In The Middle of Middle America Page 3

  I push out a laugh when I look in the mirror and see my face. Then I suck on my thumb and begin to rub it along the lipstick mark smudged across my cheek.

  “Holy Hell, Kai,” I say to my reflection. “That was close.”

  LUCY DECKER

  While he taps away at his keyboard, after offering me the deepest and rudest sigh I think I’ve ever been offered straight to my face, I distract myself from his frowning forehead by thinking about the mess back home.

  I couldn’t bring myself to clean it up last night. I was too upset. I should have left the mess as just another white pregnancy test snapped in two and lying on the tiles of my bathroom floor. But no. I had to pander to my rage by tearing down my shower bar, causing all of my shampoos and conditioners and bodywashes to tumble and crash to the tiles. I noticed when I brushed my teeth this morning that one of the shampoo bottles had burst at the bottom, and thick green liquid had formed a puddle under my sink. The thought of cleaning that mess up later is making my temple throb almost as much as the frowning of this ignoramus’s forehead.

  “Nope,” he says after tapping ridiculously loudly against the keyboard in front of him, using just his two stubby forefingers. “There’s no chance. You’ve been awarded your yearly increment already, Lucy. That’s it. This isn’t a place you can come crying to for a pay raise. It’s not how it works in this profession.”

  “Firstly, Mister… Mister…”

  “Thompson,” he says with an eye roll.

  “Yes… well, firstly Mr. Thompson, I am not crying, and I resent you even mentioning the word crying when that is literally an inaccurate description of what I’m doing right―”

  “Well, not crying but...” He sweeps his hands like the ignoramus he is; as if a sweep of his hand is enough of an apology for his misogyny. He really is insufferable. An arrogant, ignorant little toad of a man, with tiny little hands that have tiny, stubby forefingers he can barely type with.

  “Mr Thompson,” I say, before letting a deep exhale release through my nostrils in an attempt to temper the rage bubbling inside of me. “I need a pay raise. It’s for very personal reasons. If I don’t get a pay raise, I’m not sure I’ll be able to continue working here.”

  He sits back clasping his hands behind his head, before gently swinging side to side in his office chair, offering me his sweaty armpits.

  “We simply can’t afford to offer you a pay raise. Now, if you’d like to give your notice, I can detail the procedure for you and we can take it from there―”

  “It doesn’t matter, Thompson,” I say, picking up my box of paperwork from his desk before spinning on my heels. “You just have a good day, huh?” I beam a sarcastic grin at him, then leave his office, slamming the door shut behind me as loudly as I can.

  BRODY EDWARDS

  Sarah-Jane Zdanski curls her thumbs into the top of my boxer shorts and yanks them down; down past my thighs, over my knees and out of only one foot, leaving them dangling from the other. Then she flicks her hair away from her perfect face and stares up at me. Those eyes. Big and bright; staring right into my soul as she gently lifts my throbbing cock away from my belly and begins to slowly run her hand up and down it.

  “You’re a filthy ho,” I whisper.

  She smiles and then, keeping eye contact with me, lowers her face, her mouth opening, before she takes me inside of her, her tongue slowly running around the rim of my helmet. Then she begins to lower and suck, as if she has been gasping for this blowjob as much as I have.

  I grip the bedsheets with my left hand, and roll my eyes into the back of my head.

  “Oh…I’m gonna cum,” I whisper, gripping the bedsheets tighter. “I’m gonna… I’m gonna...”

  “What the hell is going on in here?” Mom says, swinging my bedroom door open. “Your moaning before you’re even out of bed this morning?”

  I cross my legs as quickly as I can, grab a fistful of my bed cover and pull it over me.

  “I uh... I’m uh… just watching the news,” I say, sitting up against the steel rail at the head of my bed, dragging the duvet with me, and nodding toward the tiny TV in the corner of my room.

  She stares at it, and as she does, I hold my eyes closed. Mortified. A cringe racing around my stomach. She didn’t see me... did she?

  “Watching the news? But the TV is paused. That’s on VHS. What are you doing? Watching a recording of the news? Did you tape-record the news, Brody?”

