Reality Boy

This makes her laugh, too.

“My mother probably doesn’t know what a hermaphrodite is. Not unless it was in some article in a magazine,” I say.

“You guys are missing the beginning,” Ashley says. “You can’t be here on a Friday and not watch Jaws. It’s a house rule. Even you, fish girl. Come on.”

Hannah and I sit in two different chairs. She sits where she can see her fish and the TV at the same time. I sit on the couch where I had my nap. Halfway through the movie—right when the shark starts chasing down Quint’s boat—Nathan goes to the kitchen and brings back beers for all of us and we sit there mesmerized until the very end.

As the credits roll, Hannah says, “I want to be a marine biologist.”

“Hell yeah,” Nathan says. “Do it. You’d be really good at it.”

Ashley nods.

No one chuckles condescendingly and says Marine biologist? Heh.

What occurs to me at this second is this: There is a huge world out there. I only know my dumb family and my dumb house and my dumb school and my dumb job. But there is a huge world out there… and most of it is underwater.

48

WHEN I DROP Hannah off at her driveway, I tell her that I have an empty house for the night.

“Do you think it would be safe for me to come over?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Probably not.”

I demand to break rule #5.

I demand to kiss her today. Right now, even.

Then I lean in and kiss her on the mouth, and she parts my lips with her tongue and we break rule #5. For ten minutes.

I can’t explain the thoughts I have about her on my drive home, but they are pretty hot thoughts. But then I’m soft inside. Like I’m filled with nougat or crème caramel. I want to tell someone. I just broke rule #5. I am happy. I think I have a real girlfriend.

I have no one to share that with. I have no friends. Joe Jr. would think I was a prude, only kissing a girl at seventeen years old. Beth is not my friend, she’s my boss. No one in SPED class would care—or they’d just make dumb comments about it. Deirdre would make me feel bad because she’s probably never going to break rule #5 in her life.

There is only one person I want to call right now, and she lives in Scotland and she left me here in this f**king mess and never calls me. My nougat hardens. My crème caramel turns crunchy. Why am I mad at Lisi? Why? All she did was follow through. All she did was exactly what she said she would do. She got out.

And it’s not like I don’t have a phone. It’s not like I don’t have fingers to dial her new number. I could have dialed her number a hundred times if I wanted to. Only I didn’t because… what?

I thought I could do this alone.

I demand not to do this alone.

When I pass through the gate and wave to the security guard, he raises an eyebrow at me and I don’t know why until I see our driveway, which is packed with cars. Maybe twenty of them, from the garage all the way down the drive. The extras are scattered around the cul-de-sac.

I stop and open my car window and I hear the music twanging away, rattling the neighbors’ houses. I wonder how long this party’s been going on. And how soon the cops will come.

I demand to not be here when the cops come.

I park and walk up the front yard to the door and when I open the door, the first thing I do is take a picture of the scene with my phone and send it to Dad’s phone.

I make my way to the stairs, through the thick crowd of complete strangers in my house. Tasha is drunk. There are two kegs in the kitchen and a lot of bottles of liquor on the kitchen table. Some people are piled up on the couch making out. Others are dancing on the far side of the room where Danny has his stereo set up. I think one girl is dancing in her bra. I can’t figure out what to do.

I get to my room and close and lock the door and stare at my phone. A minute ago, I didn’t know who to call about how great everything is. Now I don’t know who to call about how shitty everything is.

I dial Lisi’s number.

As it rings, I do the math and realize it’s, like, three in the morning where she is. But before I can hang up, she answers.

“Lisi,” I say.

“Gerald? Is everything okay?”

I let the noise of the party downstairs filter through and hope she hears it.

“I need to get out of here,” I say. “Like now.”

“What’s going on?”

“Tasha’s throwing a party. There are rednecks all over our house. Mom and Dad are away. I think I saw two people doing it on the couch when I walked in.”

“Shit.”

“Can we talk about it now?” I ask.

“Sure. What do you want to talk about?” she asks. I hear a lighter flick.

“The time she nearly drowned me.”

There’s silence on the other end of the phone.

“Lisi?”

“I’m here,” she says.

“Do you remember the time she tried to drown me?”

“Yeah.”

“You said something that night. I remember it.”

“You were, like, three, weren’t you? How do you remember anything from when you were three?”

“I remember a lot,” I say. “You said, Now you can have baths alone, like I do.”

“Did I?”

“Yeah.”

There’s silence. Well, not silence—the party is still thumping downstairs. “She did it to me, too,” Lisi says. She takes a drag on whatever she’s smoking. “Mom used to make us take baths together to save time. Tasha used to hold my head under the water. The last time, Mom caught her. Or—whatever. I was coughing and throwing up because she’d held me under so long. I think I breathed in water.”

“Shit.”

“Mom tried to get us to get in the bath together after that and I freaked out. I just lost it. I can barely remember it. You were, like, a baby. I wasn’t even four, I don’t think.” She smokes and I try to block out the pounding of the country music that has just increased by at least ten decibels. “But I read about people like her in my psych class this semester, Gerald. She’s a psychopath. Always was. Always will be.”

I used to think this, but I never said it. Psychopaths are like the guys in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, right? Psychopaths are serial killers and mass murderers. I wonder if guys like that ever tried to drown their siblings in the family bathtub.

“A psychopath?” I say.

“Trust me. That’s what she is,” Lisi says.