Perfectly Good White Boy (20 page)

“Not really.”

“Because you don't read.”

“I do, too. I read school stuff.”

“That's different,” she said. “That's being forced. What are you really
doing
, Sean? Doing on purpose? Doing on your own?”

“I'm doing the Marines,” I said.

“Oh, whatever. You are not.”

“I am too,” I said. “I signed everything.”

“Shut. Up.”

“I'm serious.”

“When?”

“On my birthday. Back in November.”

She sat up, slowly. Like a submarine rising out of the water, cautious, and it would have been funny, but I didn't laugh. Because it all came gushing out of me, the whole story.

“I signed the papers, I gave them all my documents,” I said. “I have to take this test, the ASVAB? It's for deciding where to place me, jobs-wise. I should get my boot camp assignment this summer probably. It's happening.”

She was staring at me, but I didn't care: telling had felt so good! The words had been the opposite of slow, like Neecie thought her words were. Like I was trying to prove a point about it.

She crossed her legs beneath her, pretzel-style, like in kindergarten. Raked her hair out of her face, tucked it behind her ears a million times.

“Sean, my god,” she said. “I can't even. I mean . . . So, you're going to, like, go to war?”

“Jesus,” I said. “That's not the only thing. There's a lot of other . . .”

“And jobs?” she said. “That sounds super weird. Like, it's not a
job
, really. Not how I think of it . . .”

“There's many forms of service,” I interrupted, repeating line for line how Sergeant Kendall had explained it to me. “Communications, logistics, psy ops, supply chain, IT, mechanical. So it's not just infantry, you know.”

“Infantry?”

“That's what you're thinking of,” I said. “Being in a tank, a foxhole. Front-lines stuff.”

She laid back down. Her hair covered her face. When she talked again, it was like the words were being sent to the ceiling.

“You are very brave, Sean. I couldn't do that. I hate making my bed. And I can't do one single push-up.”

“I bet you could do
one
push-up. Look at you. You probably weigh like a hundred pounds! That's barely anything to lift up!”

“I weigh more than a hundred pounds, idiot. I'm like one forty-five. And don't look at me like that's a lot. Nobody weighs a hundred pounds unless they're sick or something, Jesus. And plus, men have bigger things. You know?”

“Things, huh? What things, exactly?” I was smiling like crazy. “I, personally, have so many
things
on me.”

“You know what I mean.” She motioned to her own shoulders. “You know. Muscles.”

I laughed. “Come on, do it, it's easy.”

“No.”

“Yes,” I said, lying beside her. “Roll onto your tummy.”

“Tummy!” she said. “You just said ‘tummy'!”

“So?”

“Do they call it that in the Marines?” She laughed.

“Oh, shut up,” I said. I felt that bossy thing again, like I wasn't gonna fool around. “Now listen to me. Put your arms like this. No, ninety-degree angle . . . No, you're gonna do it the boy way. Not on your knees, that's the girl way in Phy Ed. Use your toes.”

“I
am
a girl, you know,” she said. “Don't girl Marines get to do it the girl way?”

“All Marines do it the boy way,” I said, though I didn't honestly know.

“Now, just pretend you want to lower your body to the floor, like you're pressing something down with your belly,” I said.

“With my tummy, you mean.”

“Jesus! Yes, fine. Press it down with your tummy.”

“You sound like the biggest dork when you say ‘tummy,'” she said. “Boys should not ever say the word ‘tummy.' Or the word ‘panties' either. There should be a law.”

“Whatever. Just do it.”

She lowered herself down, and I could see a little of her bra through the armhole of her T-shirt. Part of her boob, too. God.

She did one push-up, then another, then one more. Then she collapsed on the carpet.

“See?” I said. “You could totally do it.”

“How many can you do?”

“I'm up to fifty,” I said, trying to sound low-key and not braggy.

“Jesus,” she said. “You have to do that to just get into the Marines?”

“Not specifically push-ups. Pull-ups and crunches. And running. And that's just to prepare for boot camp.”

“Are you running now?”

“Not yet. I need new shoes.”

