Perfectly Good White Boy

by Carrie Mesrobian

“Her name’s Emma. She has nice tits.”

  “Well. Okay.”

  So after school one day, before I had to be at work, me and Eddie hung out with Libby and Emma. Emma did have nice tits. And she was cute enough. But kind of shy, and not saying much, and after a while I said I had to go.

  “Let’s do homecoming, you guys,” Eddie said all of a sudden. I stared at him.

  “Totally!” Libby said. “That would be super fun!”

  Emma nodded. Smiled. She was cute. She seemed so little, though. So much younger.

  “Yeah. Okay,” I said.

  So I went to homecoming with Emma and Libby and Eddie. Emma and me drank wine before the game, then went into the dance. Emma had this really low shirt on and it was hard to not look down it while we slow-danced. I’d kind of avoided dances most of high school, because I always felt dumb about asking girls to dance, but having someone automatically to dance with was kind of decent. Made me wish I’d had the chance for that with Hallie, actually.

  Afterward we went to a party at Tristan Reichmeier’s grandmother’s house, a hockey player party, but they had beer, and Libby offered to drive us because she didn’t want to drink during soccer season. So I got kinda lit with Emma, and the next thing I knew, we were sitting in this room with embroidered cushions on the sofa and making out. It all happened pretty quickly, and at first I wondered if that was because Emma thought she owed it to me or something. Not that she liked me, just because I was older. But it wasn’t like I was forcing her or anything; she was all over me and seemed into it. It was kind of funny, in a good way, actually, because I’d never expected her to be like that; she’d always been kind of quiet. But just as I got to feel, in the real, her tits, she climbed off me, said she felt bad. Then she got up and walked into the kitchen and barfed into the sink while a bunch of people stood there like assholes, staring and laughing. I got her some paper towels and then texted Eddie to get Libby, who showed up right away and took Emma to the bathroom to clean herself up.

  Emma was sitting in this lawn chair on the patio, her head in her hands, all miserable, while Eddie and Libby went to get the car. I just waited, feeling bad for her, standing by these two guys smoking cigarettes and watching my own breath go in and out like smoke too, and then Eddie texted me a picture of a girl sitting on top of this giant red dildo that couldn’t possibly have been real and I was going to text him back when I got another beep.

  Hallie.

  how’s it goin, sean

  I didn’t text back because Libby pulled up. She took me home first, because I lived the farthest out. Thankfully Emma was asleep when Libby pulled into the gravel drive of the rental, which was good, because I didn’t want her to see where I lived. Though probably Libby would tell her, anyway. Plus I kind of felt like it was my fault, for it ending up crappy.

  But that’s not what kept me up after I got home. Lying in bed, I stared at Hallie’s text on my phone in the dark. Wondering what it meant. Thinking I’d text back in the morning. Or maybe I wouldn’t.

  Wondering if this was good. Or bad. Or just being friends.

  I kicked off the covers. Otis harrumphed at me, pissed that I’d disturbed his billionth nap of the day.

  What did I even say back? Nothing sounded good. Not “fine” or “good” or even “hey”—I was starting to see Eddie’s point in just sending photo-texts.

  What if I sent her the red dildo girl? “Hey, Hallie. That’s how I’m doing.”

  Otis sat up in the dark, yawned audibly. Like he was sick of my bullshit.

  I got out of bed, then. Took a piss. Looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. All lanky. The chest hollow looking deeper. Sharper. Like I should eat more and ease up on the Amp for breakfast.

  Then, while Otis watched me from my bed, I rolled onto the carpet and did a couple of push-ups.

  Maybe I’d join the Marines, like I’d told Hallie that night in the deer stand. Maybe I would. Then someone else could tell her how it was going for me.

  The thing about working at the Thrift Bin, though Kerry was a dick sometimes and the work was hard and sometimes gross and the customers were crazy and cheap and left chicken wing bones on the shelves as they dug through all the merchandise in the store, was that it was never, ever boring. There was always some weird thing happening. Two ladies fighting over a leather coat. Kids knocking over a display of breakable figurines. Someone donating a loaded handgun inside a box of embroidered pillowcases and sheets.

