Perfectly Good White Boy Read online

  “Get in,” Hallie said. “Quick.”

  I couldn’t see her, but I could smell her, her same Hallie smell. Her same lotion or shampoo or whatever.

  “Let’s go to the basement,” she said.

  “Why?”

  She grabbed my hand, tugged me through the dark.

  “The back walkout’s there,” she said. “If anyone comes home, you can go out that way.”

  I didn’t ask why we didn’t just do it in the TV room. I could go out the sliding door, too. But I was too freaked and turned on. Plus I didn’t actually care. We got to the basement and finally she turned on the light. She was wearing yoga pants and a T-shirt. Her hair down. She looked great. She hopped up on the dryer and stared at me.

  “You’re still wearing your hoodie,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. I took it off, put it on a pile of laundry.

  “Come here,” she said.

  I looked around the basement. I’d only been in it once or twice. There was a cement floor, a drying rack covered in clothes. An ironing board leaning against the wall. I realized—too late—that I didn’t have any condoms. I’d gone over to Neecie’s to hang out, not get laid.

  I walked toward her on the dryer. I wondered what I was supposed to do now. There was about a foot of space between us; I didn’t know how to go about grabbing her and taking her clothes off anymore.

  “So, how’s college?” I said.

  She laughed. Not a fakey laugh. Or a surprised laugh. But not really a real laugh, either. This was a snotty, oh-hell-no laugh. “We can talk about that later,” she said. She put her hands on my shoulders, and then, when we were close enough, she kissed me.

  Then I was driving home.

  The whole thing hadn’t lasted more than fifteen minutes, and now I smelled like fabric softener sheets, which kind of gave me a headache. That and Hallie’s words kept piling up in my head. The few ones she said.

  I stopped at the light before the turnoff to my house. I was the only car there. Sitting at the light, my car wasting gas.

  “Touch me there,” Hallie said. “Like this.”

  The light kept being red. A truck roared past me.

  “Not like that,” Hallie said.

  I did what she said, but I hadn’t been sure about what I was doing, or even how it was that different from what I ever did before when I touched her down there. She wore a pair of panties that I’d never seen before. They didn’t match her bra, but that was maybe because it was a sports bra.

  The light changed and I turned, heading down the freeway toward my house.

  “Thanks for coming over.”

  My house was dark. Dark as hers had been. My mom’s car was there. I heard Otis bark as I climbed up the steps.

  My mom didn’t get up when I came in. Normally, she liked me to come in and say goodnight to her, and usually I did, unless I was too wasted or something. Then I’d just holler from the hallway that I was home. But now, completely sober, I couldn’t stand the idea of seeing my mom. Felt like I had Hallie all over me.

  Hallie sitting on the stupid dryer, saying oh god and I don’t know what it was, but I just felt crazy and I wanted to go down on her, something she’d never allowed before. The dryer, of all things, made this the perfect access, too, with my height, but when I ducked my head down, she wasn’t having it.

  She pushed off the dryer and then we were on the cold concrete floor and I was a little pissed.

  Another goddamn rule.

  But I was on top of her now, and she was grabbing me through my jeans and I didn’t care.

  “That’s good.”

  My head totally spinning with that. What had I been doing? Was she talking about my boner? I didn’t know what was going on. But she’d just handed me a condom and that was that.

  Then, when I was about to come, she said, “Don’t stop.” Like she knew it was almost over. That I couldn’t stop. And I didn’t know if it was still good. I couldn’t ask her, either. But I didn’t stop. Then her eyes closed and it seemed like something important was happening, but by then I was coming anyway and it was all so much, so awesome and feeling so good and she was so beautiful and everything felt better than I remembered it so I couldn’t stop myself from saying it, again, words I hadn’t said in weeks:

  “God, I love you so much.”

  Then I squeezed her so hard, in case she didn’t get it. That I’d said it. But she didn’t say anything. Her eyes were closed. There was a pink sock right by her head, curled into a ball.

