Reality Boy (15 page)

“Yes, Gerald?”

Only when Fletcher calls on me do I realize my hand is up. I don’t know why my hand is up.

“Can I have a lav pass, please?”

He points to his desk and I get a lav pass and walk to the
nearest bathroom. I look at myself in the mirror and ask, “What are your demands, Reality Boy?”

My reflection doesn’t have any demands.

All demands have been removed from my reflection. Roger, my professional demand-remover, has done a spotless job.

Should
is a dirty word. No one
should
do anything for you. You deserve nothing more than what you earn.
Reality Boy is still angry, though. Because Reality Boy knows he deserves all kinds of shit he never got.

The longer I stare at myself in the mirror, the more I want to punch myself. Right in the face. I want to break my nose. Split my lip. Bite a hole in my cheek. I want to beat some sense into me. Instead, I punch the toilet stall door. It swings in and slams into the toilet-paper holder. My hand is numb. But not as numb as the rest of me.

WE WERE SUPPOSED
to be making chicken Parmesan for Mom and Dad’s anniversary dinner, but Nanny didn’t really seem prepared for cooking. She was agitated. As we sloppily prepped food she kept saying
Mind my shoes! Don’t splash on my dress!

She handed me a Ziploc bag full of bread crumbs and cornflake crumbs and flecks of seasoning that Tasha had mixed together. She said I would shake the fillets of chicken around in there. She called them
fill-its
.

Tasha corrected her. “Fill-ays,” she said.

Nanny gave her a look. “Don’t be cheeky,” she said. Then she plunged a chicken fillet into the bag I was holding and secured it.

“Now give it a good shake!” she said. And I shook it because she and the director acted out how to shake a chicken fillet in a bag.

Then Lisi took charge of the cheese-and-sauce part, and laying the fillets into a shallow ceramic dish, and Tasha, who’d preheated the oven to exactly 350 degrees, put the whole thing in and set the timer.

I still had the lump on my head from two nights earlier, when Tasha had pushed me down the stairs.

Mom and Dad were at a movie. We’d gone shopping that afternoon, and Nanny would be taking care of us while Mom and Dad ate a romantic dinner and did stuff parents do when they’re alone. Hold hands, presumably.

At least for the cameras.

Because I don’t think Mom and Dad held hands. Or kissed.

In fact, it was that afternoon when I realized that Mom and Dad didn’t seem to like each other very much. They’d fought a lot while the kitchen was being remodeled. And before that. And before that, too. I vaguely remembered them fighting when I was really little. I vaguely remembered Dad once saying he was leaving.

Part of me—the six-year-old me—still daydreamed about that. I daydreamed that he’d take me with him. I wasn’t sure if I’d made it up in my own head or if Dad had really said it. It would be one of those things I’d ask Lisi when we finally talked.

If we ever talked.

When Mom and Dad came in from their movie, they acted
so surprised about the chicken Parmesan. Nanny and Tasha had checked it in the oven a few times to make sure it was perfect. We’d chilled a side salad. We’d made garlic bread. We served it all up to them and I even pulled Mom’s chair out for her.

We kids went upstairs with Nanny, who said it was time to get ready for school in the morning and to get ourselves ready for the week. She told Tasha to go into her room and gather her homework and make sure she had her laundry put away and organized. Then Nanny took Lisi and me into my room along with a cameraman. She looked at her watch. “We have an hour to play any game you want,” she said. “Then Nanny has a hot date.” She kicked off her very un-nanny high heels and loosened the belt on her dress and sat down on the floor at the end of my bed.

Without a word, Lisi went into her room and brought back Clue. Nanny called it
Cluedo
, which made Lisi and me laugh. Lisi did the cards-in-the-secret-envelope part because she never cheated, and I sometimes couldn’t help myself.

We played three games in that hour.

Nanny said, “You two are little dotes, you know that?” When we looked at her like we didn’t know what
dote
meant, she explained. “It means you don’t cause any trouble.”

Lisi stayed quiet. In my head I counted the times I’d caused trouble. I certainly counted crapping on stuff around the house as causing trouble. I concluded Nanny must be drunk. Maybe that’s what a hot date was.

Nanny looked at Lisi. “Did Tasha ever play Cluedo with you like this?”

