Perfectly Good White Boy (24 page)

Ivy was in the backseat, but not the phone anymore. When I glanced at the rearview mirror, she was crying. Awesome. The night was turning out just great.

It wasn't the bawling-loud crying like Neecie and Hallie had done, but just the movie-scene crying where the tears just slopped up under your lids and slid down your face. Given that Ivy went overboard with her eye makeup, it was more dramatic than it had to be. I didn't think she'd meant it be dramatic, though; it was just a coincidence. I kept looking at her in the rearview the whole time, though it was probably dickish to stare. Eddie must have seen it, too, because suddenly he was looking straight ahead, like he was pretending it wasn't happening. Which was probably more dickish, really. But all of us stayed silent, until we dropped Ivy at her car over by the busted-party house; then Eddie asked her if she was okay to drive. Ivy didn't say anything, just slammed the door, and Eddie sat there looking at the texts on his phone, saying, “Fuck” over and over and the whole way home, I had the image of the bald guy in the King Pin and had to grip the steering wheel tight so I wouldn't be tempted to feel around for lumps again.

Chapter Fourteen

I didn't talk to Neecie the rest of the weekend. She didn't text me; I didn't text her. She called in sick to work, too. Monday during lunch Eddie and me went to a meeting for track, so I didn't see her, then, either. I saw Tristan Reichmeier, walking with his set of douche hockey players. It made me pretty damn salty, her talking me into going bowling and him talking her into leaving with him. All of that pissed me off to no end. By the time Global Studies rolled around, I was wondering what the fuck was up.

But, in Global Studies, Neecie was all, “Hi, Sean!” and passing back the handouts and sweeping her long hair over her shoulder, and for the first time, that move, her slipping her fingers behind the sheet of blond hair and tossing it out of her way, instead of looking nice and pretty, it looked bitchy and snobby to me. So I didn't say anything to her, not that I normally did; Neecie had to concentrate in class on what was going on, if she wanted to hear properly, so she always shut me down if I poked her or whispered to her—“I hate whispering, Sean. Say it, or don't say it, but don't fucking WHISPER.”

But after class, she turned around and kind of looked at me like always, like normal, like next we'd start talking as we walked to our lockers to collect our shit. But I couldn't look at her. I couldn't, because of her now-snobby hair flip move and because of Tristan who gave shitty carnations to his dumb girlfriend and Neecie ditching me at the King Pin to be with a guy who wouldn't even give her shitty carnations. So I just hustled out the door, fast as hell to my locker and when I got to the parking lot my phone rang and it was Sergeant Kendall.

“Sean, how are you?”

“Good. Good, sir. I mean. I'm good.”

“Good. Hey. I'm calling because I have a MEPS appointment set up for you. It's short notice, but I want to get you in as soon as possible. It makes for faster boot camp assignation.”

“Okay. When?”

“Tomorrow, oh-eight-hundred. I can drive you. And give your school a note, excusing you from class.”

“Right,” I said. I turned around and saw Neecie, at the top of the school steps, holding her books across her chest.

“We went over this, but let me remind of you of what you'll need, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, and he launched into a list of shit. Medical history, Social Security card, driver's license. Told me to take a shower the night before, wear underwear—“Nothing too flashy: trust me, you won't want to stand around in anything out of the ordinary”—and remove any jewelry, piercings, and earrings; hats were not allowed, nor was any clothing with profanity or offensive imagery.

“Right,” I said. Listening, watching Neecie approach and stand in front of me. Waiting.

“Make sure whatever you wear is clean and loose,” Sergeant Kendall continued. “And again, not unusual. You're going to be poked and prodded and asked to do some stretching, and so you want something that'll be easy to show full range of motion. Jeans and a T-shirt and a sweater or hoodie over that are what I'd recommend. So, any questions?”

“No. I'm good.”

“Great. Pick you up at school or home?”

“School,” I said. “Hey. I have a question. Should I wear running shoes? Will I be running?”

“No,” he said. “No PT for this portion. But you should be running anyway, like we talked about.”

“I just joined track for spring,” I said.

“Good. That's awesome. Okay. Well, I'm excited about this. This'll be great. Tell your parents you should be home around dinnertime. But I'll get you dinner, anyway; traffic'll be bad that time of day, okay?”

“Yeah, great. Thanks.”

I hung up and then said to Neecie, “You always listen in to people's phone conversations?”

“Yeah,” she said, frowning and pissed. “Especially conversations where you keep saying, ‘yeah' and ‘okay' a million times. Those are so fascinating.”

I shrugged.

“Why are you avoiding me?”

“I'm not avoiding you,” I said. “Just got things to do.”

“Right,” she said.

And we stared at each other, and I could tell she was going to just wait and be quiet until I couldn't stand it, because I was about to blow, the whole thing with the MEPS appointment was huge and I was freaking out, thinking about it, how there was an oath and all these medical tests and health questions and I was going to have to just hope I knew all my shit well enough, though there hadn't been that much wrong with me in my life, besides a broken arm back in third grade when Eddie and me jumped down the staircase onto a pile of couch cushions and I landed funny. And once I got pneumonia after snowboarding all weekend in junior high. But nothing else. Except that I was shitting my pants—something happening, something to tell people about! Except not my mom!—but it was good and bad, because this was HAPPENING and I hadn't really studied for the ASVAB and my strategy was that I shouldn't because I might as well just show them what I was capable of, instead of cramming and inflating my score and then having it seem like I was fit for something really complicated and technical, which I didn't want, anyway. I was an okay test-taker, at least; Sergeant Kendall recommended practice tests if I was a bad test-taker. Neecie would have helped me with that, if I'd asked her. But I didn't ask her, though. I forgot. Or didn't want to remember. Or I wanted to do other things with her, not involving tests.

