The Screwed-Up Life of Charlie the Second (25 page)

The wafer stuck to the roof of my mouth. I tried working it free with my tongue, but gave up when I started thinking about how the wafer was supposed to be Jesus. He was in my mouth and He didn't taste like chicken; He tasted like envelope paste.

 

 

Monday, October 29

As for my big brilliant plan about seeing Rob in choir—the one where I basically avoided getting shivved by him in a hallway by wandering into third period late—well, it didn't work.

As soon as study hall let out, I headed to the boy's bathroom by the chorus room. And since Fickle Fate likes to keep me around as her personal chew toy, Rob was at a sink, washing his hands. Before I could hightail it out of there, Rob spotted me. For a second, I thought he was glad to see me—bluish eyes widening to a twinkle, his mouth nearly to its “hey, pup” beam, but that didn't last. It was like a switch in Rob's brain flipped and he now wanted to satisfy his taste for blood by going back to me for seconds.

“Nice face. Hope it hurts,” he said. He stepped toward me, feinting a jab, and I jerked back. “Wuss.”

“Yeah,” I said, doing one of those tight-lipped, chin thrust things the jocks do when they're trying to act like they mean business. Only it didn't make me look tough. It just proved what a dork I was.

“Jesus, you're a pussy.”

Rob body-checked me, making sure his elbow got me good and hard in the ribs, and pushed his way out of the bathroom.

“Rob, look. I'm sorry.”

Rob stopped, the muscles of his back tensing. “Sorry? That's rich. Charlie's sorry. Big fucking deal. That's not going to bring my mom back. It doesn't make it easier to stop hating my dad because he may have killed her.”

“Maybe he didn't want her to suffer—”

“That's your excuse? You don't know shit, asshole. Fuck you, Charlie. Seriously, fuck you.”

The rest of the day was cold shoulders from everyone. I got treated like I was radioactive. In AP Bio, Marshall was his usual mix of complete wannabe and mouthy little bitch—
Friday night was awesome. I still can't believe we did the Crosstown and didn't get busted. We are
sooo
righteous. Stewart, man, Rob totally kicked your ass; you were bawling like a little girl.

Soccer practice was a bust. State's this weekend and we don't have our crap together. Coach kept yelling that we needed to get our heads in the game, but the team was too busy waiting for the Stewart-Hunt rematch, where after one hit to my glass jaw, I'd get my lights permanently snuffed out.

Tuesday, October 30

Dirty looks from Rob in choir, during passing periods, in the locker room. It seems like the whole world is on his shit list, not just me. I wish I could do something to get off it. Mom and Mrs. B say to give it time. He'll come around. It'd be nice to believe that was true, but it's not gonna happen. If I were Rob, I'm not sure I'd know who to trust or if I could even trust anyone again.

I hung out again at Bink's house after practice. The team still sucks little green apples. Mrs. B was her usual tidings-of-comfort-and-joy self.
Maybe this is just a bump in the road for you and Rob, like the poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud. Well, not
exactly
like them. They were horrible to each other—knife fights, Verlaine shooting Rimbaud in the wrist. Still, Charlie, you look a little like Rimbaud, you know. How was it that Verlaine described him? An angel in exile. Quit it, Ma, nobody wants to hear about two dead French fruits.

Mr. B wasn't much better.
Think about it this way, Charlie, you've got it easy. When it comes to mating and courtship, Mother Nature is ruthless.
And then Mr. B launched into lectures on brood parasitism—birds dumping their eggs into other birds' nests; sexual cannibalism—some male spider from Australia would be nailing his eight-legged hottie when he,
and here's a great idea
, does a somersault so she can sink her fangs into his abdomen; and filial cannibalism, which is when Mommy Hamster dines out at the all-you-can-eat baby hamster buffet.
Jesus, why can't I have parents who aren't freaks?
Bink's sisters were the only ones saying anything that made sense.
Boys are gross. Yeah, Neil's farts smell like burning matches. Yeah, boys are stoo-pid.

