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Things get a little murky from there. I don’t pretend to know a whole lot about how the law and the government and all that work, but the deal they gave Bobby had a real bad smell about it. The lawyers and the judge, the cops, and the guy whose car Bobby stole got together with my parents and chiseled out this deal that allowed for a choice between jail and joining the army.

  I’m not going to lie and say Bobby hadn’t become pretty well acquainted with the police in our town over the years, but he never got in any serious-serious trouble. Wouldn’t you think they’d just give him probation? Of course, I didn’t want to see him go to jail, but sending an eighteen-year-old just out of high school into a war for having a little bit too much fun doesn’t seem nearly fair. In fact, I have to wonder if it’s even legal.

  That’s what happened, though. My parents didn’t even fight for him—just the opposite. Talk about cowardly. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to forgive them for that. They even tried to act like the army was going to be the greatest thing in the world for Bobby. Sure, the military would straighten him right out. First time he came home in uniform, my dad was so proud, you’d have thought Bobby was a five-star general. Of course, the war had only just got started then. Dad told me they wouldn’t need that many soldiers over there. Bobby probably wouldn’t even have to leave the States. There would just be one big raid. Bam! Saddam would go down and that would be it. Mission accomplished.

  But it didn’t happen that way. More and more soldiers had to go. And they didn’t come back like they were supposed to. The president kept sending them in again and again and again. And every time, I got madder and madder at my parents and at this whole stupid town with its so-called upright citizens—the lawyers and the judge—who took Bobby away and stranded me here, the only real human being left in this Martian town.

  But now I’ve got a plan. When Bobby gets back, we’ll move in together, maybe get one of those rent houses on the south side of town. He’ll get a job and I’ll finish high school. Then I’ll get a job too, and we’ll save our money until we have enough to shake this town right off our backs.

  I haven’t told Bobby the plan yet, and all this waiting is wearing on my nerves. Wishing and hoping for too long can take a heavy toll. So, a couple days after the battle of Casa Crazy, when I get a glimpse of someone who looks a whole lot like Bobby, I have to wonder if I can trust my own eyes.

  5

  I’m at Corker Park with Brianna, sitting on a picnic table eating a snow cone, and on the street just to the east, Sophie Lowell rolls by in her red Toyota—Sophie’s sister Mona and Bobby were real hot and heavy before he went into the army—and I swear, someone who looks just like him is riding in Sophie’s passenger seat, wearing a red baseball cap and tipping a beer. I try to get Brianna to load up in her car and chase them, but she just tells me I’m imagining things.

  “But it looked just like him,” I tell her.

  “No,” she says, “you just want him back so bad, you think it looks like him.”

  Maybe she’s right. Later, I tell my parents about it, and they laugh and say there’s no way Bobby can be back yet. The army does things on a tight schedule, my dad says. My mom pats my cheek and tells me to be patient. “Besides,” she says, “he would’ve called if he was coming home early.”

  They both grin ridiculously at me like I’m just their foolish girl and there’s nothing easier than being patient about Bobby still being stuck out there in the bomb-infested world. But they must be right. It’s probably just wishful thinking. If Bobby was back, he’d come straight to me before anything else. Still, I can’t quit replaying, over and over, the memory of that car driving by. And each time I picture it, the passenger looks more like Bobby.

  Saturday night, Tillman’s sister Dani is having a party at her place, and the word is Sophie Lowell is supposed to be there. Nothing good ever happens at Dani’s, but Tillman, Gillis, and Brianna are hot to party, and me, I don’t care if people think I’m crazy—I’m determined to have a talk with Sophie about who she’s been driving around with lately.

  Besides, I have to admit it—I have a thing for Tillman Grant. I never told anybody but my girl Brianna, and she said I should let it go. But what can you do? Your heart’s like a little kid. You can tell it to keep its hands to itself, but still it keeps reaching out for what it wants. That’s how it is with Tillman—my heart won’t stop reaching for him. It drives me crazy, those parts of myself I can’t control.

