Thirsty - M. T. Anderson [2]
“What do you want?” I say.
“Tonight,” he says. “What we’re doing is going to the lynching.”
“What?” I say.
“The lynching,” he explains, shifting carefully to let someone bigger pass. “A vampire. I’m going to go over to Bradley tonight to see them, like, stake the undead.”
“You aren’t.”
“After Mom and Dad leave.”
“Chris — ,” Jerk begins, turning toward me.
“Where are Mom and Dad going?” I ask Paul.
“Out to dinner. And I have to keep you with me, slimestick. Mom said that I do. We’ll go out, and if she calls, we went to Mark’s house. We’ll be gone for maybe, like, an hour.”
“Chris,” says Jerk, “if we stay here, all the tater tots will be gone by the time we get there.”
“You’re going to drag me over to Bradley to watch a lynching?” I say hotly. “It’s not like they’re going to do it out in front of everybody. It’ll be in the courthouse.”
He shakes his head. “I’m there, Chris. All the media and everything are going to be there. Some girls from school are going to be there. I will be there. And Mom is, like, Miss Hyper, so you will be there.”
“You are just trying to assert yourself because you’re only half an inch taller than I am,” I say.
“I am not.”
“I’ll get a ruler.”
“Asserting myself.”
“I just don’t believe you,” I say, disgusted.
Paul shakes his head. “I am not going to argue about this, butthole.”
I shrug my shoulders. I head toward the lunchroom.
He’s been a pain to me and to everyone since his girlfriend figured out that he is a geek and dropped him like a tarantula casserole.
When I reach the lunchroom, the others — Tom and Rebecca and her friends — have already found a table and have sat down. They are talking a lot and laughing at Tom’s jokes. He gestures as part of some story and makes a face like a Gila monster.
I pass by their table and look for a way that I might be able to slip in on the end or maybe on one of the corners. I am about to set the tray down in a cramped space when Jerk says over my shoulder, “It’s too crowded. There are some seats over there.”
Rebecca looks up at me and has heard it. She elevates her slim neck.
I am feeling guilty for having tried to ditch Jerk, so now I can’t. We go and sit together, far away from the others. You have to feel bad for him, after all. I feel bad because we all call him Jerk, and he is not the person with the highest self-esteem in the whole world.
“Wait until Tom hears you’re going to the lynching,” says Jerk. “He’ll be so jealous, he’ll be chewing on two-by-fours.”
“Two-by-fours,” I say, staring at my tater tots. “I’m not sure I follow you.”
A year and a half ago my mother and father informed us that as soon as we go away to college, they are getting a divorce. They are waiting.
After their big fight they avoided each other. My father worked late nights at the Staticom laboratory. My mother watched television or called her real-estate clients. Things were very bad for a year. Now, though, they are eating dinner at the same time and sleeping in the same room again, and they recognize each other by sight. They do not like to fight in front of Paul and me, ever since they overheard us referring to them as Ward and June. Now they go out to dinner alone once a month to fight.
Paul is a year older than me, so he can drive. He and his friend Mark are both into video and the media, so they jump at any chance to try and be on TV. Mark was in a crowd on the news once before, after the street near the dam flooded. You could distinctly see him behind the police cordon, waving.
They are in the front seat, and I am in the back seat. I can’t hear much of what they’re saying over the radio. It’s techie talk about the lighting booth in the school auditorium. While they talk Mark keeps on idly making zoom-lens motions with his hands, testing out angles and shots for the camera of the imagination. As usual, Mark’s hair is everywhere and curly. Paul is driving. He got his driver’s license recently, so he is at some stage where he constantly talks to people driving around him. “Uh-dur, ma’am!” he says.