Munmun

by Jesse Andrews

  “Goodluck, forreal dave, you deserve it, you’re too smart for Lifty,” says Brand in the parkinglot.

  Tray nods but says nothing, just bumps skulls and smiles grimly.

  Grace messages me yourethebests and youcandoits and endless triumphvids, hearts and fireworks, ninja skateboard champions, my phone is freaking out.

  “Bro, you’ve come this far for a reason, I believe in you,” whispers Prayer fiercely into my ear, and pushes me toward the door.

  “The test consists of nine sections, thirtyminutes each, you must pass all nine to retrack, are you ready for section one,” says the counselor in Track Test Dungeon.

  I pass the first two sections and choke hard on numberthree, six problems solved out of twentyfive, minimum to move on is thirteen.

  Failure, disaster, notevenclose.

  I cross the parkinglot into Mun World, can’t go crawling back to Lifty Gym, too ashamed, it’s not even lunch yet and I failed.

  LIFEANDDEATHWORLD

  I walked Mun World alone, aisles for miles lit with dead whiteness, hating myself.

  And also hating stupid Mun World, look at this crappy terrible place.

  Look at all these cheap freaking items, made quick and sloppy, fated for short sad lives.

  Look at these Shimmery Popstar Hero backpacks, made from stiff plastic fabrics, straps are barely even sewn on right, the machine in charge of drawing Shimmery Popstar Hero Face must have gotten distracted because the eyes are at different latitudes of the head.

  Look at this Action Gunmen Play Set, pay six hundo so your sad little murderer can plunk plastic statues with rubber bullets.

  Look at this heap of Supermops, half are already bending and buckling and can never be sold.

  Look at this fearfull row of a thousand shirts, a thousand people will come in and put these on their skin, dontknowwhy but it’s terrifying to think about.

  Listen to this plastic music, stamping and gleaming, cleanedup robot voices, probably sounds to me the way I sound to an animal. Speaking of animals, there’s one right now, tail swishing and switching.

  It was a big evil tortashell cat, hunting the littlepoors of Mun World.

  Look at this deathmachine, his wicked claws and superstrength and aboveall his love of blood. How did I know he loved blood, look at him, he’s husky, wellfed, but still hunting avidly, not even hungry for meat, just death.

  He was gazing insanely at a hole where definitely some terrified littlepoors escaped into it, probably still in there unless they have a tunnel system.

  It took me embarrassingly long to swallow my fear and get my heart to stop shuddering and remember, Warner, you’re bigger than cats now, if you survived many jailpulpings you can probably pick up and dispose of a cat.

  He wasn’t even suspicious of me, instead turned his whiskery jerkface to me and yowled frantically, Warner please help me kill these humans before they get away.

  “Sure I’ll help you, asshole,” I told him, swiping in and grabbing his underarms.

  Rightaway this frisky guy scrabbled around like a maniac, screamed and hissed and revealed his true demonself, but guesswhat, peenhead, you don’t bully me now, I bully you. I held him at armslength, he got a few scrapes in forsure, but today Warner is way stronger than a cat, what a feeling.

  But you can’t just carry a cat out of Mun World without the doorstaff noticing.

  “Honored customer, can I see your receipt for the cat,” said storepet Miles, the walking talking vidscreen who has to shimmy while talking to you.

  “Didn’t buy him, just found him creeping around, gotta be a publichealth issue forsure,” I said.

  “Well thank you beloved shopper, you know everything you need is right here in Mun World, that includes our petshop that he must have escaped from, so, why don’t you take him back,” said moonwalking Miles.

  I looked at the cat, panicking and thrashing. I thought about buying him and drowning him, or what if you just ripped his claws out onebyone and then dumped him in the street, goodluck, asshole, how about you quit killing and eat garbage like the rest of us.

  But my stupid heart wouldn’t let me kill or cripple even a murderer psychopath cat.

  “Could you maybe take him back,” I asked.

  “Please help me, man, we’re understaffed,” said the poor exhausted dancer inside the milessuit, still boogieing.

