Chicken (13 page)

Lauren bites her glittery lower lip. “Well, that escalated quickly.” 

Hannah takes her hand off my leg, grabs the last breadstick with jittery fingers. I start tearing up the one lying on my plate, the same way I tore up my hot dog. From now on I’m only eating circles, squares, and triangles. 

Brant shoves half a breadstick into his mouth, and then jumps up again before he’s finished chewing. “Casper. Air hockey. Now.”

He strides across the restaurant, down the length of the crooked line of tables, past the whispers of the church girls and the stares of the guys. I look from Lauren to the basket of breadsticks to Hannah, whose response is to push me out of my chair. I hurry after him, trying to look casual and not angry at him for making me follow like a puppy. I pass through the propped open French doors under the pink neon arcade sign, and find him force-feeding a dollar into the coin machine. 

It spits it out. He tries again.

It spits it out. He slaps the side of the machine and growls.

I take it from his trembling fist and press it flat over a call-for-a-good-time number that might be thirty years old. He puts his forearm against the wall and leans his head against the machine.

“I really could go for a cookie.”

His voice sounds strange, like a new actor’s interpretation of a beloved character in a crappy cartoon sequel. I want to take his face in my hands and make him look at me, make sure he’s still him. My heart is pounding all wrong, but a new kind of wrong, not the wrong I’m getting used to. Wrong like I’m in the presence of some great and terrible wrongness. 

I reach my hand between his chest and the machine, slip the dollar into the slot. It whirs and clicks and four tokens jingle into the metal cup at the bottom. He scoops them up and heads for the air hockey table, which is purple and glowing and vaguely space-themed. He feeds it the quarters and it comes to life, beeping and booping like R2D2. 

He picks the side with his back to the door, leaving me with a view of the restaurant and all the people wondering why he urgently needed to play air hockey right now. I’d kind of like to know myself.

Brant tosses the lime green puck in the middle of the table, and it floats ghost-like toward me. I grab the orange striker and cover my hole. Brant tries to tuck his forelock behind his ear, but it’s too wild, too much, and falls right back into his eyes. He catches his gliding striker and leans forward, dangerously close to the table. I tap the puck lightly, afraid of hitting him in the head and bringing him down like Goliath.

He slams it back and scores. His arms shoot up in victory, lifting his shirt a good four inches from his jeans.  I look away. In the other room, Lauren is laughing while Hannah mimes being trapped in what others might assume is your average invisible box but what I know to be her invisible TARDIS.

I dig the puck out of my side of the table and try again.  We keep it going longer this time. He never hits as hard as he did at first, and I start to wonder if he’s even trying to win anymore. But his eyes follow the puck with unnatural precision, and his hand is always right where it needs to be to keep me from scoring. 

I purposefully miss the puck next time it flies my way. It clunks in the hole and a red number two appears on his side of the scoreboard next to my big fat zero. He stretches and shakes his arms out, shoulders to fingers. The wrongness that clung to him has lifted, replaced by a lightness, a rightness, that I could settle into for a long, long time. 

I put the puck back on the table and lean in, curling my lip at him. He lunges forward, baring his teeth. I get that silly image again of us as bucks, locking antlers, pushing each other around. I think about all the times he’s tried to wrestle, and I want those chances back. I am angry that I ever let my stupid feelings steal my ability to play.

Rihanna blasts from the speakers, louder in here than in the dining room. Electronic and vaguely outer-spacey, just like this table. Brant’s right hip twitches as his foot bounces to the beat, and then his head starts swinging and his shoulders get to see-sawing. I score a point.

He slaps his forehead, but then pushes his fingers through his hair until he’s cupping the back of his head. He grins and swivels his hips and then thrusts his pelvis at the table. 

“I think I’m the one who earned a touchdown dance.”

He takes a step back, and then does this goofy shimmy toward the table. “Well, go on then.”

I laugh, roll my eyes, shake my head, but then I feel that bubble of defiance rising up in my chest again, and if I popped it this afternoon by tripping all over myself, well, so what? I set down my striker and watch it sail away. I ask Rihanna into my heart and let her guide my arms into one of those old disco moves that always looks goofy.

