I told him my name was Lia, which was almost true. No one called me by my actual name, and during the summers, almost no one knew my name at all.
My Mom, stepdad Bill, and I had lived at the Riverside Campground for a year and a half. Mom and Bill slept in the bedroom of our 89 Fleetwood RV. I slept where the kitchen table was supposed to be. When we’d first purchased the camper, we had put the table up each morning and broken it down after supper to set up my mattress for the evening. After several weeks of wrestling with poles and cushions, we’d settled for eating on my bed.
I watched with a twinge of envy as the flaxen-haired boy before me submerged his slender fingers into a brightly colored package of nacho cheese Doritos. Even though Mom worked hard cleaning the hospital, most of our food came from the Church of Christ food pantry. Sometimes, we had graham crackers or peanut butter crackers (my favorite), but chips were rarely donated, which meant they almost never graced our kitchenette.
“Want one?” he asked as he extended the bag.
Perhaps it was boredom that had led him to join me in the deteriorating picnic pavilion, but my heart leaped as I reached for a chip. Rich orange powder stuck to my fingertips. The saltiness, the spice, the kindness. His eyes, like pale blue larkspur, the way his hair fluttered in the breeze. It was too much; he was too much for this place, too good to be talking to someone like me.
“I’m John Michael,” he said. “me and my family are traveling this summer. We’re making memories that’ll last a lifetime.”
I studied John Michael’s face as he exhaled irritation.
“That’s home for seven more weeks,” he said, flailing his arm toward an immaculate Entegra Coach RV. It was at least double the size of the vehicle I’d been calling home.
I was caught off guard by my disappointment. People had been rolling through Scottsbluff since the 1800s. I should have known from the pants that reached fully to his ankles and the stylish haircut that John Michael would only be pausing momentarily before being blown along.
Yellowjackets worked tirelessly building a nest in the pavilion rafters. Though they repeatedly flew in front of his face, John Michael didn’t seem to notice anything but me.
“What about you, Lia?” he asked. Even my name sounded out of place in his mouth. I weaved my fingers through my mousy brown hair.
“Let’s walk by the river,” I suggested, hoping to distract him.
“I’ll have to ask my Mom,” he said, his voice dripping with annoyance.
He looked at me like I understood. Only, I really didn’t. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d asked my Mom for permission. I honestly couldn’t remember the last time she and I had talked. She worked, she slept, she paid Ms. Jordan, and she did her best to offset Bill’s drinking and gambling.
“Good luck,” I said, forcing a smile that I’d hoped would mask how different we were.
He shoved the half-finished bag of Doritos into my hand and tore off toward the behemoth they had driven here. “You can finish them,” he yelled over his shoulder.
I sat on the picnic table, swinging my feet. I considered running home and hiding the Doritos in the back of the cabinet. But Bill would eat them the same way he had eaten the fun-size bags of M&Ms Ms. Jordan had given me. At fourteen, I was too old to be trick-or-treating, but she had been kind enough to save extra candy for me. I had barely eaten any before Bill had gotten to them. I savored the crunch and tanginess as I nibbled the corner off a chip.
My breath quickened as I watched John Michael walking back up the gravel path. He seemed so tall, so confident, so refined. What could I tell a boy whose parents had chosen an uprooted summer just for the experience? How could I explain to him that Riverside Campground was the most stationery I had ever been?
“She said it’s fine!” he shouted. I could see as he trudged closer that he held a bottle of Gatorade in each hand.
My brother used to boost Gatorade from the Sinclair. He and I would sit on the riverbank and share sips when he’d come to visit. He’d been living with his girlfriend’s family since I was ten, which made Mom mad. She thought family needed to stick together, but I never blamed Brett for leaving. There wasn’t much to stick to. There was the looming fear that Mom would relapse again, the certainty that Bill would be at the Lucky Keno until eleven, and the uncertainty of whether he would come home just drunk enough to sing Bob Seger songs or so drunk that new bruises were waiting for the wrong words to fall out of my mouth.
I hadn’t seen Brett in six months. There were rumors that he was in prison. I liked believing that he and Mandy had driven away from Scottsbluff and just decided never to come back. Maybe my stepdad had driven him away, but I was hopeful that wherever Brett was, it was better than here.
Bill had gotten better about being angry. Once, he’d broken Brett’s arm, and we’d just barely lied our way out of a life in foster care. Mom had threatened to leave Bill if he ever hurt us like that again. I didn’t think she’d actually leave him, though. His oafish presence brought us a sense of security. Bill might rough us up a little, but he would annihilate anyone who tried to harm us. And with the instability that surrounded us, that kind of safety was worth an occasional bruising. Honestly, Bill had gotten really good about hiding his anger: along my ribs, my thighs, my arms, in places where it couldn’t be seen but could still be felt.