  I lifted off her a bit. Felt the grit from the concrete on my palms. Hallie’s eyes still closed, like she was pretending to be dead or something. The second I pulled out of her, her breathing start to get back to normal, and then I noticed how cold the room was. And quiet, except for my words echoing in my head: “God I love you so much.”

  Just remembering saying that made me feel sick.

  In my room, Otis jumped on my bed. Too tense to sleep, I took off my shirt and did some push-ups. Laid there again until Otis jumped down to lick my face. Waited to hear my mom call for me. She sometimes did that, after all my moving around woke her fully up.

  But tonight, nothing. The whole house was still. I could hear the water heater shrieking down the hall from me.

  Hallie, putting her clothes back on. Me, tying the condom in a knot over the utility sink, then wrapping it in the dryer sheet she gave me. Hallie, slipping the whole white ball into my hoodie pocket. Like it was a souvenir. A present. Like it was Tupperware I’d brought to a party and she wanted to make sure it went home with me.

  Then she handed me my hoodie.

  “Thanks for coming over.”

  I stared at her. A bit of hair was caught in the neck of her T-shirt. I wanted to pick it out, but I couldn’t move. Because I hated her so much. Loved her so much. Wished I had her naked boob pictures, so I could send them to everyone I knew in the world. But she’d been too smart for that, which made me hate her more. Loved how she smelled, how she felt. Hated the little white ball of cum in my pocket.

  “My parents could be back any minute now,” she said. “They don’t even know I’m home yet. You should probably go.”

  Dumb as a dog, I walked back through the dark house, following her as she turned on a few lights here and there. Then I slid open the glass door, not even saying good-bye, and stepped into my own footprints in the snow on the deck, half full of more snow now, since it was snowing again, thin streams of flakes as I reversed the trip, cutting through the same backyards, the same little park, the duck ditch covered in snow. Before I got in my car, I chucked the dryer sheet condom into a snowbank. It didn’t even make a sound, and the little dimple where it landed filled up soon enough. Little condom-print, vanished.

  Pushing Otis away, I went into the bathroom. Brushed my teeth, looked myself over in the mirror. Same old self. You couldn’t tell I’d just gotten laid. You couldn’t tell I’d broken my best friend’s nose. Couldn’t tell that my father was a fuck-up. You couldn’t tell one thing about me. I looked like any other boy, a little zitty, a little skinny, farmer tan fading, just like any other white guy in Oak Prairie. In America.

  I took off the rest of my clothes and got in bed. Shoved Otis to the side, curled toward the wall. I wondered if Hallie was asleep, now. If her parents had come home and found her in her old bed, her stuff all unpacked on the floor.

  Thanks for coming.

  Don’t stop.

  We can talk about that later.

  That’s good.

  God, I love you so much.

  I listened to Otis harrumphing and snoring down by my feet and felt like the only person left on earth still awake, the only person who knew the secret that not a single thing in this world was worth a damn.

  Chapter Nine

  I was at the Marine recruiter’s office, the next day. My birthday. All my crap in my backpack. Paperwork scrounged up on the sly, while avoiding my mom, who was upstairs cooking and getting ready for Thanksgiving.

&nb
sp; I’d had to go through about ten boxes she hadn’t unpacked to find it all. There’d been a stack of them by the furnace, a ton of stuff Brad had packed. My mom had been methodical about packing; even when I’d caught her crying while she was doing it, she still wrapped things in newspaper, still organized things by room and type.

  But the boxes Brad packed were full of a little bit of everything. Old mail, legal shit from the bank and the lawyers, bills from the hospital and the detox unit, an old collar of Otis’s that was missing the tags, a box of macaroni and cheese, a pile of catalogs and magazines, the knobs from an old dresser my mom ended up throwing out, the glass pitcher for our blender, but not the rest of the blender. Random shit, all tossed in with zero thought. At least, in the hospital crap, there were other medical bills, so I found my doctor’s name and clinic, which would at least give me something to go on.

