Reality Boy

“Hey,” she says, as if she didn’t write ASSHOLE on my dashboard.

Then, before we can talk, my phone buzzes again and I say, “Sorry, Hannah. I have to get this really quick. Do you mind?”

I look at the number on my phone. It’s Joe Jr.

“Hello?” I say.

“Dude,” he says. “What’s shaking?”

“Nothing much. Just leaving work now. What’s up, man? You okay?”

“Uh—nah. You got room for a circus freak in your house?”

“Did you run away?” I ask. This makes Hannah’s ears perk up. She’s still very interested in running away. To anywhere. Apparently with any ASSHOLE, too.

“Not yet. But I’m thinking on it,” he says.

“I wish I could, but I think my parents would freak,” I say.

“I can do more than just clean f**king buses and run around being the talent’s gofer,” he says. “I’m just so ready to go find another show and get to use my own talent, you know?”

“You’re not a dentist clown, are you?” I ask.

He laughs. “No.”

“So what are you?”

He’s quiet for a second and then he says, “What’s your e-mail? I’ll send you a link. You can check it out when you get home.”

“Cool,” I say. “I will.” I give him my e-mail address.

“Sometimes I can’t figure out what I’m doing here,” he says.

“I feel the same way,” I say. “Just without the clown dentistry part.”

“Fuck this shit, man.”

I answer, “Fuck this shit.” And then we hang up.

I can’t figure out if I helped him or not, but just talking to him made me want to run away tonight.

“So?” Hannah says.

“So… what?”

“Is he running away?”

I stop and look at her. Man, her freckles are gorgeous. “Why are you so interested in running away?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I just am.”

“Isn’t your dad coming to pick you up in a minute?” I ask. “I have to go to the parking garage,” I say, pointing toward it. “You should be out front.”

She looks down. “I told him I had a ride,” she says. She looks at me and pushes her mouth over to the left, as if she’s chewing on the inside of her cheek.

“With the ass**le,” I add.

“Yeah,” she says. “I have a ride with the ass**le.”

I don’t smile. I have all these thoughts. Crazy thoughts. Like, on the one hand, I want to kiss her passionately, like they do in movies, and just paralyze her with this feeling of how much I want to take care of her. On the other hand, she’s like Tasha somehow. She’s a girl, for one thing, and she wrote ASSHOLE on my dashboard. And she hasn’t apologized, so if I let her in my car and take her home, I will be like Mom and Dad, who never punished Tasha for writing ASSHOLE on my whole life.

“Look, I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ll clean it off tomorrow. I promise. I was just so mad at you!”

“Doesn’t mean you had to do something crazy,” I say.

She throws her hands up. “I’m not f**king crazy!”

“I didn’t say you were. I said writing ass**le on my car was crazy,” I say. “But Saturday night, before I picked you up, you were walking right toward murder central to go to Ashley’s house and you didn’t care, so maybe you are crazy. I don’t know.”

We’re standing still now—I think because I haven’t indicated that I’m actually driving her home. I start walking down the block toward the parking garage and make a sign like she should follow me. The wind is harsh. I zip my coat to my neck and she wraps her scarf extra tight around her chin. Then she slips her arm into mine, and we walk, connected, with our hands in our pockets.

When we get into the car and I start it up and crank the heat, she says, “Dude, that’s not hot yet. Now you’re just blowing cold air.”

I turn down the fan and rub my hands together to get warm. I stare at what she wrote on the dashboard. I look for something to say, but I can’t find anything except the truth about how I’m feeling, which is: like an ass**le. I sigh.

“That was dramatic,” she says.

“What?”

“That big sigh you just did.”

“You’re sitting in front of the word ass**le, which you wrote on my car, and you call me dramatic? Seriously. You—the girl who ran away to get murdered,” I say. “That’s some pot calling the kettle black.”

“That’s racist,” she says.

“It is not,” I say.

“It is. Totally.”

“Fine. Then you’re the snow calling the clouds white. Whatever,” I say.

The heat kicks in and I turn the fan up and we both put our cold hands on the vents to get warm.

“You know,” I say, “you’re not the easiest person to talk to, either.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah. Really. You could be nicer,” I say.

“Well, at least I don’t just disappear into another world like you do. Because that’s just weird,” she says. “And I want us to have a nice relationship.”

I back out of the parking space and head down the exit ramp.

She asks, “Don’t you want us to have a nice relationship, too?”

I point to the word ASSHOLE. But I smile, so she hits me lightly on the arm and says, “I promise I will clean that off tomorrow morning when you come get me for school. I have the perfect stuff to do it.”

“Tomorrow morning? So part of this nice relationship is me being your chauffeur?” I say. Still smiling.

“Yes. And I promise to never break rule number three again,” she says. “Unless you want to talk about it. Because I’m sure it will come up at some point, considering it must have messed you up really bad.”

“Yes. Yes, it did,” I say. “But I’m not as messed up as I was.”

“Good,” she says. “Because I’m getting more messed up every day living with my crazy parents and there’s only so much room in this ass**le’s car for all our emotional baggage.”

I laugh and she laughs and I don’t feel like an ass**le.

Until she’s gone.

Driving home by myself, I feel like an ass**le. In fact, the closer I get to the house, the more it comes on, as if my proximity to my mother and sister makes me into exactly what they need me to be.