John Michael’s ruddy skin was unmarred. I doubted hands had ever dug deeply enough into the fleshy part of his bicep to leave purple finger traces.
I hopped up to meet him on the path and took the lead, guiding him toward the riverfront. He handed me a bottle of Gatorade, and I treasured a sip of its cool limey-ness. John Michael carelessly guzzled his drink, emptying his bottle immediately. I wondered at the surety he must feel, knowing there would be more should he want it.
“You never told me what dragged you to Scottsbluff!” he announced.
I’d hoped he’d forgotten. I wrestled with where to start, with how to proceed. Part of me wanted to tell him about the months in my grandmother’s basement before she’d kicked us out, or the apartment without hot water, the time we’d spent huddled in Mom’s rusted Prelude sleeping in the Monument Mall parking lot. Part of me wanted to create another life for myself. One that looked more like my classmates’, with pink painted walls, a plush mattress, and an actual bed covered with cute stuffed animals and matching throws.
“I, um…”
I struggled.
John Michael grinned at me. Rarely were there kids at Riverfront Campground, and they never were kids my age. His smile was kind, his face eager. I could tell by the way he looked at me that he saw me: not some neglected child, desperate for connection, but someone who might finagle their way to being something more.
“I live here,” I confessed.
“In Scottsbluff?”
“Yeah, but like, here, at the Riverfront Campground.” I stumbled through my words, grappling with my truth.
John Michael shifted uneasily. I took a seat in a dusty clearing on the sandy, scrub-brush-laden bank. John Michael followed suit. He sat awkwardly. This face-to-face encounter with poverty may not have been what his parents had intended. A hands-on understanding of the Oregon Trail, sure. A stronger grasp of textbook American history, absolutely. A front-row seat to those of us plummeting through the gaping holes in our societal fabric, probably not.
“It’s not that bad,” I tried to convince him, or maybe I was trying to convince myself. “I have my own bed now. When I was younger, my mom, brother, and I all slept on this saggy mattress in the garage of this weird guy named Jeremy.”
Stop talking, Lia! You are making this worse.
“I mean, the garage wasn’t too bad. Jeremy hung up a shower curtain that we pulled closed at night. He kept his crushed beer cans on the other side. You’ve never seen a man who could drink like him! He wasn’t a mean drunk, though. Sometimes, Mom would go in with him for a night or two when we couldn’t afford rent. He was always kind enough to let us stay.”
I watched John Michael run his fingers through the sand on the bank. He intently studied his shoelaces. I was losing him. I could feel myself fading into the same invisible girl I always had to be.
“My school had a pool party competition a couple years ago. The class that brought in the most cans for recycling won. Mom, Brett, and I loaded up 17 trash bags from Jeremy’s garage. It took three trips to get all of them there. But we won!”
John Michael turned back toward me. “You like swimming?” he asked.
“Yeah!” But I didn’t tell him that I spent the entire party sitting at the edge of the pool because no one had taken the time to teach me how to swim. Even still, I loved that pool party. Watching my classmates laugh and splash. There was so much joy, and for once, I was not on the periphery of it but the cause.
“Jeremy had a teacup pig that lived in the garage with us for a while. His name was Samson. He’d actually cuddle with you at night. That’s pretty much the only pet I’ve ever had.”
“My dad doesn’t do animals in the house, so except for a beta fish, I’ve never had a pet. Smokey wasn’t big on cuddling.”
I laughed, and John Michael smiled. His perfectly straight, gleaming white teeth were the work of an artisanal dentist. I covered my mouth, hoping to conceal my crooked imperfections.
“You think you’ll always want to live here?” he asked.
There was an encouragement, an excitement in his voice. The timbre was different from the way the adults spoke to me about my future. There was no veiled hopelessness, no persuasion to dream smaller, to accept my fate.
“No!” I laughed at the notion. “I don’t want to live here now.”
It wasn’t that Scottsbluff was a terrible city. It wasn’t that I hated my family and wanted to escape the way Brett did. But if I had to be invisible, I wanted to be living somewhere big enough that I could grow into something more than I already was.
“Ok,” he said, “you can live anywhere in the world. Where do you go?”
This was a possibility that no one had ever extended to me. I took a deep breath, trying to savor this moment, wanting to cling to endless potential. I closed my eyes, trying to picture the map at the front of Mrs. Morrison’s 3rd-grade classroom.
John Michael lightly nudged me with his elbow. He grazed one of Bill’s bruises. A slight twinge of pain intermingled with elation as I realized I couldn’t recall the last time someone had touched me without anger being their motivation.
“Omaha.”
It sounded small the second it came out of my mouth.
“Or Denver,” I rectified.
“Have you ever been to Denver?!” he asked excitedly. He was speaking faster now.
I shook my head.
“I think you’d really like it.”
Words were falling from his mouth almost faster than I could hear them.
