Rudy’s tiny Ford is older than we are. It was built in 1993 and not even all that well. We are chugging along Burnside Road, listening to the engine slowly give up on this world, and not saying anything. It’s a little awkward. Rudy’s my best friend and the most inappropriate person I know, so you’d think I could talk to him about anything. I used to think that, too, but this one has had me stumped for months.
“So,” he says finally. “What’re we, checking out the sights? Leaf peeping?”
“No,” I say. I’m trying to figure out how to start, how or if.
We get stuck behind one of those little post office trucks with the steering wheel on the wrong side. When the guy pulls over to stick a handful of catalogs and bills in the next mailbox, Rudy pulls out into the other lane. The Fiesta labors past and then backfires at its vanquished opponent.
With the road open in front of us, Rudy tries again: “Nice day for a drive, huh?”
I’m ready to talk now.
“You know how, like in cartoons, the first assignment kids always get at the start of school is an essay?” I say.
“Maybe,” says Rudy. “What kind of essay?”
“What I did on my summer vacation.”
“Oh,” he says. “Oh yeah.”
“Well,” I say.
“I was not expecting this. Not at all.”
“I’m a man of mystery.”
“You’re a tight-lipped ass.”
“That’s a badly mixed metaphor.”
“Stay on target,” he says. He knows my tricks. “What you did on your summer vacation. About time, by the way. About time you told me.”
“Well,” I say. “I didn’t spend it with my aunt.”
“Knew it!” he shouts. “Man, you lie like a rug. Now tell me where you really were, so I can decide how pissed to be right now.”
“I really was upstate,” I say. “That part was true.”
“Congratulations.”
“I was in, well, I was in juvie. It was one of those big, half-empty places upstate.”
“Was it like, what, a prison?”
“It was half like that, and half like, I don’t know, kindergarten,” I say. “They just treated us like potentially dangerous children. Which I guess we kind of are, but still. We had to talk about our ‘feelings’ a lot, and you know how much I like that.”
“Right, like: ‘And how did that make you feel?’” he says.
“Exactly.”
“OK, so why were you there?”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s the thing. It’s just … it’s not good.”
“Yeah, I figured there was some reason you were stonewalling. I mean, juvie … It’s almost kind of cool.”
“It’s not cool! That’s just stupid. That’s just, whatever, it’s ridiculous. People who say that haven’t been there, like it makes you some kind of badass. It makes you a loser, all right? First of all —”
“Whoa, I just meant —” Rudy says, but I’m not done.
“First, it’s the most depressing place on Earth. And that’s in the summer. In the winter, I don’t even know. Second, what do I need that for? Who am I going to impress? How hard is it to be tough around here anyway? It’s not. People already think we’re at least that. What do I need the extra credit for? And you know what I don’t need? I don’t need everyone knowing and just putting that on me. I don’t want to be a dead-end loser. I am going to frickin’ get out of here and not hang around downtown at, like, twenty-seven, trying to save up for smokes, all right?”
“Jesus,” says Rudy. “Relax, all right? I’m not going to put it on your permanent record.”
I sit back and breathe. It doesn’t seem like enough, so I pop my head out the open window and let the air blast my face for a few seconds. When I duck back in, Rudy asks the same question: “Why?”
It’s possible that my entire speech was some kind of attempt to avoid answering him the first time. It’s possible he knows it.
“You can’t tell anyone,” I say.
This is the part I never wanted to admit, the part I wanted to just bury in a hole for the rest of my life. But there’s no avoiding it now: I can’t tell the what without the why. I can’t believe I’m going to do this. I’m disgusted with myself.
“I stole perfume,” I say.
It’s quiet for a few seconds — or as quiet as a mistreated 1993 Ford Fiesta can be — as Rudy tries to decide whether or not I’m joking. A few seconds stretch to a few more. Then Rudy says something equally crazy.
“I gotta say, when you, like, asked us here today, for this long, slow drive through the frickin’ woods, I thought: Oh Christ, he’s gonna tell me he’s gay. And then I was relieved it was something else, but now I’m like: ‘Wait, are you? Is that what this is?’”
“What? Shut the hell up!” I say. I’m pretty sure he’s just saying that to cut the tension, but I’m not 100 percent sure. “See, that’s why I didn’t want to even … Christ.”
“But, dude, you stole perfume?”
“It was for my mom! For Mother’s Day,” I say. “I wanted to get her something nice ’cause, whatever, her year has kind of sucked, and I haven’t exactly helped.”
“Well, that’s … I mean, I can see that. But, I mean …”
“Yeah, believe me, I know. It’s bad. I went into that place downtown. That stupid little …” I can’t bring myself to say “boutique,” but there aren’t that many possibilities downtown and Rudy figures it out.
“Illusions?”
“That’s the place.”
“Never been in there.”
“I hadn’t either, but it seemed worth a shot. So I was looking around and everything basically cost more than I had. The lady was watching me really closely, but then I told her why I was there — looking for a gift for my mom — and she calmed down. And she just, I don’t know, calmed down too much. She went in the back to check on something, and I pocketed it.”
“The perfume?”
“Yeah.”
“And you left?”
“Yeah.”
“So how did they …?”
“Hidden cameras, like, three of ’em,” I say.
“I guess that explains the calmness,” he says.
“Yeah, I didn’t even check. It just didn’t seem like a high-security environment.”
“So, wait, they sent you to juvie for stealing perfume? Did you, like, punch her to get away? Or wait, was it because of the fight?”
“Kind of. They definitely brought it up.”
“That’s lame. We wouldn’t even have gotten in trouble for that if we hadn’t won so bad.”
“That’s all on Aaron. I was pretty much useless.”
“Showed you can take a punch.”
“Or eight. Anyway, it was mostly the perfume. It was really expensive. They were like, ‘That’s our best perfume!’ Which it probably was, but I mean, that was kind of the point.”
“Like how much?”
“Like, two hundred bucks.”
“No way!”
“Yeah, which is also apparently the difference between petty theft and theft in this state. It actually could’ve been worse. My uncle is a really good lawyer, at least at that kind of stuff. He’s been useless with Mars, but he struck a deal super quick so I could serve the time over the summer. The whole summer.”
“Damn,” says Rudy.
“Yeah.”
“So you spent the summer in a high-security kindergarten upstate for stealing perfume?”
“Yeah.”
“But you’re not gay?”
“Drop dead.”
“Remember how I said it was kind of cool before?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I take it back. Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“Damn.”
“You can’t tell anyone,” I say. “Ever.”
“Course not,” he says, and he might even mean it. He leans back in his seat and looks around at the world, like it changed somehow while we were talking. In a way, it did. Just the fact that someone else knows now, the fact that it’s out there, even if it never goes any further, it changes things. It knocks me down several dozen pegs, for one thing. I might as well finish the job.
“It’s like you try and be who you want to be, and listen to the music you like instead of what everyone else is listening to, and not take crap from people and act in a way that lets them know not to give you any,” I say, looking straight ahead out the windshield. “And then the world comes along and pulls your frickin’ pants down.”
“Yeah,” says Rudy. “You got pantsed. And spritzed.”
“Yeah, ha-ha. But you see why I didn’t tell you?”
“Kind of,” he says. “Still should’ve told me. Kind of dickish not to. You don’t think I knew you were full of it? You don’t think I wanted to know?”
I think back to that day at Wendy’s, the sneak attack. “No, I knew. I was just … kind of dickish.”
“Yep.”
He takes the turnoff at Mill Pond Road. As he’s straightening out the wheel, he adds: “Just don’t tell Mars.”
I don’t answer.