Perfectly Good White Boy (12 page)

Then my mom was in the doorway.

“Sean? What's going on? Where's Otis?”

Neecie let go of my wrist. Otis rushed my mom so she could have the honor of petting him.

“Oh, hello,” my mom said, pushing Otis away and looking at Neecie. Her face was sort of shocked and blank. “I didn't know you had . . . that anyone was with you.”

“Hi, Mrs. Norwhalt,” Neecie said. “I'm Neecie.” She bounced up to my mother and held out her hand and they shook hands, like this was a business deal or something. Though Neecie was doing a nice, polite thing, I could tell my mom was standing there thinking,
What the hell, Sean?

Still, my mom, being used to dealing with complete social disasters for her job, was impressed by manners. She shook Neecie's hand and smiled. “Nice to meet you,” she said.

“Likewise!” Neecie sang in this cheery voice. But her face was bright red. My mom was nodding like she was in psychologist mode, trying to be all warm and nonjudgmental and loving. Affirming everyone's
choices
. That kind of shit. The way she was about my dad, for some insane reason, when he'd been the biggest prick ever, pretty much.

Then Krista barged in the doorway, wearing her standard skintight shirt and jeans.

“This is Neecie,” my mom said to Krista. All polite. As if it were normal, me having a girl over.

Krista shook her hand, too. It was so weird. I'd never noticed girls shaking hands like this. Hallie and her friends were always hugging and kissing each other's cheeks, though. Like they really loved each other, even though they talked shit about each other constantly behind their backs.

“We're doing the flowers now,” Krista said. “We got grow lights and everything. I found this website where it's all laid out. It's so AWESOME! Your brother's even here tonight! Isn't that AWESOME? Come on up and help us!”

Krista thought everything was
AWESOME.
Not just Brad and her wedding plans—putting flowerpots on each of the guest tables for favors to take home—but margaritas, certain reality shows, cars with leather interiors, strapless bridesmaid gowns, Weight Watchers fudgesicles, giant sofas that looked like they were ready to explode from overstuffing—these were considered
AWESOME
too.

We trailed behind Krista and my mom; Neecie yanked my shirt back a little.

“Your mom seemed fine about everything.”

“That's because she's used to dealing with fucked-up kids for her job,” I said. “You act normal, and she's all impressed.”

“Wow. I didn't have such a high bar to clear, then, huh?”

I laughed. “You don't have to plant the flowers.”

“No, I'll totally stay,” she said. “I've never heard of anyone using orange in their wedding colors.”

“Krista thinks orange is
AWESOME
. And pink and orange? Even more
AWESOMER
. But she has to scale back to just pink.”

Neecie laughed. “I suppose it might be okay. Sort of Dreamsicle-y. But I don't have any issues with pink, actually. It's summery. Nice.”

I thought we'd have to redo the whole introductions thing with Brad and Neecie, but Krista rushed through it after Brad stuck his head in the door and said he was going to buy Otis some more dog food.

“What's going on, douche,” Brad said after he'd said hello to Neecie.

“Not much,” I said.

“Then why can't you pick up the goddamn dog food, idiot?” Brad asked. “I don't even live here anymore.”

“Nobody told me to get Otis food!” I said.

“Proves my point,” Brad said. Then he slipped back out the door. Obviously, someone didn't want to plant flowers for his own goddamn wedding.

Then Krista took over. She had a whole process. We had to wipe out the pots and add this stuff from a packet and something from a jar and then the dirt and all these steps and she basically was demonstrating it like she was on a cooking show except a lady on a cooking show wouldn't be wearing flowered gardening gloves to protect her plastic nails and a shirt so tight you could see her boobs pop out with every breath she took. Krista didn't seem to get that the rest of the world would notice her boobs or her thong whale-tail, as if being Brad's fiancée erased those things for everyone else. I didn't want to notice these things, but she was always so huggy and close with me. I felt like a total creeper about it.

Our kitchen table being circular, Neecie could see Krista's face and my mom's face, and all three of them babbled together without even including me, which was okay. Neecie seemed back in School Mode, like she was being called on to participate in class, something she did when she had to, though she never volunteered. It wasn't clear to me whether she enjoyed this kind of behavior or if it just came so natural she didn't even notice. Either way, the conversation went along fine. Until Krista asked Neecie about her post-graduation plans and Neecie told her about the schools she was applying to.

