Perfectly Good White Boy Read online

  “This is kind of like that. Suck in the smoke, but don’t exhale it right away. Just hold it. Maybe try to swallow, even. Then, when I tell you, exhale it out the window.”

  “You should turn on the fan,” she said.

  “I will, but I want to make sure you hear what I’m saying.” Background noise was always a bitch for Neecie.

  She smiled at me, patted my hand. “You’re so nice. You’re my marijuana doula.”

  “What?”

  “Doula,” she said. “Assistant. The lady who stands by you while you’re giving birth. Ices your head and massages you and tells you what’s coming next. My mom had one with Melanie.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to not focus too much on that comparison. Neecie said things like that all the time, though.

  I handed her the one-hitter, then lit it.

  “Inhale,” I said and she did, her eyes going big. “Keep it in,” I said.

  She did, sucking her cheeks in, her mouth a perfect little O like in a lipstick ad.

  “Okay, okay: hold it. Hold it! Now, exhale!”

  She turned and shot the smoke out the little window, just like I’d said, and then I whipped on the fan.

  “Good job,” I said, looking straight at her. She smiled.

  “It tastes terrible,” she said. “Like burnt alligator skin.”

  “How would you know what burnt alligator skin tastes like?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, her lips curling in a grossed-out way. “That’s the first thing that went through my mind. Do I do it again?”

  “Yeah, but wait a second,” I said. “You want some water or anything?”

  “No, I’m good. Let’s go again,” she said, all business.

  She ended up doing two more hits, and then I told her to stop.

  She slid down in her chair, making the wicker squeak, and stared at toilet paper roll for a minute. The old thousand-yard stare.

  “You okay?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Everything’s kind of . . . slow. But it kind of feels like nothing.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Maybe I should do more?”

  “Just wait.”

  We went back to the kitchen, and I took out the pizza, which had sort of burned, but given that I am a human garbage disposal, I didn’t care. Neecie didn’t want any pizza; she just drank a giant iced tea (mango). She seemed the same, except less chatty. Not that “chatty” was how I’d normally describe her, but she definitely seemed more deliberate. Slow.

  “How you feel?”

  “Good,” she said. “Kind of lotion-y.”

  “What?”

  “Liquid-y,” she said. “But, like, a slow liquid. Like lotion. Toothpaste-like. Is that normal?”

  “Yeah,” I said, though I’d never felt lotion-y or toothpaste-like while high. I laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You are,” I said. “Let’s go listen to music in the piano room.”

  “Why?”

  “I think you’ll like it.”

  “Okay.”

  The piano room at the Albertsons’ was small and mostly taken up with a shiny black upright piano that I always wanted to touch but never did, thinking my greasy paws would fuck it up.

  Neecie sat at the piano, played a chord that sounded pretty choppy.

  “You know how to play piano?”

  “Yeah. But I quit lessons a long time ago. Only Jessamyn takes them still.”

  “You should play something.”

  “No way. I feel mentally retarded,” she said, getting up from the piano. “I mean that literally. Not in the dickish way. I feel so slow. Actually delayed. Like my words are taking forever to reach you, through space. Like, I could grab them after they travel out of my mouth and take them back. I couldn’t play anything. Aren’t you going to put on some music?”

  Mrs. Albertson had a ton of music. Dance stuff, which Neecie said she used for teaching fitness classes at the Y—Mrs. Albertson was kind of a health fiend—plus a bunch of old records. Classic rock, hippie stuff, disco, a mix of everything. I found a mix CD that Jessamyn had made called “Waiting Music” and put that on.

  We sat down next to each other on the floor as the music started.

  “What is this? Is this one of Jessamyn’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She makes good mixes,” she said. “Jessamyn’s always so secretive and sad about things. You never know what she thinks.”

  Kind of like her older sister, I thought. Older cousin. Whatever.

  She sighed and rested her head on my shoulder. My whole body tensed up.

  “I feel kind of syrup-y, now,” she said. “Even slower.”