But these last two days, it's been Bink and me out on his back porch, mostly. Him smoking and glancing at the kitchen's screen door every once in a while to make sure the Ps weren't watching. And me, I just griped, practically non-stop, about how things were over with Rob and how it hurt so much. Sure, Bink acted like he was listening. I knew he wasn't. He was imagining a million different ways to shut me up (gag, chloroform, cutting out my tongue, sewing my lips shut, frontal lobotomy, smothering me in my sleep).

Tonight, though, I was three-boxes-of-Kleenex, celebrity-tear-jerker-interview awful. Over everyone's plates of polish sausage, canned green beans, and Betty Crocker scalloped potatoes, I started in on my usual I-love-Rob-I-love-him-not-I-wanna-know-what-love-is-I-don't-know-how-to-love-him verbal circle-jerk.

“Some of us are trying to eat here,” Bink said, gulping down the lime Jell-O (it goes with everything, according to Mrs. B) he'd been swishing and gargling through clenched teeth. With his eyes clamped shut, Bink nudged the sausage on his plate to the edge like he was worried that processed meat might turn him into a pole smoker.

“Quit playing with your food, Neil,” Mrs. B said, shooting Bink a look that could strip wallpaper. “Why do I even bother with plates? I should put out troughs or tie feedbags to your necks.”

“I'm not playing with my food, Mommy,” one of Bink's sisters bragged.

A glob of potatoes plopped from Bink's fork to his plate. It sounded like someone having a rough go of it on the toilet.

“All right, you two. Enough. Behave. We have company.”

“C'mon, Mom,” Bink said, crossing his arms. “Company? Charlie practically lives here. And, you wanna know what really sucks?” Bink's eyes darted from Mrs. B to his dad to see if either of them would smack the taste out of his mouth. “You treat him better than you do us.

“Charlie whines and you drop everything. Most of the time it's cool, since it means you stop harping on me about my grades or Dana. And, lately, it's stopped you from wigging out about Aaron getting his head blown off in Afghanistan. Which, let's face it, normal parents wouldn't talk about that in front of their kids.”

Bink's sisters started bawling, snot greasing their lips like melted butter.

“But you know what?” Bink asked, continuing. “I'm sick of it now. Forget Charlie for once, okay? What about us?”

Red-faced and shaking, Bink stopped. Mrs. B glared at him like he'd wiped his ass on the Torah. Mr. B's hands were folded, thumbs pressed together so hard they'd gone white.

“Finished?” Mr. B asked. He leaned forward and Bink flinched.

“Yes,” Bink said, trying to sound defiant.

“Then eat what's on your plate.”

Nobody wanted to be at the table anymore, but we ate, staring at our plates and chewing like we'd forgotten how to swallow and were just going through the motions of mashing wads of wet cardboard between our gums. Mrs. B said there was chocolate cake for dessert, but I said I should be getting home. Mom would be expecting me. I think she nodded. Bink didn't say anything. He didn't even look at me.

Wednesday, October 31

Bink and I, we're cool again. During study hall today, he apologized for being a dick last night. The only reason he got pissed was that I was sounding like Dana.
Ouch
. He just couldn't take it. Can't say that I blame him really. I should've kept my mouth shut.

Thursday, November 1

Believe it or not, Rob stopped by last night. Not for a hot grudge fuck that would've had my arms pinned to the green felt of a pool table (naturally, Rob'd hold the pockets for more leverage), 'cuz a half inch of slate's got no give. No, Rob and a bunch of guys from South were out front, egging and TPing our house. It was too dark to see who was piling out of Rob's Beamer, but I recognized the voices of a couple of guys on the soccer team—Bales, Collins, Weir. Dumbasses. I should've called the cops, not 'cuz I was ticked about getting TPed, but because they were begging to get caught. They didn't care about slamming car doors, leaving the headlights on, or that Weir was on his cell phone, telling some chick he had a bone he wanted to bury. They might as well've taken out a full-page, four-color ad in the paper announcing their plan, trained searchlights on our house, and invited the entire U.S. Marine Corps Band to march across the lawn playing “Stars and Stripes Forever” loudly enough to make the neighbors think they were double-timing it to Baghdad.

