Virgin Territory Read online

  EGMONT

  We bring Stories to life

  First published by Egmont USA/Laura Geringer Books, 2010

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 806

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © James Lecesne, 2010

  All rights reserved

  www.egmontusa.com

  www.jameslecesne.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lecesne, James.

  Virgin territory / James Lecesne. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: When an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary appears on a tree at the Jupiter, Florida, golf course where fifteen-year-old Dylan Flack is caddying for the summer, he encounters a group of “pilgrims” who dare him to take a risk and find out what he really wants out of life.

  eISBN: 978-1-60684-184-6

  [1. Coming of age—Fiction. 2. Single-parent families—Fiction. 3. Emotional problems—Fiction. 4. Grief—Fiction. 5. Mothers—Fiction. 6. Grandmothers—Fiction. 7. Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint—Apparitions and miracles—Fiction. 8. Jupiter (Fla.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.L483Vi 2010

  [Fic]—dc22

  2010011318

  CPSIA tracking label information:

  Random House Production • 1745 Broadway • New York, NY 10019

  Though the town of Jupiter, Florida, is a place both real and true, the author has taken some liberties in terms of its geography and character in order to accomodate the story. All the characters are fictional and any similarity to the actual people of Jupiter is purely coincidental.

  Bob Dylan lyrics reprinted with permission. BUCKETS OF RAIN: Copyright © 1974 by Ram’s Horn Music; renewed 2002 by Ram’s Horn Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission. MEET ME IN THE MORNING: Copyright © 1974 Ram’s Horn Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  v3.1

  This book is dedicated

  to the memory

  of my mother.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Pluto

  Down to Earth

  The Black Hole

  The Speed of Light

  The Apparition

  The Other Cheek

  Meet Me in the Morning

  Pardon Our Appearance

  I Seen Stuff Happen

  String Theory

  Gravity

  Frankie Rey

  The Love of Your Life

  Buckets of Rain

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Pluto

  I’m staring out the passenger window of Doug’s banged-up Ford Explorer as we speed along I-95. I am, as usual, late.

  “Relax,” Doug says. “You’ll be there in two shakes.”

  And by that he means eventually.

  The guy on talk radio is yakking about the fact that Pluto, our ninth and smallest planet, was demoted a few years ago to something like a big rock spinning in space. It’s still there, he says, same as always, only now it’s less important; and he’s not happy about that. According to him, a bunch of Plutocrats have been very busy on the Internet insisting that planet Pluto has always been a little weird, too wobbly, smallish, and oddly shaped. And so what? That’s no reason to demote it to a number (134340). They’re claiming that the time has come for them to fight back and get Pluto officially reinstated with a name and a proper place in our solar system.

  “D’you hear that?” I ask Doug.

  “What?” he says, taking his eyes off the road for a second and looking around the car as if someone had just said something.

  “The radio.”

  “Oh,” he replies, and grips the steering wheel so tight his knuckles turn as white as beach sand. “Since when do you listen to the radio?”

  He’s right. I don’t usually listen to the radio. But earlier this summer Doug found out that I was trading e-mails with a woman with a filthy screen name. She was thirty-seven. I’m fifteen. You do the math. Doug screamed bloody murder, gave me the silent treatment, and then, as punishment, grounded me until further notice. He stomped around the house, threw things, and acted as though he’d been hired as gravity’s personal assistant. Finally, without warning, he took it upon himself to cancel my Internet service, confiscate my computer, and force me to live like a Luddite. Now I have no e-mail. I use a goddamn pencil to take notes, a pen if I’m feeling fancy. I listen to the radio, because things like gaming and blogging are out the window. Forget YouTube. Good-bye, Google and Twitter. Doug might as well have taken away my name, assigned me a number, and turned me into rock spinning in outer space. But I guess I’ve been that rock for a while now—ever since Kat died.

