We left super early in the morning. I didn’t say goodbye to Heidi because she was still asleep, and there was nothing left to say. Their grandpa made breakfast sausages he doled out wrapped in napkins that we munched on as we floored it out of Boca Raton. As part of the deal to come along, Troy would be the driver, especially since Barry was holed up in bed still on painkillers, Mom wrapped in his arms. It was a fifteen-hour drive to Texas, one we planned on doing in two shifts. Since Jenny was being weird with Seymour, and Barry and Mom had cordoned themselves off, I was stuck with Troy and Steph making goo-goo eyes with one another in the front.
“Got close to my sister?” Troy asked after Steph took a break from petting his hair to paint her toenails out the window.
“We’re gonna keep in touch.”
“They kissed,” Steph said as the RV jerked to the right, and she left a green streak on her foot.
“She was worried you’ll never come back,” I said.
Troy licked his lips, flipped his bangs out of his eyes with one hand on the wheel. “Not likely.”
“Who will take care of her?”
He chuckled. “She can take care of herself. Going on to high school soon. She won’t miss me.”
“Oh, righteous,” Steph said, turning up the radio. “Tiffany!”
We were bombarded with an off-key version of Steph singing along with “I Think We’re Alone Now,” complete with primping her hair and aping Tiffany from the MTV video. Troy turned it up, and Steph leaped out of her seat, shimmying to the beat, her oversized jean jacket hanging from her back.
“You have a great voice, girl,” Troy said, and I knew he was a big fat liar. The coke I’d ingested last night seemed to form under the bridge of my nose and cause a rousing headache. I went to shut the radio off, but she grabbed me by the collar to join in her uninhibited dance. We bounced around. Even Johnny Cash got involved, while Jenny gave us the finger. When it ended, she hugged me.
“Smile, Aaron, live life.”
The radio DJ came on and talked about a concert Tiffany and Debbie Gibson were doing together at a huge mall in New Orleans tomorrow, part of Tiffany’s Mall Tour.
“Shut up,” Steph screeched. “Shut up.”
“You shut up,” Jenny called out from the back.
“Tiffany AND Debbie Gibson together. It’s like the two sides of World War Two uniting.”
“Yeah, totally, babe,” Troy said.
“No, it’s not,” I said.
“I’ve been so caught up in this RV,” Steph said. “I haven’t been paying attention to the news.”
“That’s not news,” I said. “A Kuwait airliner was hijacked demanding the release of—”
“Oh, Aaron, no one cares about that.” Steph bolted over to Barry and Mom’s bed.
“Mom! Dad!”
Barry and Mom emerged from under the covers, the smell of their body odor filling the RV.
“What is it, sweet?” Mom said, her eyes glassy and sparkling.
“Mom, Tiffany, AND Debbie Gibson are doing a concert together in New Orleans.”
“Wake me when it’s Jim Morrison risen from the dead,” Barry said and nibbled on Mom’s shoulder.
“We have to go,” Steph begged. “New Orleans is on the way, and like, this is an opportunity that might never happen again. It’s like the Nazis and the Americans coming together for a night of, like, amazing pop tunes.”
“That makes no sense,” I said. “Are you calling Tiffany or Debbie Gibson a Nazi? Because I don’t think either would be pleased at the comparison.”
“Neither, it’s a figure of speech, and like, c’mon, I mean, Mom, you two don’t have to go. I’ll take Jenny and Aaron and give you guys a night off.”
Barry and Mom’s eyebrows rose at the offer. Barry’s like thick caterpillars that had a life of their own.
“Please, don’t make me go,” I said, interlocking my fingers and getting on my knees.
“No, this’ll be good,” Barry said, swinging his legs out of the bed and showing his boner.
“Dad, what the hell?” Steph asked.
“Jesus,” I said.
“Whoops,” he huh, huh, huhed. “Didn’t realize I was exposed.”
“Nothing wrong with our beautiful natural bodies,” Mom said, but wisely covered him up.
“It’s the meds their grandpa gave me. Makes me loopy.” He looked down at his tush, as if he’d forgotten the bullet happened. “Goddamn, that still smarts.”
“Stephie, I think it’s a lovely idea,” Mom said, and Steph screeched like a banshee on crack. “You all could use a happy moment.”
Mom seemed so sad when she said this, like happy moments had become a foreign concept.
“Happy, happy,” Barry said, kissing her neck.
Steph ran over to tell Troy while Barry and Mom got back under the covers.
“We should be celebrating,” Barry said, tickling Mom.
“Barry, stop. Stop.”
Barry poked his head back out, nodding to the front. “Aaron, if you’d give us—”
“I’m gone,” I said and rejoined Troy and Steph up front. Steph was canoodling in his lap.
“Rad,” Troy said. “You guys are so fucking bodacious.” He rubbed Steph’s cheek with his eyes still on the road.
The radio DJ came back on. “And now, our number one requested song. ‘Lost in Your Eyes’ by Debbie Gibson.” Steph clapped like a fool. Troy began to lip-sync.
