Perfectly Good White Boy Read online

  But there was a loud ping-pong game in the basement. And upstairs in the living room people were eating kettle corn out of one of those giant holiday tins and watching A Christmas Story, which was sort of lame, but still festive, I guess, since they were laughing and stuff, but it was still too loud to talk on the phone and organize my mind around what I wanted to say so I went into the kitchen, where Neecie was sitting on the counter and Shane was kind of standing between her legs, his hands on her knees, talking to her, super close, like they’d been kissing. Or would be, soon. Either way, I just stood there in the doorway and stared at them. She couldn’t see me; her long hair was around her face and Shane was talking in her ear and I felt like throwing up for some reason, but I couldn’t move, because she was sitting right next to the sink where it’d be best to barf and I didn’t want either of them to see me, and I knew the bathroom wasn’t far away, but I couldn’t move, because what the hell was happening to her and everyone else? What was making Shane think he could rub his big gross hand on her thigh like that? Her girl-sized thigh, his old-man hand: his losery, braindead-from-Jack-Daniels smoking-in-his-bedroom-and-living-with-Kerry-in-a-shitty-house hand?

  And what was making Neecie think that was a good idea? That was the real question.

  But then I had my answer, because her phone beeped and she grabbed it and checked it and then there was a gap in the music and I could hear a horn honking and she jumped from the counter, away from Shane’s old-man hands and his greasy goatee, and rushed right toward me, where I stood like a statue.

  “Move, Sean,” she said. “I gotta go.”

  “Where are you going?”

  She stopped and then just slithered around me. “Tristan’s here,” she said. “I’ll see you at work.” And then she grabbed her coat from the hook where all the shitty camo coats were, and before Shane could even say one word, to her or me, she was gone.

  Chapter Ten

  Hallie, again. Tuesday night. Early December. She was back again for winter break.

  In the laundry room. Again.

  She wore jeans. A sweater. Smelled good.

  The concrete floor. Again.

  Her saying don’t stop. Again and again.

  And me not knowing if what I was doing was what she liked. Again.

  All I knew is that I liked it enough for the both of us.

  She had gone down on me, this time. That part of things went on for a really long time, and it was good and I didn’t realize it until later, when it was over, but that was the best part, really. The part where I didn’t have to think. Or wonder about what I was doing.

  But then she handed me the condom, and then there was sex and me wanting to say all sorts of blurted-out things when I came, but I held back, and when she got off me and found her clothes, I peeled off the condom and tied it over the utility sink. Again.

  “What were you doing when I texted you?” she asked. She handed me a dryer sheet for the condom, handed me my coat after I got my jeans on.

  “At Eddie’s.” Not mentioning that Emma and Libby had been there, too. Eddie’d managed to finally do it with Libby, after a million weekends of her dithering over birth control and timing and if she was “ready,” until Eddie was ready to rip his hair out. Fuck: I was ready to rip my hair out just hearing about it. I’d been sitting in Eddie’s basement, in the dark, eating cookie dough out of a bowl with Emma, the bowl between us on the sofa like a referee, watching television while Eddie and Libby ate each other’s faces off and whatever else. Not sex, because Eddie’s parents were upstairs. It all felt super lame. Babyish. And I had signed up for the Marines and still hadn’t told anyone, not even Eddie or Neecie, because it was like I wanted to be a man and have secrets that were mysterious and keep my business private. Like, if Sergeant Kendall could see me, being all nuts and proud and braggy about things, he’d think I was a pussy or something. Like, when you were a Marine, you had to act like it was nothing big. You couldn’t just go around blabbing about your plans. Especially when you hadn’t even done anything yet. You had to wait until it was the right time. You had to be calm. You had to be cool about it. And the longer I held it in, the cooler it became to me. The better the secret became, the longer I held it in. Me being the only one to know felt really good.

  But I’d been really quiet, and not just because Emma seemed embarrassed, either about being around me or Eddie and Libby being so touchy and gross. I’d just sat there, eating and watching television, until Hallie’s text, when I had no problem standing up and saying I had to go, no explanation, just saying “see you” and not even looking back.

  “Was he having a party?” Hallie asked.

  “No, just hanging out.”

  She flicked off the laundry room light and we headed upstairs. She went into the kitchen and drank a big glass of water.

  “You want any?” she asked, holding out the glass. I shook my head. “My parents are at some Christmas party thing,” she said. “I was supposed to go, but I didn’t get back in time from Madison.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t know how I’m going to stand it now,” she said. “I don’t want to back to school. It sucks.”

  I would have asked her why it sucked, but honestly? I didn’t really care. It was pretty petty of me. But I thought, since she didn’t want to talk the other time, why pretend now? I didn’t have to be her boyfriend anymore.

  I couldn’t be anyone’s boyfriend anymore.

  “I have to be back January twentieth,” she continued. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do. What the hell is there to do here?”