  “Didn’t I tell you I’d get you here on time?” he asks as I grab my backpack and slide out of the car and onto the solid ground of the parking lot. I’m already sprinting toward the clubhouse when I hear him call after me: “Didn’t I?”

  The old duffers at the golf course are trained to ignore me, so it makes no difference whether I’m late or early to work. While on duty as a lowly caddy, I try to keep from coughing, sneezing, or bringing attention to myself in any way that might announce the fact that I’m alive. The rule is: Do not speak unless spoken to. If the geezers happen to mispronounce a word, use the wrong grammar, or give false information, I keep my comments to myself and pretend to be an idiot.

  “Always liked that Pluto,” Mr. Schulman says. He’s not addressing me; he’s talking to a big bald guy named Mr. Loomis, telling him about Pluto. Obviously, he’s been listening to the same radio station. Mr. Schulman stares out toward the wild blue yonder as though he can actually see the nonplanet spinning at the edge of our solar system. Maybe it’s his squint, but he looks kind of wistful. For a minute, I think he might start bawling right there at the third tee.

  “Y’mean, Pluto, the Disney character?” asks Mr. Loomis. “The dog with the ears?”

  Mr. Schulman pushes his lips forward and shakes his head like he’s a giant fish caught on a line. “Nah. That’s Goofy. I’m talking the planet Pluto. Or what used to be Pluto. People want it back the way it used to be. Heard a thing on the radio about it.”

  “No kidding.”

  Mr. Loomis doesn’t care; you can tell by the way he closes his eyes and pretends he cares.

  “I mean, the scientists shouldn’t be allowed to just give a planet the hook,” says Mr. Schulman. “Just like that? No questions asked? It’s not right. People want it back.”

  Mr. Loomis nods as though he totally agrees.

  “And there’s a rumor we’re gonna be the next to go,” Mr. Schulman says.

  “Us?” Mr. Loomis’s voice sounds a little shaky.

  “Yeah, us. Jupiter. Get it?”

  Jupiter is the name of the town where we live. Jupiter, Florida. Mr. Schulman made a joke. This is the kind of lame-ass, LOL, tomfoolery that golf caddies like me are subjected to on a daily basis when they work at a third-rate seaside golf course. But hey, it’s better than looking for stray balls in the underbrush like when I first began working at Spring Hill.

  But then Mr. Loomis says that maybe the decision to fire Pluto as a full-fledged planet is not such a bad thing—maybe it’s a triumph of science over sentiment.

  “How come?” I ask.

  They both look at me as though I am a leather golf bag, shocked that I can speak.

  “How come wh
at?” Mr. Loomis shoots back at me. He’s wearing clashing plaids, so it’s hard to look directly at him for too long without getting dizzy. I stare at the grass instead and say:

  “How come it would be a triumph of science over sentiment?”

  “Because maybe it’s proof that scientists aren’t attached to Pluto like we are. They see it for what it is, not for what they want it to be.”

  Then Mr. Loomis squints at me and asks, “What’s your name, kid?”

  “Dylan,” I say. “Dylan Flack.”

  He then repeats my name as though he owns it and tells me that I’d better save my questions for later because he needs to concentrate on his game.

  Of course what I really want to ask Mr. Loomis is: What’s wrong with sentiment? What’s wrong with getting attached? Is it such a crime to allow sentiment to triumph over science, to let feelings override the facts? After all, science can’t explain everything.

  For instance, my mother always used to tell me that I was going to grow up to be a real heartbreaker. I’ve never been bad looking, but I’m not a total hunk, either. I fall somewhere in the middle. I mean, my individual features aren’t bad, but somehow when you put them all together, I just come out looking average. My birth certificate says that my eyes are brown, but if you stand very close and stare at me hard, you can see a thin nimbus of blue edging its way around the pupils. My hair is light brown and shoulder length. My nose is nothing special. And yet still my mother was able to see something in me that no one else could ever imagine, not even me. Love gave her second sight, and I don’t think science has a name for that.

