Chicken (26 page)

The booth is all wood, rotted out in some spots so I can see the packed manure in the chutes below. A glassless window looks out over the arena. Brant leans his elbows on the sill. I do the same.

“It was a stupid little kid crush. And like a stupid little kid I wrote him a letter. But he never got it. Which is good because that would have been super embarrassing. But bad because—”

“Your parents did.”

He squeezes his eyes shut.

“Your parents know you’re queer.”

His teeth rake his lip, pulling loose another sliver. I try to wipe away the bloody line with my finger, but he turns his head, wipes it on his sleeve. 

“My parents know I’ve struggled with the spirit of homosexuality in the past, but they are positive that with prayer and counseling, I have conquered it. Praise Jesus.” 

“But they let you be alone with me.”

“That’s how much they trust me.”

I lean out the window, feeling like I might puke. “And if they found out?”

“They’d send me away. No third chance.”

“Like to one of those places that makes you not gay?”

Brant shakes his head. “They’re not that stupid. Twenty boys and their homosexual spirits in a dorm room? No way. It’d be like a boot camp for teenage drug addicts. Some place with guards to control my every move. I’ve never be alone, never see the moon, never see you—” 

I twist around and kiss him, so hard we stumble away from the window, fall to our knees in the middle of the room. His dog tag digs into my chest, and his hands find my butt. I groan and our belt buckles clink. My blood is rushing, rushing rushing—

He breaks away, scoots up against the wall. His chest heaves and his chin is rubbed raw. He adjusts his jeans and laughs. “Casper, I done told you Sister Bonnie wasn’t talking about my driving.”

TUESDAY, JULY 17, 2012

All my regular chores are done, and I’ve finished mowing Sister Bonnie’s lawn, but I can’t bring myself to leave. I stand at the gate in her backyard, letting Shetan snuffle his nose in my hair while I run my hand up and down his neck. A couple of cats glare at me from the back porch. The white one hops down, trots across the yard with her swollen belly swaying side-to-side, and I start making plans to ask Mama for a kitten. Daddy won’t care as long as I don’t ask him to buy anything for it. Mama just gets allergic now and then. By allergic, I mean selfish, of course. 

Debbie’s ear twitches as the cat walks past, but she doesn’t move. I keep glancing from her to the road, figuring she’ll start barking if she hears Brant’s truck. I search the road for a cloud of dust, but it’s empty and still, just like the sky and the air. Maybe he’s not coming today. He never said he was. 

But he never said he wasn’t. I rub my cheek against the hard part of Shetan’s nose. He snorts and slobbers on my neck. Debbie’s head shoots up, ears pricked, nose trembling. My heart skips, but then the back door opens and Sister Bonnie steps out, wearing bug-eye mom shades and her big, floral-print purse. She locks the door.

“I’ve gotta run to the bank, Casper. You better go on home now. I don’t want your parents getting upset with me for keeping you too long two days in a row.” She tilts her head and peers at me over her shades, eyebrows raised.

I bite back a grin, scratch my sweaty neck. “Yes, ma’am.”

She pushes the shades back to the bridge of her nose and smirks. Yeah, she knows. There’s no way she doesn’t know with a look like that. It ought to fill me with panic, but it’s like all the butterflies already inside me hatch a thousand new babies instead. I watch her walk to her van, looking away as soon as she slips inside where she can see me again. She knows. Maybe she’s not certain, but she suspects. Definitely. She thinks there is something going on with me and Brant Mitchell and she’s not wrong. And she doesn’t think we’re wrong. She’d have never let me go with him yesterday if she did.

Part of me wants to hang around after she’s gone, keep waiting for Brant. I picture us together in her barn, but I’ve at least got enough sense left to know not to take advantage of her looking the other way. I climb over the gate and slide onto Shetan’s back, tangle my hands up in his mane and urge him to trot. He’s a much better horse than Brant Mitchell.

The butterflies are born again when I emerge from the woods and find Brant’s silver pick-up shining in my front yard. I can’t tell if Mama’s car is up there too, so that means I can’t just go running up the steps and into his arms. I walk slow, casual, couldn’t care less, just in case she’s watching from a window. Hands in my pockets. This is not a big deal. But I do take the back steps in one very long stride.

