“A puzzle.” That’s what the guidance counselor calls me.
“A puzzle,” she says. And then she smiles. This makes me smile. And then Beth shows up. She’s in manager mode, which I guess is how I will always know her. But she seems like she’d be fun outside of the PEC Center. Sometimes she sees her friends here and they talk about what they’re doing on the weekend. One time a guy mentioned skinny-dipping. It made me think about how I will probably never go skinny-dipping.
Beth says, “Gerald, can you do a dog count for me?”
I leave to count hot dogs.
Once we close the gate after intermission, I move slowly. Everyone else rushes to get home. Registers #4 and #5 had to leave right away to pick up their kids from babysitters. Beth asks me if I can clean the hot dog rollers and I say yes, and I tell her I’ll mop, too, because if I mop, then I’m the last one out.
“Hannah already called mopping,” Beth says. That’s Register #1 Girl’s name. Hannah.
I clean the hot dog rollers and take all the dishes back to the sink where #2 is washing. Beth asks the remaining cashiers if we want any of the leftover food and I realize I haven’t eaten all day and I’m really hungry. She gives me a little tray of chicken fingers and fries, and when I get to the condiment counter, I take a napkin and put my chicken fingers on it and fill the rest of the tray with ketchup. I coat the fries in it. I dip the chicken in it. I think of the hugging hockey lady the whole time. I coat my food in her so I can be hugged from the inside.
As I eat my ketchup-covered food and watch Register #1 Girl mop the floor behind stand five, I rethink my ideas about India. No one there would know me. No one would call me the Crapper. Tasha doesn’t live there.
India would be great.
I wish I could fly there right now so I can keep my word. I’m not coming home.
A half hour later, I’m sitting in my car in the parking lot. Not the garage I parked in, but the PEC Center parking lot, where the circus workers are busy loading their trucks to move on to Philly. I’ve texted Joe Jr., my new friend, and I haven’t heard back. I don’t want to leave the lot until I get to say good-bye or something. (A psycho’s good-bye: Fuck this shit!)
As I look around for Joe, his father points and yells a lot. Yells a lot. He swears in almost every sentence. I rolled down my window a little and I’ve been listening. They’re $%#*ing driving tonight. They $%#*ing start setup at the next place at three in the $%#*ing morning. The $%#*ing $%%holes who quit today were supposed to be driving the $%#*ing talent bus so they could get there early and $%#*ing sleep before matinee tomorrow.
“And if that isn’t $%#*ing bad enough, I’ve got $%#*ing gas,” he says into his cell phone.
I like him. He’s the opposite of Dad. Dad, who has called four times in the last hour and left two messages. Gerald, I hope you weren’t serious about not coming home today. We’ll talk about everything later. Message number two was more serious. Gerald, call me when you get this.
Joe’s dad would leave a far more straightforward message. I know this from watching him for a half hour. He’d say something like this: Get your $%#*ing ass home and don’t be $%#*ing late.
Then I see Register #1 Girl. She’s walking across the alley and talking on the phone. It’s dangerous here at night. Especially on a Saturday. Especially for a pretty girl who smells like berries. I leave my car and I try to follow her on foot, but she’s gone, so I go back to my car and start driving around the block. After two circles, I start to panic a little. I want to roll down my window and yell her name. Instead, I widen my search area and I find her four blocks away already. Heading for a worse part of town.
“Hey,” I say. “Let me drive you to wherever you’re going.”
She stops and crosses her arms. Sighs.
When she gets into the car, I can tell she’s been crying. I still want to hug her, but I know not to. Instead I ask, “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.”
“Oh,” I say. “You seemed to be going somewhere.”
“I was.”
“So tell me where and I’ll drive you.”
“I was going nowhere,” she says.
“Oh,” I say again. “Can I come with you?”
She laughs at this and it breaks the tension in the car, which was getting pretty high because she is the first girl I have ever had in my car. And all I can think about is all the things ever said to me about girls. It’s like girl-talk soup in my head.
Don’t go out with girls.
Don’t even walk with girls.
Girls lie about stuff.
Girls need more than you can give, Gerald.
One wrong move and you’re arrested.
Girls aren’t worth the trouble at your age, anyway.
Maybe you swing the other way. That would explain a lot.
24
I DON’T TELL Register #1 Girl that I have a plan tonight, but I have one. I texted Joe Jr. again and told him, but he still hasn’t replied. We drive around for a while, and when she asks me when I have to be home, I say, “Never.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I guess I’m not going home.”
“So where are you going?”
“Nowhere,” I say. “Just like you.”
She nods and asks if she can put on some music. I say sure and she plugs her phone into my stereo and blasts out some old punk rock. I don’t know who or what kind, but it’s not bad.
After two songs, I start to feel like this is wrong. I don’t trust her. Maybe she’ll tell someone that I picked her up and tried something that I didn’t. Maybe this is all a big joke and her girlfriends are waiting for her somewhere so they can all laugh about how she made the Crapper think he had a friend.
Wouldn’t be the first time someone did that.
We drive around aimlessly for almost a half hour. Register #1 Girl talks about work mostly. Small talk. I say some stuff, but I think I’m mumbling. She looks out the window a lot. When I look at the clock and see it’s nearly eleven, I turn down the music. “So what are we really doing?” I ask. “We can’t just drive around forever. Do you want me to take you home?”
“How old are you?” she asks.
“Almost seventeen,” I say. “Ten more days.”
She’s surprised. “You look older.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“I’m sixteen, too. Not sweet, though.”