Tween Hobo Read online

  I’m making my choice. I’m going West, to find the truth: the truth about my brother, the truth about America. And don’t freak out, I obvs have my phone so my parents can text me and stuff. Plus I’m on Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram, so I’m not exactly hurtling off the grid. And I brought tampons, in case I ever get my period. And Junior Mints. And a knife. And my sticker collection.

  But if anything happens to me out on the road, like if I die or whatever? Then bury me ’neath a willow tree. And you can keep my slap bracelets.

  OMG!!!!! HERE COMES THE TRAAAAAAIIIINNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  * * *

  * Which, either way, she would have been a #Belieber.

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/8

  I’m a solitary, capable highwayman with a high side ponytail.

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/9

  All my tattoos will be tramp stamps, regardless of location.

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/10

  Brother, can you spare a dime? Sister, can I borrow your DVD of Vampire Diaries, Season 2?

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/11

  A hobo’s gotta live by the whimsicalities of chance. Which is why I keep my iPod on shuffle.

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/12

  Sittin’ on a log, updatin’ my blog.

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/13

  Found a dead possum in the woods, named her Lily.

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/14

  If the Biebz ever wanted to ride the rails, I’d show him what for and I’d watch over him as he slept.

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/15

  My recent Google search history includes poisonous berries, switchblades, and Caboodles.

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/16

  If the Lord didn’t intend for me to be a rollin’ stone, he wouldn’t have invented trains—or Heelys.

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/17

  Need a sip a’ cool water so’s I kin take my ADD meds.

  When I’m on the road I forget my troubles, like how Dad said absolutely no to a vampire-theme bat mitzvah.

  January 18

  * * *

  Philadelphia-ish

  I am LOL-ing so hard right now because here I am in a dusty boxcar going nine hundred miles an hour through the dark of night and nobody can tell me it’s past my bedtime!!!!

  By the light of my Flashlight! app I can see the rusty metal walls of the boxcar, my chipping panda-bear nail art, and the rough, weather-beaten faces of my fellow hobos. So much has happened since I caught my first freight out of town, I just hope my glitter pen doesn’t run out trying to scribble it all down.

  How can I describe the rush I got from “catching out” on my first try?! I’ll just say it was even better than the time I won that free roller-skating pizza party. When the train came roaring into the woods behind my school, I did just what Mr. Brink said: I ran alongside it till I could catch hold of the side, and I tossed my Hello Kitty sleeping bag onto the flatcar bed, and then I just hauled myself up. Skinned my knee pretty bad, but luckily, I brought my Lisa Frank Band-Aids with me :)

  There was a rusty ladder on the side of the boxcar, and I climbed it all the way up to the top of the train. And—wow. We were zooming through the woods, faster than the Batman ride at Six Flags, and the wind rushed through my hair with such force that my sparkly headband blew right off (RIP, sparkly headband!!!!). I pumped my fists and twerked a bit because everything was one and everything was infinite. I knew I was leaving Charlottesville and fifth grade far behind. Then I turned around just in time to see that the train was about to enter a terrifying tunnel.

  Having just begun to live, I was not ready to die. I threw myself flat down on my belly and grabbed on tight to a rusty latch. We roared into the tunnel and everything went dark and the tunnel filled with thick, black smoke. I was choking and coughing like crazy, and PS, I will never say yes to drugs.

  Miraculously, I survived! Remind me to say thanks to God at my bat mitzvah! We got out of the tunnel and the sky opened up and I could breathe again, better and deeper than ever before in my eleven years of breathing. I was hooting and hollering and generally getting crunk. And then an even bigger miracle occurred. I met my new best friend.

  Wiping the soot out of my eyes, I saw him there, on top of the train. He was just strumming a guitar and being awesome. Cautiously, I went over to give him a high five and introduce myself. His name is Stumptown Jim. He wears a blue bandana around his neck, has like twenty scars, is super old (he is thirty), and he’s been out on the road for a heck of a long time. He is a “socialist,” which I guess means he goes to a lot of parties? And he shared his beef jerky with me.

  When Stumptown Jim first saw me, skipping along on the top deck of the train, in my purple jeggings and sparkly Uggs, he was a little surprised. But when we “got to talkin’ ” (his phrase), he realized that we actually have a lot in common. For one thing, we both love freedom. For another—well, okay, the freedom thing is pretty much it. But we’re besties.

  He’s asleep now, across the boxcar from me, but as soon as he wakes up, we’ll play another game of MASH. We already played once. Stumptown Jim is going to marry Taylor Swift and have four babies and live in a shack. (Even a shack would be a step up for him.) And if that doesn’t happen, we made a pact: we’re gonna be Friends with Bindlestiffs.

  Stumptown Jim says sometimes an old hobo takes a young’un under his wing and teaches him the ways of the road. I was like, oh, just like Usher and the Biebz! He didn’t understand. I pulled up Justin Bieber’s Wikipedia on my phone and was like, “There are many things you can teach me, and perhaps, there are some I may be able to teach you.” I saw Stumptown’s jaw kind of tense up. But then he just nodded, with respect. He is my mentor.

