Tray and Brand and me got sucked into a ballgame. I was prepared for a Lifty type deathmatch of Kill Or Die Furiously, surprise surprise though, there’s another way to play sports. No one racing at topspeed, no one attacking the knees, no stoppages for uncontrollable brawling. No hard jukes to break ankles, just little hipfakes, jogging, dancing. No ferocious bullet passes, just light little rainbows to each other, clever geeometries, the game was basically Who Can Score The Slowest And Most Beautifull, infact no one was even counting goals.
The former faceboy Fillup was playing too, at one point flashed me his bullfists and a wink, I frownnodded sternly, Fillup I continue to have your back, let’s remain chill though.
Then came time to munch the glorious beans and meats, crunchy leaves and plants, herbs and garlics, stewy sauces and amazing chewy breads, I ate ravenously and then lay down on the dirt and moaned like a cow.
“Dave, if you keep making these sexsounds I don’t think we can be friends,” Tray clowned me.
Someone turned up the music, laughs, cheers, everybody please direct your attention this way, it is time for Angus to perform his soyouthinkyoucandance.
He had a face of intense concentration, must have been practicing for days. Look at him hustling and splitting, spinning on his tum, now on his head, sweating furiously, holycrap did he just pull four roses out of his boxerbriefs, kid who could those even be for.
I laughed, Grace laughed, I watched her laugh.
Prettysoon everyone was dancing so I asked her to dance.
The daylight faded, the streetlights blinked on, after a while I knew it was after seven, didn’t care though, didn’t even check the phone. Just held Grace’s waist, looked down into those eyes or else rested my chin in that hair, mirrored those hips, tried not to step on anyone or knee anyone in the face, some poorer relatives are quarterscale or fifth.
Angel whisked us away to sit in a circle with some cousins, sip again from the weedstick, say a little cloud into the air, let every close thing get closer and every far thing get farther.
Thoughts got louder, darkness got darker. Words became meaningless sounds unless you listened at them harder, then they split into many meanings, dozens, hundreds.
Overall it was nice and great. Grace was leaning into me from the side, my arm was around her, her skin was trembly through the soft teeshirt, her crinkly frizz was tickling my neck.
The weedstick came back around, another puff, we leaned even deeper into each other, smashedtogether like dead trees.
She whispered into my ear, a long pearly string of sounds, every ell was a glimmer shining off every bee.
“What what what, say that again,” I giggled.
“I usually like barely ever really basically never burn weeds,” she said.
“Yeah me neither,” I told her.
She turned her face to me, drank up my eyes with hers.
“I want to kiss you but I think I’m way too drugged,” she whispered.
“Oh dang,” I responded stupidly, Warner you need to brainstorm better responses for talking to girls, what exactly is Grace supposed to do with an ohdang.
She swayed a little bit, eyefocus going in and out.
“The last puff was a mistake I think,” she said.
“Do you need help, wait, uhoh, can I help you somehow,” I asked.
“Nonono, I’m okay,” she said, then turned and poured vom into the sand, kids started shrieking, I tried to keep her hair out of it, I was sort of shrieking too.
Prettysoon Grace and I were in the back of a halfcar, upfront the driver was a kind random uncle of Angel named Gill.
“I’m such a mess, ohmygod I’m so embarrassed,” Grace moaned.
“Look, I’m just happy I get to take care of you, continue getting little bits of vom out of the hair,” I told her.
“Ohgod I feel so dizzy and sick,” she cried.
No kidding, probably it was the car justasmuch as the weeds. Driving in a halfcar is hectic, you’re below half of everyone, dodging like a pinball in the shifty canyons between trucks and bikes, lights are blocked from view. On top of that the engineering of a halfcar is never going to be the best engineering in the Yewess, pretty janky and clanky.
“Eyes closed, head between knees, almost there,” I told her, rubbed her back, kind of wished she was sick everynight, I could nurse her just like this.
We pulled up in front of the family stand, dull red awning loudly telling you, EAT THE BEST COWSOY.
