How You Ruined My Life

by Jeff Strand

  “Thanks, Aunt Connie. I really appreciate it. You must be tired from a hard day at work, so why don’t we order a pizza for dinner? Extra cheese. My treat.”

  “That sounds great,” says Mom. She looks at me. “What do you think, Rod?”

  I’m still kind of stunned by Blake’s act, and I don’t like the idea that he’s scoring points with my mother. On the other hand, I love pizza. “Sounds good to me.”

  “Perfect,” says Blake. “You two relax, and I’ll order it.”

  Mom goes to her bedroom to change out of her waitress attire. I sit down on the couch, watching as Blake takes out his cell phone.

  What game is this guy playing?

  Which is the real Cousin Blake? The condescending cretin or the shameless suck-up? Is he good at pretending to be evil or evil pretending to be good?

  I’m pretty sure that the Blake I picked up from the airport is his true self and that the Blake who spoke to Mom is a fake, alien version of a teenager created to annoy me. I wouldn’t be surprised if Blake looked up at me and winked.

  Blake looks up at me. He doesn’t wink.

  “What do you like on your pizza?” he asks.

  “Pepperoni.”

  I expect him to make a comment about how only hillbillies put pepperoni on their pizza, but he simply taps at his cell phone screen. “Anything else?”

  “Sausage.”

  He taps again. “Anything else?”

  “Honesty.”

  “You want honesty on your pizza?”

  “What’s your deal, Blake?”

  “I’m trying to order a pizza. I don’t think I could in good conscience let Aunt Connie make us dinner after she’s worked so hard all day.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Blake looks up from his phone. “Do I?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me.”

  “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. All I want to do is order a delicious, piping hot pizza for you and your mother. I didn’t realize that was so terrible. Am I invading your territory? Are you the one who usually orders the pizza? I apologize if I overstepped my boundaries.”

  “This has nothing to do with the pizza.”

  “Was it the fib?”

  “Depends which fib you mean.”

  “I actually had a middle seat on the plane. It was really uncomfortable. It left me tired and cranky and, as we’ve previously discussed, socially awkward. But I’m better now.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Rodney, if you don’t like pizza, just say so. I’ll order you something else. A bowl of grits?”

  I stare directly into his eyes. I don’t go so far as to point at my eyes with my index and middle finger and then point at him to convey “I’m watching you” in a sinister manner, but I hope he gets the message.

  “Pizza’s fine,” I say.

  “Excellent.” Blake looks back at his phone. “Pepperoni, sausage…and anything else?”

  “Everything. If you’re paying for it, put everything on the pizza.”

  “Anchovies?”

  “Everything but anchovies. Actually, double everything. Triple cheese. Make it so they can’t close the box.”

  “I don’t think it’ll cook properly.”

  “Pepperoni, sausage, and double cheese is fine,” I say. I don’t want to sabotage this pizza just to make him pay more.

  I’m not sure who wins this round. We’ll call it a draw.

  6.

  Blake's part of the pizza is topped with pineapples.

  Now, in the heated “pineapples on pizza” debate, I take the controversial stance that pineapples are a perfectly decent pizza topping. Some people scream, “Unacceptable!” but I’m not one of them. Pineapple on pizza is fine. No problem there.

  If your part of the pizza is only pineapple…well, that’s weird, right?

  I don’t mean to offend you if that’s the way you choose to eat your pizza. I’m certainly okay with the concept of a veggie pizza, where pineapple chunks coexist with green peppers, mushrooms, etc. But when pineapple is your only ingredient except for cheese, I’m sorry, but I have to shake my head in judgment. I’m not saying that it makes him a bad person. I’m saying that on top of all the other stuff he’s done today, it’s one extra blotch on his record.

  Blake is frustratingly charming while we eat. He’s witty and eloquent. He doesn’t make gross sounds when he chews, and I’m sure that Mom thinks he’s an absolute treat. I keep waiting for him to make a mistake, to give away his true appalling nature, but he never drops the ruse.

  After the pizza is gone and he’s thrown away the napkins and paper plates, Blake yawns. “Goodness,” he says. “You’d think that the nap would’ve done the trick, but I’m still sleepy.”

  “You’ve had a long day,” says Mom.

  “Yeah, it was exhausting to carry all that luggage,” I add.

  Mom glares at me. She thinks I’m making a snide comment about the quantity of luggage he brought when I was actually making a much worse comment about the fact that he made me carry it all.

  “Very exhausting,” says Blake, not giving away that he didn’t participate in any of the luggage transport. He yawns again. “I’ll see you in the morning. I bet tomorrow will be an even greater pleasure than today, if such a thing is possible.”

  “Good night,” says Mom. “We’re glad you’re here.”

  “Good night,” I say, not adding anything about being glad that he’s here.

  Blake walks back to my bedroom and closes the door.

  “He’s very well-mannered,” says Mom.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you were worried that you two might not get along. Sometimes you just have to give people a chance.”

