Chapter Seventeen
Kerry tossed another twig into his little fire pit thing. It was drizzling out, but he insisted the weather was going to clear up by noon.
“Can’t believe you’re doing it,” he said. “Fucking military.”
“He’s doing it,” Eddie said.
“I feel like it’s all a fucking joke,” Kerry said. “It doesn’t even sound like you.”
What Kerry knew about me was next to nothing, really. Or really, what Kerry thought he knew about me was nothing. He’d been my boss for a bunch of months; this didn’t really qualify him as an expert on my life.
Shane came out then. Nodded at me and Eddie. Sat down in a chair, lit a cigarette. He smelled like he’d just taken a shower; he was barefoot, his hair was wet, and he’d shaved off his goatee.
“Going somewhere special?” Kerry asked, in his mean way.
“Maybe,” Shane said. Then he started cleaning out his toenails with a toenail clipper. Eddie looked away; Eddie was always squeamish about that kind of thing. He had sisters, so he couldn’t freely be disgusting and open about his personal habits. Plus, he was pissed; he only was here because he wanted some weed, and Ivy was waiting for him and was probably wondering what was going on because he kept getting texts-beeps every second.
Then my phone beeped and I checked it. Hallie. Fuck.
Hallie, who was texting me again. Hallie, who said she was better now. Hallie, who I think I almost liked better when she was depressed. I hadn’t been responding to her texts. Though once I’d been a dick and sent back a photo of a topless girl milking a cow that Eddie’d sent me.
“Got any weed you want to sell?” Eddie said, suddenly.
“They piss test you before boot camp, you know,” Kerry said, looking only at me.
“I’m not the one who asked,” I said.
Shane laughed, started clipping his toenails. Clip, Snip, Click, Snap. Fucking gross.
“It’s not the mellow kind,” Kerry said, to Eddie.
“That’s okay.”
“All right,” Kerry said, staring at me another minute before finally acknowledging Eddie. “You want it, come inside.”
Then they went inside to do the whole dirty money-exchange business, and I was stuck with Shane and his toenails. Which he was done clipping, at least. How he’d managed to smoke while clipping his toenails was kind of miraculous. Though still gross.
“When you go to boot camp?” Shane asked.
I told him. Now he was working on his fingernails. The bits were flying everywhere. Christ.
“You going on a date or something?” I asked.
“Why’s everyone got such a problem with a guy wanting to clean up? Jesus.”
I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t like I wanted him to be gross. I guess I just didn’t want to look at it, mostly. It seemed really unmanly.
“Hey, tell that friend of yours I finally did download that movie she was telling me about.”
“Who?”
“Blond chick. Neecie?”
“Oh,” I said. “What movie?”
“Full Metal Jacket. Turns out I saw it a long time ago. Good fucking movie, though. You ever see it?”
“No.”
“That’s a boot camp movie you probably don’t want to see,” he said. He laughed. “My brother said they can’t do half that shit anymore. Can’t even touch you. Still. Fucked-up movie. Tell her I liked it, though.”
“Why don’t you tell her?”
He laughed. “Maybe I will. Haven’t seen her for a couple of weeks, though.”
A couple of weeks?
I stood up and didn’t say shit, but I got Eddie from Kerry’s room, where they were doing bong hits, and was like, “We gotta leave. Now.”
And Eddie didn’t get it, but I didn’t want to explain it and Kerry just shook his head at us like we were completely worthless, his whole, how’d I end up with these assholes routine again, and Eddie was like, “What’s your deal, Sean? You’re acting like a prick.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, fuck you,” he said, getting in my face. Kerry was behind him, smirking, looking down.
“Jesus Christ,” Eddie said. “Been sitting here all fucking morning but once you get something up your ass, then it’s time to leave?”
Kerry set down his bong on his dresser, far away from us.
“You think you’re so superior or something? For not smoking weed anymore? Because you’re going into the Marines or something?”
“I don’t fucking think that.”
