The Porcupine of Truth Read online

  “Go on,” I say when I realize that she’s struggling to find the courage to go up to the other kids. I could play too, but this kind of feels like her thing, not mine. Finally she does go, and basically every pair of eyes in the area — girl, boy, trans — falls on her and follows her. I watch as she begins to notice it, and I see her begin to like it.

  Another really gorgeous girl arrives. She isn’t as crazy hot as Aisha, but she’s muscular and tall, with spiked black hair and light brown skin, maybe a couple of years older than us. She hugs a few kids, and then she turns to Aisha and gives her a welcome fist bump. It’s like watching two goddesses connect. Like you expect lightning will strike or a band will start playing.

  All the attention seems to loosen Aisha up; I see it in the way she holds her head high, the way she allows the other kids to circle her and how her face animates as she talks to them. She starts looking taller, and when I hear her melodic laughter, I know I’ve done a really good thing.

  The game starts, and I recline on my elbows in the grass and watch as Aisha sets and spikes and even dives to save a point. She’s on the same team as the tall girl, and that’s clearly not fair. They are easily the two best players, and they team up on a couple of points that look almost professional. A few times her smile goes wide like I’d hoped. Aisha is finding her people.

  After the first game — Aisha’s team wins, of course — the tall girl hugs Aisha. She actually lifts Aisha off the ground and spins her in a circle. Aisha hoots, and when the girl puts her down, the tall girl throws her arms around Aisha’s shoulders and looks into her eyes.

  Then they kiss. On the mouth. Aisha tilts her face, and the other girl leans in and puts her hand on the back of Aisha’s head. Aisha doesn’t pull away. I swallow hard and look away. I pull up a tuft of grass and grind it between my thumb and forefinger until grass juice coats my hand.

  The kiss ends and Aisha whispers something in the girl’s ear and jogs toward me. A dull ache pulses into my spine. Aisha gives me an exaggerated grin. She sneaks a look over her shoulder at her new friend, and then looks at me, her face lit up.

  “What the what?” she whispers.

  “You know you’re sexy,” I say. “You see how everyone had their eyes on you?”

  She covers her mouth with her hand, like she’s demure, maybe. I snort.

  Aisha waves her friend over and introduces me. Her name’s Brianna.

  “Do you come here a lot?” I say, then wince because it sounds like I’m trying to pick her up.

  She says, “Sometimes. It’s fun,” and I realize she’s nice but not interesting enough for Aisha, who would never say something as boring as that as an opener. Where are the bears dancing through a field of daisies? Where are the wolf psychopaths?

  “Looks fun,” I say, feeling a bit more confident that this is not someone who Aisha will choose to replace me. She may be hot, but she’s not exactly a brain surgeon. When the silence gets awkward, I ask, “So are you in school?”

  “University of San Francisco,” she says. “Pre-med.”

  Great. She is a brain surgeon. Or will be. “Awesome,” I say. I tell her it’s nice to meet her, she agrees, and then they gallop back to the court for another game, holding and swinging their hands along the way.

  A bubble forms in the back of my throat, and I grind up another tuft of grass between my thumb and forefinger. Time to go find Turk Braverman, I think. I’ll admit that part of my reason for this detour was that I’m nervous. What if we knock on the door at 36 Prosper Street, and Turk no longer lives there? Or he doesn’t know Russ Smith? To come all this way, and to fail right away. I’m not sure I could handle that.

  But as I sit there, I begin to overcome that fear. I’m ready to find my grandfather, or not find him.

  My attention is drawn back to Aisha and Brianna when I hear a series of catcalls. They are making out again. Aisha takes a smooch break, looks over and waves, and then she rolls her eyes like, Can you believe this? I force a smile and shake my head and stick out my tongue at her. She sticks her tongue out at me, and I hold the smile like someone’s taking a really long time to take my picture. My jaw is tight, and I can’t breathe.

  I look down at the grass and carve into the dirt with my finger. I sketch a heart absentmindedly, and when I realize that’s what I’m doing, I cross it out.

  After the third and final game, Aisha runs back over, sweat streaking down her forehead.

