Fancy White Trash Read online

  Mom turns to the Guitar Player. “Steve?” Her face looks like it will collapse any minute.

  “Let’s have a pig roast!” the Guitar Player yells too loudly, fiddling nervously with one of the fake diamond studs in his ear. “What a lot to celebrate!” He spent his formative years in Miami, where, apparently, it’s just not a celebration without a dead pig. He digs into his jeans for the keys. “Tonight! Everyone call somebody to come over. I’ll be back with supplies in no time.”

  I don’t know where he finds whole dead pigs in this town. I do know Cody is going to die when I tell him. Three babies on the way, all with the same dad. Obviously, no one in my family has contemplated the wisdom of Rule #1, Find Someone New, because they’re all on the recycling program.

  That’s right, the Guitar Player “dated” Kait for about two weeks before he dumped her for Shelby. Since his idea of dating has less to do with romantic dinners and getaways to the river and more to do with getting the women in my family naked, it’s not too surprising someone turned up pregnant. But three? Could my family be more embarrassing?

  Chapter 2

  "No, no, no! ” Shelby has to scream to get everyone refocused on her. “I’m not pregnant! I signed up to be an egg donor. You can make beaucoup bucks harvesting eggs.”

  Beaucoup is a fancy white trash word for “a lot.” I think it’s French or something. The Guitar Player looks beaucoup relieved. Mom dabs at her eyes. Shelby laughs while I stand by, struck dumb by the idea of someone actually wanting Shelby’s genetic material. Sure, she’s beautiful but . . .

  That leads us directly to Rule #3 in the One True Love Plan: Looks Aren’t Everything. Take the classic soap, Moments of Our Lives, as an example. Between their First Loves coming back from the dead the same day they are marrying the Loves of Their Lives and never being sure who the father of their child is, Moments characters have one love crisis after another.

  It’s clear to me that the problem is they are all too good-looking. Sure, it’s why the show’s been on the air for over twenty years, but it’s like having dessert for every meal of the day. At first, you think red-velvet cake for dinner is a great idea, but after a few years, all you want is a nice crispy salad or a side of french fries. I’m not saying you have to eat dog food here— even I am not going to date Lucas Fielding—but to fall in love, you need someone who is not all sugary sweetness.

  Shelby is pure sugar. I’m surprised her fake tears don’t melt grooves in her cheeks. “I won’t know for sure if they’ll take my eggs until all the donor-screening tests come back, but every-one’s been harping on me to get a better-paying job. I thought you’d be happy.”

  The Guitar Player inches closer and closer to the side door, the one that leads to the driveway and his escape vehicle. “Like I said, lots to celebrate. I’ll be back in a few.”

  Mom looks fine now, but I haven’t forgotten that for a second, the Guitar Player thought what I thought. Which means maybe it wasn’t as long ago as everyone thinks since he and Shelby called it quits. It wouldn’t surprise me. The Guitar Player is a scrumptious-looking man. Dirty-blond hair with sun-streaked highlights and intense almost-black eyes, always in faded jeans that cup his amazingly tight butt. He knows how to work the wannabe-rock-star image, but like I said, Looks Aren’t Everything.

  “I’m going next door,” I announce, unfolding from my chair and stretching. I tug at my jeans and pull down my pink T-shirt so my belly button doesn’t show. “Congrats, Mom. And Shelby.”

  Shelby keeps her place at the big table, tracing one of the faded cherries on the tablecloth with a long Red Dazzle nail. Her eyes have dried up. I guess the good thing about fake tears is you can turn them on and off at will. Hannah bangs away happily at the table legs with a spoon she must’ve found under there.

  “Are you really happy for me, Abby?” Mom links her arm through mine and walks with me to the front door. We pass the collage of school pictures taped to the wall. Shelby first, then Kait, then me. Year after year, marching down the hallway.

  “This new baby is like starting over,” Mom says. “It’s so important to Steve, but to tell you the truth, I had a minor panic attack when the doctor told me today. It’s been a long time since you were in diapers.”

  “Hannah’s kept us all in practice. Don’t worry, Mom, you’ll be fine.” It’s the baby I’m worried about. As a parent, Mom has her shortcomings. Like forgetting me at the grocery store when I was three. I sat in the cart in the frozen-food section for almost an hour before someone wheeled me to the manager. Luckily, she also left her purse, so they were able to contact her right away.