  “Gee, mom. Which one of those million questions do you want me to answer first?”

  She stares at me, then back at the paused image of Sarah-Jane Zdanski with white lines of worn tape blinking just under her perfect jugs.

  “That girl’s blouses are way too low-cut for a news reporter,” Mom says. Then she snatches at the boxer shorts dangling from my foot and picks up the dirty socks I wore yesterday from my bedroom floor. “Come on, Brody. Summer’s over. Get your ass outta bed.”

  I pull back the covers as soon as she leaves my room, stare at my limp dick, then back up at Sarah-Jane paused on the tiny TV before mumbling to myself, “Fuck it. I’ll do one later.”

  I try not to think about Sarah-Jane as I shower. I finish, get dressed, go downstairs and then I grab some OJ and a slice of toast before leaving the house without saying goodbye to Mom. She’s used to it… us not talking. We’ve never fallen out or anything. It’s just… well… I can never really think of anything I want to say to her. Fifteen-year- old boys don’t tend to have too much in common with middle-aged moms. I love her and all that kinda thing. I just never tell her I love her. Same way she never tells me she loves me, even though I’m pretty sure she does. She picks up my stained boxer shorts and socks from my bedroom floor every morning. Surely nothing says “I love you” more than that.

  “Dude, my mom walked in on me jacking off this morning,” I tell Stevie as soon as he has stepped outside his house and we have perfected our handshake greeting.

  “No way, man,” Stevie says, adjusting the straps of his backpack on his shoulders. “What happened?”

  “I was whacking out…”

  “To SJZ.”

  “Of course, to SJZ,” I say, nodding, “and I was just about to squirt a whole juice carton-load up my stomach when the bedroom door sweeps open. ‘Brody. Get up. Get up. Time for school.’ I was like, ‘Hey, Mom get the fuck outta my room,’ y’know? Bitch never knocks. Anyway, get this, dude. She stares at the TV and I have Sarah-Jane Zdanksi paused… Y’know the one where she’s wearing that green top that cuts right down to here?” I point to my belly button.

  “Yeah… yeah.” Stevie says. “Oh man, I’ve jerked off to that a hundred times. Maybe a thousand. I dunno. So did your mom... did she, like, did she know what you were doing? Where was yo dick, dude?”

  “I’d pulled the duvet over me when she walked in. I’ve no idea if she knows what I was doing. She just stared at the TV, stared at me and then I was all like, ‘Yo, get the fuck outta ma room, bitch,’ y’know?”

  Stevie holds his hand to his mouth and giggles into it like Michael Jackson giggles. He only ever giggles like that around me. It’s straight up, deep, heavy man-laughs and slaps on the back around everybody else. Stevie’s got a reputation to live up to. He’s supposed to be the man of the students. The main man. Our football team’s quarterback. You can’t be heard giggling like Michael Jackson if you’re the QB.

  “Y’know who I jerked off to this mornin’?” he says to me as we turn on to Walnut Street.

  “Not SJZ?”

  “Not Sarah-Jane this morning, no,” he says, shaking his head.

  “Was it um… one of the chicks from Baywatch?”

  “Uh-uh,” he says, still shaking his head.

  “One of the Spice Girls? Baby Spice?”

  “Uh-uh.” His head still hasn’t stopped shaking.

  “Gee, uh... Princess Diana?”

  He punches my arm.

  “Dude. She just fuckin’ died, man. You think I’m sick?”

  “I d
unno. She just popped into my head because she was all over the news yesterday. Have you uh…” I lean into him. “Have you ever jerked off to Princess Di… ya know when she was alive?”

  “Nah, dude,” he says. “You?”

  “Nah... too flat for me. And high-class. Not my type at all. Anyway… tell me — who did you jerk off to this morning?”

  He stops walking, holds a hand to my chest, and grins.

  “Toni. Braxton.”

  “Toni Bra― but she’s black. I ain’t never whacked off to a black chick.”

