Reality Boy

“Your shoulders are going to $%#*ing burn soon. And your wrists.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do,” he says.

“And your fingers are going to peel off one by one and you’ll drop. No stopping gravity, man. It’s $%#*ing science.”

“Shut up,” I say.

“I’m going to go and make out with your girlfriend,” he says, then gets up and walks toward the door. “When you finally decide to let go, drop ass-first. Then roll to the edge,” he says.

I laugh because Joe Jr. is funny. I’m also terrified that the net is broken and I’m about to willingly fall to my death. For the first time in my life I don’t think this is funny. I don’t shrug off dying as if it’s some dare. I don’t want to die. I have a plan.

I let go.

Falling feels like Gersday. I think I scream, but I’m not sure. As I fall, I unravel from my plastic wrap. It floats through the air above me because it’s lighter, and I see it twisting there like smoke hangs in the air above Joe Jr.’s cigarettes. I land in the net with a small bounce. I lie there for a few minutes, staring up at the bar, now suspended in the middle of the rig. It looks so small. After a while, I hear things happening outside. A truck or a tractor or something. I hear yelling. Big Joe screaming “$%#*, $%#*, $%#*!”

I roll to the edge of the net and flip myself over it and onto the floor. I think about climbing to the platform again, but I know I have to drive home today.

“About time,” Joe Jr. says when I walk into the chalet. Hannah is there, packed and ready to go. “She wouldn’t kiss me, dude. You’ve got yourself a $%#*ing gem there.”

I deserve a $%#*ing gem.

60

IT’S A SURPRISINGLY easy transition. Dad sends Mom and Tasha on a four-day all-inclusive vacation, and we move out over the weekend while they’re off getting suntans or pedicures or whatever loose-screw people get in all-inclusive Mexico.

“I think it’s the only way,” he’d said. “Your mother hasn’t really heard anything I’ve said in years.”

Dad and I talked about everything last night. Then we called Lisi and told her what was going on. She told me she might come home for Christmas if she could stay with Dad and me in the new house. When I hung up, Dad and I talked about Tasha. How she used to hurt me and Lisi. How she probably still hits Mom. He looked numb and didn’t say much, and just listened. He had a tear in his eye when he hugged me at the end. He told me he was sorry.

“Your mother always said it was just you two exaggerating,” he said.

“I don’t really want to talk to them again,” I said. “Is that okay?”

He said it was okay, but I guess we both know there will be times I have to talk to them again. I can almost picture the day my mother is on her deathbed and I say something kind and poignant like “I know you never meant to hurt me. I know you were doing the best you could with what you had.” What woman looks down at her pregnant belly and expects a psychopath?

We’re moved in by Sunday night. Dad wasn’t a pu**y about it, either. He took what was his. The car. The gym equipment. The stereo system. We emptied his man cave into the truck, and we emptied the entire contents of my bedroom and the guest room, which will be Dad’s new bedroom suite. He took all of his clothing and the Ping-Pong table. He even went into the attic and took everything that came to him from his parents. He got his mother’s engagement ring out of Mom’s jewelry box. And her two quilts from their closet.

My new room is closest to the pool. This morning I swam some laps and sat in the hot tub for fifteen minutes before I took a shower. I was at the breakfast bar before six thirty. Dad bought frozen waffles and real bacon. He stuffed the fridge full of shit Mom would never buy. I eat four waffles and three strips of bacon. He eats the same thing. I will be fat in three months. I pretty much don’t care.

We leave at the same time for work and school. It’s a shorter drive to Hannah’s from here. It’s a shorter drive to everywhere. There’s no security guard to give me judgmental looks on my way out. At night, from the third-floor deck, you can see endless stars because the sky isn’t polluted with gated-community security lighting. And no one knows us here. No one cares. I have no idea why we ever stayed in that other house for so long after Network Nanny. It’s like no one ever thought about how freeing it would be to get the hell out and start over. Or maybe some of us didn’t want to.

When Hannah gets in the car, we kiss good morning. She smells like berries. This makes me smile like crazy.

She writes in a new little book—one that isn’t waterlogged. When I bought it for her in Virginia, on our way home, she told me she was sorry that she had kept her family a secret from me. I didn’t know what to say, so I just hugged her.

We all have secrets, Hannah.

I missed six days of school, but I don’t have that much to make up. Dad will come in later today for a final meeting with the guidance counselor, Fletcher, and me. I’m going to college. I’m taking the first step by getting back into regular classes. Best Monday ever.

But in SPED, I feel like I’m leaving behind a whole family. Fletcher tells them I have something to say and I get up and sit on my desk and say, “I’m leaving today.”

“I thought you left last week,” Kelly boy says.

“Yeah,” Jenny says.

Taylor is rocking.

“I don’t mean leaving Blue Marsh. I mean this room. I’m going into other classes,” I say.

“About f**kin’ time,” Deirdre says.

Jenny looks like she’s going to have a fit.

“I’m still going to come by and say hi, you know?”

“Bring cupcakes,” Karen says. “It’s the least you could do.”

“Yeah,” someone agrees.

“Just go, Gerald,” Jenny says.

I see Deirdre’s foot has come off her footrest, so I kneel down and put it back where it belongs. When I stand up, there’s nothing left to say. I pick up my backpack and head for the door.

Fletcher says, “I like chocolate cupcakes, Gerald.”

I nod and close the door behind me. When I get outside, I’m scared to death. My first class is Language Arts and I have to talk about Romeo and Juliet and I’m not sure I can be what they want me to be. But I’ll try.

“You okay?” Hannah asks me at lunch.

“Fine,” I say, but I’m smirking like crazy and she smirks back and it’s really hard not to ask her to marry me on the spot. Slow down. Slow down. Slow down.