How to Be a Normal Person

by TJ Klune

  Chapter 14

  “STONER SCRABBLE,” Casey said, sitting cross-legged in front of Gus’s coffee table. There was a small pipe on the table, next to an old, beat-up He-Man lunchbox and a Scrabble box that Casey had grabbed from Lottie’s house before they went back to Gus’s. “A tradition passed down for hundreds of years.”

  “Scrabble started out as game called Criss-Crosswords by an American architect named Alfred Butts in 1938,” Gus said, trying desperately to not get sucked into something called Stoner Scrabble, for fuck’s sake.

  “Right,” Casey said. “So, hundreds of years. Time immemorial. One day, man made fire and then stuff happened and there was Stoner Scrabble.”

  “I don’t think you quite understand the concept of time,” Gus said. “Either that or the Yakima public school systems seriously failed on all levels. I weep for you and the other children.”

  “Hey!” Casey said. “You don’t knock the Yakima Yaks!”

  “Because that’s not a terrible school mascot at all,” Gus said.

  “You love alliteration,” Casey said. “Don’t front, man. I see the look on your face when you do it. It’s begrudging euphoria.”

  “You tell anyone and I’ll deny it,” Gus said. “They won’t believe you because all I have to do is frown and people believe I don’t like anything.”

  “It is a gift, man,” Casey agreed. “It’s a good thing I know that beneath that grumpy exterior beats the heart of a Share Bear.”

  Gus groaned. “God, how I wish you would forget that.”

  “Never,” Casey said. “I will never forget it.”

  “That feels like a threat,” Gus grumbled.

  “It is,” Casey said. “Now that you know the history of Stoner Scrabble—”

  “That was it?” Gus said, arching an eyebrow. “You really didn’t teach me anything.”

  “—now that you know, it’s time to play. The rules are very simple. You have to be stoned. And then we play Scrabble.”

  Gus’s lips twitched. “What.”

  “The name is pretty self-explanatory,” Casey said. “I will admit it’s probably not the most unique, but it gets the point across.”

  “I am still trying to figure out if there is a point at all.”

  “Eyebrows of Judgment,” Casey said, wiggling his fingers at Gus’s face. “We meet again.”

  “Don’t talk to my eyebrows,” Gus said and wondered what his life had become that such an utterance wasn’t all that out of the ordinary. “And there is a fatal flaw in your plan. I’m not stoned.”

  “Which is why, by the power of Grayskull, you can be,” Casey said. “Gus, ask me what’s in the He-Man lunch box. Say it. Say, ‘Casey, tell me what secrets you have in He-Man.’”

  “Yeah,” Gus said. “I’m not saying that.”

  “Say it,” Casey whispered, leaning over the table and closer to Gus. “Come on. Say it. You know you want to.”

  “Is this what peer pressure feels like?” Gus wondered aloud. “Am I about to learn A Very Valuable Lesson on how to say no?”

  “I would never pressure anyone to do anything they didn’t want to do,” Casey said seriously. “That’s whack, man. Say it.”

  “I feel like you just missed the point of your own words.”

  “Nah,” Casey said. “Because you want to say it.”

  Gus sighed. “Hey, Casey?”

  “Yes, Gustavo.”

  “Tell me what secrets you have in He-Man.”

  “I am so glad you asked,” Casey said. “Behold! Feast your eyes upon the glory of the coming of the Lord. If the Lord was made of pot.”

  He opened the lunch box, turning it toward Gus. Gus was immediately struck with the sweet scent of good weed, something that he hadn’t smelled since Pastor Tommy had died. It reminded him of his childhood, of thick smoke curling around Pastor Tommy’s head, of the weight of his dad’s hand on his shoulder and—

  (Gus was seventeen the first time he smoked with his dad. Pastor Tommy had wanted to wait until he was eighteen, but Gus pointed out that pot was illegal regardless then, and it didn’t really matter if he was seventeen or eighteen or eighty-three. Pastor Tommy had smiled that sweet, sweet smile of his, running his fingers through his son’s hair.