What I should've done is gone downstairs, taken their damn toilet paper, and trashed our place myself. A group of retarded quadriplegic fifth-grade Girl Scouts in wheelchairs could've done better. They really were that bad. It was just eggs and toilet paper—no boxes of Uncle Ben's Minute Rice emptied onto the grass (try cleaning that crap up after a thunderstorm), no smoked kippers tossed into the basketball net, no fertilizer burning misspelled obscenities in the lawn, no bags of flaming dog shit on the front porch, no pigs' feet in the mailbox. Amateurs.

I sat in the dark, wondering why they even bothered. It's not like Mom's yard was this wooded wonderland and I'd spend three months cleaning crap from tree limbs. There was just one skinny sapling in the middle of the yard, a two-foot-tall pine tree that'd been dying since Dad planted it last summer, and the basketball hoop I'd backed into during one of Dad's first “driving lessons.”
You see this? It's a rearview mirror. It's there for a reason. Do you have any idea how many children are backed over each year by people who don't check the rearview mirror? Do you even know what they do in prison to people who kill children in vehicular homicide incidents?
Even though they wouldn't need more than a four-pack of Charmin to do the house up in style, Rob and his friends seemed to be having a riot. I went down, flipped the porch light switch, watched Rob and crew scatter, and then went to bed.

I can't be the only one this happens to (it's not one of those things I can ask other guys about), but when I woke up after a wet dream about Rob fucking Bob Collins (
way fricking hot
), I had a total zombie hard-on, the kind you beat and beat, and once you think you've finished off, it lurches back to life, piss-slit opening and closing like a tiny, undead mouth.

Even after making Mr. Five-Incher suffer through three rounds of getting sandpapered against my mattress and he couldn't cough up anything else, he still wouldn't stay down. I only got him under control after I'd shit, showered, and shaved (a once-a-week ritual—the shaving part). I dressed, then went downstairs and cleaned the yard.

Friday, November 2

Soccer finals are way the hell down state, deep in roadkill-eating, sister-fucking, redneck country, so we had to leave way too early—like three a.m. And, I swear to God, like, the whole damn bus ride, Rob was trying to piss me off.

But it's cool, 'cuz we
sooo
got a break at quarterfinals this morning. We totally dodged the Granite City Warriors and got the Brother Rice Crusaders out of Chicago. Slaughtered 'em three-one. Yeah, I missed one up in the first half—hell, the first five minutes of play. Guess that's what I get for paying more attention to Rob and Bob Collins' grab-assing than my own shit. (Rob and Bob…c'mon, it's like they're the perfect names for a gay retread couple.)

Like I said, Rob basically spent the morning giving me the
et-tu-Brute?
-let's-just-see-how-much-more–“as seen on TV”–cutlery-I-can-plunge-in-your-back treatment. On the bus ride down, he went out of his way to jerk my chain—making sure he got a seat next to Bob, whining to anyone who'd listen about how we weren't going to take state 'cuz our defense sucked (Coach Mueller eventually told him to zip it), conning Bob into giving him a back rub, and making sure to smirk at me as Bob's hands kneaded his shoulders.

It was worse in the locker room. The three of us ended up changing into our uniforms next to each other. Once Collins had his shirt off, Rob was all
You been working out, dude? Let's see who's got the bigger pecs, tighter abs, thicker calves, and biggest barely concealed boner.
The whole time, Rob kept glancing back at me to make sure I was taking it all in.

Out on the field, the two of them actually got gayer, even though I didn't think it was possible. After practically every one of our team's plays, the two of them would start man-hugging and patting each other's asses. It was so bad that if there'd been Clydesdales or college coeds with huge knockers on the field, I would've sworn I was trapped in a beer commercial. I had to look away. That's when one of Brother Rice's forwards nailed one to the back of the net. Dad winced, burying his eyes in his hands. He shook his head and then wiped his mouth.