  Finally, in a box that had nail polish, paperclips, and a tin of nasty old caramel corn from Christmas, I found my school files and folders. Crummy faded pictures I’d made in grade school, my name in all caps: SEAN N. Report cards that repeated the same things: “seems distracted” and “often doesn’t finish his work” and “talks out of turn.” There, next to a half-filled-in baby book of my photos, was my vaccination record and my Social Security card, my birth certificate, and a little thing with my blood type.

  Sergeant Kendall was meeting with someone when I got there, and I was impatient. He wasn’t expecting me, so it was all my fault. But I couldn’t get it out of my head, Hallie’s laundry room. It just replayed, over and over, the good parts and the bad parts. Mainly the words I’d said.

  I studied the list of things my mom texted me to pick up from the store. Krista was bringing food too. Grandpa Chuck had venison. My mom had bought a cake from the store this time; it had been sitting on the counter when I’d walked through the kitchen on my way out. It would have been better if she had forgotten this year, though. I felt guilty. For a whole bunch of things.

  I love you so much.

  Fuck.

  “Sean?” Sergeant Kendall in front of me. “What can I do for you?”

  I stood up. We shook hands.

  “Got that paperwork,” I said.

  “Great,” he said. “Step back to my office and let’s get started.”

  I normally loved Thanksgiving, and not just because it was my birthday. I loved it even when my birthday got lost in it, because it was all about food and there was no church service involved or gifts you had to remember to buy and then you could take a long nap or watch football or both. But this year, I just sat there, feeling tense. Feeling like it was everywhere, all over my face. Filling out the forms and Sergeant Kendall making copies of my birth certificate and driver’s license and Social Security card and Hallie and me in the laundry room and all of it. Brad especially wouldn’t stop staring at me, asking me to pass this or that dish.

  Plus everything everyone said reminded me of the Marines thing.

  Steven-Not-Steve talked about credit cards; I thought about the credit check Sergeant Kendall explained they needed to do. To see if I owed money or defaulted on loans or hadn’t paid child support. I laughed at that, but he didn’t blink.

  Krista mentioned that one of her servers was filing a workers’ comp claim and it was getting pretty ugly; I thought about how the whole “any falsifications or omissions on medical history” was grounds for instant dismissal.

  Grandpa Chuck tossing some turkey to Otis and Krista acting all freaky about eating, asking what was in everything, like she didn’t want to blow out her wedding dress or something—all of that brought up BMI and running and whether I’d be able to hack it in boot camp. I was barely able to finish my birthday cake, which, of course, made my mom ask what my deal was.

  The next day, I went in early for my Black Friday shift at the Thrift Bin. Still feeling like the secret, the lie, was all over me. Hallie and the Marines, both. But as I walked around, doing all the opening jobs, I also felt a little proud. Smug. Like I was getting away with something.

  And that was dangerous, because I was dying to say something. Do my blurting thing. But damned if I’d ever tell Kerry one thing, even if it did involve getting laid. So Neecie it was. And it felt easy, to tell her about Hallie. To explain why I jumped up and left her house like I had. To write it off like a booty call. Which it had been. Only I hadn’t known it, I guess. God.

  “Oh, Sean,” Neecie said. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  I looked at her. “It wasn’t just me.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I know, but, god! Have you learned NOTHING?” She kind of yelled this, and Wendy, from over in the collectibles processing area, looked up at us.

  Neecie was tagging Christmas-y stuff, sweaters with Frosty the Snowman on them and aprons covered in poinsettias and tiny red velvet dresses for little girls to wear to church and fuzzy Santa hats and crap like that. I was leaning against the clothing table with a box cutter, breaking down cardboard boxes.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She looked down, her skin going all red. She wasn’t wearing her Thrift Bin apron now, just a little thermal with a low neck under a red hoodie that she’d found in the pile of Christmas clothing. The hoodie had little jingling bells along the sleeves and green ribbons all over it, some amateur crafter’s attempt at Christmas-ing up a boring hoodie. It was horrible, but she and Wendy got into moods like that sometimes. Wendy wore giant angel earrings made out of tinsel and a sweater covered in reindeer.

