by Tim Tharp
And that’s the last thing I remember before waking up under a dead tree with a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl looking down at me.
Chapter 16
She jerks back, startled to see me move. “You’re alive,” she says. “I thought maybe you were dead.”
I’m like, “I don’t think I’m dead.” But right now I can’t exactly be sure of anything. “Where the hell am I?”
“You’re in the middle of the yard,” she says. “Do you know someone who lives here?”
I sit up and look at the house—an ugly little pink brick one with a window air-conditioner unit. “No, I never saw it before.”
“Were you in a wreck or something?”
“Not that I know of. Why? Where’s my car?”
“Is it one of those?” She points toward the street, where two cars are parked along the curb on our side and a junky white pickup is parked on the other side. The pickup’s engine is idling so I guess it must be hers.
“No, I drive a Mitsubishi,” I say. “Jesus, I must have gone to sleep.” I look around, trying to gather my wits a little. A scraggly elm tree hangs over us and you can just see the moon through the branches. There’s a rickety lawn chair stationed in the middle of the yard, and two beer cans lie in the grass a couple of feet away. I vaguely remember sitting in that lawn chair at some point, but I don’t remember how I got there.
“So,” she asks. “You don’t know where you left your car?”
“Let me think for a second,” I say, but my head’s not really up for thinking. “No, it’s no good. I don’t remember where it is. Maybe I parked it at home and just went out for a walk.”
She shakes her head. “No, I don’t think you live in this neighborhood, Sutter.”
That surprises the hell out of me right there. “How did you know my name? Were we talking a while ago or something?”
“We go to the same high school,” she says, but she doesn’t say it like I’m an idiot. She has a kind voice, kind eyes. She looks at me like I’m a bird she found with a broken wing.
“Do we have a class together at school?” I ask.
“Not this year. We did when we were sophomores. You wouldn’t remember me.”
Her name turns out to be Aimee Finecky, and she’s right, I don’t remember her, even though I pretend to. According to her, it’s five a.m. and the reason she happens to be out at this time is because she’s throwing her paper route.
“It’s really me and my mom’s paper route,” she explains, “but Mom and her boyfriend went to the Indian casino over by Shawnee last night, and I guess it got so late they decided to stay in a motel or something. That happens sometimes.”
The paper route gives me an idea. Since she’s driving around anyway, maybe she could haul me along with her. Surely my car is somewhere close by. In the condition I was in, I probably didn’t walk too far before sitting down for a rest.
This sounds el fabuloso to her. After all, usually her mother drives the truck and she heaves the papers out the window. If I can get the right throwing motion down, she figures I’ll be a real ace paperboy.
The back of the junky white pickup contains three bundles of unfolded newspapers and the cab is piled high with folded ones, crisp as new ears of corn. “How big is this paper route of yours?” I ask as we pull away from the curb.
“Practically this whole side of town,” she says, and I’m like, “Jesus Christ, I didn’t know newspaper throwing was such big business. You must reel in a lot of cash.”
“My mom does. She gives me an allowance out of it.”
“That doesn’t sound fair.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Of course not. If you do half the work, you ought to be fifty-fifty partners. Maybe more, since you have to do all the work when she goes out blowing her money at the Indian casino.”
“That’s all right,” she says. “She pays most of the bills.”
“Most of them?”
“Sometimes I have to chip in.”
“She sure saw you coming.”
Down the street we drive, moving at senior-citizen speed since she has to tell me which houses to deliver to. I take to the throwing part right away, though—it’s a sideways motion from the chest out, kind of like throwing a Frisbee. Before we make a whole block, I’m already pitching way into the yards, almost to the porches. I’m a natural.
My head’s still a little woozy, but gradually, it’s clearing up, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. Thoughts of what Mom and Geech will have to say about me staying out all night start to trickle in. It’s not hard to predict—Geech is bound to come with the good old military school threat. He must have that recorded on a chip and installed in his robot head.
Mom, she’ll go into her routine about what the neighbors would think if they saw me traipsing in at such-and-such time in the morning. What I want to know is why should she care? She doesn’t even like the neighbors. But that doesn’t matter. She worries more about what people think than anyone else in the universe. I’m always embarrassing her somehow. I guess I must have inherited that trait from Dad.
But I don’t know why I should have to explain anything to anybody. Why shouldn’t I be doing exactly what I’m doing? It’s superb to be out in the early, early morning before the sun comes up. There’s this sense of being super-alive. You’re in on a secret that all the dull, sleeping people don’t know about. Unlike them, you’re alert and aware of existing right here in this precise moment between what happened and what’s going to happen. I’m sure my dad’s been here. Mom might have been once. But Geech? Robots don’t have any idea of what it’s like to be really alive, and they never will.
Chapter 17
After finishing up three streets, we’re out of rolled newspapers and still haven’t run across my car. Aimee pulls over and brings a bundle from the back around to the cab so we can get some more ready to throw. She shows me her method of folding, then rolling, then slapping on the rubber band, but there’s no way I can keep up with her once we get started. Her hands are magic. I swear the girl gets three done for every one I finish.