  “Too much fun,” she says. “I hope you weren’t too bored, but I gotta figure that was entertaining to watch. Let’s be real here. I kicked ass. You should have played.”

  “Yeah,” I say, trying to figure out a polite way to hurry her up. It’s getting dark, and I don’t want to be rude, but it’s Turk time. “Would’ve been fun.”

  “So Brianna and a bunch of them are going out for dinner. Let’s join them.”

  “Um,” I say.

  “Um, what?”

  “Um. How about we go do what we came here to do?”

  “Carson,” she says. “I just met a bunch of gay kids for the first time in my entire life. Can I have, like, an hour to enjoy that?”

  “Of course,” I say, shrugging. “You can do whatever you want. Obviously.”

  She shakes her head at me. “I know you’re not bitching about me having fun. Because that would be a big-time asshole thing to do, given that you brought me here and all.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m a big-time asshole. How selfish of me to want to find my grandfather.”

  She puts her hands on her hips. “Carson,” she says, really slowly. “I know you don’t get this. But this was, like, a special deal for me.”

  “You’re welcome,” I say.

  “Thank you,” she says, exasperation in her tone. “Really. But can we join the first-ever group of gay friends in my life for dinner, or do you need my full attention immediately?”

  My shoulders hurt. I’ve tensed up my whole body.

  “You go do what you need to do,” I say. “Seriously. I’m just fine. But yeah, I’m probably gonna skip the gay pride dinner, if that’s okay.”

  Her mouth opens wide, and her eyes too, and I immediately feel like a jerk. But I’m still mad too. It’s confusing and I don’t know how to fix it. So I just walk away.

  “Carson,” she calls to my back, her tone filled with frustration.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say in the most apologetic way I can muster. “I’ll go see Turk myself. I’ll walk, thanks. No big deal. I’ll text you all about it and when you’re done getting gay married or whatever, you can join me if you want. Or if you don’t, that’s fine too.”

  And I close my ears and walk away from the volleyball game, wondering if I’ll ever meet a person who won’t trade me in for someone or something else. Yeah, probably not.

  I’M SILENTLY CURSING Aisha as I leave the park, but I’m also cursing myself, because who walks away from their only friend, without clothes or toiletries or transportation, just because they’re pissed?

  Carson does. Idiot Carson does.

  I sit down on a bench at the far edge of the park and pull out my phone so I can see how to get to Turk’s on foot. It buzzes and I see a message pop up. Aisha is texting me, but she’s just chosen strangers over her so-called best friend at the most important moment of his life. I’ll let her think about that one for a bit. I ignore her text.

  I follow the Google map to Prosper Street, which turns out to be a side street, barely wide enough for a car and lined with picturesque Victorians. I find number 36. It’s lime green and white, two stories, with a garage on the ground level and a staircase with wrought-iron fencing on either side. I stand at the bottom of the steps and count to ten. Then to twenty. This is solving nothing, so I climb the steps and ring the doorbell.

  Silence, other than my pounding heart. I ring again. A barking dog, frantic. My heart speeds up.

  Nothing else. Just a barking dog.

  “Shoot,” I mumble. The barking dog tells me that
someone lives here, but, duh. Most houses have people living in them. It’s still not clear if that someone is Turk Braverman, and I have no way of knowing.

  I descend the steps and sit down on the second stair. I’ll wait a bit. Just wait and see if someone comes by. I take a moment to check out Aisha’s texts, feeling a little bad for the passive-aggressive thing I’m doing but also looking forward to her apology.

  What the hell?

  Did you just really walk away from me after I drove you to San Fran-fucking-cisco to deal with your thing? I get a couple hours to do my thing, and suddenly I’m the bad guy?

  Gimme a break, Carson. Text me when you get a clue.

  My stomach turns. Not the apology I was looking for. Am I actually wrong here? I don’t feel wrong. I feel very, very right. How can I be wrong? I put my phone away.

  An hour later, I’m shivering. The sun is descending, and no one told me that San Francisco in July is cold. I am underdressed in shorts and a T-shirt, and the rest of my stuff is in Aisha’s car.