I get lost in your eyes. And I feeeeeel my spirits rise.
Steph melted into a puddle.
We drove into the night, where we found a rest stop in Slidell, Louisiana, near a highway that would take us across a giant lake to New Orleans. I figured I should sleep and not have a toot from Barry’s vial, which was getting dangerously low. That either meant he’d been dipping in more than before, or I was guilty for emptying it up my own nose. Sober for once, my dreams delved into violent scenarios. We were back in the bank in Boca, Barry, punching the security guard so hard in the face that it collapsed like in some poor special effects B movie. When I woke, we were crossing Lake Pontchartrain. I stumbled out of bed, made some coffee as Mom sat glued to the small TV on the counter, flipping from news station to news station. She bit her nails, now chewed to the nub. She flipped from the local news to the national covering the robbery. She had the volume on soft, so it was hard to hear, but it seemed like the police had no leads, showing the same grainy footage of the heist before I sprayed the cameras. The last image on the screen of me masked as Jimi Hendrix.
“Morning,” I said to her, but she barely acknowledged, a grumpy harrumph attacking me with coffee breath. I figured it was best to leave her alone.
In New Orleans, we found a park for the RV to stay, while us kids walked to the nearby mall. The concert was at noon, and it was just past nine. Secretly, while I hated the two-headed beast of Tiffany/Debbie Gibson, I was excited to let loose. Steph had told me the other day to live life, and I realized it was hard for me to ever relax enough to actually enjoy myself. Even my time with Heidi, I was so worried I’d screw everything up that I barely remembered anything we talked about or did. Just that one kiss, played over and over, each time my memory making us kiss longer. I wanted to write to her soon.
When we got to the mall, a zillion girls with braces foamed at the mouth. I had never seen anything like it before, all these girls, holding signposts with music pumping. Girls were crying or screeching, cackling like hyenas, shouting Tiffany’s and Debbie’s names in a chant I could feel in my bones.
“This is fuckin’ nuts,” Jenny said to Seymour. I’d forgotten she was there. Seymour seemed more well-worn, like he’d been through a war and only made it through semi-intact.
“Is this line even moving?” Steph asked, after an hour of standing still in the exact same place. The doors hadn’t opened yet, security guards on high alert for any little girls trying to break in.
“Some people got here at midnight,” a girl in front said, dressed like a Tiffany clone: hoop earrings hanging from other hoop earrings, a jean jacket like Steph’s, scrunchie socks over her tucked-in jeans.
“I have an idea,” Troy said and whipped out a stack of bills. “I had a feeling this might happen, so I brought some tubular cashola.”
He had a bop to his walk as he headed to the front of the line. I could see him talking with two of the security guards, who shook their heads, but then he showed them the cash, and they nodded. We were waved over past a million fans glaring at us to die, gnashing their teeth, cursing us with imagined voodoo dolls.
When we entered the cool AC of the mall, a light shone through the glass windows like we’d been sent to heaven, bathing us in shimmering bliss. A pseudo-stage had been set up, microphone stand ready, the crowd screaming until their throats became sore.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Steph said and linked her arms around Troy’s neck. “You are so bodacious for getting us in.”
“Anything for my girl.”
We found a spot to plant ourselves, close enough to the stage after Troy gave a posse of little blonde girls forty bucks each to get behind us. Troy and Steph started making out, and since there was no one else to talk to…
“Hey, Jenny belly.”
She looked up cross-eyed. “What?”
“Nothing. How’ve you been?”
She was glaring at me so strong it was like her eyes had lasers.
“How’ve I been? What the fuck do you care?”
“I wanted to check in about the guinea pig…”
She rolled her eyes. “Everything dies, Aaron.”
“What? No, I know. But you killed it. Have Mom or Dad talked to you about it?”
“Do they even know?”
I gave her a side hug. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
She looked at Seymour and then up at me. That was as much of an answer as I was gonna get.
“How’s Seymour been?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation going.
“Seymour isn’t real.”
“Right. No, I know. And good you know that too.”
“No, duh, of course I do.”
“Why don’t we make fun of the songs when they come on, to keep us from dying of boredom?”
She petted Seymour’s fur slowly. “I’m listening.”
“Like, let’s substitute words in the song titles and sing it really loud to piss off Steph.”
She put Seymour up to her ear. He was obviously telling her something. “Seymour likes your idea.”
“Like instead of ‘Lost in Your Eyes’ we could sing, ‘Lost in Your Thighs.’”
Seymour shot up to her ear again. “That’s the best you can do?”
“You got anything better?”
Seymour poked his nose in her ear. “Seymour says instead of ‘Lost in Your Eyes,’ we could do ‘Lost in Your Vagina.’”
She barked the word vagina loud enough for a few fans around us to swivel their necks.
“Or,” she said, smiling like a devil, “instead of ‘I Think We’re Alone Now,’ we can sing, ‘I Think We Boned Now.’”
