Reality Boy (11 page)

He nods and I can hear him as I walk away. “Fuck this shit!”

THE GIRL AT
register #1 has told me her name again, but I still won’t use it. I just smile at her and feel scared of her and want to smell her hair. Which sounds creepy, but I don’t mean it in a creepy way at all.

When I look over at her during the preshow rush, I see that she’s not happy today. I think back to when I saw her in the smokers’ alley between shows. How she had a quiet conversation on her phone. How she wasn’t her usual smiling self. At the time, I thought she was mad at me because of what I said when she and her friend came over to see what the yelling was about, but now I’m thinking this has nothing to do with me.

So when I see her on my way to refill her drawer with hot
dogs, I say, “Hey,” and she says, “Hey,” and she makes it really clear that she’s not going to smile and so I smile at her but she still won’t smile.

Fact: Being in a five-foot radius of her makes me not want to kill anyone.

Once the circus starts and the crowd dies down, I walk to register #1, where she’s leaning on the counter writing something in her tiny book. I don’t want her to think that I’m reading it, so I stand back and wait until she’s done.

“Whoa. Gerald. Way to sneak up on me.”

I ask, “You okay?”

“No.” She sighs.

I nod, and I want to hug her because I can tell a hug would make her feel better. But Roger told me that I need to stop thinking that I know what other people need or want. He said, “Because of your childhood—uh—
situation
you have a larger sense of self than many.”

I remember that frustrated look he gave me when I didn’t understand this.

He translated. “You think the world revolves around you.”

“No I don’t,” I said. What does Roger know anyway? He’s just another guy like me who graduated from lame anger management class. I hate when he talks like he’s some sort of headshrinker.

Thinking about him makes me mad, so I look back at sad Register #1 Girl and I say, “Can I help?”

She laughs a little. “Only if you have a magical time machine.”

“And if I had a magical time machine?” I ask.

“Then I’d want to be in the future, two years from now. Preferably with some money and going somewhere exciting. Like Morocco. Or India.”

“Wow,” I say, because I’ve never known anyone who wanted to go to either place before. I don’t think, in nearly seventeen years, I’ve ever even heard a person use the word
Morocco
in a sentence.

“Would you come with me?” she asks.

I want to make her smile, so I say, “Yes.” But I don’t want to go to India or Morocco.

“Really?” she asks. “You’d want to come with me?”

“Sure,” I say. “I mean, I guess. I don’t know anything about India.”

“I can’t figure you out,” she says. “One minute I think you might be nice and then the next minute, you’re—uh—just hard to figure out.”

“A puzzle.” That’s what the guidance counselor calls me.

“A puzzle,” she says. And then she smiles. This makes me smile. And then Beth shows up. She’s in manager mode, which I guess is how I will always know her. But she seems like she’d be fun outside of the PEC Center. Sometimes she sees her friends here and they talk about what they’re doing on the weekend. One time a guy mentioned skinny-dipping. It made me think about how I will probably never go skinny-dipping.

Beth says, “Gerald, can you do a dog count for me?”

I leave to count hot dogs.

Once we close the gate after intermission, I move slowly. Everyone else rushes to get home. Registers #4 and #5 had to leave right away to pick up their kids from babysitters. Beth asks me if I can clean the hot dog rollers and I say yes, and I tell her I’ll mop, too, because if I mop, then I’m the last one out.

“Hannah already called mopping,” Beth says. That’s Register #1 Girl’s name. Hannah.

I clean the hot dog rollers and take all the dishes back to the sink where #2 is washing. Beth asks the remaining cashiers if we want any of the leftover food and I realize I haven’t eaten all day and I’m really hungry. She gives me a little tray of chicken fingers and fries, and when I get to the condiment counter, I take a napkin and put my chicken fingers on it and fill the rest of the tray with ketchup. I coat the fries in it. I dip the chicken in it. I think of the hugging hockey lady the whole time. I coat my food in her so I can be hugged from the inside.