“How many of these things have you folded in your life?” I ask as she pitches another finished product onto the floorboard by my feet.
“I don’t know.” Her hands keep working. “It feels like about a hundred million.”
I ask if her mom has a day job too, but she says no, the paper route is her only job. Her mom’s boyfriend is on disability with a bad back. He collects his disability check and buys and sells things on eBay. That’s when he’s not sitting around watching TV in his sweatpants. A lot of kids might have sounded bitter about that, but not Aimee. Her voice is gentle, like she’s talking about someone with a terminal disease.
We trade a few stories about our parents. Her mom’s a real gamble-oholic it sounds like to me—the Indian casinos, the lottery, bingo, anything to try to make a quick buck. Only she hardly ever wins. She has the luck of an armadillo trying to cross a six-lane highway. Still, Aimee doesn’t judge her. Losing the gas bill money is just a fact of life for her. She probably thinks it happens to everybody.
I mention a few things about Mom and Geech and my real dad’s office at the top of the Chase building. Nothing too deep, although I have the feeling that I could say anything to Aimee and she wouldn’t judge me. Her voice would remain cool and soft, like a pillow to lay your head on after a hard day.
She’s cute, too, in a nerdy sort of way. You know the look—glasses that ride down on the nose, pale skin from staying inside too much, mouth hanging slightly open in that classic nerd mouth-breather style. But she has full lips and sweet, little blond eyebrows and a nice, slender neck. Her hair isn’t pure Scandinavian blond like Cassidy’s—it’s more dirty blond and sort of lank. And she doesn’t have the fjord-blue eyes either—hers are paler, more like a public swimming pool. Still, she has a way about her that makes me want to do something for her. Not to her. For her.
“You know what?” I say. “If we find
my car, I’m still going to help you finish off your route.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she says, but her eyes tell me she’d like nothing better.
“I know I don’t have to,” I tell her. “I want to.”
Once we get a good-size batch of papers folded, we’re on the road again. Still no sign of my car, but the further we go the better we work together. I start calling her Captain and tell her to call me Special Agent Danger. Instead of having her point out which house to throw to by saying something boring like “here” or “this one,” I coax her into yelling, “Fire the torpedo, Special Agent Danger, fire the torpedo!” After a while, we’re zipping down the road at almost the speed limit and I never miss a yard.
“You know what?” she says. “I think this is the first time I’ve ever actually had fun doing this.”
“We make a good team.”
“You think so?” There’s a hopeful look in her eyes.
“Absolutely.”
Then all of a sudden, there it is—my car, sitting sideways in the middle of a lawn. One of Aimee’s customer’s lawns yet.
“Jesus,” I say. “I can’t believe I walked all that way from here. It must be a mile and a half.”
“What’s it doing in the yard?” she asks.
For a second the vision of me cutting across lawns yelling at the top of my lungs shoots through my mind. “I don’t know,” I say. “I guess it’s a pretty safe place to leave a car if you have to. But I’d probably better get it off before these people wake up or the cops come by.”
Turns out, the car’s out of gas, which is a relief. I’d hate to think I didn’t have a good reason for leaving it there. Getting it off the lawn is simple in concept but not so simple to actually do. Aimee gets behind the wheel to steer and I push from behind. The problem is that the yard is real spongy, so it takes all the effort I have. By the time we finally get it parked decently by the curb, I feel like I’m about ready to pass out.
“I guess I’ll have to go get some gas,” I say as Aimee steps out of the car.
She’s like, “I guess so,” and looks back at my car like it’s some annoying person that broke up our good time. “There’s a convenience store just a couple of blocks over. I’ll drive you.”
“What about the rest of your route?”
“That’s all right. I can finish it by myself. I’m sure you probably need to get home.”
But I’m like, “No way, Captain. I said I’d help you finish and whatever Special Agent Danger says he’ll do, he does. Do you roger that?”
The light flips back on in her eyes. “Yes.”
“No, you have to say ten-four. Say, ‘Ten-four, I roger that.’”
She looks down, her pale eyelashes hiding her eyes. “Ten-four,” she says. “I roger that.”
It takes about another hour to finish throwing her papers, and I keep her spirits high most of the time, but both of us lose a little enthusiasm toward the end, mostly because we know time is running out. She’ll have to go back to her empty house, and I’ll have to go back to meet the wrath of Mom and Geech.
We go by the convenience store for a couple of gallons of gas, and I buy us both donuts and strawberry-guava drinks. After getting my car gassed up, we’re standing there in the middle of the street, and she has this sort of shy look on her face like we’ve just been on a first date and she’s wondering if I’m going to kiss her.
“You know what, Aimee Finecky?” I say. “I had a pretty rotten night last night until you came along and found me.”
She looks like she wants to say something back but can’t find the right words.
So I’m like, “Where do you eat lunch Mondays?”
And she’s, “In the cafeteria.” Which, of course, is where any red-blooded nerd would eat.
So I’m, “Aw, dude, that’s lame.”
And she’s like, “It is?”
