Everybody Sees the Ants (21 page)

When she returns, I serve Mom and Jodi what I call a Lucky burger. Grilled, seasoned chicken breast smothered in melted brie with sweet cranberry crème sauce drizzled over it, topped with fresh lettuce, on a poppy-seed roll.

Jodi leans her head back to say, mouth full, “You really should be a chef, Lucky.” When she says “should,” a piece of lettuce flies out. “This is really good!”

Mom nods, and I think she simultaneously hopes I don’t become a chef and turn out like Dad. The ants say:
Not all chefs have to be turtle chefs
.

Mom says, “So are you gonna tell us where you go at night, or what?”

“I just go for walks.”

“And?”

“And that’s it.”

“Did you fall asleep on the playground again?”

“Sure. Yeah.”

Aunt Jodi looks at Mom. Jodi says, “We heard you were on a bus with Virginia Clemens. That you two looked like an item.”

I laugh at the “item” part, and I look around, nervous that all those weirdos from Wednesday morning are about to jump out of the hall closet and start asking me more questions about my bowel movements.

“We are
so
not an item,” I say, grinning at the thought of it.

“But you were on a public bus with her?” Mom asks.

“Yeah. She said she wanted to show me something, so we went into town for an hour and then we came back.”

“You know if her parents knew about this, they’d kill you,” Aunt Jodi says. She adds, “And then they’d probably kill her, too.”

“They sound like assholes,” I say, which earns me a disapproving look from both my mom and Aunt Jodi as they chew their Lucky burgers. “All we did was walk for an hour. I’m like a little brother to her. Believe me. I have no idea what to do with a beautiful girl like Ginny.”

Jodi looks as if she might argue for a second, then takes another bite of the burger. Mom is grinning a bit.

Jodi looks at Mom. “Do you mind if I ask him a personal question?”

Mom shrugs. The ants say:
Uh-oh
.

“Lucky,” Jodi says, staring at me in that adult-who-needs-to-know-the-truth way, “have you had a sexual experience yet?”

I nearly spit out my mouthful of chicken. I chew and swallow and then wash it down with a sip of water. I don’t know what to say, so I say, “You mean—uh—with—a girl?”

Jodi smiles uncomfortably. “Uh-huh. Yep.”

“God, no. Like, at home I play cards with Lara at the pool and stuff, but I’ve never kissed her—or anybody, for that matter.”

“You haven’t kissed a girl yet?” She rests her chin on her hand in that daytime TV kind of way, and I figure that she’s taken a Dr. Phil pill or something.

I shake my head, kinda proud. “Nope.”

“Why not?”

I shrug and think about this for a minute. My scab reminds me it’s there by sending an intense itch signal to my brain. The loose edges tickle my face every time I move.

“I think he’s too busy in school,” Mom offers as I chew and think.

I say, “I just haven’t found a girl I want to kiss yet.”

The two women nod and shake their heads in disbelief.

Jodi says, “I wish the boys around here thought like that. I hear a quarter of the junior class has an STD already.”

“Ew.”

“Yeah,” Mom agrees.

“I just can’t figure how this could happen, you know? Most of those kids go to church every Sunday and come from good families.”

“But isn’t that always what happens?” I say. “The kids who have the strictest parents end up being the ones who act out?”

After a minute, Jodi says, “Are you saying Virginia Clemens is having sex?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Actually, I am. Not that it’s any of your business.”

Mom looks at me skeptically. “You’ve known this girl for a week and you know this type of personal information?”

I smile. “I’m a natural listener. What can I say?”

I think for a minute about what Aunt Jodi just said. “Are Ginny’s parents extra strict or something?”

“They don’t let her out of their sight—which was why I
was so surprised to hear that someone saw you two on the bus last night.”

“She doesn’t usually take the bus,” I say.

“Oh?”

“Yeah—she usually sneaks around like a ninja. That’s how I met her.”

Mom has stopped eating and is staring at me. I can’t tell if she thinks I’m cute or thinks I’m high or what. Jodi is staring at me, too. It’s making me uncomfortable, so I start clearing the table and cleaning the kitchen while they finish.

But then I get this awful feeling that I’ve said too much. I go back to the table.

“You guys aren’t going to tell, are you?”

Mom looks at me as if to say, “Tell who?” Jodi shakes her head and says, “If Mr. and Mrs. Clemens can’t keep tabs on their daughter, it’s not my job to tell them.”

And right then I know that she knows.

It’s the way she said “Mrs. Clemens.” Flat. Emotionless. Hollow.

And I wonder if that’s why she freaked out in church that time, and if that’s why she goes every week. Does she go just to mark her territory? Just to show that she can?

Dave never shows up for dinner. He calls and says he’s working late. My mother, upon hearing this news, probably pictures him chained to his drawing table, designing bridges. Jodi probably pictures him handcuffed to a bed somewhere in Tempe, being dominated by some leather-clad hooker. I don’t really want to see him again.

We
spend Wednesday doing absolutely nothing. Mom swims. I nap. Jodi cheers for Dr. Phil. Fifteen days of living in someone else’s house is exhausting. Especially if everyone thinks it’s your fault.