  “Yeah,” I said. Still tense. My hands around my knees in a panicky grip.

  “Is that how I should feel?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Her head moved the other direction then, and I breathed out in relief.

  “I feel like I could fall asleep,” she said. “Why don’t I have the munchies?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You don’t have to have them. It’s probably better you don’t, actually. It kind of destroys your high a little.”

  “Makes you feel shitty?”

  “No, just dilutes it. Makes it go away sooner.”

  “Oh.”

  She laid back on the carpet, then, which I approved of, as that meant no more head-on-the-shoulderness. But then she dumped her bare feet into my lap, bright yellow toenails and all. I told The Horn I would kick its ass if it didn’t stop it already.

  “Did you want to be a pianist when you were little?” I asked.

  “What? A penis?”

  “No,” I said, pointing at the piano, turning so she could see my mouth. “A pianist. Piano player.”

  She laughed, then, and I knew it was good, her being high, because she couldn’t tell I was tense. That I’d turned The Horn on her and was thinking all kinds of shit that I shouldn’t be thinking. She was high and it was okay, she was oblivious, she couldn’t stop laughing. Laughing like birds flying over us, tumbling around the whole room. Which made me start laughing, too. Then we were laughing at each other for laughing. Which is the kind of thing that happens when you’re high, really, except I was sober as hell. Fucking weird.

  “No. I didn’t want to be a pianist,” she said, finally, when we stopped laughing. “Or a penis.”

  “God, you’re fucked up.”

  She laughed. “I’m not into music like Jessamyn is. I like it, but I’m more into other things. I like science. I like writing. I like reading. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just going to be one of those academic people. A professor, maybe. That’s what my mom always says.”

  “So, is that your future? Is that what you’re gonna do in college and everything?”

  “Who knows? It’s not worth discussing. Can you even hear me? I feel like the words are so slow, traveling to you . . .” I shook my head, told her it was fine.

  “I get kind of blank when I think about the future,” she said. “There are so many things, you know? How do I know what to pick, when I haven’t seen any of the things out there?”

  That sounded suspiciously like Hallie’s breakup talk.

  “Whatever,” I said. “You’re going to college. You’ve already picked that. That’s one thing, at least.”

  “I guess. But really, college is like my ship out,” she said. “I’m going to just get on it and see what happens after that. It’s just the vehicle. To find out what I really like to do. I can’t get really specific. Especially now; I’m all lotion-y, you know. My words are even like lotion. Or pizza cheese. Stringy. Like spiderwebs. Weird . . .”

  I laughed. I didn’t want to, even though she sounded completely wasted and crazy. I knew what she meant, I guess. I’d never heard anyone describe getting high like that, actually. But I could see it.

  “Plus I like a lot of things,” she said. “But a lot of them I just know about in books, you know?”


  “Not really.”

  “Because you don’t read.”

  “I do, too. I read school stuff.”

  “That’s different,” she said. “That’s being forced. What are you really doing, Sean? Doing on purpose? Doing on your own?”

  “I’m doing the Marines,” I said.

  “Oh, whatever. You are not.”

  “I am too,” I said. “I signed everything.”

  “Shut. Up.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “When?”

  “On my birthday. Back in November.”

  She sat up, slowly. Like a submarine rising out of the water, cautious, and it would have been funny, but I didn’t laugh. Because it all came gushing out of me, the whole story.

  “I signed the papers, I gave them all my documents,” I said. “I have to take this test, the ASVAB? It’s for deciding where to place me, jobs-wise. I should get my boot camp assignment this summer probably. It’s happening.”

  She was staring at me, but I didn’t care: telling had felt so good! The words had been the opposite of slow, like Neecie thought her words were. Like I was trying to prove a point about it.

  She crossed her legs beneath her, pretzel-style, like in kindergarten. Raked her hair out of her face, tucked it behind her ears a million times.

  “Sean, my god,” she said. “I can’t even. I mean . . . So, you’re going to, like, go to war?”

