“No, it’s true. This is a small town. When we aren’t working our butts off, there’s nothing to do but get drunk, wasted, or pregnant.”
“You really believe that?” he says.
“No.”
“So why do you say it?”
“Everybody says it.” My voice is rising. I feel awkward sitting on his bed next to him. I feel defensive, freaked out, and attracted to him at the same time. I’m not even sure what I’m doing here. His sheets have dolphins on them. He’s practically old enough to vote, and he has dolphin sheets. He’s put more time into decorating his bedroom than my dad’s put into stocking his shop.
He says, “I like your cowboy boots.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“No, really. They’re great.”
For a split second I’m thinking that these boots must be better looking than I’d realized. Then I have a terrible realization. Of course. I’ve read about this just a few weeks ago. Guys compliment girls’ shoes to tell them they’re gay. It was a three-page article in
Seventeen
on “gaydar detection.” But it suddenly all makes sense. The perfect hair. The perfect room. Hanging out with me.
All repressed gay guys have homely, insecure girl friends. I’m the neurotic sidekick. He’s gorgeous and I’m the village idiot. How could I have been so stupid? But then the sidekicks never know. That’s why they always get shot instead of the main character.
Virgil looks at me funny and then puts his hand on my elbow. “Are you all right, KJ?”
“I’m fine,” I say, choking a little. I have to test the water. “Do you show all the girls your bedroom?”
Virgil does the shy smile thing, still holding on to my elbow. “No girls. I did show it to Dennis though. He’s going to help me do a Web page with some of my stuff.”
I knew it. No girls. Dennis and Virgil. He’s holding my elbow because I’m the homely sidekick. I could cry.
Virgil lets go and scoots backward. “You don’t have to worry about me attacking you or anything.”
“Oh,” I say. Of course I don’t. Outside, I laugh, like a complete idiot. Inside, I gasp, like a complete idiot. He’s going to tell me now and I can’t stand it.
Then Virgil does something else I don’t get and have no cultural preparation for: he takes my hand. His hand is surprisingly big and warm. I’m totally confused. I grab my hand back. We stare at each other.
“Okay,” he says. “Not a good idea. I’ll get my pictures.”
“No. I mean . . . It’s just . . . my dad doesn’t like me to be in guys’ rooms. Even if they’re . . .”
Virgil raises his eyebrows at me. They disappear into his hair. Gay guys always have the best hair. The article said so. He says, “Even if they’re what?”
I go into bolting mode. How am I supposed to know what to do now? I say, “Even if they don’t like girls like that.”
Virgil stares and shakes his head. “Like girls like what?”
If my mouth were a faucet I would definitely need a plumber. “Don’t get mad.”
“Like what? Do you think I’m gay or something?”
“You’re not?” My eyes wander around the room. Maybe I could pretend to be having a seizure.
Virgil stands up, twisted off to one side with his hand on his hip. He looks like he’s dropped something on the floor. “No. I’m not.”
“I’m sorry.” I feel like my head is going to burst. “I’d better go.”
I run to the door and practically fling it open. Through the darkness Eloise’s voice bellows, “Don’t forget your books.” I don’t know where her voice is even coming from, but when I get to the kitchen I look down and see three books on a chair. I spin backward and Virgil is right behind me.
We stare at each other again.
“Whatever,” he says.
I gather up the books. I can’t get out fast enough. I say, “I’m sorry.”
“Life’s too short to be sorry.”
He escorts me past his great-aunt’s demonic sculptures. He opens the door and holds it open, but not in a nice way. I rush out the door and don’t look back. I should have tried the seizure.
TEN COOL THINGS ABOUT WOLVES
1. A wolf can use its hair to tell other wolves it’s going to beat them up.
2. A wolf can run at speeds of between 28 and 40 miles per hour for up to 20 minutes, can jog almost indefinitely, and may cover distances of up to 125 miles in a day. That’s what I call endurance.
3. A wolf’s teeth and jaw strength could pop a monster truck tire.
4. The wolf pack could have its choice of elk victims but it chooses the sick, old, or weak. I think that’s so ecologically polite.