Eddie shoved me in the chest.
“What the fuck, Eddie?” I shoved him back, but not as hard. Just so, you know, he’d know to stay in his own lane and everything. But that’s not how he saw it. He shoved me again, right into my chest hollow, and it actually hurt and I wanted to kill him.
But he walked out and I rushed after him, Kerry behind me.
“He’s right, you know,” Kerry said. “You are being a prick, Sean. It’s already starting.” He shook his head, smiling a little.
“Fuck you too,” I said as I headed out the door, seeing Eddie walking halfway up the street, like he hoped to walk all the way home or some stupid shit like that.
“The hits don’t stop with you two girls,” he called after me.
“I’m glad you wanted to hang out,” Hallie said. “Not just because of the other stuff. I mean, I have so much to tell you.”
I nodded at her. We were at this graduation open house for her cousin, who was graduating from college, actually, and why Hallie needed me there, I don’t know, but at least the food was good. It wasn’t just ham on buns in the garage like everyone else had; there was, like, actual catered food that was hot, everything in steam tables off the back deck, and tons of people and little tables everywhere in the huge backyard.
“I’ve applied to a couple different places for fall,” she said. “St. Kate’s is my first choice. I think I needed a smaller setting, personally. Madison’s pretty big.”
“Right.”
“Plus, Carenna goes there. I don’t think we can be roommates, or whatever, because she said that stuff might be hard to set up, but at least I would know one person there.”
“You didn’t seem to have a problem with meeting people at Madison, Hallie,” I said. “You were constantly posting pictures of you with people. It wasn’t like you were, like, all by yourself all the time.”
A little kid came over and told Hallie her mom wanted her in the kitchen. “Tell her I’ll be right there,” she said, smiling at the kid. Once the kid ran off, she said, “Yeah, but none of them really understood me, you know. For real? Not outside of a party context. It was just super fake. It was all bullshit.”
“Oh.”
Hallie started picking at her fingernails, then chipping the polish off with her thumbnail, right onto her placemat. Jesus, what was with everyone and their weird grooming habits in my face lately?
Without looking up, still picking, she said, “So, the other thing I was going to say wasn’t a big thing, but I thought you ought to know. I mean, I probably should have said something earlier, but then it happened so quick, and I didn’t want to bother anyone or anything, because there was really no question about what I had to do.”
Then she looked up at me. In a way that made me suddenly want to barf. I didn’t know what was coming, but it felt like something big.
“Well, so I was depressed and stuff but that wasn’t it. I kind of . . . Well, I was pregnant too. I didn’t know then, but after that one day, I kind of put it all together and took a test and stuff.”
“What?”
She shrugged. Like it was nothing.
“My mom and sister took me to the clinic and everything. It’s all fine now, but I thought you might want to know.”
“What?” I repeated.
“What do you mean, what?”
The little kid came back. It was a little boy. He had a big orange stain on his shirt, like he’d spilled juice or so
mething. “Your mom says to come now,” he said. “Hurry up!”
“All right, yes,” Hallie said, smiling at him, all fake. When he left, she turned back to me, completely normal. “I heard from my mom who heard from someone else that you’re going to join the Marines.”
“What the fuck, Hallie?” I said. Blurted. Loud, too. People nearby looked at us.
“Lower your voice,” Hallie scolded me, all mom-like.
“Why in the hell would you tell me this?” I said, leaning in and trying to talk lower. “I mean, why now? If you were just going to do what you wanted to do, anyway?”
“Oh, you think I should have had a fucking baby, Sean?” She was hissing, whispering so fierce.
“No, but Christ, you wouldn’t even ask me . . .”
“You’re assuming you have any say in the matter.”
“Hallie!” Mrs. Martin, on the other side of the lawn, waving and motioning for her.
“Just a second, Mom!” she yelled, fake-smiling again.
“I don’t have any say?” I asked.
“No, you don’t,” she said, louder. “No one does but me.”
