Trailer Trash (17 page)

“Hello?”

It was a man’s voice. Nate froze, his mind reeling. Had he dialed the wrong number?

“Hello?” the man said again, sounding annoyed this time.

Should he hang up? Dial again?

“Hi,” he made himself say. “Maybe I have the wrong number. I’m trying to reach Susan Bradford.”

The man made a noise—something similar to a growl. “Her name’s Susan Jennings now.”

“Oh. Right.” Although it felt like a knife in his heart, hearing his mom called by her maiden name. Worse than that, this meant he did have the right number. It was almost midnight, and his mom had a man in the house.

A man who was most definitely not his dad.

“Is she there?”

“Hang on.”

Nate waited, his heart pounding, his stomach twisting painfully. “Babe?” he heard the man say. “It’s for you.”

“Who is it?” Definitely his mother’s voice.

“Hell if I know.”

There was the usual jumble of clunking as the handset changed hands, and then his mom said, “Hello?”

Nate swallowed, suddenly unsure. “Mom?”

“Nate? What’s wrong, honey? Is everything okay?”

Was it? He had no idea how to answer that question.

“Are you hurt or something?” she asked. “Where’s your father?”

“He’s in bed.” And now, Nate’s mind was scrambling for purchase. “I wanted to talk to you. I needed—”

“Nathan, you’re only supposed to call on Wednesdays. You know that.”

She didn’t sound angry, though. Just . . .

Sad?

Guilty?

“Who was that?” he asked, unsure if he wanted to hear the answer.

“Who was who?”

Such a stupid question. Such a ridiculous pretense, to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about. “Who was that guy who answered the phone?”

“Oh. Well, just a friend—”

“He called you ‘babe.’”

“Oh.” Her voice suddenly sounded very small. “Oh, honey. I didn’t want you to find out like this.”

“Is he living there?”

She didn’t answer, but the silence told him everything.

“For how long?”

“Since . . . Well, since—”

“Since we left?” Because suddenly, it was all clear. He’d heard his aunt and uncle whispering about an affair. He’d seen the way his parents couldn’t look at each other anymore. And all along, he’d assumed it was his father. All that time, moving to Wyoming, being dragged to this shithole of a town, he’d blamed his dad. And all along, his mom had been at home with another man already warming her bed.

Nate hung up. He sat there in the dark, clutching the phone to his chest, just long enough to be sure the line was dead. He put it to his ear, checking for the dial tone, which would soon become incessant beeping of a phone left off the hook too long. Then he stuck the phone between the Froot Loops and Honeycomb cereal and shut the pantry door. If his mom called back, she’d get a busy signal.

And eventually, she’d give up on calling, just like she’d given up on her family.

Nate awoke the next day with his eyes scratchy from the tears he’d shed into his pillow the night before. He felt like he’d lost his mom all over again. Even worse, his dreams had been full of Christine laughing at him, and Brian and Brad tapping out lines of cocaine on a mirror, telling him it was his turn, and Cody yelling at him, telling Nate he should be ashamed of himself for taking advantage of Christine. And through it all, Nate tried again and again to tell Cody that his mom already had a new boyfriend, but Cody never seemed to hear him.

He found his dad in the kitchen, making French toast. The phone was back on the wall. His dad looked at him strangely but didn’t ask.

After breakfast, his dad left to go grocery shopping, and Nate dug the Warren phone book out of the junk drawer in the kitchen. It was tiny. He’d laughed when he’d first seen it. The phone book in Austin had been two separate books—one for white pages, one for yellow—and both had been enormous. Here, the white and yellow together were only as thick as one of the single-subject spiral notebooks he used in school.

He looked for “Lawrence” first.

None.

He scratched his head, puzzled, then remembered what Cody had said.
“People were always asking me why my last name was different from my mom’s. Used to piss me off.”
Nate slumped, feeling defeated. How in the world could he get Cody’s phone number?

Logan.

He looked up Robertson. There were three listings. He called the first and asked for Logan.

“Wrong Robertson,” the man on the other end said. “You’re looking for my brother’s son.” He rattled off a phone number, and Nate hurried to grab a pencil and scribble it down. It helped that every single number in Warren had the same prefix.

He called the second number and asked for Logan.

“That’s me.”

He should have recognized the voice. “Hey. Um, it’s Nate Bradford.”

There was a stony silence, and then Logan said, “Okay. What the hell do you want?”

“I need to talk to Cody.”

“Yeah, you said that once before, but it doesn’t seem like it went all that well.”

“I know, but—”

“If you want to talk to Cody, why the hell are you calling me?”

Nate put his head in his hand. “Because I don’t know his number.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“He never gave it to me.”

He could practically hear Logan scowling at him. “Did you ever ask?”

Nate sighed. It annoyed him how Logan could make him feel so small, even over the phone. “Look, can you help me or not?”

“Why should I?”

Nate traced his finger over the wood grains of the tabletop, debating ways he might convince Logan. He had a feeling Logan wouldn’t forgive him until Cody did, but maybe he’d meet him halfway. “Can you at least tell me his mom’s last name?”

A second went by. Then another, and another. Finally, Logan said, “Prudhomme.” It sounded like he hated himself for letting it slip.

Nate was already flipping through the pages, running his finger down the lines of names, the black ink smearing beneath his fingertip. “Powell. Powers. Probst. Prudhomme! Cyndi? Is that it?” It had to be. “Thanks, Logan. Really.”

“You’re welcome.” Although his voice said otherwise. “And Nate?”

“Yeah?”