  “Thanks for the help, just drop him in that tank over there,” said the stressedout petshop captain, under attack from mangy parrots.

  I plunked this cat in a crappy tank.

  “Mickdonalds, you gotta stop escaping, what are we going to do with you,” said the petshop captain.

  I felt happy that Mickdonalds atleast has to live in a crappy catjail, then I felt a little sad, nowonder the poor stupid jerk is evil, jail made him crazy just like me, then I realized, Warner, don’t get soft, all cats are evil, the foodchain made them that way.

  On my way out I spotted them, the two tatty littles I saved from the cat, a guy and a girl sneaking deodorants into a hole.

  They spotted me and kissed fists gratefully, thanks for saving us, nice giant.

  I kissed fists back and began to feel not horrible, might not be Mathy but atleast I’m bigenough to repress a cat.

  DREAMWORLD

  Hue Office was on the topfloor of Hue Family Palace, took me a while to get up there. As I climbed a hundred halfsteps I could hear his smooth boom.

  “But you have to remember it’s not a bad thing for an experiment to fail, kittycat,” I heard him say, “the point of an experiment is not to succeed, the point is for you to learn from it. So if we all learn from this, then this can still have been quite a good thing.”

  Then he noticed me in his doorway and got very silent in the way of, incase you haven’t figured it out, I am talking about you.

  “Warner’s here, gottago, I love you,” he said into his headset and tapped off.

  “Hue, firstofall pardon the interruption, if I can have two moments of your time that would be great, obviously though I can come back later,” I offered.

  “No, ofcourse, please sit,” he murmured, and watched with kind somberness as my halfchair pulleyed to his eyelevel.

  On the walls around us were vidscreens going twentyfourseven, localnews and saddlelight feeds and the tabletops of his campainteam, you could see them edit his speechclips in realtime.

  “Not sure if you got the retrack results from Eat Votech,” I began, he nodded regretfully, I did, I did.

  “Hue, with politeness and respect, I’ll realtalk you for a second,” I said. “I know I haven’t been exactly killing it so far, dropping out of a nice middlerich academy, going missing one night to smoke drugs, now failing Mathy Retrack like a dumb jock. Bottomline, I know I’m not the kid you wish I was.”

  Hue smiled sadly.

  “Who do I wish you were, do you think,” he asked.

  “I’ll describe that kid to you,” I answered. “He’s a completely reliable genius who just needs one chance to prove he’s a superstar, never screws up or tests your patience. And he’s got a laserfocus on success and achievements, nothing else in his life contains any importance even for a minute. He exists only to rack up points and scores, to show poors are people too.”

  Hue’s grin faded a little, I don’t know if I’d put it that way, but fine.

  “But Hue,” I said, “if the point of having poors in your house is to tell beautifull campainstories, how about this story, Hue rescued two kids from misery and death, they weren’t geniuses but guesswhat, that’s fine, they still deserve a nice life, nongenius poors are also worth rescuing.”

  Hue put a finger in his ear suddenly, glanced at a screen and grimaced, murmured, “Shoot, Warner, give me a moment,” swiveled to a camera and announced sternly, “Thankyou for having me, Violet, needless to say I completely reject my opponent’s taunts and bullying, if anything he is the one with the bonerdisease, you can tell because he brought it up.”

  He flashed a movies
tar smile, tapped his ear, turned back to me, resumed solemn gentleness.

  “Warner,” he told me, “I’m glad we’re realtalking. You’re a smart kid and you might not think so but I like you, I genuinely do. And personally, I ofcourse agree with you, all kids deserve nice lives, not just the most gifted.”

  His eyes got big and soft as he continued carefully, “But politically, and this is my field of expertise, remember, the story you propose is a story that voters just don’t love. Voters like results. And so the heart of my campainplatform, as it relates to poors, is to convince voters that helping poors brings results.”

  “I can only stay if I bring results,” I asked.

  “That’s how we get the most out of my daughter’s program,” he agreed.

  I thought about the voters, tried to see me like the voters saw me, actually it wasn’t hard.

  Nogood jailfish failing and flunking, drugging and thugging, who cares if he can read now or do mathbasics, congrats I guess on not being a total idiot, that’s still not results.

