Fancy White Trash (3 page)

Cody grins. “Simple yet so profound. You'll be a great big sis with wisdom like that to share.”

I hope he's right. Because I don't have a lot of faith that anyone else is going to be looking out for this kid. But all we can really do, I guess, is wait and see.

“Cody, we need to go.” His mom joins us on the porch, all sunny in her head-to-toe yellow dress and matching sandals. “Hi, Abby. What's new with you?”

“Nothing, Barbara, but thanks for asking.” I smile.

Cody pulls a crumpled paper out of his pocket and consults it. “His flight doesn't land for hours. Besides, I need to change.”

“I don't want to get stuck in traffic.” Barbara is such a worrier. “You know how it gets around the airport.”

“Airport?” I ask.

“Yeah, Jackson's coming home. I told you, remember?” Cody stuffs the paper back in his pocket.

“Right. Hey, that reminds me. The Guitar Player is having another pig roast tonight. You guys should come.”

“What's the occasion?” she asks.

Cody laughs and I shush him. Barbara is already not a big fan of my mom. No reason to add fuel to that fire.

“Just an end-of-summer thing.” My voice squeaks at the end, always a sign that I'm lying, but she seems to buy it.

Barbara smiles wide and combs blonde bangs out of her eyes. “How lovely! We were planning a quiet little dinner for Jackson, but I know he'd love to catch up with you all. Can you believe it's been two months? I don't know what I'll do when he leaves for college.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Cody mumbles. “Jackson the wonderful, Jackson the magnificent.”

Jackson, Cody's older brother. Jackson, who mentioned it every day for a month when I started wearing a bra. Jackson, who brought two friends to my eleventh birthday party and ate so much cake that I never got a piece. Jackson, Kait's ex-boyfriend and one-time suspected father of her child.

“He'll flip when he sees Kait,” I say, imagining the look on Jackson's face when he encounters the Great White Blimp for the first time. “He is sooo lucky it's not his.”

Barbara looks at me disapprovingly, but Cody cracks up.

“Sorry,” I say to Barbara. “I should let you guys go. See you tonight?”

“I'll bring a macaroni salad,” Barbara says.

See what I mean? Nice, normal family. Why can't I have one of those?

Rule #4: Don't Need Him. Want him, like him, love him— but never, ever need him. Case in point: my dad. Who is sitting on the porch, next to the rickety bug zapper, nursing his Bud Light. He's a handsome enough guy, with a decent job as a salesman over at Chapman's Hardgoods, and is pretty funny when he's drunk. Overall, not a bad catch.

Mom married him twice and she's never hurt for choices when it comes to guys, so he's certainly matrimonial material. It's just that you can't count on him. Oh, he'll promise you anything. A shiny new bike for your birthday, a complete makeover at the mall when you turn thirteen, that he'll be at the awards presentation when you are the first person in your family to ever make honor roll. But you can't believe him. I did, and was disappointed every time. I guess Mom felt the same.

Now Dad is on wife number two, or three depending on how you count it, and she is not funny when she's drunk. She arrived at the pig roast already lit and has been hanging on the Guitar Player ever since he broke out the acoustic and played “Tears in Heaven” for her. She got all weepy and clingy, and hasn't left his side since. Dad doesn't seem to notice, which is probably another reason Mom divorced him.

“Daddy!” Hannah sees him from across the yard and launches herself at my father. She has not grasped the complexity of family relationships. All men are “Daddy.”

“Pumpkin!” He catches her and kisses her cheek. “Pumpkin” used to be my special nickname.

The combined smell of electrocuted insects and beer makes me a bit light-headed. Dad swats at a fly that gets too close to his drink, misses, and knocks the bottle to the ground. Chuckling, he picks it up, wipes the mouth with the bottom of his not-so-clean blue shirt, and takes a swig.

Although the temperature's taken a dive since the afternoon, it's still hot enough that sweat glues my white tee with the climbing gray vines to my back. There's also a not-so-comfortable ring of perspiration under the waistband of my jean shorts. I grab a Bud from the red-and-white Igloo and park next to Dad and Hannah on the peeling wooden bench and take a long drink to cool off. Cody and his family aren't back from the airport yet, so I have no one to share my witty comments with. I settle for the beer and a handful of Cheetos.