  “What are you doin’ out on the road, kid?” he asked me. I filled him in on how I’m going to find my brother and bring him home so that my family will magically be fixed and my parents will wake up out of their zombie trance and my brother will be nice to me again. “But in the meantime,” I added, “I’m gonna have some fun.” He said nothing, but I saw a certified twinkle™ in his eye.

  Stumptown Jim has a guitar and he knows lots of songs. He’s teaching them to me, but I’m making up my own lyrics.

  Go to sleep, you weary hobo

  In your shorts that say PRINCESS across the butt . . .

  One more thing, before I drift off—this boxcar could use more glow-in-the-dark stars all over it.

  Hot-pink nail polish looks good no matter how many fingers you still have.

  Hobo Style

  Each time a new bum hoists hisself up on this freight, I’m all, MAKEOVER!!!!! Cuz it’s only fun to be a hobo if you can look good doing it. Luckily, there is nothing cooler in the fashion universe these days than the hobo look (spend five seconds googling the Olsen Twins if you don’t believe me). Big hobo trends include begging, robbing, dodging John Law—and skinny jeans. In case you ever find yourself riding the rails, here are some basic tips for your fashion survival:

  • Rag + sequins = party rag.

  • Every hobo needs a blanket that can go from day to night.

  • When rations get scarce, you can eat strawberry lip gloss.

  • Bindle is the new black.

  • The secret to hair this dirty is—don’t wash it.

  • French braids can really up the wow factor of a filthy beard.

  • General rule of thumb? Put a braid in it.

  • If it comes in corncob, I want it.

  • Boots wit da furrrr: good for hiding out on mountain passes.

  • I know this is weird but I secretly wish I had braces and crutches and glasses and was missing an arm.

  • I’m not sure what bootlegging is but it sounds supertrendy.

  • When twigs and berries get stuck in your hair, think of them as
nature’s accessories.

  • Nobody ever had too many coonskin caps.

  • Tween Hobo packing list: spork, jorts, banjitar.

  Bottom line: hobos are all about layering. Oh, and here’s a tip: don’t ever get photographed next to a baby wild animal. It will look cuter than you.

  Now, any a’ you drunken stiffs have a hair thing I can borrow?

  Why should I go from rags to riches if rags are on trend?

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/20

  Tween Hobo tip: apple juice = pretend whiskey

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/21

  Just invented a game called Angry Birds. It involves throwing rocks at telephone wires.

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/22

  Soon’s I git rid’a my retainer, I’m rippin’ out all my teeth, replacin’ ’em with gold.

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/23

  Traded two stolen cabbages for a Ring Pop. #priorities

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/24

  Stumptown Jim’s been all the way along the Oregon Trail, and he also searched the world for Carmen Sandiego.

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/25

  Foragin’ in these woods for berries and such, I’m real careful, cuz my pediatrician said I have a nut allergy.

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/26

  Thinkin’a hitchin’ my way into town to git my ears pierced.

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/27

  Shout out to animal crackers, ridin’ around in a box just like me.

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/28

  Stumptown Jim and I split the work fair & square: he chops the wood and makes the fire, I update the Bunheads wiki.

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  1/29

  Wind in my face, creek rushin’ by—love goin’ on a shopping spree for twigs!

  Tween Hobo

  1/30

  I’m obsessed with nail art.

  They couldn’t make an American Girl doll of me cuz it would have to come with a small weapon.

  February 1

  * * *

  The Big Apple

  Cold here in New York Town. Still I could murder some fro-yo.

  Round about Newark I realized the train was heading straight for the Greatest City on Earth, the place where they shot all six seasons of Gossip Girl—and I got psyyyyyyccchhhheeeddd. I’m a pretty sophisticated kid, and here I was, arriving in the international mecca for Great Art and Culture. I was determined to soak in as much of it as possible, and I knew just where to start. So as soon as the passenger train pulled into Penn Station, I jumped out from under the seat where I’d hidden myself and hightailed it to the Disney Store in Times Square.

  And it was like, whoa. What an afternoon! I can safely report, in case anyone was worried, Art and Culture are killing it right now. I hit up the Disney Store, M&M’s World, Nintendo World, and of course, American Girl Place. All of them rocked me with their colors, their passion. The only problem is, I spent the whole chunk of change I’d brought along for my journey. So now I have these heart-shaped Minnie Mouse sunglasses, this plush green M&M’s guy, and a full set of accessories for Addy, the escaped slave doll from the Civil War era, but I don’t have Addy and I don’t have any money. Oh, well. This miniature wood-and-metal ice-cream maker has gotta come in handy at some point.

  Speaking of Addy, I need to take my Ritalin.

  Okay, so there I was, just having a ball, eyeing ladies’ pocket-books and wondering how much it costs to go ice-skating in this town, and whether they tase you point-blank if you try to sneak out onto the rink, and suddenly, without warning, my personal party got badly busted up. No, it wasn’t that somebody forced me to go to ten museums, which is what happened the one time my parents took me to New York. And no, it wasn’t the moment when the lady at the TKTS booth told me, quite heartlessly, that Shrek the Musical was not playing on Broadway anymore. It was worse. I ran into my FREAKING AU PAIR.