As I eat my ketchup-covered food and watch Register #1 Girl mop the floor behind stand five, I rethink my ideas about India. No one there would know me. No one would call me the Crapper. Tasha doesn’t live there.

India would be great.

I wish I could fly there right now so I can keep my word.
I’m not coming home.

A half hour later, I’m sitting in my car in the parking lot. Not the garage I parked in, but the PEC Center parking lot, where the circus workers are busy loading their trucks to move
on to Philly. I’ve texted Joe Jr., my new friend, and I haven’t heard back. I don’t want to leave the lot until I get to say good-bye or something. (A psycho’s good-bye:
Fuck this shit!
)

As I look around for Joe, his father points and yells a lot. Yells
a lot
. He swears in almost every sentence. I rolled down my window a little and I’ve been listening. They’re $%#*ing driving tonight. They $%#*ing start setup at the next place at three in the $%#*ing morning. The $%#*ing $%%holes who quit today were supposed to be driving the $%#*ing talent bus so they could get there early and $%#*ing sleep before matinee tomorrow.

“And if that isn’t $%#*ing bad enough, I’ve got $%#*ing gas,” he says into his cell phone.

I like him. He’s the opposite of Dad. Dad, who has called four times in the last hour and left two messages.
Gerald, I hope you weren’t serious about not coming home today. We’ll talk about everything later.
Message number two was more serious.
Gerald, call me when you get this.

Joe’s dad would leave a far more straightforward message. I know this from watching him for a half hour. He’d say something like this:
Get your $%#*ing ass home and don’t be $%#*ing late.

Then I see Register #1 Girl. She’s walking across the alley and talking on the phone. It’s dangerous here at night. Especially on a Saturday. Especially for a pretty girl who smells like berries. I leave my car and I try to follow her on foot, but she’s gone, so I go back to my car and start driving around the block. After two circles, I start to panic a little. I want to roll
down my window and yell her name. Instead, I widen my search area and I find her four blocks away already. Heading for a worse part of town.

“Hey,” I say. “Let me drive you to wherever you’re going.”

She stops and crosses her arms. Sighs.

When she gets into the car, I can tell she’s been crying. I still want to hug her, but I know not to. Instead I ask, “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere.”

“Oh,” I say. “You seemed to be going somewhere.”

“I was.”

“So tell me where and I’ll drive you.”

“I was going nowhere,” she says.

“Oh,” I say again. “Can I come with you?”

She laughs at this and it breaks the tension in the car, which was getting pretty high because she is the first girl I have ever had in my car. And all I can think about is all the things ever said to me about girls. It’s like girl-talk soup in my head.

Don’t go out with girls.

Don’t even walk with girls.

Girls lie about stuff.

Girls need more than you can give, Gerald.

One wrong move and you’re arrested.

Girls aren’t worth the trouble at your age, anyway.

Maybe you swing the other way. That would explain a lot.

I DON’T TELL
Register #1 Girl that I have a plan tonight, but I have one. I texted Joe Jr. again and told him, but he still hasn’t replied. We drive around for a while, and when she asks me when I have to be home, I say, “Never.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I guess I’m not going home.”

“So where are you going?”

“Nowhere,” I say. “Just like you.”

She nods and asks if she can put on some music. I say sure and she plugs her phone into my stereo and blasts out some old punk rock. I don’t know who or what kind, but it’s not bad.

After two songs, I start to feel like this is wrong. I don’t
trust her. Maybe she’ll tell someone that I picked her up and tried something that I didn’t. Maybe this is all a big joke and her girlfriends are waiting for her somewhere so they can all laugh about how she made the Crapper think he had a friend.

Wouldn’t be the first time someone did that.

