Lucy did the same, but she said nothing back. She noticed Bucket’s shoulders hunching, and she imagined he was realizing he’d been used as a conduit and was quickly being third-wheeled. She decided to bring him back into the conversation.
“Hey, Bucket.”
“Yeah?”
“You bring anything for the party?”
“Not really. I tried to call Tricia Howard so she could pick me up some beer, but my phone’s shot. I rolled a joint using some crumbled-up schwag I stole from my parents’ closet, but I don’t have high hopes for it. The weed was really dry.”
Brewer chimed in, using a cartoony voice. “How dry was it?”
Bucket had blown the fist bump. Lucy saw his face brighten at this new attempt to amuse Brewer. Bucket said, “As dry as Tina Plumber’s second pussy.”
The joke landed with Brewer, who snorted and shook his head. “Man, she is mighty confused, though.”
Lucy wasn’t fond of how boys talked about other girls in front of her—either they said demeaning shit as if she weren’t there at all, or they recognized she was there and said really demeaning shit. Despite that, she was curious. Did Tina really have a second vagina? And if so, how reduced was her own social standing that she hadn’t heard about it yet?
“What are you monkeys laughing about? Does Tina really have—”
“Oh no. It’s gross, Lucy.”
“Grosser than your swampy nuts?” She’d actually liked that he’d been so open about his body. She sensed that came from a place of confidence; he hadn’t said it in the way that some boys would say disgusting things to her in an attempt to shock, or to let her know how little her opinion of them mattered.
Bucket chimed in, “Lucy’s okay with gross. I showed her Guacamole Party on my phone once and she didn’t even flinch.”
Lucy hadn’t flinched—she had yet to back down from an internet challenge—but she did cry for the girl in the video that night. Never told Bucket, though. He often told her he liked that she was “one of the guys,” and she didn’t want to let him down.
“Guacamole Party? Seriously?” said Brewer. “I don’t even like to think about that one. In fact, I’m kind of pissed you reminded me of it. So nasty.”
“Wait,” said Lucy, “is Tina’s thing that bad?”
“Oh, not at all. Just that it might be… Listen, you know how people were saying that I smoked crack out of a light bulb at Ada Keizer’s birthday party?”
“Yeah.”
“But that was total Grade-A bullshit, and it got around so fast that two days later my cousin was asking me about it. So sometimes I feel like it’s shitty to go spreading stories you aren’t a hundred percent sure on.”
They were much closer to the East Bear Caves. They’d gone past the range of the city’s streetlights. Without any moon overhead, Brewer’s headlights were the only thing illuminating the road as it rolled beneath them. Lucy thought about what Brewer had said. She’d heard a ton about him, and his cousin Rodney, and how their whole clan lived in a manufactured home compound out past Westerhaus. They were meth cooks, they were burglars, they were junkies, they bred dogs for fighting. Brewer smoked crack.
How much of any of that was true?
Lucy knew Brewer pulled good grades, when he bothered to show. She’d heard his name on the honor roll during morning announcements and didn’t quite believe it until she heard it again the next quarter. She wondered what he was really like. She wondered what lies he’d heard about her. She said, “You don’t have to talk about it, then.”
“Well, now it’s built up, though, isn’t it? And besides, I heard it straight from Ben, and Tina’s got that crazy in her eyes, so I think we can file this one under ‘Maybe.’ ”
“Soooooooo?”
“You know how Tina is an Eastsider? Well, they were doing one of their megachurch events, like some boy-band concert. Lambs on Fire, I think, which is actually a totally metal name. Anyway, she goes to this concert, and at the end they have this come-to-Jesus kind of thing on the stage where you can make a ‘Purity Pledge.’ So she does that, gives her heart to Jesus, says she’ll save her virginity for some schmuck who won’t even know if she’s good in bed until they’re married.”
“Oh no.”
“Yeah. You see where this is going. Well, she was dating Ben Brumke at the time, and he’s an Eastsider too, but only because his parents go. So he’s there every Sunday, and Tina saw him there and figured he’d be a safe guy to date.”
Lucy remembered the time Ben Brumke walked by her locker and said, “If you forgot your lunch, then I have something you can eat,” and then started making nasty wet throat-gagging noises.
“Tina miscalculated.”
“Yeah, you could say that. So Brumke keeps pushing and after a month Tina tells him that she can’t give up her virginity, that’s holy territory, but she’d been messaging some other Christian girls online and she had something else for him.”
“The butt!” said Bucket, appearing to relish this part of the story in a way that gave Lucy pause—there were clearly thoughts Bucket had about women in general that he never shared with her.
“Yup. The butt. Which always seemed kind of crazy, to me at least. I always saw that as a bonus level. That’s not the default game. Like, you have to beat all the bosses and collect all the stars or rings or whatever, definitely do a bunch of oral, and then maybe you get to the butt. But here goes Tina, throwing it out there like a level-one mid-boss. So of course Ben goes for it, starts thumping away. He said that she kept her hands clasped in front of her face the whole time, like she was praying, and toward the end he said she was crying. And then afterward they’re lying there, and she’s still crying a little bit and she looks at Ben with this weird face and she says, ‘I can’t believe you love me so much that you’re willing to wait. But I swear you can have the rest of me once we’re married.’ ”
“Nooooo.” Lucy didn’t know what she was more amazing—that Tina lived so far outside of our accepted reality, or that anyone would consider marrying an ape like Ben Brumke.
“Yeah. Makes me a little sad. You can kind of picture her eyes all misty, that room smelling like ass and big, sweaty Ben, and she’s hearing wedding bells and thinking something special has happened. She invited him to come to dinner—with her parents—at the Beef N’ Brew the next night. So of course Ben dumped her. Sent her a text that night saying that he’d thought she was a good Christian girl and that after what happened he didn’t think he could see her again. Then she texted back saying she didn’t understand and he sent back, like, a prayer-hands emoji and a message saying, ‘I’ll pray for you.’ ”
Bucket laughed. Lucy cuffed the back of his head.
“What?”
“You know what. Ben’s an asshole.”
“Yeah, but… the prayer hands. It’s kind of funny.”
Brewer said, “Ben sure thought it was funny. But you could also tell he was shook up over it. I mean, with a girl that confused or crazy or whatever, how far is it in her head from This is the man I’m gonna marry to This is the man I’m gonna stab to death?”