  Brianna says I’m being ridiculous—you can’t fall in love at six years old—but I swear the first time I saw Tillman in Mrs. Gray’s first-grade class, my stomach did a backflip. It didn’t matter how big his Adam’s apple was or that he was a little bit dense—he was dark and brown-eyed and hard-muscled as a Doberman pinscher. No one in our grade could take him in a fight. And tough as he was, something about his eyes made you want to take care of him, made you want to lean your head against his, stroke his hair, and say, “Everything’s going to be all right, Tillman Grant.”

  Besides a lot of wrestling in the grass, nothing ever happened with Tillman till fourth grade. I couldn’t help myself. We were stuck together in the classroom during recess—the teacher sentenced us to hard time because she overheard us cussing—and we started to get rambunctious as usual. I chased Tillman around and around the room, both of us jumping from one desk to the next, and finally one of the desks toppled over and he crashed to the floor. In the next second, I straddled his hips and without thinking at all, I leaned down and smacked a big, wet kiss right on his mouth.

  This is the part I’ll probably never forget till the end of recorded time—he reached up and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Damn you, Ceejay,” he said, all disgusted. “I don’t want your ugly frogmouth on me.”

  That’s what he said! It’s not enough that I’m what I guess some people would say is a little stocky—just a little—but now I’ve got a frogmouth!

  I know a lot of girls would’ve burst into tears at that, but not me. No. I punched him right in the eye and then rose up and sat at the back of the class with my arms folded across my chest. Didn’t talk to him for the rest of the week.

  But the bad thing is, still to this day, I’ll look in the mirror at my mouth and see he was right. My mouth is too wide and my lips are too thin, just like an ugly frog. I try sucking in my cheeks and it works for a moment—I actually look almost pretty—but you can’t hold them in forever. Lipstick doesn’t help either. I’m a frogface, and kissing Tillman didn’t turn me into any princess.

  Anyway, his sister Dani lives in a trailer home south of town with her two-year-old boy, Ian, and whatever stupid boyfriend she’s hooked up with at the time. Right now it just happens to be a weed dealer named Jace. Most of the people who hang out over there are the typical Knowles late-teens, early-twenties losers, and this night is no different. You know the type—they probably dropped out of high school and can’t keep steady jobs. Most of them I see around town all the time, but there are also some out-of-towners who came in to buy weed and whatever else Jace has to sell. They’re not the best types to hang around, but I’ll take them over the goodie-goodies of this town any day.

  When we get to Dani’s, everyone is packed into the living room and kitchen, drinking beer and smoking weed. Plus, some idiot brought some OxyContin, which is like this extra-high-strength prescription painkiller, so half the gang gets to walking and talking like they just stepped out of a bad dream. Don’t worry, I stay away from that kind of thing—I don’t even like smoking weed—but Gillis, Tillman, and Brianna get a little more messed up than what they’re used to. I’d drag them out of there, but Sophie still hasn’t shown up.

  At one point, Dani has little Ian asleep on the floor between a couple of chairs and Gillis accidentally steps on his head. Ian barely lets out a whimper, but Jace gets all pissed off and righteous and threatens to kick Gillis’s ass. Like stepping on the kid’s head is somehow so much worse than having him lying around in the middle of a cloud of cigarette a
nd weed smoke. Nothing comes of the threat, though. As soon as Jace starts to get up, he loses his balance and falls back over his metal folding chair and lies there laughing so hard he forgets about Gillis completely.

  Having had only a couple of beers, I see all this as very pathetic, but not as pathetic as what Brianna and Tillman get up to later. Brianna is a big girl, and I don’t mean stocky like me. She’s B-I-G. So she dyes her hair black, wears a nose ring and black, baggy clothes and black fingernail polish. You just have to know that’s not the look her parents had in mind when they gazed down into the crib at their little pink baby and thought of a sweet name like Brianna. Me, I never went in for that look myself because it seems so obvious that you’re trying to make people think you don’t care about not being pretty. But whatever helps Brianna make it through the day is all right with me.

