Perfectly Good White Boy (16 page)

Eddie asked, “Where are you going?” all panicked, like I was ditching him, which I was, but Jesus. That would teach him to think before he put on a pink sweater again.

“Be right back,” I said.

I ran the shitty basement and then back up through the living room, down the hallway. The bathroom door was shut now, at least. And no one was in the kitchen. Though there was a hallway off it that led to somewhere and I could hear people talking and I didn't pause for a second to look.

It was Shane's bedroom, and there was Neecie, sitting cross-legged on Shane's bed, wearing a giant pair of headphones. The expensive kind that asshole kids went around wearing between classes in the hallways, like they were actual deejays and couldn't live one second without music.

She waved at me, Shane behind her on a chair, staring at me. I realized I had nothing to say. No reason to be standing there.

“I'm listening to this band Shane likes,” Neecie said, talking in that loud way people do when they are wearing headphones. “What's up? You leaving?” She pulled off the headphones, and they messed up her hair.

“No,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, looking at me funny.

Shane lit a cigarette, blew the smoke toward me. It reeked, and I couldn't imagine smoking in the same room you slept in.

Neecie stood up, set the headphones on Shane's bed. “Should we get another drink?”

Shane said, “I'm good. I don't drink that cocoa shit.” But he was behind her and she couldn't see his face and so I nodded, said yes.

It was awkward, but only for me, because Neecie breezed out and then we were in the kitchen and there were Kerry and Wendy and Eddie.

“Took you long enough to bring my drink back,” Kerry said, touching Neecie's back in a way that creeped me out. But she just smiled and said she forgot and hopped up to sit on the counter and started scrolling through stuff on her phone.

Kerry ladled more cocoa into mugs and filled them with Hot 100 and Rumple Minze and passed them around. Wendy opened a cupboard and took out a package of cookies and passed some to Eddie, who shook his head. I wondered if Kerry had smoked her out. I wondered if her wife knew she was doing this, hanging out at this gross coworker's party. It seemed like it was beneath her, to be around kids like us.

Shane came back into the room, still smoking. He ashed into the sink, stood beside Neecie, who looked up from her texting to talk to him. I wished I could hear them, but Kerry had turned on his shitty seventies rock so I knew it'd be hard enough for her to communicate with Shane face to face. I slammed back my cocoa, then. Feeling annoyed and pissed off. For no reason. Eddie nudged me.

“Is she gonna get with that guy or something?” he asked.

“Dunno.”

“He's like, way older.”

“I know.” I drank some more, and Kerry and Wendy came over.

“You guys want to smoke out?” Kerry asked.

Eddie's eyes got wide. “Sure.”

“It better be that mellow shit, Kerry,” Wendy said, biting into a cookie. “I have to work tomorrow.”

“It's mellow shit. You've smoked this stuff before.”

I was shocked about Wendy. You had to be piss-tested to use the baler and probably the forklift, too. Did Kerry have someone else pee in the cup for him? Maybe Wendy did it for him? I was starting to feel like everyone had weird secret relationships now. It made me feel paranoid as hell.

Of course, it wasn't mellow shit; Kerry never had mellow shit and I knew it, but five minutes later, I was with everyone all circled up and claustrophobic in Kerry's bedroom, smoking out of Kerry's little red glass bong.

“I'm good,” I said after two passes, knowing I'd be destroyed with another.

Eddie was coughing his head off, and Wendy was laughing at something Kerry said, but they passed it around some more and then I just knew that Eddie was going to be a total disaster. Wendy and Kerry seemed totally normal, which was something I never understood, how people could smoke pot and not act high. It seemed like a superpower. Or a waste.

After that, though, as if by magic, or marijuana, the party got fun. Some girls showed up—adult women, really, Kerry and Wendy's age—and that seemed to make everything less grim and shitty and just kind of loose. Having girls around always makes any party better. Kerry hugged and kissed a bunch of them hello, which was weirder still. One of them hung off him, too, which was strange, but her name was Brianne or Brianna or Deanna or something, and she was teasing him and he was laughing and suddenly, everything was fun, all mixed up and loud and people down by the bonfire talking and smoking and someone playing Christmas carols again and Neecie and Wendy were laughing their heads off, wearing Santa hats, and it was all good.

Kerry introduced Brianne/Brianna/Deanna to me and Eddie, and she was funny; she had this tattoo of a fish that was saying, “I'm hooked!” and it didn't make any sense but she was telling us the story of how she got it and I wondered if she and Kerry were fucking and figured they were. Or had. Or might yet tonight. And somehow that didn't make me depressed or anything, just kind of, like, all right. Resigned. Everything going along, nothing stopping, sometimes you were up, sometimes you were down, nothing you could do but just roll along and accept it. I knew this was the pot, of course, but it also seemed true, down-to-my-balls
True
, and I wished I could call Hallie and tell her this, with my mouth, though, not in a text, because I couldn't explain it in short sentences. I'd need to talk it all out.

I went inside, then, to do it. Call her. Just tell her that it was okay, and we didn't even need to hook up again, and it wasn't because we had, either, and I could take back my whole
I love you
thing because I understood her now, what she had meant that night before she left in the weird un-breakup breakup we had, how there was possibility and it was all so good and we shouldn't stop, we shouldn't rule it out, we should just follow our ideas, and plus, that was how I knew the Marines would be good for me, it was my thing, it was where I was supposed to be, where I would fit. Because it felt right, no matter what people said, it felt like the story I would tell about myself, I would be like Shane's brother or Kerry's brother, but not a prick; I would be in the Marines, I would know things, I would go there and then I'd come back and still be me, but better, because that was how life worked, if you just fucking let it. I would tell Hallie this and she would say something good and then I'd tell my mom, too, and she'd get it and then it'd be okay and I was leaving and never coming back but maybe I would come back, after a while, eventually, and everyone would see, then, how it was okay, how I'd done it, and you just never know what a person can do with their life and themselves, really, which was fine because everything, all of it, was fine. Good.

