Anywhere But Here, Chapters 22–24
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AWBH is a work in progress and an experiment in crowd editing + serial posting. I wrote the first draft during NaNoWriMo 2012.
Your feedback is welcome.
The novel is told in alternating points of view between Sandra (mom) and Emily (teenage daughter).
Chapters 1–3 | Chapters 4–6 | Chapters 7–9 | Chapters 10–12 | Chapters 13–15| Chapters 16–18 | Chapters 19–21 | Chapters 22–24 | Chapters 25–27 | Chapters 28–30 | Chapters 31–33 | Chapters 34–36 | Chapters 37–39 | Chapters 40–42 | Chapters 43–45 | Chapters 46–48 | Chapters 49–50 | Chapters 51–53 | Chapters 54–57 | Chapters 58–60 | Chapters 61–63
Chapter 22: Emily
San Francisco, Summer 2012
“Eating PB&J and cereal for all meals is better than running from homeless people, but this ancient building is too creepy-quiet,” Emily said to Orbit who stared and then licked her furry cat belly.
Emily flipped through endless cable channels of reruns and daytime soap operas. She re-read the same treasured four books she’d brought until they bored her. She forced Orbit outside every hour for a bathroom break and followed her around, ensuring her cat wouldn’t escape.
She waited each night at 8:30 for a call from her Dad.
Her Mom had given her a city transit map, marked with Parker’s big red stars for home and work, but the colored lines and numbers were as cryptic as Egyptian hieroglyphics. She’d never taken a bus anywhere. In her life.
Her Mom stopped asking what she did during the day, since Emily’s response was a monosyllabic, “Nothing.” She wasn’t about to tell her that she’d rifled through all of the cabinets, drawers, and closets in the house, looking for something incriminating on Parker, so her Mom would give up this whacked fantasy of living in San Francisco, and they could move back home. Of course, there was no home in Folsom anymore.
On Friday, she woke late, again, and wandered into the kitchen.
“What are you doing here?” Emily mumbled, annoyed and embarrassed, like she’d been caught rifling through his toiletries. Parker was sitting on a stool in front of the kitchen counter, reading something on his laptop.
“Aside from living here, I have an unpredictable schedule,” Parker said, hiding a grin, “Girl, have you left this house all week?”
Emily gave Parker the dirtiest look she could muster in her Hello Kitty pajamas. Like it was any of his business if she left the house or didn’t. Sure it was his house, but so what if she didn’t leave it? He couldn’t make her go outside.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Parker answered for her. “All I see you do is read the same books over and over. Are you ready for fresh material?”
He noticed? Emily tried to hide her glimmer of excitement. Fresh books?
“Bookstore or library, what’s your vice?”
“Um, library?” Emily said. She didn’t want to spend her stash of money on new books. Having $96 saved gave her hope for a ticket back home.
“Get dressed,” Parker sniffed the air around Emily, and dramatically grimaced, “No, take a shower, then get dressed, we’ll leave in half an hour.”
“Half an hour? Don’t you have to go to work?”
“Not today, cupcake, it’s a slow week in the world of consulting, which is good, because the Michaels women require my attention.”
The Michaels women? What did her mom need help with? Emily hurried to the shower.
“Do you have the Muni map? Or is it lining the cat box?” Emily looked at him suspiciously, then took it out of her backpack. “One new star on the map today. I’ll get you there and you figure out how to get home. Do you want your own color, or can I make it red like your Mom’s?”
“What?”
“Okay,” he smirked, “you get a red star like your mom’s.”
She followed Parker out of the house, watching as he deftly locked the door. “Did you figure out you have to wiggle the key?”
Emily nodded. They walked side by side in silence, turning left on California Street, where a different dirty homeless guy perched in front of the grocery store. Would Mr. Homeless #2 chase them down? Was he a friend of Homeless #1? Was there a rogue gang of Homeless people, waiting to jump on passers-by while waving papers at them?
Parker didn’t even glance at Mr. Homeless #2, as if the guy didn’t exist. Emily glanced at Mr. Homeless #2, then rushed to keep up with Parker. “Why didn’t that guy ask you for a dollar?” she asked.
“Who?”