After dinner I ask if I can go out, and I’m surprised when both women say yes. I don’t tell them I’ll be home late, even though I know the last rehearsal ran until after midnight. I stop in the bathroom to comb my hair, but once I do, I mess it up again because too-combed hair just doesn’t look right on me. I lean in and carefully peel off the floppy edges of the scab, and when I’m done, it’s the exact shape of Iowa. I rub in a little aloe but then wash it off in case it dries green, and then I put on a clean POW/MIA shirt and leave.

To my surprise, Ginny arrives at the playground early. She’s in 100 percent ninja black and greets me with a salute.

“Hey,” I say, and salute back. “You’re early.”

“Am I?” She threads her arm through mine and we walk elbow-locked toward the swing set. “I didn’t know we had a set time.”

I stutter out a goofy laugh. “Well, yeah, you said ten.”

“I wanted to have some time to talk,” she explains. “And I knew you’d be early.”

“Oh, yeah,” I say.

“So… are you gonna tell me about it?”

“About what?”

“About that scab on your face. About how you always wear those fucking shirts. About why you’re here.”

“You know why I’m here.” We each sit on a swing. She produces and lights a cigarette.

“I only know what you told me. But I know you haven’t told me everything, Lucky Linderman. Like, what’s
really
up with your dad? Is he a control freak or something?” she asks.

“Not really,” I say. Then, “I guess. About some stuff. He wouldn’t talk to us if he didn’t have to. I mean—it’s not that he’s a dick. It’s just not in his nature to confront things.”

“And that?” She points to my POW/MIA shirt.

“My grandfather is MIA since 1972—that’s my dad’s father. Dad never met him, which is the primary reason he’s a turtle, I think. My grandmother was a POW/MIA activist. She pretty much raised me until she died of cancer when I was seven. And my dad hasn’t got over any of it—not the MIA
stuff or the cancer stuff—so now he can’t face anything other than work. Can’t face me, can’t face my mom—” I pause. “But I guess it isn’t easy being married to a squid, either.”

Ginny laughs. “Oh my God. I forgot she’s a squid!”

Her laughter gives me an instant boner. I find myself watching her hair fall in front of her perfect face and shake up and down with her giggling body.

“So what really happened to your face?” she asks. “I mean, you don’t just fly two thousand miles because you get beat up, right?”

I sigh.

I hear myself explain the scab, but it’s sort of an out-of-body experience. It’s like some other kid is explaining how Nader McMillan has bullied me since I was seven, when he peed on my feet. This other kid is explaining how Danny made me and Nader try to be friends in freshman year and how it backfired.

Some other kid is describing the freshman-year locker-room banana incident—how they held him down. How they chanted. How they blindfolded him and made him take it into his mouth and threatened to put it other places. How he puked. Repeatedly.

Some other kid’s brain is making note of each accomplice and blurring Danny Hoffman’s face like deep cleavage on TV.

Someone else is explaining how I helped Charlotte at the pool when Nader was trying to make her go topless. Someone else is explaining the moment he used my face as a scrub brush on the concrete next to the men’s room, and how he called it karma.

I come back to my body. “You know, I think it was a wake-up call.”

“Seriously? Because in my world that’s assault, and you should have called the fuckin’ cops,” Ginny says.

“I have the weirdest memories of that minute,” I say. “I remember the smell—the hot-sun-on-cement smell. The chlorine smell. But I don’t remember the pain.” I do not tell her about the ants, even though they are screaming:
Tell her about us!

“Just so you know, that asshole is not your friend.”

“Yeah, I know,” I say.

“Seriously, Lucky. You need to hang out with friends who act like friends.”

I nod.

“It’ll probably leave a scar,” she says.

“Yeah. I’ll have one big white cheek forevermore. I know. Did you see it’s the shape of Iowa now?”

She leans in and looks closely. “No shit.”

“Cool, eh? Started out in the shape of Ohio.”

“So did you like this Charlotte girl? Is that why he did it?”

“No.”

“Do you like anyone? Like a girlfriend back home?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“I have a friend Lara, but we just, uh, read books and play cards and shit. I mean, I
might
like her, but I can’t tell.” I feel a little choked up and shaky.

“Are you gay or something?”

“No! Are you?”

“Hey! I
have
a boyfriend,” she says.

“You do?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that,” I say, realizing right at that moment that Ginny is the only girl I’ve ever met who I want to kiss. She’s the one. And she is seventeen and beautiful and she can say “vagina” and her boyfriend is probably equally beautiful and smart. I’m like a retarded monkey compared to them.

“How would you? I never talk about him.”

“Why not?”

She refers to her black ninja outfit with her hands and says, “Hello? I live with freaks, remember?”

“So your parents wouldn’t want you to have a nice boyfriend?”

“Not until I leave college.”

I laugh. “College? Won’t you be ancient by then?”

“Yep,” she says, not laughing at all.

“Wow. I’m sorry you live with freaks.”

“At least I don’t live with a squid or a turtle. I can’t imagine that’s so easy, either.”

“Actually, it’s not that bad,” I say. They would never send me to fat camp, anyway.

Ginny doesn’t say anything.

“Is he from school?” I ask. “Your boyfriend?”

“No. He graduated.”

“Oh, wow. I’d say your parents would stroke out if they knew.”

“You have no idea.”

After a few seconds of silence, I ask, “Can I ask a dumb-little-brother kind of question?”