I started to open the door, Angel Uncle piped up and said, “Warner, how about you stay in the car, I’ll walk her to the door.”
“No no, I can do it,” I said.
“Not sure if you’re picking the right time to meet the parents,” he stagewhispered.
So Grace and I said some awkward goodbyes, me trying to drown her apologies with I Had Fun and This Night Was Great Seriously.
Then I cowered below the halfcar windows and listened to Grace Dad come out and gasp and yelp kind of loud and theatrical, “Grace, where were you, oh Grace you look awfull and you stink like drugs and vom. Ohhhhhhwow, oh dang, Grace how could you, what a bad betrayal, do you mean to tell me you were out addicting yourself to drugs instead of helping your family restaurant survive.”
Listened to Grace mutter tearfull sorrys and then escape while Grace Dad discussed with Gill a little, well ofcourse thankyou for bringing her home, nexttime though if you see her at one of these drug parties call me rightaway immediately, I will drop everything to come get her even if it means closing up the shop which ofcourse will cost us untold munmuns but nomatter, most important is that Grace needs to be studying or working, oneortheother, not suiciding on poisonous drugs.
• • •
The drive up into Wet Almanac was long, atleast for a halfcar, a little deathdefying too, no halfroads and not a ton of middles. Mostly we hugged the gutters of bigroads and scanned the rearviews constantly for giants roaring up on us from behind. I was a little terrified but Gill was super calm, the guy drove like in spacenavy.
My phone was trembly with messages, I was dealing with it by pretending the phone doesn’t exist.
“Gill thanks again for driving me home, I really appreciate it,” I mumbled.
“Don’t even worry about it, how is life with the Almanac cityboss, anyway,” wondered Gill.
“It’s good, it’s good, I mean a little stressfull sometimes,” I said.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he said.
“Oh I don’t need to,” I said.
But then the drugs loosened my mouth and I did babble like a drugster for a while, there’s just a ton of stress, pressure, awkwardness, got to learn math or I’m worthless, but the math is too much and I’m starting toolate, seems like it’s impossible but I’m not allowed to say that.
Gill said finally, “But you’re putting up with it because you want to be middlerich someday.”
“I mean, doesn’t everybody,” I asked.
“Well,” he said. “At some point, don’t you think enough should be enough?”
And he started speeching at me a little of, Warner, here’s how it is. Some people need to scale up nomatter how big they are, because they’ll never feel big enough, never feel safe enough. They get to halfscale, they need those extra sixinches, extrafoot, need to get to threequart, someday get to middle, someday climb above middle to oneandahalf, onandon, it’s all they think about.
Their minds are swirling always with pictures of living in a bigger nicer home, driving in a bigger nicer car, eating bigger and more illaborate food, starting to accumulate staffs, cleaners and cooks and drivers and then personal assistant and head of staff, people to orbit you like moons.
And that’s the only way they see the world, just scale, nothing else, scalemun is the only focus of their mindseye. And hey, I’m not talking about Grace Dad, necessarily, although I mean I’m not not talking about him either, you know, well howabout we just say forget I brought him up.
What I’m saying is
, it’s okay to want to get bigger, sure we all do, but just remember it’s not the only thing, it always comes at a cost, not just time and munmun but your relationships with people, your printsapulls, the person that you are, stuff like that.
At a certain size you can still be happy, remember that. At most sizes really.
It was a littlebit the classic oldguy move of deciding it’s time for you to take the class of How To See Everything The Way I Do, hey polite respectfull kiddo, congrats, you’ve been enrolled freeofcharge in the school of How To Be Me.
And after a while I wasn’t really listening, just mumbling yeahs yups yuhhuhs and whiteknuckling the seatbottom while triplecars flew over us.
But at the same time, gotta admit, that oldster tactic works prettygood because here’s what I was thinking: well what if I do become the same guy as this Drivy beardo, what if that’s my life.
What if I don’t even retrack to Mathy, just graduate with a Lifty degree, work Lifty jobs carrying burdens and everynight earning a goodnight’s dreams.
