Reality Boy (8 page)

“Yeah,” she says.

I think about this for a minute, and then I ask, “So why don’t you switch registers? Two and five don’t do credit.”

She answers, “I can’t do two because”—she lowers her voice to a whisper—“I’m not eighteen.”

“And five?”

“I—uh—I just like number one. It’s, like, my place.” When I don’t say anything, she adds, “You probably think I’m a freak now or something.” I watch her expression turn pained.

“No. I’m—uh. I’m always on seven for the same reason,” I
say. “I like it there.” I don’t add that I like it there because she’s on #1 and I’m in love with her, even though I don’t even know her.

I don’t add that.

“Oh,” she says. “I guess we all have our quirks, eh?”

I CATCH HER
looking at me a few times across the distance. When it’s busy, there’s a lot of space between register #1 and register #7. I counted on my way to fill the ice bucket. It’s nineteen paces.

I don’t think I’m too dangerous to date anymore. I mean, I know Roger thinks girls are infuriating and that I shouldn’t be opening myself up to that shit, but she’s cute. She’s funny. We’re both weird. She’s weird because she writes in that little book. I’m weird because I used to crap on stuff. And because I wear war paint to school. And because I ate part of some kid’s face once when I was thirteen.

I should clear that last part up.

Tom What’s-His-Name was asking for it. I mean that in a strictly pre–anger management way. Now, I know that Tom was just being a douche, and I was to blame for eating his face.
Tom did not deserve a hole in his face. I did not deserve justice.
But anyway. He called me Crapper all the time. Like—never called me Gerald, ever. Just Crapper. And in middle school, we were stuck in the same class two years in a row, for seventh and eighth grades. As if middle school wasn’t hard enough.

From the time Nanny left to the time I ate Tom What’s-His-Name’s face, I fell behind in school because no one helped me. Sometimes Lisi would, but I felt stupid a lot, so I didn’t always ask her. By middle school, Mom had petitioned to get me into SPED again. This was her mission in life, I guess. The elementary school wouldn’t let her do it, because they said I did fine in regular classes. But middle school was middle school. And the first quarter of eighth grade was just that Tom kid calling me Crapper all the time again and all the teachers letting him. It distracted me. I got mostly Ds and Fs on my report card.

Then one day—it was a normal day—he didn’t do anything over the top. Just called me Crapper the way he would. Casual. “Hey, Crapper, can you pass me that book?” And I just turned into a hungry tiger. I think people tried to pull me off him, but before they could, I’d bitten him on the arm and the shoulder, and finally my teeth sank into his cheek. I took a bite, like he was an apple. I spat it out. He screamed.

I don’t know. Something snapped, I guess. After five years of locking myself in my room with no one remotely concerned
about that fact, and then a year and a half of being called the Crapper, I ate a kid’s face. Sometimes these things happen.

Nichols doesn’t show up until the end of the second period of the hockey game, and when I see him approach, I look over at Beth and give her the
come here
motion with my head. She recognizes him from last time and pretends to be annoyed so Nichols thinks she’s the bitch.

“ID?” she asks.

Todd Kemp is already walking away, but Nichols just stands there staring at her. She could totally take him. She stares back. He gets that sarcastic smirk he has all the time, like he’s better than us.

Nichols walks away and Beth nods, then motions toward the mob of people coming at us for food. “Here comes the rush,” she says.

I look up and see Tasha standing right in front of me.

This sends me to Gersday, where a bowl of ice cream awaits, and two tickets to the circus for me and Lisi.

Tasha’s drumming her fingers on the counter. “Pretzel and a jumbo hot dog and a Pepsi.”

“No,” I say. Beth stays by me when she hears me say this. I am in Gersday, so I don’t give a shit what either of them thinks, because Tasha doesn’t exist, so Tasha obviously
can’t
have a pretzel, a jumbo dog, or a Pepsi. Things that don’t exist can’t buy, eat, or carry things that do exist. That’s just a simple fact.