  “Yeah, Gussy,” he’d said. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  Gus wanted Pastor Tommy’s water bong first, but his dad said they’d have to work up to that. “Besides,” he’d said. “My first taste was off a joint, so maybe that should be yours too. It could be tradition, maybe. Passed down from me to you, and if you ever have kids and they want to try it in a safe environment, free from pressure or judgment, maybe you can show them how too. Drugs can be bad, Gus. All that synthetic and manufactured crap that creates addiction and destroys your life and body. You stay away from shit, you hear me? Left-wingers will whisper in your ear that marijuana is a gateway drug, but it’s not. It’s all about choice. You can choose to hurt yourself. You can choose to put a gun to your head or a needle in your arm. Pot isn’t going to make you do either of those things. As long as you are safe and keep it within the privacy of your own home, marijuana will never hurt you.”

  And he’d sat next to Gus on the very couch Gus was leaning against now. The coffee table was different then, an old pine thing that Pastor Tommy had said was a family heirloom, but Gus believed was probably just something his grandfather had once owned. Pastor Tommy had taught Gus to parse through the seeds, separating them from the buds. He taught him how to roll a joint, the papers tearing at first, then holding together the second time he tried.

  That first joint was an ugly thing, somehow fatter on the ends than it was in the middle. But Pastor Tommy had grinned at him, saying it was good. “It doesn’t have to be beautiful to do the job. Hell, just look at me. I ain’t anyone’s definition of beauty, but I get shit done.”

  The first puff had burned, as had the second and the third. Gus had coughed harshly, eyes watering as Pastor Tommy rubbed his back. “You’re doing okay,” his father had said. “It’ll go down smoother in a bit.”

  And it had.

  At first, Gus hadn’t felt anything and he wondered if he’d done it wrong. If something was wrong with him. If Pastor Tommy would be disappointed in him and wouldn’t be proud of him anymore.

  But then his thoughts had slowed down, and his heartbeat evened out, and he took a breath and all of a sudden, he wasn’t the guy who worried about his dad being alone. He wasn’t the guy worried that he didn’t have many friends at school. He wasn’t the guy not planning on going to college because that meant leaving Abby and Pastor Tommy. He wasn’t the guy, the weird and abnormal and strange guy that people whispered about because he scowled a lot and he glared a lot and he wasn’t really anything like Pastor Tommy at all. He wasn’t any of that.

  He just was.

  “All right?” Pastor Tommy had asked.

  “Yeah,” Gus said. “Yeah. Dad, yeah.”)

  And now, here Gus was, in the living room that was now his, in the house that was now his, with the couch that had once belonged to Pastor Tommy, with the coffee table that they’d gotten when the other had started to splinter (“My old man would be pissed,” Pastor Tommy had said with a shrug. “That was a family heirloom. At least I think it was.”). Here was Gus, in this house, in this place, inhaling the smells that reminded him of growing up, of becoming a man, of losing something so fucking precious in such a nonsensical way that it burned like that first hit off a joint he’d taken when he was seventeen years old.

  But this wasn’t about Pastor Tommy, at least not completely. This was about Gus and Casey. This was about Casey wanting to share part of his life with him. A stupid part, sure, but a part nonetheless. Gus didn’t have to say yes. Casey wouldn’t think of him less if he did. Gus hadn’t smoked since Pastor Tommy had died because the ache in his chest carried too much weight to it. It was always something they’d done together. Maybe he hadn’t smoked as much as his father had, maybe one or two time
s a month, but it’d always been fucking special, okay? It’d always been special because it was theirs.

  Gus wondered if normal people carried their grief like he did. He wondered if normal people carried it for the rest of their lives like he thought he would. It didn’t hurt as much as it once had, but sometimes the scar broke apart and it was all he could do to breathe through it.

  He looked down into the lunchbox. There was a Tupperware container of cookies. A container of thick, green buds. A glass pipe, swirls of green and blue and red mixed in. A square silver lighter with the initials CJR carved into the side. A small orange packet of rolling papers.

  Gus touched the lighter first, picking it up carefully from the lunchbox. It felt heavy in his palm. He ran a finger over the lettering.

  “A friend of mine gave that to me,” Casey said quietly. “My initials. Casey John Richards. He hated that I kept using those cheap Bic lighters and was always losing them. Said if I had something nice, I’d keep it. He was right, I guess.”

