Perfectly Good White Boy (30 page)

Finally, it seemed like she was trying to twist up and away from me, but I held on until she said my name—
Sean!
, in this kind of whisper, and the thrill of that, of her knees locking and my name like an emergency,
that
was what mattered,
that
was the point of everything in the whole world just then and possibly ever.

When she finally opened her eyes at me, she laughed, all out of breath, but she looked so happy anyway and she said, “I think we're ready, Sean.”

And so I got up and got out a condom from my sock drawer and started ripping into it, standing by the bed as she sat up next to me, and I felt a little embarrassed of how much of me she could see in full daylight. But then Neecie was all involved, and she kept saying things:

“Hold still!” and “You're being a dork!” and “Your bed smells like chlorine. Bleach. I'm getting all rashy. Look, it's all over my shoulders. Is it on my back?”

Her voice was lazy, sexy, even, but she was just her normal Neecie-self. Even if she was holding my dick and looking at it straight, like it didn't bother her. Just kept talking, kept her eyes on it, like it was all a big huge turn-on and not upsetting in any way. I thought I might die, I couldn't wait. We'd rolled the thing on me and then she grabbed my ass (“Come here! You have such a bony ass!”) pushed me toward her, so I was above her, stretched over her and she kissed me, right on my chest, not the caved-in hollow, but around my collarbone.

“This is weird,” she said. “But I think it'll be good. Don't you?” She smiled, and before I could answer her, I heard the kitchen door open and slam and my mom's keys clanked on the counter and she called out not just my name, but Neecie's too.

We didn't move. My eyes were on the door like it might open any second. Neecie pulled the sheet around herself and we stared at each other, listening to my mom moving around in the kitchen: the cupboards opening and closing, the dishwasher door banging down where it was missing a hinge, the radio news station she liked buzzing away.

Then my mom called down: “You and Neecie want some dinner, honey?”

Neecie shook her head. Looked panicked. “No, Sean. Don't say anything!”

But I just yelled back, “Sure, Mom. We'll be up in a little bit.”

“Sean!”

“She knows we're here,” I said. “But she doesn't think anything. And if she did, she's not gonna care. I stayed out all night that one time and I told her I was with you and she didn't even care about that.”

She nodded. Then she looked at the wall. And I just laid on my back now, looked at the ceiling. My hand was on her thigh and The Horn was totally gone.

Leaving. Never coming back.

Neecie sat up, her hands over her boobs.

“Sean, I need to go home.”

I nodded. Stared at her body. She was so pretty, Neecie. All of her. I touched her shoulder where it was sort of red and blotchy and she twitched a little.

“Sean. I mean, I'm sorry, but this is totally weird.”

“Yeah,” I said. She slipped over me, and we both got out of bed to get dressed. When her back was turned I took off the condom, which was kind of terrible, if you've ever done that, taking off a condom when you haven't even gotten off. Kind of like ripping a Band-Aid off your dick.

“Ouch!” I said, louder than I could help. Neecie smirked at me, put on her shoes. Then she kissed my cheek and ran upstairs. I put on clean boxers and then sat down on the bed. Listened to her talk to my mom. My mom laughing at something she said. They talked some more, about the track meet—“Sean's pretty tired, he won the relay”—and then I heard the door open and shut and her car start and my mom's kitchen noises started back up.

I was exhausted. I laid back on the bed, half awake, half asleep.

I thought about it, for the first time, what it would be like, being Neecie's boyfriend. We could get an apartment or something. Live together. Somehow she'd go to college and do her thing, be smart and nerdy, and I'd go to the grocery store and buy her cases of her weird iced tea and special order that laundry soap she had to use for her skin thing, which her mother said they made in this place in Vermont, and it was genetic, so maybe our kids would get all red in the face, too, and we'd have kids so I'd need a job, something good, not the Thrift Bin, but something. Maybe work with Brad, trimming trees? Though I'd never trimmed trees and I hated working with Brad. Or maybe Grandpa Chuck could hook me up with something—he had lots of friends who owned businesses and shit. And we'd bring Otis to live with us, too, because kids need a dog for when they are lonely or sad or scared, they need a dog for company, for when they come in the door and to sleep on the end of their beds, even if they did hog all the room, the bigger you got. Otis would for sure live with us. I couldn't leave Otis.

Which made me think: I hadn't seen Otis all day. Hadn't heard him when Mom came in.

I threw on some pants and my shoes and pounded upstairs. Mom wasn't in the kitchen. I called for Otis.

Nothing.

I opened the back door, to the deck. Hollered again and flipped on the outside light. There was Otis, standing all weird, looking cringey and shaky in front of the back deck steps, like he wasn't sure how to climb steps or something.

“Sean?” Mom was behind me. “What . . .?” Then she saw Otis and stopped talking.

“He's hurt, maybe,” I said. Bent low, slapped my knees to call him. “Otis, come here, boy.”

He just stood there, looking like he might tip over. Whining a little, too, a sound he hadn't made since he'd been a little puppy.

“Sean, I think something's wrong.”

“He'll be okay,” I said, stepping out to him. His tail wagged a little. “Good boy, Otis. That's a good boy. Come here, boy.”

My mom started crying. “Sean.
Sean.
We have to take him to the vet, honey.”

But I wouldn't listen to her and even when Otis licked my hand, I could see she was right, but I wouldn't believe her and then he sort of sat down weird on the ground, like he wanted to sit or lay down but couldn't figure it out so I went to pet him and saw he was covered in burrs and something wet, too. Piss, his own piss. Which he'd been pissing out everywhere, on my backpack and on the kitchen floor and on a pile of Krista's wedding craft crap, ruining the ribbons for something they needed to decorate the reception with and then I lifted him up and carried him into the house and my mom said that I needed to listen to her, because Otis was hurting and something was wrong and he needed the vet but I wouldn't listen. I wouldn't, because that couldn't be what happened next. It couldn't.

