Perfectly Good White Boy Read online

“I’ve got to be able to hack it in boot camp,” I said. I’d said that so many times, I was sick of hearing myself saying it. Then I told her about the timing, the whole thing. I was looking her right in the face and everything, too, but Neecie wasn’t very athletic; she seemed to think I was being excessive, that I was out of my mind. It bugged me having to explain, but she was the only one who knew what I’d done, so there was no one else who could help me.

  “Okay, so where do I meet you?”

  “Just drive to that little shitty road behind the school and then go three more blocks to that park. That’s four miles.”

  “I thought you needed to do just one mile.”

  “A mile and a half. But this is for general conditioning and stuff. I can’t just do the minimum and think that’s enough. You run every day in boot camp.”

  “How do you know?” she asked. “Did you actually ask your recruiter guy what happens in boot camp?”

  Of course I hadn’t. I hadn’t even watched the videos of how to do correct pull-ups. I was just assuming, but I didn’t want her to know that.

  “Yes,” I said, then put my hat on and my earbuds in so we could be done talking.

  “You shouldn’t wear those kind of earbuds,” she said. “Why?”

  “At elevated volumes, they’re bad for your ears.”

  “Oh, really?” I asked, sarcastic. “Is that how you got the way you are?”

  “Shut up,” she said. “I was born with this shitty problem.”

  “It’s not shitty,” I said. “People have to look at you if they want to lie to you. That’s really genius. Plus, anything you don’t want to hear, you can just ignore it.”

  Neecie bit into her sausage biscuit. The smallest bite, Jesus. I could eat one of those things in two bites. She looked really tired, though, and I felt instantly shitty about how good she was being about this. It wasn’t even seven a.m., and while she’d agreed to this, I hadn’t realized maybe she had other things to do. Like be asleep for a couple more hours.

  “Go,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “You’re not even the one running!” I said, handing her the keys and turning on my music. “I’ll see you in a little while!”

  Maybe some people think about really great things while they’re running. Like maybe they come up with new inventions or whatever. Solve math problems. Meditate on the nature of the universe. Or maybe even cook up excuses or lies, elaborate stories for why they needed to dump their girlfriend or quit their job or whatever the hell.

  But I’d found, since I’d been running for a few weeks, that after the first few hellish minutes, during which my body basically screamed at me internally to JUST STOP STOP STOP WHAT ARE YOU DOING STOP FOR FUCK’S SAKE, I thought of pretty much nothing. I just saw things. Noted them. Like, “Burger King.” Or “patch of ice.” Or “Shitty house that looks like the rental.”

  So, after the last mile, when I saw Neecie sitting in my car, and I had to walk to cool down, and she popped out to accompany me, sipping her coffee and asking me how was it, I really had nothing to say, unless I wanted to say “Burger King. Patch of ice. Shitty house.” Also, I was coughing a little and spitting, which I couldn’t help, but if Neecie thought that was gross she didn’t show it. She just sipped her coffee, and we walked around the little park where I’d mapped out the finish line until I got back to normal.

  “You know, I want to be able to hear it though,” she said.

  “What?”

  “What you said, before you left? About not having to hear shit? I don’t like that. I want to hear what people are saying. Know what’s going on. I mean, I don’t want to have to talk back, always. Or have a long discussion about stuff. But I want to have the chance. To at least know what’s being said.”

  “Oh.”

  “I was just thinking about it, that’s all.”

  “Okay.”

  I was trying not to be all huffy and puffy with my breath, but it was colder now than when I’d started running. Or maybe I was just cold now that I’d stopped running. I didn’t even have a coat on, just windpants and a hoodie and a couple of old thermals.

  “I didn’t mean . . . I was just saying, you know, like . . . Never mind.”

  “I know what you’re saying,” I said. “I get it.” We looked at each other for a long time, and then she nodded.

  “Are you cooled down enough now? How much longer can that take? It’s freezing out here.”

  Back to the car, she said, “Can I drive again? I really like your car. It’s super dreamy and smooth. Like butter.”