  “You’ll help out, won’t you?” Mom asks. “I won’t be able to do this without the support of my girls.”

  Ha! Like she was really supporting her girls when she started sleeping with the Guitar Player. Like she was thinking of her daughters when she married him at the courthouse and didn’t invite any of us to the ceremony. This is so Veterans’ Hospital, I expect to hear theme music pipe in from above at any moment.

  “I could be really helpful running errands for you in my own car.” I am supposed to share Kait’s car when I turn sixteen. Which means I will have to get a job so I can help pay the insurance for a car that she will never let me drive. Maybe this baby can be my ticket to vehicular freedom.

  “You’re so funny.” Mom laughs, and she looks young to me. Too young to be anyone’s mom. It’s easy to see why her boss at the advertising agency keeps her around even though she’s hopeless with computers.

  I don’t reply, open the door, and walk the fifty-eight paces to Cody’s. He is waiting for me on the enclosed front porch. At last, a sane person!

  “Tell me everything.” He pats the seat next to him on the rocker. His hazel eyes are bright with interest. “Everything.”

  I do, and he nods his head like this is all totally believable and normal. That’s why we’re best friends. He knows my crazy family and likes me anyway.

  “It all sounds so Savage,” he says. He likes to make jokes like this ever since he found out in second grade that savage has another meaning besides being my last name. “I mean, isn’t your mom kind of old to be having another baby?”

  “She’s only thirty-seven,” I reply, although come to think of it, that is pretty ancient. “But she thinks she’s still nineteen. Like we need another teen mother at our house.”

  “Maybe it won’t be so bad,” Cody, far less cynical than I am when it comes to my family, says. “New marriage, new baby, new life. This could be your mom’s opportunity to do things right.”

  Oh, how I wish it were true. “For her to make things right, she’d have to admit to doing something wrong. We both know that’s not Mona’s style. I’m afraid this baby is doomed, like the rest of us Savage girls.”

  “You didn’t turn out so bad.” Cody sets the porch swing to rocking with a push of his foot. “And you can watch over the baby, kind of like you already do for Hannah. You’ll be, like, the Fairy Godmother of Normalness.”

  “Right, my dream has always been to raise other people’s babies.”

  “Better than raising your own.”

  “So true.” A definite lesson I’ve learned from my sisters is that teen pregnancy is not pretty. “I’m going to break family tradition and make it to graduation without getting knocked up. What do you think of that?”

  Cody grins. “Simple yet so profound. You’ll be a great big sis with wisdom like that to share.”

  I hope he’s right. Because I don’t have a lot of faith that anyone else is going to be looking out for this kid. But all we can really do, I guess, is wait and see.

  “Cody, we need to go.” His mom joins us on the porch, all sunny in her head-to-toe yellow dress and matching sandals. “Hi, Abby. What’s new with you?”

  “Nothing, Barbara, but thanks for asking.” I smile.

  Cody pulls a crumpled paper out of his pocket and consults it. “His flight doesn’t land for hours. Besides, I need to change.”
/>   “I don’t want to get stuck in traffic.” Barbara is such a worrier. “You know how it gets around the airport.”

  “Airport?” I ask.

  “Yeah, Jackson’s coming home. I told you, remember?” Cody stuffs the paper back in his pocket.

  “Right. Hey, that reminds me. The Guitar Player is having another pig roast tonight. You guys should come.”

  “What’s the occasion?” she asks.

  Cody laughs and I shush him. Barbara is already not a big fan of my mom. No reason to add fuel to that fire.

  “Just an end-of-summer thing.” My voice squeaks at the end, always a sign that I’m lying, but she seems to buy it.

  Barbara smiles wide and combs blonde bangs out of her eyes. “How lovely! We were planning a quiet little dinner for Jackson, but I know he’d love to catch up with you all. Can you believe it’s been two months? I don’t know what I’ll do when he leaves for college.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Cody mumbles. “Jackson the wonderful, Jackson the magnificent.”

