Lost in Seattle (The Miss Apple Pants series, #2) Read online

  I guess that story could almost certify as yet another favorite—criteria being stories told more than one hundred and fifty times. It sure is pretty close.

  Dad, a devoted Dylan fan and not much into the whole Beatle-mania, had been really cool about naming their daughter after some Beatles’ song. “As long as you don’t name her Jude, Penny, Yoko Ono or Linda,” he had said, Mom later told me. “Linda, as in Paul’s first wife,” she explained to me like I was a total Beatles rookie.

  I looked at Dad and smiled. “I know. Mom was eighteen, you were twenty, the night was a hundred and ten,” I said in a sing-song voice.

  “Something like that,” Mom said, looking at Dad with lovestruck eyes.

  “Hey, don’t you make fun of love.” Dad set down his glass and looked straight at me. “True love is hard to find. I was lucky. We were lucky,” he said, admiring Mom. He grabbed a curly fry from the basket in the middle of the table and pointed it at me. “Love may only come around once. So make sure to grab it when it does.” He nodded his head and placed the fry on his tongue. “Was I right, or was I right, about those burgers?” he asked, pride evident on his face.

  “You were right,” I said, looking at the empty basket.

  “D’oh! It wasn’t me.” Dad looked at Mom with a guilty face.

  “Oh, Frank, you are such a pig!” She stood up and shook her head.

  “That’s not what you said last time we were here,” he said, once again rubbing his belly.

  Mom looked at me and smiled, still shaking her head. “I’ll drive,” she said, reaching for a handful of napkins.

  “I’ll have a window seat this time,” I demanded.

  Dad yawned and stretched. “I’ll sleep,” he said in a lazy voice.

  I LOOKED OUT THE WINDOW again. I don’t know what I had expected going across God’s own country, but I guess a little more than just never-ending highways, cornfields, gas stations, and McDonalds. Was that really it?

  Dad, always a glass-half-full kind of person, seemed to be amazed by every single thing we passed along the way. “Did you see that little shop by the gas station? The woman sitting outside was actually wearing the same t-shirt as me,” he would say, like it was a good thing. Or, “Did you see that truck passing just now? He had a Darth Vader mask hanging down from the roof. It looked quite real.” Or, “Look at that old church on your left. I guess it goes all the way back to the Mayflower.” He never missed an important detail. I, on the other hand, couldn’t see beyond the road in front of us.

  “When you think about it, the timing is not that bad,” Mom said, clearly trying to cheer me up.

  “What?” I said, looking at a woman—wearing one of those LIVESTRONG t-shirts—trying to make it up the hill on her bike.

  “This,” she said and knocked on the ceiling. “Leaving. Now,” she explained when I made a what-the-heck face.

  “I mean, you’re seventeen, almost eighteen, it’s almost the end of your high school years, and hey, the world is your oyster. And Dad and I support whatever you want to do ... hopefully with a nice university degree in your back pocket.” She looked at Dad and nodded.

  “Almost is a pretty ambiguous word, Mom.” I glanced at the side mirror. The woman on the bike had tossed in the towel and was now walking up the hill, pushing her bike. On the front of her t-shirt it said: “Never give up!” Apparently, she had never heard of a little something called steroids.

  “I’m just saying; it could have been worse, much worse.”

  I looked at Mom and nodded. Another glass-half-full parent, woo hoo, but I guess, in a way she was right. Technically, I had graduated, but I had received an all-time-low SAt score on the math portion. My teacher had actually called me to his office to break the news himself, and I swear, I could hear him laughing behind the closed door when I left. So, I had another four to six months of online algebra, trying to improve my non-existent understanding of numbers, and to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.

  All of my friends had already signed up for college or left to go see the world outside of Connecticut. I guess staying in the same place all of your life kind of gives you that urge. I, on the other hand, had no desire to leave; having moved all my life and finally found a place called home.