“How's it going, Abby?” Dad asks. He bounces Hannah on his knee while she yells, “Go, horsey, go!” and slaps his leg. Her dark, bowl-cut hair flops up and down in time to her ride.

“The same.” I stuff another Cheeto in my mouth. “You?”

He looks over where Wife Number Two/Three is currently sitting on the Guitar Player's lap. “Shevon wants a divorce.”

“Bummer.” I knock back a few swallows of beer. “What's it been, less than six months? You gonna try counseling or anything? ”

He shrugs. “Naw, she can have the divorce. Can't cook worth beans anyways.”

Dad's rules for falling in love are different from mine. I think they go something like 1. Female? 2. Breathing? 3. Cooks? And he's always so surprised when things don't go well.

“Maybe you can work it out,” I say, because, sheesh people, isn't marriage supposed to mean something?

“Maybe,” he agrees, and drains his beer. “Get me another, will you, Abs?”

I do, then wander away from the roasting pig and around the side of the house. There's a tree on the property line between my house and Cody's. We built a fort up there a million years ago, but it has mostly disintegrated. The steps are still nailed to the trunk, so I lift myself up to the first one and wrap my arms around the tree. My fingers dig into the bark.

I breathe in the tree, the dirt smell and dampness, and feel the tightness that was growing in my chest all night relax. I go up another step and another until I am high enough to scoot out onto the lowest bough. I wedge myself between the trunk and branch. Now, if only someone would bring me another beer.

“Lookin' for this?”

Cody holds up a can. Coke.

“You got some rum for that?” I ask, just to see him squirm.

“My mom's here. You know how she is.” He braces a foot against the bottom of the tree. “But I can leave, you know, if you don't want it.”

“Don't be so hasty,” I say with a smile. “Come on and join me already.”

Cody scrambles up the tree. I move over to make room, but even though he's not a big guy, it's a tight squeeze. He pops open the soda and hands it to me.

“Thanks. When'd you get here?”

“While you were having a personal moment with the tree. I decided to give you some privacy.” He lays his head on my shoulder. “It sucks that we only have one more weekend of freedom. Can you believe school starts Monday?”

Cody hates school. Not like everybody hates school, in that won't-it-be-great-when-we're-seniors-and-can-finally-get-out-of-this-place? way. But in a real, physical, stomachache-in-the-mornings, please-Mom-I'm-begging-you-let-me-stay-home way. If I could, I'd homeschool him myself. He's plenty smart. It's the teasing that gets him.

“It'll be different,” I tell him. “Now that Jackson's not on campus, everyone will stop comparing you two. We won't be freshmen. We'll be nice, boring, no-one-will-notice-us sophomores. ”

“You promise?”

I give him the last half of my Coke. “I promise.”

“Cody and Abby sittin' in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g!”

It's true that Cody and I once kissed in this very tree, but that was fourth grade and only one other person on the planet knows about that kiss.

“Shut up, Jack-Off.” I use my nickname for Cody's brother without even looking down.

“First comes love, then comes marriage . . . oh, wait, you're one of those Savage girls. First comes love, then comes the baby, then comes the welfare check in the mail. . . .”

I chuck the empty soda can his way and bean him right on the forehead.

“Nice one,” says Cody.

Jackson rubs his head like it actually hurt. “Nice to see you, too, Abs. Don't bother comin' down and givin' me a hug or anything. I've only been gone two months. You probably didn't even notice.”

“I did, too. It was so much more pleasant without you.”

“Get down here,” he says.

I take off a shoe and throw it at him.

He ducks this time, and my flip-flop skids off his back. “Hey, now, no need to get violent. Just thought you two might like a beer?” He holds up a six-pack with one finger. Jackson has never been afraid to buck his parents when it comes to alcohol. Pretty smooth, sneaking that out of a party right under their noses. Hey, not everyone can have parents as understanding as mine.