  “I’m all for equality, bro,” he says. Then he slaps me on the back and laughs one of them deep man-laughs. Only because we have stopped where Walnut Street merges on to Grove Avenue and other students strolling from that direction are probably, by now, within earshot of us. “Think there’ll be any new chicks in our class this year?” he says out of the corner of his mouth when we continue walking.

  I raspberry through my lips.

  “Doubt it, dude. Been the same faces ever since we were in kindergarten, hasn’t it? Ain’t nobody new ever moves to Lebanon. All folks ever do around here is move out.”

  “No wonder we gotta jerk off to celebrities all the time. Ain’t nobody around here worth wasting a tug on, right?”

  I laugh. A big husky man-laugh. But only because lots of students are, by now, definitely within earshot as we approach the school pathway. We both have reputations to keep up. Stevie may be the QB. But I’m the left tackle. We only each look good if we both look good.

  “Think I’m gonna have to find time to jerk off in the restroom later,” I whisper to him.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Stevie says, spraying one of his husky man-laughs into my face. Then we pull open the double doors to begin our lives as tenth graders by doing our cool handshake thing again.

  CAOIMHE LARKIN

  I sit, with me legs crossed, on a hard plastic chair, holding the forms the principal’s assistant handed to me, while all of the other students, who know where they’re going, push through the double front doors before splitting off in all manner of directions.

  I try to take as many of them in as I can, without being caught staring; the two pretty girls who giggled their way up the stairs; the tall Goth with the crazy haircut who stared at me like I was an alien. Though I guess, to him, I am. The two dudes with the square heads who did a stupid handshake as soon as they stepped inside. I wondered immediately if either of their names had two M‘s in it. That’s what Madam Aspectu told me my next boyfriend would have. “Two M’s,” she said, “He will be the one.” The teacher rushing by with an apple clenched between her teeth, carrying a box filled with paperwork; the tiny geeky kid who must be at least fourteen to be coming here, but who only looks as if he’s ten. God love him. I hope he doesn’t get eaten alive in here. Jeez, I hope I don’t get eaten alive in here.

  Though I think I was more nervous walking to school this morning than I am now. It’s relaxed me a bit to finally get inside; to feel a sense of the place. I might actually like it here. The building’s a lot brighter and much more modern than my school was back home. And the teachers look like normal people —well... in that they’re not nuns with faces so wrinkled under their habits that they look like prunes.

  I look back over my shoulder to where the principal’s assistant is sitting, then cough to try to get her attention. But her eyes seem glued to whatever it is that’s on her computer screen. She said she’d come over to me when I’d finished filling out these forms so she could show me to my first class. But that must’ve been at least ten minutes ago now.

  As more students pull open the double doors and walk into the reception area, I stare at the faces of the boys in search of a face that looks as if it might belong to somebody with two M‘s in their name. Then a tall girl with cropped blonde hair strolls by me and it makes me think of Princess Diana. A little ball rolls itself around my stomach. It’s so sad. I can’t believe it. It was on the news all day yesterday. That’s what they do in America. They have news channels that are on all day, every day. Even through the night, when we’re asleep. Back home, the news comes on at six p.m. every evening for half an hour and the whole country tunes in. That’s it. You get your news at six. There’s a repeat of that and an update at nine p.m. But if you miss it, you miss it. Tough luck. Here, it seems as if people can’t breathe unless they’re being updated on the news every other minute. And the news happens to be on every other bloody channel, too, when I’m flicking through the TV.

  “Cow-Im-Hay,” a voice calls out.

  I turn and smile politely at the principal’s assistant.

  “It’s pronounced Kwee-Va, the MH together makes a V sound.”

  Her face squishes up.

  “A V sound?”

  I shrug one shoulder.

  “Yeah… we’ve only been using the alphabet for, oh-I-dunno, about a thousand years in Ireland,” I say. “So maybe it’s us who’ve got our sounds all in a muddle... how many years has America been using the alphabet again?”

  She raises an eyebrow at me, clearly not humored by my sarcasm. Dad actually said that about America on the flight over here. He said they don’t really do sarcasm. But I thought it was a bit ironic that he said that, because he was watching episodes of Seinfeld on the plane, and breaking his shite laughing.