  Tonight’s example of this was Kerry’s discovery of a pile of used thongs in the parking lot by the donation door (Wendy’s policy was that we didn’t sell any underwear or panties unless they still had the tags on them; bras were okay, though, for some reason.) We all went and stood outside in the parking lot, staring at the pile of blown-out elastic and talking about what the hell had happened.

  “Maybe it’s some kind of subliminal message,” Wendy said. “Sell more thongs.”

  “Maybe we should bag them up and sell them as special lady-of-the-evening accessories with all the Halloween costumes,” Neecie said.

  “Maybe next week we’ll get the matching bras,” I added.

  “Maybe all of you are fucking cracked,” Kerry said. “A whore empties out her car’s ashtray and you’re all standing here acting like it’s the secret meaning of life. Jesus.” He kicked the pile of thongs into a box with his boot and huffed back inside. Kerry did that sometimes. Just shit on everyone’s good time. Like this was the millionth pile of used thongs he’d dealt with today and the rest of us were babies for even pausing about it.

  The rest of the shift was pretty basic. The Be Like Jesus group showed up, a bunch of giggling little junior high kids with braces and skinny girls wearing more makeup than they had any right to and their dorky youth pastor in a Captain America T-shirt making them pray before they starting unpacking bags and boxes of donated junk, acting like it was this super holy, sacred activity instead of one step above Dumpster diving.

  People’s behavior in a thrift store is so predictable. The girls freaked about finding some dude’s old brief underwear; the guys lost their minds at touching a bra; the dorky pastor kept telling all these unfunny jokes like he was super “wacky” and then got kind of high-horsey with Wendy, asking her why we thought it was okay to sell Bibles: “Shouldn’t those be given away for free?”

  What a total douche. How did he think a nonprofit place like the Thrift Bin made any money by giving shit away for free? The Thrift Bin made money for United Way or something like that, stuff that helped poor people or kids with diseases or disabilities or whatever. There was a point to it, the Thrift Bin. But there was always some customer wanting something for nothing. Like we were just a big garage sale and needed a FREE box at the end of the driveway.

  The Jesus group’s job was to unpack clothing on the table in flat piles so that Wendy could sort through it to see if any of it had stains or rips. Then I went around and emptied all the trash they created as they ripped open bags and boxes. People don’t donate their cast-off junk with any sort of organization, obviously, so the kids would open a box and find an alarm clock and a bunch of broken dishes and a pile of socks. My job was to collect the obviously broken junk for the trash and take all the nonclothing and put it in another bin for later sorting. I mean, the Thrift Bin might have been a secondhand store, but Wendy really made it so that we didn’t just put out any old shitty shit for sale.

  Later that shift, while I was working through a bunch of cardboard with a box cutter, Neecie came up and started talking to two of the Be Like Jesus girls. One of them looked like her, blond. The other was dark-haired, with a fairly significant rack. Sometimes you saw girls like that in junior high, who were all filled out in a way that they weren’t thrilled about, and this girl was totally like that. All hunched over and uncomfortable. I watched Neecie talk to the girls. Neecie was actually smiling and putting her arms around their shoulders, and it was weird; I’d never seen her do that. She always seemed stiff and serious, whet
her she was ignoring Kerry’s gross comments or evaluating stuff people gave her for the altar shelf thing.

  “Do you know those girls?” I asked her as we both went back to the break room to get something to drink.

  “My sisters. Melanie and Jessamyn.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t want to knock them, then, for being in a dorky Jesus group.

  “My mom is making them do youth group,” Neecie said, like she could tell what I thought. “It’s family tradition. Of horribleness.”

  I laughed. Again, surprised. Neecie cracked open a giant cans of iced tea, watermelon flavor, and I drank my Amp, and we stared at the stuff she’d put up on her little thrift hall of fame.

  “What’s on tap tonight?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “One of the cashiers found a pencil sharpener that looks like a nipple. But I don’t think that’s on purpose. It’s just bad design.”

  “Lame.”

  “I know. Why would you ever put anything into a nipple? It’s not even anatomically correct.”

  I was wondering about that when Kerry came in, yelling.

