Something Like Normal(7)

“Like what?” Ryan says.

“Burned out.”

“It seemed okay to me.”

I let out the clutch and the car stutters as it accelerates. “Okay? You work at a fucking VW dealership.”

“I’m not a mechanic.”

“You don’t have to be a mechanic to know when your clutch is messed up.” I’m probably angrier than I should be. I know how to replace a burned-out clutch, but it’s the principle of the thing. There was nothing wrong with the car when I left. This is classic Ryan. And my car is Korean war G.I. Joe.

He doesn’t apologize. He doesn’t say anything at all. He just looks all butthurt—like I’m the bad guy—and then turns his face toward the window.

As we head toward the beach I notice the differences in the landscape of the city. New businesses that weren’t there last year. Old businesses that are gone. It’s like a whole chunk of time has just… disappeared. The songs on the radio are different. The faces on the celebrity tabloids at the airport newsstand were people I didn’t recognize. There’s even a new American fucking Idol.

We pull up in front of the Manor, and I guess I’m expecting it to be different, too. Except the white cottage with the crooked porch steps never changes. There’s a beer can on the porch railing that’s been sitting there as long as I can remember. Even on the rare occasion someone decides to clean the place, no one ever touches the beer can. It’s become art.

“Trav, dude, where you been?” The first person to greet me is Cooper Middleton, half-baked and heavy-lidded, a halo of pot smoke around his dirty blond head. He’s sitting in the same saggy lawn chair he was sitting in the last time I was there. Maybe he’s been there the whole time. With Cooper, it’s not implausible. He graduated with me, but as far as I know he’s never had a job—unless selling weed counts.

“Afghanistan.”

He looks off into the middle distance for a moment, a ghost of a smile on his face, and I can tell he’s somewhere else. “Oh, yeah… sweet.”

The living room is a mosh pit, all the thrift store furniture pushed up against the walls to make room for dancing, and a band—made up of some of the people who live at the Manor—warms up in the dining room. As I walk through the house, people reach out to me, shaking my hand and welcoming me home. Instead of feeling welcome, I feel hemmed in, like at the airport. Jittery. Freaked out at being in the middle of a crowd without my rifle.

“I need a beer,” I say to no one, and my trigger finger flexes as I press my way through the crowd to the kitchen. Paige is perched on the counter, a plastic cup and cigarette in the same hand, gesturing widely as she talks to a group of girls. Paige has an opinion about everything and sometimes she will not shut up. But her black hair is marble shiny and her plush lips are stained red from whatever she’s drinking, so who cares what she’s saying? Her eyes break away from her friends and meet mine. I feel the magnetic pull and have to remind myself she’s not mine anymore.

Before I can approach her, Eddie comes up. “Trav, man, welcome home!”

He goes in for a slap hug that I know will turn into a takedown attempt. It always does. He lowers his shoulder and circles my waist with his arms, trying to wrestle me to the floor. We used to be more evenly matched, but now he doesn’t stand a chance. I curl my leg around his and drop him.

“Dude, you may as well call terminal uncle.” I laugh as I haul him to his feet.

“It’s been too fucking long.” He gives me a hug for real this time. “How ya been?”

“Good.” Lie. “You?”

“Same shit, different day, you know?” Eddie shrugs.

I have no idea what it’s like to be the nineteen-year-old night manager of Taco Bell with a pregnant girlfriend. I’m not saying Eddie made the wrong choices—he’s living an honest life and it’s not my place to judge—but, no, I don’t know. I’ve spent the better part of a year on the other side of the planet in a country where a guy will shake your hand and smile, then go pick up his AK-47 and shoot at you. Where a little boy will demand—with no tears in his eyes—that you give him a hundred bucks’ compensation for accidentally killing his mother, which is less than the going rate for killing his dog.

Paige hops down from the counter and walks toward me and my brother. I can see her red string bikini through the thin white tank top she’s wearing. I’ve unstrung that bikini before. She goes to Ryan first—so weird—reaching up on tiptoe to ruffle his hair as she kisses him. His arm slips around her waist. Her face is different when she looks up at him. Softer. Less angry. “You smell good.”

Ryan doesn’t look at me, but I see the I-told-you-so-grin tug at his lips. I laugh. Paige cocks her head at me and smiles. “Well, if it isn’t G.I. Joe.”

“G.I. Joe”—I take her drink and down it in a single swallow. It’s fruity, but the alcohol is strong—“was a pussy.”

She laughs her smoky, sexy laugh and kisses my cheek, her boobs—which her parents bought for her fifteenth birthday—brushing against my arm. “Welcome home.”

“Thanks for the care package,” I say. “Miss January brought a lot of guys a lot of pleasure.” She laughs again.

“It was the least I could do.”