Reality Boy Read Online Free PDF

a soda to the customer in front of me and ignore her even though she’s still staring at me. As I’m making nachos for the next guy, one of her kids comes up and says, “Mom? Are you coming?” and she leaves with the kid.

    During the first period, we get a chance to clean up our counter and refill the condiment stations. Because I’m brawny, I always take the big bottles of ketchup and mustard over to the stand and fill them. Plus, it gets me away from the other six cashiers, who tend to want to talk and get to know their coworkers. Most of the time, they talk about TV shows.
    And I don’t watch TV.
    Ever.
    As I’m filling the second container of ketchup, the hockey-fan lady in the shit-kicker boots from before comes up to me and puts her hand on my shoulder.
    “You’re Gerald, aren’t you?”
    I stop and look at her. I can feel my face drop, and I nod.
    She has tears in her eyes. “You are?”
    I nod again.
    She squeezes my arm and says, “I am so sorry for what those people did to you.”
    I find myself paralyzed. It’s been more than ten years since it first aired, and I’ve tried to make it part of someone else’s childhood and move past it, like Roger says. I’ve tried to forget Network Nanny by not watching TV and by writing her pretend letters to tell her how I really felt. I’ve done all that. None of it made it go away. But this hockey lady is something brand-new. She just says it and I can’t move. Can’t speak.
    “You okay?” she asks. “I know it’s none of my business, but I couldn’t help it.”
    All I can do is nod.
    “I always wanted to find you and take you up into my arms and give you a hug. You poor boy,” she says.
    I nod again. I try to get back to my ketchup, but I can’t see anything through the glaze on my eyeballs. Everything is blurry.
    “Do you mind if I hug you?” she asks.
    I shake my head no.
    And when she hugs me, something really weird happens. Before I can even figure out what’s going on, I’m crying. Like,
really
crying. It’s like someone is twisting open a spigot. I’m facing the ketchup containers, so no one at stand five can see this. And the harder I cry, the more she hugs me and the softer she is. The longer I cry, the more I realize what’s happening.
    I am being hugged. In ten years, I have been recognized, scrutinized, analyzed, criticized, and even terrorized by a handful of the millions of
Network Nanny
viewers. Never was I hugged.
    I am completely silent as I cry. She is completely silent as she hugs me. After a few moments, she reaches behind me and grabs a few napkins and hands them to me. Beth comes over and asks if everything’s okay and when she sees I’m crying, she pats me on the back and tells me she’ll take register #7 for the rest of the day if I need her to.
    “No,” I say. “I’m fine.” I face the wall and the condiments and blow my nose and wipe my face. Beth goes back to the stand. I take a few deep breaths.
    Hockey Lady squeezes my arm and says, “I’ll stay in touch.” Then she walks away.
    I stand there for a minute and locate my invisible roll of plastic wrap and cover myself in it again—the barrier that keeps me from
them
. The armor that protects me from the whole fucking world. The polyethylene that keeps the tears in.
    Register #1 Girl looks at me as I walk in the door and she has that look on her face like she wants to cry, too. I ignore her and go back to register #7. I make a pact with myself to never let anyone hug me again.

9
    I’M STILL WEARING my brand-new hockey jersey when I get in the house. I bought it so I don’t have to take any shit, just like the hug woman. I never got her name. I will never be able to see ketchup again without thinking about her.
    Dinner is long over, but the house still smells of roast chicken and homemade gravy. Dad is in his man cave, doing whatever he does in there. Probably drinking. Tasha and her rat boy are downstairs blasting some awful country-and-western song and