  Still, there’s nothing she wants more than a boyfriend, but this guy who starts hitting on her at the party is not what she needs. Not at all. For one thing, he must be thirty years old, and for another, he has this pockmarked, smooshed-in face that makes him look like a bank robber with panty hose over his head. To top it off, he’s all proud about how he just came back from a year in jail for possession with intent.

  None of that matters to Brianna, though. She’s standing next to him at the kitchen counter, giggling and playing touchy-touchy and trading hits off a blunt. I try to get her to come outside so I can talk some sense into her, but she pushes me away and goes, “Just because Tillman’s found himself a slut, don’t start trying to ruin my time.”

  I don’t know what hurts more—that Tillman really is hitting on some tramp or that Brianna went out of her way to say the meanest thing she could to me.

  It’s a fact, though. Tillman’s latched on one of the out-of-towners. She looks like she’s thirty too, but she’s probably really only about twenty-four. She’s just lived hard. Has a skeleton figure and gray teeth that you’d swear could fall out on the orange carpet any second. An absolute skank. It wouldn’t surprise me if she worked part-time hooking at the truck stop by the interstate.

  This is what I can’t understand. What attracts a guy to one girl and not another? Why does he fumble around with someone he knows doesn’t have any staying power when there’s someone else right across the room who’s mooned over him practically her whole life? No way is this girl even better-looking than me. Sure, she’s thin, but as far as I’m concerned she’s downright ugly, and I don’t mean just physically. She has an ugly spirit too. You can see it in the droop of her eyelids and the slant of her mouth. Still, there Tillman is brushing her hair back and kissing her neck like she’s the love of his life while his beer sloshes down his pants leg.

  I go to the kitchen, get a beer, and stand there staring at this stupid wall hanging with all these corny sayings about how to be happy on it:

  Dance in the moonlight

  Blow on a dandelion

  Kiss a kitten

  Play with a baby

  Bite the bottom out of an ice cream cone

  Run in the purple clover

  Say I love you

  Not a single word anywhere about taking a handful of OxyContin and hitting the bong.

  “Hey, Ceejay.” It’s Jace. He has a look on his face like he just came out of a coma. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. Just admiring the artwork.”

  He grins at me and narrows his eyes. He thinks he’s a cocksman. “You know, there’s something about you. You ever think about maybe wearing some makeup?”

  “Why? Do you think I’m a clown or something?”

  “What?” He’s too much of a moron to get the joke.

  “Nothing,” I say. “I heard Sophie Lowell was supposed to be here.”

  “Sophie Lowell’s a pain in the ass.” He takes a drink of beer. “So, Dani tells me your brother’s in Iraq.”

  “He was. He’ll be coming home pretty soon.”

  He leans against the counter and runs his hand through his mop of thick brown hair. “Yeah,” he said, “I thought about joining the marines, shipping over, and kicking some hajji ass.”

  “So why didn’t you, then?”

  “I don’t like taking orders. I still might go over there, though. Recruit some of my buddies, get us some assault rifles, and do our own private commando deal. Shit, we’d take Baghdad in a day.”

  “I don’t think they allow private commandos over there unless they’re part of some big corporation.”

  “Hey, I’m not gonna ask for permission.”

  “Well, but I think the military would probably stop you before you got there.”

  “Screw the military. Bunch of meatheads. We’d have us a special chopper with rockets on it, machine guns. Black as metal-flake death. No one could stop us.”

  “So, what? You’re gonna fight our military too?”

  “We’ll fight anyone who gets in our way.”

  I just shake my head. It’s too stupid to even get offended by. “I gotta go,” I say, and squeeze past him.

  “Where you headed?”

  “Outside. I feel a little sick to my stomach.”

  “Take a drag on the bong. That’s the best thing for a sick stomach.”

  I don’t even bother to respond to that. The whole party is too much for me—the drunk talk, the smoke, the baby on the floor, and especially Tillman’s lips on that ugly girl’s neck. But what did I expect? That he would get drunk and declare his undying love for me? Superpathetic.

