Just when he thought she couldn’t surprise him more, she went and said something like that. “You’re saying you think Larry’s gay?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged, looking as if she regretted having said so much. “Maybe not. Maybe he’s just desperate to fit in.”
They fell silent. Outside, the wind blew through the trailer park, rushing across the bare plains. He could hear raised voices from inside Kathy and Pete’s trailer.
“It explains about Nate, though,” Christine said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I invited him over one night before homecoming, when Larry and I were having a party. Took him into my room—”
Cody’s heart clenched at the thought.
“—but he just freaked out. Went running out of there like somebody was chasing him.”
“So, nothing happened?” He wondered if she could tell how much he hoped that was the case, not because there was anything wrong with Christine, but simply because he hated the thought of anybody else being intimate with Nate.
“He told me it was some religious thing, and then when he went to homecoming with Stacy, I thought maybe he was Mormon.” She laughed and shook her head. “First time that’s ever happened to me.”
“You mean, first time a guy’s told you no?”
“Exactly.” She frowned and pushed her cigarette butt out the narrow crack in the window.
Cody pulled out his own pack of cigarettes, just so he’d have something to fidget with. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Doesn’t it ever bother you, all the things people say?”
“You mean everybody calling me a slut?”
It seemed odd that he was the one blushing, but he nodded. “Yeah.”
“Does it bother you? They talk about you just as much.”
Fair point. He wanted to tell her no, but he felt like he owed her the truth. “It does sometimes. I try to pretend I don’t care, and sometimes I can ignore it. But yeah, it still pisses me off.”
She turned further toward him, curling one knee under her on the bench seat. The car continued to run, the engine a soft hum that couldn’t quite drown out the shouting from Pete and Kathy’s trailer. “It bothers me too, but not for the reasons you probably think.”
She stopped, chewing her lip, and Cody waited.
“It’s just unfair, you know? Logan probably had sex with half the girls at our school, and that was okay. Nobody ever had a bad thing to say about him. Brian Anderson’s the same way. Brad Williams—hell, the day after I had sex with him, he quit talking to me altogether. Went from calling me twice a day and inviting me over and buying me little presents and telling me he loved me to pretending I didn’t exist, just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Ever since then, he and Brian snicker every time they see me, like somehow I should be ashamed of screwing them, but they don’t need to be ashamed of screwing me.”
“Uh . . .” Cody hadn’t ever thought of it in those terms before.
“And my brother. Hell, the only reason he ain’t nailed every girl in the school is ’cause most of them have better taste than that. But even if he had, that’d be just fine, as far as everybody else is concerned, right? ‘Boys will be boys,’ and everybody just laughs about how they’re sowin’ their oats or whatever. Well who the hell do they think they’re sowin’ them with? Girls like me, that’s who!” She shook her head. Her chin trembled a bit, but she bit her lower lip and took a deep breath. “So guys like Logan and Brad and Brian are just doing what boys are supposed to do, but me? I’m a slut, just because I ain’t a total prude. Now, how come they get to do whatever they want, but I’m supposed to be a goddamn nun?”
“I don’t know.” He was too busy trying to take it all in. He’d always felt a bit bad for Christine, because he knew her dad was no better than his. He’d always thought she should be able to do better. It had never occurred to him how big the double standard was. “It is kind of shitty, now that you mention it.”
She sighed, looking out the bug-spattered windshield at the distant highway. “Well, I guess that’s how I feel about you and Nate, too. I mean, you guys are eighteen. You’re about ready to graduate. Everybody expects that after high school, people will pair up and settle down and get married. Guys like Brad and Brian will have to quit nailing everything that moves, and I have one year left before I have to make some guy put a ring on my finger just so I can start popping out babies, whether I want them or not. And here’s you and Nate, just minding your own business, not hurtin’ anybody. Just, I don’t know, being friends or being boyfriends or whatever you guys are. If one of you was a girl, nobody’d bat an eye. Hell, if you was both girls, people still wouldn’t mind. They’d just assume you were best friends. But since you’re both guys, and you’re clearly not out banging all the girls you can land, they decide it’s cool to jump you, nine on two. Like somehow that makes them so fucking tough.” She shook her head and smiled at him. “The truth is, they’re all just a bunch of goddamned douche bags, you know?”