  “Jesus,” I said. “That’s not the only thing. There’s a lot of other . . .”

  “And jobs?” she said. “That sounds super weird. Like, it’s not a job, really. Not how I think of it . . .”

  “There’s many forms of service,” I interrupted, repeating line for line how Sergeant Kendall had explained it to me. “Communications, logistics, psy ops, supply chain, IT, mechanical. So it’s not just infantry, you know.”

  “Infantry?”

  “That’s what you’re thinking of,” I said. “Being in a tank, a foxhole. Front-lines stuff.”

  She laid back down. Her hair covered her face. When she talked again, it was like the words were being sent to the ceiling.

  “You are very brave, Sean. I couldn’t do that. I hate making my bed. And I can’t do one single push-up.”

  “I bet you could do one push-up. Look at you. You probably weigh like a hundred pounds! That’s barely anything to lift up!”

  “I weigh more than a hundred pounds, idiot. I’m like one forty-five. And don’t look at me like that’s a lot. Nobody weighs a hundred pounds unless they’re sick or something, Jesus. And plus, men have bigger things. You know?”

  “Things, huh? What things, exactly?” I was smiling like crazy. “I, personally, have so many things on me.”

  “You know what I mean.” She motioned to her own shoulders. “You know. Muscles.”

  I laughed. “Come on, do it, it’s easy.”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” I said, lying beside her. “Roll onto your tummy.”

  “Tummy!” she said. “You just said ‘tummy’!”

  “So?”

  “Do they call it that in the Marines?” She laughed.

  “Oh, shut up,” I said. I felt that bossy thing again, like I wasn’t gonna fool around. “Now listen to me. Put your arms like this. No, ninety-degree angle . . . No, you’re gonna do it the boy way. Not on your knees, that’s the girl way in Phy Ed. Use your toes.”

  “I am a girl, you know,” she said. “Don’t girl Marines get to do it the girl way?”

  “All Marines do it the boy way,” I said, though I didn’t honestly know.

  “Now, just pretend you want to lower your body to the floor, like you’re pressing something down with your belly,” I said.

  “With my tummy, you mean.”

  “Jesus! Yes, fine. Press it down with your tummy.”

  “You sound like the biggest dork when you say ‘tummy,’” she said. “Boys should not ever say the word ‘tummy.’ Or the word ‘panties’ either. There should be a law.”

  “Whatever. Just do it.”

  She lowered herself down, and I could see a little of her bra through the armhole of her T-shirt. Part of her boob, too. God.

  She did one push-up, then another, then one more. Then she collapsed on the carpet.

  “See?” I said. “You could totally do it.”

  “How many can you do?”

  “I’m up to fifty,” I said, trying to sound low-key and not braggy.

  “Jesus,” she said. “You have to do that to just get into the Marines?”

  “Not specifically push-ups. Pull-ups and crunches. And running. And that’s just to prepare for boot camp.”

  “Are you running now?”

  “Not yet. I need new shoes.”

  “Why?”

  “Mine suck.”

  “But you’ll have to run in combat boots, anyway, stupid,” she said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Come on, Sean! Haven’t you ever seen a movie in your whole life?”

  I rolled my eyes. But I knew I’d have to ask Sergeant Kendall. Because, really, that could save me a big hunk of money, not buying new running shoes.

  “You should join track,” she said. “Melanie does track. I think that would be funny. You’d get to wear those gross cutaway short shorts. And those man tank tops and stuff. I bet you’d look just fabulous.” Then she laughed at her own joke for a long time. Another hazard of smoking pot I should have warned her about.

  But I laughed too, and then we just laid there some more, the music changing into some trance-y stuff. Both of us and our secrets. Kind of. Her with her secret sex-ninja life; me with the Marines. Maybe I was being stupid, with the Marines: it crossed my mind a couple times since signing everything. But mostly I’d been thinking, yeah, the Marines was a good thing. Which was what I focused on, lying on the piano room floor with Neecie.

