Trailer Trash(48)

Eventually, his dad left, closing the door behind him.

The following afternoon, Lisa tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Are you going to homecoming on Saturday?”

Nate turned in his seat, hoping she wasn’t about to ask him on a date. “I don’t think so.”

But it was Stacy who spoke next. “You can come with us, if you want.”

“Yeah,” Grant said. “It’ll be fun. The guys are meeting at Adam Sullivan’s house at five. We’ll have pizza and watch a movie or something until the girls are ready. Then we’ll all head over together.”

Nate glanced cautiously back at Cody, who was studiously ignoring him, and Logan, whose long legs were stretched out into the aisle, his cowboy boots strangely at odds with his hot-pink polo shirt. Logan was glaring at him, and Nate averted his eyes quickly, remembering Logan’s threat to skin Nate alive if he fucked with Cody’s head.

Don’t worry, Logan. I’m too busy fucking with my own head, and Cody’s forgotten I exist anyway.

But despite everything—Cody and Logan, Nate’s wayward sexual desires, and his mom’s new boyfriend—Nate suddenly didn’t want to miss the dance. It was his senior year, after all, and going with a group seemed safe enough.

“Sure.” But his eyes lingered on Cody as he said it.

Not much chance of Cody being at homecoming.

He was in a good mood until he arrived home Friday afternoon and found a letter waiting for him in the mailbox. It was from Mike, and Nate stared at it for a moment, trying to decide what he felt.

On one hand, it was nice to know that Mike still thought about him enough to write a letter. On the other hand, Nate felt so detached from his old life, he almost wanted to throw the letter away unopened.

“Don’t be stupid,” he mumbled to himself. He dropped his backpack on the living room floor and took the letter upstairs before plopping down on the bed to read it.

Nate,

Hey, man. What’s up? Nobody’s heard from you since you moved to Wyoming. It must be more fun than you expected.

Our tennis team is awesome this year. Too bad you’re not here. We’re second in the division, and might even take state. I got my letter. I failed my math test because Ms. Carter is a bitch, but I was still eligible, so it’s cool.

Jason and Lisa broke up last week, right in the middle of Top Gun. They got kicked out of the movie theater and everything. It was totally embarrassing. And Tony went to homecoming with Carrie, but says he didn’t even get to first base. Have you had homecoming yet? Met any hot babes up there? According to David Lee Roth, farmer’s daughters make you feel “all right,” so at least you have that going for you, right? (And yeah, I know it was a Beach Boys song first, but David Lee Roth is way cooler.)

Speaking of cool, have you bought the Beastie Boys record yet? Check out the album cover in a mirror, if you haven’t already. They’re my new favorite band. My mom hates them, which makes it even better. You gotta fight for the right to party, know what I mean?

Guess that’s about it.

Write back soon.

Mike

Nate’s hands were shaking by the time he finished the letter. The tennis team was doing great without him, and his friends were going to movies and to homecoming and listening to music as if Nate weren’t stuck in the windiest version of Hell ever. Nate didn’t even care that Tony hadn’t made it to first base. To hell with Tony. Warren didn’t even have a movie theater. The closest Nate had gotten to Top Gun was seeing the commercials on TV. Some of the people from the Grove had driven to Casper to see it, but he hadn’t wanted to go with them, and he sure wasn’t going to go by himself. And as for the Beastie Boys . . .

Who in the world were they?

The one static-filled station he managed to pick up in Warren played country, and there wasn’t a single record store in town. I want my MTV! had been spray-painted across the side of the bowling alley, but so far, nobody had complied. Some weekends, Nate managed to stay up late and to watch Night Flight, always hoping for a few music videos, but he was pretty sure he hadn’t seen anybody called the Beastie Boys.

He really was in the black hole of modern civilization.

“Fuck you,” Nate said aloud to the room. He crumpled the letter into a ball and threw it toward the trash can in the corner. It bounced off the wall and landed in the middle of the room. “Fuck you, and fuck David Lee Roth too.”





The coat Logan brought Cody on homecoming night—“Better than a corsage, anyway,” Logan had said—was a bit too big, and still had the tags on it. Cody felt like a fool for taking it, but only until he put it on and walked outside into the Wyoming wind. A glance at the sky was all it took to tell him snow was coming.