text message reading “I want to die …”
As the weekend of the hunting trip approaches, my dread and indignation at the whole idea grows stronger. It’s only one item on a long list of sacrifices I’ve made since Brian came home. Other items include giving up my bedroom temporarily, sitting through a soul-sucking dinner with Victoria and her parents, and driving Brian wherever he needs to go. I’ve more than done my part, as far as I’m concerned.
It makes no sense that Brian wants me to go hunting with him and Dad. Mr. Popularity has a thousand friends, doesn’t he? Why can’t one of them go instead of me? Then I realize: aside from a couple “welcome home” get-togethers, Brian hasn’t spent much time with his friends since he’s been back. True, quite a few of his high school buddies left town after graduation, but some of them are still around. I wonder whether, like me, they’re wondering why Brian never calls them or wants to get together. He seems content to spend his time hanging around the house, sleeping, following U.S. troops coverage online, or holing up in the basement to watch slasher flicks with Victoria.
“Baaaaabe … why can’t we rent something I want to see for a change? Does it always have to be those terrible movies?” I heard her asking Brian one day when they were heading off to Blockbuster for another supply. “It doesn’t have to be a chick flick … how about a comedy? You always used to like those.”
“Sure.” Brian shrugged. “I guess.” But when they came back, they’d rented Saw III and American Psycho. “Brian said everything else looked boring,” Victoria explained, rolling her eyes at me.
At school, at least, things have improved. Scarlett has finally relented and started eating lunch with us at the designated emo table. “How many emo kids does it take to change a light bulb?” Ray Sellers calls from two tables over. “Three—one to change the light bulb and two to write a poem about how much they miss the old one!” Ray and his friends crack up, and I see a few kids at other tables laughing too.
“What’s his name?” Scarlett asks Koby.
“Ray,” he tells her. “Ray Sellers.”
Scarlett turns in her chair. “Hey, kid,” she calls.
Ray looks over. “Yeah? What do you want?”
“Why don’t you shut up and give that hole in your face a chance to heal?” Scarlett yells.
Ooooh … the sound sweeps across the lunchroom, accompanied by a few snickers. Even Miranda looks impressed.
Ray grins, but his face grows red. “You’re pretty hot for an emo kid,” he says. “Meet me after school and I’ll show you my razorblade.”
Scarlett considers. “Thanks,” she says, “but I don’t hang out with people whose parents are cousins.”
Oooh, it comes again.
“Burn, sizzle, fry,” Miranda murmurs, a small smile of admiration on her face.
Scarlett and Ray stare each other down until Ray can’t take it anymore. “Freaky emo bitch,” he mutters to his friends, all of whom have suddenly become extremely interested in their lunches.
Scarlett shrugs and turns back to the table. “What a waste of skin.” She picks up a carrot stick and begins to chew on it.
“Gotta admit,” Koby tells her, offering Scarlett a high five, “you’re pretty much my hero right now.”
Scarlett hesitates, then brings her palm to his. “Anytime.” She smiles.
“So anyway,” Miranda says. “Poisoned Heart. Less than a month away.”
“It’s going to be awesome,” Ali agrees. Even he’s excited about the concert, and it’s hard to get Ali excited about anything that happens in the real world. For better or for worse, things fizzled between RedWarrior23 and Moridin once Ali decided to break the news that he was really a guy from Longview. “I had to come clean,” Ali explained to me. “Who wants a marriage that’s based on a lie?” Whether it makes sense or not, Ali is now free, and able to come to the concert with the rest of us.
Scarlett’s mom has decided she can come along as well. “Hearing that I have some friends probably makes her feel less guilty,” Scarlett said, and it was hard not to notice the bitterness in her voice.
Scarlett and I are talking a lot lately; most nights, I fall asleep with the phone under my pillow having just hung up from one of our marathon conversations. She’s less enthused about getting together in person; her grandparents like her around in the evenings, she says, and even when I point out to her that they go to bed at eight thirty, she says she doesn’t feel right leaving them. I’m starting to suspect she might have a boyfriend back where she comes from.