Brant grins and nods his approval. Then he goes full-throttle “Stayin’ Alive.” 

Behind him, I see his mother bustling toward the cash register. I wonder why she’s paying when the pizzas aren’t even out yet. She accosts the teenage cashier, pointing up at the ceiling and then back at the kids’ table. The cashier shrinks away, hands up like he’s telling her not to come behind the counter. Then he turns and fiddles with something I can’t see.

Rihanna leaves the building.

Casting Crowns fills the arcade. 

Brant’s eyes flutter shut and a great, slumping sigh leaves his body. I open my mouth to tell him what happened but realize there’s no need. He knows. Of course he knows. I get a terrible flash then, maybe even a vision, of Brant Mitchell, my hero, my best friend, as just another human-shaped mosquito, crumpled and frozen, crushed a long, long time ago.

FRIDAY, JULY 6, 2012

I roll out of bed wincing. 

I fell asleep in Brant’s boxers, and now they’re stuck to my junk. 

Perfect.

I don’t even remember the part of the dream that did this to me. Only that Reba McEntire was there roasting weenies on a campfire. Unsettling, but unsurprising since I did drift off listening to my Legendary Ladies of Country mix. 

I peel the underwear off. Gently. I keep a roll of paper towels under the bed for mornings like this, and I tear off a few sheets. I dunk them into the glass of water on my nightstand, and then carefully wring them out over the glass. I wipe myself down, grateful that my stuffy room kept the water bearably lukewarm. I tear off a few more sheets and blot things dry.  

I look at Brant’s boxers lying on the floor. We don’t have a washing machine. I could take them in the shower and rinse the worst of it out, but there’s no place to dry them. I could take them with me to Sister Bonnie’s and wash them in the barn. She’d have no reason to believe they weren’t mine, but she’d wonder why it couldn’t wait for laundry day, and then she’d think back on her own son and realize what I must have done.

Finally, I roll them up like a snake and hide them inside the paper towel tube. Stash it back under my bed between a box of novels and a box of junior rodeo trophies. 

I pull on a clean pair of white briefs. But after eighteen hours in Brant’s supportive yet airy boxer-briefs, these suddenly make me feel like a cat in a Christmas sweater. I want them off. I twist around in front of my mirror, tugging at the waistband and the leg holes, trying to make Fred and George and my nameless penis comfortable, but it’s no use. I’m ruined. I’ll have to waste one of my limited seventeenth birthday presents on new underwear.

I put the rest of Brant’s clothes back on so I can return them and retrieve mine this afternoon. Then I head down the long, skinny hallway, past family portraits and inspirational Scripture plaques, every step shaking the whole trailer no matter how softly I tread on the matted blue-gray carpet.

I hear Max and Ruby chattering in the living room. Laramie still watches that show religiously even though she got her period two months ago. Sometimes I feel like going broke stunted her growth in strange ways. I find her slumped on the couch, barely blinking at the bunnies on the TV, spooning colorful cereal into her mouth, which she doesn’t bother to close when she chews. I don’t acknowledge her because I know if she missed a single word of her show she would scream and possibly throw her wet spoon at me. 

Mama’s got the back door propped open with a pair of Daddy’s boots, letting in a passably cool breeze. The sun’s shining and the blue jays are jabbering and the trees out back look considerably greener than they have all summer. It’ll be a nice walk to Sister Bonnie’s.

The microwave goes off in the kitchen, and as soon as I walk in, Mama presents me with a paper plate full of tiny pancakes. She’s still in her pink bathrobe, but her hair’s already done up real big. There’s barely enough room in here for her to maneuver without catching it on something. When we’re not having a family sit-down meal, she shoves the table and chairs up against the bay window, but when we do have a family sit-down meal, we have to scoot them all out again. It might not seem like a big deal, but it’s hard to feel at home in a place where even the furniture can’t relax.

Mama pats at my cowlick. “Brush your hair before you leave. And your teeth.”

“Good morning to you too.”

She smiles and brushes a kiss across my temple as she twists back to the dishes in the sink. “Good morning, little fox.”