  I said I didn’t care; I was tired and cold. Could feel my sweat rolling, cold, on my skin. Neecie drove to my house because I needed a shower pretty bad, and we didn’t talk at all because she had the radio on and had to face the road, anyway, and it was weird, being the passenger in my car, with her driving. It could have been that we’d been married a million years. Or that we didn’t know each other, either, like I was some sweaty, red-faced hitchhiker she’d picked up out of the goodness of her heart. Or some other third thing, where it could have been awkward, but wasn’t because, well, it just wasn’t. The song on the radio was Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire,” and it was old as fuck and Neecie wasn’t singing along or anything but I could tell she liked it from how she had this little twisty smile on her face and her fingers tapped the blue leather of the steering wheel and she just seemed awake now, happy, just happy, and then I realized it, what I was thinking, and it was that it was like she was my girlfriend, that was the third comfortable feeling, as if Neecie was the girl I was with, like, together-with, the girl I liked, or maybe even would love soon enough, because we weren’t far from it, and that was how it was when you were in the car together, and when you let someone drive your car for you, and when you knew they’d be there, four miles down the road, after you’d finished running on a 22-degree day in February, the month that has Valentine’s Day, which hadn’t happened yet, but was coming up next week, we’d been hearing about it on the morning announcements at school every morning, about the stupid carnation sales in the cafeteria at lunch, how you could send one to someone with a message for a dollar, secretly, even, and how goddamn annoying that was to me, had always been, both because I hated how girls would get all squeally about getting flowers, and because I never ever had the nuts to send any to anyone, even anonymously, even girls I really liked, and maybe that was why I’d gotten so mad last year and broken Eddie’s nose, though I knew it wasn’t the whole reason, which was my dad and all that shit no one would ever know and I was fine with that.

  Neecie stopped at a light. Turned to me.

  “Tristan’s been texting me,” she said.

  “What else is new?”

  “So. I texted him back. Twice. Both times were to tell him to stop it, though. So that shouldn’t count, right?”

  “Right.”

  The light turned green, and Neecie turned onto the highway, guiding the steering wheel through her hands, driving slower and more safely than I ever did. She was precise when she drove. Precise and certain about Tristan, too. She was done with him. She had made up her mind, she said. She told me when he texted; she even showed me the texts he’d sent at first. She was honest.

  But I was still being a shithead. I’d gone over to Hallie’s the night before.

  And it had been bad. Because it was bad with Hallie now. Hallie, who’d not gone back to college. Hallie, who was having some kind of mental breakdown and looked like she was dying and never wore anything but pajamas now, who cried the last couple times after we had sex, and who told me all this shit about why she hated her life and college and couldn’t go back and didn’t want to stay here, either. Hallie, who didn’t make me use condoms anymore, since that time I’d smashed the used one into the dryer sheet in her hand, and who said she was still on the pill, so that was good enough.

  Sex without a condom? Like I was going to put up a fight about that.

  When Neecie pulled up the gravel dri
ve, my mom’s car was still there.

  “Shit,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I just thought my mom’d be gone by now.”

  Neecie went into my house first, petting Otis, saying hello to my mom, who was in the kitchen filling the dishwasher. Neecie liked my mom. She liked our house too. And Otis. There wasn’t much she didn’t like about my life. I felt like she wasn’t getting something. Like, if she really understood everything, she’d stop petting my dog, who licked his own asshole twenty times before breakfast, and stop talking to my mom, who always gave a little sigh whenever she saw me. She’d not fall into a chair at the kitchen table and start fiddling with Krista’s piles of ribbon that were going to become something unspeakable romantic for the goddamn wedding.