I told Koby that Scarlett and I are talking a lot. “Does Miranda know?” was his first question, which I thought was strange. The truth is, I haven’t mentioned it to Miranda, although I’m not sure why. She’s become friendlier toward Scarlett, but I wouldn’t say the two of them are friends. Girls are complicated, I’ve realized.
And to make things even more confusing, I found another poem on Monday, stuffed into the front pocket of my backpack.
An infant, filled with trust
My world the view from your shoulder
Warm milk, soft blankets
Nights spent cradled in loving arms
A tiny child, feeling safe
My world the grass tickling my bare feet
Melting popsicles on wooden sticks,
Dreamless nights in my innocent bed
A young teen, safe no more
World turned on end
Paper shelter, fragile, useless
Falling asleep with tears on my cheeks
Now the future, weary, damaged
The world a cold and foreign place
Eyes wide open, skeleton soul
I lie awake with my ruined heart
Thinking about the words, I sigh. My nightly conversations with Scarlett are nice, but something stops me short of asking her about the poems. They’re like a one-sided conversation going on underneath all the other ones we’re having.
“I think Miranda wants to be more than friends with you,” Scarlett says one night. “I can tell by the way she looks at you.”
“Naw,” I respond immediately. “I don’t think so.”
“Who does she like, then?”
I consider, ruling out Koby and Ali almost immediately. She never talks about anyone else, not that I’m the person Miranda would confide in about her love life.
“No one, I guess.”
“Uh-huh,” Scarlett says knowingly.
“How about you?” I venture. “Anyone back home?”
Scarlett sighs. “No, no one. It’s the last thing I’m looking for, believe me. Life is too complicated as it is right now. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m barely able to handle friendships.”
Ordinarily, I might be disappointed to have been put in the friend zone by Scarlett, but the truth is that my own life seems to be filling up with complications too.
As if the looming hunting trip, Leo’s lack of appetite, and the random poetry bombs aren’t enough, I have something new to think about: Last night, I woke up with a sudden craving for a bowl of cereal. I headed out to the kitchen and was pouring milk into the bowl when I heard Brian’s voice coming from the basement.
“Get around the back!” I heard him holler. It took me a minute to rule out the possibility that I’d imagined it, but then I set the milk carton down on the counter and tiptoed to the top of the stairs.
“Hurry up, hurry up!” His voice carried urgently up from the basement. “Go … go … go … go!”
“Bri?” I called uncertainly. “Everything okay?”
When he didn’t answer, I flicked on the basement stairway light and started down. Downstairs, Brian was nowhere in sight, but his bedroom door was ajar and the room beyond it was dark. I made my way down the hall toward it, not sure why I was tiptoeing.
My brother was a dark, shapeless lump under the bedcovers. “We’re at checkpoint 343, how copy? … watch to your right … hold on, hold on, I can’t see through the dust,” he muttered, twitching and jerking
in his sleep. “Look out, bro, I’ve got this one … whooooo … ten-four brother, that’s a motherfucking hit.”
I watched him for a while longer, but he didn’t say anything more. Gradually, his movements quieted and eventually he appeared to have settled back into sleep. I crept back upstairs, put the milk away, and went back to bed. Watching my sleeping brother back in Afghanistan, shouting frantic communications to his fellow soldiers, had killed my cereal craving.
Too many things about Brian are making me feel unsettled lately: the restlessness he can’t shake, his pre-occupation with war updates and with disturbing, violent movies, and also the way I’ve heard him pick irritably at Victoria until she leaves, crying. Not to mention the empty vodka bottles I’ve seen in the trash can when I take out the garbage.
The clock beside my bed says two o’clock before I finally drift off into my own troubled sleep.
