It’s heavy, I have three library books today.

  “Come sit?” he asks. There’s a couch on the porch, a real furniture-
couch. Doesn’t it get wet when it rains? He pats the place beside him.

  I glance down the street, but of course I can’t see if Dru is out. I’m self-conscious about the big lump between my legs too. “I gotta get home,” I say, but I don’t move.

  Dana grins at me, and he’s so cute, I can’t stand it. I squeeze my knees together, holding the pad in place.

  “Aw, come on,” he says. “Just for a minute.”

  “Okay.”

  I push open the gate and walk up the cracked concrete path, then climb three wooden steps and sit down next to him. He’s in the very middle of the couch, and I take the side closest to the steps. A smell of dust and mildew rises up as I sit. At least he won’t smell my period.

  “You want a Coke or something?” he asks.

  “Sure.” Mom never buys Coke.

  He gets up and goes into the house, brushing against my knees as he goes by. The screen door slams behind him, and doesn’t close all the way at the top. But it’s a house, anyway, and it’s not small. Do his parents live here? I wonder how old he is, I should ask him. He got to ask me, didn’t he?

  But when he returns with the Coke, I just take it and sip the sweet fizzy bliss.

  “You’re quiet, for a girl,” he says, after a minute or two.

  “Uh-huh.” I grin at him over the Coke. Oh man he’s cute.

  “I like that, I like quiet.” He smiles back at me, and again I notice how bright and white his teeth are, in contrast to his perfect dark hair.

  He doesn’t know I can scream and sob and wail, and sing along to Donna Summer at the top of my lungs, and holler at my mom. He doesn’t know the power in me. He doesn’t know what happened on the band trip. I might as well pretend to be meek and quiet. I can be anyone I want.

  I keep quiet and nod at him, and drink. “Your birthday’s next week?” he says.

  “Yep.”

  “I guess you’re too old for trick-or-treating,” he says.

  I try an eye-roll, like Clarinet. “Yeah,” I say, my voice all sarcastic.

  “Ah, too bad,” he says, and now he’s grinning in a sort of wicked way. “It’s fun to go out with a big old gang of folks. We get candy, then just hang around, make a little trouble. You should come with us.”