  Neecie and my mom started chit-chatting, my mom offering tea—my mom being very big on tea, the more stanky and herbal, the better—and by the time the explanations about the ribbon on the table came up, I had slipped downstairs to shower and get dressed and figure out a quick exit. I didn’t like being alone with my mom lately. I didn’t want to tell her about the Marines thing yet, but it was so close to my mind, my mouth, I was worried it’d just spill out. I wanted to wait until my dad was back. When I got my boot camp assignment, at least. When everything was solid. No debate. Just, I am leaving, and here’s where I’m going, and that was it. The never coming back part I’d leave out.

  But just as I was putting my shoes back on, my mom asked if she could talk to me for a minute, alone.

  “I’ll be in the car,” Neecie said, her face getting all red like it did when she was nervous or uncomfortable. “What’s going on?” I said, trying to be all unconcerned. “Two things,” my mom said. “First, your dad called. He’d like you to call him.”

  “Okay. Why didn’t he just call my cell?”

  “He didn’t have the number; they didn’t allow him his cell phone at the place he was, so I just canceled it, anyhow.”

  “Oh.”

  “Second, all the papers for the divorce came yesterday. I signed them and sent them back.”

  “Okay,” I said. Not really getting why she was telling me. I knew that she’d filed; I’d wished for it long enough, and I’d seen the papers after the shit with my dad finally forced the issue. Last year at this time, in fact. Perfect timing.

  She kept looking at me, as if she was checking for signs of distress or drug use or something else I was hiding. Which just pissed me off.

  “What? Why are you staring at me?”

  She shook her head. “No reason. I guess I expected a different reaction to that news.”

  “Well, I’m glad,” I said. “It’s good news. And he’s not my husband, he’s yours, so what do I care, exactly?”

  “Come on, Sean,” she said. “He’s still your father.”

  “Barely,” I said, putting on my coat.

  “Don’t be like that,” she said. “Brad doesn’t see it like that.”

  “I’m not Brad.”

  “I know that . . .”

  “And what does he want me to call him for?”

  “Well, you know, the divorce stuff, for one thing.”

  “Which I don’t care about.”

  “And he just wanted to talk to you, in general, I think.” She handed me a piece of paper with his number on it.

  “Can he get calls there? Or is it a pay phone like the other places?”

  “It’s his new cell,” she said. “He’s out of the halfway house now. He’s living in a kind of group space. A kind of recovery community, too, but not like the halfway house. Well, he can tell you all this himself. Just call him.”

  “You, like, talk to him now? Why would you talk to him? You’re divorced, Mom. You don’t have to talk to him at all.”

  “Sean . . .”

  “And neither do I, you know,” I said, opening the door. “I’m eighteen. There’s no visitation, no custody.”

  She looked at me like I was a total piece of shit then. Like I’d done something bad by admitting I was grown and not a minor.

  “I knew you’d be touchy this time of year,” she said. “Anniversaries are hard.”

  “I don’t know why you’re making this such a big deal; you even have a boyfriend now.”

  “Steven is not my boyfriend. We’re just friends.”

  “Whatever. I don’t care, either way.”

  “Will you please just call him? Just once? I think he has some things he’d like to say to you.”

  I could have argued. I wanted to. But I didn’t want her getting more therapeutic and didn’t want her giving me that shitty look again. So I said yes and tried not to run out the door, where Neecie was waiting for me in the passenger seat.

  “Is everything okay? Where do you want to go?”

  “Anywhere you say,” I said.

  We went to the gas station. Neecie bought a giant can of iced tea and some Sour Patch Kids; I bought corn nuts and nachos and donuts because I was hungrier than shit. Then Mrs. Albertson texted Neecie and said we had to pick up Jessamyn, so we picked her up from someone’s house and then dumped her off at someone else’s house. We went to the bookstore, where she bought a bunch of books and crap. We stopped at the YMCA to look up the indoor track hours. Eddie had scored some free passes for me; I figured running indoors might be better than going in the subzero. Then we went to the Thrift Bin so Neecie could buy some junk she’d put aside in the donation room and somehow, from me looking through racks of old T-shirts, Neecie talked me into buying some jeans, making shit out of the ones I was wearing being so crappy and old.

