Free Badd by Tim Tharp Page B

second, I’ll explode.
    Waiting on the porch after I ring the bell seems to take forever. I’m like, Why doesn’t Bobby rip the door open? Isn’t he as anxious to see me as I am to see him? Finally, the door swings back. It’s only Chuck. He looks stoned.
    “Uh, yeah, hi, Ceejay,” he says, rubbing his beard. “I almost forgot you were coming.”
    I look around his shoulder to see if Bobby’s behind him, but instead I see Amber Galen, the cupcake twin, standing by Chuck’s CD tower looking for some music to play.
    “Where’s Bobby?” I ask.
    “We have to go get him.” He turns around and calls to Amber, “You coming with us?”
    Her face twists into a sneer. “Are you kidding? You couldn’t get me out there for a million dollars.”
    “Well, lock the door when you leave.”
    Walking down the stairs, I ask Chuck where we’re headed, but he just goes, “Don’t worry, nowhere too weird.”
    He doesn’t give up much more information as we drive through town either. I ask if Bobby’s with Mona again, but he changes the subject. He wants to know what I think of Amber. It’s like he’s a high school kid again, trying to pry out some top-secret scoop about his girlfriend. I tell him I don’t know her all that well, but that it’s pretty surprising to see her at his place.
    “Why’s that?” Chuck asks, lighting a cigarette.
    “Because she’s kind of a stuck-up bitch.”
    “So?”
    “Well, stuck-up bitches usually don’t hook up with guys like you.”
    “What kind of guy is that?”
    “You know, Chuck—losers. No offense.”
    “That’s all right.” He exhales a puff of smoke. “None taken.”
    Pretty soon we’re outside of town and heading down a familiar road. Again, I ask where we’re going, but he just tells me to wait and see. There are only two places I know of out this way—Captain Crazy’s and Tillman’s sister’s. We pass the spot where the captain’s winged giraffe sticks up over the trees, so that just leaves Dani’s place.
    “What’s Bobby doing out here?” I ask as we head up the gravel drive to the trailer.
    “Nothing,” Chuck says. “Just needed to pick up some product, that’s all.”
    Dani comes to the door, and when we go inside, there Bobby is, scrunched down in the big orange easy chair. Facing him, on the other side of the coffee table, Dani’s boyfriend, Jace, sits on the couch stuffing weed into the bowl of a wooden pipe. A gray-blue cloud of smoke hangs in the air above them.
    Dani sits next to Jace, and Chuck squeezes in next to her. Now, I figure surely Bobby will bounce up from his chair and grab me, but he doesn’t even say anything. He just points a finger like he’s shooting me a hello. Like we haven’t seen each other in about five minutes or something. Then he turns away and takes the pipe from Jace. He poises the lighter above the bowl, closes his eyes, and says, “God is great, God is good, thank you for this dope, amen.”
    It’s too weird. So many times I’ve imagined him coming back and me running into his arms, but now all I can do is take a seat on the floor next to his chair while he sucks on the stem of that pipe. I feel like I’ve done something wrong somehow, like I’m being punished. Maybe he’s mad because I took his room when he left. Or maybe he thinks I’m on the parents’ side just because I still live with them. It’s stupid to feel guilty when I haven’t done anything, but I can’t help it.
    Jace goes back to telling a story that he must have started before we came into the room, something about how pythons have been introduced into the wild in Florida and are making their way across the rest of the country, living off raccoons and squirrels and family pets along the way. He heard a story about a two-hundred-pound python swallowing a bulldog right in front of the kids who owned it. They were traumatized.
    He takes the pipe back from Bobby. “That’s why I told Dani not to let little Ian sleep on the floor anymore.