“That homeless guy back there?” She didn’t want to tell him the last one chased her down. Almost.
“Unfortunately you have to get used to ignoring the homeless. Most of them aren’t aggressive.”
“But what if they are?”
“Act crazier than them, make a scene.”
Act crazier than a homeless person?
They walked farther up the incline, then turned left on a street lined with clean, fancy retail storefronts.
“Fillmore Street; the nice end of it,” Parker said. “Are you paying attention so you can get home?”
Emily cringed. Would Parker really leave her stranded? She hadn’t been exactly nice to him. Maybe this was his chance to ditch her so he could be alone with her mom?
They crossed to the other side of Fillmore, took a right, and waited at a bus stop. “Know what street we’re on?” Parker asked.
“Um, no?”
“Look around and figure it out.”
“Is this city boot camp for newbies?” She mumbled, looking around for a street sign. “Sacramento?” Oh, irony, Emily thought. They were nowhere near Sacramento.
“Yes, Sacramento, and this is transit boot camp, or maybe like wilderness camp. Take you somewhere, and leave you with a muni fare and a map. At age fourteen, transit is the best way to get around the city. We’re going to take the 1-California up to Polk Street and then catch the 19-Polk.”
“If the bus on Polk Street is called Polk, why is the bus on Sacramento Street called California?”
“That is the best question you’ve asked since I met you. The 1-California runs on California Street from downtown, but into downtown it runs on Sacramento. The Muni folks do that to confuse people.”
“Oh,” Emily said, Did she have any chance of remembering how to get home? Not home, she corrected herself, Parker’s house. A long behemoth on wheels lumbered up, sighed audibly with exhaustion, and opened its doors.
“Have three quarters?” Parker asked. Emily looked through her wallet and shook her head no.
He pulled a crisp $1 bill from his pocket, motioning Emily to board the bus. He waved a blue plastic card at reader inside the front doors of the bus. “Put the dollar in there,” Parker said, pointing at a device next to the driver. Emily fed in the short end of the dollar and watched the machine gobble it up. The bus driver ripped a small piece of paper and held it out to her. Emily shook her head no and frowned.
“That paper is your ticket to a free bus ride home.”
Emily shyly took the transfer receipt and stuffed it in her front pocket.
“It’s your lucky day, the bus is empty!” He walked back to the middle of the bus and sat on the inside of two joined seats. Emily reluctantly sat next to him.
One lucky day in the middle of a really messed up month, Emily thought.
“This is the same bus line your mom takes to work. We can meet her for lunch someday I’m not working, or you can fly solo all the way down to Grant St.” Parker smirked.
“Why would I want to go to her work?”
“It’s not what you would expect.”
“Not today, right?”
“No, not today, your Mom has enough chaos at work without us dropping in uninvited.”
Chaos? Emily wondered. Her mom never had anything going on at work. She talked on the phone to customers. End of story. It was bo-ring, especially compared to her father’s exciting life of technology and travel.
“Next stop. I’m sounding like a tourist guide recording this week,” Parker laughed to himself. “Remember to pull this when you want the bus to stop,” Parker said, pulling a wire that ran horizontally along the inside of the windows. She followed Parker off the bus, onto a street packed with retail shops, but more dirty and unkempt.
They passed a woman with a face wrinkled like an apple doll. She reached out with a gnarled hand, “Read your future, dearie,” she crowed.
“My future sucks,” Emily responded aloud.
“Really?” Parker questioned, “you escaped the suburbs and are wandering around the greatest city on the planet.” They sat down on dark plastic seats at the stop.
“If you say so,” Emily mumbled. “I’d trade it all for a quiet street with a wide front lawn.”
“ONE! FIVE! NINE! EIGHT! SIX!” a woman yelled into her phone, “No! I said 1–5–9–8–6!” Emily counted the rolls of horizontal fat visible through the woman’s purple polyester top.
She had screamed the numbers three more times into her cell phone when Parker quipped, “Hand me the phone, I’ll tell him.”
The woman glared at Parker, then stalked away. A block later Emily heard her shout the numbers again.
“Guess it’s too late now to find out what those numbers were,” Parker chuckled.