But when I looked at her, I just saw her snobby hair. Her snobby yellow hair, all over Tristan's bed. Her pink bra. Him over her. The cat he loved more than anyone else. And him wearing the stupid black cap that hung off his head like he was some kind of Rasta. A Rasta listening to goddamn country music.

“See you tomorrow,” I finally said. And she said nothing, but I knew she heard me because I was, obviously, looking straight at her when I said it.

On the way to the MEPS, Sergeant Kendall tried to draw me out and talk, but I was nervous and I couldn't get into it. Couldn't follow what he was saying. Felt like sleeping, but that seemed lazy and rude, too. I was wearing jeans and a button-up shirt (I figured why not go one step further than the hoodie and T-shirt) and I had clean underwear on—boxer briefs, grey. And I'd shaved my weak-ass stubble and put on extra pit-stick. I even flossed my teeth. Except for my running shoes, I looked ready to go to church. Or court.

When Brad did his maybe-I'll-join-the-Army thing in his senior year, it had been pretty low-level stuff. Certainly he'd never ridden in a car with a recruiter for an hour. All it had taken for my mom to lose her shit was finding an Army recruiter's business card in Brad's pocket. Of course, Brad never intended to sneak around about it, so he just told her he was thinking about it. She did her whole freakout thing about killing and peace and shit, but after a couple days, she got practical. She knew how to work Brad. This was before things really went to shit between my parents, before all the bankruptcy and foreclosure stuff, so my mom told Brad she'd give him the down payment on a used pickup if he'd go on a weekend visit to where she went to college in Moorhead and tear up the Army dude's card.

My dad drove Brad to Moorhead, where Brad ended up getting shit-faced at a frat party and Dad probably did the same in some crappy hotel room and that was the last we ever heard from Brad about college or the Army. He still runs his tree-trimming business out of that truck, though.

The Military Entrance Processing Station was in downtown Minneapolis, where I'd only ever gone for Twins games or once to some play that my mom wanted us to see at Christmastime. It was in an old marble-looking building that looked like a museum. When we went in, we had to go through a screening thing like at an airport, and my backpack was searched and all that shit. Then Sergeant Kendall nudged me toward the Marines liaison and said he'd pick me up later today.

The liaison gave me and a bunch of other dudes a big speech. That we needed to listen to instructions and realize we were being watched and that there was no spitting or listening to music and cell phones, that we had to put our bags in this cabinet and take out any necessary ID and forms now and not give them to anyone who wasn't a medical doctor and there would be no bathroom privileges until after the medical exam had been completed. It was kind of hardcore and freaky, and at one point a Marine walked through where we were all sitting and told the guy next to me sit his ass up proper, and the idea that I could have been that guy made me feel like my hair could start on fire.

Then we did a pile of paperwork. A whole bunch of instructions from this woman who had her hair pulled into a tight ponytail that was painful to look at. I fished out my medical forms, and Tight Ponytail came over, her huge ass bumping the other little tables and butted in to ask what I was doing and I told her and she was like, Okay, go ahead, like I was a complete idiot and every inhalation and exhalation needed to be approved by her.

After I finished my paperwork, then there was another bit of waiting and then Tight Ponytail Lady gave us all Breathalyzers, which just made me feel guilty, though of course I was completely sober. The little tube thing she handed me looked like something you'd suck up pot smoke through, except way more clinical and sterile. So we did that, and they collected them, and then we were shuffled to another room for the ASVAB test. Which, while technically a test with math and crap on it, was the first thing I didn't mind doing, because finally I had something to actually do instead of being yelled at and sitting and waiting.

But then I finished mine first. Which meant more waiting.

The medical part was at least with just a normal doctor, and just like the normal doctor's office, including more waiting. Only difference was, once the doctor showed, it was like the longest exam ever. Eye exams and blood being drawn and peeing in a cup. By the time I got in front of him, the doctor said I was lucky because the physical exam was usually with a fuckload of other people—yes, he actually said “fuckload”—and then he asked me to strip down to my underwear so he could do a physical survey, and I didn't see how this was lucky, being alone and naked in a room with a dude I didn't know.

But he just stood there and looked at me, asking me to do all sorts of stuff, like rotating my foot at the ankle and bending over to touch my toes and stuff and follow his finger with my eyes and walk this way. Then the bend-over-and-cough move, which, gross. Then this weird-ass duck-walk thing, which he actually demonstrated, and I wanted to laugh but I was too scared. I guess I did the duck walk right, though, because he just nodded and sent me along. God. I could never be a doctor.

Then, I got dressed. And—shocker—more waiting. Finally, there was a hearing test with this really cute nurse chick. She had nice boobs, too, and she smelled good, and being all dickconscious from just being in my underwear, I was glad we were sitting down with a table between us because I totally got wood. Typical of The Horn.