  “I haven’t done this since Pastor Tommy died,” Gus admitted, rolling the lighter between his fingers.

  “And you don’t have to do it now,” Casey said lightly. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, Gus. I would never make you.”

  “I know.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why did you smoke with Pastor Tommy?”

  Gus shrugged. “He was my dad. I never had much in the way of friends or family. But I had him. We had each other and it’s just something we did.”

  “I wish I could have met him,” Casey said.

  “Oh god,” Gus groaned. “He would have adored you. The conversations you two would have had would have driven me up the walls. Everything would have been dude this and man that and oh my god.”

  Casey grinned. “So, essentially like things are with you and me.”

  “Oh my god,” Gus said and then winced. “Well, maybe. But I would hope you wouldn’t have taken my dad on a date to a festival where you were allergic to almost everything they were serving.”

  “Not the quiche,” Casey said promptly.

  “Not the quiche,” Gus agreed. “What about you? When did you start smoking? When you first got stigmata?”

  Casey laughed. “Nah, man. I went through a lot of shit trying to figure out who I was. For a long time, I thought there was something wrong with me. My parents made me go to a therapist and we were told I was disordered. Anxiety. Social. Whatever you want. They wanted me on pills. To alleviate my anxiousness. I didn’t want them. I was sixteen and terrified because I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t want to be a pill popper too. I was at a party and this guy I knew had a bong. He asked if I wanted to hit it. I said sure and forty minutes later, my mind was as clear as it’d ever been. That was really it for me, I guess. Never really needed anything else. I’m a marijuana success story, man. I was disordered and now I’m ordered.”

  Gus watched him. All he saw was earnest sincerity, not that he expected anything less from Casey. He wondered what his life would have been like if Casey had never moved to Abby. He didn’t even want to think about it. “I’ll have a cookie or two,” he decided. “I’m not ready to smoke yet. And I might not ever be.”

  Casey nodded. “Do you mind if I do?”

  Gus hesitated before shaking his head. “No. It’s fine.” He thought about showing Casey the old clay pipe of Pastor Tommy’s, but he didn’t think he could do that yet. Maybe someday. And maybe someday sooner rather than later. Which was a terrifying thought in and of itself.

  He could do this. He trusted Casey. And he knew that if Pastor Tommy could see him, he’d be laughing his ass off.

  So, while Casey began to pack a bowl, Gus opened the Tupperware container, pulled out a cookie, and ate half of it in one bite.

  GUS FORGOT that when he got stoned, he tended to laugh like a hyena.

  He’d also forgotten that when he got stoned, he tended to laugh a lot.

  It wasn’t his fault. Certain things were just funnier to him when stoned. And when he found something funny, he couldn’t help but laugh.

  When sober, he could moderate the type of laugh he had, if he even laughed at all. If he did laugh, it was always a low, guttural thing that was more of a rumble than anything else. If something was really funny, he might even crack a smile while he rumbled. Casey’s jokes were evidence of that.

  But when he was stoned?

  Sweet Jesus, he yipped.

  “What in the name of all that’s holy was that noise?” Casey asked him, bloodshot eyes widening.

  Gus clapped his hand over his mouth, trying not to let the ai ai ai abomination that was his stoned laughter come out again.

  “Did you just laugh?” Casey asked. “Like full-on, no bullshit laugh?”

  Gus scowled at him.

  “Why are you smiling?” Casey demanded. “I’ve never seen you smile that big before.”

  Okay, so he fucking sucked at scowling when he was stoned. He didn’t know why he thought he was ready to reveal his secret that he was a happy stoner. It was a secret he should have taken to the grave.

  But those damn cookies were good. The right amount of sweetness, with just enough of the underlying tang of pot that just edged along bitter. Before he’d stopped himself, he’d eaten two of them and discovered two things.

  First, Origami Star Fucker was good fucking weed.

  Second, he was fucking stoned.

  “I’m stoned,” he told Casey. “Your cookies had pot in them.”

  “Yeah, man,” Casey said, caching out his pipe and setting it back down in the He-Man lunch box. “I should hope so. I bought them at the pot store.”

