Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [8]
If only Teddy were sixteen—he would have been living with his brother already. Or maybe, if he was alive, with his dad. He didn’t dare mention this to his mother, who had long ago forbidden the subject, or to Jude, who regarded curiosity about one’s missing father as one of the telltale symptoms of being a fag, but he’d been thinking about his dad a lot lately. His whole life, his mother had been telling him he was dead, but then Johnny had found out that his own dad was alive. Didn’t that mean Teddy’s dad could be out there, too? But how did you find someone you knew nothing about, not even a name?
“You guys got any money I could borrow?” Teddy asked. He kept his voice down, though there were no customers in the store.
“What for?” Kram asked, climbing off of Jude.
“I want to visit Johnny,” he said, keeping it simple and hoping Jude wouldn’t decide to elaborate. But Delph and Kram didn’t have any money, either. They’d gone broke buying Christmas gifts for their girlfriends.
“We’ll settle for some pot,” Jude broke in.
Delph snorted. “No more IOUs, Judy.”
“Come on, man! We’re dry.”
“I don’t need any pot,” Teddy said. “I just need a bus ticket.”
Delph leaned an elbow on the counter. “Listen to young Edward,” he said. He had a dark, horsey mullet and a big moon of a face, craggy with craters, so white it was yellow. “He’s gone straight edge, like his brother! Just Say No, right?”
“I still say he’s lying,” said Kram. “Michelob McNicholas? He’d go into cardiac arrest if he stopped drinking.”
“Those straight edge kids don’t fornicate,” Delph said. “That’s what I heard. Don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t breathe . . .”
“What, like Jehovah’s Witnesses?” Kram said, rubbing his Buddha belly.
“The music’s pretty wicked, though,” Teddy said. “Johnny made me another tape. You guys heard that Youth of Today album yet?”
“Told you, Teddy Bear. We don’t have that crazy rock-and-roll music in stock.”
“Come on, Delph,” Jude whined, impatient with the conversation. “Just a dime? It’s my birthday.”
Delph slapped the counter. “Jeezum Crow! I knew that, man.”
“Aw, Delphy, you gotta hook him up. Man’s sweet sixteen, right?”
“You finally going to turn in that V-card tonight, little man?”
Then they were talking about Eliza, the girl Jude would meet in a few hours at the train station. As if they didn’t have girls in Lintonburg; they had to import them from New York. That was the sad thing about Jude and those guys, thought Teddy—they hadn’t been anywhere. They hadn’t seen shit. The other day Jude had insisted that Wichita was a state. He thought you got a girl to like you by stealing her umbrella.
Teddy made his way over to the Y section in Rock, scanning the cassettes, just in case. The Yardbirds, Yes, Neil Young, but no Youth of Today. Over the past few months, the negligible shelf of vinyl at the back of the store had been phased out by a growing bank of compact discs. Soon the Record Room would sell no more records. Teddy stood disheartened in front of the display, his hands crammed in his pockets. He was tired of Vermont, tired of the homemade drugs and the farm boy slang and the cold. He was tired of letting Jude cheat off his algebra tests. Just before winter break, the guidance counselor had called Teddy into her office and said, “Edward, have you given any thought to college?” The truth was, he had not, but the word chimed in his head for days afterward like the sleigh bells tinkling from the guidance counselor’s earlobes. When Jude asked why he’d been pulled out of class, Teddy told him he’d been caught smoking in the boys’ bathroom, then faked an afternoon