Reality Boy (12 page)

I stay on the small couch next to Nathan, who is watching a documentary about Jacques Cousteau. Register #1 Girl doesn’t ask me a second time. She just sits there and stares at the fish. She’s totally relaxed—I can see it in her face. I am the opposite of totally relaxed. I look at Nathan and I envy his beard. I decide when I’m older I’m going to grow a kick-ass beard.

Fuck this shit. Let’s grow beards.

“Ashley! Beer me!” he says. Not in a bad way. “Bring one for Gerald, too!”

When she brings us both a beer, she kisses him on the lips right there in front of us. A big, loving kiss. I’ve never seen people act like this. It must show.

“We’re newlyweds,” Ashley says. “Have a cookie.” She points to a plate of chocolate chip cookies.

“Congratulations,” my kazoo-self says.

“Has Hannah told you all the names she’s given the fish?” she asks.

“No.”

We both look at Register #1 Girl. She is lost in the fish. This makes me wonder what might be in the cookies. These people are too mellow. Their house is too relaxing. The fish are too colorful.

So I open my beer.

“AREN’T THEY AMAZING?”
she asks.

I’m busy worrying about if I’m sitting too close or if she can tell that I’m sweating too hard to answer.

“That’s Lola. I named her that because she’s yellow and just looks like a Lola, you know?” She points to the bigger, blue fish. “He’s Drake. He’s always biting everyone.”

I look around to all of the fish tanks and try to estimate how many fish are in the room with us. I’d say there are about a hundred. We’re outnumbered.

“Get it? Drake? Dracula?”

I pretend to look at the fish, but really I’m looking at Register #1 Girl’s face. Her skin reflects the fluorescent lighting of the tanks, and she looks translucent.

“One day, I’m going to get fish,” she says. “I’m going to get a huge tank like that one.” She points to the long tank at the end of the room. “It’ll be cool. No more parents. No more rules. No more anything except a job and a house and my fish.”

Nathan scratches his beard. “You rock, Hannah.” Then he bends his head toward the kitchen and yells, “Ash! You’re gonna miss the best part of this documentary if you don’t come in now!”

Ashley comes in and sits on the love seat next to him and they hold hands. Register #1 Girl cares about nothing except the fish. I sit here, nervous. I never realized how uncomfortable I am around happy people before. I feel like one of those fish—behind glass.

When I finish my beer, I figure I’ve been here for about an hour. I’ve learned a lot about Jacques Cousteau and underwater life. My clothing has absorbed about a pint of sweat. Register #1 Girl has had two bottles of water and three cookies and has rotated from tank to tank so that she’s acknowledged every fish in the room. Then she just gets up and says good-bye. Just like that.

“See ya.” She waves, and Ashley and Nathan wave from the love seat and keep watching the documentary.

“Later,” Nathan says. “Hope to see you again, Gerald.”

“Take some cookies for the road,” Ashley says. “I’ll eat them all.”

Register #1 Girl grabs a half dozen cookies and we walk through the kitchen and out the front door. I lock it behind me out of habit. Or maybe because I liked Ashley and Nathan so much I don’t want anything bad to happen to them before I can go back.

As I walk toward the car, I realize I want to go back almost immediately.

I want to live there.

I can tell by Register #1 Girl’s sad face that she feels the exact same way. She wants to live there, too.

We don’t say anything until we’re five minutes out of town. I check my phone, and there’s still no reply from my new friend Joe-Psycho-Jr. Even after my second text.
I’m coming with you to Philly. Don’t leave without me.

“They’re really nice,” I say.

“Yeah. They’re awesome.” She says it like she couldn’t care less about them—like she’s only using them for their fish. I can’t describe her right now. It’s like when we were there on Franklin Street she was herself, but now she’s wrapping herself in my plastic wrap.
Probably because she’s stuck in the car with you, loser.

“Are we just going to drive around now?” I ask.

“I don’t know. You’re in charge. Where do you live?”

I think about what I said to Dad today. I think about Tasha. “I guess I don’t live anywhere. But I have an idea. I just don’t know if it’s a good idea,” I say as I drive back over the bridge toward the PEC Center.