I growl under my breath, but realize that’s probably not the best way to get someone to stop comparing you to a fox. Seems when you’ve got red hair, even your own mother can’t resist dehumanizing you, although she must know how it feels or else why would she keep spending money on hair coloring? God, that bothers me.

I take syrup out of the cabinet and squirt it all over my pancakes. Then I lean against the fridge, careful not to crumple Laramie’s latest masterpiece, a grisly split-screen depiction of the futures that await the saved versus the damned. I stab a pancake and pop it into my mouth.

“When I get home, will you take me to Brant’s?”

She groans. “Casper, I have other things to do this summer than be your chauffer.”

I suck in my cheeks. “Then teach me to drive.”

Big, sweeping headshake. “Then you’d just have the car every time I needed it.”

“Buy me one.”

She glares over her shoulder. “I’ll do that. Right after I dig through the couch for spare change to send you to college.”

I look down at my feet, at Brant’s old sneakers I’ve been wondering if he might let me keep. “Sorry.”

Mama points at my plate. “Eat.”

“But I left my clothes at his house. And I need to take his back.”

“We might be poor, but I think you’ve got enough clothes to last you ’til Sunday.”

“Sunday! That’s three days! You want me to just sit here all weekend so you don’t have to go ten miles out of your way?

She points at the table. “Sit down and eat. You’re going to be late.”

I stomp over to my chair, throw myself down. “That’s not fair.”

“Ten miles out there. Ten miles back. Gas adds up, Casper.”

I stab a pancake so hard the fork clicks on the tabletop beneath the plate. “Fine. I’ll pay you.”

“It wouldn’t hurt you to spend time with your sister some days.”

“Because there’s nothing I love more than watching iCarly reruns all afternoon.”

Actually, that show totally cracks me up, but Mama doesn’t need to know that. She walks back to the stove—a grand distance of like two steps—and moves the skillet and spatula into the sink. I guess someone in this house deserved bacon for breakfast and it wasn’t me.

“You’re mighty surly this morning.”

“I’m not surly. I’m sixteen.”

She puts the box of little pancakes back in the freezer. “You sure it doesn’t have anything to do with that little scene at Pizza Arcade last night?”

My next pancake collides with my chin. “Why would it?”

She shrugs. Now it’s her turn to lean against the fridge. She bends the corner of Laramie’s drawing, and I’ll probably get the blame. 

“Your daddy wishes you wouldn’t let Brant fight your battles for you.”

I grab a napkin to blot the syrup from the stubble on my chin. “I don’t let Brant do anything. He’s just faster.” 

“Well, maybe you ought to speed up. Your daddy says those other boys only bully you because you let them—”

That thing that made me rip up the plate yesterday—I feel it again. Makes me want to throw this plate against the window and let her scrub at sticky syrup all day. I latch my ankles around the legs of my chair. “If Dad’s got a problem with me, maybe he ought to tell me himself.”

Mama sighs, touches her hand to her forehead. “You know words aren’t his thing.”

“Well, maybe getting punched isn’t my thing. How come he’s the only one who gets a free pass?”

She comes over, brushes her hand through my hair. “He just wants you to try—“

I jump up so fast my chair topples over and my sticky fork skids across the table. Laramie screams from the living room. Mama reaches for my arm, but I yank it away. 

“All I do is try!” 

“Casper Russell Quinn. You pick that chair up this instant.”

I glare at her, breathing hard. She glares back, breathing steady.

I pick up the chair. “Happy?”

“Not particularly.”

“Well, neither am I.” 

I grab my paper plate and storm toward the back door, rattling this whole stupid excuse for a home. I can’t slam the door because Daddy’s boots are in the way so I make my exit satisfying by jumping off the wooden steps instead. A pancake slides off the plate, splats conveniently close to an ant hill on one of the many bare patches in this sorry yellow excuse for a yard. I fold the plate up like a taco and keep going, waiting for Mama to holler but knowing that she won’t. 

Our yard ends at a thick, uneven line of cedars. Normally, I duck under, but today I plow right through their low-hanging branches like I’m trying to get to the redneck version of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. It even sort of works because when I stumble out the other side, skin stinging from the itchy leaves, it’s like stumbling into a hidden world, some magical realm existing alongside but separate from my own. I come through here every day, but it never gets old.