  A little while later, Neecie decided to eat some of Melanie’s Christmas cookies, and I watched her devour them. I’d never seen her devour anything before. It was pretty worth it, all the non-high babysitting, because she was like Cookie Monster, at least the way Cookie Monster was before they made Cookie Monster only eat carrots. She had crumbs on her boobs, eyes closed, saying how much she liked them, how awesome they were, until I told her why didn’t she just marry her cookies if she loved them so much, and she laughed and laughed and swatted at me, and I laughed, and she kept eating, crumbs all around her mouth.

  Then she said she wanted to watch some TV, and she laid on the sofa, and I sat on the floor, her hands brushing my hair a little, telling me I was her pet and did I use this one kind of conditioner, which Melanie used, which didn’t have some chemical in it? Because my hair was so soft, like a girl’s.

  “I can’t stop touching it,” she said, her fingers chopping around the back of my neck, all awkward and grabby, which freaked me out and made The Horn get all excited again.

  But luckily, then she stopped petting my hair and fell asleep. Way before midnight. And I was glad, because I didn’t want to be there when her mom and Gary came home. Didn’t want to keep liking hearing her breathe. Didn’t want to keep liking her, either.

  I stood up, nudged her arm a little. “Neecie, I’m going home, okay?”

  She opened her eyes, looked up at me in the half-dark of the TV.

  “What?”

  “You okay without me?”

  She yawned. “Yeah. I think so. I think I’m just going to go to bed,” Neecie said.

  “Okay.”

  She followed me to the door, watched me put on my shoes and jacket. I was about to open the door when she crossed her arms over her chest—her little boobs popping forward—and then she said, “I’m gonna do it, Sean. If you can go in the Marines and run in combat boots and wear those cutaway track shorts, then I can do it, too. No more Tristan. New Year’s resolution. You’ll hold me to it, right?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Good,” she said, then stepped toward me and kissed me on t
he cheek. Her mouth was soft, smooth. Like all the other girls’ mouths I’d ever kissed. Like Hallie’s mouth. Was my mouth like that?

  “Thank you,” she added.

  “Yep,” I said, trying to keep cool. The Horn was all freaked out, of course.

  I drove home, trying to be steady. It was only after I’d talked to Steven-Not-Steve and my mom in the living room, who were watching the ball drop while they tied up little ribbons to some crazy thing that had to be for Brad and Krista’s wedding and drank wine and ate crackers and cheese and whatever other crap Steven-Not-Steve thought made good snack foods, after me and Otis toppled into bed, that I saw Hallie had texted me. I had left my phone in my jacket pocket all night.

  I did some push-ups. I looked at the phone. I thought of Neecie, all lotion-y, petting my hair.

  And then I wondered, how it would work, to be done with Hallie too? I laid there for a long time, thinking of how to tell her.

  Chapter Twelve

  Brad’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. I know I’m smarter than Brad—I know it—and not just because of grades. It’s like Brad never thinks or something. He just goes around and DOES things and that’s it. He’s very simple. But Brad was always golden, always good, always doing the right thing, even if the right thing was something dipshitty like getting his truck stuck in the mudflats or getting in trouble for fighting at Homecoming or something idiotic like that. But with me, the one who didn’t get caught, the one who didn’t usually fuck up, my mom was always sighing. And my dad? I don’t know what he was doing. He would ride Brad’s ass a lot, but that was because he was older and more into the kind of sports my dad liked: football, baseball. By the time it was my turn for that stuff, my dad was too fucked up to notice.

  I was trying to tell Neecie this, not in those words, really, but trying to explain all the shit in my head, in order for her to get it, why we were up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning in early February, but she just sat in the passenger seat of my car, holding her coffee and sausage biscuit on her lap. Neither of us had to work for once, and I’d picked her up at her house and got her McDonald’s for breakfast (“My mom thinks McDonald’s is the devil!”) while I explained what I wanted to do.

  “Why do you have to do this now? It’s freezing cold!”