  “How about a three-wood?” Mr. Schulman says, his gloved hand stretching toward me. He’s so busy squinting toward the swell and sweep of the green in the distance, he doesn’t notice that I handed him the club two minutes ago. I tell him so, and he inspects the thing as though he’s never seen it before. Then he gazes at the ball, white as a capped tooth, sitting in the grass. Makes no difference what club he uses for which shot; Mr. Schulman is strictly a hit-and-hope player.

  The truth is, I don’t hate being a caddy as much as I thought I would when I first took the job. It’s better than sitting around the house and hating my life. Right after Doug banished me from the Internet and took away my computer, I pretty much had nothing to do. My only actual friend, Corey McDermott, had been placed in a French-immersion course for all of June, July, and August somewhere in the Alps. And since I haven’t heard from Corey since the day he left for France, I’m beginning to think that we aren’t such good pals after all. All of June, I was on my own, depressed twenty-four/seven and looking at weeks of summer stretching out before me. On the Fourth of July, I didn’t even bother getting out of bed. I didn’t wear shoes for four days. I forgot to bathe.

  Doug came into my room, sat on the edge of my bed, and told me that the time had come for me to come up with “a plan.” If he hadn’t looked so pathetic, I might have laughed out loud. Instead, I explained that I was teaching myself to play “Positively 4th Street” on my guitar. Mistake. He explained that guitar playing was not a plan and I’d better find a real job or I’d be going to work with him on Monday.

  The landscaping outfit that Doug works for is called Down to Earth, and to tell you the truth, I’d rather be buried alive in someone’s backyard than work a day alongside my own father in broad daylight.

  Doug moves earth for a living. He digs holes, plants trees, deadheads flowers, and prunes shrubs. I guess you could say that he brings his work home with him, because in the evening when he walks through the door he’s covered in dirt from head to foot, and the outline of his sunglasses is stenciled onto his face like bikini tan lines; his clothes have given up their original color and have taken on the muted shades of earth. There are often soot deposits sitting in the wells of his ears, and his hair is permanently covered with a fine layer of dust. Even after he’s showered and changed into fresh clothes, the dirt lingers. His hands, which used to be smooth and sometimes even manicured, have become permanently chapped and rough. If he happens to touch me with his open palm, it’s like making contact with an Ork.

  Fortunately, around that time I noticed an ad for the Spring Hill Golf Course in the local PennySaver; at the bottom in small type, it said: “Jobs available at local private golf course. Groundskeepers, golf caddies, bar backs, and ball boys.”

  Being a ball boy meant I got paid a few bucks to spend my day padding around the grounds of the Spring Hill Golf Club and retrieving lost balls while time moved slower than the laws of physics allow. I’m talking the kind of flat-line dull that makes your eyes glaze over, your shoulders slump, and your feet ache. I walked and walked until I spotted a golf ball wedged against a chain-link fence. I picked up the ball and plunked it into a wire-mesh pail. Each found ball was a major highlight of my day, a win. My basic nine-to-five thought was: Kill me now.

  After two weeks of this, I went to see Prendergast. He’s a big guy with dark, sad eyes and a fringe of soft black hair. He wears khaki shorts and pastel-colored polo shirts with a Spring Hill emblem embroidered over his heart. Once upon a time, Prendergast was a golf pro, but then he started taking too many prescription drugs, lost his wife and his award-winning swing, ran out of money, lived in his car, went into rehab, and moved to Jupiter, where there are about ten million golf courses within a ten-mile radius. Spring Hill wasn’t Prendergast’s first job in town, and chances are it won’t be his last. If this one doesn’t work out for him, he’ll just move down the road and try another. He’s been at the Spring Hill Club for almost a year now, and though he seems pretty comfortable with his position, the clock is ticking, and the odds are stacking up against him. My fellow caddies are betting on the exact date that he’ll have his next relapse.