“I’m open to ideas. Except that we run off and get married,” she says. “I’ll never get married.”

I feel myself blush when she says this.
Dear Register #1 Girl: Marry me right now.

“Kidding,” she says. “I don’t think you want to run off and get married.” When I don’t say anything, she adds, “Wow.
Sorry. I hope that didn’t make you mad. Sometimes I don’t know when to shut up.”

“Nah. I don’t get mad,” I say. Breathe in. Breathe out. “I think I probably want to get married one day, though. I mean, when I’m old. Not now.”

“So what’s your idea?” she asks.

“It’s not Morocco,” I say. I turn into the PEC Center parking lot and drive to the back where I won’t be in the way of any of the circus trucks. I stare at the crew loading the trucks.

After three minutes of us watching them together, she says, “You’re going to run away with the circus?”

I figure I can lie to Big Joe. I’ll tell him I’m eighteen and he won’t ask me for $%#*ing ID. He’ll tell me,
This isn’t some $%#*ing picnic, boy. It’s $%#*ing work. Hardest work you’ll ever $%#*ing do
.

That’s how I see it in my head.

“Am I allowed to talk you out of it?” she asks. “I mean—would that even work?”

Gerald, be real. There is no way this beautiful girl likes you. She only wants to talk you out of it because it’s a crazy idea.
“I don’t want to count hot dogs all my life, you know?” I say. “And I’m not going home.”

She senses it in my voice. Register #1 Girl is very observant like that. “Did something happen? Are they bad to you?” She cuts that sentence short. I can see her rewinding the tapes in
her brain. I can see her picturing the five-year-old me squatting on the kitchen table.

“Do you want my car?” I ask.

“Seriously?” As she says this, her phone buzzes again and she presses the
IGNORE
button. I saw it said
Home
on the screen, though. I check my phone. No more messages from Dad. Still nothing from Joe Jr. “Aren’t your parents going to want it back?” she asks. “You’re only sixteen. You’ll be, like, a missing person. I’ll be driving around in evidence. Shit. I’ll have to lie,” she says. Then she punches me lightly on the arm. “Way to put me in a bad spot, Gerald.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I can just abandon the car downtown. Someone’ll steal it. It’s the perfect alibi.”

“I’ll still have to lie,” she says. “Or, you know… I could go with you.”

“I don’t want to get you into trouble,” I say. “You should go home. I can drop you there. Then you can say that you thought I was just going home.”

“Or… not. Life is
boring
here. India, remember? Morocco?”

I want to tell her that being bored is not a reason to run away. I want to tell her that she’s got a chance at a decent existence. No crapping videos to haunt her. No rodent-planking siblings. No anger management. No SPED class. No crazy fake Jamaicans out to kill her. Instead, I don’t say anything because it feels right, her coming with me. And then the back driver’s-side door opens, and my new friend Joe Jr. is sitting in my backseat.

“Are you $%#*ing crazy?” he asks.

“DIDN’T YOU HEAR
anything I $%#*ing said on the steps today? My life sucks. Why the $%#* would you want my life?”

“I—uh—don’t know,” I answer.

“Hi,” Register #1 Girl says. “I’m Hannah.”

Joe Jr. nods at her. “And you have a $%#*ing girlfriend? Gerald, as your friend, I have to talk you out of this. It’s a shitty life with shitty pay, and while it may look good to you because of some shit at home or whatever your problem is, it’s not as cool as you $%#*ing think it is.”

“I think it’s cool,” Register #1 Girl says.

“You’re just a kid,” Joe Jr. says. To both of us.

“You’re just a kid, too,” I say.

“Yeah, but I’m a circus kid. It’s different. I don’t have any $%#*ing choice, dude.” He looks into my eyes. “Fuck this shit, remember?”

Register #1 Girl is getting edgy. I can tell because she’s frowning at Joe Jr.

“I don’t have a choice, either, man. If I stay here, I’ll end up in jail. And I don’t want to work counting $%#*ing hot dogs my whole life.”

