Perfectly Good White Boy (2 page)

“People shoot at deer in cornfields?” Hallie asked. Like she thought I was some kind of crazy lunatic.

“Well, I was up in the deer stand when I shot mine, but yeah.”

“You shot it from a tree?”

“Well . . . yeah, but . . .”

“I owe you a beer, Sean,” she said. “Come on.”

So, then I just kind of fell into this hole. The Hallie Martin Hole. It was a decent place to be. She smelled really good. And she looked even better. Hallie's hair, when she pulled it out of her pony-tail, was dark reddish blond. She was a lot shorter than me, but most everyone is. I couldn't stop looking at her.

I had no idea why she was hanging out with me.

But I went along with it. Me and Hallie drinking more beer. Me and Hallie drinking shots of tequila. Me and Hallie playing bad Frisbee. Me and Hallie and her friends, getting introduced. Me and Hallie, suddenly, this
thing
.

Of course, Eddie was not around to witness this. Which was too bad. He would lose his mind when he found out. Still, we were kind of on a need-to-know basis these days, Eddie and me. We'd been friends since we were ten years old. So I didn't say shit to him about him always dogging younger girls and his swoopy gelled-up hair, and he never said shit about why I broke his nose right before Valentine's Day and he had to go to the St. Albans Dance looking like hell. I could have told him why, of course. But when I tried to explain, he said he knew, and then we just waited in silence in the principal's office, him holding the ice pack the nurse gave him, until our parents showed up.

My phone beeped. As if Eddie'd realized I was on to something. He'd sent his typical text. Too lazy for words, he'd only send photos, and they were usually gross. Porn shots or whatever. This time it was a shot of two horses fucking. I wondered what it meant, but couldn't text back or laugh, because me and Hallie were sitting around the bonfire and she was surrounded with her friends and they were whispering and laughing and the girl Hallie'd been playing Frisbee with said, “He'll be perfect,” and another one added, “Way better than fucking
Dan
,” and then Hallie looked at me and smiled and I was so embarrassed that I got up and went to take a piss in the bushes.

I mean, this was fun and everything, but she was going to college, and I had another year of dumbass high school.

Fuck.

I finished pissing. I turned around. And there was Hallie.

“Hey,” I said. Hoping to god she hadn't been watching me piss.

“I thought you were leaving,” she said.

“No, me and Eddie are camping out all night.”

“Did you set up your tent yet?”

“No. Maybe he did. I don't know.” I thought of the horses fucking photo. Wondered if that meant the tent was now occupied?

Then, though I'd barely had done up my belt, with no plan or asking or anything, I just moved forward, closer, kind of towered over her, in a way that made her seem smaller than before, in a way that made me want to scoop her up and put her in my pocket, like she might run away. Before something else about this weird, good situation would break. I just reached out to her waist and hooked her toward me, my hand gripping the edge of her skirt, looking for anything to grab onto. And I kissed her. I was sorta wasted and not thinking much beyond
GRAB SMASH GIRL.

But she was into it. Which was amazing in itself. Because it couldn't have been that smooth. She was on her tiptoes, wobbling in those damn cowboy boots. But somehow, it worked.

So we made out. Nothing really involved. I maybe touched her boob over her shirt a little by accident, but it was mostly kissing. This all went down with us both up against a tree in the dark, away from the rest of the party. She smelled like bonfire and tasted like beer, but her mouth was super soft and warm.

After a little while, she pushed back from me, folded her fingers beneath my belt, looked down. Right at The Horn I was rocking there. Jesus.

“Carenna and I set up our tent already,” she said. “She might already be in it. But do you want to go and see? It might be more private . . .”

“Okay,” I said.

“Do you want to get another beer?”

“No. Do you?”

“No.”

We walked quickly toward where all the tents were, between the house and cornfield. Nobody saw us. And we didn't say a word to each other. She checked that her tent was empty and then she told me to take off my shoes, so I did, and stood there while she took off her cowboy boots. Then we went inside.

Once she zipped the flap shut, bam! We were back at it.

Except now she was under me on top of a bunch of sleeping bags and blankets. I didn't check my watch, but it couldn't have been that long until we were both stripped down to our underwear. But maybe it was longer, because of the way it happened. My shirt for her shirt. Then her bra, but only after I spent a lot of time feeling over it. Then my jeans. Then her skirt. There was a strict kind of order for the whole thing, unlike the other drunk hookups I'd had. But I followed everything she did. I was so turned on I would have done anything she said, anyway. Except she didn't say anything. It was mostly signals: her hands going here or pushing mine there.

Finally, she did talk, though. Just as her hand went down my boxers and started rubbing my dick, she said, “We can't have sex, okay, Sean? I can't yet. Okay?”

What? “Okay,” I said.

“You're not mad?”

Was she kidding? We were almost
naked
. My hands were on her
tits
. She was giving me a
handjob.
Why would I be
mad
?

“Why would I be mad?”

“I don't know. We just can't do it tonight. But I've thought about it, and I've got this plan, okay? I'm not just being a prude.”

JESUS. I was about to come all over her, pretty much, and she was talking about being a
prude
?