  She sounded whiny, kind of desperate, but damn. If she couldn’t think of anything to do, Jesus Christ, I sure could. Just the thought of it filled me up, like money in my pockets. It just felt so fucking badass. Like, maybe I really deserved whatever I wanted now. I’d made a sacrifice, and even though it was secret, it still counted. So I didn’t have to wait for say-so. I could just leave someone’s cookie-dough-basement-make-out session to go get my dick sucked and get laid. Get whatever the fuck else I felt like too.

  So I took the glass of water from her hand, not in a nice way, and I gulped it. All of it. Then set it down on the counter and got my keys out. Didn’t look at Hallie at all.

  “You can always just text me if want to hang out in your laundry room,” I said. “That passes the time decent for me at least.”

  Then I walked out the back deck door. Same footprints in the snow, same stupid roundabout route to her house, through backyards of people I didn’t know, to my car, which was still warm.

  I’ve never understood how girls always like guys who are total dicks, but after I said that to Hallie, all assholey and bossy and whatever, instead of her being, like, fuck you dick, it was the reverse. The laundry room thing kept happening. Not all the time, but just enough for me to always feel up for it. My mom and Krista bugging me about what did I want for Christmas and me shrugging. What else do you want for Christmas besides that?

  Christmas Day, I sat in the living room with Grandpa Chuck and Brad and Krista and my mother, eating cookies and drinking eggnog and everything seeming really boring and slow, like we’d all gone into some shredded wrapping paper–induced coma, surrounded by boxes of new sweaters and gift bags of socks and some books I’d never read. Sergeant Kendall said he was flying to Jamaica for Christmas to meet some buddies. He had a few days’ leave. I thought about Jamaica. Rum and the beach. Chicks in bikinis. Surfing. Who knows if they surfed in Jamaica, but there was an ocean and Sergeant Kendall had grown up in California and talked about surfing as a kid. It made me feel jealous.

  And made me think, for the hundredth time, that this was when I should tell everyone. Before Brad gave me shit about living with Mom until I was forty and Grandpa Chuck asked me about my future plans—had I thought about veterinary school at all, since it was a kind of the family business, ha ha—and Mom started in about Steven-Not-Steve’s community college.

  My mother poured everyone eggnog. It made
a thick, slow, glooping sound that made me want to take a nap. Grandpa Chuck loved eggnog and asked my mom for a refill. Then he said he had some news.

  “Todd called me this morning,” he said.

  Todd = my father.

  “He’s got a ticket for Brad’s wedding,” he continued.

  Everyone immediately got tense; you could just feel it.

  Except for Krista. “Oh, how nice!” she said, all happy.

  “He must be doing well,” my mom said in this sort of dazed robot voice.

  And then I didn’t want to say anything about anything, least of all the Marines. Another reason to put it off: I should wait until everyone was here. All formal-like. But also, of course my dad would be back for Brad’s wedding. Not for my graduation a few weeks before, though. Pretty much what I’d come to expect from my dad.

  And I thought of Sergeant Kendall. How dry and smooth his handshake was. How he never seemed to sweat or pause or hesitate. How he always said just enough, like he planned his words; how he moved the exact amount necessary, like he meant every step and gesture.

  Then I felt guilty. I’d told him I could run the mile and a half in under thirteen minutes. I told him, and I hadn’t done shit. I looked at my family, still in their Christmas coma, and said I was going to take Otis out. Though it was freezing cold. I needed to stop thinking about screaming and hitting and acting like a two-year-old. I needed to mean what I was doing.

  Otis ended up ditching me five minutes into it, cutting through the snow back to the house, the pussy. But I walked at least an hour, down the highway, until I was back to normal. Numb with cold and calm. But slow and steady as eggnog sliding into the glass. Secret safe for another day.

  By New Year’s Eve, I was ready to eat rocks, I was so sick of my family and doing nothing. When Hallie texted that we only had a little window—her parents were having dinner with her grandmother at the nursing home—I jumped.

  But this time, when it was over and she tried to lift off me, my hands clamped down on her hips.

  “They’ll be back soon,” she said.

  “You said the nursing home’s in Chaska. And it’s not even close to midnight.”

  “Yeah, but they won’t stay that long. The old people don’t stay up until midnight, you know.”

  “Just wait,” I said, squeezing tighter.

  She folded her arms across her chest. Like she was cold. Or pouty. She looked both. But she also looked beautiful. There was something about being pinned down by her this way that I liked, that made her more beautiful. I mean, she was always beautiful, that didn’t go away, even on days when she claimed she looked like shit. She always looked the way she looked, which was beautiful in a way that sort of made me feel panicked and jealous and maybe I needed to be the one who was on top, holding her down. But I didn’t. I wanted her on me, just like this, us together, and me being able to look at her as long as I wanted.

  “What are you doing tonight?” I asked, since she was letting me get my way. At least for a few minutes.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re going to do something, though. You’re going out.”

  “I don’t know yet. Maybe.” She looked down at her fingernails for a minute. She had polished them, a silver-grey color with sparkly glitter. I thought about that for some reason. I hadn’t noticed her polishing her nails before. Had she? I didn’t remember it from before she left for college. This was another reason I needed to look at her. Though not noticing probably meant I’m a terrible boyfriend.

