Reality Boy (26 page)

“I can’t tell if this is stupid or not,” Hannah says as I drive toward the turnpike.

“What?”

“This,” she says.

“If you’re not okay with it, I can take you home,” I say.

“I don’t know.”

I slow down and make a U-turn in a bank parking lot. I head back to her house. Can I tell you that my heart is breaking? My heart is totally breaking.

“I didn’t tell you to turn around,” she says.

“I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do,” I answer.

“Can you pull over?”

I pull over.

“I don’t want you to get mad, okay?” she says.

“Okay.”

“But you were right. I lied about something. I don’t think I can do this unless we talk about it first.”

My heart continues to break and I’m so busy thinking about it that I don’t stop to think what she might have lied about.

“When I said I wasn’t scared that you could hit me. I lied. I was. You got so mad so quick and I have an aunt who had a husband who did that and I get scared of it. I’m sorry. I don’t want to say anything else about it. I just had to say it.”

Fuck. My FS levels go up and I do all the stuff Roger taught me to make them go down again, but this doesn’t feel right. There is no way I can run away with Hannah now. She thinks I could hit her. As if I’m an animal or something.
You
were a dumbass to think she could ever love a loser like you in the first place.

Also, Gerald? She might be right. You never know.

“Gerald?”

I go to Gersday and I meet Lisi on the trapeze. Except she’s not there. Tasha is there, in a blue sequined trapeze costume, so I leave Gersday in time to hear what Hannah says next.

“I do think I love you,” she says. “I just can’t figure out what will happen if we go, you know?”

My voice is a little louder than I want it to be. “What will happen if we go is: We will be gone. That’s what you said you wanted, right? You wrote it in your birthday card. It’s all you’ve bugged me about for two weeks, isn’t it?”

“Shit. You don’t have to be an asshole about it.”

I reach into the tray between the seats and grab the Sharpie marker. “Go ahead. Write it again. At least you had balls when you did that.”

“I have balls.”

“But?”

“But I don’t know,” she says. I stop the car at the end of her driveway, where I just picked her up five minutes before.

“I have to get out of here now. That kid probably called the cops. That wasn’t a boxing ring. Have a nice life, okay?”

She sighs. “Look. I don’t want
another
person making decisions for me. I just want a minute to think about this.”

“I don’t have a minute.”

She gets out of the car with her red backpack and stands there in my headlights, so I have to reverse into the road and
do a U-turn in her neighbor’s driveway. Then, when I drive back, she’s standing there, in the road, and I can’t go around her because she keeps moving the same way I steer the car.

I try not to be frustrated, but I’m frustrated.

“I don’t have time for this!” I yell out my window.

“Let me in,” she says.

“No.”

“Let me in, Gerald!”

I stop the car. She gets in. Then she says, “You’re totally in asshole mode right now.”

“I just got my ass kicked.”

“So?”

“So I’m tired. And I’m running away. I don’t have time for your crazy shit right now.”

“Stop calling me crazy!”

“I didn’t call you crazy. I called your shit crazy.”

We have a staring standoff.

We take off. Again.

We’re quiet for the first chunk of driving. I allow my adrenaline levels to drop. I try not to think about the police who might be on their way to find me. I try not to think about how Hannah thinks I could hit her.

I think Hannah has gone to sleep, but when I look over, she is wide awake, staring out the window into the darkness beyond the metal mile markers.

“Why do you love me, Gerald?” she asks.

“Wow. That’s a question,” I say.
Fuck.

She doesn’t say anything smart-ass or pleading and just keeps staring out the window.

“I loved you the minute I saw you at register number one. You were scribbling in your little notebook. You didn’t notice me. I liked that.”

“You love me because I didn’t notice you?”

“Yeah. And because you’re funny and sarcastic and you don’t care what other people think,” I say. “Do you know how long I’ve cared about what other people think?” I guffaw out my nose. “And the way you like the fish. I love that.”

“The fish?”

“Nathan and Ashley’s fish,” I say.

“Oh.”

I look over at her. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Really? I mean, we’re about to run away together. You have to be okay or I’m taking the next exit and going back again.”

“I’m fine. Really. I’m just trying to figure out what the fuck is going on,” she says. “I can’t tell if you love the real me or the fake me.”

I see a sign that says
EMERGENCY PULL OFF
. I pull off.

I see Hannah’s been crying and I hug her while she reminds me of rule #5, which in turn makes me hug her harder. I tilt her face up to mine. “I love the real you. I don’t even know what you mean about the fake you.”

“I have shocking news,” she says. “I do care what people think.”

I nod.

“And when I get out of high school, I want to do something fun—like they do in the movies or in punk rock songs. I don’t want to do something just because some group of people decided that this is the process for baking kids. Preheat to three fifty and bake for sixteen years or until browned.”

“We
are
running away with the circus, you know. That could be considered fun and not in the recipe for baking perfect kids.”

“Except we have to go back to school, Gerald. We’re juniors. It’s only December. We have a while to go before either of us gets to run away with the circus.”

I sigh. “You’re a buzzkill.”

“I probably just need sleep,” she says. “Wake me up when you get tired and I can drive for a while.”

“You drive?”

“Dude, I’m the junkman’s daughter. Of course I drive. I even drove a bulldozer once.”

She curls up and puts a sweatshirt between her head and the window and cranks her seat back a little so she can sleep. I pull back onto the turnpike and get going.