Lisi shook her head. “Tasha hates us.”

“Tasha doesn’t hate you,” Nanny said.

“She tells us all the time,” Lisi said. “She calls us names and hits us.”

I reached and felt the lump on my head from two nights before. “She pushed me down the steps because she hates me.”

“I’ll look into that,” Nanny said. “Would that make you feel better?”

Lisi’s face was red now. “It won’t change anything.”

I added, “Yeah.”

“Mom and Dad never care what Tasha does to us.”

For a split second Nanny looked like she understood. Like maybe she knew—like maybe she remembered her promise, on the first day she came this time, to make things in the house fair for me. Then she said, “Let’s change things up, will we? I want to be Mrs. Peacock this time!”

The cameraman got the entire hour on tape until Tasha started screaming in her room like someone had stabbed her.

Nanny got up and ran to Tasha’s room and knocked on the door, telling the cameraman to stay in the hall.

By this time, Mom was halfway up the steps. “What are they doing to her?”

“I’ve got it,” Nanny said. “Go down and enjoy your meal.”

“How could you let this happen?” Mom asked.

“Tasha’s in there on her own,” Nanny said.

Mom clearly didn’t believe it. “Where’s Gerald?”

“He’s been with me for the last hour,” Nanny said. She pressed her mouth to the crack of the door. “Tasha! Open up the door!”

Tasha screamed, “I need Mom! I need Mom!”

“I’m here!” Mom called.

Tasha slowly opened the door and Mom gently pushed Nanny out of the way and went in.

Nanny, Lisi, Dad, and I stood in the hall until Mom opened the door and demanded that we come into Tasha’s room to see what was going on. There was a giant turd in her bathroom sink. Allegedly. I didn’t get to see it, but I admit I was curious because I’d only ever seen my own turds and I wondered what other people’s turds would look like.

Nanny said, “Gerald didn’t do that. He was with me for the last hour. We were playing a board game. On camera.” She seemed completely pissed off that Mom was somehow blaming her for this.

“Well, he somehow
magically
got in here and did this,” Mom said.

“Yeah,” Tasha said.

Nanny and Tasha stared at each other. Then Nanny took me and Lisi to our rooms and told us to stay in there with the doors closed.

She took Mom, Dad, and Tasha downstairs, and after that I didn’t hear anything because I did what I was told and stayed in my room.

But when I saw episode two when it aired, they’d cut the whole thing out. The whole day—the chicken Parmesan, the side salad, the garlic bread, the hour of Clue, Nanny’s fancy blue dress and hot date, and even the mystery turd.

They cut it all out as if the day had never happened.

DURING THE LAST
half hour of SPED, I sat there thinking about what had happened in the bathroom and how much I had wanted to punch myself in the face. I wished I could just split into two and have the other me beat me to death and then that half of me could go to prison.
Homicidal Half Boy
: tonight at eight.

I text Joe Jr. once I get in my car in the school parking lot.
Fuck this shit.
I erase it.
Do you ever hate yourself?
I erase that, too.
Why do we take it?
I erase that and roll my eyes for being so dramatic. I finally type:
Still can’t figure out why the clown dentist is so fckn funny.

I drive to the boxing gym. When I get there, it’s pretty
empty, and I go straight to the big bag and grab a pair of gloves and I start working it. It’s amazing how out of shape my hands feel after a weeklong break. And after punching the dumb bathroom stall today, my right hurts when I hit the bag. I try to superimpose faces on the bag.
Have a nice day, loser.
Tasha. Mom. Tasha. Mom. Tasha. But then it’s just me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me.

After a little while, Bob the trainer walks over and watches me.

“Your left is weak,” he says. “Here.” He shows me how my left isn’t punching straight, and moves his left the way he wants me to move my left. Then he says, “Keep that blocking hand up.”

I pull my right close to my chin and hit the bag with my left a few times. He nods in approval and stands behind the bag to steady it. My hands still hurt, but I keep going until I sweat through my shirt. Then I move to the speed bag.

“Did you work out your shit with the Jamaican?” he asks.

“He’s not Jamaican.”

He nods. “You know who I mean, though, right?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s a great little boxer,” he says. “I think he could go all the way.”