And what if I marry a wife who breadwins also, working a Wordy job maybe, editing corpo texts up in some Sentrow skyscraper.
Middlelife with a Grace type girl, shy and kind and secretly bloodthirsty, looks like Grace too, infact let’s just say Grace.
Middlehouse down in Eat Almanac, going to beebeecues, throwing parties for our middlekids in a ballfield.
Warner don’t get ahead of yourself, dummy, who said anything about Grace wanting to marry you.
But I couldn’t not think it, zoomed the last few biggutter miles with a dumb little smile on my face.
DREAMWORLD
In Hue Family Palace ofcourse an ambush waited for me.
“There he is, Warner ohmygod where were you, what happened, are you okay,” cried Kitty, peeking out the sunroom window, other familymembers crowded quickly behind her.
I told them it was just a nice beebeecue, lost track of time, won’t happen again, if we’re being honest I smoked weeds with some friends.
This last piece of news might have been a mistake to admit. Because it filled everyone with despair and rage.
Dawn was the maddest, “Warner it goes without saying that this is unacceptable but what is more troubling is your casual attitude which makes it crystalclear that you do not have any sense of why we have set what we feel are completely reasonable requirements,” et set set setera,
meanwhile, Hue was the saddest, “Because the opportunity we provide is rare and special we can only provide it to those who will make the absolute best use of it, it would be very painfull to say goodbye to you but not as painfull as knowing there are poorkids outthere who would not waste this opportunity goofing off and doing drugs,” et set set,
meanwhile actually Kitty was the saddest, “Warner did you do this because you think you are worthless, when I look at you I see someone with unlimited potenchill, I know the road is hard but you can be someone amazing, why can’t you just believe in yourself like I believe in you,” et set, et set,
meanwhile actually exhausted Prayer was both saddest and maddest, “Kitty it’s jail, jail messed him up and beat the hope out of him, before jail you should have seen how spunky and sparky he was, now he dreams small and bad and can’t imagine great futures for himself, Warner ohmygod I can’t even look at you, I am killing myself everyday over here and you are goofing off like an idiot, if you screw this up for me I will never forgive you.”
Grumpy anger flooded me a little, you maniacs, I missed one familydinner and that’s it, just wanted to be a standard middlekid for a day, can we please not act like I went insane and murdered eighty grandmas.
But what can you do except play the game, I bowed my head and sorrowed.
“Family, I screwed up bad, but only now do I know how bad, truly,” I told them, “it won’t happen everagain, two strikes I’m out.”
Tony found me in the hall.
“I thought about your mistakes and here’s where I think you messed up, your originalsin was, you were not being considerate,” he explained. “Because you see it’s not just you sacrificing, familydinner is a sacrifice for all of us, thinkaboutit, dinners are prime social realestate. Dad could be meeting constituents, Mom could be wooing clients, I could be consolidating classmate support for my schoolvicepresident run in the fall with targeted pizzanights.”
“Thanks, Tony,” I said.
Kitty found me in the hall after Tony.
“Sorry for freaking out, it’ll be okay, don’t worry,” she soothed, crouching over me, hoping to sound casual and not shakysad.
“I promise though, I’ll never do that again,” I swore.
“So who were you with anyway,” she asked.
“Just normal kids from school,” I said. “I mean obviously badinfluence randos I will immediately eject from my life.”
“Only if that’s what you want, seriously,” she said.
“It wasn’t even fun,” I lied.
“You know you can tell me if it was a girl,” she said suddenly. I looked up into her big pretty eyeblacks.
“No no,” I lied. “I mean, it was boys and girls mixed, big group of losers, but not like a girl.”
“Okay,” she shrugged.
My dreams were wild that night for the first time since before jail, must have been the drugs. I built endless lifty gyms out of the palaces of Wet Almanac, lift this car, climb that flippedup lawn, unflood these homes and clear that rubble, kliegs and broadways lit the sky like right this way and step right up, the floodplain shrank to a trampoline to help poors dream themselves up to me, Eaters were somersaulting up joyously into the dreams of Wets, hurling and wrestling, paddling and cramming, beneath our feet the soil was swimming and boiling with extra dreamstuff, like I had nine dreaming minds and eight were out of my control.