“Why?”

“Mine suck.”

“But you'll have to run in combat boots, anyway, stupid,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“Come on, Sean! Haven't you ever seen a movie in your whole life?”

I rolled my eyes. But I knew I'd have to ask Sergeant Kendall. Because, really, that could save me a big hunk of money, not buying new running shoes.

“You should join track,” she said. “Melanie does track. I think that would be funny. You'd get to wear those gross cutaway short shorts. And those man tank tops and stuff. I bet you'd look just
fabulous
.” Then she laughed at her own joke for a long time. Another hazard of smoking pot I should have warned her about.

But I laughed too, and then we just laid there some more, the music changing into some trance-y stuff. Both of us and our secrets. Kind of. Her with her secret sex-ninja life; me with the Marines. Maybe I was being stupid, with the Marines: it crossed my mind a couple times since signing everything. But mostly I'd been thinking, yeah, the Marines was a good thing. Which was what I focused on, lying on the piano room floor with Neecie.

A little while later, Neecie decided to eat some of Melanie's Christmas cookies, and I watched her devour them. I'd never seen her devour anything before. It was pretty worth it, all the non-high babysitting, because she was like Cookie Monster, at least the way Cookie Monster was before they made Cookie Monster only eat carrots. She had crumbs on her boobs, eyes closed, saying how much she liked them, how awesome they were, until I told her why didn't she just marry her cookies if she loved them so much, and she laughed and laughed and swatted at me, and I laughed, and she kept eating, crumbs all around her mouth.

Then she said she wanted to watch some TV, and she laid on the sofa, and I sat on the floor, her hands brushing my hair a little, telling me I was her pet and did I use this one kind of conditioner, which Melanie used, which didn't have some chemical in it? Because my hair was so soft, like a girl's.

“I can't stop touching it,” she said, her fingers chopping around the back of my neck, all awkward and grabby, which freaked me out and made The Horn get all excited again.

But luckily, then she stopped petting my hair and fell asleep. Way before midnight. And I was glad, because I didn't want to be there when her mom and Gary came home. Didn't want to keep liking hearing her breathe. Didn't want to keep liking her, either.

I stood up, nudged her arm a little. “Neecie, I'm going home, okay?”

She opened her eyes, looked up at me in the half-dark of the TV.

“What?”

“You okay without me?”

She yawned. “Yeah. I think so. I think I'm just going to go to bed,” Neecie said.

“Okay.”

She followed me to the door, watched me put on my shoes and jacket. I was about to open the door when she crossed her arms over her chest—her little boobs popping forward—and then she said, “I'm gonna do it, Sean. If you can go in the Marines and run in combat boots and wear those cutaway track shorts, then I can do it, too. No more Tristan. New Year's resolution. You'll hold me to it, right?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Good,” she said, then stepped toward me and kissed me on the cheek. Her mouth was soft, smooth. Like all the other girls' mouths I'd ever kissed. Like Hallie's mouth. Was my mouth like that?

“Thank you,” she added.

“Yep,” I said, trying to keep cool. The Horn was all freaked out, of course.

I drove home, trying to be steady. It was only after I'd talked to Steven-Not-Steve and my mom in the living room, who were watching the ball drop while they tied up little ribbons to some crazy thing that had to be for Brad and Krista's wedding and drank wine and ate crackers and cheese and whatever other crap Steven-Not-Steve thought made good snack foods, after me and Otis toppled into bed, that I saw Hallie had texted me. I had left my phone in my jacket pocket all night.

I did some push-ups. I looked at the phone. I thought of Neecie, all lotion-y, petting my hair.

And then I wondered, how it would work, to be done with Hallie too? I laid there for a long time, thinking of how to tell her.

