Trailer Trash (5 page)

“Always figured I’d end up in either the oil fields or the coal mines, like everybody else who grew up here.” He dropped a couple of cards and took some off the stack. “I’m taking two. How many do you need?”

“Is that what you want, though? To dig coal or be a roughneck?” Nate only knew the term because of his dad.

“Jesus, nobody wants to be a roughneck, but what the fuck else is there around here? You think I’m gonna take up ranching instead? Buy a couple of cows and spend my days worrying about whether there’s enough rain this year to make hay?”

“I don’t—”

“Just ’cause you got your life all planned out, don’t mean the rest of us do.”

Nate didn’t have his life all planned out. Not by a long shot. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to go to Chicago, or to college, but it was what he and his parents had planned back before the divorce. He figured he’d live in the apartment his aunt owned and scope out the schools. Maybe he’d take some accounting courses at the community college, or see about learning computers. His aunt seemed to think there’d be a lot of jobs in that field someday. “I didn’t mean—”

“It don’t matter.” Cody ran his fingers through his hair and forced a smile. It looked more like a grimace. “We playin’ poker or what?”

“Yeah.”

“Then either tell me how many goddamn cards you want, or fold.”

Nate folded, even though he’d been holding a pair of kings.

With the exception of Cody, Nate had yet to meet a single kid his age in Warren. Yes, he’d seen a couple in the neighborhood, or passed them in the grocery store, but he’d intentionally avoided the places Cody had named as the popular hangouts, not because he was shy, but because he wasn’t ready to deal with high school bullshit yet. Cody made Walter Warren High School sound like a cliquish hell. The longer Nate could avoid it, the better. When he saw other teenagers around town, they gave him curious looks, but none of them spoke to him, and he chose to return the favor.

A week before school started, his luck ran out.

“Hey, Nate,” his dad said one afternoon, just as Nate was about to leave the house. “How about we go uptown and get some lunch?”

“Why’s it ‘uptown’ here? In Austin, we went ‘downtown.’”

His dad cocked his head, his lips pursed. “I have no idea, now that you mention it. Maybe bigger cities have ‘downtown,’ but small towns go up?”

Nate shrugged. “Whatever.”

They were quiet for the few minutes it took to drive into what qualified as “uptown” in Warren. It wasn’t until his dad was parking the car that Nate realized where they were headed.

“The drug store?”

“Joe tells me it’s a great place to grab a bite.”

“Let’s go get some ham-fried rice instead.”

“We’ve had Chinese food twice in the last five days!” He was right, of course. Nate was getting tired of it too, but if he told his father the real reason he didn’t want to go inside, his dad would never understand. Nate sighed and followed his father in.

The near side of the store was much like any other drugstore, only smaller. Greeting cards, ChapStick, cheap toys. But the entire length of the back wall was taken up by the counter and stools of the old-fashioned soda fountain. At the far end were a couple of booths, and that’s where the teens were, some lounging at the tables, some occupying the stools across from them.

Nate and his dad chose stools at the counter on the near side, as far away from the teenagers as possible, and Nate did his best to ignore their curious stares. He and his dad ordered grilled ham and cheese sandwiches and vanilla malts. The lady working the counter even asked if they wanted them thick or thin (the former for his dad, the latter for Nate). Afterward, his dad excused himself to use the restroom. Nate didn’t want his dad to leave him there alone, even for a minute, but he resisted the urge to follow him like a little kid.

“You’re the new guy,” one of the teenagers said to Nate as soon as his dad was gone. The teen in question was the perfect prep—letter jacket over a polo shirt with the collar flipped up. Nate could imagine Cody’s disdain, and it was safe to assume that attitude went both ways.

“Yeah,” Nate said, seeing no way around it. “Nate Bradford.”

“We’ve seen you around.”

What was he supposed to say to that? They sat there awkwardly for a second, until one of the girls stepped forward.

“We’re going out to the old mine tonight,” she said. “Why don’t you come along?”

“Yeah,” one of the other girls said. She had poofy, permed hair and bangs that stood straight up like a tidal wave. “You’re just two doors down from me, you know. You can ride with me.”

“I don’t know—” Nate started to say, but the first boy cut him off.

“We scored some beer.”

Nate wasn’t sure if that made it more tempting or less. Unfortunately, his dad came around the corner just then. The guy who’d mentioned the beer did his best to look casual. The girl with the tidal wave bangs smiled at Nate. “I’ll pick you up at eight?”

“I’m not sure I can go,” Nate started to say, but this time it was his dad who cut him off.

“Why not?” he asked. “You should get out of the house more.”

Nate got out of the house plenty. What his dad really meant was, Nate should meet more people his age, and it wasn’t like Nate could argue with his new “friends” listening in.

“Great,” he said, wondering if his severe lack of enthusiasm was evident. “See you at eight.”

The girl with the tidal-wave bangs showed up promptly at eight. She told him her name was Jennifer. Nate climbed into the passenger seat of her Toyota Tercel, and wondered for the hundredth time what he was getting himself into.

“There’s an old mine northeast of town,” she told him. “We’re not supposed to go in there, but we do. We have bonfires and stuff.”

And stuff
. Nate was afraid to ask what that meant.

There were two guys in the group: Brian, the one with the letter jacket from the drug store, and Brad, who was smaller and obviously spent most of his time in Brian’s shadow. There were three girls. Two were named Jennifer, and the third one was named Christine. The Jennifers didn’t seem to like her, and it took him a bit, but Nate finally figured it out.