I can tell she feels like she said something stupid, so I go, “I don’t mean you eating there’s lame. I mean the food’s lame. No, are you kidding? I’d eat in the cafeteria every day if the food was better.”
“They have pizza on Mondays,” she says.
“Oh, yeah?” I say, like that’s the greatest news I’ve heard all year. “I am the man when it comes to pizza. Why don’t I meet you outside the south door, and we’ll eat pizza and relive our greatest triumphs of newspaper delivery?”
“Really?” She looks at me like I might just be planning a practical joke of some kind.
“I’ll be there right after Algebra.”
“Me too,” she says. “I mean, not after Algebra but after Calculus, or I mean after French. I got mixed up.”
I give her hand a squeeze. “Wish me luck for when I get back home. I’ll need it.”
“Good luck,” she says, and she’s so earnest I’m tempted to believe it just might help.
Chapter 18
So why do I call my stepdad Geech? That’s simple. His actual name is Garth Easley, so of course, I started calling him Geasley and then it was the Geast and then it was Geechy and now it’s just Geech. Which is perfect because it sounds like how he makes you feel if you’re around him for more than fifteen seconds. Geeeech. Kind of like retch.
He came along when I was eight, and believe me, I wasn’t happy when we loaded up and moved in with him. Holly thought it was the most fandangulous thing that ever happened. It was like she didn’t miss Dad at all. She was just happy to have a pool in the backyard so she could invite over all the high school hotshots who never really liked her before.
Mom changed when she and Geech got married. She started spending all sorts of money on her hair and makeup. She traded in her long hair and jeans and started dressing like something out of a hoity-toit magazine all the time. I don’t think she really even likes him all that much, though. You’ll never see her leaning in close to him on the sofa, running her fingers through what’s left of his hair or sneaking up behind him and grabbing his bony ass or dancing to Jimmy Buffett songs on the patio in the moonlight. All that disappeared when she kicked Dad to the curb.
She’ll be on Geech’s side this morning, though. They’ll present a united front against me. Luckily, I still have a couple of beers left from the twelve-pack I bought last night. They’re pretty warm, but that’s all right. I’m not exactly drinking them for refreshment purposes this morning.
The sun’s been up for a while when I get home. This has been one hell of a long day or two days or whatever. Time for a swig of the mouthwash I keep in the glove compartment. There’s not much chance I can sneak in, but I try it anyway. Quiet as a second-story man, I get the front door open and shut with barely a sound and creep upstairs without a single creak. The safety of my room is at the end of the long hall, but I make it there fine and am just starting to take my shoes off when the door flies open.
Mom starts in first. “Where have you been, Mister? And don’t even try saying you spent the night with a friend. We called everywhere, including all the hospitals between here and your sister’s house.”
For someone in pink pajamas, she can sure pull off an angry pit-bull look, but actually it’s nice of her to warn me about having called my friends because that’s exactly the defense I’ve been planning to present. That’s all right. Something close to the truth will work better anyway.
“I went driving around,” I say. “It got to be pretty late and I ran out of gas, so…”
“Your sister called.” Mom pauses to let the horror of that information sink in. But I figure it’ll be better to keep quiet until I find out exactly what the charges against me are.
So she’s like, “I’m at a loss, Sutter. What am I supposed to do with a boy who tries to steal an expensive bottle of liquor from his brother-in-law and then nearly burns his own sister’s house down after she worked so hard to get it?”
Worked hard? I don’t know where Mom gets that—unless she considers getting a boob job hard work, because that’s pretty much what got Holly married to Kevin and l
iving in the big house. Of course, this isn’t the time to point that out, so all I can say is that I never tried to steal the bottle.
Nobody listens to that, though. Instead, Geech is all, “I’ll tell you what you do with a boy like that—military school.”
It sure didn’t take him long to throw out that old line. Usually, I have to spar a few rounds with him before he goes military school on me.
“He needs to understand the meaning of discipline,” he says, using the third person like I’m not sitting right there in front of him. “He needs to understand the value of other people’s property. A good, tough drill sergeant will pound that into him.”
“When did drill sergeants start caring about people’s personal property?” I say. “I thought they were just concerned with destroying your individuality.”
That gets the vein in his forehead pumping overtime. “Don’t get cute with me, young man. I won’t take it in my own house.” He turns back to Mom. “That’s another thing military school needs to pound into him—respect for authority.”
It’s not all that easy to take a short, balding, red-faced guy with glasses for much of an authority figure, but I don’t need to point that out right now either. His military-school threats are stale—nothing but bluster. Mom’s never thrown her support behind that proposition. I mean, after all, there’s a war going on. She’s not about to pack her only son off on the road to Baghdad.
Or so I used to think.
“Is that what you need, Sutter?” she asks, but she doesn’t bother waiting for an answer. “Because I’m starting to think it is. You can just finish out the semester in the military academy over by Tulsa and then go straight into basic training. Let’s see how you handle a tour overseas. That ought to shape you up.”
She sounds like she means it one hundred percent too. She’s pissed off enough to actually throw me to the crazy suicide bombers. But I guess I can’t be surprised after the way she ditched my father.