  “Hey! You ever gonna do your job or what? Shit’s piling up, idiot.” Wendy must have been piling up the reject clothing for Kerry to bale, which of course would make him all hacked-off. As if he had it so bad. As if he’d be any cheerier in my place, listening to the dork pastor’s jokes. And as if it were my fault I wasn’t legal to work the goddamn baler. But I felt like he was also trying to act all badass in front of Neecie, which just bugged me more. Neecie always ignored him anyway, since she started working here.

  The rest of the shift, I kept my head down, did my shit, and tried to avoid Kerry. At the end of the night, when I took the goddamn cardboard recycling bin out, I came across another interesting thing: Neecie Albertson, standing back by the Dumpster, arguing with someone.

  I stopped pushing the recycling bin when I heard her. I couldn’t tell if she was alone or on her phone. Wendy was sort of strict about not using your phone at work. There were just too many places you could lose it or break it.

  “I can’t, okay,” I heard her say. Walking closer, I could see she had a phone to her ear. I wondered how she could hear on it.

  “Tristan, I have to drive my sisters home . . . I know. Normally I would . . .”

  TRISTAN? TRISTAN REICHMEIER? What the fuck was she talking to him for?

  Then Neecie again: “I couldn’t text you in the middle of work! Fine. Whatever . . . If I can get out, I’ll try. No . . . I couldn’t get there in time between school and work. I don’t know why you can’t go and do it . . . it’s your idea . . . but you always have hockey! I mean, when is that not going on . . .?”

  It had to be Tristan Reichmeier. Tristan played hockey. He was, like, the hero of hockey at our school. Really good at it, actually. Everyone kind of lost their mind about him about the hockey. But Tristan Reichmeier always had a girlfriend. Girlfriends. And none of them were nerdy weird deaf Neecie Albertson.

  “Fine, I know,” she said. “But you know what you want to get more than I do. Okay. Okay! But I can’t promise anything.”

  He must have hung up, because I heard her swear to herself, and then I started rolling the recycling bin again and Neecie turned and looked a little surprised to see me but just rushed past without saying anything.

  When I got home from work, another round of Brad and Krista’s Wedding Planning was going on. This had been happening since forever, it seemed like, since Brad asked her to marry him when they were in Florida on vacation and now every minute there was some new project going on all over the kitchen table and if I wasn’t careful I’d get sucked into it. To top it off, Steven-Not-Steve was there too. Steven-Not-Steve was this guy my mom had met in her Al-Anon group, and who she said wasn’t her boyfriend, but he was hanging around a lot for someone who was not a boyfriend. Steven-Not-Steve stood at the kitchen counter, drinking a beer. Which was weird; my mom usually didn’t stock beer. I wondered if she was losing her mind about the wedding planning, too. Or maybe Steven-Not-Steve was losing his mind? Either way, Steven-Not-Steve wasn’t usually here on weeknights, though he’d been showing up more and more lately.

  “Hello, Sean,” Steven-Not-Steve said. He was always formal, careful around me. Just like his clothes: Steven-Not-Steve always wore stuff that was tucked in, always took his shoes off when he came into our house, too, which wasn’t a rule or anything.

  “Hey,” I said, edging around Steven-Not-Steve to get to the refrigerator and the orange juice. I’m kind of a fan of orange juice. My mom buys gallons of the stuff, just for me. I normally drink it out of the jug, because I’m the only one who drinks it anymore, but since Steven-Not-Steve and his dumbass polo shirt were here, I used a glass.

  “Pretty excited for your brother’s wedding, I’d imagine,” Steven-Not-Steve said. Which, what was I supposed to say to that? No? Yes? Neither answer was right. What a dumb question to ask.

  I nodded, slipped away, hoping I could just nod at my mom and Krista too and not get roped into anything. But then my mom came up and said, “Oh, hi, honey,” and Krista looked up and said, “Hi, Sean!”