  In case you don’t know what an au pair is, let me explain. It’s like a babysitter on crack. A normal babysitter lives down the street or something and comes over for a couple hours while your parents go out to dinner. An au pair comes over from the freaking Netherlands and never leaves your house again, regardless of whether your parents are out to dinner or not!!! She eats dinner with your family!!! She goes on vacation with you!!! And if she’s anything like my au pair, she wears inappropriate booty shorts and spends all her time on Skype with her boyfriend in Holland. And her name is Honig. Which she says sounds like “honey” in Dutch. Which, sorry, Dutch. You lost that round.

  Okay, so I’m just loitering in the crowded accessories wing of a Forever 21, just innocently plunging my forearms elbow-deep into a giant plastic tub of scrunchies, because it kind of relaxes me, when I hear that shrieking Dutch-accented voice go, “Ah, now the monkey comes out of the sleeve!” I whip around to see Honig, in the flesh, standing there with another tall, blonde Dutch girl who might as well be her identical twin, only they’d be too dumb to pull off a successful Parent Trap situation. Both of them are wearing hot-pink pajama bottoms with “I NY” printed all over, tiny neon tank tops that barely cover their embarrassing boobs, and, because after all it’s below freezing outside, cropped faux-fur vests. In short, they look great—but I’m not happy to see them.

  Honig grabs me by the ponytail, air-kisses me five times, then goes to her friend, “Hallo, Kaatje, dis is de little poepje dat de agency, dey giff me! Dis little kloothommel, she run away! But fee find you now, ja?” I grimace. Kaatje chortles. Honig whips out her flip-phone. “I call your parents, but I haff no more minutes on de pay-as-you-go. . . . Kaatje, you haff minutes?” Kaatje hurtles through a paragraph or more that I imagine translates basically to “Who cares about this kid, we are on our mandatory one-weekend-off-a-month, we need to hit up H and M and then go to Applebee’s to meet up with those sexy freaks on that Italian teen tour.” I try to duck away while Kaatje pronounces things, but Honig catches me. “I know what!” she screams. “You come fis us, you haff crazy weekend fis de big girls, ja?! Fee get de ears pierced, fee go to de techno club, fee make a short visit to de 9/11 Ground Zero, and den fee go back to Charlottesville, okay?”

  As fun as all that sounded, I was like, yeah, no. How could I explain my American quest to these Europeans? How could I make them understand that I had heard, nay, felt the words “Go West, young man” in my very soul and had not gotten offended at the fact that they were totes sexist but had just done a little of the ol’ cut-and-paste so the message said, “Go West, tween of unspecified gender”?! How could I let them know that this was my destiny, that I was not made for classes and homework, but for a life on the open road, with the sky as my teacher, the prairie as my science room, and the train whistle as my bell! I knew full well that my parents might miss me, that I’d probs have to repeat fifth grade, but these are the risks you take when you commit yourself to high-octane rambling. No, I was headed West and there was nothing that could stop me. And I would not return until I had tasted every slice of the American pie—nut allergies be damned.

  Plus, I was going to find my brother. I didn’t want to mention that to Honig, who would probably just start blathering about how cute my brother is, because she obvs has a giant crush on him, which raises the question of why my parents got a Dutch au pair who’s only three years older than Evan and why Evan couldn’t just be the one to take care of me like he always used to. But I digress. However, it suddenly occurred to me that as a supposedly “adult” member of the household, Honig might have some information as to my brother’s whereabouts. I schemed for a second and then said, “Okay, Honig. You got me. I’ll come with you. But will you just tell me one thing? Do you know where my brother is?”

  Honig blinked. “Oh, ja,” she said. “He’s in de rehab.”

  Rehab?! What the heck is that?! But Honig continued, “He’s in de California.
Vit all de big celebrities. Like James Van Der Beek. Who is Dutch.”

  California!!! MY BROTHER’S IN CALIFORNIA?!?! Well, conveniently, so is Justin Bieber! I now had every reason in the world to get out there, out to that golden West, by whatever means necessary.

  So just as Kaatje got out her flip-phone so Honig could rat me out to my mom and dad, I made a break for it. Just darted and swerved like crazy out of Forever 21 and through Times Square, narrowly avoiding a collision with the real-life Arby’s oven mitt, pausing to give the real-life SpongeBob a courteous high five, and the next thing you know I was at Port Authority, hopping a bus bound for Freehold with Stumptown Jim. But I wasn’t planning to stay in New Jersey for long. If one thing was clear to me now it was that I needed to leave the gloomy East behind, as far and as fast as I possibly could.

  (Oh, and if you’re wondering how I got so independent, fact is, aside from my parents and my au pair I’m basically an orphan.)

  Heart-shaped sunglasses, bound for glory.

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  2/2

  I’m obsessed with One Direction—westward ho!

  Tween Hobo @TweenHobo

  2/3

  Holdin’ onto the side of a westbound freight ain’t so hard as holdin’ onto a middle-school relationship.