Perfectly Good White Boy (10 page)

Brad nodded. He wasn't going to argue with my grandpa. He never did.

“Look at it this way,” I said. Blurting. “We can drive back early. Krista'll be thrilled. More time to do wedding stuff, right?”

Eddie laughed, like he wasn't expecting it. I stepped back, myself; Brad would have hit me if my grandpa hadn't been there. But I didn't care. I set down my shotgun and knelt beside Grandpa Chuck, handing him whatever he asked for, my back to Brad, looking at what I'd done and letting myself smile as much as I wanted.

Chapter Six

After I overheard her talking to Tristan Reichmeier, Neecie Albertson didn't talk to me at all in school. Which was weird, because while we'd never been chatty, before we at least acknowledged each other, since we worked together and sat by each other in dumb Global Studies. But now she wouldn't even look at me. Even when I was looking at her. Like if I said “hey” to her, it would pop her secret with Tristan into a big splattery mess.

I watched Tristan more now, though. Him at his locker with his stupid hair he couldn't stop shaking off his forehead constantly, and that stupid black cap he always wore, in that total douche way. Him at lunch acting like a shithead with his hockey friends. Him surrounded by girls, the hot ones, plus this chick Hannah, who I think was supposed to be his current girlfriend, or just maybe the girl he'd be public about, or whatever. He'd put his arm around that Hannah chick and she'd always be laughing at whatever he said. You'd never in a thousand years put Tristan with Neecie. Never ever. She'd achieved ninja status in this, in my mind. Because you can't do the simplest, littlest shit in high school without a dozen people noticing one second later. I wondered how long it'd been going on. How it'd ever started.

One Friday during lunch there was a college-career fair. They'd had them last year, too, but I'd skipped them all. Was planning on skipping this one, too, until Neecie came up to me while I was standing outside the gym, debating whether to go in. You could get free pizza if you went and got your thing stamped by a certain number of booths, and today the caf was serving nasty turkey tacos.

“What's up, Sean?” Neecie said. All normal. Wearing her usual T-shirt and hoodie and jeans, her hair the long straight sheet of yellow everywhere. Drinking her giant can of iced tea—peach-flavored today—and holding a piece of pizza and a bunch of handouts and brochures.

“Nothing.”

“You going in?”

“No.”

“I only went for the pizza,” she said, laughing.

“I'm shocked you don't care more about your future.”

“I already applied to the places I wanted to go. I don't need any more information. Here,” she added, handing me the pile of handouts. “Go expand your horizons. I don't need any of this shit. You just have to talk to six places. It's no big deal. Go to the Marines' guy. He's giving out water bottles and nobody's at his table. He's all lonely, and there's no line. Plus he's really kind of cute.”

I looked at her.

“Well, anyway,” she said. “Just saying.”

“How long have you been with Tristan?” Blurting.

She almost dropped the pile of papers she was dumping into my hands. She stopped, looked around. I grabbed the stuff, lowered my voice.

“I mean, has it been a while?”

“Since summer,” she said. “Since July.”

“Oh.”

“You can't say anything,” she said.

“Who would I say anything to?”

“I don't know,” she said. “Here. I'm not hungry, anyway.” She handed me the pizza and then she was gone, and I just watched her ass walk away like an idiot, until she turned down the senior hallway. I sat down, then, and looked at all the handouts from colleges I'd never get into, eating the pizza, which was a little cold and greasy, but still good.

The Marines brochure showed dudes climbing up ropes and standing in formation and sighting rifles with pretty sweet scopes and running in combat boots and doing pull-ups. I had been decent at pull-ups, back in tenth grade. I was skinny, so it wasn't as hard for me to heave my weight up, probably. But still.

I would have kept sitting there, eating and looking at the handouts, but then I saw Emma and Libby coming down toward me and I didn't want to deal with that. I mean, I didn't hate Emma or anything, but I hadn't really talked to her since our failed make-out. And I supposed I would have made out with her again, but I didn't really want to have a girlfriend anymore. Well, I guess I would have had sex with someone. So maybe that meant I wanted a girlfriend. But I didn't want to deal with any of it. Not since Hallie. I jumped up and tossed all the handouts into the recycling, and that was how I met Sergeant Kendall for the first time.

The next Friday, while driving to my follow-up appointment at the Marines recruiting center, I started to wonder if maybe Neecie was crazy. Like, actually mentally ill. Pathologically lying about this. Or delusional, hallucinating. Maybe playing some complicated joke on me.

The Marine recruiting center was in this little junky strip mall, which included a shitty grocery store that sold expired spaghetti sauce and 3.2 beer to anyone with a pulse, a place that did those fakey nails like Krista had, and this kind of porn store, which wasn't super porny. It sold “novelty” gifts like dick-shaped pasta and feather boas for bachelorette parties. There was some porn and sex toys and crap in the back, everyone said, but you had to be eighteen to go in so I didn't actually know for myself. Really, except for the hooker nails, it was kind of one-stop shopping for a kid who just turned eighteen and didn't have Internet, I suppose.

Sergeant Kendall remembered me. I was sort of surprised about that. We shook hands, he called me Sean Norwhalt, all formal, like he spent his evenings memorizing names of kids he'd met at career fairs. Which maybe he did. He looked like he was basically on top of everything. He wasn't wearing the same uniform like last time, just a basic button-up and matching pants, but it was a uniform—you could see that in every inch and ironed seam. I felt like a slob in comparison.