  “Follow me,” she says. And then she turns and almost races away as though she doesn’t want me to catch up with her.

  I pace after her, down a well-lit wide corridor with lockers on either side — a luxury we don’t get in Irish schools for whatever reason — before she turns to walk up a winding staircase.

  “Your first period is in room 2C — it’s Miss Decker’s room. She’ll be teaching you American History. Perhaps you should ask her how long America has been using the alphabet… Oh, here she is now,” the principal’s assistant says. And then the teacher who raced by me a few minutes ago with an apple clenched tightly between her teeth while she was carrying a box of papers offers me an eye smile.

  “Miss Decker, this is…”

  “Caoimhe,” Miss Decker says, holding her hand out for me to shake.

  “Yes,” I reply, sounding as surprised as I am impressed.

  “I have family from Ireland, so when I read your name as my new student I had to give them a call, just to make sure I got the pronunciation right.”

  “You nailed it,” I say, offering her a big smile. I already like her. She looks… well, she looks nice. Warm. Certainly warmer than a prune-faced nun whose lip-corners never so much as think about turning upward.

  “Guys, this is Caoimhe,” Miss Decker shouts out, leading me into the classroom. “Her name won’t look like that when you see it written down, but trust me, that’s the correct pronunciation. Her and her family have just moved to Lebanon from Ireland.”

  I look at all of the gormless faces staring back at me in what must be one of the most awkward silences I’ve ever experienced. This was literally the reason I was nervous walking to school this morning… this introduction. Me standing at the top of the class, while all of the students check me out, and realizing, as I’m sure they are right about now, that I am about as average looking as any girl possibly can be. I glance by the two square heads I saw doing a silly handshake in the reception area earlier sitting in the front row, whispering and giggling. I bet they’ve already decided I’m not pretty enough for them. Five is probably the rank they’ve both agreed I should have. Which is fine by me. Unless one of them has two M‘s in their name. Cos if that is the case, then I guess he’s my next boyfriend regardless of what mark out of ten he has just given me.

  “Eh... where’ll I sit?” I say when the staring goes on for so long that I’m sure my face is turning the same color as my hair.

  “You’ll uh... you’ll have to sit in that back corner,” Miss Decker says, pointing her whole hand to the back of the class. As I walk toward the vacant chair I notice I’ll be sitting next to a boy with a mop of so much black
hair that it covers his eyes, and who has acne spots scarring across both of his cheeks.

  He doesn’t look at me as I sidle in beside him. As if he’s shy. Which is odd. I’m supposed to be the newbie. I should be the one not wanting to make eye contact with you, mate. Then, as Miss Decker begins, by welcoming everybody back for a brand new year and asking them to fill in the blank lines on the front of the new notebooks she had left on each desk, I take a peek around the room and do a quick count. Twelve desks, each with two students. Twenty-four in total. A smaller class of students than I ever had back in Ireland. I stare at the two square heads again who are still whispering and giggling, then I inch up in my chair to see over their broad shoulders at the names they have written onto the front of their notebooks before plunking back down to my seat. Darn it. No M’s in either of their names. So, I reach down, take a pen out of the front pocket of my bag and begin to fill out the front of the notebook Miss Decker left on my desk.

  Caoimhe Larkin

  American History

  Miss Decker

  As I’m placing the cap back on to my pen, I glance at the quiet, acne-scarred boy next to me, to see if he will at least, by now, acknowledge the new student sat beside him. But he doesn’t lift his gaze from the edge of the desk. And that’s when I look down at his notebook, and notice the name he has scribbled messily across the top.

  Meric Miller

  Two

  She was so far away that she had to yell her thank you toward the driver as she swung her legs out the open door of the limousine.

  Phil followed, scooting and squeaking himself along the cream leather lounge seat behind her, without thanking the driver; not because he didn’t want to, but because saying as little as possible was how Phil went about his days. It was as if his throat was controlled by a battery that was constantly running low, and so he only used it when he felt it absolutely necessary to do so.