I stop and look at him. “He couldn’t take me last week. Too slow.”

“He’s lazy,” Bob the trainer says.

I’ve been coming to this gym for over three years now, and if Bob thinks Jacko the fake Jamaican could go all the way, then I assume he knows if I could, too.

“Could I go all the way?” I ask.

“If you were allowed in the ring, I think you probably could,” he says.

Then I start on the speed bag and Bob the trainer goes back to his office and I’m left wondering if I even like boxing anymore.

Now that there’s an
all the way
and I can’t get there, boxing seems stupid. It’s like learning how to be a clown but never getting to perform your stupid dentist act in the ring. It’s like learning how to drive while you’re spending life in prison.

I stop hitting the bag and stand there. I stare at it as it swings back and forth and eventually comes to a stop.

The bag is me. I can’t explain why the bag is me, but the bag is me. I have been swinging and I have come to a complete stop. I have no idea why. I have no idea why
anything
. Like, why I’m here. Or why I stopped. Or why I was swinging. I have no idea why my tribal music didn’t work this morning. No idea why I don’t feel like the chief. No idea why I felt like the chief in the first place. No idea why I ever started boxing. Or nonboxing. No idea why I wrap myself in plastic wrap and no idea how not to or what it really means. I just can’t breathe. I feel like I’m going to spontaneously combust, so I pick up my keys and my sweatshirt and I leave.

I sit in the parking lot with the heater blasting until I get warm enough in my sweat-soaked shirt. Then I punch the dashboard. It leaves my knuckles stinging, like what happens when I punch the drywall.

A car parks in the lot, and it’s Jacko the fake Jamaican. He
gets out and walks into the gym. As I watch him, I am a snowball of rage that’s reached the bottom of a very steep hill. I turn off the car and follow him in.

I grab a fresh mouth guard from the cabinet and put on headgear. He sees me and smiles and I nod at him in that way that can only mean I’m ready, and he finds headgear and puts his mouth guard in, too.

We find a random guy to lace us up and I fly into the ring.

No one rings a bell or referees us. We just start going at it. I go for his face, mostly. He goes for my ribs. There is blood inside of a minute—no idea whose blood, but who cares? That’s the point. Blood is the point.

B-L-O-O-D I-S T-H-E P-O-I-N-T.

If I could bleed out the Crapper into the ring, I’d do it.

If I could bleed out everything that’s wrong with my life, I’d bleed until I was empty.

I hit him in the face over and over again and his nose is pouring. He is a fountain of blood, and yet he won’t keep his hand up to block, and I keep hitting the open target.
He is me. Me. Me. Me. He is too dumb to block his face, so I will punch it.

Have a nice day, loser.

Minutes go by—it’s impossible to tell how many. I try to maintain a rhythm, but he’s clumsy and slow and he won’t dance with me like he did last week. When I dodge his head shots, he slams me in the guts again. When he does that, I take the opportunity to pound his nose further into oblivion.

At first he said stuff. I don’t know what. Stuff to egg me on, all garbled in the fight. Now he says nothing. He’s breathing
through his mouth. He’s wishing for the bell, I think. But there is no bell and I keep punching the fountain of blood.

My ribs are cracking. I can feel the snap. It feels good. Ribs are like prison bars for my insides. Jacko is snapping all the bars. All the bars. Jacko is setting me free, rib by rib.

This thought distracts me. This thought makes me see that I am failing.

Roger will be so disappointed.

Just as I start to wonder if Hannah will visit me in jail, the fake Jamaican catches me on the side of my head—on my cheek, I think—and makes my neck twist. I nearly lose my footing, but I pull up my left to block and dance backward a little and take a short breather. It feels like we’ve been doing this for an hour.

He’s hunched over now, still spurting blood. He’s tired. He tries to aim for my head a few times, but I dodge and block and slam him one in the gut and one in the chest that knocks the wind out of him and he doubles in half and while he’s bent over, I take my knee and jam it into his face and his head and he backs away and I kick at him like I’m an animal.

I am an animal. Jacko has just broken me out of my cage.

“Whoa! Whoa!” someone says. It’s Bob the trainer. “Jesus, guys! What the hell?”

Before now, nothing existed outside of this ring. Now there’s Bob. And Jacko is bleeding a river.