Rebel, Bully, Geek, Pariah (19 page)

“Ugh! Stop!” Andi retched and laughed at the same time, a horrible but hilarious sound, which set us all off again.

“And
that
,” York finished with a flourish, “is how I got my abs of steel.”

We laughed until our stomachs hurt, and it was amazing how the howling sound shifted from painful to playful once I'd joined in.

When we finally settled into breathless sighs and just the occasional stray giggle, Andi reached across her towel to yank my hand away from my head. I hadn't even realized that I was working my fingers along my scalp again, making knots in my wet hair.

“Picking your scalp is as bad as picking your scabs,” she said.

“But not as bad as eating them,” I joked.

“Do you think you could have OCD?” Andi asked.

“She doesn't,” Boston piped up. “Trust me.”

“He would know,” York agreed.

“What about borderline personality disorder?”

I pulled my hand back and laughed. “I don't think so, Dr. Dixon.”

Andi rattled off a few more mental diagnoses, then sat up, excited. “Oh! I've got it! Could you be a sociopath?”

York shook his head and pointed at Andi. “Nah, we took a vote and decided you're the sociopath.”

She smiled and flopped down on her stomach. “Well, better a sociopath than boring.”

“I'm sure no one ever accused you of being boring,” I said.

She tipped her smile up to me. “You, either.”

 

24

THE MOON DISAPPEARED behind another canopy of clouds, and we ended up lying on our backs in a kind of circle with our heads together, counting stars through the breaks in those clouds. At least,
I
was counting stars. The rest of them had gone back to counting our troubles.

“I hate that we even have to haul that shit back to town,” York said. “What if we get pulled over and they find all those drugs in the car?”

“We could leave them here,” Andi said. “And just tell the police where to find them.”

“That would look shady,” I said. I hadn't agreed to speak for the group yet, but it was making more and more sense by the minute—even the part where I would drag three backpacks full of drugs into a police station.

“Do you think there are even enough drug addicts in River City for all that heroin?” Boston mused.

“Drugs addicts are everywhere,” I said.

They're your mailman, your math tutor, your mom.

“Everyone I know just takes their parents' Xanax,” York said from my left. He shifted on his towel, his shoulder bumping mine. Then he shifted again, more deliberately, and this time our shoulders stayed touching. “Vicodin, too, and Oxy, if they can get their hands on it. Oh, and Ambien. If you push past the part where it makes you sleepy, you get some crazy high.”

“That's stupid,” Boston muttered.

“I'm not saying
I
do it,” York said. “I'm just saying at least it's not heroin. If you can get it out of the bathroom cabinet, it's probably not that dangerous.”

Mama used to keep nail polish remover in the bathroom cabinet. I saw her take a swig of it once when she ran out of alcohol. That seemed kind of dangerous.

“My dad has a pharmacy in the bathroom,” Andi said.

I tipped my head to the right and studied the profile of her face. “Like what?”

“Antidepressants. You name it, he's got it.”

“You ever try any of it?”

She grinned into the night. “Do I look like I need uppers? No way.”

I felt an unexpected inner sigh of relief.

“But he needs them,” she said, her smile melting. “And he won't take them.”

“What's he need them for?” Boston asked.

If he'd been next to me in our circle instead of across from me, I would have elbowed him in the ribs to let him know what a rude question it was. But Andi didn't seem to mind.

“His brain got all scrambled after my mom died. I mean, he's always been scrambled eggs to me, because I was so little when it happened, but everyone else says he used to be normal—fun, even. And funny. Now he's just a lump of mold growing on our living room couch.”

“Watching infomercials,” I prompted.

She nodded. “Not that he uses any of that shit he orders. He just lets it pile up all over the house, like his meds, all shiny and new and totally unused. If it wasn't for companies delivering stuff to our door every week, I swear, he wouldn't get up for anything but bathroom breaks.”

“Doesn't he work?” York asked.

“No. He got some huge life insurance payout when my mom died. Everything's paid for—for, like, ever.”