“You’re near the mountains. You can go skiing, hiking, white river rafting. There are waterfalls and aspen trees. There’s the Museum of Nature and Science if you like that kind of thing. My family travels out there every summer to visit my grandparents. When I was younger, we would ski in Colorado too, but lately, we’ve been trying to ski more in Banff because the slopes are incredible there.”
John Michael’s mind finally caught up with his mouth. After taking note of the garbage haphazardly tossed along the North Platte shoreline, he looked back at Riverfront Campground, enshrouded in its subtle patina of hardship. To passersby, Riverfront was an escape from the 9-5. It was a momentary adventure in the southwestern corner of Nebraska, close to tourist sites far from the hustle of the bigger cities. But through the lenses of Riverfront’s permanent residents, it was the kind of prison that kept you safe while holding you down.
I tried to think of something to say, but I was too caught up in John Michael, a momentary breeze.
“What do you want to do when you grow up?” he asked as he knocked my forearm with his knuckle.
I touched the spot where he touched me. I wanted to press it into my skin to save it.
“Probably a teacher,” I said, thinking back to Mrs. Morrison’s smile. Some people felt like home. I wanted to be that for someone.
“How about you?” I asked.
“Lawyer, I guess.” He shrugged and gazed out over the North Platte.
“You don’t seem too excited about that.” I nudged him back. I relished in the moment my arm made contact with his.
“That’s just kind of how it is in my family. My grandfather is a lawyer, and my dad and uncles are lawyers. When I was little, I wanted to be an astronaut. Even then, I could see how disappointed my dad was.”
“But if you could be anything without disappointing anybody, what would you be?” I desperately wanted to hand John Michael the same momentary freedom he had gifted me.
“I try not to think about that,” he said. I could hear the liveliness drain from his voice.
I placed my hand on his forearm. John Michael looked at me, and I could tell he knew I saw him and that wild and limitless potential that grownups seemed impossibly determined to crush. John Michael took my hand. My heart raced, and I watched in wonder as he steeped in possibility. My hand grew hot, but I wanted to hold his hand more tightly.
“I think I’d want to be a painter,” he divulged. He seemed surprised by this admission. He laughed, but I’m not sure why. “Can you imagine? My dad would kill me.” John Michael turned the wrist of his free hand. A bright LED screen illuminated at 3:43 PM. He abruptly jumped to his feet, tearing free from our clasped hands. “I have to go! We’re golfing Monument Shadow today.” A look of hesitation flashed across his face. “And then we’re driving down to Denver.”
I felt a lump form in my throat. I swallowed my sadness and slowly rose to my feet, dusting the dirt from my backside.
“Can I get your number?” he asked me cautiously.
I let out a defeated, involuntary giggle.
“I don’t have a phone,” I admitted, another symptom of living in an unrooted purgatory.
Genuine disappointment overtook John Michael. It reminded me of Mrs. Morrison on the last day of school. She had looked at me with that same look of regret, knowing she was abandoning me to a monotonous summer of long, lonely days and unpredictable nights.
“I can give you the address to the front office.”
“What?”
“If you want to send a letter or something.”
He grimaced. Texting was a simple means of immediate communication. If John Michael were to stay in contact with me, it would require both time and effort. He considered this obstacle for a moment before pulling a pristine iPhone from his pocket with the plastic sheeting that protects the screen still in place.
“Lia what?” he asked.
I ran my fingernail along my bottom teeth. I resolved to be fully who I was.
“My name is actually Peculiar. Everyone just calls me Lia because Peculiar’s kind of weird.”
He looked perplexed. “Kind of weird” may not have fully encompassed how strange my name was. I gave him Ms. Jordan’s address and as the ZIP code left my mouth, I tried to prepare myself for his departure. John Michael lingered longer than I expected. He kept looking like he was waiting for something, but I wasn’t sure.
“What?” I finally asked, almost irritated that he was prolonging my dread.
John Michael leaned forward and kissed my cheek. Before I could say or do anything, he tore off down the path, racing back toward his sixteen-wheeled home away from home.
I stood on the overgrown bank of the North Platte River, hot tears streaming down my face. My Mom told me that Peter calls the faithful peculiar because they are God’s special people. As I held John Michael’s kiss firmly in place, I realized that he was my God today. I wanted that boy to pluck me out of forsaken Scottsbluff and take me to the promised land of Denver, Colorado. I prayed we’d be together. He could paint, and I’d teach. We’d have a pantry in a stationery house filled with Doritos, Oreos, and Gatorade that we’d purchased at the store on lazy Saturdays. I imagined his long, slender finger entwined with mine, filling my soul with warmth instead of cold, tender bruises left by stinging rage.
It was foolishness and I knew it. Surrounded by crushing oppression, I watched the shimmering sunlight reflect from John Michael’s golden hair. He slipped into their RV, extinguishing his light from my view. I tried to anchor in the comfort of his kiss, desperate to cement the hope of possibility.
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