“That's wonderful that you're going to college,” my mom said. And I was sure she'd use this as an opportunity to rail on me for not applying anywhere yet.

But Krista was the one who brought it up. It was like they took turns, rotating who would bug me about the future.

“Sean is so smart,” Krista said. “He really needs to go to college.”

“I don't know about that,” I said.

“You're just thinking grades are the only thing that matters,” my mom said.

“Well, they kind of are. When you're talking about
school
,” I pointed out.

“Test scores are also important,” Neecie said, but it was in this shy peep of a voice, like she knew I wasn't loving this discussion.

“Community college is a good place to get started,” my mom said, trying to sound all casual as she patted seeds into the black soil.

“Totally,” Krista agreed. “And the tuition costs way less.”

“I guess it's up to Sean, though,” Neecie said. “He's got to decide, right?”

Then nobody said anything, even Krista, and we just went back to miserably potting the goddamn flowers until Brad busted in carrying the dog food on his shoulder.

“I got that Senior Formula for weight loss,” Brad said. “Since Otis is kind of a fatty.”

“He's not that fat,” I said.

“He's fat as fuck, are you nuts?” Brad said, unloading the kibble bag into the giant bin in the pantry with a big rushing clatter.

“Hon? Who's that friend of yours who went to DeVry? The one who makes all that money installing furnaces?” Krista asked Brad. Then they traded the guy's name back and forth and asked me if I knew him, and I shrugged.

“Don't you think Sean would do good in that kind of program?” Krista asked Brad, like Brad was my dad.

But Brad just shook his head, like he didn't even see the point of discussing me. He adjusted his cap on his head and said, “Babe, I'm starving. I didn't get any dinner yet. What did you eat?”

“There's stuff for sandwiches in the fridge,” my mom said.

“I want a pizza,” Brad said, and then, because he was the man, he called for pizza, and a little bit later, me and Neecie were sitting out on the back deck in the dark while Brad ate pizza in the living room and Krista and my mom set up the seedlings in the basement under the grow lights, which made it look like they were growing weed. They were probably the first people in the history of the world to buy grow lights for something actually legitimate.

Neecie was eating a piece of pizza, all careful with each bite. It was kind of cold, and she had zipped her hoodie up her neck, her long hair trapped underneath it, like she wanted the extra layer for warmth. It made her look a little weird, but also like she didn't give a shit, which was nice. Hallie was always worrying about her looks; flipping her hair, checking herself out in mirrors, all that.

“Your family's nice,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“They are. They seem really nice.”

“Brad's kind of douchey.”

“Well, yeah,” she said. “But he asked me what I liked on my pizza, didn't he?”

Neecie was such a bright-sider sometimes. Finally, she said she needed to get home and so I drove her back into town. She lived in an okay neighborhood, not one of the fancy developments or anything, but not anything like the rental. Once I was in front of her house, she turned to me.

“Your mom doesn't know about the Marines thing?”

“No,” I said. “And she'd freak if she did.”

“Well, you have to tell her sometime.”

“Not after I turn eighteen.”

“I'm sure she'd notice, Sean, if you suddenly went off to boot camp.”

“By then it'd be too late.”

“I guess,” Neecie said. “But I don't see why you can't just tell her. I mean, explain why you're doing it.”

I didn't have anything to say to that. I thought she'd expect me to explain why I was doing it, the Marines. Though I wasn't really doing anything yet. But she didn't. She just kind of hung out with me in my car, talking.

I don't remember much more of the evening, though I know we sat in front of her house in my car for a long time. Eddie texted me a photo of a naked chick smoking from a bong shaped like a dick, which was his way of saying he needed me to get some weed from Kerry for him, but I just ignored it. Because I didn't care. It was nice, just sitting there, talking, her being just so regular and not hyper, her hair trapped under her hoodie, her hands on the knees of her jeans, not making me feel weird like she wanted to go on a date or anything. Like, people who said guys and girls couldn't be friends had to be wrong. Because that's what it felt like. Like there was no bullshit or games. Like we were just friends.