5. Wolf pups are low on the pecking order but they still get to wrestle with the alpha without getting their head ripped off.
6. A wolf’s sense of smell is practically bionic. It’s more than a hundred times better than humans.
7. Wolves pee with form and function: they can mark territory, show dominance, and leave little love scents. They can even tell their family what’s for dinner.
8. Wolves like to sing on family vacations. And they harmonize.
9. Wolves are the most popular villain in European fairy tales, but they are really the least likely of the major predators to eat you or your grandma.
10. Wolves never worry about yesterday or tomorrow.
TAKING INVENTORY
DAD GETS ME up early to help with inventory. “How are things?” he says over reel boxes.
“Things?” I say.
“School.”
“A’s except for math.”
“How bad?”
“Not good.”
We unpack boxes for a minute. I rip. He stacks. Then I try again. “I took a review test I probably bombed. I can never tell. It’s starting to sound familiar to me though.”
He takes a bag out of my hand. “You’ve gotta have decent math grades, KJ.”
“I’m pretty sure I know that,” I say.
“Don’t back off just because it’s hard. You can’t back off.”
We both stop talking now. This is old, ugly ground.
Dad goes through his checklist. He hands me a box of fishing line. I hand him a set of waders that are in the wrong stack. He says, “What I meant is, how are other things at school?”
“
Other
things?”
He stacks the waders. I know he’ll wait me out.
“I like the newspaper. I’m supposed to write a column about the wolves.”
“Wolves?” Dad looks amused. “That ought to make you some enemies.”
“Yeah, Kenner and his friends. I’m brilliant at making enemies.”
He stops stacking. “Oh yeah?”
“Mandy and Joss told me I’m conceited.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“You think I’m conceited?”
“You don’t look like their little brother anymore.”
“Geez. That’s what they said.”
I rip off some packing and hand him two reels. That was almost a compliment. I say, “Plus there’s this new guy who is really great who I’ve thoroughly offended.”
Dad looks the reels over in the light. “Teenage boys don’t listen enough to be offended.”
“I said I thought he was gay.”
“They listen to that. You really like him?”
I unpack another reel.
He says, “Well, keep your shirt on.”
I hand Dad the reel. “Not every guy is like that.”
He nods. “I thought you said he wasn’t gay.”
We work for another twenty minutes without talking.
Finally he says, “So the year’s off to a good start then.”
“It’s like this every year, only worse. It’s my pattern.”
Dad unwraps a flannel shirt with a pseudo-Indian design on it and shakes it at me. Maybe the ugliest shirt I’ve ever seen. “A pattern is only a pattern if you follow it.”
“What if I
am
that pattern, Dad? Well, not
that
pattern. What were you thinking when you ordered that beast?”
“I like it.”
“I’m the pathetic random pattern. I’m a nonsequential but recurring loser. I’m fluid stupidity.”
Dad smashes plastic wrap in the trash can. “You love a good bellyache, don’t you, Katherine Jean? Do you think you’re the only kid who ever had a bad day or got a bad grade? If you don’t like your life, change it.”
As long as I can remember, this is how it goes. My dad can only listen for so long before he has to judge, criticize, or give advice that involves telling me to “buck up” because “life isn’t fair.” That’s his pattern.
I take the box openers and split open a box of fishing socks and somehow manage to slice myself. Blood jumps out of my finger onto the box and the socks inside. I step back and blood escapes to the floor.
Dad barks at me, “You’re bleeding!”
“Sorry!” I bark back. Scaring my dad scares me a lot more than blood. I run to the sink in the back room and run my finger through the water. Outside the room, I can hear my dad cursing.
Sometimes I wonder if my dad wishes that I had died with my mom. He could have remarried and started a new family. The cold numbs the deep slit in my skin. I wish I knew how to change my patterns—all of them. But it’s like the blood in my finger. I screw up and there it is, just the stuff I’m made of, making a mess again.
