A Summertime Journey

grass next to her trailer. She was lying on a green and orange beach chair, the kind that reclines like a bed, wearing a two-piece, white bathing suit. Her skin glistened from the Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil and she smelled like coconuts. She was wearing black sunglasses, and her blonde hair was tied back to keep the lotion out of it. Every time I walk by her trailer, that vision runs through my head, including today. We walk eight blocks to Jeremy’s house, a three-bedroom made out of brick with a large English oak tree in the center of a severely neglected front yard.

CHAPTER EIGHT
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THE YARD ITSELF HAS more square footage than my trailer lot. I’m not sure if he is considered poor, middle class, or what. From where I come from, anyone who doesn’t live in a trailer and has an actual house is considered rich. We go through the side door that leads into the galley-style kitchen, and we start shoveling through the cupboards and the fridge. There’s way more food in his house than mine, but we can’t find anything we want to eat. Jeremy claws at the handleless drawer closest to the sink, working his fingers under it. He finally coaxes it open and grabs a packet of food stamps and starts thumbing through them, counting how much he has. His mom receives food stamps, but unlike my mom, she doesn’t use them for food. She puts them in the drawer for her kids—Jeremy and his older, high school jock of a brother, Brian. Jeremy grabs a five and stuffs it into his front pocket.
“Let’s go to A&W Foods and get some candy,” he says.
“Cool, let’s roll.” We head into the living room, dodging the couch and a basket of clean but unfolded clothes on the way to the front door.
“Hey, little dicks.” It’s Brian, coming out of his bedroom with two girls. Scorpions’ “Rock You Like a Hurricane” is blaring on his record player. His room lit with the distinctive hue of black light, which he uses to illuminate the fluorescent posters on his wall. Oh shit, I think as dread envelops my body. Every time Brian catches me, he picks on me.
“Hey, Lance and I are gonna go to A&W and grab some snacks,” Jeremy says. Brian is average height with slightly more than average muscles, and a lot of girls say he looks like Tom Cruise. He is a handsome, arrogant, and often mean person.
Brian walks up to me and says, “How much you pitching in, little man?”
“Nothing. I don’t have any money.”
Brian starts laughing, and Jeremy makes a break for the door. Brian’s much quicker and gets there first and blocks us in—his hand on the doorknob and right leg stretched across the bottom of the door.
“Dork, if Lance doesn’t have cash, how’s he getting anything?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer to his own question.
“I’m using the stamps to get us both something.”
“Bullshit, you’re not using our stamps to buy food for this poor little fuck,” Brian says with an emphasis on “poor little fuck.”
“Just put them back, and let’s go,” I say, knowing that this is going to get ugly.
I don’t have siblings, but I never imagined brothers would fight as much as these two. Sometimes they get into very violent fistfights that end with broken furniture and bloody lips. Jeremy said he loves his brother and would do anything for him, even though they fight all the time. I never understood how he could do that.
Jeremy replies, “No, Mom said we could use them for whatever we want.”
Brian slowly looks me over from head to toe. He stops at my waist and says, “Lift your shirt, Lance. I want to see how empty your stomach is.”
I feel the blood rush to my face. I know Brian doesn’t give a shit about my stomach; he wants to embarrass me in front of the girls. You can tell by looking at me that my pants are several sizes too big, and I use a belt to keep them up. The waist is scrunched-up and folded over to make them look as normal as possible, hidden under my untucked shirt.
“No, he won’t. Now move, Brian, or I’m going to call Mom.”
Brian pretends not to hear Jeremy as he reaches over and forcefully grabs my shirt and pulls it up. He immediately begins laughing, and points at my folded-up pants held up by an old, brown leather belt. One of the girls starts laughing with him, pointing at my white Velcro sneakers, I guess to emphasize how pitiful I am, but the other one is not amused.
“Brian, put that little kid’s shirt down now and leave him alone—you’re such a dick,” she says with a genuine look of disgust. Brian looks at her, surprised, and drops my shirt.
“You two get the hell outta here—now,” she says.
That’s our cue—Jeremy kicks Brian’s leg out of the way and swings the door open, leaps off the steps, clearing the oscillating sprinkler, and is in a dead run down the yard, with me on his heels.
Once we’re far enough away and sure Brian won’t follow us or try to shoot us with his BB gun, we stop to catch our breath. Last year Brian and Jeremy got into a fight for the ages, and Jeremy got the better of Brian. He punched him so hard Brian had a black eye for a month. During the battle, Brian chased Jeremy outside and treed him in the oak tree. Jeremy climbed as high as he could and was perched on a thick branch, his legs and arms wrapped around the limb for stability. He thought he was up high enough that he was safe and unleashed a string of cuss words so weighty that if the words were raindrops, it would have been a tsunami. Brian looked up at Jeremy and said, “You’re dead, motherfucker!” and marched back into the house. Two minutes