Reality Boy (27 page)

I wake up to my phone ringing in my pocket. It’s Dad. I ignore it. I check the time and realize that Hannah and I are late for work. I feel bad for Beth. We should have at least called her to let her know… we were being kidnapped.

Which makes no sense.

“Welcome to North Carolina, circus boy,” Hannah says. “You sleep like a dead guy. Who was that?”

“My dad.”

“I turned mine off hours ago.”

“Can we stop for coffee? Or something to eat?”

“You like crab?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“Then according to the billboards, we’re about to find heaven.”

I reach to her large cup of leftover coffee and swirl it around to see if there’s anything left.

“It’s cold,” she says as I drink it back like a shot.

“And textured,” I say. “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Woke me up, though,” I say. I adjust the seat up and take a deep breath.

“Maybe they reported us missing and we’re famous,” she says.

“Been there. Sucks. Trust me.”

The 2-4-1 Crab Shack is really a shack. We can get two-for-one crab legs all day long if we want. No limit. That’s what the guy in the apron behind the counter says. No limit.

We get some. Hannah orders hush puppies, too, claiming that my life will change when I eat my first hush puppy. I pretend to like it more than I do, just to make her happy, because she’s sitting here watching me eat it and yeah, it’s okay. Really good. But it didn’t change my life.
Welcome to the life of the Crapper.

“Can I ask you a favor?” I ask. She nods while eating another hush puppy. “I know you think it’s fine and cool or whatever, but could you stop hitting me?” I rub my arm to show her what I mean.

“Aw, come on. Have a sense of humor,” she says.

I demand not to be told to have a sense of humor.

I look at her seriously. “Look,” I say. “Tasha hit me all the time. Then I started hitting other shit, right? Does that make sense?”

“I guess.”

“So hitting is out. I know you mean it to be funny and it is, but it reminds me of what I had to put up with and I just don’t like it, okay?”

“Is that why that show came to your house?”

I shrug and feel awkward. “The show came to my house because my mom wrote them a letter. I was punching holes in the walls. That was because of Tasha hitting me,” I say.

This makes Hannah stop gorging on crab legs. She looks at me. “You know, if the world knew what really went on there, people would understand why you were so messed up.”

“I’m not planning on telling the world,” I say. “Just you.”

“Sorry for hitting you,” she says. I tell her never to worry about it again and then go over to the counter and ask the guy in the apron for a pencil and a piece of paper.

I sit back at the table and look at her. “So what’s your first demand?”

“More butter,” she says, pointing at the plastic dish of melted butter in front of me. I slide it toward her. She’s like a savage with crab legs. It’s kinda sexy. “And I’m going to need a shower,” she says. “Soon.”

“I was thinking of stopping at a hotel for the night,” I say.

“You thinking of breaking rule number five?”

“We already broke rule number five,” I say.

“I’d like to break it more,” she says, smiling even though her mouth is full of crabmeat. She goes back to chewing.

I clear my throat. “My first demand is a safe place to live. No more Tasha.”

She nods and chews. “That’s a good one,” she says.

“I’ve only been demanding that since I was born, I think,” I say. “Not like it ever worked.”

“My first demand is that I only have to do my own laundry and I don’t have to give my mom pedicures anymore. Her feet are disgusting and full of fungus.”

I have no idea how she can mention this while eating, but I have to take a thirty-second break before I attempt my
next mouthful of crab. I write down our first demands and think.

“And my second demand is that I don’t have to go to college right after I graduate. I know they mean well, but I want a break. I don’t even know what the hell I want to do, right? And they think being a marine biologist is
impractical
.” I nod, and I write
I demand not to go to college right after I graduate.
“What’s your second demand?” she asks.

“I don’t know. It’d be nice if my mom stopped being sarcastic about my future. It’s like she wants me to go to jail or something.”
Oh God.
“Oh God,” I say.

I feel like throwing up. How did I not see that before?

Fuck.

“Gerald? You okay?”

I’m in Gersday. In Gersday, I am a family of three. Just me, Lisi, and Dad. I don’t give a shit about ice cream or trapezes. I just want an escape from this thought. Then Snow White is there, and her bird says, “She wants you to go to jail because it will make her look like she was right all these years
lay-tah
.”

Then the dwarfs show up.

GRUMPY: She.

SLEEPY: Wants.

HAPPY: You.

SNEEZY: To.

DOC: Go.

BASHFUL: To.

DOPEY: Jail.

“Gerald?”

I look at Hannah but I can’t answer her. It’s like I’m stuck in a time warp. I am stuck between Gersday, where I’m nineteen, and a 1937 Walt Disney movie, when my grandparents aren’t even born yet.

She grabs my arm and squeezes until I can speak again.

“Shit. Yeah. I’m here. Wow.”

“What the hell was that?”

“I just realized something really heavy,” I say.

“And?”

“And I need a minute.”

She pats me on the arm as if she can see something big is going on in my brain. I walk to the bathroom and have a pee. I look at myself in the small, dirty mirror while I wash my hands, and I smile. I don’t know why I smile.

I feel like crying.

“I’m starting to think this list-of-demands shit is stupid,” Hannah says when I get back to our table. She’s doing it for me—I can see that.
She cares about the Crapper.

“Yeah. What good is a list of demands if we’re never going back?” I say.

Hannah makes a noise in the back of her throat. The noise says
Gerald, you know we have to go back
.

She takes out her notebook and starts to scribble something in it and I rest my head in my hands and close my eyes and think about what I demand.

I ask myself:
What do you demand, Gerald?

None of my answers are possible.

I demand a different childhood.

I demand a mother who cares.

I demand a do-over.