Mix Tape Ideas for Brian
“Into the Dark” by The Juliana Theory
“Walking on Glass” by The Movielife
“Misery Business” by Paramore
“All Hail the Heartbreaker” by Spill Canvas
“No Place Feels Like Home” by Midtown
“Morale is Low” by Jejune
“Nothing Feels Good” by The Promise Ring
“Buried Myself Alive” by The Used
“The Recluse” by Cursive
“One-Armed Scissor” by At the Drive-In
“In Circles” by Sunny Day Real Estate
“The Suffering” by Coheed and Cambria
“I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” by My Chemical Romance
Twenty-Four
While Brian rides the Disoriented Express, Leo’s hunger strike continues. I’m so distracted by all there is to worry about that when Ms. Twohey announces we’re going to start a project involving self-portraits, I can barely follow her explanation. It’s like one of those Charlie Brown television specials: when Twohey says, “It can be anything you want it to be, as long as you choose a medium we’ve studied this semester,” all I hear is mwhmp-rhmpwhmp, mrphmp-bmrmph-phmp.
“I don’t get it,” I whisper to Miranda, who’s already sketching.
Miranda barely glances up. “Self-portrait, Dov. What do you think she means?”
“That’s it?”
“It’s supposed to be something that represents you as an artist. A self-portrait from your unique artistic perspective.”
Everyone seems to be talking gibberish today. Rather than try to decipher it all, I decide to ask Ms. Twohey if I can go to the library. “I want to do some, uh, research. For my project.”
That’s what I love about Ms. Twohey: rather than ask what kind of research might possibly be necessary to draw a portrait of myself, she reaches for her pad of hall passes. “I hope you can find something to inspire you,” she says with a smile, holding out a pass. I’m reminded that, up close like this, Ms. Twohey is a pretty blinding work of art herself.
“Thanks,” I reply sweetly. “Having you as a teacher is usually inspiring enough.”
On the way out of class, I grin at Miranda, who mimes puking into her pencil case.
Scarlett was right: there are plenty of gecko sites on the web, and many of them have postings from owners with finicky eaters like Leo. More than one noted that geckos sometimes eat less during the shorter days of fall and winter; kind of like a mini-hibernation period. If this is the problem, things should revert to normal within a month or so. Still, in all the years I’ve had him, Leo has never gone through something like this before, so I don’t put it high on the list of likely possibilities.
Environmental temperature changes are apparently also a common cause of geckos going off their feed. I make a mental note to check the thermometer in Leo’s aquarium when I get home, but I’m pretty sure it’s holding steady at a balmy 88 degrees. I also plan to double-check the under-tank heater to make sure it’s heating uniformly, but I doubt that’s the problem.
Another possibility is that Leo is stressed out by something else that’s changed in his surroundings. I remember guiltily that I rearranged things the last time I cleaned his aquarium; I hope I haven’t inadvertently sent Leo spiraling into anorexia. Still, he doesn’t seem agitated or disoriented … if anything, he seems lethargic and too calm.
The last, and most concerning possibility, is that Leo has accidentally eaten some of the substrate that covers the bottom of his cage. This, I read on GeckoWorld.com, could cause impaction, a condition which is “potentially fatal.” I don’t want to think about that possibility.
On the reassuring side, everything I read emphasizes that geckos can survive for weeks on little or no food. I try to remember exactly how long it’s been since Leo has eaten normally; to my best recollection, things changed shortly before Brian arrived home. Which means it’s going on a month. If things don’t resolve soon, there’s cause to get seriously worried.
As I’m turning this over in my mind, the pink rectangle of an eraser flies over the top of the computer’s monitor and lands with a thud in my lap. Craning my head to the side, I’m surprised to see Koby sitting at a table near the newspapers.
I log off and head across the room. “Hey,” I say. “What’s up?”
“Sub in math class,” Koby says. “I asked if I could come down here and do homework.” That’s a laugh; anyone who knows Koby knows that he’s never done a page of homework in his life. “What are you doing here? Don’t you have Twohey right now?” All my friends know that under most circumstances, I’d never miss a minute in Ms. Twohey’s radiant presence.
“Leo’s not eating,” I tell him. “I’m trying to figure out why.”
Koby makes a face; all my friends know what Leo means to me. “That sucks.”
“I know.”
“Listen,” Koby says, changing the subject. “What are you doing after school?”
