We go by the convenience store for a couple of gallons of gas, and I buy us both donuts and strawberry-guava drinks. After getting my car gassed up, we’re standing there in the middle of the street, and she has this sort of shy look on her face like we’ve just been on a first date and she’s wondering if I’m going to kiss her.
“You know what, Aimee Finecky?” I say. “I had a pretty rotten night last night until you came along and found me.”
She looks like she wants to say something back but can’t find the right words.
So I’m like, “Where do you eat lunch Mondays?”
And she’s, “In the cafeteria.” Which, of course, is where any red-blooded nerd would eat.
So I’m, “Aw, dude, that’s lame.”
And she’s like, “It is?”
I can tell she feels like she said something stupid, so I go, “I don’t mean you eating there’s lame. I mean the food’s lame. No, are you kidding? I’d eat in the cafeteria every day if the food was better.”
“They have pizza on Mondays,” she says.
“Oh, yeah?” I say, like that’s the greatest news I’ve heard all year. “I am the man when it comes to pizza. Why don’t I meet you outside the south door, and we’ll eat pizza and relive our greatest triumphs of newspaper delivery?”
“Really?” She looks at me like I might just be planning a practical joke of some kind.
“I’ll be there right after Algebra.”
“Me too,” she says. “I mean, not after Algebra but after Calculus, or I mean after French. I got mixed up.”
I give her hand a squeeze. “Wish me luck for when I get back home. I’ll need it.”
“Good luck,” she says, and she’s so earnest I’m tempted to believe it just might help.
Chapter 18
So why do I call my stepdad Geech? That’s simple. His actual name is Garth Easley, so of course, I started calling him Geasley and then it was the Geast and then it was Geechy and now it’s just Geech. Which is perfect because it sounds like how he makes you feel if you’re around him for more than fifteen seconds. Geeeech. Kind of like retch.
He came along when I was eight, and believe me, I wasn’t happy when we loaded up and moved in with him. Holly thought it was the most fandangulous thing that ever happened. It was like she didn’t miss Dad at all. She was just happy to have a pool in the backyard so she could invite over all the high school hotshots who never really liked her before.
Mom changed when she and Geech got married. She started spending all sorts of money on her hair and makeup. She traded in her long hair and jeans and started dressing like something out of a hoity-toit magazine all the time. I don’t think she really even likes him all that much, though. You’ll never see her leaning in close to him on the sofa, running her fingers through what’s left of his hair or sneaking up behind him and grabbing his bony ass or dancing to Jimmy Buffett songs on the patio in the moonlight. All that disappeared when she kicked Dad to the curb.
She’ll be on Geech’s side this morning, though. They’ll present a united front against me. Luckily, I still have a couple of beers left from the twelve-pack I bought last night. They’re pretty warm, but that’s all right. I’m not exactly drinking them for refreshment purposes this morning.
The sun’s been up for a while when I get home. This has been one hell of a long day or two days or whatever. Time for a swig of the mouthwash I keep in the glove compartment. There’s not much chance I can sneak in, but I try it anyway. Quiet as a second-story man, I get the front door open and shut with barely a sound and creep upstairs without a single creak. The safety of my room is at the end of the long hall, but I make it there fine and am just starting to take my shoes off when the door flies open.
Mom starts in first. “Where have you been, Mister? And don’t even try saying you spent the night with a friend. We called everywhere, including all the hospitals between here and your sister’s house.”
For someone in pink pajamas, she can sure pull off an angry pit-bull look, but actually it’s nice of her to warn me about having called my friends because that’s exactly the defense I’ve been planning to present. That’s all right. Something close to the truth will work better anyway.
“I went driving around,” I say. “It got to be pretty late and I ran out of gas, so…”
“Your sister called.” Mom pauses to let the horror of that information sink in. But I figure it’ll be better to keep quiet until I find out exactly what the charges against me are.
So she’s like, “I’m at a loss, Sutter. What am I supposed to do with a boy who tries to steal an expensive bottle of liquor from his brother-in-law and then nearly burns his own sister’s house down after she worked so hard to get it?”
Worked hard? I don’t know where Mom gets that—unless she considers getting a boob job hard work, because that’s pretty much what got Holly married to Kevin and living in the big house. Of course, this isn’t the time to point that out, so all I can say is that I never tried to steal the bottle.
Nobody listens to that, though. Instead, Geech is all, “I’ll tell you what you do with a boy like that—military school.”
It sure didn’t take him long to throw out that old line. Usually, I have to spar a few rounds with him before he goes military school on me.
“He needs to understand the meaning of discipline,” he says, using the third person like I’m not sitting right there in front of him. “He needs to understand the value of other people’s property. A good, tough drill sergeant will pound that into him.”