  “The pot store,” Gus said, trying to stifle a giggle, for fuck’s sake. “Where they sell pot.”

  “Yeah, great job, huh? Growing shit and helping people. Making sick people feel better. Cures all the maladies, even those in the mind.”

  “Mind maladies make me mad,” Gus said.

  “Dude,” Casey breathed. “Your alliteration game is sick. Have you ever thought of writing a book?”

  Gus glared at him (read: he smiled dopily). “Nah. M’not much of a writer. I tried to write a screenplay once, because I thought if Michael Bay could make movies, then so could I.”

  “You wrote a movie?” Casey asked, sounding like that was the most impressive thing in the world. “I wanted to write my book into a movie, but they hired some dude who just didn’t understand my postapocalyptic vampire/werewolf dystopian prose.”

  “Yeah,” Gus said. “Your movie was awful.” He blanched. “I mean, it wasn’t very good. Oh fuck. I mean, I am sure someone enjoyed it. Like teenage girls.”

  “S’cool,” Casey said. “They ruined my vision. I’ve made peace with it. Meditation helps. And weed. Now, tell me about your screenplay.”

  “No,” Gus said. “You wouldn’t get it. It was… I don’t even know. It was deep and ahead of its time. It was some Terrence Malick shit.”

  “Whoa,” Casey said. “I don’t know who that is.”

  “This… this guy. He makes movies that make no sense, but they’re so deep that it doesn’t even matter if they make no sense.”

  “Just tell me the name of it,” Casey said, reaching over and touching Gus’s arm. “Just the name. I bet it was an awesome name.”

  Gus looked down at Casey’s fingers on his arm, thoughts a little fuzzy, and thought maybe of having another cookie. “It was called….”

  “Yeah,” Casey breathed.

  “It was called….”

  “Yeah!”

  Gus opened his mouth to lie and make up some awesome-sounding movie title. Instead, he accidentally spoke the truth. “Monkey Island Adventures.”

  “Whoa!” Casey exclaimed. Then, brow furrowing, he said, “I don’t get it.”

  “It was about this monkey,” Gus admitted. “Who had adventures. On an island.”

  “Yeah,” Casey said. “That�
��s some Terrence Malick shit right there.”

  “You don’t even know who that is!”

  “But you said it was like that!”

  “It wasn’t anything like that,” Gus said. “I was eleven and somehow wrote a sixty-page treatment for a feature film about a monkey and his human friend named Mr. McSchnickel who lived on St. Mervin’s Island off the coast of Florida—Florida, for fuck’s sake, who even wants to go there—and the script was about them foiling an art heist from the St. Mervin’s History Museum. Mortimer was the monkey’s name. And he knew sign language. He was like… like, smart, okay? Like, so fucking smart.”

  “Why isn’t this a movie?” Casey said, throwing his hands up. “Why did you not finish this, man? We could be watching this right now. I could be watching a movie about a monkey named Mortimer stopping art thieves. Dude. Gus. Gus.”

  “What!”

  “You have to finish the movie. The world needs to see your talent, okay? You have to finish the movie so everyone knows just how far your genius goes. I know, but everyone else needs to know too.”

  “I don’t even know where it’s at,” Gus said, rubbing his eyes. “I gave up on it because monkey-based movies were on the decline and I couldn’t even imagine the budget because there was this whole bridge chase thing with penguins… I don’t even know. But I do know it would have had a twist ending, had I finished it.”

  “What?” Casey said, sounding astonished. “What could be more of a twist than a monkey crime fighter?”

  “I know,” Gus said. “Trust me, I know. But the twist would have been that the Mortimer would have gotten shot saving the day—”

  “No!” Casey cried. “Don’t do it, Gus! Don’t you dare.”

  “—no, no, it’s okay, he would have lived! He would have lived and at the very end, the twist, man. The twist. Mortimer would have been interviewed by CNN and they were going to ask him how he could forgive the art thieves for shooting him. And you know what he signed back?”

  “I am literally waiting for you to tell me!”

  Gus brought up his arms and out of nowhere, did a series of complicated motions with his hands and fingers. Then he looked at Casey expectantly.