After work I head over to the tree house with the books Eloise gave me. I’ve wrapped them in a special bag to keep them nice. They feel heavy and important in my arms. I pick my way slowly through the dying grass and fallen trees that cover my path. Overhead ravens argue and the changed light of fall shifts in the branches of the trees.
When I get to the house I find someone has ripped three of the supporting logs out from under the platform. I stand and stare at its dismembered remains. There are beer cans in a heap by a nearby burned-out circle. Why would someone wreck a tree house? At least wolves destroy things they can eat.
I climb the rope ladder to see if the platform can still hold my weight. It creaks and tips but I don’t drop to the ground. I look at the swaying treetops, and my brain rambles around to thinking about what my dad said in the shop. But how can I change? How do I stop being what I am?
I open up the book and look at all the pictures of dead wolves and wonder what got into people to do such a thing. Then I look at the pictures of dead livestock and I remember.
I hear four-wheelers out in the trees, coming straight for me. I wonder if I’m about to meet the creeps who wrecked the tree house. Or hunters. The bow hunt has started but nobody hunts this close to town. Either way I’m going to feel ridiculous up here. I lie flat on my stomach and think camouflage thoughts.
When they get closer I realize it’s three machines. I see a red flag flying through the lodgepole, which I recognize as Road Work’s. I see the heads of the other riders, but I can’t get high enough to see who they are.
I put my head down flat against the boards of the tree house. I hear yelling, a guy’s voice. The engines whine and grind in a wide circle around the tree house, slowing only slightly. Then I hear a sudden pause in one engine and a muted crashing sound. The other machine stops and Kenner’s unmistakable laugh opens up the ground beneath me.
Kenner. I will seriously die if he sees me up here.
“You shouldn’t drive like that.” I don’t recognize the guy’s voice. It’s not loud, but it has an edge.
Kenner says, “Whatever,
Mom
.”
Road Work’s thick words tumble out, “It’s okay. My folks don’t care.”
The softer voice says, “They make their living off these things, and if Golden Boy cracks one of them open then you can guess who’s going to pay for it.”
“What do you care?” says Kenner.
“Maybe because you don’t.”
“Geez, Will. You’re like an old woman.”
So it’s William. Of course it’s William, being responsible, unlike his little brother Golden Boy.
I hear branches snapping and movement, then shoving. I hear the sudden crack of wood on skin. Kenner whelps, “Hey! Knock it off.”
I hear more branches snapping. And a hard slap of skin.
“Hey,” says Road Work, laughing. “Stop it.”
“Is that your best shot?” Kenner says.
“You’d know if that was my best shot. Forget it. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before we have to be back at the ranch. That guy said he saw ’em clear back on the river-front.”
“This is stupid, there’s nothing this close to town,” says Kenner. An engine starts.
The voice calls back cheerfully, “And that’s why I’m the brains and you’re the little brother. We turn at the tree house and head along the ridge.”
I’m not sure about William’s brains, but in high school he ran the basketball team. He would drive down the court like there was nothing else in the world. When the team was jammed up, he was always there to shoot them out of a hole.
I’ve heard he went away after graduation to play ball but got hurt and lost his scholarship. Now he works for his dad.
The second machine starts as the first screeches away. I look up enough to see the outline of three heads bolting through the forest. William is in the lead, followed by Kenner and Road Work. Branches jut everywhere but neither Kenner or William veer or slow down. Road Work is so square he has to duck at everything.
I stay quiet on the platform until I can’t hear their engines anymore. I wonder what they were looking for. I doubt it’s anything good. That said, it’s nice to know that even Kenner gets the cocky kicked out of him sometimes.
“You’re only pretending to be a sheep,” said the shepherd.
“How do you know?” asked the wolf. “I look like a sheep.”
“You say you are a sheep,” said the shepherd, “but you act like a wolf.”
Aesop’s Fables
NO MORE MR. NICE GUY
MRS. BABY’S EYES are bloodshot and her voice is hoarse. She sends us all to our workstations and tells us to “brainstorm” for an hour. After a short nap on her desk she scans my article like a grocery bill.
She calls me over. “This reads like you took it straight out of a book.”