Joe Jr. sighs. Register #1 Girl is still frowning at him. “Look,” he says. “You go to school, right? You have a girl. You have a house. You have a job. You even have this $%#*ing awesome car.”

“It
is
awesome,” I say.

“What does that have to do with shit?” Register #1 Girl says. “If Gerald wants to work for the circus, who the $%#* are you to say he can’t?”

Joe Jr. ignores her. He looks at me in the rearview mirror. “Don’t make me tell my dad that you’re not eighteen. I don’t want to bust on you like that.”

In my head, there is a series of explosions—like Joe Jr. and I just blew up all the circus buses and the trucks and my house and the school and the whole $%#*ing PEC Center. But really, it’s not an explosion. It’s an implosion.

Because he’s right. About everything.

And why hasn’t Register #1 Girl told him that she’s not my girlfriend? What’s her deal? And why am I so especially pissed off about Tasha today, anyway? Hasn’t she been calling me gay since before I ever knew what
gay
meant? Hasn’t she been drowning me in plain view since I was born?

CAMERA NUMBER ONE
was on Nanny. “I think we should have one day that’s all for Gerald. He gets his favorite foods, plays his favorite games, and can do whatever he wants so long as his
behay-vyah
is good.”

Camera number two panned to Mom and Dad. They nodded.

Camera number three was set for a wide shot of all of them at the kitchen table. “I think his ‘outbursts’ are his way of trying to get your attention and because you’re working so much, Doug, and you’re his male role model, he needs to spend more time with you. Not a lot. Just a bit of boy time, you know?”

Camera number two focused on Dad trying not to look
pissed off. During this time, Nanny fluffed her hair in a mirror she’d propped against the wall. She took it to all her scenes with her. She had somehow become bonier since the last time she was here, so her cheekbones were jutting more than usual.

Camera number one again. “And Jill, sometimes you’re so busy telling him to hush up you forget to listen to him. I think he feels that. I think he feels like he’s in the way. I think he may even feel like you don’t want him around. You spend so much time with Tasha that the others feel like you don’t want them,” she said. “We need to have a better attitude.”

Mom looked stunned that this had been said aloud. Stunned. She excused herself from the table and went to the bathroom for five minutes.

After a short coffee break, Nanny clapped her hands and clasped them together. Then she got on one knee—which she often did to talk to me—and said, “Well. Today is
your
day, Gerald. What would you like for breakfast?” Camera one came in close.

I asked for waffles and Mom fixed me waffles. I asked for more maple syrup and Mom gave me more maple syrup. Mom asked me what I wanted in my lunch for all-day kindergarten and I said I wanted a peanut butter and marshmallow crème sandwich, potato chips, and Jell-O.

“We don’t have any Jell-O,” Mom said. “But I have pudding. Will that do?”

“Yes, please,” I said.

Such acceptable behay-vyah.
I could tell that Nanny, on the sidelines, was pleased. She kept winking at me the way Real
Nanny used to. Camera number two caught my smile, I think. They wanted as many angles of me smiling as they could get during episode two.

I ate all my waffles and I asked for more, and Mom gave me more even though it was against her nature. When I was done, I was allowed to go to my room, not make my bed if I didn’t want to, and get dressed in whatever I wanted to wear. I made my bed anyway, and I wore my favorite camouflage pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt under a cool short-sleeved T-shirt of two T. rexes with boxing gloves on.

Mom hated those pants. She grimaced when she saw I was wearing them, but that was the point. I showed her my perfectly brushed teeth and my unsticky, lemon-fresh washed hands. She acted impressed, but by then she was too busy doing a homework sheet for Tasha to really care.

Nanny stepped in, motioning for a camera to follow her. “Jill? What are you doing?”

“Tasha forgot to do her homework last night,” Mom said.

“Yes,” Nanny said. “But what does that have to do with you?”

Mom looked at her and scowled.

Nanny sat at the table, gently reached over for the paper, and pulled it toward herself. Then she slid it across the table to where Tasha usually sat, and left it there.