“Forever?” I whispered.

“And then some. I think he buys that seen-on-TV junk because he feels obligated to spend what she left for him—to get some enjoyment out of it. But it's kind of hard to blow through cash when you're comatose.”

She steals, when she could buy the whole store.

“At least you don't have to worry about paying for college,” Boston said. “Right?”

“Not really sure I'm going to college, but if I decide to, then I guess I'm covered.”

“Cool.”

I swear, I'm going to get up and kick him.

“Yeah, cool.” Andi's voice dripped with sarcasm. “Who cares if your dad refuses to celebrate holidays or take you on
vacations or make you dinner or even
look
at you, as long as
college
is paid for.”

When Boston spoke again, he sounded small. “I just meant, y'know—at least you can get away from him, right?”

Okay, that's it!

I moved to sit up, but before I could, York's arm was flying backward over his head. There was a
crack
as his palm met Boston's forehead.

“Ow. Sorry,” Boston muttered, and I hoped his “sorry” was meant for Andi.

“You know, for a smart guy, you're really pretty stupid,” I said.

“Well, my GPA says otherwise,” he retorted, sounding smug. Then he answered the question no one asked. “Four-point-six.”

“On a four-point-oh scale,” York said before Boston could. “We're all very impressed.”

“The average unweighted GPA of incoming freshmen at Harvard is three-point-nine-four,” Boston said. “And you know most of them got AP credit, so the weighted GPA average is probably more like four-point-five.”

I thought of my own measly two-point-nine grade-point average.
Guess Harvard's out.

“Did anyone else understand that gibberish?” Andi asked.

York sighed. “Unfortunately, yes.”

“He gets kind of tired of hearing about it,” Boston said.

“More like tired of hearing Mom and Dad go on and on and
on
about it. You'd think they were the ones picking a college. It's all they ever talk about.”

The closest Mama and I ever came to talking about higher education was the time she pinned up a pamphlet for River City Community College on my bulletin board. I covered it with a postcard of the canals of Venice in silent protest. I had every intention of going to college, but it wasn't going to be within a thousand miles of River City.

“Drag,” Andi said.

York was quiet a moment, then said, “I hate them.”

Boston sighed. “Come on, don't say that. You don't hate Mom and Dad.”

“I do. And you do, too. Everyone hates their parents a little. It's normal.”

Andi stretched her hands up to the sky, inspecting her black fingernails. “I don't
hate
my dad. I just wish he'd wake up.” She lowered one hand to poke me. “Do you hate your dad? For bailing on you?”

“I think we kind of bailed on him,” I said.

“So you hate your mom, then?”

“I love my mom,” I said reflexively. “But
 
. . .”

God, I sound just like the kids from family therapy
. How many of them had I had to listen to at those mandatory sessions when Mama was in the halfway house? It was always the same with the children of addicts.
I love them, BUT . . .

I gave myself a beat to really think about it. I thought of the two of us curled up on the couch watching scary movies while she shielded my eyes during the parts she knew would freak me out the most. I thought of hour-long road trips for Whitey's Ice Cream, which we both agreed was worth the drive. I thought of  late nights
listening to her stories of life on the road; but then again, the moral of those stories was always to stick close to home. Mama's constant message was how much she needed me—how I was her rock. And the subtext of that flattery was that I couldn't leave her behind. By giving me all the credit, Mama also gave me all the responsibility. And as much as I loved her, sometimes I hated her for that.

“She used to be
 
. . .
 
kind of messed up,” I said.

“Messed up how?” York asked.

“Infomercials?” Andi suggested with a laugh.

I bit my lip, not sure I wanted to share the way Andi had. I tested the water with a single word.

“Drugs.”

“What kind of drugs?” Andi asked.

Boston answered for me. “Heroin, right? That's how you knew what that stuff was.”

“Yeah, heroin,” I confirmed. I fought to keep my voice from shaking. “And meth. And coke, pills, pot
 
. . .”

