by Lorri Horn
“Hold up there, mister,” she’d said, and had him remove his shoes. He wasn’t sure how the others had fared, but for his part, he’d taken science today in his socks.
Input Lag
A sock-footed Dewey made his way into the office to catch up with Clara again. After all this time, he’d never thought to remove his shoes coming through the vents, and it had a whole different feel. He found it easier to crawl along as the top of his socks slid over the metal.
When he got to the first cookie, he lifted the lid on the small glass dome. Today’s sample was a chocolate crinkle cookie. A perfectly round chocolate cookie, studded with mini-chocolate chips and rolled in powdered sugar with a crackly exterior. Dewey popped the whole thing in at once and began to chew. It had a deep rich cocoa flavor, not too sweet but complex and satisfying. ‘Molasses?’ he wondered. Such questions would never have crossed his mind before meeting Clara. Now, he enjoyed trying to guess. Whatever it was, it was good.
“Where are your shoes, sir?” Clara asked when he landed onto the client pillow.
“Outside. Caked in mud.”
“It does get muddy after the rains. Let them dry out and you’ll be able to bang it off.”
Dewey stood up. “Good cookies! Any more of those?”
“You know there are,” she smiled.
“Hey, where’s Wolfie?” Usually by now he would have run up and greeted Dewey.
“Groomer. He needed a haircut.”
Dewey sat down at his desk with a plate of warm crinkles.
“Thanks! So, any more thoughts on Archie’s case?”
“Just this one: game controllers in the modern world.” She stood up and clapped her hands together in one solid gesture of completion.
“Huh?” He had no idea what she was talking about. Was that all she had to say?!
“That’s it. You’ll take it from there, Dewey!”
Now, Dewey stood up, too. “But I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do! I got the idea from you yesterday.”
“Game controllers?” Dewey asked, squinting his eyes.
“Right.” Clara gave a nod.
“Right, what?”
“Right, you got it! Now I’m going to fetch Wolfie. Back in a bit.”
And she walked out.
“Ugh!” Dewey smacked himself in the forehead and sat down at his computer. He stared at it blankly. Didn’t she promise to help him?
He pulled up those articles again about game controllers and the navy, the medical world, and their effect on today’s culture. Where did she want him to go with this? Dewey sat there tapping at a pad of paper with a pencil making a bunch of dots.
Nothing was coming to him.
He drew a t-chart and wrote “Problem” on one side. On the other side he put “Game Controller” since that’s what Clara said was the answer to the problem. Then he added an “s” to the word Problem to make it Problems and started adding to the list:
-Archie = video games
-Mom = no weekdays
-A plays anyway
-She Ø thinks he’s playing.
-She thinks A has problem (addiction etc.)
-A. Ø know how good has it (snacks! Nerf!)
Argh! He already knew all of this. And he was getting bored.
He wrote “Controller” again in the middle of its own page and circled it. He tried to do a brainstorm web, drawing long lines off of it and connecting words related to it. Well, he thought, let’s see. Video games have controllers, obviously. He wrote that down. Archie’s mom is a controller, he laughed to himself—with a big fat mother board. That cracked him up. She only thinks she’s controlling everything cause he’s off sneaking around. That’s a whole other kind of video controller! He smiled to himself. He didn’t feel like doing these dumb school strategies. They weren’t getting him anywhere other than amusing himself.
Dewey shoved a crinkle in his mouth. He was hoping to see Wolfie’s new haircut, but he had homework and his math book was in his room. He left Clara a note: “Had to go. Back tomorrow. You left me with the controller, but I got some input lag.”
Can You Feel Water?
“Who even knew he had eyes,” had been Dewey’s first remark. “They’re very expressive.” He smiled and stroked Wolfie’s silky-smooth fur. His eyes were two glassy brown marbles with a big black bull’s eye in the center. Fluttering above them were long, soft willowy black lashes. Dewey rubbed his forehead into Wolfie’s fur. He smelled like vanilla and almonds.
The fur had been cleaned up around his mouth, and his whiskers were cut blunt and even. Dewey didn’t know how he did it, but that dog smiled with his curled pink tongue.
“So, yeah,” Dewey began. “I pressed and held the guide button to turn on that game controller you left me holding, but, uh, no connection,” Dewey shrugged. “I made this stupid list,” Dewey held up his stupid list. “Still nothing. So I consulted the user manual. It suggested I ‘chat with a volunteer from the community.’” He sat down, folded his arms in front of his chest, and stared at her.
She laughed. “Okay, okay. Sorry I ran out on you, sir. He really was a furry mess.”
“Well, that makes two of us now,” Dewey said, running his finger through his hair anxiously. “Come on, Clara. I’m out here drowning.”
“Let me see that list, sir.”
She looked it over.
“But, sir,” she said. “You’re already doing it. You just have to find your feel for the water.”
“Huh?”
“In swimming. They call it ‘feel for the water.’ It’s when swimmers grab hold of the water and use it to propel themselves forward.”
“How can you grab hold of something that isn’t solid?”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly, what?”
“Exactly, right. They feel how the force they exert against the resistance propels them forward.”
“The force they exert against the resistance propels them forward?” he repeated.
“Exactly.”
Archie slid onto the pillow with a flop, and a newly coiffed Wolfie ran to greet him with a happy pant.
Dewey looked at Clara, his eyes wide.
“Good to see you, boy!” Archie said patting him. Wolfie made some happy noises, and Dewey motioned for Archie to come in and sit down.
“Okay,” Dewey began. “Here’s the thing.” Archie looked at him intently.
“Actually. Let’s start here,” Dewey began again. “Please answer these questions for me as true or false:
“One, ‘I have been unsuccessful in cutting back video game playing.’”
“Well, no one has asked me to cut back? Unless you mean my mom asking me not to play on weekdays? Then I guess I have to say true because I have not been successful doing that.”
“Interesting,” nodded Dewey. “Okay,” he continued. “Next one. ‘I experience an irresistible urge to play.’”
“True, yes. I think so. I do. Sometimes, yes.”
“Hmm. Okay. Huh. Last one. ‘I experience tension that is only relieved by playing.’”
“Tension? What’s that mean? No, I don’t think so. That doesn’t sound right. False.”
It was touch and go there for a minute. Dewey let out a sigh.
“Good news. You don’t have a video game problem. You aren’t what researchers would call a ‘problematic video gamer.”
“Well that’s good news!”
“Yup!”
“So, we just tell my mom that! And you’ve fixed the problem!!” Archie jumped up and clapped his hands together. Dewey wished it could be that simple.
“Somehow I think it may take a bit more convincing.”
“Oh. Okay.” Archie settled back into his chair. “You might be right about that.”
“Here’s the thing,” Dewey felt his way through his words. Clara slid his list from yesterday back to him across the table and walked o
ut. He glanced back down at it. Like a swimmer dipping his foggy goggles into the water to clear them, it began to emerge. Controller. Controlling.
“You and your mom have a problem. She doesn’t want you to play video games on the weekdays. You’re going to have to tell her that you’ve been sneaking it elsewhere.”
“What?! NO! You’re CRAZY!”
Clara came in with a plate of black and white cookies.
“You made black and whites?!” Dewey exclaimed.
The insides were soft cake-like cookies, the outsides half-frosted vanilla, the other half chocolate.
“Wow,” Archie said. He took a bit right down the middle so he got both chocolate and vanilla in his bite. “Wow.”
Dewey liked to eat all the vanilla first and then leave the chocolate half second.
“My dad would die if he knew you’d made these!”
“I’ll save him some,” Clara said. “I’ll bring them around later today, or tomorrow.”
“You gotta, Archie. It’s the only way.”
“Why?” he said, forgetting to chew his cookie. A swirl of black and white frosting and cookie crust sat on his wet tongue.
Dewey offered Archie another cookie. Archie distractedly bit into it, exacerbating the problem.
This kid needed to chew. “Well, buddy, it’s like this. We need your mom to understand that she thinks she’s controlling the situation, but it’s not working.
“The only way to have her open to that without killing you for breaking her rules is if you’re the one who cops to it. And, I think,” Dewey said, feeling his way through his words, “if she finds out from somebody else, you’re gonna get busted. This way, you confess and come up with a solution together. She’s a reasonable person, right? She seemed like it the other day.”
Archie worked out the cookie in his mouth and swallowed.
“Kind of. Yeah. I guess so. She’s just crazy about this computer stuff.”
“Okay, we’ll take it nice and slow.”
“Slow? How is confessing ‘slow?!’ What if I get in trouble?”
“Well,” Dewey spoke slowly, “you broke the rule, right?”
“Dewey! I came to you for help, not to get into trouble!”
Sink or swim, thought Dewey, sink or swim. As if Clara’s cookies could somehow channel her lessons to him, he swam. “My friend,” Dewey spoke, leaning forward and grabbing a cookie like he’d found a precious shell, “It’s like the cookie. It’s neither black, nor white. It’s the same with your mother. Not just her ideas, or your ideas. We will find the grey in the cookie!”
“The grey in the cookie? That sounds kind of gross.”
“Hmm. Maybe not grey. But you get the idea, right?
“Yes. I get that I’m about to get grounded for the next thirty years.”
“We’ll do this one cookie at a time. Have another?” Dewey offered the plate.
“Might as well,” Archie said. “Could be my last.”
Family Dinner
It had been a while since Colin had come for dinner at Dewey’s, and Dewey’s parents were giving him the once over.
“Did you go anywhere over break?” Dewey’s mom asked him as she plopped some rice onto his plate. “Beans?”
“Yes, please. We went with my mom to San Francisco to see her sister’s family.”
“Oh, San Francisco is so great. Love the food at the Ferry Building. Right, Dewey?”
“Right!” Dewey said, biting into a taco. The bottom half of the meat dropped out onto his plate and he grabbed some chips to scoop it up.
“How’s school?” Dewey’s dad asked him.
“It’s going great. Except science. Too much homework.”
“I have homework,” Pooh Bear said.
“Oh, you do, do you?” Dewey’s mom smiled. “What do you have to work on tonight?”
“A paper for you to sign.”
Colin and Dewey laughed.
Pooh frowned.
“Oh, no, Pooh. They’re not laughing at you, right boys?”
“Right,” nodded Colin. “I’d love to see your homework after dinner,” Colin said patting her arm gently.
“Okay!” she smiled.
“Okay,” he nodded.
They ate their dinner, sharing their day. Dewey’s dad talked about his kids at school. Then Colin asked, “Hey, does Dewey know his real parents?”
Dewey’s dad pinched Dewey’s mom.
“Ouch, Don!”
“She’s real!” Dewey’s dad sang.
“What Don means, Colin,” Dewey’s mom said, rubbing her arm, “is that we are Dewey’s real parents. You want to know if he knows his birth parents, though, right?”
“Oh, yeah, right! Sorry! I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t worry, nobody’s hurting anybody here except Mr. Pinchy Fingers.”
“Sorry! I didn’t mean to pinch you hard! I was just playing!” He kissed her pinched spot.
“Yeah, yeah. I forgive you,” she smiled. “No, he hasn’t met them. Maybe someday if he wants to he will.”
“Whoa. It’s so cool. How old was he when you adopted him? Can I ask?”
“Sure. Of course. Dewey? You want to say?”
“No, you’re doing fine,” Dewey smiled. He liked when Colin asked the questions about it. They used to talk about it a lot when he was little. He’d always known he was adopted. They’d read books about how he was adopted, and they’d specially chosen him to forever be theirs. He’d never known anything else but this, though, so it didn’t seem strange to him or even come up very often. But every once in a while it did, like when someone made an adoption joke in a movie or at school.
Once even his dad’s second cousin who didn’t know he’d been adopted joked about how his son must have been adopted as the punchline for something dumb he’d done. It didn’t make Dewey feel bad. But it did make him feel different somehow, and remind him about being adopted in those moments.
His dad had taken his cousin aside and told him, and boy did that guy feel awful. He definitely felt worse than Dewey did. It hadn’t come up for a while lately, though, and he kind of enjoyed hearing his family and Colin talk about it.
“We adopted Dewey when he was three days old. We got him from Texas. He’s our little Texan.” Dewey’s mom beamed.
“Wow. That’s so cool,” Colin said. “It’s kind of weird, but he looks like you guys.”
“Yeah, well Dewey has all my allergies to dust mites and cats, too,” Dewey’s dad said. “Life is funny that way!”
“I’m adopted, too!” Pooh Bear said.
“No. You’re not. You were what we call a wonderful surprise!” Mom smiled.
“I’m a wonderful surprise!”
“I’ll give you ‘surprise,’” Dewey said.
“Did you adopt Stephanie from Texas, too?” Colin asked.
“She’s a wonderful surprise!” Pooh said.
“Not quite,” Dewey’s dad said to Pooh. “We have three children, two biological and one adopted and all real if you pinch them.”
Dewey pinched Colin.
“Ouch!”
“This one’s real, too.”
They all laughed.
“Do we have anything good for dessert?”
“No, but I was thinking,” Dewey’s mom said, “When Stephanie gets home soon we can all go out for some ice cream before we take Colin home. Good?”
“Good!” Dewey said.
“Good!” Pooh Bear imitated.
Cyranose
Archie was terrified to tell his mother that he had been sneaking around playing video games during the week, and each day that Dewey found him at school to ask how it had gone was another day that passed without it going. Dewey instructed him to come by the office after school for a new plan of action.
When Dewey arrived at the office that afternoon, Clara had prepared Minecraft cookies for Archie. She had square cookie Creepers, Steves, Pickaxes,
pigs, and sheep.
“Just when I think you can’t be outdone!” Dewey said. “I didn’t even know you knew what Minecraft was.”
“I didn’t. I looked up Mindcraft! Wouldn’t that name make a lot more sense?”
“Not really. They’re mining for things.”
“Oh!”
“Well, whatever. You just made cookies too good to be eaten, they’re so beautiful.” He snapped a picture with #minecrafteats and posted it. “That ought to boost business!”
Archie slid in and landed on the lime green pillow.
“No time to waste, my friend. Let’s get down to work.” Dewey ushered him over to his desk.
“Whoa! No way!” He picked up one of Clara’s cookies. “No. Way! Are these edible?”
“Of course. Always. Dig in.”
Archie took a few snaps himself and then began to nibble on a Creeper.
“Just tell me what to do.”
“Do you know who Cyrano de Bergerac is?”
Archie didn’t.
“My mom read me a kid’s book with it once. So, he’s this guy back in the I-don’t-know-when—a long time ago—who’s got this huge, huge nose and loves this woman, but she’s in love with this dumb good-looking guy who loves her, too, but he thinks he’s too dumb for her. But Cyrano, the big schnozzle guy, is some great poet. So, even though he loves her, or maybe because he loves her, I can’t remember—who even cares—he says he’ll help the dumb guy and pretend to be him by writing stuff for him and whispering in his ear underneath her balcony. Are you following this?”
“Not at all.”
“Basically, there are two guys. They both want the girl. Cyrano can write and talk great, but he’s got the big nose. The other guy is a looker, but he can’t speak worth two dead flies. So Cyrano whispers for him.”
Archie laughed. “‘Two dead flies!’ But, I don’t get it. Why would Cibaro do that for him?”
“Cyrano. Who knows why those guys did anything back then. The point is, I’m going to be your Cyrano.”
“Are you calling me ugly?”
“No. I’m the ugly one! I’m Cyrano.”
“Oh. So I’m stupid fly-guy.”