  Jackson, Cody’s older brother. Jackson, who mentioned it every day for a month when I started wearing a bra. Jackson, who brought two friends to my eleventh birthday party and ate so much cake that I never got a piece. Jackson, Kait’s ex-boyfriend and one-time suspected father of her child.

  “He’ll flip when he sees Kait,” I say, imagining the look on Jackson’s face when he encounters the Great White Blimp for the first time. “He is sooo lucky it’s not his.”

  Barbara looks at me disapprovingly, but Cody cracks up.

  “Sorry,” I say to Barbara. “I should let you guys go. See you tonight?”

  “I’ll bring a macaroni salad,” Barbara says.

  See what I mean? Nice, normal family. Why can’t I have one of those?

  Rule #4: Don’t Need Him. Want him, like him, love him— but never, ever need him. Case in point: my dad. Who is sitting on the porch, next to the rickety bug zapper, nursing his Bud Light. He’s a handsome enough guy, with a decent job as a salesman over at Chapman’s Hardgoods, and is pretty funny when he’s drunk. Overall, not a bad catch.

  Mom married him twice and she’s never hurt for choices when it comes to guys, so he’s certainly matrimonial material. It’s just that you can’t count on him. Oh, he’ll promise you anything. A shiny new bike for your birthday, a complete makeover at the mall when you turn thirteen, that he’ll be at the awards presentation when you are the first person in your family to ever make honor roll. But you can’t believe him. I did, and was disappointed every time. I guess Mom felt the same.

  Now Dad is on wife number two, or three depending on how you count it, and she is not funny when she’s drunk. She arrived at the pig roast already lit and has been hanging on the Guitar Player ever since he broke out the acoustic and played “Tears in Heaven” for her. She got all weepy and clingy, and hasn’t left his side since. Dad doesn’t seem to notice, which is probably another reason Mom divorced him.

  “Daddy!” Hannah sees him from across the yard and launches herself at my father. She has not grasped the complexity of family relationships. All men are “Daddy.”

  “Pumpkin!” He catches her and kisses her cheek. “Pumpkin” used to be my special nickname.

  The combined smell of electrocuted insects and beer makes me a bit light-headed. Dad swats at a fly that gets too close to his drink, misses, and knocks the bottle to the ground. Chuckling, he picks it up, wipes the mouth with the bottom of his not-so-clean blue shirt, and takes a swig.

  Although the temperature’s taken a dive since the afternoon, it’s still hot enough that sweat glues my white tee with the climbing gray vines to my back. There’s also a not-so-comfortable ring of perspiration under the waistband of my jean shorts. I grab a Bud from the red-and-white Igloo and park next to Dad and Hannah on the peeling wooden bench and take a long drink to cool off. Cody and his family aren’t back from the airport yet, so I have no one to share my witty comments with. I settle for the beer and a handful of Cheetos.

  “How’s it going, Abby?” Dad asks. He bounces Hannah on his knee while she yells, “Go, horsey, go!” and slaps his leg. Her dark, bowl-cut hair flops up and down in time to her ride.

  “The same.” I stuff another Cheeto in my mouth. “You?”

  He looks over where Wife Number Two/Three is currently sitting on the Guitar Player’s lap. “Shevon wants a divorce.”

  “Bummer.” I knock back a few swallows of beer. “What’s it been, less than six months? You gonna try counseling or anything? ”

  He shrugs. “Naw, she can have the divorce. Can’t cook worth beans anyways.”

  Dad’s rules for falling in love are different from mine. I think they go something like 1. Female? 2. Breathing? 3. Cooks? And he’s always so surprised when things don’t go well.

  “Maybe you can work it out,” I say, because, sheesh people, isn’t marriage supposed to mean something?

  “Maybe,” he agrees, and drains his beer. “Get me another, will you, Abs?”

  I do, then wander away from the roasting pig and around the side of the house. There’s a tree on the property line between my house and Cody’s. We built a fort up there a million years ago, but it has mostly disintegrated. The steps are still nailed to the trunk, so I lift myself up to the first one and wrap my arms around the tree. My fingers dig into the bark.

  I breathe in the tree, the dirt smell and dampness, and feel the tightness that was growing in my chest all night relax. I go up another step and another until I am high enough to scoot out onto the lowest bough. I wedge myself between the trunk and branch. Now, if only someone would bring me another beer.