So that was the first night we hung out, even though there wasn't a big thing said about it. After that, we just kept hanging out like it was normal. Like it wasn't a secret that got us together. But, still, we weren't really
together
. I didn't want to fuck her, and she didn't want to go out with me, either. I didn't care if I picked her up after she'd been with Tristan. I didn't care what she thought about me, because clearly she didn't care about what I thought of her and that was nice, because normally, when I liked a girl, I was so tense around her I could barely speak. So this was all nice, because I thought she was cool, in all these different ways, like her hearing thing that made me have to think about what I said, whether I meant it, whether I wanted her to really know it. How she was like this stealth sex ninja, how cool and above-it-all she acted around Tristan at school. And at work, how she underhandedly worked to piss off Kerry with country music and requests from the supply closet and wearing shirts that showed off her boobs. (She didn't realize she was doing that last thing. Probably.)

The one thing I remember from that night in the car, when we just sat there and talked forever, was when I said something about Tristan and how it seemed like no big deal, how they hooked up and that was it, and if guys did that and no one cared, why should she care? I was trying to make her feel badass, better about herself, but she shook her head. Looked me straight in the face, the only light coming from her garage floodlight, and said, “I know. I wish it was. But it just makes me feel so bad sometimes.”

Chapter Eight

It was two days before Thanksgiving. My birthday was the day before Thanksgiving this year, which meant we always had a cake with our turkey. But in the past, this had often been forgotten in the holiday shuffle. Especially when my dad was still around.

But this year I didn't care, because it was snowing like crazy, the first big snow of the season, and I was at Neecie's house, eating a giant plate of fudge that her little sister Melanie made me. A pre-birthday treat, she said. Melanie was sort of crazed about cooking. She was also sort of crazed in general. But I didn't care. I loved being at the Albertsons' house and was happy to not be at home. My mom was talking community college all the time and didn't I want to tour the one where Steven-Not-Steve taught (he taught accounting, which wasn't a surprise), and was my “little friend” Neecie coming over again anytime soon, and it just made me want to laugh and also start yelling but I couldn't do either, because I was signing up for the Marines in secret and if she knew, she'd lose her mind. She was also kind of losing her mind, it seemed like, because my dad was out of the rehab in Arizona and living in this halfway house thing now. Or he'd just left it. He had some job now, doing something outside. It was all part of the expensive treatment thing Grandpa Chuck had paid for. It was like his eleventh rehab. She kept bugging me to call my dad at this one number, between these certain hours, but I kept putting it off.

“Try this kind, Sean,” Melanie said, pushing another plate across the counter. Neecie's kitchen had a little breakfast nook thingy, with stools, and Melanie liked to stand there and feed people her stuff. Melanie had some kind of eating issue, according to Neecie, and it wasn't exactly an eating disorder, I guess, but something like it, though mostly it looked to me that Melanie was that awkward junior-high skinny where the girl looks like she's a newborn deer or whatever, all shaky-kneed and stuff. That, along with her braces, and her tendency to do yoga or Pilates in the TV room whenever I came over could have been something pathological or something totally normal. But I never asked; Melanie loved to make food for me to eat. I didn't really see any reason to probe too deep into the exact reasons why.

Neecie was somewhere in the house, dicking around. This sometimes happened when I'd come over. She'd get a call and then kind of slip out of the room and ditch me with Melanie or Jessamyn and then come back, like, a half hour later, all showered. Or wearing different clothes. Like, pajamas. Or just a different outfit. Like, she'd sometimes do yoga with Melanie, and then I knew she wanted me to leave, which was fine because, knowing Melanie, I'd get pressed into doing yoga, too, which I'd done a couple times. But I didn't want to stick my ass in the air while counting my breaths and hoping my hands would unstick from the purple yoga mat if Mrs. Albertson came home suddenly with her boyfriend, Gary, who was nice and everything, but like, a real dude who worked for the telephone company, a guy who climbed up the poles and shit, and while he loved Mrs. Albertson, clearly, from all his touchy behavior with her when he thought no one was looking, I was pretty intent on Gary never seeing my softer side.