  Am. Was. Had been. Whatever.

  God, I love you so much.

  “So, let’s go out together. Get drunk or something.”

  “I’m tired of getting drunk.”

  “Okay, so, then, not get drunk. Something else.”

  “I don’t want to smoke pot, Sean.”

  I barely had any pot left, and I didn’t want to smoke it anyway. I didn’t see why bringing that up would help, though. Still, I was pissed at why she couldn’t just do something with me. Instead of just sneaking around. I felt like telling her about the Marines. Saying something like, I’m going to boot camp. Then who knows where. Deployed, somewhere far from here. And you’ll wish you’d been nicer. You will.

  “My knee’s falling asleep,” she said. All cold. Pissy.

  Her rules. Always. I fucking hated her rules now. Her too. Hated that she’d called me to come over and we’d done this at all.

  I am leaving. And never coming back.

  I took my hands off her hips and she stood up, separated herself from me, a little huffy, stepping into her clothes. Pajama pants. And a UW–Madison T-shirt.

  Usually, I went and did my bit at the utility sink with the condom, but this time I watched her get dressed like a total perv. It was dickish. Nasty. But I didn’t even hide it.

  She turned away from me to hook up her bra, and I got up, put my boxers and jeans on, tied the condom in a knot.

  She handed me the dryer sheet then. But I wouldn’t take it.

  “You deal with it for once,” I said, smashing the tied-off condom into the middle of the dryer sheet, making her flinch.

  She made a face, all disgusted. Which pissed me off more. As if it were really any grosser than her letting me put my dick up in her.

  “Fine,” she said, the dryer sheet unsteady in her palm, like it was radioactive.

  I put on my shirt and hoodie. I felt like shaking her. Hitting something. Her? I wanted to do something like that so bad that I couldn’t look at her. I was afraid she’d be able to tell it, just from my face.

  “See you,” I said. “Happy New Year.” Stomped upstairs.

  She rushed behind me, all the way to the sliding glass door.

  “Sean, wait . . .”

  I turned around.

  “I mean, I’m not trying to be, like,” she started. “It’s just not . . . I mean . . .”

  “Fuck, Hallie! Just fucking say it already!” I yelled.

  She backed away, put her hands on her hips.

  “God. You don’t have to be such an asshole about it.”

  “What am I even being an asshole about?” I said. “Tell me.” I put my shoes, my old shitty Adidas, flakes of Grandpa Chuck’s patio cement falling everywhere on the Martins’ perfect carpet. I didn’t bother to tie them.

  “I don’t want to fight with you,” she said.

  “Oh, are we fighting?” I said. “We’re not fighting. What would we have to fight about? See you. Happy New Year.”

  “Sean . . .”

  Then I stepped through the glass deck door. It was dark; it’d been dark since forever. My watch glowed that it was 8:02. I went through the same footprints as before, snow crusted and established. I wondered if her parents ever went out there, noticed the size-eleven prints, asked her who was coming and going through their back deck in the middle of the winter like that.

  I wasn’t out of her yard when I started running. Running like I hadn’t been. Running like I’d promised Sergeant Kendall I would that day in the recruiting office. I was lucky I didn’t wipe out, my untied shoes full of melting snow.

  By the time I got to my car, I wanted to just, I don’t know. Cry. Break something. Choke the goddamn life out of someone. My hands in fists. Wishing to just SMASH.

  Then another text.

  “FUCK YOU!” I screamed into the interior of the Mercury.

  But then I looked at my phone. Because I was always going to look at it, because that’s how I rolled, no matter if it was Hallie wanting to talk or something. Or Eddie sending some goddamn sex picture for the millionth time; the last one had been a picture of a buck’s balls.

  But this time it was Neecie.

  can you come get me?

  “Whose house is this?” I asked as Neecie got in the car. Though I knew exactly whose house it was. Been down the long windy drive toward the lakefront to a couple of parties here. Tristan Reichmeier’s house on Prairie Lake. The gate was open, and there were a bunch of cars parked there, in
the driveway and in the muddy snow.

  Neecie didn’t say anything. She just put a stick of gum in her mouth and rolled on her lip gloss.

  “Neecie?” I touched her arm, made sure she saw my face when I asked again.

  “Can you just drive?” She shook my arm off her.

  “Can you just answer the question?”

  “It’s Tristan’s, okay. Which I know you know. Will you just drive?”

  She glanced toward the door of the house, where a light had just gone on.

  “What,” I said. “Did you guys have a fight?”

  “No.”

  Then the door whipped open and there was Tristan. No coat, but with his shoes on, and it looked like he might come out. Until he saw me. Then, beside him, stood Ivy Heller. Her hair was blue again. Then Neecie said, “Will you fucking drive already?”

  I pulled the car out of park. But not before Tristan and me had a nice long stare-down. I’ll admit it; I enjoyed him looking uncertain about whether to come and mess with me.

  Getting back on the county road from the lake involved paying attention, so Neecie was lucky I didn’t ask her anything for a while. Then I asked where she wanted to go.