“Dude, get me it,” Tasha says.

I don’t say anything. In Gersday, the trapeze act is stunning. Lisi and I
ooh
and
aah
between bites of creamy goodness.

“You’re a dick,” Tasha says.

I don’t say anything, because saying something to someone who doesn’t exist would mean I’d be talking to myself, right?

“Forget it,” she says, and walks away to get a pretzel somewhere else.

Once she sees I’m fine with the next customer, Beth goes back to acting as runner for the busier side of the stand, where Register #1 Girl is working.

Register #1 Girl has a name, but I don’t use it, because all girls fall into one of two categories and she has a 50 percent chance of falling into the bad one. And if she falls into the bad category and I use her name, then I will have another trigger, and I don’t want another trigger.

After we close, clean, and mop, I go outside and she’s there, waiting for her ride. I want more than anything to offer her one, but I’m not allowed to offer beautiful girls a ride. That could put me in danger. Instead, I stop and talk to her while the two of us watch the next night’s crew unpack their stuff at the loading dock. It’s the circus, which seems like Gersday kismet. I wonder if there’s a trapeze act.

“My dad is always fucking late,” she says.

“So’s mine,” I say. “I think that’s why my parents bought me a car when I turned sixteen. Just so they wouldn’t have to taxi me around anymore.”

I’m glad she doesn’t ask me about my car. I get embarrassed
about it. Like I’m some rich kid because a bunch of people used to watch me crap on TV. I don’t have anything more to say, but I stand with her anyway. The PEC Center borders the bad side of town. During the day it’s fine, but at night I wouldn’t want Lisi standing around waiting by herself, so I’ll stay with Register #1 Girl until her dad gets here.

“What do you think that is?” she asks, pointing toward something the circus guys are pulling out of a truck.

“No idea. Maybe a trampoline? Or some kind of platform?”

“I vote for trampoline.” She squints. “Looks like those legs fold out.”

A horn beeps. She turns toward the road and says good-bye. I watch the circus unload for a few more minutes before I go home. When I get there, Tasha and the naked mole rat are already in the basement making barnyard noises and Mom is already asleep, so she can’t start mowing grass that isn’t long or blowing leaves that aren’t there, to block out the sound and act like our life is normal.

NANNY LEFT US
alone for the last week but left her little spy cameras all around the house. It was creepy. I started to put a towel over myself in the bathroom. I looked down most of the time. I stopped picking my nose.

One night we were watching TV in the living room, and Mom and Dad were somewhere else in the house doing Mom-and-Dad things. Tasha sat with her back to a camera and did what she’d do—called me names and poked me and wiped spit in my face—and then, when I didn’t react to any of those things, she pinched my nose and mouth closed until I turned pale. When I started to cry, Lisi said, “Tasha, just leave him alone.” This made Tasha punch me. She did it low down, so the camera couldn’t see it. Right in the balls.

When I could catch my breath, I came at her like a train and I hit her over and over while she screamed and swore at me until I eventually pushed her right off the couch. I picked up the nearest thing I could find—a wood carving of a giant mahogany fish that Mom and Dad bought on their honeymoon—and was about to slam it into her face, but Dad got there just in time and pulled me off her.

The cameras saw all of that.

Mom and Dad knew they were on camera, so they tried to discipline me the way 1-2-3 Fake Nanny had instructed. As they doled out punishments, I felt like I was floating through the deepest parts of the sea, holding my breath. A whale swam by and brushed against my back. A school of fish swam around me in a fish-cyclone and then swam away again. I could see the surface and the vague brightness of life above the water, but I was tied to something by my ankle.

I was five years old and I already knew it—that the day I inhaled would kill me.

SATURDAY MORNING I
have to get to the PEC Center by eleven for the circus. I’m at the kitchen table with Mom and Dad at nine. It’s very civilized. Mom is reading an issue of
Walker’s World
and Dad is talking about this great deal across town with an indoor swimming pool and three decks.