I burst out laughing but wagged my finger. “Tell Seymour that’s crude.”
“Fuck your crude.”
The shrieks around us got louder and louder, deafening all other sounds. A Casio beat thumped through the mall as Tiffany burst on stage, and everyone lost their ever-lovin’ minds. What felt like a tall wave knocked us from behind as girls yanked each other’s hair to see over one another. Tiffany was dressed in a small top hat, her red hair spilling out, and a leather jacket halfway on filled with colorful pins.
“Hello, New Orleans,” she said, into the microphone, waving at the crowd, who responded with, “We luvvvv you Tiffany!”
“I love you all, too!”
A fan next to me gripped my arm and jumped up and down, screaming, “She loves me. She loves me.”
“Calm the fuck down,” I said, yanking my arm away.
Jenny spun her finger around her ear. If Jenny was calling someone nuts, they had mega issues.
Tiffany started singing “I Think We’re Alone Now.”
“Children behave,” she began, as everyone sang along, knowing every word. Tiffany, to her credit, worked the crowd well, bopping from side to side on the stage and catering to all her adoring fanatics. Steph and Troy danced in each other’s arms, and Steph looked so damn happy I couldn’t hate. She’d been so miserable when we left Kent at first, now, she seemed in pure love, touching Troy like she never wanted to let him go.
“I think we boned now,” Jenny sang.
I found myself shaking my butt a little, Tiffany being infectious, I guess. The stress of the robbery pushing into the rearview as my shakes became bounces and then jumps until my arms were moving too, swinging around and nearly decapitating a little moppet.
“Sorry,” I went to say, but the girl, a trooper, brushed it off and flung her arms in the air.
I closed my eyes and let Tiffany guide me to a moment of happiness. In this paradise, the police weren’t currently sifting through our DNA and combing over the camera footage for any indication of who we were. We had gotten away with stealing close to a hundred thousand dollars, an amount people could take a lifetime to amass, and we had done it in a matter of hours. And yeah, I’d found true love and lost it, but at least Heidi and I left off better than we initially had. And yeah, Barry had been shot in the ass, but at least it wasn’t anywhere more serious. And sure, Mom seemed depressed, but she wasn’t being fake smothering anymore, so that was a plus. I could also be mad at Troy for weaseling his way into the family, but he was keeping Steph preoccupied. Even Jenny, sure, she mutilated Heidi’s guinea pig but didn’t seem too affected, so it was best to just move on.
“I think we’re alone now.” Tiffany sang as I joined in.
I opened my eyes to Jenny dancing with Seymour, dropping her guard enough to become lost in the exhilaration.
“I think we’re alone now,” I continued, singing louder. “The beating of our FARTS is the only sound.”
Jenny’s eyebrows shot up into her hairline, and she laughed so hard she doubled over, calming herself down enough to sing, “The beating of our FARTS is the only sound,” when the chorus came back.
And then, like a magic rope pulled her toward us, Tiffany danced in our direction. Steph was clawing out her eyes as Tiffany got closer, mere inches, Steph’s voice carrying through the microphone and blasting into the mall. Tiffany smiled, winked, and took off her little top hat, then placed it on Steph’s head. Some other girls tried to grab it, but Steph stayed strong, using her shoulders to knock them all away. Tiffany bee-bopped back to the center of the stage to finish the song and punched at the air during the final chorus as the crowd chanted along, who then lost their shit even more when Debbie Gibson peeked out from the stage singing “Out of the Blue,” and gave her frenemy Tiffany a nod. Girls flipped their signs to the other side with Debbie Gibson’s proclamations. Jenny sang “Out of the Poo” instead as I made fun as well, the two of us with our arms around each other, Seymour forgotten and stuffed into her jean skort.
After the concert, we were high, not a drug high like on coke, but fueled. Steph was babbling about getting Tiffany’s mini top hat, and Troy said how sexy (barf bag) it was when she got to sing into the microphone. Jenny was singing “Out of the Poo” all the way back till we heard “Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)” pouring from the shaking RV. The inside was hot-boxed with windows shut, candles melting into wax nubs, and Barry and Mom peeking from under sweaty covers, their faces long and disappointed at our return. They didn’t say anything, but I could see it, while Janis Joplin wailed, and they had forgotten about us for a glorious day, entwined until the buzzkills came roaring back, marching to Tiffany songs and destroying their sixties free love vibe where they had no responsibilities and recklessness reigned. Mom seemed to swallow a ball of tears at our revival, retreating under the covers while Barry chewed at his cheek, eyes spinning and wild, and I made an excuse for the rest of us to grab a bite. Johnny Cash had pissed all over the floor, so we took him out for a walk. We found a diner that let him in, where we got milkshakes and burgers and tried to hold on to our day of happiness that was disappearing with the sunset and coming night.
“Out of the Poo,” Jenny said, and we smirked but couldn’t bring ourselves to a full-on laugh. The mall concert one of the last times we ever really would.