I open the door. Laramie and Brant are on the couch, sharing a bowl of homemade flour tortilla chips and watching an episode of Reba. Laramie’s face doesn’t even flicker with recognition, but Brant lights up, his eyes impossibly wide. For a second, I think this look is for me, but then he lifts the chip bowl into the air like it’s a lion cub and he’s an old baboon.

“Casper, you got five seconds to explain why you’ve lived here nearly a year and never told me your mother was a Mexican goddess disguised as an Irish maiden disguised as a boring, blond housewife.” 

“She’s not. She stole the recipe from our housekeeper.” I take a handful of chips from the uplifted bowl. “Who was a Mexican goddess.”

Brant tugs the bowl into his lap, wraps his arms around it. “Oh, yeah? Was she pretty?”

I flop down in Daddy’s armchair. “You ever seen an ugly goddess?”

“Was she prettier than Lauren?”

“For sure.”

“You’re just saying that because she’s fat.”

“The housekeeper was very curvy.”

“So prettier than Hannah then?”

“Oh, come on.”

“Was she prettier than me?”

My eyes dart to Laramie, but I’m not sure she’s even alive. “A little bit.”

Brant pats the top of Laramie’s head. “Was she prettier than Laramie?”

My sister’s tan face turns fifty shades of red. She shoves Brant’s hand away. “I’m telling Daddy y’all said goddess.”

Brant wrinkles his nose. “Okay, okay, that was a silly question. Obviously, no one could be prettier than Laramie.”

Laramie slams her fists down on the couch. “Stop talking during my show!” 

Brant flashes me his laziest, dimpliest grin. “Fine. Maybe Casper can show me his room.”

My room? My room with my bed? My room with a bed covered in a twelve-year-old’s stupid cowboy quilt? I scratch the back of my head. “Well—”

Brant hops up, still clutching the bowl. “I showed you mine.”

“Fine. But no chips.”

He hugs the bowl. “Yes. Chips.”

I glance at Laramie, but her eyes have re-glazed, totally lost in a conversation between Reba and her ex-husband’s new wife Barbara Jean. I get up, shaking my head, and drag my heels toward the hallway. Brant follows. With the chips.

“No. Chips.” I point behind me.

He hangs his head and drops the bowl on the coffee table, takes one last handful of chips and stuffs them all in his mouth. He runs after me and the whole house shakes. He stops in the hall, plants a hand on each wall like he’s in an earthquake. I roll my eyes and hold out my hand. Then drop it when I remember where I am.

I open my door, ready to make a speech about how awesome my room used to be and how he should just close his eyes and imagine that room instead, but the second he steps in behind me, he grabs my butt and pushes me to the center of the room, shutting the door with his boot.

He spins me around, holding my shoulders and kissing me harder than ever before. He tastes like Mama’s chips, and I know I’ll never eat them again without thinking of him. I curl my fingers in his shirttail, and the only thing stopping me from yanking it over his head is my stupid sister in the other room. 

He lets go, takes a step backward, and plops onto the edge of my bed. It groans. Brant smooths his hands over the quilt, then leans back on his elbows while his eyes roam around my room. The stained ceiling. The peeling wallpaper. The tiny window. The stereo. The pictures—my old horse Vern, me and Hannah at the prom with her dress that matched my hair, me and him and Hannah dressed in moth-eaten robes after Nativity: Live! .

Brant doesn’t quite smile, but one of his dimples appears. I want to tackle him and kiss it. Kiss his whole face. His face and his neck and his shoulder and—

“So what exactly is wrong with your sister?”

“What?”

He twists his body, hikes his legs onto my bed. Stretches out with his head on my pillow like the whole thing belongs to him.

“Your sister. She’s weird.”

“Oh. That.” I go to my closet. “Hannah says it’s Yellow Number Five.”

“Isn’t that a song?”

“That’s a mambo.” I pull a clean shirt off a hanger. “This is something they put in cheese.”

I turn around and he’s just lying there, arms crossed under his head, ankles crossed at the foot of my bed. He barely fits. He fiddles with his dog tag.

“In cheese?”

“Yeah. It makes kids act squirrely.”

“Huh.” He tucks the tag under his T-shirt. “Guess that explains me.”

“Close your eyes.”

“I saw you naked last week.”

“It’s different now.”

He rolls his eyes, but then squeezes them shut. I peel off my sweaty, grassy, horsey shirt and toss it on the floor. Pull the fresh one over my head.