  On one of the editscreens they were trying to find music for when Hue waves at people who are applauding him, rippling weepy music of a piano who thinks it’s a harp.

  “So what happens next,” I said slowly, keeping my voice from squeaking or shrieking, I knew the moment I freaked out I would lose him forever.

  Somehow as his words got harder the kindness deepened in his eyes.

  “I am going to arrange rentfree government housing for you at a littlehouse in Eat for the rest of your time at school,” he said. “And ofcourse that housing will be chosen for its proximity to the school. Then, subsequent to your graduation you will be able to remain at the littlehouse, but a modest rent will be instated.”

  My bones got shaky.

  “You’re saying littlehouse though, I mean, can I atleast stay scaledup?” I asked. “I won’t be able to keep doing Lifty Track if I’m ratscale.”

  His voice melted to a crackly whisper, so sad was this suited cityboss.

  “Warner, a hunthousand munmuns can never be a gift,” he said. “It can only ever be a loan.”

  I didn’t even want to ask about my sis, I knew I had to though, my blood felt poisoned, my heart felt weak.

  “And what about Prayer,” I said.

  He glanced at the door, will anyone overhear, no, okay, and said, “That’s a separate judgment that I’m not yet ready to make.”

  “Why not,” I asked.

  “I’ll be very candid with you,” he said. “Your sister does work hard, she does dream big, I do think she is getting the most out of herself. She has the laserfocus you’re talking about. But without a strong Wordy or Mathy background, her potenchill is always going to be pretty limited.”

  I nodded, blinked back angry tears, forced a steady voice, hoped he had the patience to hear one last salespitch.

  “Hue, give me one more chance,” I said. “You need results, noproblem, I will give you results. I’m one kid in a million.”

  He leaned back and rubbed his tired crinkly forehead, please don’t make this hard.

  “I will do whateverittakes,” I promised him. “Whateverittakes, I mean it. This last failure taught me what I need, there can be no mistakes or relaxing everagain. Fromnowon I will have the focus, reliability, highpowered brain. Hue, please think about it, it’s already crazy what I’ve learned, a few months ago I didn’t even know what math was and today I’m already passing atleast two testsections, you have to admit that’s progress. Give me one more chance to retrack, keep Prayer and I around meanwhile.”

  He frowned, glanced away at his screens, stared back at me.

  “Here’s a true story about littlepoors,” I told him, “they can give results but they need more than one chance, no one succeeds if only one door ever opened for them, Hue I know you’ve had a few doors opened for you, not just one, please open one more for me.”

  He glanced again at a screen, murmured sorry, got to deal with this, tapped a pad and I began to lower.

  “One more door,” I squeaked.

  “I’ll think about it,” he lied.

  But I had a hope left, I paced the sunroom anxiously waiting for her to come home.

  “Bro are we okay, bro what’s going to happen,” demanded fretty Prayer.

  “I don’t know I don’t know,” I said, shooing her frantically.

  “I’m sorry but this is incredibly nerveracking,” yelled Prayer.

  “Look, just go study, remind everyone what a learny maniac you are,” I told her, she hugged me fiercely and left.

  Through a window I watched her laying out vidcarpet in a livingroom for all to see, Hue be honest, is this really what lowpotenchill looks like, a savvy businessgirl playing complicated graphs like a piano.

  Kitty got home as the sky was pinking, I jumped up and waved.

  She met me with cloudy eyes, squeezed the bunchy mouth into a frown, hid one squeezy hand inside her braidnest.

  “I heard the news, Warner, I’m so sorry,” she said, seemed more hurt than sorry though.

  “Look I know you’re disappointed that I failed,” I told her, “I just want to tell you, I don’t feel any kind of despair at all somehow, honestly just hope, I completely believe in myself, just like you always wanted.”

  “Well okay, good,” she said uncertainly. “That’s the right attitude, for sure.”

  “For sure it’s right because you taught it to me, you gave me the gift of selfbelief, in addition to the gift of still being alive, remember when you saved my life,” I reminded her.