There was nothing like fashion to build the brick wall between the “haves” and the “have nots,” and in high school, being a “have” was the only thing that mattered. Those with money proved it by sporting labels—Guess, Gitano, and Esprit, accessorized with Swatch watches and Reebok tennis shoes. If you wanted to look like a rebel without looking like your folks were dirt-poor, you went for the acceptable alternatives: Converse, Doc Martens, and Levi’s 501s. The Jennifers were designer all the way, from their United Colors of Benetton earrings to their scrunchy Gap socks. Christine, on the other hand, had none of it. Everything she wore had probably come courtesy of the Sears or JCPenney catalogs, and not the high-dollar pages either.

The Orange Grove residents may have had more money than the rest of Warren, but despite what Cody seemed to think, none of them were rich. Not by the Texas standards Nate was used to, at any rate. They were solidly middle class. Upper middle class at best. What truly seemed to set them apart wasn’t so much their money, but their attitude and their awareness of the outside world.

“Can you believe we
still
don’t have MTV here?” Brian said to Nate. “It’s like living in the Old West or something.”

“It isn’t as bad as I thought it’d be,” Nate confessed. “I was worried we wouldn’t even have cable.”

“Warren’s all right,” Christine said. “My parents say there’s nothing worth watching on cable anyway, and the antenna works well enough.”

“Well enough for
what
?” Brian asked. “Jesus. I get static more often than not, and the radio’s worse.”

“Cable, but no MTV,” Jennifer said. “I mean, they have it in Casper and Laramie, but not here. And I wish we didn’t have to drive all the way to Colorado or Utah to find a mall!”

“There’s a mall in Casper,” Christine said, but all the others immediately laughed.

“Eastridge barely qualifies,” Brad said.

“It isn’t fair,” Jennifer went on. “Laramie’s less than an hour from Fort Collins, and only another hour past that to Denver. Evanston’s an hour from Salt Lake, and people up in Sheridan can get to Billings. But we’re stuck in the goddamn middle of nowhere. It’s an hour and a half to Rock Springs, and that’s barely even a town!”

“The shopping isn’t the worst of it,” Brad said. “It’s the music! I wish we didn’t have to drive eight hours to see a damn concert.”

Nate wished they’d quit talking about it. They were only making him hate Warren more than he already did.

Brian tossed Nate a can of Old Milwaukee. “You’re cool, right? You won’t tell your dad or anything?”

It seemed a bit late for them to be asking that question, but Nate said, “No. I won’t tell.”

Over the next hour, the sexual dynamic of the group became clear. One of the Jennifers—the one with smaller bangs—liked Brian. Brian liked big-bangs Jennifer, who seemed to be focused on Nate. Brad was clearly trying to get into Christine’s pants, and despite her obvious desperation to fit in, Nate had a feeling the only reason she’d scored an invite at all was because Brad wanted to get laid.

“Where’ve you been hanging out?” Brad asked.

Nate swallowed a bit of beer, debating his answer. “Nowhere.”

“I saw him with Cody Lawrence,” Christine volunteered. “At the gas station.” She looked around for some kind of approval of her statement. “Last week, and again yesterday.”

They all looked at Nate. Brad smirked. “Cody? He’s a loser.”

Christine scowled and crossed her arms. “He’s nice. Just because he isn’t from Orange Grove—”

“He’s worthless trailer trash,” Brian said, as if it were the final verdict.

Christine looked away, biting her lip. Nobody else spoke. Nate took a long pull on his drink and wondered what to do. Cody was the only friend he had, but even he could see that they were from different worlds. Cody seemed to assume Nate would end up being friends with this group—the “rich kids” from Orange Grove. Nate wasn’t sure if he wanted to fit in with them or not.

A few minutes later, Brian pulled a cigarette out of his pocket. Except on closer inspection, it wasn’t exactly a cigarette. He lit it and made a show of taking a big hit and holding the smoke in his lungs as he passed the joint to his left. Nobody commented on it, and Nate’s heart began to beat faster than normal. He’d tried pot once back home, but it had been with friends he was comfortable with. None of them had been serious about it, and he was pretty sure none of them had actually inhaled. But everybody in this group seemed to be fairly familiar with it.

Cody had told him to expect it. Still, Nate was beginning to see just what being in such a small town meant. Back in Austin, there’d been all kinds of people to hang around with. If he was uncomfortable with one group, he could just move to another. There was lots of overlap between the cliques. People he knew from the swim team or the tennis team might also be on student council, or in metal shop, or in the chess club. The lines were fluid, and it allowed for a great deal more individuality. At the time, he hadn’t appreciated it, but looking back, he could see now that his social options had been limitless.

But here in Warren, his choices were few. And just as Cody had said, there wasn’t much to do. No movie theaters. No malls. No arcades, libraries, or skating rinks. There was nothing but a run-down bowling alley, a soda shop that closed at five, a rock quarry where the cowboys hung out, and apparently an old mine, where the preps and jocks got high. There was beer, and weed, and guessing from the activities going on between Christine and Brad on the other side of the fire, plenty of sex, but not much else.

The joint inevitably came to Nate, and he tried not to be too obvious about taking the smallest hit ever.

“You going out for football?” Brian asked as Nate passed the joint on.

“I doubt it.”

“Wrestling?”

Nate sighed. His dad would certainly like it if he made an effort, but he had no desire to appease him. Besides, Nate didn’t know the first thing about wrestling. “I don’t think so.”