“I don’t know how this fucking happened,” I said. Set my hands on the table a little too hard and the plates and cups jumped.
“Calm down,” Hallie said, through her teeth.
“You said it was okay,” I said, trying to breathe out. “You said I didn’t need the goddamn condoms . . .”
“You didn’t. I’m still on the pill.” She stood up, grabbed her plate, crossed her arms over her boobs. Looked pissy.
“Well, then, what the fuck?”
“Sometimes when you take antibiotics, it interferes with the pill, okay? I didn’t know that, but I guess it does.”
“Oh.”
“I wasn’t being irresponsible, Sean. God. I can’t believe you would ever think I’d just do it without anything . . .”
“Well, I don’t know. Christ.” I pushed my plate away. She grabbed it, stacked it on top of hers, removed the silverware, the bits of food making a sticky sound as the paper plates suctioned together. Then she grabbed my cup, like she was some kind of waitress, and stacked it inside her cup.
“Hallie!” Mrs. Martin hollered again.
“We don’t have to talk about it anymore,” she said. “It’s done. I just . . . I don’t know. I thought you should know. But I guess you didn’t have to. I didn’t have to tell you. I just thought . . .”
What? She thought I’d like to know about how she had my kid vacuumed out of her?
Which I said. Blurted.
Her face looked like she might cry for a second. But then she didn’t. She tilted her head to the side and paused, her eyes narrow.
“Hallie . . .”
“It wasn’t just you that I was texting, Sean,” she said.
I didn’t want to even look at her. I couldn’t not look at her, though.
She sat back down, put the plates and cups in a stack. Her mother yelled again, but she didn’t turn around. Instead, she reached for my hand, uncurled it from its fist.
“But it was just you that I actually, you know, cared about, even,” she said, soft and quiet. “You mattered to me, okay? That’s why I told you. I wanted to tell you. We’re friends, right? We were at least. We’re more than just sex, okay? I know you don’t believe me; I can see it in your face, Sean. I know. But that’s always been the way it is with us.”
She was crazy. She was so full of shit. I had no idea how someone so dumb had actually made it into college. Maybe that was why she’d had to quit, though.
But I didn’t want to act weird. I nodded. Her mom yelled again and she said “I’ll be right back” and she was gone, leaving me there with nothing on the table, so I felt like an idiot, just sitting there for no reason.
When she came back, it was like the conversation had never happened. And we just said a bunch of polite stuff. Stuff that sounded like the right thing to say. Like, sorry for everything. That she had to go through all that. That I was glad she told me. Even if I wasn’t. Even if I wished I’d never come here. Wished her hand would get out of mine. Wished I didn’t know about my kid or some other dude’s wasted kid swirling around some drain in a clinic.
Finally I told her I had to get to work, so she walked me out, down the street where I’d parked with all the other cars of the party guests, and she said we’d have to stay in touch, for sure hang out a lot before I left, which to me was just another way of not saying good-bye. Another way of not being brave.
After I punched in for work later that day, I went straight to Neecie in the break room, where she was tying on her apron.
“Hey, tell me this, will you?” I said. “Did you have sex with that Shane guy?”
“What?”
“Shane. That guy who lives with Kerry.”
“Oh,” she said, tilting her head. “No.”
“Nothing with him, though? You didn’t do anything else?”
“Why do you even care, Sean?”
“Just . . . did you?”
“No,” she said. “I saw him at Applebee’s one night. He came and sat with me and Ivy and some other people. We talked a little. Don’t be all weird.” She pushed past me, toward the tagging table, where she started filling a rack with hangers.
“I’m not being weird,” I said. “I just had to, you know, witness him clip his fucking toenails and tell me to tell you how much he loved Full Metal Jacket and whatever.”
“What does clipping his toenails have to do with anything?”
“Nothing. I’m just telling you.”
“Well, thank you,” she said, kind of snobby. “Now I know.” Then she didn’t talk to me the rest of the shift. God, I was fucking annoyed.