“I like your freckles.”

I yank the shirt down, expecting to see him staring, but his eyes are still shut. 

“Stop.”

“I do.”

There’s nowhere else in my room to be but on the bed. I sit down next to his hip. He tugs on the hair behind my ear. “I like your red hair too.”

“You’re just happy I don’t have a soul.”

He sits up, nuzzles the side of my neck. “That would complicate things.”

I turn my head, press my cheek against his. I want to lick his ear, but I’m not that brave. I kiss his fuzzy sideburn instead. 

He pulls back. “Speaking of dancing.”

“Were we?”

“Mambo Number Five.”

“I don’t think this house could take it.”

He stands up and holds out his hand. “How ‘bout a good, ol’-fashioned prom dance?”

I stare at his hand, glance at my closed door. 

He ruffles my hair, and then holds his hand out again. “Cas.”

I let him pull me off the bed. He takes two steps to my dresser and the stereo sitting there. He picks up the CD case on the top of the stack. Raises an eyebrow at me. “Legendary Ladies of Country?  Well, I guess we know who’s going to be the girl in this dance.”

I grab him by the waist, pull him right up against me so he can feel what’s behind the fly of my jeans. He laughs and reaches around to squeeze my rear, then he slides his hands up my back and clasps them behind my neck, resting his forearms on my shoulders.

“Okay, okay. We’ll take turns.”

“That’s what I thought.”

He skips around, past Shania and Leann until he finds a good slow song—Sara Evans, “No Place That Far.” We put our foreheads together and dance in a tiny, stilted circle in the center of my room. He plays with the hair at the back of my neck. The floor creaks with every step. I keep waiting for the doorknob to click and my sister to walk in, but I should know better. She’ll never walk away from a working television.

Brant nuzzles my nose. “You remember the first time we met?”

I dig my fingers into his hips. “July 2, 2000. Sunday School. I didn’t want to go, but my grandpa made me. I cried and cried, but he finally dragged me in there. Y’all were already watching that show with the talking produce. There was a pickle singing about a hairbrush.” I pause. “In retrospect, it sounds like I met you during a terrible acid trip.”

Brant pulls back, scowling. “What did you just say?”

“Uh…”

“Did you call Larry a pickle?”

“He’s not?”

Brant sucks in his cheeks. Exhales. “Casper. Larry is a cucumber.”

“There’s a difference?”

“One has to soak in vinegar! Do you think a sentient cucumber could survive that?”

“I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t even know why he needed a hairbrush.”

“Because he—” Brant stops. 

His arms slide off my shoulders. He slips past me and goes to my nightstand, picks up the crinkled piece of paper lying on top of my Bible—the grainy, green picture of the cougar. He holds it right in front of his face. I hear a funny rattling sounds and realize it’s the paper shaking in his hands. 

Our song ends and Reba starts singing. I touch his arm and he shudders. I have an overwhelming urge to call him a pet name, but I don’t have one picked out yet. He called me darlin’ once, but everything sounds silly when I try to apply it to him. What do guys like us call each other? Sport? Champ? Why am I even thinking about it now? 

“You gonna tell me what’s going on?”

Brant drops the paper on my bed. He sits down and chews on one of his ever-present hangnails. He picks up the paper again.

“Kind of gangly, ain’t he?”

“Mama says he looks like teenage Simba.”

Brant runs a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. This is just really weird.”

“Yeah.” I turn his face toward me. “It is.”

“I’m sorry. This is just—”

“Really weird?”

“Yeah. I’ve never seen—”

“Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

He hands me the photo, and I lay it on my nightstand out of his reach. By the time I turn around, he’s standing up, pacing, rubbing the back of his neck. 

My doorknob clicks. We both jump even though we aren’t doing anything. Laramie appears in my doorway, hands on her hips. She looks from me to Brant to the stereo and back to me.

“You’re making the trailer shake. It’s messing up the TV.”

“Go away, Laramie.”

“No. What are you doing?” She looks at the stereo.

“We’re just hanging out. Scram.”

“Listening to Reba? That’s weird.”

Brant hits pause on my stereo. “Watching Reba with you made me wonder about her music. I’d never heard it before.”

Laramie arches an eyebrow. “You said you loved Reba’s music.”