Chapter Twelve

Brad's not the sharpest tool in the shed. I know I'm smarter than Brad—I know it—and not just because of grades. It's like Brad never thinks or something. He just goes around and DOES things and that's it. He's very simple. But Brad was always golden, always good, always doing the right thing, even if the right thing was something dipshitty like getting his truck stuck in the mudflats or getting in trouble for fighting at Homecoming or something idiotic like that. But with me, the one who didn't get caught, the one who didn't usually fuck up, my mom was always sighing. And my dad? I don't know what he was doing. He would ride Brad's ass a lot, but that was because he was older and more into the kind of sports my dad liked: football, baseball. By the time it was my turn for that stuff, my dad was too fucked up to notice.

I was trying to tell Neecie this, not in those words, really, but trying to explain all the shit in my head, in order for her to get it, why we were up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning in early February, but she just sat in the passenger seat of my car, holding her coffee and sausage biscuit on her lap. Neither of us had to work for once, and I'd picked her up at her house and got her McDonald's for breakfast (“My mom thinks McDonald's is the devil!”) while I explained what I wanted to do.

“Why do you have to do this now? It's freezing cold!”

“I've got to be able to hack it in boot camp,” I said. I'd said that so many times, I was sick of hearing myself saying it. Then I told her about the timing, the whole thing. I was looking her right in the face and everything, too, but Neecie wasn't very athletic; she seemed to think I was being excessive, that I was out of my mind. It bugged me having to explain, but she was the only one who knew what I'd done, so there was no one else who could help me.

“Okay, so where do I meet you?”

“Just drive to that little shitty road behind the school and then go three more blocks to that park. That's four miles.”

“I thought you needed to do just one mile.”

“A mile and a half. But this is for general conditioning and stuff. I can't just do the minimum and think that's enough. You run every day in boot camp.”

“How do you know?” she asked. “Did you actually ask your recruiter guy what happens in boot camp?”

Of course I hadn't. I hadn't even watched the videos of how to do correct pull-ups. I was just assuming, but I didn't want her to know that.

“Yes,” I said, then put my hat on and my earbuds in so we could be done talking.

“You shouldn't wear those kind of earbuds,” she said. “Why?”

“At elevated volumes, they're bad for your ears.”

“Oh, really?” I asked, sarcastic. “Is that how you got the way you are?”

“Shut up,” she said. “I was born with this shitty problem.”

“It's not shitty,” I said. “People have to look at you if they want to lie to you. That's really genius. Plus, anything you don't want to hear, you can just ignore it.”

Neecie bit into her sausage biscuit. The smallest bite, Jesus. I could eat one of those things in two bites. She looked really tired, though, and I felt instantly shitty about how good she was being about this. It wasn't even seven a.m., and while she'd agreed to this, I hadn't realized maybe she had other things to do. Like be asleep for a couple more hours.

“Go,” she said. “Let's get this over with.”

“You're not even the one running!” I said, handing her the keys and turning on my music. “I'll see you in a little while!”

Maybe some people think about really great things while they're running. Like maybe they come up with new inventions or whatever. Solve math problems. Meditate on the nature of the universe. Or maybe even cook up excuses or lies, elaborate stories for why they needed to dump their girlfriend or quit their job or whatever the hell.

But I'd found, since I'd been running for a few weeks, that after the first few hellish minutes, during which my body basically screamed at me internally to JUST STOP STOP STOP WHAT ARE YOU DOING STOP FOR FUCK'S SAKE, I thought of pretty much nothing. I just saw things. Noted them. Like, “Burger King.” Or “patch of ice.” Or “Shitty house that looks like the rental.”

So, after the last mile, when I saw Neecie sitting in my car, and I had to walk to cool down, and she popped out to accompany me, sipping her coffee and asking me how was it, I really had nothing to say, unless I wanted to say “Burger King. Patch of ice. Shitty house.” Also, I was coughing a little and spitting, which I couldn't help, but if Neecie thought that was gross she didn't show it. She just sipped her coffee, and we walked around the little park where I'd mapped out the finish line until I got back to normal.

“You know, I want to be able to hear it though,” she said.

“What?”

“What you said, before you left? About not having to hear shit? I don't like that. I
want
to hear what people are saying. Know what's going on. I mean, I don't want to have to talk back, always. Or have a long discussion about stuff. But I want to have the chance. To at least know what's being said.”