But just like the first time we'd met, I couldn't stop looking at him. Also, we were standing up. He was standing up, in front of his chair, and though I had a chair, too, I felt weird getting all comfortable when he was standing. And also wondered if maybe this was a test or something. Or some Marines ritual I needed to observe.

So, standing, he started going over some stuff with me, about Delayed Entry, and how I'd need to graduate on time in order to qualify, and I was nodding, but I was barely listening. Just staring at him. Studying him. Maybe it was because he was black. In Oak Prairie, there aren't that many black people, beyond that one African minister's family, but they were from somewhere in actual Africa where they spoke French for some reason and his church was the weird one where everyone got all nuts with the praise music and speaking in tongues. Not that I went there; just that was what people said. His daughter was this girl named Mahali or something and she always wore a fancy dress every day to school, which alone made her weird, even though she was pretty. Also, she was like Neecie, off-limits from sex stuff, even though she had a nice rack and all. Plus she was a couple grades below me, and so I didn't really keep track of her like you did other hot chicks, maybe also because of her minister father and French-accent weirdness too. Not that I'm racist—I'm not—but anyway, it was just unusual for me. Talking to a black dude.

Plus, everything about Sergeant Kendall was so polished and scrubbed. Like, my fingernails were all dirty and needed cutting, while his were trimmed and short. And his hair was short, like a dusting of black color on his scalp. While my hair had become kind of a mop lately. Which I liked, I liked having mop-hair, you didn't actually have to do anything with it, which was nice. Hallie had loved my hair.

He'd asked me about my job history and I told him about the Thrift Bin; then he moved down a list of stuff on a form.

“Are you involved in any sports, Sean?”

“No. No, I mean, I was. Not currently. I used to swim, though.”

He nodded, like he was a little bummed out.

“There's a fitness requirement all recruits must pass. Pull-ups, crunches, and a timed run. There are also weight and BMI standards, which, just from looking, I think will be okay with you. How tall are you?”

“Six one or so.” He looked at me more, nodded again.

As if that didn't make me feel gay, him giving me the whole up-and-down. But also kind of happy.

“The timed run's a mile, right?” I asked.

“A mile and half. And we ask that you finish in thirteen minutes, thirty seconds. So . . .”

“Okay, that's doable.”

I thought it was, at least. I should have talked to Eddie about this. We used to run sometimes, back when we swam together and were all gung-ho about making varsity and keeping in shape in the off-season. Eddie still did that, as far as I knew. But I hadn't. And my running shoes were shit. I needed new ones; my old ones were covered in cement from me and Brad pouring a patio out at Grandpa Chuck's place.

Sergeant Kendall nodded and smiled at me. I smiled back. We were smiling at each other, like two people on a date, almost. And then he told me to have a seat. I tried not to look too relieved to finally sit down. In case that was also part of the invisible test or something.

Sergeant Kendall handed me a DVD, which he said showed proper technique for pull-ups and crunches, and told me to keep on with the running, and we made another appointment to meet after my birthday. There was a list of documents I needed to bring for that meeting, and I had to register for Selective Service, too, which I'd forgotten about but needed to do, and I stared at all the papers seriously for a minute before saying anything. I was kind of bad with paperwork. I didn't know where half that shit was before we'd moved; I didn't exactly want to ask my mom where it was now, either.

“I really want to do this,” I said, like maybe he could see me getting all bummed out. “I do.”

“I'm glad,” Sergeant Kendall said.

I felt like it was clear on my face that I was all freaked about the paperwork part. But he just stood up, and so I stood up, quickly, ready to be dismissed. I shook his hand and took the papers and then I walked out.

But before I could even dig my keys out of my jacket pocket, I saw Neecie Albertson. She didn't see me, though. Because she was coming out of Private Delights. Which was the real name of the porny store. She had a brown paper sack with something in it. And she was digging in her bag for something and then she dropped her phone and the battery knocked out of it and then she was picking up all the little bits of stuff and when she stood up again, she saw me, standing there in front of the Marines place, staring at her.

She looked completely freaked.

Then a red truck pulled up to the curb and she practically leaped toward it and got in the passenger seat.

Tristan Reichmeier's red truck. It was nice. New. She buckled in, and he drove off, not even seeing me, or if he did, he didn't care. And I knew she'd text me, later. And I knew, then, that I'd call her again. I just knew.

“He didn't see you, so don't worry about it,” Neecie said.

“I'm not worried about anything,” I said.

“He gets kind of nuts about things. Like, he's paranoid, I swear.”

“He's just being a douche,” I said. Then tried to gulp it back when she looked across the table at me and stopped cutting her pancakes. “Sorry,” I added.

She didn't say anything. We were at IHOP. It was Friday night, almost nine o'clock. Neecie had texted me (“please don't say anything,” again) two hours after I saw her. So I just called her, and she said she was at work, and I said I'd come get her. I pulled up to the group of employees standing around waiting together for everyone to get picked up by their rides in the parking lot at the Thrift Bin—Wendy's rule, as the store wasn't in the greatest part of town—and when Neecie climbed in, Kerry stood there smoking and looking at me like,
Really? You and her, huh?