Good Luck, Fatty

it.”
    I flip through the stations until I land on one of Orv’s favorite shows: Swamp Loggers. As borderline poor as we are, we still manage to squeak out the thirty bucks a month for satellite TV. “I have no reason to lie,” I proclaim to a symphony of chainsaws and earth movers. “We have a study group for Biology. I’ll be gone an hour or so.”
    “Who’s ‘we?’ ” Orv asks, raising an eyebrow.
    “Me, Ruby, Brent, and…I forget the other kid’s name.”
    “Where’s it at?”
    “Ruby’s house. You can call her mother, if you want,” I bluff.
    Orv’s eyes widen as a mud-caked guy on TV is nearly pancaked by a runaway load of timber. “How’re you gettin’ there?”
    “It’s too far to bike,” I say, baiting the hook. “Either you can give me a ride, or…” I pause as if I’m awaiting his response. “…or Brent can pick me up.”
    Out of the side of his mouth, Orv says, “How long’s he had his license?”
    I shrug, even though Orv is now staring past me in a TV daze. “At least six months,” I say with confidence.
    “Be back by ten.”
     

----
     
    I don’t need a psychiatrist to tell me why I treat my body like a trash heap. I’m not an idiot. What I am is a sucking hole of neediness with an utter lack of boundaries and an underdeveloped conscience.
    I ease into the passenger seat of Mr. Flynn’s late-model sedan (the nicest car I’ve ever been screwed in) right in our cruddy driveway. Brent gives me an uneasy grin and reverses the car into the street, but he doesn’t clear the lawn before Denise comes barreling alongside us, clutching my lead brick of a Biology text.
    “Hang on,” I say.
    Brent stops the car and I power down the window.
    Denise skids to a stop. “Gosh, Bobbi,” she says in the most exasperated tone she allows herself, “you forgot your book.” She hands it to me with a shallow huff.
    “Oops.” I lay the tome across my knees. “Thanks.”
    “Hi, Bret,” Denise says, leaving out the n in his name, like half the student population of Industry High. Denise works with Brent’s mom at Welcome Home (well, sort of, since their shifts only overlap by fifteen minutes). Mrs. Flynn has the day shift, and Denise is perpetually on graveyard.
    Brent leans over and squints at her. “Hey.” I swear I can feel his pulse quicken, as if he expects us to be caught.
    The only “sex incident” Orv and Denise are privy to is the time Harvey caught Noah Rice screwing me in the janitor’s closet. They went even more ballistic than real parents would have (or so I assume).
    “Did you get any dinner?” Denise asks me. “I made Tuna Helper.”
    “That’s all right,” I say. “We’re gonna have something at Ruby’s.” With a polite smile, I try to suggest she’s overdoing the mother thing. After all, if Marie didn’t care to fill the role, why should Denise (who’s only a few years older than me) go to such trouble?
    “Okay,” she says, sounding disappointed. “See ya later, then.”
    Brent pops the car back into gear, and I shoot him an apologetic eye roll. Then, for the ten minutes it takes to get across town (to a secluded spot a block away from the Greyhound station, down a blind alley where no one will bother us), I quietly ponder whether I’m about to break one of my steadfast rules: no screwing friends. I’ve never thought of Brent as a friend per se , since he’s out of my league on every parameter imaginable (looks, brains, money, respect), even as a potential pal. But maybe our relationship—if you can call it that—is changing.
    It’s not like I keep track or anything (honestly, I’m afraid to know the total number of lewd acts or the even the running tally of boys), but I think Brent’s screwed me ten or eleven times, every one of them in this long-forgotten alley.
    He kills the headlights as we round the corner, and we coast the last fifty yards in total darkness. Finally the car stops and the engine shuts down. And that tiny voice in the back of my mind starts wagging its finger.
    I kick my shoes off.
    “You ready?” says Brent.
    I unzip my pants and tug them down, freeing a leg and leaving my underwear bunched around the opposite ankle. Brent strips off everything but his t-shirt. I recline the seat as far back as it will go and open my legs, and then he climbs over.
     

----
     
    I’m pretty sure Harvey is gay, but I don’t plan on asking him about it. It doesn’t matter to me. Quite a few folks around here still get