  “Yeah ofcourse I do, well good, good, I’m glad you don’t want to give up,” she admitted.

  Then her voice got a little loud and she said, “Hey can I ask you something, I saw you got a whole bunch of lovey vids today, what’s up with that.”

  “Lovey vids?” I repeated.

  “I’m in charge of Hue Family Data Plan,” she explained, “today your phone ate crazy data, I got informed automatically, someone sent you a million flowery lovey vids.”

  • • •

  She didn’t have to say anything else, I saw the entire truth in her eyes.

  The truth wasn’t even, Kitty loves Warner.

  The truth was just, when Warner is out of Kitty’s control, under someone else’s spell, Kitty doesn’t want him around anymore.

  Even Prayer was almost too much, even just my grumpy love of a sis made Kitty less intrested in the Help Warner Program.

  The truth was very simple, Warner can’t live in this house if he loves another girl, Warner if you really want to do whateverittakes, here’s the whateverittakes.

  So in that moment, I stopped loving Grace.

  How is that possible, easy, you just tell your sad heart, aim only at one girl, forget the other one. Aim only at the god you can see, not the middlegirl you can put your arms around.

  Forget everyone except the giant pretty songmaker, the dogood dictator queen, the girl you dreamed with longago, when you were just a kid.

  “Ugh, it’s this super annoying girl,” I told Kitty, “she has a crush or something but believe me, I am not into it.”

  Kitty blinked and brightened.

  “Lol really,” she wondered.

  “Manohman, it’s like can you leave me alone already, you loopy maniac,” I made myself groan.

  “Well you can just block that number, you know,” she advised.

  And she blinked, smiled, waited for me to do it.

  Goodbye dreams of middlelife with Grace, goodbye Shaky Buzz dates.

  I only get one love and it’s not sweettasting anymore, salty now, bloodflavor from killing the other one, maybe that’s what truer love tastes like.

  Was it such a big sacrifice, I don’t even know, maybe that’s the saddest part.

  I drew an ecks on Grace’s name, the phone asked BLOCK?, I yupped.

  “I don’t have time to waste on any girl not named Kitty anyway,” I teased later, made myself light, jokey, happy.

  It’s prete
nd flirting, not real, pretend is the only kind we get.

  “You don’t have time for any girls, smooth guy, math is your girlfriend,” she told me, eyes sparkling, pretend flirting is her favorite.

  “Sorry, it’s just the truth, you saved my life, therefore I belong to you,” I said.

  “Okay fine,” she laughed. “You belong to me.”

  And I felt her soft giant fingers in my hair.

  V.

  MARKFIVE

  LIFEANDDEATHWORLD

  Team Warner Prayer was saved, atleast for a few months. Kitty begged Hue to keep us around, Hue said okay fine, Tony said hey what about these orphans I found under a dumpster though, I thought it was my turn to save some poors, everyone told Tony to chill.

  Another Mathy Retrack was scheduled for Warner, twelve more weeks in the distance.

  All of Hue Family was hopefull and supportive, we all cheerfully pretended like no one was threatening to drop us back into our old ratlives.

  At Reelect Hue voteparties and rallyshows I continued to be introduced as Warner The Amazing Success Story, look at this bright young striver, a few months ago he was illiterate and rotting in jail for the crime of defending his sister, now he’s studying to become a mathgenius, if you reelect me I will continue to fight for poors to get the opportunities they deserve, everyone should get the chance to work like crazy.

  I bumped into Grace in the parkinglot, just mumbled sorry, shouldn’t really hang out with you anymore, I kind of met someone else, watched her eyes get sad and hard.

  Angel stalked up to me later that day, calmly informed me I was a lunatic criminal and they should put me back in jail, ohwell toobad yourloss and starting now none of us will literally ever think about you everagain.

  Maybe it was the truth, days passed and I’d be in the parkinglot nowandthen and my eyes stumbled over Grace living life without me, giggling with her crew, reading comics, huddling with Frank over his phone, guess she has a new itscomplicated now.

  No time to get weepy over dead loves though, Warner, the king of your life now is math.