There were six bins of clothing to bale, too. Some volunteer group had come in the night before and plowed through a ton of stuff, according to Wendy. Now it was my gig to use the baler, since I was old enough and had done the whole training thing on it with Kerry and everything.
The baler was a pretty simple machine. You lined up the twine, then loaded the hole with the unwanted clothing, shut the door, turned the key until the light went red, then hit the button. Then fight the urge to plug your ears as things got louder than hell until the final CLANG sound and the light went green, letting you know you could turn the key the other way and out came a perfectly twined-up sandwich-deck of unwanted clothing that smelled like body odor and mildew and dirt. Easy to stack ten deep on a truck. Nice, neat. And no fucking hassles.
I blew through all the bins and then I stacked bales until Wendy told me to stop, that the rag dealer wouldn’t be here until next week and we’d have to wait to get another truck down here before we could store them. I was sweating like a fucking pig and I wanted to tell Wendy that if it was all the same to her, I’d just keep baling forever. I’d stack them to the ceiling, I’d load them up in the truck and tear off to the river trestle and dump them in the water, which was running high from spring rains. Or I’d put them along the property lines of the rambler, like a gunner’s nest, stacks and stacks, like a fortified fence. Or take them to the clinic where Hallie had gone, let the nurses use the rags to soak up all the blood before it went down the drain. I knew a million places to put unwanted useless shit.
Kerry looked at me the whole night like he was pissed. Building up to saying something too. Like he was mad at me telling him to fuck off the day before. He kind of huffed around, popping in while I stacked the bales, looking at me funny until Wendy sent me to clean out a storage bin where someone had donated a terrarium full of rancid nasty water. Including two dead turtles. Jesus, could people not even drain the goddamn liquid before hustling their kid’s dead pets out the door?
And that’s when I found it. The exact thing that I knew Neecie would like for the shelf of stuff in the break room. She might like it for herself, actually, too. It was kind of perfect. Only now I didn’t want to talk to her either. Or I wanted to talk to her too much, maybe. And I kept making it so I cou
ldn’t and that was all my fault and I was tired of not doing anything right.
Chapter Eighteen
School was almost done, and it was hotter than hell with no air-conditioning and everyone was ragged and worn-out. Papers all over the floor and kids acting stupid and teachers too tired to deal with it. Like, when I told my Global Studies teacher that my dog had pissed on my homework, he just nodded and shrugged like he didn’t have the energy to even be mad anymore, even though Otis actually had pissed all over my backpack. Had been pissing all over everything, actually, lately, and my mom was going crazy.
You could feel the let’s-just-be-done-already vibe from all the teachers, too, as if they got infected with it by all the seniors, who nobody could touch anymore, really, with graduation in thirteen days and the weather sunny and beautiful and everyone hanging out in the parking lot more than the hallways. Plus all the girls were wearing little tank tops and shorts and I was all The Horn, all the time, and instead of being annoyed about it, and wanting to leave—I am never coming back—I just wanted to make out with every single one of them, even Ivy Heller, even Neecie—who wasn’t really talking to me again—and it was disturbing, how everyone bitched about being done and how over high school they were and being ready to graduate and now I just felt like it was all rushed and ending. When people saw in the school newspaper Senior Showcase thing, where they listed what everyone’s graduation plans were, that I was going into the Marines, they were all, “Wow, Oh, Cool!” and I felt worse, like no no no, you have no idea, I am leaving, for real, you have no goddamn idea how real and neither do I so we need to stop, and mark this and never let each other go and it was embarrassing that I felt that way, since I’d never felt that way about them to begin with.
The last track meet of my brief high school track career ended on the high fucking note of my fourth-place finish in the 800.
Or at least I thought it had ended. And then the assistant coach, this cute college girl named Gretchen who everyone had The Horn for, asked me why I wasn’t warming up, since I was doing the 4X400 relay, and didn’t I know this?
I looked at Eddie, who looked at me like, dude—keep up already.
Perfectly Good White Boy Page 20