“It’s the perfect house at a quarter of what it’s worth. I’d buy it now if I could.” He puts printed pictures on the table and Mom stops to take a look at them. Downstairs, it starts quietly at first. A few squeaks and then small sounds like a washing machine. Then
ba-bang-ba-boom-ba-bang-ba-boom-ba-bang
.

I look at the picture on the MLS real estate listing. The pool looks warm and one of the decks looks high enough to
push Tasha off and make it look like an accident. Or frame Mr. Trailer-Park Whiskers.

“Why don’t you buy it?” I ask.

Mom makes a chuckle through her nose in that cynical way she does.

I reach over and grab the other pictures. It’s a really great house. Even in this market, we’d make money selling this place and moving. More acreage. Different school district. New start. Maybe we can move one day when Tasha is out and forget to tell her where we went.
Ba-bang-ba-boom-ba-bang-ba-boom.

“This place would sell for a lot, right?” I ask.

Dad nods. “At least four hundred. At
least
.”

“We’re not moving,” Mom says. She gets up and opens the lower cabinet next to the sink and retrieves the blender. “I’m not leaving a gated community for some house in the woods. I feel safe here,” she says. Then she opens the fridge and pours some apple juice and yogurt into the blender and starts it.

Dad yells, “We’d save in community fees. And taxes.”

Mom hits a higher speed on the blender. We can all still hear the
ba-bang-ba-boom-ba-bang-ba-boom
.

I say, “Yeah. And we wouldn’t have rats in our basement.”

Dad gathers the pictures and the MLS papers and stuffs them into his briefcase. Mom stands there pretending like she’s making a smoothie, but we all know she’s not. I get up and walk over to the basement door and kick it before I open it and scream, “Jesus, will you two just
stop it
already? Grow up! Move out! Just shut the hell
up
, will you?” I slam the door.

Mom turns off her blender and we all look at one another.
They look at me like I just shot a bear in the leg or something. Like the bear is about to come at us. I look at them like maybe I’m okay with the bear coming at us.
I can take the fucking bear.

Seconds later, it starts up again and it’s really loud and she’s moaning extra-vulgar on purpose and Dad gets up and washes off his plate and puts it in the sink and Mom just stands there with her left hand on the blender’s lid and her right hand hovering over the
LIQUEFY
button and we hear them both—uh—you know—
arrive
—and then, inside of fifteen seconds, Tasha’s in the kitchen in her bathrobe.

Dad, Mom, and I stand there looking at her for a second: freshly inseminated, hair standing straight up, cheeks pink, last night’s mascara chipped around her eyes.

“What the hell is your problem, you little prude?” she says to me.

“Hey,” Dad says. This is his attempt to what? Defend my prudeness? What?

She walks over to me and shoves me in the chest. She says, “Dick.”

I stand there and take it. I breathe in. I breathe out. I do not react. I enjoy every millisecond of being
her
trigger instead of her being mine.

She shoves me again. Mom puts her hand on Tasha’s shoulder.

“This is my house as much as it’s your house,” Tasha says. “I can do what I want in my room.”

“Fine,” Dad says firmly—as a sort of gut reaction to make her just go burrow again.

“It’s not
fine
. He’s messed up,” Tasha says.

“You make too much noise,” Dad says. “He’s right.”

“Doug, we offered her a pla—” Mom starts.

Tasha turns to me. “Why are you so hung up on sex anyway, Gerald?” She stands inches in front of me with her arms crossed. “Can’t get a girlfriend?” I imagine how bad the screams would be if I grabbed her now and stuck her palm on the burner Mom used to make her tea. I picture the perfectly circular ring burns on her fingers. Breathe in, breathe out.

“Tasha,” Mom says.

Tasha taunts, “No one wants our fucked-up little crapper.”

I’m chief all the way. Not a word. Not even a rise in blood pressure.