My first real (if inept) fight and my first time asking out a girl, both on the same day. This was going to be a very interesting school year.
“Hey!” Ed called out to me.
I stopped walking and looked back at him.
“You tried to kick my ass,” he said. “I respect that.”
“Oh, uh, thanks.” You’re welcome? What was the proper response to this?
“We’re not friends or anything like that, so don’t go getting the wrong idea. But we’re cool. You need anything, let me know.”
“I will.”
Ed walked past me. I watched him go, wondering how much weirder this day was going to get.
Instead of making up an excuse that might be analyzed for gaps in logic, I just called my mom and told her that I’d been talking to some other kids and didn’t realize that the busses had left. Since the reason made me look like a dumbass, she’d believe it.
“How was school?” Mom asked, after I got in the car.
“Fine.”
“Anything interesting happen?”
“Not really.”
“Learn anything?”
“Eh.”
“Do you have a favorite teacher yet?”
“Mrs. Davis.”
“What does she teach?”
“English.”
“Why’s she your favorite?”
I started to say, “She’s nice,” but clearly Mom was fishing for something more substantial. I needed to throw her some sort of bone, even if it was a smart-assed bone. “She doesn’t worship Satan.”
“Okay.”
“All of my other teachers are obviously Satanists,” I explained. “They didn’t actually sacrifice a goat during class, but if there’d been a goat in the classroom, they totally would’ve sacrificed it to the dark lord.”
“Then it’s good that there wasn’t a goat in the classroom,” said Mom.
“Right? I like Mrs. Davis because she doesn’t make us scoot all of our desks out of the way to make room for the pentagram.”
“Wise guy.”
“What are your plans for the weekend?” asked Dad.
“Mow some lawns,” I said. If Tina’s father gave his blessing for me to take out his sweet innocent daughter, I’d need some money. I wasn’t going to tell Mom or Dad about it unless I got a “yes” answer. I didn’t want them getting all excited and then needing to console me.
Dad nodded. “Yeah, you should probably try to earn some money.” The way he said it, I could tell that the issue of the missing cash from his safe was still very much on his mind.
I didn’t acknowledge the blatant accusation in his tone. “Yep.”
“Mrs. Deckle is looking for somebody to help her assemble a shed. I’ll call her, if you want.”
I didn’t want to assemble a shed. But I did need the pay, and I didn’t want a lecture from my father on not being a lazy piece of crap. “Okay,” I said.
“It’ll be good exercise.”
“I already said okay. You don’t need to say that it’ll make me less fat.”
Dad blinked. My weight was not something I ever acknowledged in his presence. Nobody tried to pretend that I was svelte; we simply didn’t discuss it.
“I’ll call her right now,” said Dad.
It took the entire weekend to put together the shed. Mrs. Deckle, an elderly woman with dead eyes, paid pauper wages and stopped the clock for bathroom breaks. Her lemonade had seeds floating in it and was so sour that I’m convinced this was her recipe:
Step One: Squeeze lemons into glass.
Step Two: Serve.
She was a cruel taskmaster. She barked orders at me the entire time, punctuating them with “Dammit!” if I didn’t immediately understand what she was trying to say, which was most of the time. “Move it to your left! No, no, your other left! No, no, your other left, dammit!” I’m honestly surprised she didn’t pick up one of the planks of wood and start beating me with it.
When I was taking an unpaid bathroom break, she pounded on the door. “What are you doing in there?” she demanded. “You’d better not be masturbating in my bathroom!”
I found it disturbing that she thought being berated by a mean old lady all day would make me so horny that I couldn’t control myself. I was sore and exhausted and miserable and she was far from a visual treat. “I’m going number two!” I informed her.
“You save that kind of thing for your own house!”
Normally I would agree with her. As a guest in somebody’s home for a short visit, bathroom visits should be quick and efficient. But these were sixteen-hour days, starting so early that my bodily functions hadn’t yet kicked in, and so, yeah, I needed to take a dump. This debate through the bathroom door went on for several more sentences, none of which need to be shared here, but finally she left me alone.
When the shed was “as good as it’s gonna get, I guess,” Mrs. Deckle sent me home, promising to pay my parents the next day. She must’ve been worried that I was going to squander my hard-earned cash by betting on cockfights or something. (Yes, I recognize that not long ago I’d stolen money from my dad to buy an illegal gun, so Mrs. Deckle’s concerns about my fiscal responsibility were valid.)
I rode my bicycle home, thinking that a hard day’s work was supposed to bring a greater sense of personal satisfaction. Yes, I’d probably sweated off a couple of pounds, but I didn’t feel like I’d built much character. If anything, I was more ageist than before.
As I turned the corner onto my street, I saw Markus, the kid who’d tormented me about the nudie magazine, standing in his front yard. He waved to me. I waved back. I realized that he was waving for me to stop, so I put on the brakes (some fancy-ass bicycles had