“Fuck with his head again, and I’ll skin you alive. Got it?”

Nate swallowed, wondering if he was making the biggest mistake of his life. “Got it.”

His heart pounded as he dialed the number. It rang once, twice, three times. Somebody picked it up midway through the fourth ring.

“Hello?”

Cody’s voice. Nate tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry.

“Hello?” Cody said again, sounding annoyed. It was oddly reminiscent of Nate’s call home the night before, and suddenly Nate’s hands were shaking, his throat too tight to speak. What the hell was he doing? What exactly did he think he could say to Cody now?
I’m sorry. I screwed up. I’m confused. I want to see you. I’ve lost my mom. I’m lonely as hell, and you’re the only friend I have.

He couldn’t say any of it, though. His grip on the phone was tight, his heart in his throat, the pressure in his chest almost more than he could bear.

“I’m hanging up,” Cody said. “Speak now or forever hold your peace, man.”

Nate sat there, silent and confused, until the line went dead.

Logan was already at work when Cody arrived Saturday afternoon. The back of the kitchen was steamy as a sauna.

Well, steamy as Cody imagined saunas to be, at any rate. He’d never actually been in one.

The brisk walk from home had kept him warm, despite the ice-cold wind and his insufficient jackets. All but his hands, at least. They were frozen stiff, and he rubbed them together, not wanting to plunge them into the hot water quite yet.

Maybe he’d ask Logan for a ride to Rock Springs. He had a feeling Logan would do it. He might not even laugh at him. Granted, he probably wouldn’t buy Cody a Big Mac and hassle him about his Wyoming twang as they both dipped their french fries into their chocolate shakes, but a ride would be enough, even if it made Cody’s heart hurt, thinking about it.

“How was your morning?” Logan asked, his arms elbow-deep in dishwater, his eyes uncharacteristically bright and expectant as he waited for Cody’s answer. “Anything interesting happen?”

“Not really.” It seemed like an odd question, even from Logan. “You wanna switch and let me wash?”

“Hell, yes.”

Logan had to stoop to reach the sink, and Cody couldn’t reach half the shelves to put stuff away. With them both there, it didn’t make much sense to do it any other way. The water was already pretty foul though, so Cody flipped the lever under the sink to let it drain.

“So,
nothing
happened this morning?” Logan asked, watching Cody carefully.

Cody wrinkled his brow, trying to figure out what Logan was getting at. “The phone woke me up at ten, but nobody was there. We’re out of milk, so I ate my cereal dry, and my mom was still asleep when I left. She’s working evenings now, so she gets up after I’m gone for the day and doesn’t get home until I’m asleep.” He shrugged. “That’s the sum total of my morning so far.” He watched the last bit of water twirl down the drain. “How’d the game go?”

“We won.”

“Good.”

“I threw for one hundred ninety-eight yards, and had three touchdowns.” He wasn’t bragging. It was said in the same matter-of-fact tone he used for just about everything. “Coach says there might be scouts from the University of Wyoming at the homecoming game next week.”

If scouts were coming to Warren, it could only be to see Logan. Cody heard enough talk at school to know Logan was the star of the team. “You think they’ll offer you a scholarship?”

“My parents think so, but what do they know?” Logan was rinsing the dishes he’d already washed, sorting them into neat rows on the drying rack. “That reminds me though—I wanted to ask you something.”

Cody flipped the lever back in place to plug the drain and turned on the water, testing the temperature as it began to fill the enormous sink. “Okay.”

“You want to go to homecoming with me?”

Cody blinked, sure he’d misheard. “What?”

Logan laughed awkwardly, looking uncomfortable for the first time ever. “I didn’t mean it like that. Not, you know,
together
.”

Thank goodness. As nice as Logan was, the thought of dating him was horrifying. “Aren’t you going with Jamie Simpson?”

Logan scowled, tossing a handful of clean forks into the utensil bin with a bit more force than the occasion demanded. “She’s going with Tom Phillips.”

“Tom Phillips?” Cody added a generous squirt of Dawn to the sink, thinking. “Didn’t he graduate three years ago?”

“Yes.”

It wasn’t uncommon in Warren for teenage girls to date guys in their twenties. High school girls bringing guys in their thirties to prom wasn’t unheard of.

“So?” Logan prodded. “What do you say?”

“You want me to go to a high school dance with you?”

“You don’t have to say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“You make it sound weird. But it’s no big deal, you know. Lots of people go stag. And Frank’s giving us both the night off.”

Cody would have preferred to work. He felt like he was in a race against Mother Nature to see whether or not he’d manage to buy a coat before the snow started to fly. He waited while Logan took the clean silverware to the front to be wrapped in napkins by the hostesses.

“So, what’ll we do there?” he asked, once Logan was back. “Stand against the wall looking like idiots while everybody else makes out?”

Logan laughed. “Have you ever even been to a school dance?”

“Whatta you think?”

“First of all, they won’t let anybody make out at the dance. There are chaperones to make sure nothing kinky goes down.”

“Yeah, ’cause that’ll stop everybody from having sex.”

“It’ll stop ’em from having sex there in the gym, at any rate.” He shoved a stack of bowls onto the shelf in the corner. “But not many people actually dance with their dates. I mean, like I said, half the school goes stag anyway. The girls mostly dance together in one big pack, and the guys hang out and bullshit. I mean, it’ll be the usual cliques, you know? The cowboys in one corner; the Mormons in another; the Grove pricks hanging out in the parking lot, getting high; and all the burnouts sneaking out the back door for a smoke.”