I realize I have no idea
where
I’m going, but I figure south is good enough.
South. I’m going south.

Lisi’s question rings in my ears.
Do you have a plan?

BY THE END
of the second day, Nanny started to storm around. None of her psychobabble bullshit worked on me. I tore down every new behavior chart she made to show off how great she was. I interrupted every time she tried to make us look like a fixed family. I made it a game.

“You’re ruining the show!” Tasha screamed after take ten. “Just do what they tell you to do!”

Lisi pulled me aside after take twelve. “Do you want them to leave, Gerald? For good?”

“Yes.”

“Then just do what they say and they’ll get out of here. Forever.”

I loved Lisi. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do what they
said. They were wrong and I was right. They wanted a tame, loving child. I could give them one if only they stopped telling me what was wrong with me and let me tell them instead.
I’m living with a homicidal maniac.

But they wouldn’t shut up. So I had a crap fest. My final crap fest.

“Take seventeen!” the guy said, and he snapped down the wood.

“Gerald,” Nanny said in her softest voice. “You know we all love you, right?”

I decided to make it fun. Make them think I was following their instructions. I nodded.

“And since we all love you, we want you to get
bett-ah
. And to get
bett-ah
, you have to listen to what Nanny tells you. Do you
undah-stand
?”

I nodded again while Nanny checked her hair in the on-set mirror she still carried around. “I understand,” I said.

The director looked relieved. Mom looked at Lisi and gave her a thumbs-up.

“Right. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to apologize to Tasha for what you did to her doll, and then we’ll go upstairs together and we’ll start to figure out how to clean up her room.”

I even followed her up the steps and stood at the door for the wide shot of Tasha’s crap-covered walls. The smell was impressive. Repulsive. Just like Tasha.

“Where do you think we should start?” she asked me. “Maybe the walls?”

The director cued Mom, who said, “I still think I should
get professionals in to do it. I can call them. They can be here in a few hours.”

Nanny put her hand up. “This is Gerald’s mess. He needs to clean it up. It’s part of his learning responsibility.” She looked at me and knelt down to be right at my level. “Why do you torture Tasha so? She loves you. Don’t you know that?”

I had so many things to say.

I had so many things to say.

Instead, I slammed my fist into Nanny’s nose so hard it bled the minute I made contact.

“Cut!”

People gathered around her. Mom grabbed my arm and pulled me into my room. All I could hear was Nanny yelling, “Fuck it! Fuck it!” I heard her throwing things. I heard her slamming doors. Mom and I just stood there inside my bedroom door, listening.

Then Mom bent down and said, “Gerald, that’s it. I think they’re leaving. We’re going to have to give all that money back.”

I shrugged.

“We need that money, Gerald,” she said, shaking me. “You have to go say you’re sorry. We only have a few scenes left to tape. You have to do it.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” I said.

She grabbed me by the arms and squeezed me so hard, I had bruises for a week. “You will apologize, and then you will go to your room for the rest of the day.”

So we went out, her right hand still crushing my right
arm, and we looked for Nanny. The cameramen and crew were tossing all their equipment into the vans that were parked in our driveway.

Mom met the director on the way out. “Give us one more chance,” she said.

“We have enough tape.”

“But he’s not fixed!” Mom said.

The director just laughed and laughed and looked right at me. “Good luck with that,” he said.

I remember looking at the director and seeing his shiny shoes and knowing that my suffering had paid for them. My mother’s words ran over my brain.
We need that money, Gerald.

Nanny came out from the TV crew truck and Mom dragged me over to her and said, “What do you say?”

“Fuck you,” I said. Mom squeezed so hard.

Nanny Elizabeth Harriet Smallpiece, still holding an ice pack to her nose, leaned down right then and said, “I look
forwah-d
to your
lett-ahs
from prison.” Then she got in a waiting car and closed the door.

My mother was squeezing me so hard now I could feel pins and needles in my hand. She dragged me back inside and we watched, all five of us, as the entire show was emptied from our house and our lawn and our road. It took all of ten minutes. Mom squeezed my arm the whole time.

She sighed.

Dad said, “Rob said we get to keep the money, so that’s something, anyway.”

Tasha glared at me until I looked at her.

Mom said, “Apologize to your sister. Now.”

I said, “Sorry, Tasha,” because they were gone. Tasha’s doll was disfigured. Her room was painted with shit. My job was done.

And so I went to my room and took a nap. A ten-year-long nap. The Gerald who didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to do has taken a ten-year-long nap.

The Gerald who had control over his life is awake again.

Good morning.

How did you sleep?

HANNAH DRIVES LIKE
a maniac. After Washington, D.C., when I got too tired to drive, I asked her if she had a valid license. She punched me in the arm so hard, it still hurts.

“I have my first demand,” she says. “I demand people stop underestimating me.”

“That’s kinda abstract for a kidnapping note,” I say.

She punches me again. It makes me uncomfortable, how easy it is to punch me like that.

“It is,” I say.

“Just go to sleep. I’ll get us around D.C. and we’ll stop for some food, okay? Unless you plan on eating that chicken salad all day.”

I curl up on her sweatshirt, which is like stuffing my face
into a berry patch, and I think of my demands. Her punches made me feel weird. My arm is still sore, and I realize I’ll have to tell her she can’t punch me anymore.

I demand to not be punched anymore. Even in jest.