  “You’re right,” I say. This is not the time to blab about Blake’s dual nature. I’m not saying that I’ve got a code of honor where I won’t squeal. Believe me, if Blake keeps up his behavior, I’ll squeal like a mobster ratting out his associates in exchange for immunity and a new identity under the Federal Witness Protection Program even if it means a lifetime of always looking over my shoulder and waiting for the ghosts of my past to make a reappearance. (Sorry if that was melodramatic. It’s been a rough day.)

  For now, I’ll remain optimistic and trust that I can work things out with my cousin. If he knows I’m on to him, he’ll have to change his ways. He can’t maintain the illusion of not being despicable for three full months.

  Mom yawns. “I think I’m ready for bed. Don’t stay up too late.”

  “I won’t.” I give Mom a good night kiss. (Giving your mother a good night kiss is totally punk rock, and don’t you forget it!) And then I sit down on the couch. I text with Audrey for a while, giving her the latest thrilling updates, and then I brush my teeth, floss (I don’t expect you to consider me as a role model, but, yes, I floss every day), take care of other business that doesn’t require a detailed description, and then head to my bedroom.

  (Okay, you need to trust me as a narrator, so I’ll confess that I don’t floss every day. But I floss at least three days out of five. That’s a sixty percent flossing rate. When the dentist asks, I lie and say that I floss every day, but it’s not like I’m saying, “Yep, I’m a flosser!” while plant life grows between my molars. I do have the occasional cavity. So though I’m not a perfect role model for dental hygiene, I do all right. And if you’re one of those people who thinks, Gosh, yanking strings around my teeth sure seems like a lot of work! I hope you’ll consider shifting your point of view and say, “Rod Conklin, lead singer of Fanged Grapefruit, flosses an adequate amount and now I shall too!”)

  (I apologize if you’re not the kind of person who enjoys long parenthetical digressions. I’ll try to do better in future chapters, although I make no promises.)

  (Note that I said future chapters. This chapter is
going to be all parenthetical digressions, all the time! Woo!)

  (Okay, I’ve got that out of my system. Apologies. But I can’t offer a refund for the purchase price of that portion of the book.)

  As I open my bedroom door, it creaks. Fortunately, the creak is not nearly as loud as Blake’s awe-inspiring snoring, so I don’t wake him up.

  It’s dark in my room, but something seems wrong.

  The first wrong thing is that Blake is sleeping in my bed instead of on the inflatable mattress that I set up for him. But that doesn’t surprise me at all. Something else disturbs me.

  I turn on the light.

  Blake has redecorated my room.

  To be fair, he’s only redecorated half of it. But he’s taken down everything on the left side of the room and replaced it with his own stuff. The punk rock band posters and a Guitars through History calendar that I’d had on my wall now rest in a neat stack on my desk.

  I really don’t like the idea of Blake messing with my posters. He’d better not have torn any corners. If he’s so much as crinkled one of them, oh, how my cousin will suffer! Death would be too good for him!

  The left side of my room is now decorated, walls and ceiling, with animal pictures. But not cute animals (I can enjoy a kitten picture as much as anybody) and not interesting animals (giraffes sure have wacky necks!) and not majestic animals (lions, tigers, elephants, pumas, leopards, hippos, etc.) and not even animals that indicate some sort of hobby. (For example, I don’t necessarily want to spend every evening looking at a picture of a salmon, but at least I could say, “Okay, Blake enjoys fishing.”)

  No, Cousin Blake seems to have a thing for rodents.

  I’m serious. There are pictures of rats, squirrels, opossums, and lemmings. If it’s got beady eyes and fur, there’s a picture of it up on my wall. Why would anybody want to look at a squirrel on purpose?

  The giant-sized poster of a rat on my ceiling looks like it’s in 3-D. It’s not a greasy sewer rat, but it’s still a rat that’s placed exactly where I stare at the ceiling when I can’t fall asleep. If I already can’t sleep, how is a three-foot-long rat going to improve the situation?

  Blake rolls over on his side. “Too much light,” he mutters.

  “I didn’t give you permission to do this,” I whisper.

  Blake opens one eye. “Huh?”

  “Nobody said you could mess with my stuff.”

  “I only touched my half of the room.”

  “It’s not your half of the room. It’s my room, and I’m letting you stay here. You don’t get to change it around without asking.”

  “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

  “I didn’t think anything needed to be said!”

  “Bad call on your part.”

  “You don’t take down my posters without telling me. That’s totally uncool, and I’m pretty sure you know it.”

  “Am I supposed to feel like I’m in a museum here?”

  “No, but you’re supposed to ask permission before redecorating.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Could you open your other eye while we talk?”

  Blake opens his other eye and sits up in bed. “I apologize for not knowing that you were my all-powerful ruler. I assumed that since we were sharing this living space, I’d be allowed to make a small effort to stave off the homesickness and make myself at home.”

  “Don’t say stave. Nobody says stave.”

  “I say stave several times a day.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Whatever.”

  “How would you feel if I went into your room and took down your rodent posters?” I ask.

  “Please don’t call them rodents. It’s disrespectful.”

  “No, it’s not. That’s what they’re called.”

  “If you say so.”

  “It’s the actual word! Rodents! It’s not a derogatory term! It’s like calling cats felines!”