  Krista was pretty, but she had this squeaky voice. And her hair was this blondish color that couldn’t be real. And she wore those fakey plastic nails and a lot of makeup. And she liked to fake-tan. And sometimes her thong stuck out of her jeans in a way that made me turned on and grossed out all in one shot. But the thing was, Krista was very very nice. She was always so happy to see you, and unlike the rest of her looks, that part wasn’t fake. Like, there was a reason she was the manager of Applebee’s; probably people were so taken in by her welcoming them to the dumb restaurant, they just wanted to eat everything and like it so they wouldn’t disappoint her.

  “Hi, Krista,” I said, guzzling my juice.

  “How are you, honey? Sean, your hair is so long! I can barely see your eyes! Can we get your opinion?” Krista said, and I wanted to die, because that meant no slithering down to my room to jerk it in the shower or stalk Hallie online or just be alone for five minutes to think my own thoughts.

  But I went over to the table and looked at what my mom and Krista were doing, which was making “Save The Date!” postcards that were like some kind of weird pre-invitation to the wedding and featured a picture of Krista sitting on Brad’s lap next to some palm trees, which meant this was taken during the Fateful Florida Vacation. There were four different versions of the thing, the same picture, but framed with different designs. The table was covered in little bits of colored paper. It looked like Otis had gotten into some paper recycling and shredded shit up, like he did when he was a puppy.

  Which reminded me.

  “Where’s Otis?” I said, since he hadn’t come to the door to greet me. That was always his habit. At least, it was at our old house. Here, Otis was as disoriented as me, except instead of eating cereal out of mixing bowls and drying his body with Pokémon beach towels because we couldn’t find the normal towels in any of the boxes, Otis had taken to hiding behind the furnace things in the basement or under my mom’s bed, and running away along the highway, eating garbage and making me freaked out that he was going to get hit by a car.

  “He’s somewhere,” my mom said, distracted. “So which one do you like, then?” She pointed to the cards again.

  I motioned toward one of them and then yelled, “Otis?”

  “That was the same one Steven liked,” Krista said, frowning, as if that had some meaning. Like it was a man conspiracy. I went into the living room, where Otis’s dog bed lay empty by the fireplace. Of all things, the rental had a fireplace. Brad said it didn’t work, though.

  “Mom, did you let him out and forget to bring him in?”

  “What? No, he’s inside. Check my office,” she said, not even looking up from the table. “He’s been going in there lately.”

  I found Otis under the office desk, between stacks of my mom’s psychology books. He looked happy, was thumping his tail. And he got up and f
ollowed me to my room like nothing after that. But it was weird. Otis was almost twelve years old; we’d had him since I was in kindergarten. He was part German shepherd, part something else the vet and my mom could never settle on. He was big and furry and kind of fat, but he was great. He jumped on my bed and lounged for a minute, licking himself in all his gross places, and then, while I was in the shower, something else must have caught his dog-attention, because he was gone when I came back to my room.

  I put on clean boxers and opened the window above my bed. It was still hot, even though it was now technically fall. The rental didn’t have air-conditioning. Our old one had it. Our old one had everything good, really. Everything good, except for my drunk father.

  Even a shitty house out on the freeway, with trash tossed out of passing cars getting caught in the fence, and semi trucks roaring by all night long and the goddamned muddy yard and gravel drive making everything look like we were hillbillies cooking meth or something, even that was better than living with my dad when he was drinking. But it still wasn’t great.

  I considered, pretty intensely, for a period of three to four minutes, doing my homework. But then I just got into bed. Because at the moment, I felt like doing nothing. Which meant one thing, really.

  Doing nothing, jerking off; they were kind of the same for me. Not because I felt really sexual, necessarily. Mostly I jerked off for no real reason. Because I had a hand and it could go easily down my boxer shorts. And because, why not just do that when all else failed? I lay in bed, listening for everyone to shuffle out—Brad honking the horn of his truck in the drive, Krista’s girl shoes making pointy clacks on the linoleum, Steven-Not-Steve jingling his car keys. I waited until I heard my mom call down that she was going to bed, and I yelled back “Good night,” and then, finally, I could do it. Finally.

  I’d worked myself up decently when my phone buzzed from across the room, still in the back pocket of my jeans. The little sound it made when I got a text. My hand froze midstroke. I listened again. In case I’d just imagined it. I didn’t think it would buzz again. Then it did.