Perfectly Good White Boy (19 page)

I wondered if she'd ever lost it or broke down in front of Tristan.

She wasn't going to lose it or break down now, though, thank god. She just looked tired, lying there on her bed, with her legs in the air, tugging off her socks.

I wondered if she put her legs in the air when she fucked Tristan.

Hallie never did that.

God, The Horn. It was a good thing no one could see into my mind.

She sat up, stretched. Opened a drawer in her dresser, pulled out a little bottle of nail polish.

“I'm gonna paint my toes. Want me to do yours?”

Chapter Eleven

If I had to map it out, when it was, it was probably then, that night when she made it clear that we were just nonsexual friends. That night she painted my toenails. She painted them blue—“to match your car,” she said, laughing—and she was grossed out by my toenails and the hair on my feet and that was when it was, when I knew it wasn't just friends with us, that I'd crossed over without her, somehow.

Because, The Horn.

Because I felt embarrassed by her looking at my feet and touching them and touching me in general.

Because now she was cute to me in a way I wanted to hog all to myself and not let anyone else have, because she smelled really good, kind of like cake, and something else, like the candles they kept in the bathroom and her hair was all shiny and long and she moved around in this completely unaware way, in a way I don't think she saw at all, or anyone else did, maybe not even Tristan, but I could see it now, her little boobs denting out the top of her shirt, the straps of her bra were yellow and sticking out the neck of her T-shirt, and her body, too, I could see how she had a little curve going there, and how it might feel, my holding onto her hips and ass, how you did when you were fucking, which made me wonder if she shaved down there too and if it was blond or darker or what, and did he go down on her, Tristan? Did he make her come? Did he know how to do that, or was it just silent between them, and he just got off, alone? Or could she get off
with
him? Because he was so hot or because the whole thing was all secretive? Or maybe she told him how to get her off? Because maybe Neecie knew how to get herself off? And wasn't afraid to say it to him, to show him? She wasn't afraid to go in sex stores or try a threesome, after all. Or say how things made her feel so bad.

You'd think that it would have been a good thing, us alone, with no parents, on New Year's Eve, in her bedroom. Privacy. But I was so panicked, I almost left. I felt like a dope, maybe it was the nail polish fumes, maybe it was just the niceness of the whole thing, the naïve way Neecie was acting, like I didn't have The Horn or any shitty suspicious motives. Like this was just another cookie-dough-in-the-basement situation. Less than that, even.

I just needed to get through this dumb year of school and ship out to boot camp and be done with it—
I am leaving and never coming back
—maybe I needed to be done with it too, where Hallie was concerned. But thinking of Hallie and The Horn and all of it just seemed impossible. I couldn't say no to Hallie. But I couldn't tell Neecie that. So, then, when I should have left or said anything else, probably, I just asked her if she wanted to smoke some weed.

“I've never done it,” she said.

“Really?”

“Sorry,” she said, her neck and face getting all red. She took a handful of her hair and shook it behind her back, like it was bothering her. Like it was alive or something. I tried to not be fascinated by that. I really did. But I was staring, and she assumed I was judging her about the pot.

“I'm not that cool, I guess,” she added.

“It's not a big deal. It's just an idea.”

She looked at her fingernails for a minute, which were freshly painted this weird yellowish color that reminded me of the spray paint Kerry used to mark the parking lot lines at the Thrift Bin.

“Will you do it too?”

“If you want, I won't. In case you freak out.”

She looked a little panicked.

“But the stuff I have, it's nice,” I said, real quick. About this I wasn't lying. This wasn't Kerry pot; it was some stuff Eddie got from his sister's boyfriend. “It's mellow. It'll make you laugh. You'll laugh about weird stuff.”

“Okay, let's do it,” she said. She got up then and started brushing her hair. Neecie was always brushing her hair, too. It sounded weird, but her hair was just this long blond sheet all the time, but she never really did anything with it, so it didn't seem overly vain, her brushing it constantly. She even kept a hairbrush in her purse. But I didn't want to watch her do it now; now it seemed like something different than before.