“Obviously you're not,” I said. “Not that you're . . . you know . . .” I sort of nudged her hand off my dick so I could actually talk like a normal person.

“A slut?”

“I didn't say that. I just . . . what's your plan?”

“It's not really a plan,” she breathed into my ear. “More of a
rationale
.”

“Okay...”

“If we do it tonight, then what would we do next weekend?” She laughed in my ear and all my hair stood on end. Christ.

“Next weekend . . .?”

“Well, that's when we'll go out on a real date. Next Friday's my birthday and I turn eighteen. So we could do something fun for that. Okay?”

I felt like a baby again. I wouldn't turn eighteen for months.

But I just said okay, and we kissed again, but her hand didn't go back into my boxers. Which was fine. Everything else was so great. Her body, her whispering into my ear, all of it weird, but still great.

Then a girl voice shout-whispered right outside the tent.

“Hallie? The cops are here!”

We got dressed faster than hell. It was a total disaster. My watch snagged on the sleeping bag. She couldn't find her shirt. The tent flap zipper jammed. She wanted to run toward the house, and I knew they'd check there and all the other outbuildings, so I had to convince her to go toward the cornfield. It was like she'd never been caught at anything and didn't know how to be sneaky, almost.

When we'd gotten to the tree with the deer stand, she looked at me like I was crazy.

“You want me to climb a tree?”

“The deer stand's up there. It's like a little platform. We can sit on it. You'll see it soon enough. Grab the little wooden handholds. It's not that high up.”

“How do I know those handholds are safe?”

“They're fine! I nailed them up myself! Just go!” I kind of just pushed her into it, put out my hands so I could boost her up, and then she laughed so loud I had to shush her. Seriously, she seemed like she'd never been busted before for anything. The climb wasn't a big thing, given that Grandpa Chuck wasn't the most fit old guy in the world, but Hallie hadn't struck me as the tree-climbing type. Still she launched up that fucker in no time and I followed her, surprised at her speed. The Horn didn't mind seeing flashes of her panties, either.

But once up in the deer stand, I sat on the outer half of the platform while she clutched the tree trunk like she was scared now. We were quiet. Watching and listening. Flashlights scanning around the barn and outbuildings. Cops hollering. The red swooping glow of the cop-car lights making everything all swimmy and sickening. Reminding me of the day in February, my dad in the bathroom. Which was nothing I wanted to think about up here with Hallie.

“Do you think they'll see us?” she whispered.

“Not if we're quiet,” I said.

“Are you sure? Wouldn't they check up here?”

“How would they know there's a deer stand?”

“I don't know.”

“People don't tend to look up, generally,” I said. “Plus, just look at that fat fuck.” I pointed toward the one cop who stood in the headlights of his cop car, talking into his radio. “You think
he's
going to climb up and get us?”

“But it's like a treehouse, kind of?” She ran her hand over the little two-by-fours we'd nailed up there. “A little treehouse that someone started and didn't finish. Won't they see the little ladder things? Don't you think . . .”

“Shhh . . .” I said. “They'll only check if they hear something.”

Honestly, I was more concerned about the sex mood being totally killed, and since I had no idea how it had started to begin with, there was pretty much no way I could get it going again without seeming completely dickish or awkward. And Hallie was pretty freaked out. So I let her talk, all her worries, how her parents thought she was at Carenna's house for the night and that she'd just been given her car as a present from her parents and everyone would be so pissed if she got busted, because they thought she was so good and perfect with her awesome grades and everything. It sounded like she might cry, and I didn't know what to do. Like hold her or tell her it'd be okay? But I couldn't say that, because what did I know?

“They'll never find us,” I said. “We're being quiet. It's too dark out here; they'll never come out into the mud. Look at how dirty your boots are.” I pointed, and she knocked one boot on the tree trunk, raining clumps of mud down below.

“Don't!” I said, putting my hand on her knee. Then snatching it back, which freaked her out even more. Like the cops would be there any second now, seeing a little hunk of dirt from a tree that far away. So I tried to distract her again.

“Hey, Hallie,” I said. It was the first time I'd said her name. I'd just known it and had never said it. “I'm gonna make a guess here, but I'm betting there's no way those are your cowboy boots. Because you don't seem like the kind of person who
owns
cowboy boots . . .”

“I don't?”

“No.”

She smiled at me and I was all The Horn. Again.

“What makes you think that, Sean?” she asked.

“I bet you came into the Thrift Bin—where I work,” I said. “With all your friends you planned the party with. And you all laughed at all the junky shit and weird-smelling old clothes. But you guys found everything there, anyway. Tried it all on, laughing your asses off. All those bandanas and hats and shit.”

She leaned closer to me. “How'd you guess?”

“Shh . . .” I said. One of the cops was talking into his radio, and I was trying to listen. Wondering if he'd call for more backup. There were only two cars here and that meant they were only just busting the party. They'd need more cops if they wanted to round people up and give them underage consumption tickets.

She whispered into my ear. “No, really, how'd you guess?”

Her voice in my ear tickled. Damn. Having The Horn up in a tree in a deer stand was one experience I'd never banked on.