Reality Boy

I don’t say anything. I go to my locker and start to change. But New Kid doesn’t stop. “Do you still do it?” he asks. “Shit on stuff?”

I don’t say anything.

“Just so you know, you can’t take me, okay? I might be crazier than you.” He pokes me to get me to look at him. “Just so you know, okay?”

We have a crazy-eyes stare-off. He stares. I stare. He makes crazy eyes. I make crazy eyes. Eventually I win, and he walks off.

I finish getting dressed and I go out into the hall and aim myself for the cafeteria.

“Gerald!” I hear as I’m coming out of the locker room door.

I look up and see Register #1 Girl. “Oh, hey,” I say.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.”

She tips her head to the side and frowns at me a little. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Sure. Gym sucks, that’s all.”

“Mightily,” she says. “Indeed.”

Who else would say that? Gym sucks mightily indeed. I love her.

“Uh—you still here?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Going to lunch. You?”

“Lunch also. Shall we sit together and make all the freaks talk about us?”

I have so many answers to this. The first that comes to mind is: Are you sure you want to do that? The second is: Are you sure you want to do that? Why is she acting like I’m not Gerald “the Crapper” Faust?

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“No no no,” I say. “Yes. Take it as a yes. I just—uh—never sat with anyone at lunch before. And you know, I’m—uh—well, you know.”

“No. What? You’re what?” she asks.

“I’m, well. I’m,” I try. “I’m not very popular.”

She smiles. “Welcome to the club, Gerald. I’m also not popular. I’d go one step further and say I am rather unpopular. I’m okay with that. Aren’t you?”

By this time, we are in the cafeteria and Register #1 Girl is walking toward a small booth at the side of the caf. Booths are cool. Makes the lunch experience feel less like school and more like a diner. Plus, there is only so much space in a booth. No one can intrude. She tosses her two backpacks into the seat first and then sits and I do the same.

We both pull out our packed lunches and she says, “Do you know my name?”

“Sure,” I answer.

“So how come you never use it?”

“Hannah,” I say. In my head I say Hannah Hannah Hannah Hannah.

She looks relieved. “Oh, good. So now we’re on a first-name basis. What you got there?” She points at my lunch. Mom packed my favorite for me today. Chicken salad sandwich.

“Chicken salad,” I say.

“And an apple,” she adds. “And what’s that? Soup?”

“Protein shake,” I say, holding up my thermos. “My mother believes in the power of protein.”

“Ah. I see.” She empties her brown bag onto the table. There are two packs of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, a small bag of Doritos, a Ziploc bag of Girl Scout cookies, and a Coke. “As you can tell by my lunch, my mother believes in nothing.”

I nod and smile because she’s hilarious. “I’ll trade you half my sandwich for one of those Reese’s,” I say.

“Deal.” She puts her hand out and I give her half of the diagonally cut sandwich and snag an orange packet. She bites into the sandwich and talks with her mouth full. “Jesus! Is that apple in there?”

“And grapes.”

“Fuckin’ A,” she says, as if she’s never eaten anything but what’s spilled out in front of her.

We eat for a while. She asks to taste the protein shake, and I warn her that it’s vanilla, which tastes like nothing, and she says she still wants to taste it and then complains that it tastes like nothing. I drink it anyway while she slurps down her can of Coke.

I save the Reese’s for last because it was always my favorite candy before Nanny told Mom we should all give up sugar.

“I really liked your friends,” I say.

“Nathan and Ashley? Yeah. They’re the shit.”

“Where do you know them from?”

“Ashley worked at my last job. She was a waitress. I was a busgirl. Our boss was an ass**le. We bonded and lived happily ever after.”

“Cool,” I say. I think about bonding. I don’t think it’s something I can do inside all this polyethylene.

And then I realize that for twenty whole minutes, I haven’t felt the need to kill anyone. Maybe longer. Maybe all day. I don’t know. I didn’t feel like killing New Kid in the locker room even though he was being a douche bag. I didn’t feel the need to kill Nichols, either.

After five minutes, the silence at the table is killing us. I can tell it’s driving her nuts, and I can’t come up with anything clever to say, so I don’t say anything. I chew everything maybe fifty times. I start to sweat from the pressure.

She finally says, “So you know my name and we almost ran off with the circus together, but I can’t tell if you’re my friend or not.”

“Sure,” I say. “I’m your friend.”

“You don’t say much.”

“I’m not used to having to say anything, I guess.”

“But you’re my friend?”

I want to tell her that she’s my girl, but it seems wrong. Roger would not approve. So I nod.

“If you’re my friend, then you need to know that I carry this with me all the time and you’re never allowed to look at it,” she says, pulling her little notebook from her back pocket.

“I’ve seen you write in it before. At work, remember?”

“And?”

“I don’t want to look at it. I mean, if that’s what you were asking,” I say.

“I wasn’t asking you anything. I was telling you that if we’re friends, that’s part of the deal,” she says. “And some of my old so-called friends had a problem with it, so I figured I’d get that part out of the way.”

“Oh,” I say. “Why’d they have a problem with it?”

She’s already got it balanced on her knee and is writing. “They thought I was writing about them,” she says.

“Oh,” I say.

“And I was. But it’s still none of their business,” she adds. “And before you ask, yes, I have written in it about you, too. So you’ve been warned and if you’re friends with me, you’re friends with me and the book, okay?” She looks down again and continues writing.