Songs for a Teenage Nomad by Kim Culbertson Read Free Book Online

hamburger?”
    “Red meat is horrible for you. Kelly at work gave me an article…it was horrible. You should read it.” Her eyes fill with tears. “I’m just trying to do what’s best for us as a family.”
    Now I look like a jerk because I’m making a big deal out of this. It’s not like she’s murdered the old couple next door or something. She’s just…she’s just her . She always does this.
    “Maybe we could also get regular milk? You can buy the organic kind. And normal cereal. No granola!”
    She nods and puts her arms around me, smelling of jasmine oil. That’s something about my mom that never changes. She has always smelled like jasmine.
    ***
    “Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me…
    Sitting bolt upright in my bed, I wait for the strains of the song to drain from me as the moonlit room replaces my dream. I pick up my clock so I can read it. I always place the bright green numbers face down on my nightstand or I can’t sleep. I look at it. 4:30 a.m. And it’s almost Monday. My alarm will go off for school in under three hours.
    I shake my head and stare out the window. The moon, smug in the night sky, stares back. It’s been awhile since I dreamed about my Tambourine Man. Once I asked my mother about the song. I was twelve, and we were eating pancakes at an IHOP just off the I-5. I remember that she looked at me strangely, her eyes dark.
    “I hate the Byrds,” she said. “Eat your pancakes.”
    I don’t ask her anymore.
    The song is gone now, but my heart still pounds. Something is seriously wrong with me. Sam said I am a strange girl. Those were his words. Strange. Girl. I scan my bookshelf. In the green glow of the clock I hold like a flashlight, I see Jane Austen, Stephen King, Toni Morrison, and J. R. R. Tolkien cohabiting.
    A teddy bear Red Mustang Ted gave me is stuffed between a book of world poetry I never read and a dictionary with all the Xs next to the words I look up. My CDs form flat plastic rows along the top shelf. I pause, my eyes on my music.
    I listen to strange music.
    I listen to my mother’s music. She loves Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen and Alicia Keys, and I breathe it in through her. Some of it’s mine, but my mom always seems to make it hers. She likes Taylor Swift a lot more than I do, even though I’m the one who bought the CD. And just last week, she took my Ingrid Michaelson disc and hasn’t given it back.
    A girl in San Diego once told me that I like all the music her thirty-six-year-old brother likes. She wasn’t mean about it or anything; she just thought it was interesting that I didn’t listen to the same music as other kids did. And I don’t have an iPod or a cell phone. I have a Walkman . No one buys CDs anymore. And I don’t know any of the latest bands. Don’t know about podcasting or how to text message someone. No Facebook (Mom would freak!).
    I’m strange.
    I push the covers aside and walk silently to the front door, the dream already lost, my heart slow and rhythmic. I can hear Rob snoring, little putters that sound like a distant moped. I open the door and pad out in my socks to the edge of the street where I can just make out a thin band of the sea, still dark, even in the light of the moon. A strip of aluminum in the night. My socks are soon soaked.
    My mother had me when she had just turned nineteen, which never seemed that unusual. But Alexa’s mom is forty-eight and Drew’s parents are over fifty. My mom was five years older than I am now when she had me. Maybe she and my dad met at a club where she was working. He was older, playing in a band. Maybe he wrote a song just for her.
    My mom keeps two pictures in a side-by-side silver frame. In the first, she is pregnant with me. Her hair is dark, and she wears a man’s white T-shirt over her round belly. Maybe my father’s shirt. In the picture, she’s looking away and laughing, her hand settled over her belly, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders. The other picture is me