Read Online Perfectly Good White Boy by Carrie Mesrobian - Free Book Online

here on weeknights, though he’d been showing up more and more lately.
    â€œHello, Sean,” Steven-Not-Steve said. He was always formal, careful around me. Just like his clothes: Steven-Not-Steve always wore stuff that was tucked in, always took his shoes off when he came into our house, too, which wasn’t a rule or anything.
    â€œHey,” I said, edging around Steven-Not-Steve to get to the refrigerator and the orange juice. I’m kind of a fan of orange juice. My mom buys gallons of the stuff, just for me. I normally drink it out of the jug, because I’m the only one who drinks it anymore, but since Steven-Not-Steve and his dumbass polo shirt were here, I used a glass.
    â€œPretty excited for your brother’s wedding, I’d imagine,” Steven-Not-Steve said. Which, what was I supposed to say to that? No? Yes? Neither answer was right. What a dumb question to ask.
    I nodded, slipped away, hoping I could just nod at my mom and Krista too and not get roped into anything. But then my mom came up and said, “Oh, hi, honey,” and Krista looked up and said, “Hi, Sean!”
    Krista was pretty, but she had this squeaky voice. And her hair was this blondish color that couldn’t be real. And she wore those fakey plastic nails and a lot of makeup. And she liked to fake-tan. And sometimes her thong stuck out of her jeans in a way that made me turned on and grossed out all in one shot. But the thing was, Krista was very very nice. She was always so happy to see you, and unlike the rest of her looks, that part wasn’t fake. Like, there was a reason she was the manager of Applebee’s; probably people were so taken in by her welcoming them to the dumb restaurant, they just wanted to eat everything and like it so they wouldn’t disappoint her.
    â€œHi, Krista,” I said, guzzling my juice.
    â€œHow are you, honey? Sean, your hair is so long! I can barely see your eyes! Can we get your opinion?” Krista said, and I wanted to die, because that meant no slithering down to my room to jerk it in the shower or stalk Hallie online or just be alone for five minutes to think my own thoughts.
    But I went over to the table and looked at what my mom and Krista were doing, which was making “Save The Date!” postcards that were like some kind of weird pre-invitation to the wedding and featured a picture of Krista sitting on Brad’s lap next to some palm trees, which meant this was taken during the Fateful Florida Vacation. There were four different versions of the thing, the same picture, but framed with different designs. The table was covered in little bits of colored paper. It looked like Otis had gotten into some paper recycling and shredded shit up, like he did when he was a puppy.
    Which reminded me.
    â€œWhere’s Otis?” I said, since he hadn’t come to the door to greet me. That was always his habit. At least, it was at our old house. Here, Otis was as disoriented as me, except instead of eating cereal out of mixing bowls and drying his body with Pokémon beach towels because we couldn’t find the normal towels in any of the boxes, Otis had taken to hiding behind the furnace things in the basement or under my mom’s bed, and running away along the highway, eating garbage and making me freaked out that he was going to get hit by a car.
    â€œHe’s somewhere,” my mom said, distracted. “So which one do you like, then?” She pointed to the cards again.
    I motioned toward one of them and then yelled, “Otis?”
    â€œThat was the same one Steven liked,” Krista said, frowning, as if that had some meaning. Like it was a man conspiracy. I went into the living room, where Otis’s dog bed lay empty by the fireplace. Of all things, the rental had a fireplace. Brad said it didn’t work, though.
    â€œMom, did you let him out and forget to bring him in?”
    â€œWhat? No, he’s inside. Check my