Reality Boy

I am addicted to anger.

This makes me smile.

Snow White says, “Gerald, why on earth are you happy about that?”

What else do I have to be happy about?

“I could name a thousand things,” she says.

“So what’s the other kid look like today?” Roger asks.

I let my shirt drop down, and I answer, “Roadkill.”

We look at each other, two FS refugees. I want to ask him why he’s so concerned about me dating a girl. Was Roger some wife beater? Did he smack his kids around? Does he really think that girls can only lead to trouble?

“Roadkill. Awesome. I’d put my money on you any day,” Roger says.

Snow White and I stare at him. It’s like we just witnessed a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis. Except that the butterfly isn’t quite what we expected it to be, because the whole world is full of shit.

39

I SPEND A half hour watching the Monaco trapeze video before I get ready for school. I’m late to the breakfast table and as I eat my breakfast and think about how Roger seemed to get off on seeing my bruises last night, Tasha comes upstairs in her bathrobe and says some stuff to Mom while I pretend she’s not there. Then she turns to me. “I hear you have yourself a girlfriend, big guy. You gonna bite her, too?”

I ignore the bite comment and say, “What are you talking about? I don’t have a freakin’ girlfriend.”

“Not what I heard,” Tasha says.

“Aren’t you, like, twenty-one? Why are you hanging around here and gossiping about high school kids? Are you retarded or something?”

I get up and walk out of the kitchen, and Tasha says, “I’m not the one in special ed.”

I turn around and face the two of them. “Yeah, well, I’m not the loser living in my mom’s basement because I’m so stupid no college will take me after dropping out three times.”

“Stop it,” Mom says.

“I’ll make sure your new girlfriend gets the message that you don’t like girls,” Tasha says. “Danny knows her brother.”

I shake my head and shrug. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but whatever it is, it sure as hell won’t get you a f**kin’ job, will it?”

At this, I walk out the door to the garage. Danny is in the garage. I want to just jump on him and punch him until he becomes the garage floor—a big, huge, sticky red spot on the perfect concrete that Mom makes Dad power wash twice a year as if garages should be clean places where oil doesn’t leak and mice don’t pee.

“Hey,” Danny says to me.

“Hey,” I say, walking through the garage toward my car, which is in the driveway.

“Can I use your speed bag?” he asks.

“No,” I say.

I get into my car and turn the ignition to warm it up and then I go back into the garage and Danny is still there, standing in the exact same spot as he was a minute ago when I said no. I think he’s trying to decide whether to use the speed bag while I’m at school. I realize that he belongs here in the Faust family. He is the half-wit son they always wanted. He can take my place.

I go inside. I say to Mom, who is now standing in the kitchen by herself, “Mom, I figured out what I want for my birthday.”

“Oh?” she says.

“How about a gas card? You know—the kind that’s prepaid, so I can save some money this year before college.”

She chuckles a little. “College?”

I pick up my lunch, and when I get back into the garage, Danny is still standing there.

“You can totally use the speed bag,” I say. “Just don’t sweat up my gloves, okay?”

He’s still staring at me with the rodent stare as I close the garage door behind me.

I don’t turn on any tribal music on my drive to school. I check twice to make sure I have my work pants in the backseat. Today I chose khakis. I think they make my ass look firmer and now I care about shit like this when I’m serving hockey fans from register #7.

I’m so early, the student parking lot is empty. I open my backpack and pull out my library copy of Romeo and Juliet, the kind with plain English on one side and real Shakespeare on the other, which I started reading last night.

As I read, I’m surprised by how it doesn’t go over my head, and angry that I thought it would.

I am not retarded.

My mother has a screw loose.

She needs me to be dumb so Tasha will be happy.

She wanted Lisi to not go to college so Tasha would be happy.

Fuck.

Have a sense of humor, Gerald.

I try to have a sense of humor about this. Isn’t it funny how messed up this all is? It’s not you! It’s her! It’s them! That’s funny, right?

When Hannah gets to our lunch booth, I’m still reading Romeo and Juliet and I’m just getting to the part where Romeo says “Ay, mine own fortune in my misery” and I read it twice—and I check the other page, in plain twenty-first-century English to be sure, and I laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

I can’t tell Hannah that I’m happy to not be retarded. So I say, “Oh, nothing. Just Shakespeare. Funny guy.”

She nods and slips into the booth. “No lie. Have you read A Midsummer Night’s Dream yet?”

“No.”

“It’s hilarious,” she says.

I suddenly feel dumb again. It’s so easy to feel dumb. There is no pressure there, in Dumbville. When you’re expected to be dumb, then crapping on stuff and never having read A Midsummer Night’s Dream is all the same big zero in your life.

“Gerald?” Hannah says.

I look at her, but I’m still thinking about how it’s more comfortable being dumb.

“God,” she says, and sighs. “Sometimes you are so hard to talk to.”

I say, “What?” like I’m irked, because I don’t want her to say that.

“I said: You’re hard to talk to,” she says. “Because you go off in your own little world.” She leafs through a textbook while she says this, as if she’s not angry. Or maybe she isn’t angry. I can’t tell. She adds, “You always did, too.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say. “I always did? You mean like since last week?”

“No, Gerald, I mean like since you were a kid. On TV. You used to do it then, too,” she says.

And I realize why dating is not a good idea for Gerald Faust.

Dating isn’t good for Gerald Faust because everyone knows his secrets.