Perfectly Good White Boy Read Online Free Page B

it made him extra bitchy. But then a bunch of weird injuries happened: one of the cashiers punctured her thumb with a tagging gun, I got a big scrape across my forearm shoving a busted baby buggy down the compactor, Kerry dropped a box of books on his foot. Wendy told everyone to relax—the accidents and injuries freaked her out. She busted out a box of popsicles and made everyone take a break while she filled out injury reports and we all shot the shit, looking at all the crazy things on the break room shelf, laughing at this book called The Christian Guide to Sex , which of course didn’t have any pictures in it and Kerry was surprised the whole book wasn’t just a bunch of blank pages.
    I didn’t find out what Neecie picked for the break room altar because my shift ended before hers, but it was a choice between a million-year-old condom that came from some old guy who died at the nursing home, some nasty Polaroids of this chick in a bikini sitting on an ugly couch smoking a cigarette, and a crucifix made out of wire hangers. Wendy had found the condom; Kerry had found the Polaroids. I’d found the crucifix.
    Wendy even let me go a little early when things slowed down, which was awesome, because there was a party out at Prairie Lake where Hallie’s cousin’s cabin was. Everyone was going waterskiing, and I wanted to get out there fast because it was supposed to thunderstorm later, and I loved waterskiing.

    Hallie had been drinking all day. Everyone had been; it was kind of a sloppy all-day-swimming thing. Which was good; I had met all of Hallie’s friends, but I still felt a little weird being around them, since they all had known each other forever and had a million inside jokes and talked about people I didn’t know. And her cousin was in college and so everyone was talking about college, like they were already there or something. I was glad they were all drunk by the time I got there.
    We went out on her cousin’s boat. Hallie wore a white bikini, and she looked tanned and sunburned, both at once. She was drinking this crap that her girlfriends always drank: these super sweet malt liquor bottled drinks that made their mouths a bloody red color, and she was being kind of crazy. Like, loud. Telling her cousin driving the boat to go faster and swearing a ton more than normal and touching me more than usual in front of everyone. And screaming laughing when she got up on skis. Just being really drunk, I guess.
    Around seven we came back to her cousin’s cabin because everyone wanted to get some pizza in town. The girls changed out of their swimsuits; the guys finished their beers; everyone scooped up keys and purses and hashed out who was sober enough to drive.
    â€œDo you want to go?” Hallie asked as she stood on the deck in her bikini, wrapping a towel around her waist.
    â€œWhatever. You decide.”
    â€œI just feel so . . . I don’t know. I’m not hungry. You’re probably hungry, though, right?”
    I was really hungry. And pizza sounded good. But I was always hungry, I guess. I could eat an entire pizza first thing in the morning. But I looked at her and saw everyone leaving, and I didn’t care where they were going.
    â€œOkay, let’s just stay,” she said. “Okay?”
    â€œCool. Yeah. Fine.”
    From the deck, we watched the guys wrap up the ponykeg in a trash bag and load it into someone’s trunk, taking the party with them, or maybe just getting Hallie’s cousin to return it for another.
    Hallie went inside and brought me back a Coke, and we sat watching the sun get low over the lake. Though I was exhausted, I felt pretty good. It was hard to get alone with her sometimes. If we weren’t at a party with a bunch of people, then I’d be at her house, late long nights where we’d sit on the couch and watch TV, and I’d wish her parents would just go to bed already so she’d calm down and let me touch