I brought him down to my room and I laid on the carpet with him, just listening to him breathe, his chest rising and falling. I pulled out the burrs softly and gently and wiped him with my Pokémon towel so he wasn't all piss-wet and I just stayed there, all night, telling him I was sorry and it was going to be all right, and it was, as long as I was listening to him breathing and feeling for his heartbeat.

In the morning, when my mom came into my room, I handed her his collar, the little charm still jingling, even though he was gone, and I told her, both of us crying, how in the middle of licking my hand, the sun not quite up, Otis' chest stopped and stiffened and there wasn't anything after that. No more breathing. No more Otis.

Chapter Nineteen

The day of graduation, my mom and I went to pick up Otis from the vet. My mom didn't want to do it, saying we could wait another day, but I refused to let it go. I wanted him back and I wanted to bury him and I didn't care about graduation or the stupid Senior Lock-In that night either.

“Sean, honey,” she said, a million times, until I told her I'd go without her if she wouldn't come already.

But when we got to the vet, I didn't want to go in. I wanted to cry.

“Come on, honey,” my mom said, and we went in, and there in the vet's office were all these other pet owners, holding their cats in their laps or hanging onto their dopey-looking little puppies on leashes and all along the back wall were the bags of expensive pet food, which I felt guilty we couldn't afford because maybe if we could have, Otis still would be alive and not dead from kidney failure or whatever the vet said he thought it was.

My mom stood at the counter and got out her credit card, like she was buying something normal, not her dead dog's ashes in a little marble container, and I stood beside her, wondering if we'd have to talk to the vet or something formal, but it was just the receptionist lady having my mom sign a receipt and then handing us a heavy box that was now Otis. My dog, now a box I could hold with one hand. My dog, now a thing that could fit under the seat of my car.

When we got back home, Krista and Brad and Grandpa Chuck were there, all dressed up for graduation, Krista in an orange dress, Brad and my grandpa in collar shirts. It was hot, and I was still wearing what I'd dug the hole in the backyard in and I smelled and I was dirty and my jeans had a big tarry stain on the knee, and but Krista still hugged me and said she was so sorry and she smelled like Juicy Fruit gum, and Brad even looked a little like he might actually feel bad.

Grandpa Chuck helped me put Otis's little box into the hole. And then we all stood there and looked at the box in the black dirt and I didn't know what to say. Though it seemed like we should say something. Like a normal funeral.

“He was a good dog,” my mom said. “Gentle. So loving.”

I nodded. Krista started sniffling.

“The best,” I said.

Then Brad took a picture, with his phone. And I whirled around and screamed, “What the fuck are you doing?”

“For dad,” he said. “Dad loved Otis too.”

“You asshole,” I said. “You are such an asshole.”

“What the fuck is your problem, Sean?” Brad said. “You act like you're the only one in the world.”

Grandpa Chuck stood between us. Yelled, “Enough. Enough. Brad, I mean it. Sean, go get ready. You need to be at commencement soon.”

Krista was crying now, openly, ruining all her makeup. My mom took my hand and led me into the house and said, “Your shirt's ironed and on your bed, honey.”

I showered and put on the dumb collar shirt she'd laid out for me and some dorky pants, just like Brad's and Grandpa Chuck's, and slapped on deodorant since it was hot as fuck. When I came out again, Krista's makeup was fixed and Otis's box was covered up by dirt and my mom was finishing planting flowers all over the top of it. Yellow and orange ones and something green with no petals yet and she told me the names—yarrow and poppy and Shasta daisies, “all things that are perennials, so they'll always come back every year” and I wanted to say,
But will we always be here? We don't even own this shithole. Will you? Because I won't.
But I couldn't talk, and then we got into the car and drove to celebrate my graduating from high school.

About the actual graduation, well, it was stupid. Because I was trying not to think about Otis and I was sitting by people I didn't want to talk to, even though I'd had my locker by them for years (Charlotte Norton and Asher Nyander) and I wore sunglasses, which was douchey—Tristan Reichmeier wore sunglasses too—but I had an actual reason, because I didn't want anyone to know I'd been crying. Some minister led us in prayer, which seemed like bullshit, because, separation of church and state, right?

But no one said anything and then a teacher I'd never had did a funny speech that everyone laughed at and then the genius kid of our grade, this guy named Brandon Houseman, did the speech and because he had gotten into Princeton, we all were supposed to worship him or something. All the fucking possibilities. When it was over, my mom and Grandpa and Brad and Krista took pictures, me with Eddie and everyone, even some kids from the track team, and Neecie and even Ivy Heller, which was a stretch, but everyone had all this goodwill now that high school was over. Tristan Reichmeier and the hockey players posing with the football team and all their dumb girl equivalents from the dance team and it was all so phony but also sincere, with some of the girls crying, which seemed unreasonable, as if this was some accomplishment, surviving high school. And then Sergeant Kendall was there, and he hugged me and said well done, and I introduced him to my family and I thought for a minute that my mom would get mad at him, but then she was nice to him, though distant, while he listed off all my wonderful qualities, which Brad smiled at, as if he knew better. Then Steven-Not-Steve was there for some reason, and it turned out that Brandon Houseman was his godson or something so I got my picture taken with both of them, too. And just when I wanted to leave and go home and lie in bed and never come back out, my mom handed me a duffel bag and said she'd packed some other clothes for the lock-in and my toothbrush and stuff, and I told her I didn't want to go, that I didn't have to, and then Neecie slipped beside me and said, “Come on, Sean. It'll get your mind off things,” and I couldn't argue because Neecie knew Otis was dead and my alternative was staying home and doing last-minute wedding crap with Krista and my mom.