A cable car clanged as it passed. Emily eyed the open-sides skeptically. She’d turn around and start walking to Folsom before taking that accident waiting to happen. An emergency vehicle screeched its alarm as it crossed over onto the wrong side of the street to avert traffic.
Nothing about this city makes sense, Emily thought. And it’s too loud.
“Fifteen more minutes,” Parker said, pointing at the electronic display above Emily’s head. She winced as a large delivery truck made a sharp turn and nearly collided with an anonymous white delivery truck of the same size.
The 19-Polk bus arrived, and Parker led Emily to a lone vacant seat. “Really is your Muni lucky day. The solitary window seat. You take it.” Parker said, gesturing for Emily to sit.
She hoped Parker would stay nearby and protect her. Then she hoped he would go to the back of the bus, far away. She hoped everything.
A tan woman sat in front of her, large breasts, waist, thighs, and calves barely restrained by the fiberglass bus seat. A woven pink ribbon circled her neck announcing “I ♥ SF” in white letters. A black tattoo in script between her thumb and index finger declared “I ♥ MG.” Emily suspected she didn’t love either anymore.
“The worst part about the divine institution of books we are about to visit,” Parker said, “is its location near the worst part of the city.” Emily glanced out the window to a theater sign, adorned with shapely women wearing tiger striped cat suits and lascivious facial expressions.
“And then, there’s the people who don’t say no to drugs.” Parker indicated subtly outside to the trio of dark men in black leather jackets, their faces gaunt and skeletal. They leaned against a metal fence in front of a modern empty children’s playground. An overweight woman wearing dirty pink plastic flip-flops fidgeted with the hem of her polyester floral top.
The bus turned left and then right; Emily had lost track of the street names when Parker said, “Now, look!”
A golden domed building presided majestically behind a long wide lawn.
“But the State Capitol is in Sac,” Emily questioned. A pang of homesickness shuddered through her. It looked like State Capitol building in downtown Sacramento.
“SF County Seat,” he replied. “And we’re here!” The bus lurched to a stop. “Let’s blindfold you to maximize delight.”
“Absolutely no.”
“No? Ruin the surprise. Follow me.”
They circled a tall gray stone building, until Parker stopped, looking up. “We’re too close, let’s step back a bit.” They walked onto a street with a statue of a man on a horse, his gallop frozen in marble. “At least cover your eyes?”
“Fine.”
“Now open!”
Emily removed her hands over her eyes, looking at a tall gray stone building, maybe four stories, rising into the sky. “Um…” Emily said.
“It’s the library, cupcake, the San Francisco Main Library.”
“It’s huge!”
“Four floors filled with millions books. I bet there are a few you haven’t read.”
The plain monolith transformed to golden, beautiful, as if the clouds had parted, and Emily imagined the rows and rows of alphabetical and Dewey-decimal organized books it contained. “This is better than Starbucks!” Emily exclaimed.
“What is it about Michaels women and that mermaid?” Parker laughed. “I’ll walk you to the door and you can enjoy this on your own.” Emily nodded, already imagining the world behind the doors.
Chapter 23: Sandra (San Francisco, Summer 2012)
Sandra never thought she would miss the modicum of privacy afforded by the four foot metal and fabric walls of her past cubicle.
After four days at an open desk, surrounded by twenty-something-year-old people with freshly minted computer science degrees, Sandra felt exposed. Her colleagues wore enormous headphones like Princess Leia’s iconic dual hair buns from Star Wars. Sandra wondered if most of her coworkers were old enough to know the reference. She asked one person nearby how much the headphones were, because at least they blocked cacophony of noise amplified by the high open ceiling.
“Three hundred dollars?” Sandra asked, hoping her mouth wasn’t agape. She’d have to settle for noise.
She had attended meetings with the Marketing Director, the VP of Engineering, and even the IT guy, Tad, who all assumed she knew how to build a customer support organization. She’d never built anything before and had no opinion of whether to buy or build the software they’d need to provide customer support. HealthCo just had a system, she didn’t know what it was. She was afraid to tell anyone she’d only placated unhappy customers over the phone at HealthCo?
When Tad, the IT guy asked her whether she wanted a call queue or a ring group, Sandra was terrified to say she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. “Which costs less?” she managed. It must of been the right answer, because he nodded approvingly, and said “ring group.”