But there was a loud ping-pong game in the basement. And upstairs in the living room people were eating kettle corn out of one of those giant holiday tins and watching
A Christmas Story
, which was sort of lame, but still festive, I guess, since they were laughing and stuff, but it was still too loud to talk on the phone and organize my mind around what I wanted to say so I went into the kitchen, where Neecie was sitting on the counter and Shane was kind of standing between her legs, his hands on her knees, talking to her, super close, like they'd been kissing. Or would be, soon. Either way, I just stood there in the doorway and stared at them. She couldn't see me; her long hair was around her face and Shane was talking in her ear and I felt like throwing up for some reason, but I couldn't move, because she was sitting right next to the sink where it'd be best to barf and I didn't want either of them to see me, and I knew the bathroom wasn't far away, but I couldn't move, because what the hell was happening to her and everyone else? What was making Shane think he could rub his big gross hand on her thigh like that? Her girl-sized thigh, his old-man hand: his losery, braindead-from-Jack-Daniels smoking-in-his-bedroom-and-living-with-Kerry-in-a-shitty-house hand?

And what was making Neecie think that was a good idea? That was the real question.

But then I had my answer, because her phone beeped and she grabbed it and checked it and then there was a gap in the music and I could hear a horn honking and she jumped from the counter, away from Shane's old-man hands and his greasy goatee, and rushed right toward me, where I stood like a statue.

“Move, Sean,” she said. “I gotta go.”

“Where are you going?”

She stopped and then just slithered around me. “Tristan's here,” she said. “I'll see you at work.” And then she grabbed her coat from the hook where all the shitty camo coats were, and before Shane could even say one word, to her or me, she was gone.

Chapter Ten

Hallie, again. Tuesday night. Early December. She was back again for winter break.

In the laundry room. Again.

She wore jeans. A sweater. Smelled good.

The concrete floor. Again.

Her saying
don't stop.
Again and again.

And me not knowing if what I was doing was what she liked. Again.

All I knew is that I liked it enough for the both of us.

She had gone down on me, this time. That part of things went on for a really long time, and it was good and I didn't realize it until later, when it was over, but that was the best part, really. The part where I didn't have to think. Or wonder about what I was doing.

But then she handed me the condom, and then there was sex and me wanting to say all sorts of blurted-out things when I came, but I held back, and when she got off me and found her clothes, I peeled off the condom and tied it over the utility sink. Again.

“What were you doing when I texted you?” she asked. She handed me a dryer sheet for the condom, handed me my coat after I got my jeans on.

“At Eddie's.” Not mentioning that Emma and Libby had been there, too. Eddie'd managed to finally do it with Libby, after a million weekends of her dithering over birth control and timing and if she was “ready,” until Eddie was ready to rip his hair out. Fuck:
I
was ready to rip my hair out just hearing about it. I'd been sitting in Eddie's basement, in the dark, eating cookie dough out of a bowl with Emma, the bowl between us on the sofa like a referee, watching television while Eddie and Libby ate each other's faces off and whatever else. Not sex, because Eddie's parents were upstairs. It all felt super lame. Babyish. And I had signed up for the Marines and still hadn't told anyone, not even Eddie or Neecie, because it was like I wanted to be a man and have secrets that were mysterious and keep my business private. Like, if Sergeant Kendall could see me, being all nuts and proud and braggy about things, he'd think I was a pussy or something. Like, when you were a Marine, you had to act like it was nothing big. You couldn't just go around blabbing about your plans. Especially when you hadn't even done anything yet. You had to wait until it was the right time. You had to be calm. You had to be cool about it. And the longer I held it in, the cooler it became to me. The better the secret became, the longer I held it in. Me being the only one to know felt really good.

But I'd been really quiet, and not just because Emma seemed embarrassed, either about being around me or Eddie and Libby being so touchy and gross. I'd just sat there, eating and watching television, until Hallie's text, when I had no problem standing up and saying I had to go, no explanation, just saying “see you” and not even looking back.

“Was he having a party?” Hallie asked.

“No, just hanging out.”

She flicked off the laundry room light and we headed upstairs. She went into the kitchen and drank a big glass of water.

“You want any?” she asked, holding out the glass. I shook my head. “My parents are at some Christmas party thing,” she said. “I was supposed to go, but I didn't get back in time from Madison.”

“Oh.”

“I don't know how I'm going to stand it now,” she said. “I don't want to back to school. It sucks.”

I would have asked her why it sucked, but honestly? I didn't really care. It was pretty petty of me. But I thought, since she didn't want to talk the other time, why pretend now? I didn't have to be her boyfriend anymore.

I couldn't be anyone's boyfriend anymore.

“I have to be back January twentieth,” she continued. “I don't know what I'm gonna do. What the hell is there to do
here
?”

She sounded whiny, kind of desperate, but damn. If she couldn't think of anything to do, Jesus Christ, I sure could. Just the thought of it filled me up, like money in my pockets. It just felt so fucking badass. Like, maybe I really deserved whatever I wanted now. I'd made a sacrifice, and even though it was secret, it still counted. So I didn't have to wait for say-so. I could just leave someone's cookie-dough-basement-make-out session to go get my dick sucked and get laid. Get whatever the fuck else I felt like too.