The New Kid: A Novel - Hardcover

By the age of fifteen I've taught myself the essentials: how to walk cool, how to shave, and how to masturbate. The first involves spacing your feet wide and looking like you're about to fall sideways; the second, starting with your sideburns and proceeding with downward strokes; the third, the efficient application of saliva.

And yet, despite these skills, I have a number of strikes against me:

-- My name is Humphrey.

-- I'm overweight, with a lame haircut.

-- I'm the new kid.

No one knows dread like the new kid. No matter how friendly we may try to be, we're none of us easy to talk to. We're all either snobs or assholes, because we're scared as shit.

Summer school won't start for a while, so all I do for the first two weeks of June is swim in the pool at the crappy motel my family has moved into. At first it's all bright fun, games of king of the dolphins with the girl with the wet band-aids from room 10. Then she leaves so I float lizards on leaf boats, collect the curled husks of drowned centipedes, or, finally, just stand for hours at the shallow end, my arms hitched over the wet concrete, and stare through the chlorine haze at the low palms at the edge of the parking lot. One day Mom comes home from work and finds me like that, my hair a greenish matted mess, both dry and wet like pool-hair gets, my shoulders peeling, and that's the day she throws her hands up and says I'm not contributing anything to the family and I call her a bitch and she says I'm ungrateful and moody so I wander off and come home late that night. She rubs my back and says she's sorry and I say I'll apply for a job the next day. I guess I'm ready to do something else. What I really hope is that I'll make a friend at work, at least one friend, so I'll know someone when I arrive at summer school.

The woman who interviews me is named La Toya, and she seems nice but doesn't say much, so I lead the way and tell her about how I worked at the supermarket back in Fresno. She chuckles when I ask if she wants references. I start the next day. My pay is $5.15 an hour, which means I can buy a new video game every couple of shifts. She makes me a bagger, but tells me that I could train on the registers and become a cashier in a few weeks. That comes with an automatic ten-cent raise.

My first few nights I'm bagging for Bernice. She pretty much ignores me (everyone at Food Festival does; I'm not really loud and also I'm white), but I really like her, because she talks back to the after-work assholes in suits, smiling the whole time, tapping her fake nails on the corner of her lips.

Even though the other baggers and cashiers live near me, they're mostly in their late teens, and moms, so I don't make any friends. I bet Bernice might hang out with me if we started talking, but we haven't yet.

I wish I could capture the moment for you, what it was like when they walked in. I was wearing the uniform: a red plaid button-down, black jeans, black apron, black Velcro sneakers that I bought down the street from my old school in California. Bernice was scanning a mound of tortilla packages for a couple of Mexican dudes. The air conditioner had just snapped off, so the fluorescent lights were brighter than usual, and they made the edges of everything sharp. I had just got back from asking the front end for a carton of Winston Lights for Michelle's customer on 2. Bernice slid the last plastic package down and placed the dudes' tomatoes on the greasy aluminum scale. She punched 5 8 9 [scale] [code] and handed them to me.

So. 5 8 9 [scale] [code] and the receipt printer's whirring and they come in. High school kids. The girl comes first. She's got one of those careless-yet-worked-on ponytails that hot girls wear -- you know, where the hair has probably been blow-dried because it's perfectly straight and flying above her head, full inches higher than her scalp, and the tail fans out like the wash from some department-store fountain. She's got this tight army-green T-shirt with a little pocket over a nipple -- no bra, I think -- and this pair of khaki shorts that flare over her tan legs, and she's wearing flip-flops that are soft brown leather. I don't think I'm an expert on this kind of thing, but she's definitely pretty well-off, a lot richer than this neighborhood, for sure. She sails right past the bread aisle with this purposeful expression, looking like most dumb people do when they have something on their mind, like she's balancing all the troubles of the world on the down of her upper lip, and the solution to it all is somewhere at the back of the store.

He comes in after, but he's totally different. She's all directed, like she's on an errand that someone has the car idling outside for, but he comes in pissed and reluctant. The automatic doors have already half-closed and opened again before he makes it inside.