  Dad leaned over and kissed me on my cheek. “You just need to figure out what makes you happy. You have to find your soul.” He held out both of his arms and closed his eyes, making him look like a chubbier and hairier version of Jesus. He peeked down at me with one eye and smiled. “Parents can guide, but they shouldn’t make the choice for you.”

  It’s no secret that Dad still holds a grudge against Sitting Bill and Grandma for sending him off to boarding school for five years. He once told me how he hated every single day. “Even the damn food. Oatmeal every God damn day. For five years.” To this day, Dad still gags when Mom shovels in her steel-cut oats.

  I looked at Dad and shrugged. “Great! I have to find my missing math gene and my soul. Great. Just great!” I slumped back into my seat and looked out of the front window.

  “You’ll find it. Don’t worry. You’re only seventeen. You have nothing but time, right Frank?” Mom turned and punched Dad on his shoulder.

  “You are always right, hon,” he said like he was on auto pilot.

  “Great,” I said—again—mostly to myself.

  AFTER DRIVING ALMOST nonstop for eighteen hours, we finally stopped at some little cheesy motel—right off the freeway—halfway into Illinois. Dad insisted he had booked ahead, but the little Portuguese concierge had no record of any Frank Jensen. Of course, the entire motel was full—there was a big bowling tournament in the neighboring town—but if “we wouldn’t mind,” we could have the room above the carwash in the back.

  Without knowing exactly what he meant with “wouldn’t mind” (whether he couldn’t tell us {a language thing?} or whether he wouldn’t tell us {a safety thing – or money under the table thing?}), we found the dark alley in the back and climbed the narrow staircase above the car wash.

  It was definitely a safety thing. A hazardous and nauseating smell of bleach meets hairspray meets gasoline meets old cigarette smoke hit us in the face right away as we entered the room. The carpet looked totally alive, and when Dad pulled out the sofa bed, a pair of purple lace panties dropped to the floor.

  “Classic!” Mom said, dropping down onto the bed. “I say we just order some room service, watch half an hour of TV, and sleep.” She leaned over and grabbed the remote control from the top of the little refrigerator standing next to her side of the bed.

  I sat down beside her and stretched my arms.

  “Great, there are only two working channels. I guess TV is out.” She tossed the remote on the bed. “Frank?”

  We both looked at Dad, who was attempting to pick up the purple panties with his pen. “There’s no room service, honey. It’s not exactly The Four Seasons, you know,” he said without looking up. He grabbed the panties and tossed them in the basket next to the door.

  “Hey, you could have fooled me.” I made a gesture toward the room.

  We all took a second glance around the room. It actually looked worse than it smelled. It was pretty much one big mix of fake brown wood and synthetic fabric. The queen bed stood in the middle of the room, just off the entrance. The rude brown and orange duvet cover sure looked like some kind of evidence—taken right out of some crime scene on CSI—containing all kinds of goodies: fingerprints, hair, saliva, blood, and other more-revealing body fluids. Next to exhibit A, they had squeezed in a sofa bed, and in the corner, there was a small window half blocked by a big dresser. On the other side of the room, there was half a bathroom consisting of a toilet, a shower head, and two rolls of toilet paper. There was the Bible, of course, a TV with only two channels, and a pair of purple panties. The weirdest object, however, was this huge replica of a totem pole, which swallowed half the room.

  “Why they would put something this big in a room this small? It doesn’t make sense
. And a totem pole?” Mom propped herself up on her elbow and looked at Dad.

  “Isn’t it called ‘Knights Inn’? I mean, are we missing something here? Dad?”

  “What am I, the travel guide?”

  “Apparently not!” I turned and looked at Mom. She tossed her head on the bed, nodding it in the pool of DNA.

  “I say we make a run for it, girls.”

  “Let’s go,” Mom agreed with a tired voice.

  And so we left the bizarre motel behind and went next door to Ralphs, famous—according to the little Portuguese concierge—for his special Ranch burgers, which as it turned out, was just another word for a very greasy hamburger soaking in ranch dressing. (Needless to say, Dad liked it).