  I look up hotels, because now I have some cash and can pay for a place overnight. There’s a guesthouse down the block, but they want $159 for a room with a shared bath. Then I see a place called Beck’s Motor Lodge, just a couple short blocks away. They’re asking $139 for a room with a king-sized bed.

  That seems insane to me. Over a hundred bucks to sleep somewhere? I have just under two hundred total. But the more I surf, the more I realize that Beck’s is pretty much a bargain when it comes to San Francisco. And I’m not sleeping outside again.

  When I’ve been sitting there for ninety minutes and my teeth are chattering from the cold, I decide to head off to Beck’s for the night, and I push myself to my feet.

  Even upset, I feel more at home here in San Francisco than I did in Billings. Mostly it just looks like a really hilly New York. I pass a stringy-haired woman with a shopping cart who mutters curses as she trudges up the hill. Ahead of me, a middle-aged guy wearing dark sunglasses is balancing himself against a tree, apparently drunk or high off his skull. Except when I walk by I see he is not actually leaning against the tree. Rather, his arms are pointed at the tree as if he’s performing a magic spell on it. Welcome to Freakville, Carson. We’ve been waiting for you.

  I finally get to Market Street and see the pink-and-blue sign for Beck’s Motor Lodge. It’s a bit of a rundown place, and the guy who checks me in seems particularly disinterested in my welfare. When I ask him if I can pay in cash, he looks at me like I’m an idiot and points to a sign that says CREDIT CARD REQUIRED.

  I say, “I don’t have one. All I have is cash.”

  He points at the sign again, and I hold back my urge to ask him if this is how he expected his life to turn out. Instead, I just say, as nicely as possible, “Is there anything you can do? I have no car, no place to stay. I don’t know anyone here. Please?”

  He rolls his eyes and throws a form on the table. I say, “Thank you, thank you” as I fill out the paperwork. When I’m done, he tosses me a key.

  The room is perfectly fine inside. A little musty, maybe, but there’s a big TV and a huge bed. I pull my phone out of my pants pocket and stare at it. No more texts. I feel a twinge in my chest. I’m sitting alone in a hotel room in San Francisco. Maybe this is my fault? Is there something wrong with me that I feel like Aisha is in the wrong? Part of me is like, No way. Absolutely not. And the other part is cringing as I think about what I said to my best friend about getting gay married. She was happy. She met a girl, and I acted like a jerk. Why is that my factory setting?

  I swallow my pride and text her.

  sorry.

  i’m an asshole. but you knew that already.

  i got jealous, ok? i have a place for us to stay. text me

  and i’ll give you directions. sorry again.

  I wait for her response. My heart pounds.

  Fifteen minutes pass, and still nothing. Shit. I really fucked up.

  I’m hungry, so I head out to find something to eat. Barracuda Sushi is the closest place. When I see how fancy it is, I order a teriyaki chicken plate to go.

  On my own, I think as I jaywalk across the street. On my own. Better get used to it. Apparently I’m not so good at the keeping of friends.

  I pass a liquor store, and I stop. So many colorful bottles. So many different kinds of beer too. Those are the most alluring to me.

  I stare for a good minute, and I calculate how much cash I have left and how many beers I could buy. I fantasize about feeling nothing.

  And then I think about my food getting cold.

  I hustle across the street to my room and drink a soda with my dinner. And I feel a little proud because I’m not my father. At least not right now. I have a chance never to be him, or never to become what he became.

  After I wolf down dinner, and Aisha still hasn’t texted back, I call my dad.

  “So if I told you I was someplace that a seventeen-year-old probably shouldn’t be, would you react like a father or a friend?” I ask.

  He laughs uncertainly. “Maybe a little of both? Where are you?”

  “I’m alone in a hotel room in San Francisco,” I say.

  He draws in a breath. “I thought you were coming home soon.”

  “I am,” I say. “A couple days, three tops.”

  “Are you drunk? High?”

  Now it’s my turn to laugh. “What? No.”

  “So you’re in a hotel room in San Francisco, where you aren’t high or drunk. Do you have a girl there?”