She responded with an illusive, “I’ll get back to you by tomorrow,” then frantically searched Google.
Phone system options. He was asking about phone system options.
She felt the burden of being financially responsible for the household. The burden Drew had always shouldered. Before, her part-time job was only a slight contribution to the family income, and she scorned Drew’s opinion that she could quit at any time. Now if she quit, how would they eat?
She fretted constantly she was going to get fired.
At least there is child support money from Drew someday, Sandra thought, but your stupid pride got in the way of asking for alimony. The salary Francesco offered was more than double what she took home in Folsom, but it didn’t feel like enough in San Francisco. Maybe she should have asked for more? She had never been good at negotiating.
Beleaguered further, she had no idea what she was supposed to be doing at work, after the first day when the Tad handed her an unopened laptop, saying he’d be back in an hour with instructions on how to access email. She thought she heard him mumble about this part of his job sucked, and wondered what else an IT guy had to do besides IT. Would more questions make her look useless? Did people just know these things?
Dana explained for Tad, “He has to set up all the production servers for the developers, and we can’t justify hiring someone just for office IT.”
Servers? Like in a restaurant? Sandra didn’t know what ‘servers’ were, except she thought Drew had mentioned that word a few times. Now she wished she’d paid more attention to what Drew did for work.
When Sandra finally got email setup, she had 47 messages in her Inbox with dates one week prior. Someone knew she was coming to work here, even if Dana didn’t.
Fifteen messages were lunch announcements, which was catered most days for the trove of young developers that needed to stay chained to their desks and code. Whatever that was. Another six were announcements of new hires, and didn’t include one for her. Another dozen were press announcements about the company or the impeding product, which didn’t exist yet.
How was she supposed to help customers when they not only didn’t have them, they didn’t have a product?
The rest were messages from Francesco to his management team, with direction, orders, then new directions which conflicted with the previous ones, and links to articles that he expected his management team to read. She hoped at some point to have fifteen minutes with the man who had hired her to get some idea of her role and expectations, but this week she only saw him for the one hour management meeting where he presided as each manager, director, or VP gave a 2 minute summary of their current “blockers” and what they were working on.
“You’re exempt this week, Sandra,” Francesco said. Sandra felt momentarily relieved, then burdened with thoughts of what she would say next week.
What she was working on?
· Cajoling Tad into telling her how to access my email
· Memorizing all the lunch menus from the past two weeks, in case historical data was needed
· Reading all the articles Francesco emailed; asking Google what every fourth word meant
· Figure out what she was supposed to be doing
· Do it, somehow
· Not get fired
Sandra didn’t expect that would go over well.
Chapter 24: Emily (San Francisco, Summer 2012)
Clutching the bus map, Emily reverently approached the glass and steel double doors leading to the library entrance. Light filled the bright space; a vast rotunda stretched from the ground floor to the domed ceiling, circumscribed by branches of books. Emily approached the center directory and saw there was a Teen Center on the third floor. She followed the circular walkway around and over to the elevators.
Delight tickled her toes and fingers, anticipating the exploration of the bountiful expanse of books. So many of Emily’s routines had been shattered, but the rules of libraries were intact: no running, no yelling, and books organized predictably in alphabetical or Dewey decimal order, depending on their fictional or nonfictional content. She could stay as long as she wanted, if she followed the rules. The librarians looked pleasant, but the kind of pleasant that would become stern to shush a loud voice. Their presence would keep her safe from crazy homeless people.
When she reached the third floor, Emily wound through rows of books that stretched outward like spindles of a wagon wheel, exhaling deeply. She saw a couple computers but didn’t want to check her email. How did she tell her friends in Folsom how badly her life sucked? Lauren would be sympathetic, but Natalie would be smug, if she even wrote back. She didn’t want to know they were having fun. Hearing about the life she no longer had would add to her malaise.
She found the Teen Center on the second floor. A graffiti-like mural on the wall announced “teens need our own space.” You have no idea, Emily answered silently. The teen section hosted a few round tables next to the mural wall and three aisles of books stretching up towards the tall ceiling. She would have skipped through the aisles with glee, but resisted out of reverence. She browsed titles, her eyes grazing, lingering, and savoring.
