Todd Strasser - No Place

I shook my head. “No, it just bothered me.”

“Since when?”

Since everything started going against me and my family too , I thought. But what I said was, “Don’t you think the guy’s had enough crap in his life? His football career ends with a concussion, and now they want to arrest him because he forgot his wallet?”

“So you have to be the hero?”

“A man got to do what he got to do.” The line from The Grapes of Wrath , which we’d read in school the year before, had become a little joke between Noah and me, a sort of catchall explanation anytime one of us did something that we couldn’t, or didn’t want to, entirely explain.

After watching Buzzuka Joe lay down a couple of tracks in the studio, we headed back to Median. It was dark by the time we got there. “You guys coming to Tory’s later?” Noah asked as he drove. Tory Sanchez was his girlfriend.

“We have to go to this stupid party first,” I answered glumly. “Some friend of Tal’s from dressage.”

“Why can’t she go without you?”

I gave him a weary look. “Because we’re a couple, remember?”

“Bet Olivia wouldn’t make you go to boring horse parties.”

Back at the studio I’d been Olivia’s knight in shining armor. Now that I’d “saved” Oscar, she couldn’t stop touching and flirting with me. Talk about having your ego stroked. After that, everyone flopped on the couches and relaxed into a fun time digging on the music. It was so different from being with Talia’s dressage friends. They were all nice enough, but reserved and careful about everything they said and did. Maybe it was because they came from a world of private schools, country clubs, and fancy vacations. Of course, except for private school, that was Talia’s world too. And, to some extent, Noah’s and Tory’s, as well. But it was different when I was with them. We’d all known each other since grade school.

Noah turned onto my street. When I spotted the U-Haul van backed into my driveway, my spirits plunged faster than a two-seam fastball.

Stopping at the curb, Noah glanced at the van, but said nothing. I was pretty sure he knew what it meant, but it was something we’d never spoken about.

And we’d spoken about practically everything.

“See you later?” he asked solemnly.

I nodded, got out of the car, and pretended to walk up the driveway. The second Noah’s taillights were out of sight, I stopped. A heavy sensation of dread had begun to mass in my chest. I’d known this day was coming sooner or later. Only I’d been clinging to the hope that it would be later.

A lot later.

Like, maybe, not in this lifetime.

Moving boxes were stacked in the front hall.

“That you, Dan?” Dad called from the kitchen.

“Yeah.”

“Just in time for the last supper.”

Welcome to my father’s demented sense of humor.

I went into the kitchen, where my parents were sitting on folding chairs at a card table having bowls of homemade vegetable soup and bread. On the floor were cardboard boxes filled with kitchen utensils.

“So this is the end?” I slumped down while Mom got up and prepared a bowl of soup for me, adding boiled beef because she knew I needed extra protein in my diet. Both of my parents were vegetarians, but they were cool with me being a carnivore.

“This is the end… buhm, buhm, buhm… beautiful friend, the end,” Dad chanted as if even now he couldn’t take it seriously.

“I prefer to see it as a new beginning,” Mom said.

I shook my head. “Hard to believe.”

“You don’t have to,” Dad said. “It’s just a temporary setback, Dan. We’ll get things together. You’ll see.”

“We’ve got our health,” added Mom.

“Oh yeah, I forgot. Right.” I pretended to agree. Like as long as we had our health it didn’t matter that we were losing our home.

Neither of my parents had jobs. After being a stockbroker for a long time, Mom had been let go about five years ago when her firm went out of business. She’d looked for another job for almost four years before giving up. The longer you were out of work, she said, the more people believed there had to be something wrong with you, and the harder it was to find new employment.

For a while we managed to scrape by on Dad’s salary as a supervisor for the Burlington Inner City Youth Sports Program. But then Dad had lost his job and now there was no way we could continue to live, eat, and keep up the payments on the house. The bank had started foreclosure proceedings—they were taking away our home so that they could resell it to someone else.

“When do we have to be out?” I asked, and took a sip of soup. Mom had grown most of the ingredients herself in the garden she tended in our backyard.

“Monday morning, seven a.m.”

Since we’d known for months that this day was coming, my parents had sold a lot of their furniture and had put a few favorite pieces in storage, leaving only the bare essentials we needed to live. Over the weekend we would gather up that stuff and leave. Forever.

After dinner I went up to my room. I probably should have made good use of the time by packing the few things that remained—some favorite trophies, the ball I threw my only shutout with, a couple of cherished team photos, my first mitt—but I couldn’t imagine being in this room without them, even for a weekend. I knew I’d wait until the last moment.

The same went for my clothes, books, and posters. I just couldn’t do it now. It was too depressing. Instead, I took a shower and changed. On my way out I stopped in the kitchen and called to whoever might hear: “I’m taking one of the phones.”

We were down to two.

Outside Talia waited at the curb in her red BMW convertible.

“So we don’t have to stay at Carrie’s for more than an hour, right?” I asked as she started to drive.

“I promise I won’t keep you away from Noah any longer than necessary,” she half teased.

In the car’s side-view mirror I watched the U-Haul van in our driveway grow smaller and then vanish in the dark. We’d moved into our house when I was two, so I couldn’t remember living anywhere else. I’d thrown my first pitches to Dad in the backyard, and learned to ride a bike in the driveway. We’d had all those Christmas trees in the living room.

How soon before some other family moved in, and it would be like we’d never lived there at all?

“Please think about coming to Hilton Head with us?” Talia asked, pulling me back from those thoughts. “Didn’t we have the best fun during the summer?”

“The best,” I echoed dully. Talia’s family had rented a house and I’d been invited to join them for a week. It had been nothing short of amazing—beautiful beaches, fun fishing, great seafood, living large—but it had been weird, too, doing all this stuff my own family couldn’t come close to affording. “I appreciate the invitation, Tal, really. But I can’t.”

She didn’t reply. While neither she nor any of my other friends knew exactly what my parents’ financial situation was, you’d have to be pretty obtuse not to get a feeling that things weren’t good.

We stopped at a 7-Eleven and Talia said, “Be right back,” which was code for Stay in the car while I buy stuff for the party.

She returned with two shopping bags brimming with Diet Cokes, Mountain Dews, and an array of snacks. From there we drove to Carrie Bard’s house, where I carried the bags in, as if I’d been the one who’d purchased everything.

Over the weekend I wandered half-dazed through workouts, homework, helping mom pick vegetables in her garden, and—finally—packing the last of my stuff for the move. When I told Talia that we were going to stay with Mom’s brother, Uncle Ron, the only question she asked was whether my parents were thinking of moving away from Median entirely. I promised her they weren’t and quickly changed the subject.