“You've got me kind of concerned. You know how I'm all uptight and tense sometimes.”

“You'll be fine.”

“What if I lose my mind and you have to take me to the emergency room?”

“That's not going to happen.”

“It happened to this girl Ivy's cousin knows. Her parents found out and it sucked.”

“That's not gonna happen to you,” I said. “I promise.”

She kept brushing her hair, so I went out to my car and got the weed, and when I came back in, Neecie was standing in the hallway.

“I put a pizza in the oven,” she said. “For eating, like you said. Where do you want to do this?” That made me laugh, how prepared she was being. Like getting high was a quiz and she was going to bust out the flashcards any second now.

“Somewhere with a window we can crack,” I said.

“The bathroom?”

“Sure,” I said.

We went into the DREAM bathroom. Neecie opened the window and the cold started streaming in. While I was getting my one-hitter ready, she sat down on the wicker chair beneath the window. I always thought having a chair in the bathroom was weird. I mean, if you're going to sit down in a bathroom, isn't the toilet the main place? Who wants to, you know,
lounge around
in a damn bathroom?

“Okay, so have you ever smoked a cigarette?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“This is kind of like that. Suck in the smoke, but don't exhale it right away. Just hold it. Maybe try to swallow, even. Then, when I tell you, exhale it out the window.”

“You should turn on the fan,” she said.

“I will, but I want to make sure you hear what I'm saying.” Background noise was always a bitch for Neecie.

She smiled at me, patted my hand. “You're so nice. You're my marijuana doula.”

“What?”

“Doula,” she said. “Assistant. The lady who stands by you while you're giving birth. Ices your head and massages you and tells you what's coming next. My mom had one with Melanie.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to not focus too much on that comparison. Neecie said things like that all the time, though.

I handed her the one-hitter, then lit it.

“Inhale,” I said and she did, her eyes going big. “Keep it in,” I said.

She did, sucking her cheeks in, her mouth a perfect little O like in a lipstick ad.

“Okay, okay: hold it. Hold it! Now, exhale!”

She turned and shot the smoke out the little window, just like I'd said, and then I whipped on the fan.

“Good job,” I said, looking straight at her. She smiled.

“It tastes terrible,” she said. “Like burnt alligator skin.”

“How would you know what burnt alligator skin tastes like?”

“I don't know,” she said, her lips curling in a grossed-out way. “That's the first thing that went through my mind. Do I do it again?”

“Yeah, but wait a second,” I said. “You want some water or anything?”

“No, I'm good. Let's go again,” she said, all business.

She ended up doing two more hits, and then I told her to stop.

She slid down in her chair, making the wicker squeak, and stared at toilet paper roll for a minute. The old thousand-yard stare.

“You okay?” I said.

“I don't know,” she said. “Everything's kind of . . . slow. But it kind of feels like nothing.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Maybe I should do more?”

“Just wait.”

We went back to the kitchen, and I took out the pizza, which had sort of burned, but given that I am a human garbage disposal, I didn't care. Neecie didn't want any pizza; she just drank a giant iced tea (mango). She seemed the same, except less chatty. Not that “chatty” was how I'd normally describe her, but she definitely seemed more deliberate. Slow.

“How you feel?”

“Good,” she said. “Kind of lotion-y.”

“What?”

“Liquid-y,” she said. “But, like, a
slow
liquid. Like lotion. Toothpaste-like. Is that normal?”

“Yeah,” I said, though I'd never felt lotion-y or toothpaste-like while high. I laughed.

“What's so funny?”

“You are,” I said. “Let's go listen to music in the piano room.”

“Why?”

“I think you'll like it.”

“Okay.”

The piano room at the Albertsons' was small and mostly taken up with a shiny black upright piano that I always wanted to touch but never did, thinking my greasy paws would fuck it up.

Neecie sat at the piano, played a chord that sounded pretty choppy.