  Anyway, as I stood in the doorway of his cramped, windowless office, holding tight to my bucket of balls and projecting an attitude of total defeat, Prendergast was thumbing through some papers. I cleared my throat, and when I finally had his full attention, I explained why I absolutely had to give up the job of ball boy.

  “What do you mean you’re feeling anxious?” Prendergast asked me.

  “I mean very anxious,” I said. “I think it’s a result of spending too much time on my own in the middle of so much nature.”

  “Nature,” he said, as though the concept was new to him.

  “Yeah. Human nature I can handle, but things like grass? Grass freaks me out. And sky? Forget it. In New York City, where I come from, there’s hardly any grass to speak of. Lots of people, though. Lots. And, of course, buildings. Big buildings. Some of the tallest.”

  I could tell by the way he blinked at me and swallowed hard that he was thinking about the World Trade Towers, the two tallest buildings in New York. Both gone.

  “I was only six years old at the time,” I said, allowing my voice to crack a little. “But I’ll never forget it.” Then I shook my head and added, “Anyway, I can’t, I just can’t look for another stray golf ball or else … or else …”

  “Okay. How about taking a crack at being a caddy?” he suggested. I could tell he wanted to change the subject and get me out of his office. “I mean, being a caddy is not so much about grass. It’s more about the people.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I could give it a try.”

  And that’s how I came to be a caddy.

  Mr. Schulman’s gaze is directed toward a grove of pine trees in the distance. Unlike the pine trees of my childhood—the Christmas variety, which were generally fat and squat and covered in twinkle lights—the pines of Florida stand tall and thin with a toupee of green fluff swaying way up high. This particular stand of trees looks tense, almost comical, and out of place just planted there in the middle of the third fairway. But that’s the whole idea—the trees didn’t just accidentally grow there; they put them there in order to make an obstacle. While many holes on the Spring Hill course are designed as a straight shot from the tee to the putting green, this one is called a “dogleg,” because it bends d
ramatically. I’ve watched plenty of golfers attempt to cut the dogleg, but it’s always accompanied by the sound of the ball hitting a tree trunk. Watching a golfer have a fit because the world isn’t going according to plan isn’t exactly my idea of how to spend a summer afternoon, but then on the other hand sitting alone at home teaching myself to play the guitar isn’t that great, either. Given the choice, I’d rather be out and about watching other people make fools of themselves; you never know what can happen.

  Mr. Schulman hasn’t even teed-off yet. He’s standing there, addressing the ball and shimmying his behind as if trying to fit himself into a tight spot. That’s when he notices the women.

  “Kid,” Mr. Schulman says to me without taking his eyes off the four middle-aged women who are standing in the grove. “Go find out what’s going on. We don’t want a lawsuit when someone gets hit on the head.”

  I lay down his big leather golf bag and go trotting across the close-cropped grass and into the shade of the grove. Spring Hill isn’t one of the many fancy courses for which Jupiter is famous. For instance, it doesn’t offer perks like freshly laundered towels, cappuccino machines, and valet parking; and though it’s technically a private club owned and operated by the King of the Geezers, Jack Felder, the place is very of the people, for the people, and by the people. And by that I mean just about anybody can wander onto the grounds without being asked a lot of questions or expected to show an ID.

  “Hey,” I say as soon as I set foot on the mound of soft sand and imported woodchips. “What’s up?”

  All four of the women look over at me and smile. A compact woman with shiny black hair and a toothy smile waves at me as if she needs a refill on her coffee.

  “It’s my boss,” I say loud enough so that they all can hear me. “He doesn’t want to hit you with his golf ball, and you’re kinda in the way. A lot of times the golfers send their balls flying into the trees here, and it can get dangerous.”

  The woman who waved to me is walking toward me. She walks like a marionette, her legs lifting higher than necessary and her white running shoes sinking into the soft cedar groundcover every time she takes a step. She’s a small, pretty woman with rosy cheeks and lush eyelashes—but as she gets closer I can see that her teeth look too big for her mouth and her bangs are covering a very broad forehead.