What do I want today? she asked herself. Do I crave immersion into the illusory world of fantasy with female heroines? Somewhere good and evil were obvious? Or do I want a realistic story where the main characters overcome real-life tragedies and unusually challenging circumstances?
Emily yearned to build book fort, and curl up in the comfort of words and plot lines that would stay the same regardless of her address.
The lunchtime sun lit up a batch of carpet near the window; Emily glanced outside and didn’t recognize the street. People of all colors, ages, genders raced past on the sidewalk below.
But Emily had no interest in people watching, even with the parade of curious people and a high vantage point that made her invisible. There were too many books waiting for her. She turned back to the aisles, looking for familiar authors. Maybe Sarah Dessen, Meg Cabot, Jerry Spinelli, John Green, or Tamora Pierce had something new alphabetically awaiting her in the shelves, with prose that would welcome her like the comfort of her old bedroom, the mattress indented from her body at rest. She picked out a book she’d read before, choosing the added comfort of a story where she already knew the ending.
Two hours later, Emily’s stomach rumbled. She had read a third of a fantasy novel by Tamora Pierce about a girl her age in an ancient, mythical time, who became a spy in a foreign land and relied on her wits and magic to succeed. Emily wished she had the courage to do something so bold. Her body felt stiff, but her mind was calm, filled with the intriguing story. She put a scrap of paper in the book to mark her page, looking for a place to hide it in the shelves.
Emily found acafé on the lower level and ordered a bagel, which she ate quickly, anxious to get back to her book. She headed back upstairs to the teen section, relieved her book was still hidden. She settled back down in her space by the wall, noticing a girl about her age, sitting on the floor with her knees bent, and her ankles crossed on top with her feet resting on top of her thighs. The girl looked up and gave Emily a relaxed, conspiratorial smile, like they shared a secret. Emily looked at the floor, suddenly shy. She opened to her bookmarked page and tried to read, but shifted her eyes up towards the girl every few sentences, each time soaking in a different detail of her unusual outfit: neon green and black striped tights, clog-like glossy burgundy shoes, a short black tulle skirt, tan t-shirt with a strange swirled icon, below which read “Just Say Om.” Her short pixie hair was burgundy like her shoes. She had her eyes closed and seemed to be humming between pauses; the sound barely more audible than breathing.
Emily wondered if all teenagers in the city dressed like that, feeling plain and inconspicuous. She hadn’t noticed on the bus. She glanced back at the book in her lap, submerging in the fantasy world while another hour passed. She closed the book with a satisfied thump and checked her watch. Six o’clock! She had to get home and in a hurry. She scooped up her books and stood to rise, feeling her legs pricked by a thousand needles.
“I haven’t seen you here before.”
Emily looked up: pixie girl was standing a few feet away from her. “Um, what?”
“I’m Olivia,” pixie girl said, smiling and extending her hand like an adult, “connoisseur of books, frequent visitor to this fine establishment for bibliophiles.”
Emily shook Olivia’s hand because she didn’t know what else to do, shifting the books to her left arm, and dropping two of them. “I’m Emily, yes it’s my first time here, but I have to go or my mom will freak out.”
“Nice to meet you Emily, maybe I’ll see you again?” Olivia the pixie girl stood still as Emily collected her books from the floor, heading towards a librarian.
“Excuse me,” Emily said to the librarian at the desk, “How do I check these out?”
“Do you have a library card, dear?”
“No?”
“You’ll need your parent to come in with you to complete the form and show proof of address.”
Emily looked longingly at the three books in her arms, two of them sequels to the book she’d just finished.
She heard pixie girl from behind her, “I’ll check them out for you.”
“You would trust a complete stranger?”
Olivia exaggerated looking at Emily from hair to shoes. “You look pretty responsible to me: clean skinny jeans, t-shirt, requisite hoodie, clean hair, and no signs of gang membership,” Olivia said. “Are you good for it?”
“Yes, yes, thank you! I promise I’ll return them on time!”
“No problem,” Olivia said, handing her the books after check out, “and welcome to San Francisco.”
Thanks for reading!
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Up next: Chapters 25–27