When I look at Hannah, she is Snow White. She smiles and has a bluebird on her shoulder. The bluebird tweets.

I demand my own bluebird that tweets.

Snow White hands me the LEGO Star Wars set that Mom and Dad took away from me eleven years ago after I crapped on the kitchen table the last time. It’s the
Millennium Falcon
. It’s real. I wonder how I will explain this to Hannah—the
Millennium Falcon
appearing out of nowhere.

“Great,” I say. “That’s great.”

“What’s great?” Hannah asks.

I don’t open my eyes. Or maybe my eyes are open and I can’t see Hannah, because Snow White is clearly still sitting next to me on the bench.

“Gerald?”

I open my eyes and it’s Hannah. No
Millennium Falcon
LEGO set. No Snow White.

“Shit. Sorry,” I say.

“Where do you go?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I go where I’ve always gone. This cool place.”
Do not tell Hannah about Snow White and the bluebird.

“What’s so cool about it?”

“Tasha isn’t there,” I say. “And there’s ice cream. And a trapeze.”

This makes us both laugh and I feel like I got away with something.

I demand to stop getting away with things.

I grab another hush puppy and pop it into my mouth. I think about how messed up my mom must be.
My mom has a screw loose.
I take a second to pity her.

Holy shit.

My mom is pitiful.

Maybe hush puppies
can
change your life.

WE’RE DRIVING SOUTH.
I check my phone again to see if Joe Jr. wrote back, but he didn’t. All I know is to aim for Bonifay, Florida, and I hope, if he doesn’t get back to me, that they’re listed in the phone book. It can’t be so hard to find a circus in its hometown, can it?

Mostly, we’ve been listening to music, but Hannah turns it down from time to time to badger me about letting her drive or to ask a question. She’s tiptoeing around rule #3 since we talked about our dumb demands at the 2-4-1 Crab Shack.

“About my mom,” I say, somewhere around the South Carolina border. “And Tasha.” I don’t know what to say afterward.

“Yeah?” Hannah says.

“Like—you could tell in the show that something was wrong? Like—when you watched it?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Could you see that Tasha was nuts?”

“She was such a passive-aggressive. Totally. I could tell,” she says. “It’s complete Schadenfreude, dude, so most people are just watching for the thrill of being better off than the people in the show.”

“Schaden-what?”

“Schadenfreude,” she says. “It means when people take pleasure in others’ pain or humiliation.”

“Oh.” Jesus. I had no idea there was a word for what I’ve suffered for my whole life. It’s like being asthmatic but no one telling you until your seventeenth birthday the name for why you couldn’t ever breathe. “I didn’t know there was a word for that.”

“It’s German.”

“I gathered that.” I paused. “Did my mom look nuts, too?”

“I don’t know. I never thought about it,” she answers. “Is she nuts?”

I sigh. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

“Isn’t this breaking rule number three?” she asks.

I keep my eyes on the road and stay quiet for a second. “A lot gets cut out,” I say. “From the show. Like—you only saw what they wanted you to see.”

“A lot?”

“Like, almost all of it,” I say.
Including all the shit that was important.

We both stay quiet for a little while.

Then I ask, “Did Tasha really look crazy on the show? Because I couldn’t understand why they didn’t show that more.”

“I’ll be honest,” she says. “They didn’t make her look all that bad. It was really you they focused on. You know. You were kinda the star of that family.”

“Great.”

“Nothing you didn’t already know, though, right?”

“Yeah. Still. It’s such a bummer.”
My life. My life is such a bummer.

After looking at the map while Hannah drove, I realized that Bonifay, Florida, is in the Panhandle, so we decided to get off I-95 and go west. We find a motel in western South Carolina.

Still no word from Joe Jr.

My dad has tried calling three times but didn’t leave messages after the first time. The message he left is the one thing making me feel like this plan could work—kidnapping ourselves, demanding shit until something changes.

Isn’t this what Nanny taught me? Isn’t this the foundation of parenting responsible children? You demand proper behavior. And when they disobey, you punish them. I have done what any responsible parent should do… to my parents.

I demand their punishment.

Anyway, what Dad said in his message makes me feel like this might work.

We can work this out, Gerald. Any way you want.

I haven’t even sent my list yet.

Dad doesn’t know I’m in some motel in South Carolina about to have a shower for the first time since yesterday morning. He doesn’t know I got my ass kicked in his living room last night. He doesn’t know that my life has been a series of fails that could have been wins.
Nanny’s coming! We’re saved! Nope. Hannah likes me! I’m saved! Nope. Run away with the circus! I’m saved! Nope.

“Gerald?”

I hear Hannah say that, but I keep staring out the motel room window, thinking about everything.
We can work this out. Any way you want.

“Gerald?”

“Yeah?”

“You wanna take a shower together?”

I look at Hannah. She’s naked.

I can’t find anything to say, so I sit there and stare.

And as sick as it sounds, I can’t get those thoughts of Tasha and my dad and my life out of my head. How can Hannah just stand there naked and not think about her junkman family? Is she a robot? Or am I just too emotional?

I demand to know if you are a robot, Hannah.

“Gerald?”

I stand up and strip off my clothes and we walk to the
bathroom, where the shower’s been running. It’s like walking into a foggy dream. A good, foggy dream.

I can’t come up with words for what we do.
Kissing, touching, loving
all sound too intimate. We are not intimate people, but we fit, you know? We are breaking rule #5. Bouncing off each other. Like balloons.

And the best thing about being in a shower together is no one has to say anything.

“I SHOULD CALL
my mom,” Hannah says after we eat the Chinese food we ordered. “She’s probably freaking out.”