  When we got back, stuffed with too much Ralphs and ranch, I was certain I was going to fall asleep right way, duvet cover and all. But when I finally—after almost twenty-four hours of sitting in the cab of a truck—crawled into bed next to Mom, somehow, I just couldn’t sleep. Dad, on the other hand, practically began snoring before his head even hit the panties-bed.

  The color purple

  “Mom, you awake?” I turned and propped myself on my elbow. I could make out the contours of her face, but I couldn’t tell whether her eyes were open or shut. She nodded and sat up. “Mom, what do you think it will be like?”

  “I don’t know. Fine, I guess. As long as we’re together, I know we’ll be fine.” She punched the pillow a few times and lay down again. “Now, go to sleep, Ella. We have another very long drive tomorrow. She whispered, “Good night,” into the smelly motel room. “I love you.”

  I guess she was right. Everything always turned out okay. Mom had always been good about making the next place our instant home, and I had never felt like we were living in temporary housing. But making a house feel like home was not the same as making friends. That was always the difficult part. Mom tried to help, but for the most part, that task was all on me.

  I was furious when Dad had told us about Seattle. We were sitting at the dinner table, eating pasta with green onions, still digesting the news about Dad quitting his job, when he broke the news of our impending move.

  His words had been so casual; we didn’t suspect a thing.

  “So, anyway, I called that headhunter guy who called a few weeks back, and it seems like they still want to meet up with me.”

  “Great,” Mom had said and looked at me with her I-have-absolutely-no-clue-what-he-is-talking-about face. I smiled and made my beats-me face right back at her. She smiled and nodded. “What was it again, hon? I forgot.”

  “The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,” he had said, going for another round. “Remember I told you they wanted me for an interview as their Senior Program Officer with the Global Health Industry Relations? Sounds pretty interesting and you know me—always wanting to save the world.” He smiled and made the peace sign over Mom’s head.

  Mom had just finished her third glass of Chianti, so she was quite mellow. “Oh, Frank. That sounds lovely.” Her head was cocked to the side as she admired her politically correct husband.

  I had agreed with Mom, of course, before I knew where all this was heading. “Great idea, Dad.”

  His voice adopted a weird tone when he continued talking. “The thing is, um, it’s kind of, um ... it’s a few miles down the block. Actually, a lot of blocks, that is, northwest from here.” He looked at me, biting down on his lip, one of his nervous habits. And just like that, he dropped the bomb. “I might as well say it flat out. It’s in Seattle.”

  Mom had raised one eyebrow, questioning Dad’s sincerity for a moment. “Seattle?” His expression changed after those words, to let us both know he was not joking. He looked at me and forced a smile. I looked over at Mom, who remained surprisingly calm. “Seattle, you say? They have some nice fishing up there. A lot of salmon. At least that’s what I’ve heard.”

  I had slammed my fork down hard and blurted out, “Mom, are you serious?” I could feel the tiny hairs in the back of my neck curling up. “I mean, Dad is talking about Seattle, and all you can say is there’s good fishing up there? I mean ... hello? Fishing? Maybe that’s because it rains half the year. Good place for fish, bad place for people. As in me. I’m so not going.” I leaned back with my arms crossed, flaring my nostrils.

  Dad’s voice remained cheerful as ever. “That’s actually not true. Contrary to what people might think, they don’t get more total rain in Seattle than in, let’s say, Chicago. It’s all because of that Tom Hanks movie that everyone thinks otherwise. Seattle is a wonderful city. Yes, there’s a chance of some light sprinkles now and then, but you can go skiing during the winter season, and the music scene is supposed to be great. Both Jimmy Hendrix and The Nirvana are from the Seattle area, see.” He looked proudly at me and Mom. Surely, he had planned this speech. He probably spent half the day online researching this stuff. I mean, what did he know about weather statistics and Nirvana (as in Nirvana and not The Nirvana) anyway? And why couldn’t he just save the world from right here? I—for one—didn’t really care about Nirvana or chances of sprinkles; and no, frankly I couldn’t “see.” All I could see was Tom Hanks sitting on that boat, feeling miserable and all alone in all that rain (not sprinkles).

