Perfectly Good White Boy Read Online Free Page A

hinges to busted windowpanes and screens. So much shit needed fixing. Which I guess was good. I couldn’t fix shit.
    That morning, I said my usual Brad-greeting: “What’s up, idiot.”
    Brad gave me my usual Sean-greeting: “What’s up, douche.” Then went back to his grunting on the floor with all his tools. I started making peanut butter toast and gulping a ton of orange juice out of the jug, not saying anything. Lately, talking to Brad meant him launching into a list of jobs I needed to do around the house for Mom.
    When I turned to put away the orange juice, my dog Otis jumped up on the counter and ate one of the pieces of peanut butter toast, and I yelled at him and Brad laughed. Brad was like that: the kind of brother who thought it was super amusing when shitty things happened to other people. Or at least to me. Two weeks before, on the Fourth of July weekend, he’d made us demo one of the crappy old sheds in the backyard because the rambler’s landlord knocked money off the rent in exchange for the labor. I’d ended up getting stabbed with a rusty nail and had to go get a tetanus shot, and Brad laughed at that, too. But when I tried to blame our dad for any of this, for me having to sweat my balls off on my one day off from work, or for anything else, either, Brad told me to shut the fuck up.
    â€œI’m busting my ass to help you and Mom out,” Brad had said as we walked into the quick clinic to get my shot. He looked at me with his lips all thin. “Quit acting like a dick.”
    I wanted to say it wasn’t him, it was our dad, but Brad stomped off ahead of me, and that was that. No discussion. No more laughing, either.
    It was one main reason I didn’t get along with Brad. Maybe some brothers like each other, or at least have a good time together. But we never did. All Brad did was save the goddamn day and then laugh at me when shit went south. He’d never say one bad thing about our dad. Never once. And no one else could, either. Brad wouldn’t have it. It drove me crazy.
    I left Brad to be the dishwasher hero, happy to have a job. Happy to be able to get away from the rental and go to work, where there was always something to do and none of it made me feel guilty. It was a normal shift like any other at the Thrift Bin: Wendy was wearing a weird outfit; Neecie Albertson was tagging clothing; Kerry was saying sleazy things; a cashier called us to help carry out a loveseat to the car of this four-hundred-pound man who was driving around on one of those Medicare motor scooters. His wife smelled like baby powder and diapers and bossed us ridiculously about loading the damn thing into their crap-filled minivan. Your basic Thrift Bin regulars, hoarder customers. That day must have been a sale day; the regulars/hoarders crowd always came in on those days to swoop down on whatever they’d been waiting to get marked down.
    After the loveseat thing, Kerry bought us Taco Bell for lunch, and then we baled tons of unsaleable clothing into the rag baler, which Kerry was training me on because soon as I turned eighteen, I could legally use it, and then he would celebrate because he hated baling. I remember thinking that would be cool, to be the one doing the baling for a change, so Kerry could handle the donation door (and all the customers and their annoying tax receipts) instead of me.
    It was a heat wave, a mid-July kind of thing. The Thrift Bin was pretty horrible in the back, with no A/C.
    â€œSweating like a whore in church,” Kerry kept saying. He always said it around Neecie Albertson too, like he wanted to make her react. She never reacted. I was proud of her, in that way, but also waiting for her to finally crack. Kerry was relentless in his grossness to girls like that.
    Despite the heat, Wendy was in a good mood. She even changed the radio to the country station when Neecie asked her to, though everyone else hated country, especially Kerry: