by Will Walton
Truth: I’m still hard at this point. In fact, I’m starting to think not even the near-frozen cookie dough can hold a candle to me. I’m about to bite off a square of the dough when I spot the door to what has to be a bathroom around the corner. I step over to it, move inside, and swing the door softly shut behind me.
I find the light switch and flip it. It’s not a bathroom, it turns out, but a laundry room. There’s a washing machine and a dryer stacked one on top of the other—I’ve never seen a washer and dryer like this before. Pretty decent way to save space, if you ask me. There’s also a short little ironing board with some bright collared shirts draped over it. I kneel beside the ironing board. “Okay,” I say. I unbutton, unzip, and pull at the waist of my jeans.
“Okay,” I say again. I shut my eyes. Remember.
I start going to town with myself behind the closed door of Matt’s laundry room, in Matt’s house. At first it feels all weird and kind of exciting, but then it becomes just like every other time I’ve done this, and I lose track of everything. It’s like I go elsewhere. There’s a pounding in my chest. A pounding throughout my body. A pounding on the door.
A pounding on the door?
My eyes shoot open.
“Tretch?” It’s Matt on the other side. “You in there?”
My brain floods. No! No! No! No!
I keep quiet. Then the door starts to open.
“Uh! Wait, wait!” I holler. What now? “Hold on just a second, Matt!”
“Tretch, why are you in the laundry room?”
I stand up fast and jump over by the washing machine, staring into it. “Just checking the appliances!” I try to sound calm. My pants are still around my knees. I yank them up. “You can come in,” I say.
Matt pushes the door open. “Ah,” he says. “You like the washing machine?”
“I really do!” I say. I make sure to keep my front turned away from him. “It’s nice, the way they’re stacked.”
“Did you want some cookies? I saw you had the dough pulled out.”
“Oh! Yeah. I would love some—” I clear my throat. “Cookies.”
“Sweet,” Matt says. “Me, too.” He disappears out of the doorway, and I adjust myself, zipping up my pants and all. Does he really not know? I’m not sure. He doesn’t seem to be acting weird, at least.
When I get out of the laundry room, Matt is standing by the oven, breaking apart squares of cookie dough and putting them on a rectangular metal baking sheet. He is shirtless, wearing some long green pajama pants.
It’s almost like in my fantasy—except that it’s not. “Shower’s free, if you want it,” he says. “I left some pajamas out for you.”
“Thanks—I think I just might,” I tell him. “Be right back.” I bound up the stairs.
Once my clothes are off, I turn the shower knob to cold and stand under the freezing stream. I’m still anxious.
He doesn’t know, I think. He doesn’t know.
He came close, but he doesn’t know.
Later, Matt and I, still with damp hair and smelling like Old Spice body wash, sit on his bed watching an episode of The Office on Landon’s laptop. “I don’t know where I’d be if you hadn’t told me about this show,” he says.
I shrug. “One day you’ll find a way to repay me.”
We fall asleep side by side with the laptop sitting on the edge of the bed. At one point in the night, I wake up and see it teetering. I sit up, reach across Matt, and set it gently on the floor. My arm over his bare chest—I can’t help it. I think about kissing him. Like it’s the most normal thing on earth.
I’m imagining us being like his dads. Living in a house that’s ours, sleeping in a bed we share, and not caring what anybody thinks about it. Just being in love.
I wake up to Matt’s face hovering over me, smiling. “Riiise and shiiiiiine,” he says.
I cover my eyes. “Ugghh, morning,” I groan.
“Come on. Dad and Pop are making breakfast.”
We stumble downstairs to the scent of brewing coffee and frying bacon. The sounds are of sizzling and popping, and a dull gurgle. Ron stands at the frying pan, humming, his short hair in sprouts around the tops of his ears. Landon, ponytailed and bearded, with his square-rimmed glasses, sets plates on the kitchen table.
“Hey, hey, guys,” he says.
Ron turns around. “Morning, boys.”
“Morning.”
“Morning.”
I eye the laundry room guiltily.
“Matthew.” Ron points the fork he was using to turn the bacon at his son. “We heard you come in last night. Cutting it awful close to midnight, weren’t you?”
Matt hangs his head. “Yes,” he says. “But we had to walk Amy home.”
“Mm-hmmmm. ‘Had to’?” Ron winks at me. “Hear that, Landon?”
“Heard it.” Landon looks up from his place setting and smiles. “So, Tretch, can you confirm or deny whether Matt’s got a thing for this Amy Sinks?”
I shoot a glance at Matt, and he rolls his eyes.
“Confirmed it!” Ron says. “We knew it.” He reaches for a high five from Landon, who slaps him one.
“I figured we’d know a crush from our boy when we saw one.” Landon pulls some napkins from a cabinet. “Sure enough”—he winks at Matt—“we did.”
“Come on, guys! Leave it alone, please.”
Ron smirks and turns the bacon in the pan. “Whatever,” he says. “Tretch, you drink OJ or just coffee?”
“Hmm.”
“Too long to decide,” Landon says. “He gets both.” He hands me and Matt a mug each. The one I get has a snowman on it, with the word BUM in uppercase underneath it. I don’t get it. I nudge Matt to look at it, but he just shrugs. He tips hot coffee from the pot into our mugs and we sit down. Landon delivers a cup of orange juice to my place, and I can’t help but think it’s the nicest thing. He sits down and unfolds a paper. Ron puts a plate of hot bacon in front of us, layered with paper towels. “It’s turkey bacon,” he says. “Hope you don’t mind, Tretch.”
“Oh, I love turkey bacon, Mr. Ron,” I say, even though I’ve never had it. But, as it turns out, I really do love it. After my first piece, I scarf down three more. We all sit chewing and sipping in silence for a while. It’s nice, the sunlight coming in through the kitchen windows, which are still drawn with thin curtains, and spreading itself out along the table. The oven dings and Ron gets up, returning with a pan of hot biscuits. He drops one onto his plate, one onto Landon’s, and two onto Matt’s plate and mine.
“Thanks, Pop,” Matt says.
“Thanks, Mr. Ron,” I say.
“You’re welcome, you’re welcome.” Ron sits down, smiling. “Now, Matt, your dad and I want to know about this girl. I mean, what’s she like? You can’t just keep us in the dark about—”
“Pop!” Matt’s eyes go big. “I will talk about it when there is something to talk about.” Matt looks at me, and I stop chewing. “I promise. But, honestly, there’s nothing to talk about at the moment, right, Tretch?”
I swallow. “Well …”
“Aha!” Ron leans in.
“Okay, so there is something!” Landon says. “Tretch clearly thinks so.”
“Tretch is on our side!” Ron proclaims. “I knew I liked this kid.” He looks at Landon and gestures to me with his thumb. All of this is in good fun, of course. I know they’re just acting this way to give Matt a hard time. It’s a kind of messing around, a kind of friendly talk, and it supplies the kitchen with a warmth separate from that of the coffee or the frying pan.
Matt turns to Ron. “Dad.” Then he turns to Landon. “Pop. I don’t want to talk about it. Yes, I kind of have a crush on this girl, and, yes, I think she might like me, too, but …” He spreads his hands wide. “I don’t want to talk about it before anything is certain, okay? Like, I don’t want to jinx it.”
“Well, what are you waiting for to happen, Matt?”
“Yeah, I’m confused.”
Matt’s dad
s each take sips from the same coffee mug, one that reads MONDAY and has a picture of a cartoonish, red-eyed squirrel on it.
Matt smacks his forehead with his hand. “Well, I’m not talking about sex, if that’s what you guys are thinking.”
“Well, you kind of made it sound like—”
“You did make it sound—”
Matt eyes me. I shrug again. I realize this is one breakfast table where sometimes even keeping your mouth shut gets you into trouble.
“Tretch, back me up here.”
I clear my throat, which feels almost chapped from the orange juice and coffee. “Um … I think Matt doesn’t want it to get out, you know? Like, he doesn’t want to act like it’s official until it actually is official.”
“Understandable,” Landon concedes.
Matt pats me on the back. “True friend,” he says.
“That is a true friend,” Ron says.
“True friend, indeed,” Landon agrees through a biscuit-filled mouth.
“You guys are acting weird,” Matt says. “Are you all amped about the trip or something?”
“Of course!” Ron says. Then he looks over at Landon and hands him a napkin. “You got crumbs in your beard.”
“Oh, whoops.” Landon flicks his beard a couple times with his finger. The crumbs stay. “Yeah, we’re pretty amped, I guess.” He giggles. “Are you, Matt?”
“Yeah.”
“When are y’all leaving?” I ask.
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I’m surprised. I haven’t wanted to think about them leaving, but here it is. Can’t we all just stay here for the entire rest of break?
Ron, with another napkin, wipes a spot of grease from the table. “Yeah. Matt, you gotta make sure you’re all packed tonight.”
“I know,” Matt says. He looks at me and rolls his eyes again. “We’re leaving in the morning.”
“Dang,” I say, which isn’t an eighth of what I’m feeling. “I guess I didn’t realize it was so soon.”
“You’re gonna be bored slap to death, aren’t you?”
I can’t look him in the eye right now. It’s too difficult, because I’m too afraid of what he might see.
“I know,” I tell the table. “Without you or Joe around, I don’t know what I’m gonna—”
“Movies,” Landon suggests. He looks at me and smiles. “Watch lots and lots of movies.”
There’s no way for me to tell him that this is the movie I want to watch, this is the one I want to be in, this scene right here.
With both Joe and Matt gone, I am so bored.
I spend a lot of time wondering, mostly about my future.
I wonder if it would be a good idea to run away. Or maybe I’ll just wait until I’m eighteen, make good grades, get into an out-of-state school, make even better grades, and then move to LA to write and direct a sitcom or something.
Maybe a sitcom about my life. About a kid growing up in a small town, figuring out he’s got a crush on his best guy friend, figuring it out while he’s in church, no less. I wonder if that would even make it on TV. Wonder if anyone would want to know about a story like that. It would be sad but not any more than it had to be. I mean, my life isn’t sad. My life is good, with some sad, hard things scattered around it.
The thing is, on a TV show there always has to be something happening. And right now, with Matt and Joe gone, nothing is.
When I can’t bear it anymore, I go and hang out with Spooky the Bad Luck Cat, since I think we’re trying to make amends. The day after Matt leaves, I go across the street to the Whips’ house and sit with her, rubbing her black hair. She actually purrs when I do this, which is nice. Then I have to open that nasty, wet Fancy Feast to feed her, and I just about hurl.
When I walk out the Whips’ front door, I notice something funny. Dad’s car is there in the middle of the day. I wonder if he’s come home for lunch. I know Mom’s home, so maybe he’s decided to eat with us.
The sky is white and makes the day feel snowed in, even though it never snows in Warmouth. I keep my hands in my pockets and arms against my sides as I walk up the front lawn to the house.
When I walk in, I see a loaf of bread on the countertop.
“Hey, Dad?” I call.
I walk down the hallway to Mom and Dad’s bedroom. The door is shut.
What does that mean? Surely Mom and Dad aren’t—
“Ugh,” I say, starting to turn.
But then I hear Dad’s voice. And I stop.
Because there’s something about the way he sounds. He’s talking really fast, almost like he’s speaking gibberish. I stand in the hallway, wondering. And then I wonder if it would be okay to listen, just eavesdrop a little. I mean, if something’s wrong, I want to know about it.
I creep up to the door and press my ear against it.
“—I don’t know, Katy, he left a voice mail. That was all.”
“Well, did you try calling back? Maybe that would—”
“I tried, but they aren’t answering.”
Dad sighs—and not the quiet kind of sigh, either. It’s a worried sigh, like the kind you use when you can’t really say what you’re trying to say, and you feel all this pressure or something stopping up the inside of your chest. It comes out of him like a low roar.
“Where’s Tretch?” he asks.
“He’s feeding Spooky.”
“Oh, okay.”
“We shouldn’t—”
“No, we shouldn’t say anything.”
Suddenly, I feel dizzy.
In the fifth grade, Mom gave me this talk about “adult things.” She had just walked in on me reading this old book of hers called The Thorn Birds, and she wasn’t very happy about it.
“There are adult things, Tretch, and there are kid things,” she had explained. “When you’re older, this book will be fine.”
Right now, I know I’m on the outside of an adult thing, looking in. And I’m not sure I want to be.
I stop listening and walk down the hallway to the living room, where I slide beneath the Christmas tree. They will notice me here; they will notice me, and then maybe they will figure I’ve heard them. Then maybe they’ll tell me about it, if they think I can handle it—whatever it is.
Right above my nose is this ornament I got from the Samsanuk Opera House, right after I saw The Nutcracker with Mom. It’s a blond Clara in ballet slippers holding her nutcracker. I blow softly and watch it shake. There’s something about it that soothes me.
I close my eyes and fall asleep, and I dream about the Christmas tree. I dream that it grows bigger and bigger, like the tree in The Nutcracker, and I can hear all this chirping coming from beneath it. I don’t know what it is, either, until I start to float up. When I look down, I see what’s causing all the chirping.
Rats.
Just like in The Nutcracker. Like the Mouse King and all his cronies. They’re scuffling around all over the presents and stuff—
“Bagh!” I wake up shouting. My head shoots up into the tree’s bottom branches, and I get a mouthful of pine needles. Two glass ornaments shake free of their stems. They crash and break on the floor.
“Oh no!” I cry out, childlike. I hop up, run into the kitchen, and grab a broom and a dustpan. One of the ornaments is pretty plain-looking, just kind of a red ball, no big loss, but the other one upsets me. I can still read the letters on the broken glass.
Our Family
It’s an old ornament with all of us drawn as stick figures on it: Dad as the tallest stick figure with pants, Mom the stick figure with a dress, Joe smaller, and me the smallest. I can’t just throw it away, even if it is broken.
I carry the dustpan upstairs to my bedroom, take Grandma’s scarf out of my desk drawer, and put the ornament shards there instead.
Then I sit down on the bed and start to cry.
I can’t explain it. It’s not just the broken feeling. It’s being responsible as well. But even that isn’t enough for why I feel so emotional right no
w. Maybe I’m getting sick.
In, like, third grade, Grandma had to take me to the doctor’s office because I was sick with something. I don’t even remember what it was. I just remember feeling awful, and I was crying, and I mean crying, really sobbing, and Grandma was sitting with me in the waiting room with her arm around me, rubbing my shoulder.
I remember dripping snot on the front of my T-shirt and snorting the question, “Grandma, do you think I’m brave?”
She just nodded and held a hanky up to my nose. “Yes, I think you are very brave, Tretch,” she said. “Now, blow.” I didn’t think it was possible for me to be brave and be crying at the same time.
Truth: I always get kind of emotional when I get sick. It always makes me feel like a big wimp, too.
I stand up and go to the stereo, where a CD Joe burned for me before he left is sitting, ready to be played. He remembered to put that Ellie Goulding song I like so much on it—and, over the past day or two, I’ve been developing a new dance to it in my room. I decide to dance now to take my mind off things for a little while. Maybe I’ll feel better afterward.
The trouble with dancing to this song is the eeh-eeh-eeh parts at the very beginning, because I want what I do during those eeh-eeh-eehs to be different than what I do during the eeh-eeh-eehs that come later.
So I’ve been trying some stuff.
It’s really hard to cry and sweat at the same time, so the dancing does the trick. After a few go-rounds, I’ve sweated a whole lot. My face is all moist and pink when I check it in the mirror. I decide to take what I call a Dirty Dancing break. This is when I go downstairs to the living room and stick my DVD of Dirty Dancing into the player. I’ve had about four Dirty Dancing breaks in the last couple of days.
“Tretch, Dirty Dancing again?” Mom asks when she walks into the living room.
If I were feeling better, I might ask her about the discussion I overheard. I might ask her if everything’s okay with Dad. She’s already told me that work has been tough for him lately, I know, but he sounded—well, he sounded upset. I’ve heard him sound worried about stuff going on at Farm and Handel before, but never upset.