I consider. “Nothing that I know of,” I say finally.
Koby waves at the librarian, who’s frowning in our direction. “It’s my shrink’s birthday tomorrow. I want to get him a CD.”
I’ve never heard of anybody buying their shrink a birthday present, but then I’ve never had a shrink. Maybe it’s the normal thing to do. “He says he wants to know more about the kind of music I listen to,” Koby adds.
Ah, now it makes sense. Koby’s shrink is trying to pry a little deeper into my friend’s psyche.
“Ali and I are going to the Dusty Groove; you should come along.”
“Sure,” I agree. “Let’s do it.”
Koby thinks he can get his mom’s Buick, so we agree they’ll pick me up at my house. I’m relieved at the idea of spending a couple hours hanging out with my buddies; it sounds like a great way to take my mind off everything in my life that I can’t fix right now.
After school, I drive home and find the Buick already parked by the curb in front of our house. I pull the Gator into the driveway and get out, motioning to the guys that I just need to drop my stuff in the house and I’ll be ready to go.
Unfortunately, when I walk in the house, Brian is waiting for me. “I need you to take me downtown,” he says, getting up from Dad’s chair where he’s been waiting. “Victoria’s pissed at me again. I want to pick up some flowers before I see her tonight.”
“Can’t Mom take you?” I ask, glancing out the window to where Koby and Ali are waiting.
“She’s not home from work yet,” Brian says. “I don’t want to wait that long.” He’s already reaching for his jacket, restless and impatient as usual.
“Maybe you can drive yourself,” I suggest. “The Gator’s out in the driveway.”
“I haven’t been cleared to drive yet,” he snaps back. Even though his cast has been removed, Brian’s doctors are concerned about his depth perception.
I watch him struggle to get his jacket on, knowing he’ll shrug me off if I try to help. “The thing is, bro, I already have plans. The guys and I are stopping by the Dusty Groove, and then we’ll probably … ”
>
Brian doesn’t miss a beat. “Perfect,” he says. “You’ll be driving right past the flower shop.”
I give up. “I guess.”
Now Brian is inviting himself along when I see my friends. I’m irritated, although I try not to show it. I’m glad that neither Koby nor Ali looks all that surprised to see Brian trailing behind me toward the car.
Instead of climbing in back with me, Brian pulls open the Buick’s passenger door. “Hey, dude,” he says to Ali, “mind if I ride shotgun?”
Ali hesitates, more out of surprise than any kind of actual objection. “I guess,” he agrees finally. Still, he shoots me a puzzled look as he climbs in back with me. I shrug to let him know I don’t understand what goes on in Brian’s head any more than he does.
Brian settles into his seat and locks the Buick’s door, which seems unnecessary, since downtown Longview isn’t exactly Central LA.
Koby turns up the music and pulls the Buick away from the curb. “So, I’ll bet you saw a lot of crazy shit over there, huh?” Koby asks Brian.
“Some,” Brian agrees. He’s staring out the window, concentrating on the road. I know he’s looking for potholes; there’s something about them that makes him nervous. Fortunately, the Longview city workers keep the roads of our town in good condition, so we don’t encounter any serious threats on the way downtown. I expect Brian to insist that we stop so he can buy the flowers, but he doesn’t bring it up, and the next thing I know we’re pulling up in front of the Dusty Groove, our favorite Longview music store. We pile out of the Buick and go inside, first Koby, then Ali, then me, with Brian bringing up the rear.
The Dusty Groove is everything you could want in a music store; the usual array of new and used CDs, cassettes, and vinyl, plus Tshirts and posters, vintage comic books, and a glass case of jewelry for body modification addicts. The place always smells like some type of incense that makes the inside of my nose itch.
“Need help finding anything?” the kid behind the counter asks as we walk in.
“I’m looking for something by Marilyn Manson or maybe some Ozzy Osbourne,” Koby replies. The clerk nods and gestures for Koby to follow him.
“What kind of shrink is he seeing, anyway?” Ali mutters as they head off.
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