We drive around aimlessly for almost a half hour. Register #1 Girl talks about work mostly. Small talk. I say some stuff, but I think I’m mumbling. She looks out the window a lot. When I look at the clock and see it’s nearly eleven, I turn down the music. “So what are we really doing?” I ask. “We can’t just drive around forever. Do you want me to take you home?”

“How old are you?” she asks.

“Almost seventeen,” I say. “Ten more days.”

She’s surprised. “You look older.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“I’m sixteen, too. Not sweet, though.”

At first I don’t get it. I think she’s teasing me about something I don’t understand.

“You know—sweet sixteen?”

“Oh,” I say. “Right. You’re not sweet. I get it.”

The clock hits 11:04.

“Look,” she says. “I kinda lied.”

I hate lying girls, so I just shrug until she tells me the punch line.
The joke’s on you, Gerald.

“I was going to a friend’s house. Well, two friends. But then we started talking, you know? And I—uh—I always wanted to know what you were like,” she says. When I don’t respond because I’m too busy trying to figure out what that
means, she adds, “They live over on Franklin. You can come, too, I guess. They’re nice.”

Franklin Street, depending on which block you’re talking about, is a mess of crack houses and dive bars. I can’t imagine Register #1 Girl has friends there.

I can feel her looking at me, waiting for an answer. I say, “Do you want me to take you there?”

“Don’t you want to come in with me?” she asks.

I can’t tell her that I’m afraid my car will get stolen on Franklin Street. I can’t tell her I don’t like meeting new people. I can’t tell her I am wrapped in plastic wrap so tightly sometimes I can’t breathe. So I say, “Sure.”

She directs me to the house and there’s a parking spot about a half block away. In the summer on a Saturday night the street would be busy, but now it’s not. We just pass a few guys walking down the sidewalk. They don’t say anything, but as they approach I remember that I was a tiger earlier today and that I can be one anytime I want. I’m not scared of anyone. Except Register #1 Girl and her friends I haven’t met yet.

She walks up the steps and I follow her. It’s a house, not an apartment. It’s a row house attached to about twenty other houses. The porch light is on and I can see the door knocker is a set of brass testicles.

Register #1 Girl doesn’t knock. She just walks right in and I follow her. I don’t know if it’s the invisible plastic wrap or my nerves, but I think I’m sweating.

“Hey!” someone says. “It’s Hannah!”

Register #1 Girl says, “Hey! It’s Ashley!”

She walks in from the kitchen and is gorgeous. Red hair in a braid. Tank top and a half sleeve of colorful tattoos. Barefoot. Wedding ring. She hugs Register #1 Girl and then shakes my hand as I’m introduced, and smiles at me.

“Nice to meet you, Gerald.” She doesn’t look twice to see if I’m
that
Gerald. She just says, “Nice to meet you, Gerald,” and goes back into the kitchen. “I’m baking.” We follow her into the kitchen and Register #1 Girl goes to the fridge and grabs a bottle of water as if she lives here.

“You want something to drink?” she asks.

“No thanks,” I say.

She shrugs and walks through the kitchen into the back room, where Ashley’s husband is sitting. Register #1 Girl tells me his name is Nathan. He is as handsome as Ashley is gorgeous. They are the beautiful people. I had no idea the beautiful people could live on Franklin Street. You’d think it wouldn’t be safe for them. Especially since they don’t lock their front door.

“Nice to meet you, man,” Nathan says. “Sit. Relax. Grab a beer.”

“I don’t drink.” That’s what I say through the plastic wrap. To me, it’s sound waves bouncing off polyethylene—like a kazoo just said something.

I am suddenly distracted by the fish tanks in here. There are eight of them. I realize I am sweating because they make the room hot and Ashley is baking. Cookies, I think. It’s hard to smell through the layer between me and the rest of the world. But I think it’s chocolate chip cookies.

Register #1 Girl sits in a chair that’s surrounded by three of the aquariums. She watches the fish and says, “Gerald, come here.” She pats the chair next to her leg as if I could fit in that space—or as if I’d want to.