  “Lookin’ for this?”

  Cody holds up a can. Coke.

  “You got some rum for that?” I ask, just to see him squirm.

  “My mom’s here. You know how she is.” He braces a foot against the bottom of the tree. “But I can leave, you know, if you don’t want it.”

  “Don’t be so hasty,” I say with a smile. “Come on and join me already.”

  Cody scrambles up the tree. I move over to make room, but even though he’s not a big guy, it’s a tight squeeze. He pops open the soda and hands it to me.

  “Thanks. When’d you get here?”

  “While you were having a personal moment with the tree. I decided to give you some privacy.” He lays his head on my shoulder. “It sucks that we only have one more weekend of freedom. Can you believe school starts Monday?”

  Cody hates school. Not like everybody hates school, in that won’t-it-be-great-when-we’re-seniors-and-can-finally-get-out-of-this-place? way. But in a real, physical, stomachache-in-the-mornings, please-Mom-I’m-begging-you-let-me-stay-home way. If I could, I’d homeschool him myself. He’s plenty smart. It’s the teasing that gets him.

  “It’ll be different,” I tell him. “Now that Jackson’s not on campus, everyone will stop comparing you two. We won’t be freshmen. We’ll be nice, boring, no-one-will-notice-us sophomores. ”

  “You promise?”

  I give him the last half of my Coke. “I promise.”

  “Cody and Abby sittin’ in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g!”

  It’s true that Cody and I once kissed in this very tree, but that was fourth grade and only one other person on the planet knows about that kiss.

  “Shut up, Jack-Off.” I use my nickname for Cody’s brother without even looking down.

  “First comes love, then comes marriage . . . oh, wait, you’re one of those Savage girls. First comes love, then comes the baby, then comes the welfare check in the mail. . . .”

  I chuck the empty soda can his way and bean him right on the forehead.

  “Nice one,” says Cody.

  Jackson rubs his head like it actually hurt. “Nice to see you, too, Abs. Don’t bother comin’ down and givin’ me a hug or anything. I’ve only been gone two months. You probably didn’t even notice.”

  “I did, too. It was so much more pleasant without you.”

  “Get d
own here,” he says.

  I take off a shoe and throw it at him.

  He ducks this time, and my flip-flop skids off his back. “Hey, now, no need to get violent. Just thought you two might like a beer?” He holds up a six-pack with one finger. Jackson has never been afraid to buck his parents when it comes to alcohol. Pretty smooth, sneaking that out of a party right under their noses. Hey, not everyone can have parents as understanding as mine.

  “Why didn’t you say so?” I clamber down the crumbling wooden steps. Cody’s right behind me.

  “Give us a hug first.” Jackson holds the beers over my head. Although I’m not short, he’s pushing six feet, so it’s not exactly a fair contest. I jump and he lifts them higher.

  “I’m not hugging you.” I kick him with the ball of my bare foot. He yelps and too late shields his knee with both hands, dropping the beer.

  Cody grabs the six-pack and I retrieve my shoe. “Run!” Cody shouts.

  He takes off, avoids the party, which is mostly just our two families and a few neighbors spread out around the pig-pit, and runs for the back fence. It’s not much of a fence, more a line in the sand than an actual barrier against the desert. Cody shoves aside a loose panel and slides through. I’m right behind him until I feel a tug on the back of my T-shirt.

  “Let go, Jack-Off!” I lunge for the fence but get caught between the panels. Cody pulls on my arm, trying to help me through. Jackson grabs the back of my shirt, then gets a hand around my waist and hauls me back toward his side.

  “Ow!” Cody apparently encounters some kind of wild desert plant. Saguaro cactus can be surprisingly pointy, and since they’re protected by the state, they are everywhere. He lets go of my arm, and the force of Jackson’s pull has me tumbling out onto his side of the fence.

  “Got you.” He pulls me against his chest for a hug. My mouth goes dry. “Missed you,” he whispers into my ear.

  Rule #5 of the One True Love Plan is Get Out of Town. Because if Jackson and I had run away together that first week of May, that once-in-a-lifetime week when I really, truly believed he was both my First Love and the Love of My Life, then maybe we could’ve made it.