Hot air must have blasted in when the girl entered, too, but because of some chaos of wind currents in the rafters, I only feel a wave of wet heat when the guy enters. He's got Vans on (like he's a skater! like he's from California!), and these baggy pants that make it look like there's some other pair of pants inside trying to get out. He's also wearing -- and this is what makes me think he might be a nice kid -- a yellow tank top. I mean, what guy wears yellow? He's got these defined arms, so he's clearly got some social capital, but at the same time, I figure a guy who wears yellow has got to be kind, right? He doesn't seem really friendly, though. He scowls and saunters into the Food Festival like it's a pool hall. He's wearing a baseball hat, but the hair sticking out in the back is crusted with beach. He's got this small and intense expression that might mean he owns a shotgun. He disappears down the wine aisle, after the girl.

If I could be friends with them, it would be perfect.

I look down at the scored metal of the checkout. I could be as popular as he. If only I weren't wearing a plaid shirt embroidered with "Food Festival." If only I had gotten around to losing those twenty pounds. If only I weren't earning minimum wage at a supermarket.

"Hey, Bernice," I say. "Do you have any go-backs?"

She has been picking price-tag goo from beneath a lacquered nail. "Um," she drawls as she scans the shelves beneath the register. She holds up a box of tea like it's an artifact. "Yeah, I got this."

I take the box and head toward the aisles before La Toya can stop me.

I take the middle row and sweep the store, glancing left and right, just like when I was a kid and would lose my mom. Unless my potential friends happen to be passing an end cap, I'm sure to spot them. 4AB, jams and spices, no; 5AB, toothpaste, no; 6AB, paper goods, no; 7AB, cake mixes, no; 8AB, soft drinks, no; 9AB, cereals, toys, no; 10AB, frozen foods, no -- or yes. They're in the dairy section, at the end of the frozen foods.

It has always been the most untamed section of the grocery store. The pastel purple gives way to stark whites and silvers; puffs of cold vapor make the whole area an arctic passage. And at the end of the aisle, leaning against the grill where the white and purple of the 1 percent shifts to the white and blue of the skim, they are making out.

He has her pressed past the half-gallons and into the gallons, her ass pushing so deeply into the containers that they seem to be fleeing her. His half-thrusts have pushed the plastic sliding tags over, so the milk prices are bunched at the yogurt. Her legs are spread around his hips, and her shorts are short enough that from my angle it looks like she's not wearing any at all.

Her eyes are closed -- the rule of teenage kissing -- and he's not facing me, so I can watch them in privacy. He's got her neck between his hands, and the frayed bill of his cap cradles the top of her head. He's going after her with such animal intensity that I feel anxious for the girl -- if she's even a little bit not into him, she has to be really uncomfortable. But by all evidence, she's into him. I stare at the spot where the denim of his jeans presses against the smooth skin of her thigh, and then walk away. I have a box of tea in my hand, after all, so there is something to be done.

As I pass back down the cereal aisle, though, I wonder why they have come into the store. They lost no time getting to the milk section. Why head straight to Dairy and go at it? By the time I reach Produce I think I've got it figured out: summer break is weird like that. You slam against the emptiness of the suburb, and in order to relieve yourself of the boredom of hanging with your girl and yet remain into her you come up with challenges, ways to break the deadening feeling. Maybe getting it on in public places was the best solution this guy could come up with.

I've never had a girlfriend. Well, I had a couple back in California, but all we did was hold hands in the hallways and go to the mall after school. We made out a bunch and one girl gave me a blowjob but she had braces and it hurt. I can't help but feel that whatever I did with those girls is lily-white compared to what's going on in the dairy section. I wonder if this is what Florida will be like, all girlfriends and intense making out. I hope not. Hooking up was fun sometimes but usually I found it kind of boring, like playing a chess game by following the moves written down in some book. And when the ultimate thing turns out to be boring, it's really depressing. I put the tea back and return to Bernice.

I can see straight to the front as a couple more kids arrive. The door slides open, and in the wavering space of hot air outside the store I see their pickup idling. They have the yellow-tank-top boy's coolness but not his hotness. Their hats are at the same angle as his. They have sulky what-the-hell expressions on, like they're pissed off but not ready to fight about it, and they storm toward the back. I slot myself behind Bernice, fit another tab of plastic bags on the dispenser.

I know La Toya sees them come in. She's leaning against the front coun...