  Then she said, out of the side of her mouth, “Me and Tristan,” and went back to being really absorbed in the workings of her tagging gun. As if Tristan had spies hiding out in the back room of the Thrift Bin.

  “Oh.”

  “Be careful. Might become a bad habit.”

  I shook my head. Neecie had no idea; I’d gone and made the future happen with the Marines. I couldn’t be a habit with anyone. “I won’t be that lucky. I can’t believe it even happened once.”

  Neecie looked doubtful, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Christ, Sean, do you ever do anything but sexually harass people around here?” Kerry, coming up from behind me.

  I pictured, not for the first time, stabbing him with my box cutter. But then Kerry did something totally weird.

  “So, Neecie,” he said. “You guys should come out tonight. I’m having people over.”

  Neecie turned super red. But she just said, “Really?”

  “Yep,” Kerry said, smiling now that he had her attention. “Real festive gathering. Homemade hot chocolate and everything.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” I said. Blurted. “You’re so full of shit.”

  Kerry was staring at Neecie like she was something delicious he wanted to eat, but he just said, “Oh, yeah? You weren’t here last year, so you don’t know the whole tradition. Just ask her! Wendy always comes to my Black Friday thing. Hey, Wendy!”

  Wendy looked up from the pile of pottery she was squirting with Windex.

  “Sean here doesn’t believe me about the Black Friday party,” Kerry said, all snotty. “Tell him.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Wendy said. “Kerry and I always do that on Black Friday. He makes homemade hot chocolate and everything.”

  “Hot chocolate?” Neecie said. Now she was smiling. “Seriously?”

  Kerry said yes and smiled at her again. He looked like a shark. A shark with a black and ginger beard.

  “It’s my secret recipe,” he said. “You can add a little Hot 100 to it, just for flavor, if you want, too . . .”

  “Okay,” Neecie said. Before I could say anything. “But I still don’t have my car. I’ll need a ride.”

  “I can give you a ride, no problem,” Kerry said, looking very satisfied with himself and walking off. Like he’d just totally rooked the dumb girl into some joke. Or worse. I was thinking worse, given the Hot 100 comment. Though he couldn’t think he’d get her loaded and try shit with her. Not with Wendy there. Or me.

  �
��I’ll take you,” I said.

  “Whatever,” she said.

  “Since when do you want to hang out with Kerry?”

  She shook her head, and then the donation door rang and Kerry yelled for me, and I spent the rest of the night dealing with this stupid donor who had three carloads of crap from her dead uncle’s house and who told me and Kerry about the tragedy and the coincidence of someone dying right around the holidays, when all these bags and boxes of shit could be given to “those in need.” Most of it was garbage, I could just tell, looking at the woman, who looked like the kind of lady who saved yogurt containers and the foil that butter got wrapped in and whatever. She was wearing a Christmas sweater too. Which appeared to be contagious, because by the time we were closing, even Kerry was wearing a Santa hat.

  And Neecie wouldn’t even drive over to his house with me, because Eddie texted me a bunch, wanting to hang out, but when I told her we needed to stop and get him, Neecie, putting her own Santa hat on, said that she’d go straight to the party with Wendy, who was getting a ride from Kerry too.

  “What’s Libby doing tonight?” I asked Eddie as we drove to Kerry’s. I sounded kind of like a dick. But neither of us had hung out much this year. He was always with Libby, and I was always with Neecie. Or up my own ass.

  “She’s at her relatives’ in Iowa,” he said. Sounding like he was sorry for it, and sorry for ignoring me, and I felt sorry back, too.

  “You think he’ll sell me some weed?” Eddie asked when I parked in front of Kerry’s house.

  “Don’t bring it up,” I said. “He’s all touchy about who he sells to. Plus my manager is gonna be there; I don’t know if she knows he sells weed. And Neecie Albertson is gonna be there too.”

  “That deaf chick from school?”

  “Fuck you, she’s not deaf.”

  “Are you, like, hooking up with her now?” Eddie asked. “I thought she was gay with that Ivy chick.”