Two
IT WAS SUMMER, WHICH MEANT THAT NOTHING WAS HAPPENING. It was insanely hot, making it hard to care about anything other than eating Popsicles. My house was empty; my mom was working, my dad was in Milwaukee with his new family, and the triplets were all flipping burgers at different fast-food restaurants. I’d wander the house, listening to music on my headphones, never changing out of my pajamas. I was supposed to get a job, but I hadn’t filled out any of the applications. I was fine with just keeping up my babysitting gigs. My mom, who loved me so much and was so tired, gave up, let me have the house to myself, and at first I was happy for the silence, but soon it began to feel oppressive, like the walls knew I was the only person there and could shrink down to hold me in place.
I wasn’t looking for a friend or anything like that. I was bored. And Zeke, this new boy who seemed stunned to find himself in this dinky little town, was something that could occupy my time.
Two days after we’d first met at the public pool, after I gave him a little piece of paper with my address on it, Zeke rode his bike over to my house. He had on an oversize black Road Warriors T-shirt, two angry wrestlers, their faces painted, weird shoulder pads. My brothers loved these dudes, too. I couldn’t imagine people who seemed more different than Zeke and my brothers, but if you were a boy, there were just things you loved, I guess.
“Hey,” he said, smiling. “I live, like, four blocks away.”
I just shrugged, unsure of what to do now that he was here.
“Thanks for inviting me,” he said. I shrugged again. What was wrong with my tongue? Why did it feel so fuzzy?
“This town is weird,” he said. “It’s like a bomb was dropped on it, and you guys are just getting back to normal.”
“It’s pretty boring,” I finally said, and my jaws ached with the effort.
“It’s always better to be bored with someone else,” he offered. I gestured for him to follow me inside, into the air-conditioning.
I didn’t know exactly what to do with him, but I wanted it to be clear that we weren’t going to have sex in my empty house. I had been nervous over the past two days, worrying what I was or was not getting myself into, all the things that I did not yet want to do. I needed Zeke to know that it wasn’t that kind of thing, so we just sat on the sofa and watched horror movies on VHS, eating Pop-Tarts, which felt so far away from what I thought sex might be that it seemed safe. I was trying to put off talking for as long as possible, until it became inevitable. By then, I thought, I’d have something interesting to tell him.
“Do you like it here?” Zeke asked me while I was taking out one tape and trying to put in another. And now we had to talk. I guessed I was okay with this.
“It’s fine,” I said, crouched over the VHS machine. And it was, honestly. What would I do in a city? Go dancing? Eat a fifty-dollar steak at some fancy restaurant? Well, I mean, maybe go to a museum. That would be fun. But I was sixteen. I lived inside of myself way more than I lived inside of this town.
“But,” he said, pressing me, “what do you do for fun?”
“This,” I said, frustrated, holding up a copy of Fright Night. What did he want from me? Did I have to prove to him that I was cool, that I didn’t belong in Coalfield? “Why?” I finally asked, turning it back on him. “Where did you come from that’s so great?”
“Memphis,” he said. “And it’s not so great, really. But, you know, there’s some okay stuff. Memphis Chicks baseball games. Mall of Memphis, you can ice-skate there. Audubon Park.”
“Well, okay, that does sound pretty cool. Ice-skating would be cool.”
“But,” he said, smiling, “here we are.”
“Why did you move here?” I asked him.
“I didn’t have any say in it. It’s messed up.” He kind of looked at me for a few seconds, like he was trying to decide what he would and would not tell me. And this intrigued me, that his story required editing. I got up off the floor and sat next to him on the sofa.
“My dad’s been having an affair,” he told me. “I guess he’s been having a few of them, because one of the women found out about the other one.”
“Oh, god,” I said.
“Yeah, and she called our house to rat him out, but I answered the phone. And she told me about how he was really a bad guy and was treating her wrong, and that I needed to divorce him and then get that other lady to stop seeing him, and only then would she think about staying with him, and I was like, ‘Ma’am, I’m his son,’ and she said, ‘Oh, honey, you have such a high voice,’ and I hung up.”