  I yelled as loud as my voice could reach, “I’m so not going!” I stood up and slammed my chair so hard against the table that both Mom and the Chianti shook. Dad was steady as a rock.

  I LOOKED UP AT THE ceiling, still waiting for sleep to kick in. “Mom, are you asleep?”

  Not a sound.

  I moved a little closer to her. I could feel her breath on my face. Her breath had a sweet smell of toothpaste and ranch dressing. Gently, I touched her face and whispered, “Sleep tight. Don’t let all the CSI bed bugs bite,” and turned over on my back again.

  Why wasn’t I asleep? Was there such a thing as being too tired to sleep? I turned around on my stomach but was stabbed a thousand times by the spring mattress. I sat up in the dark. I could tell my heart was pounding, and I recognized that feeling of rage and anxiety I’d had the last couple of weeks.

  Even though we’d had a fun time on the roads so far, I was still angry with both of them. How could they do this to me all over again? Especially since—after four solid years of living in the same place—I had actually thought that for once we were going to stay put.

  Since I was born, we’ve moved almost every other year—if we add up the two summers living with Grandma and Grandpa, the summers where Dad was in between jobs and Mom was in between pregnancies or trying to become pregnant.

  For some people it might sound all interesting and adventurous moving around, going places, getting to see different parts of the country; but for a three, five, seven, nine, ten, and thirteen-year-old girl, there’s no place like home and the familiar sound of walking down your street.

  It was always hard, having to start all over again and try to make new friends. And it was pretty much the same experience every single time: The first week of school is the best. You’re the new kid on the block and everybody wants to hang out with you and make you his/her new best friend. The second week, everyday life sets in, and everyone goes back to his/her old best friends. I wouldn’t say that I was unpopular in school, but I wasn’t exactly popular either. I guess I’m the kind of person who’s just there and nobody seems to mind. And for the most part, I didn’t really mind being by myself. I loved to spend time on my own, and when Mom arranged a play date with some kids from school, they would always end up spending more time with Mom in the kitchen, which was perfect, because Mom loves to have the house filled with “little feet.” Mom would have loved having at least four kids—“one for each season,” as she used to say. I am winter.

  But this time things had been different; Hartford was different. I actually made a handful of great friends or, that is, my cousin Maddie had been so nice to share her friends—Taylor, Annie, and Tamra—with me.

  A few years before I had moved to Connecticut, the four of them
had formed a club, the “Odd Couture Club,” where they read fashion magazines, did each other’s hair, nails, and makeup, and dressed up in a variety of clothes. I wasn’t officially a part of it, but when Mom and I went to Aunt Ellie’s condo, I was occasionally invited into this fantastic world of giggling girls. And I loved it.

  And with the arrival of a brand-new Singer sewing machine on the morning of my fourteenth birthday, I was in. Suddenly my house became the new hotspot, offering both a sewing machine and a sweet host: Mom (Aunt Elly can be quite bitchy at times). And with a twenty-first-century sewing machine in the house (Mom had an old foot-pedal-driven one in the basement, which didn’t really count as a sewing device anymore), we moved away from hair and makeup and started designing our own outfits.

  We started out making simple stuff like sweatpants and skirts, but later on we actually created dresses and pants, and occasionally we even earned a buck or two on alterations for some moms in the neighborhood, which also earned us a lot of mixed memories of the neighborhood mothers in very interesting underwear.

  Two weeks before prom, we had decided to make our own dresses: five identical ones—short and strapless with a big bow in the back—but in five different colors. Maddie’s dress was deep red to compliment her long blond hair. Taylor’s dress was navy blue, not because it was a particularly flattering color on her (she is extraordinarily pale year round), but because she had found the exact same color shoes to go with it. Annie’s dress was bright yellow. Annie always wears something yellow, so that was an easy choice. Tamra wore black. Tamra has struggled with her weight for years, like her mom, who told her that black was a good choice for “people like them.”