“You know how to play piano?”

“Yeah. But I quit lessons a long time ago. Only Jessamyn takes them still.”

“You should play something.”

“No way. I feel mentally retarded,” she said, getting up from the piano. “I mean that literally. Not in the dickish way. I feel
so slow
. Actually
delayed
. Like my words are taking forever to reach you, through space. Like, I could grab them after they travel out of my mouth and take them back. I couldn't play anything. Aren't you going to put on some music?”

Mrs. Albertson had a ton of music. Dance stuff, which Neecie said she used for teaching fitness classes at the Y—Mrs. Albertson was kind of a health fiend—plus a bunch of old records. Classic rock, hippie stuff, disco, a mix of everything. I found a mix CD that Jessamyn had made called “Waiting Music” and put that on.

We sat down next to each other on the floor as the music started.

“What is this? Is this one of Jessamyn's?”

“Yeah.”

“She makes good mixes,” she said. “Jessamyn's always so secretive and sad about things. You never know what she thinks.”

Kind of like her older sister, I thought. Older cousin. Whatever.

She sighed and rested her head on my shoulder. My whole body tensed up.

“I feel kind of syrup-y, now,” she said. “Even slower.”

“Yeah,” I said. Still tense. My hands around my knees in a panicky grip.

“Is that how I should feel?”

“Sure,” I said.

Her head moved the other direction then, and I breathed out in relief.

“I feel like I could fall asleep,” she said. “Why don't I have the munchies?”

“I don't know,” I said. “You don't
have
to have them. It's probably better you don't, actually. It kind of destroys your high a little.”

“Makes you feel shitty?”

“No, just dilutes it. Makes it go away sooner.”

“Oh.”

She laid back on the carpet, then, which I approved of, as that meant no more head-on-the-shoulderness. But then she dumped her bare feet into my lap, bright yellow toenails and all. I told The Horn I would kick its ass if it didn't stop it already.

“Did you want to be a pianist when you were little?” I asked.

“What? A penis?”

“No,” I said, pointing at the piano, turning so she could see my mouth. “A pianist. Piano player.”

She laughed, then, and I knew it was good, her being high, because she couldn't tell I was tense. That I'd turned The Horn on her and was thinking all kinds of shit that I shouldn't be thinking. She was high and it was okay, she was oblivious, she couldn't stop laughing. Laughing like birds flying over us, tumbling around the whole room. Which made me start laughing, too. Then we were laughing at each other for laughing. Which is the kind of thing that happens when you're high, really, except I was sober as hell. Fucking weird.

“No. I didn't want to be a pianist,” she said, finally, when we stopped laughing. “Or a penis.”

“God, you're fucked up.”

She laughed. “I'm not into music like Jessamyn is. I like it, but I'm more into other things. I like science. I like writing. I like reading. I don't know. Maybe I'm just going to be one of those academic people. A professor, maybe. That's what my mom always says.”

“So, is that your future? Is that what you're gonna do in college and everything?”

“Who knows? It's not worth discussing. Can you even hear me? I feel like the words are so slow, traveling to you . . .” I shook my head, told her it was fine.

“I get kind of blank when I think about the future,” she said. “There are so many things, you know? How do I know what to pick, when I haven't seen any of the things out there?”

That sounded suspiciously like Hallie's breakup talk.

“Whatever,” I said. “You're going to college. You've already picked that. That's one thing, at least.”

“I guess. But really, college is like my ship out,” she said. “I'm going to just get on it and see what happens after that. It's just the vehicle. To find out what I really like to do. I can't get really specific. Especially now; I'm all lotion-y, you know. My words are even like lotion. Or pizza cheese. Stringy. Like spiderwebs. Weird . . .”

I laughed. I didn't want to, even though she sounded completely wasted and crazy. I knew what she meant, I guess. I'd never heard anyone describe getting high like that, actually. But I could see it.

“Plus I like a lot of things,” she said. “But a lot of them I just know about in books, you know?”