  “As if these jeans aren’t old, either,” I said, coming out of the dressing room in a pair of Levis she’d found for me. She’d insisted I try them on and show her, like she was my mom. They were okay jeans, but they had a stupid button fly. I hate button flies.

  “Levis are well-made denim. They’ll last you forever. Unless you get fat.”

  “Fat? Who just ran four miles, huh?”

  “I’m not accusing you of fatness. Just stating facts.”

  “I don’t need a lot of clothes, you know. They’ll be giving me a uniform. You can’t bring a ton of stuff to boot camp.”

  “You can’t bring any stuff to boot camp,” she said. “Nothing. Didn’t your guy tell you that?”

  Your guy = Sergeant Kendall.

  “Well, yeah, but . . .”

  “Nothing,” she repeated. “You don’t get your own stuff back until you complete boot camp. I’ve been reading all about it.”

  “Where? What have you been reading?”

  “Just the stuff online, military websites. It’s all there. You didn’t read any of that before you signed everything?”

  I shrugged.

  She rolled her eyes. “Those look good on you,” she said. “I’ll even buy them for you. A going-away present.”

  “Big spender. All of $5.99.”

  “Don’t forget my employee discount.”

  Neecie bought the jeans, so I bought her another can of iced tea (pomengranate) when we stopped at another gas station so I could get some gas. We’d picked up our checks at the Thrift Bin, too, and I’d deposited mine at the ATM outside the gas station. I kind of had to do things like that the second I got paid, otherwise I’d spend everything and end up on an empty tank. I was kind of a dope about money.

  “Where now?” I asked.

  “Just take me home, I guess,” she said, yawning. “I totally want to take a nap.”

  “Okay,” I said. Not wanting her to know how bummed out I was. I mean, I was tired, too, but I didn’t feel like being alone. Or going home either.

  I drove toward Neecie’s, a little slower than normally. Not that she noticed. She just sort of lolled around in the passenger seat, talking about dumb little things.

  “This is why I like being friends with you,” she said, out of nowhere.

  “What?”

  “Just, that you don’t take it all personal if I want to be alone,” she said. “And you
don’t care if we do dumb little things. You know?”

  “Right.”

  We drove in silence for a few more minutes.

  “I can’t believe you’re doing that Marines thing,” she said, out of nowhere. “God. That’s gonna be weird. I’m totally gonna miss this. Who will get your car? It’s not like you can drive it to boot camp.”

  “What?”

  “Well, you can’t. You get flown or bused to boot camp. Depending on where you are in the United States. West of the Mississippi, you go to California for training. East, and you to Parris Island. That’s where you’ll go. Parris Island, that’s where they go in Full Metal Jacket, you know?”

  “What?”

  “You know? That movie, with the drill sergeant screaming about how he’s gonna skullfuck the recruits and stuff? That guy who does all the shows about guns on the History Channel? It’s a famous movie. Stanley Kubrick directed it.”

  Skullfuck? “No idea what you’re even talking about.”

  “Wow, I can’t believe you haven’t seen that. Like, every guy has seen that. Tristan quotes from it all the time.”

  I shrugged. Because, fuck Tristan. “Fuck Tristan.”

  She stopped talking, then. Stared straight forward. I didn’t know if she was pissed off. Or had been seeing him again.

  “What?” I said, after I parked in front of her house. “Is it surprising I don’t like the guy?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what, then? Did you want to see him again or something?”

  “Do you still see Hallie?”

  It caught me, I had to admit. I was quiet.

  “Fuck you!” she said, pushing at my shoulder. “You’re still doing it with her, aren’t you?”

  “Did you do it with Tristan?”

  “No,” she said. “No, but . . .”

  “But . . .?”

  “Almost,” she said. “I wanted to tell you earlier. He came over last night. If my mom hadn’t woken up just when I could have slid out the back door, I might have.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know.” She was quiet a minute. Then she turned back to me, mad. “I can’t believe you! What’s your problem? How can you be all judgey of me when you’re still with Hallie?”