  “No, and that’s the problem.”

  He laughs again.

  “Aisha is angry at me because I’m a dickwad. I thought she was being dickwad-ish, but she isn’t talking to me, so I’m guessing I am and I don’t even know it, which kinda sucks.”

  He laughs some more. “Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  “Why does everyone keep saying that?” I say.

  His laugh continues. It’s kind and soft. I want to memorize this feeling, this tingling in my legs that tells me I have a dad and we know each other.

  “So you’re having an adventure, you’re crashing and burning, but you’re not high, drunk, or messing around with girls?”

  “Yup.”

  “What am I supposed to be upset about?” he asks.

  “Dad,” I say, a little frustrated. “Is that what you’re supposed to say to your kid who is marooned in a hotel room in a strange city alone?”

  “Hey. Baby steps, right?”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “Nope,” he says.

  “Good.”

  “Easy for you to say. It sucks monkey cock, actually. I’m jonesing for a scotch and soda.”

  “You gonna be okay?”

  “Could you stay on the phone with me for a while? That would help,” he says, and I hear that unsureness in his voice again. So I do, and I tell him the story of what happened with Aisha, and he has no advice but does laugh at the funny parts, which is better than nothing, and actually calms me down a bit. He tells me that he and my mom are getting along real well, past fighting for the first time in so long he can’t even remember. She’s super pissed at me, he says. “Better get her something in San Francisco. Something good.”

  “I’ll buy her a condo,” I say. “Tell her I’m okay and I’m coming back soon.” Then I ask him if he could imagine us being a family again, and he has to pause before he says anything.

  “That would be real nice,” he says, his voice weak.

  When he gets sleepy, and he promises me he’s just going to hang up and close his eyes, no drinking, I say good night and I tell him I love him. It’s easier this time. Not easy, but easier.

  I hang up and check in case a text came in and somehow I didn’t hear it. No.

  I text Aisha again.

  i’m worried. Please let me know you’re okay and that you’re coming back to stay with me.

  It takes her only a few seconds to respond.

  Let’s chill for the night. We�
��ll talk in the morning, okay? I’m fine. Have a place to stay.

  K, I text back.

  I turn off the lights and listen to the traffic outside. It soothes me, in a way; it sounds like New York. The shadows of cars traverse the walls and I feel the pulse of the city just outside the window. Maybe there are kids who would take tonight and get drunk or go looking for girls. Maybe part of me is one of those kids, I don’t know. Mostly I just want to be alone right now, and that’s a bigger part of me.

  I play the entire volleyball scene over and over in my mind. What I said. My tone. My mood. Why did I have to be that way? If I could go back and change the entire thing, I would. I wouldn’t let my pride take over. I would not make my friend feel bad about wanting to enjoy herself.

  Tomorrow I’ll either find out what happened to my grandfather, or I never will. There’s no other way it can turn out. I’ll find Turk Braverman, or I won’t. If I do, he’ll know my grandfather. Or he won’t.

  And for the second time in a few days, I find myself doing something I don’t normally do.

  Please, God. Let me find my grandfather tomorrow. Please. If you exist, please just give me that one thing. Amen.

  THE NEXT MORNING, I shower, get dressed in the same dirty clothes I wore yesterday, and think about texting Aisha. But I don’t want to wait for her before going to see Turk Braverman. And why should I? She can join me when she wants, if she wants. I check out of the hotel and start my walk back toward 36 Prosper Street. It’s chilly again, and I wonder if it ever warms up here.

  I ring the bell again. I hear the dog bark again.

  My heart sinks. Nothing else. No other sounds.

  Then, softly, I hear the patter of slow footsteps. My pulse accelerates.

  The knob turns. The door opens.

  The old man who answers has extremely thin legs, which I can see because he is wearing white shorts that reach to just below his knobby knees. His upper body is thick and muscled. He looks a bit like he might topple over at any moment because he’s too top-heavy. He has a mustache that has clearly been dyed black because the rest of his hair is salt-and-pepper, mostly salt. His face is craggy and lined; he has two horizontal lines across his weathered cheeks that look like minus signs to me.