  If I had my own car, I’d hit the road, take a cruise in the country, but I don’t, so I go out and sit in Gillis’s, stare at the silhouettes moving across the closed curtains of the doublewide, and wait to see if Sophie will show up.

  About five minutes later, the front door swings open and here comes Gillis walking across the yard to the car, his body leaning slightly to the side like someone walking in a high wind. Messed up again.

  “What are you doing out here?” he asks, plopping down on the seat next to me. “The party’s inside.”

  “I’m having my own party.”

  “Looks pretty boring.” He puts his hand on my thigh. “But it doesn’t have to be.” He doesn’t even look me in the eye. He just stares at my boobs, this goofy, loose-lipped, drunk smile scrawled on his face.

  I yank his hand away and tell him to quit thinking with his penis because it’s even stupider than he is. It’s not like I’m surprised, though. Ever since about sixth grade, Gillis has had these periodic attacks of the raging hornies. If you’re a girl—any girl—you don’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity when it happens. It’s not so great if you’re a guy either because at the end of the evening, after all the girls have shut him down, he goes looking for a fight. How about that for gay?

  “Come on, Ceejay.” This time he puts his hand on my shoulder and looks me in the eyes. He almost seems tender for a change. “What are you holding out for? It’s not natural.”

  I’m like, “How many times do I have to kick your butt before you learn it’s never going to happen with us?”

  “Hey, you gotta get some experience sometime. You might as well get it with someone you can trust.”

  “Trust to do what? Run the other direction if I get knocked up?”

  “You’re not gonna get knocked up. We’ll be careful.”

  “Famous last words.”

  His hand slinks down toward my breast. I swat it away, and he moves it back to the headrest behind me. “We can just do oral if you want. That’s not even really having sex.”

  “That’s what you say. I say it’s sex as soon as Mr. Trouser Snake takes the stage.”

  “Look.” His hand slides down to the back of my neck. “It won’t even be like it’s me and you doing it. It’ll be like two different people.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  He leans forward like he’s going to kiss me, but stops short. “Because I’ll be pretending you’re somebody else.”

  I have to laugh. “That makes me feel real r
omantic, asshole.”

  “Damn, Ceejay, is that what you’re waiting for? Romance? Don’t be stupid. You think any guy’s going to go around buying roses and lighting candles for a girl like you? Forget it. I’m just trying to do you a favor so you don’t have to go through life not knowing what sex feels like.”

  Oh my God—don’t you know I slap the shit out of him then? And I don’t hold back either. But it doesn’t faze him for a second. Instead, he takes it for some kind of weird invitation to pounce on top of me and squeeze his hand between my thighs. It’s superpathetic. The boy needs to be on some kind of medication—anti-Viagra. I could almost feel sorry for him, but I’m too pissed, so I haul off and head butt him as hard as I can. I mean, wham!

  The secret to a good head butt is to drive the hard part of the top of your forehead right into the fleshy part of the guy’s eyebrow. Not only will it daze him, but you’re likely to draw a decent amount of blood, nothing serious, but enough to put a scare into him. And I’ll tell you this—the head butt I put on Gillis is as good as it gets.

  He rolls off onto the floorboard, and I’m out of the car before he can grab me again. I only look back once. Blood’s trickling down beside his eye as he leans out of the car, propping himself up with one hand on the ground. “Goddamn you, Ceejay,” he whines. “Goddamn you. You gave me a damn brain clot.”

  I just keep walking. “Shit,” Gillis wails behind me. “Jesus Christ!” But I don’t slow down.

  About a half mile down the shoulder of the highway, I start to rethink my choice. Sure, someone I know is bound to drive by, either leaving the party or going to it—maybe Sophie will even stop for me—but at the same time, you never know what kind of creep might be loose on these little country highways—a serial killer, a rapist, the police. Too late, though. A pair of headlights pulls up behind me. They’re so bright I can’t even tell what kind of car they belong to. One thing for sure—if it is a serial killer, he’d better be ready for a fight.