  “Since you’re my ruler, I guess I can’t argue.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I know that there is a zero percent chance that this conversation is worth continuing, yet for some strange reason, I forge onward. “If I told somebody they had a rodent face, yeah, that would be disrespectful. But calling a rat a rodent is just using the proper term.”

  “Did you really wake me up to discuss animal classifications?” Blake asks.

  “No, I woke you up because you took down my posters.”

  “Your posters weren’t injured.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “What is the point?”

  “The point is that we’re not roommates. You’re a guest. I’m totally willing to compromise. I even cleaned up my room for you, which is something I never do. But if you want to change things around, we have to discuss it first. That’s all.”

  “We’ll just have to agree to disagree.”

  “No! I don’t agree to that!”

  “Rodney, Rodney, Rodney,” says Blake. “You need to relax. Being so high-strung isn’t good for you. You don’t want to have a nervous breakdown, do you?”

  “I’d rather not, no.”

  “So take a deep breath. In the grand scope of the universe in which we live, the posters in your room are a mere speck on a dot. In the overall scheme of things, it wouldn’t even matter if I set them on fire.”

  Did my cousin threaten to set my posters on fire, or is he trying to make a point? The fact that I’m not immediately sure is a little scary.

  “All I’m saying is—” I begin.

  “You don’t need to say anything. You’ve made your point. If I’d known you had a squirrel phobia, I never would have decorated my half of the room this way. I’ll take them down first thing in the morning, unless they’re going to give you nightmares.”

  There’s a pillow nearby that looks like it could be an excellent smothering tool. That’s probably a bad idea.

  Sure, I could explain that I don’t have a squirrel phobia, but then he’d say something else infuriating, and we’d go back and forth until I start to gnaw off my own lips. For my own sanity, it’s time to bail.

  “Good night, Blake,” I say.

  “Good night, Rodney.”

  “Call me Rodney again, and I’ll shave off your eyebrows while you sleep.”

  “Good night, Rod.”

  “Good night.”

  Only ninety-two more days to go.

  7.

  “So I think Cousin Blake may be evil,” I tell Mom in the morning.

  “Excuse me?”

  “He’s evil. I’m not saying that he’d push somebody in front of a bus—though I’m not ruling that out—but I think there’s something genuinely wrong with him…in an evilish kind of way.”

  Mom stops pouring her cup of coffee. “What makes you say that?”

  “Basically, it was all the evil things he said and did yesterday.”

  “Rod…”

  “I’m not asking you to talk to him about it,” I say. “I can handle the situation. I just want it on record that I think he’s pure, dark evil.”

  Mom resumes pouring her coffee. “Noted, I guess.”

  Blake is still asleep. I had to play loud music through my headphones and put several layers of blanket over my head to drown out his snoring last night. If this continues, those layers of blanket are going to be stuffed in his mouth. Though prison wouldn’t be fun, at least it would be quieter.

  “Like I said, I can handle it, but he should have come with a warning label.”

  “It’s natural for there to be an adjustment period,” says Mom. “You’ve never had to share your space like this before. You’re used to having things your own way.”

  “No, no, no, no, no, this isn’t me being selfish,” I insist. “I’m the good cousin here. He’s…he’s rotten. We’ll work i
t out, but I’ll tell you right now, for the sake of my social standing, I’m going to pretend I don’t know him tomorrow at school.”

  “I hope you change your mind.”

  “Not likely, but we’ll see.” It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours. Blake could still be a cool guy. Maybe his ears didn’t properly pop during the flight.

  Mom heads off to work. Everybody is going to come over for band practice this afternoon, so we’ve got to get Blake’s boxes out of the garage, but I’m not going to touch them until Blake is up to do his share. Until Blake is awake…until Blake, that snake, is awake to take a break from being a flake and make my garage… Sorry, I’m not good at making up song lyrics on the spot. He doesn’t deserve his own song anyway.

  Around noon, the snoring ceases. He’s either awake or dead. Despite the impression I may have given, I hope it’s the former.

  My bedroom door opens and Blake emerges, looking like somebody who’s stepped off a thirty-six-hour ride on a Tilt-A-Whirl. “G’mrn,” he says, which I think translates to “Good morning.”

  “Good morning, Sunshine,” I tell him. “I trust you had a restful night?”

  “It was okay. Mattress could be better.”

  “Well, it’ll be a lot better tonight because you’ll be sleeping on the air mattress.”

  Blake scowls. “Ugh, no, I don’t do air mattresses.”

  “Sure, you do. I blew it up all by myself. You don’t want to hurt my feelings, do you? It took forever.”

  “You didn’t use a pump?”

  “Nope. We don’t have one. That’s all my carbon dioxide in there. Will you be enjoying a refreshing shower before you dine?”

  “You don’t have a bathtub?”

  I shake my head. “Sorry.”

  “So I have to stand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who doesn’t have a bathtub?”

  I raise my hand. “Me. It’s inconvenient, I know. But water spraying on you is just as useful as water that you sit in. Actually, it’s better because the grime isn’t floating around you while you’re trying to get clean. If you’d like to order an outdoor pool, be my guest.”