Reality Boy

“I have balls.”

“But?”

“But I don’t know,” she says. I stop the car at the end of her driveway, where I just picked her up five minutes before.

“I have to get out of here now. That kid probably called the cops. That wasn’t a boxing ring. Have a nice life, okay?”

She sighs. “Look. I don’t want another person making decisions for me. I just want a minute to think about this.”

“I don’t have a minute.”

She gets out of the car with her red backpack and stands there in my headlights, so I have to reverse into the road and do a U-turn in her neighbor’s driveway. Then, when I drive back, she’s standing there, in the road, and I can’t go around her because she keeps moving the same way I steer the car.

I try not to be frustrated, but I’m frustrated.

“I don’t have time for this!” I yell out my window.

“Let me in,” she says.

“No.”

“Let me in, Gerald!”

I stop the car. She gets in. Then she says, “You’re totally in ass**le mode right now.”

“I just got my ass kicked.”

“So?”

“So I’m tired. And I’m running away. I don’t have time for your crazy shit right now.”

“Stop calling me crazy!”

“I didn’t call you crazy. I called your shit crazy.”

We have a staring standoff.

We take off. Again.

We’re quiet for the first chunk of driving. I allow my adrenaline levels to drop. I try not to think about the police who might be on their way to find me. I try not to think about how Hannah thinks I could hit her.

I think Hannah has gone to sleep, but when I look over, she is wide awake, staring out the window into the darkness beyond the metal mile markers.

“Why do you love me, Gerald?” she asks.

“Wow. That’s a question,” I say. Fuck.

She doesn’t say anything smart-ass or pleading and just keeps staring out the window.

“I loved you the minute I saw you at register number one. You were scribbling in your little notebook. You didn’t notice me. I liked that.”

“You love me because I didn’t notice you?”

“Yeah. And because you’re funny and sarcastic and you don’t care what other people think,” I say. “Do you know how long I’ve cared about what other people think?” I guffaw out my nose. “And the way you like the fish. I love that.”

“The fish?”

“Nathan and Ashley’s fish,” I say.

“Oh.”

I look over at her. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Really? I mean, we’re about to run away together. You have to be okay or I’m taking the next exit and going back again.”

“I’m fine. Really. I’m just trying to figure out what the f**k is going on,” she says. “I can’t tell if you love the real me or the fake me.”

I see a sign that says EMERGENCY PULL OFF. I pull off.

I see Hannah’s been crying and I hug her while she reminds me of rule #5, which in turn makes me hug her harder. I tilt her face up to mine. “I love the real you. I don’t even know what you mean about the fake you.”

“I have shocking news,” she says. “I do care what people think.”

I nod.

“And when I get out of high school, I want to do something fun—like they do in the movies or in punk rock songs. I don’t want to do something just because some group of people decided that this is the process for baking kids. Preheat to three fifty and bake for sixteen years or until browned.”

“We are running away with the circus, you know. That could be considered fun and not in the recipe for baking perfect kids.”

“Except we have to go back to school, Gerald. We’re juniors. It’s only December. We have a while to go before either of us gets to run away with the circus.”

I sigh. “You’re a buzzkill.”

“I probably just need sleep,” she says. “Wake me up when you get tired and I can drive for a while.”

“You drive?”

“Dude, I’m the junkman’s daughter. Of course I drive. I even drove a bulldozer once.”

She curls up and puts a sweatshirt between her head and the window and cranks her seat back a little so she can sleep. I pull back onto the turnpike and get going.

I realize I have no idea where I’m going, but I figure south is good enough. South. I’m going south.

Lisi’s question rings in my ears. Do you have a plan?

51

EPISODE 3, SCENE 12, TAKE 17

BY THE END of the second day, Nanny started to storm around. None of her psychobabble bullshit worked on me. I tore down every new behavior chart she made to show off how great she was. I interrupted every time she tried to make us look like a fixed family. I made it a game.

“You’re ruining the show!” Tasha screamed after take ten. “Just do what they tell you to do!”

Lisi pulled me aside after take twelve. “Do you want them to leave, Gerald? For good?”

“Yes.”

“Then just do what they say and they’ll get out of here. Forever.”

I loved Lisi. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do what they said. They were wrong and I was right. They wanted a tame, loving child. I could give them one if only they stopped telling me what was wrong with me and let me tell them instead. I’m living with a homicidal maniac.

But they wouldn’t shut up. So I had a crap fest. My final crap fest.

“Take seventeen!” the guy said, and he snapped down the wood.

“Gerald,” Nanny said in her softest voice. “You know we all love you, right?”

I decided to make it fun. Make them think I was following their instructions. I nodded.

“And since we all love you, we want you to get bett-ah. And to get bett-ah, you have to listen to what Nanny tells you. Do you undah-stand?”

I nodded again while Nanny checked her hair in the on-set mirror she still carried around. “I understand,” I said.

The director looked relieved. Mom looked at Lisi and gave her a thumbs-up.

“Right. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to apologize to Tasha for what you did to her doll, and then we’ll go upstairs together and we’ll start to figure out how to clean up her room.”

I even followed her up the steps and stood at the door for the wide shot of Tasha’s crap-covered walls. The smell was impressive. Repulsive. Just like Tasha.