“Why didn't you say so?” I clamber down the crumbling wooden steps. Cody's right behind me.

“Give us a hug first.” Jackson holds the beers over my head. Although I'm not short, he's pushing six feet, so it's not exactly a fair contest. I jump and he lifts them higher.

“I'm not hugging you.” I kick him with the ball of my bare foot. He yelps and too late shields his knee with both hands, dropping the beer.

Cody grabs the six-pack and I retrieve my shoe. “Run!” Cody shouts.

He takes off, avoids the party, which is mostly just our two families and a few neighbors spread out around the pig-pit, and runs for the back fence. It's not much of a fence, more a line in the sand than an actual barrier against the desert. Cody shoves aside a loose panel and slides through. I'm right behind him until I feel a tug on the back of my T-shirt.

“Let go, Jack-Off!” I lunge for the fence but get caught between the panels. Cody pulls on my arm, trying to help me through. Jackson grabs the back of my shirt, then gets a hand around my waist and hauls me back toward his side.

“Ow!” Cody apparently encounters some kind of wild desert plant. Saguaro cactus can be surprisingly pointy, and since they're protected by the state, they are everywhere. He lets go of my arm, and the force of Jackson's pull has me tumbling out onto his side of the fence.

“Got you.” He pulls me against his chest for a hug. My mouth goes dry. “Missed you,” he whispers into my ear.

Rule #5 of the One True Love Plan is Get Out of Town. Because if Jackson and I had run away together that first week of May, that once-in-a-lifetime week when I really, truly believed he was both my First Love and the Love of My Life, then maybe we could've made it.

On
Moments of Our Lives
, when the actress who played Candy wanted to leave the show, her character bought a sail-boat and took off on a world cruise with the Love of Her Life. Later, both actors came back, their characters returned to town, and all hell broke loose again.

That's what it felt like, standing in the dark with Jackson's arms around me again. All hell was breaking loose in my body. I remembered too much about him, the feel of his chest under my hand, the steady
thump-thump
of his heart. For a crazy second, I wanted to reach up and kiss him, tell him how I'd missed him every day.

But it was too late for us. We hadn't run away, just kissed a lot and pretended to study for our final exams together. Then, instead of enjoying the prestige of dating a senior during graduation week and maybe getting invited to parties that freshmen only dream of going to, I'd had to deal with Mom and the Guitar Player announcing their engagement and Kait turning up pregnant.
Five months
pregnant, proving that peasant tops were not, in fact, coming back in style and that it wasn't depression eating that had added those extra pounds to her waistline.

Kait claimed the baby was the Guitar Player's, and I believed her until Shelby revealed—in the biggest Savage Family Blow-Out of the Century—that the baby could just as easily be Jackson's. I'd never even known Kait and Jackson had dated. When he didn't deny it, we were over.

Two weeks later, Jackson graduated and was off to Central America to build houses for the poor. He never even sent a postcard.

Finally, I push away from Jackson. “What, no slutty families to make your way through in Nicaragua?”

“Shut up, Abby, you know it wasn't like that.”

“I do?”

“Fine.” He slumps against the fence. “Have at me. You never got to say your piece, did you?”

Even in the dark, he is too beautiful. I can't look at him, the hard edge of his jaw and his deep blue eyes. His soft, white-blond hair hangs in his face.

“I have nothing to say to you.” I push through the fence. Cody's waiting on the other side, open beer extended.

I take it and slug the whole thing back in three gulps.

“Everything okay?” he asks. “I thought you two could use a minute.”

I shake my head because I really don't want to talk about it. “Beer me.” I hold my hand out, and he gives me another.

He leads me farther into the desert. It is miles and miles to the next development. The cacti are dark shadows in the night. We find a relatively clear spot of sand and sit. Millions of stars sparkle above us.

“It's not over,” Cody says, like it is a fact.

“It has to be.”

“What if he really loves you?”

I perk up at this. Cody, after all, might know. “What do you think?”

He shrugs. “I'm just saying, what if?”