Evenings went by of studying and stressing, things went backtonormal, everyone pretended like my druggy rampage never happened. I doubledowned on studying with Markfive, drowned myself in math, at familydinner Hue and Dawn warmly praised my dedication, Warner you’re really turning it around.
Then outofnowhere another defeat walloped the team of Poor Bro And Sis.
Prayer failed out of Wet Almanac Middlerich completely, I came home one afternoon to find a grim sis on the steps.
But it was outofsomewhere afterall, tobehonest Prayer had known for weeks she was failing. Because her plan of Make Business Presentations In Place Of Every Assignment Or Test was just a random desperate strategy, no teacher asked her to do it or thought it was a good idea.
Inotherwords she had gone completely renegade and was just getting up there everyday with panicky cheerfullness and teaching homemade casestudies to a giggly class and snarkysmile teacher, wow, yikes, okay well Prayer what you’ve told us about Shaky Buzz’s journey into the fruitmash sector is forsure quite intresting but I am afraid it is not going to get you a passing grade in Terror History.
So Wet Almanac spat my scrappy sis out into the mouth of Eat Votech.
It wasn’t all badnews because guess who talked her way into Busy Track.
“Prayer, holy crap, I’m proud of you,” I cheered her on the bus.
“Ohgod, what are you talking about, in one month I failed out of two different schoolyears, ontop of that I still don’t know enough math to place into Mathy,” she moped. “I spent a year doing shopmath, weeks at middlerich school memorizing stupid theorymath, wasn’t even close to enough.”
“Busy Track’s going to be a good home for you atleast,” I hoped.
“Who cares, Hue thinks I’m a loser now,” she worried.
“How’d you sell the counselors that pen though,” I said.
Prayer cracked a little smile finally and said, “Want to know what I said?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Okay, you’re the counselors,” she said. “So first, without telling me, just think of how many munmuns you’d pay for the most premium reliable topquality pen, the only pen you’ll need for the rest of your li
fe.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking, one munmun, who the heck needs a pen.
“Got that number in your mind?” she asked.
“Yup I got it,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “Here’s a piece of paper. Write down the number.”
I didn’t have anything to write with.
“I don’t have anything to write with,” I said.
“No kidding,” she said. “Sounds like you need to buy a pen.”
And she bopped me on the nose with the pen.
That was it apparently.
“That’s all you need to say to get on Busy Track?” I shrieked.
Way too soon, it was the weekend before my own return to Track Test Dungeon.
I felt pretty unready but refused to admit it, daughterday and sonday the whole family made a cheerfull determined groupeffort of Prep Warner For Retrack.
The family and Prayer and me meditated both mornings.
Hue ordered the cooks to make special brainfoods, leafygreens, oilyfish.
Dawn performed evening yogas with me, align the energies and breathe only with certain lungzones, bet you didn’t know lungs even had zones.
Hueagain reviewed medicals with me daughterday morning, gave me quiet encouragement of it’s really not as hard as you think, you’ll be totally fine, I almost believed him.
Tony covered programs, ifthens and forloops, I cut this one a little short because Tony is always trying to tell you why everything is so great, it stressed me out having to agree with him overandover, yes, all of these boring things are super great.
Even insane bitter Daisy took two hours with me to review chemicals. Daisy was not a childgenius anymore but still headed for a comfy life at a chemlab, her prep was solid and she was even nice to me. “In this house you really put up with a lot,” she told me with kind eyes, “I could never do it.”
And allday sonday I dug into math with Markfive and Kitty. Markfive gulped extra focusdrugs and was wild helpfull, this kid has a superpower brain when he’s not distracted, I tried hard to absorb like a thirsty plant.
Wake up Warner, it’s munday, day of the retrack test, here is how it goes.
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