“And a partridge in a pear tree,” Andi sang.

I tried to laugh, but it came out as a shudder. York must have felt it ripple through my shoulder to his, because he reached over to steady my arm with a squeeze. Then, slowly, he slid his hand down to find my fingers and wrap them in his own. I was glad it was dark and everyone was flat on their backs with only a view of the sky. I opened my hand to his and then closed it again with our fingers laced together.

“My mom was a country star
 
. . .
 
almost,” I said, bolstered by the support of York's hand in mine. “She was a singer-songwriter.”

“That explains Nashville,” Andi said.

“Yeah. And she was a musician, too—an amazing fiddler. She could play all the strings—banjo, cello, violin
 
. . .”

“Oh,” Andi said quietly, and to my surprise, she whispered, “I'm sorry.”

“You didn't know,” I said.

“What's her name?” York asked. “Maybe we've heard of her.”

“Trust me, you've never heard of Melissa Cherie. She played with a lot of the big names, though—on tour, at the Opry—and country's no different from rock and roll. A lot of drinking, a lot of drugs. She says she was on top of the world and at the bottom of a bottle all at once.”

“What happened?” Andi asked.

“She got busted buying something off an undercover cop—like, a lot of something. Went to prison. Got out and couldn't get any gigs. Then she got knocked up with me and came home.”

“Geez,” Boston said. “That's heavy.”

“No wonder you're so weird,” Andi teased, but her elbow gave me a reassuring nudge.

“Not nearly weird enough,” Boston said. “It's kind of amazing you're not completely screwed up.”

I rolled my eyes. “Not everyone whose parent is an addict is screwed up.”

“I don't know,” York said with exaggerated slowness. “Andi's dad sounds like an infomercial addict, and she's pretty screwed up.”

“Hey!” Andi cried with feigned indignation, and we all laughed.

When the laughter died, we settled into a comfortable kind of silence, broken only by the occasional
crack
of a tree settling or the rustle of something small scurrying through the woods. The clouds gathered, and our circle of stars grew smaller and smaller until there was no clear sky left to be seen.

 

25

AS THE LAST star winked away, Boston said quietly, “Guys, how did we get here?”

“In a car,” York answered.

“An SUV,” Andi corrected.

“A
stolen
SUV,” I perfected.

Boston sighed. “No, I mean, how did we
get here
?”

York's hand reached up to ruffle Boston's hair, and with our heads so close together, he tangled all of our tresses as one. “We know what you meant, buddy.”

“The bigger question is how we're going to get
out
of here,” Andi said.

The group fell silent, and I shifted uneasily, knowing they were all wondering whether I would stand for them—whether I would use my power of invisibility to be their hero. I still wasn't sure I was the best person for the job. Sure, my anonymity would get me through the front door of the police station without getting handcuffed, but then what? It wouldn't be as easy as handing
over a piece of paper and a few backpacks full of drugs as “evidence.” I would have to sell our story, and while I'd had more experience talking to cops than the rest of them, I couldn't help but think I'd sell it better with Boston's brains or Andi's guts or York's sense of humor.

“When I—
if
 I take our statement to the police,” I started, my speech halting, “how close will you guys be?”

“Close!” Boston answered hastily.

“Very close,” York promised.

“But not too close,” Andi said, and the boys groaned. “What? I'm just being honest. We're not going to park our stolen car in the front lot, right?”

“Don't listen to her, Sam,” Boston purred. “It's like you said earlier: all of us or none of us. We'll be right around a corner or something.”

Or something.

The fingers of my free hand threaded through blades of grass at my side, and I closed my eyes, imagining the grass growing on a rolling hill in Ireland
 
. . .
where I am lying under the sun, tasting salt on the wind as ocean waves try to scale cliffs in the distance. Everything is emerald green as far as the eye can see, and there are bagpipes playing, though I can't see any bagpiper. I can't see anyone at all. As always, when I go away like this, it's beautiful, but I'm alone. And I'd rather be in trouble than alone.