D. Pierson - The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To

“No,” I say, “I was just doodling.”

“Oh,” Eric says.

I was trying to be dismissive because Eric being genuinely interested seems about as bad as Bret Embler or Carter Buehl being mock-interested. Here somebody across the room is staring at him like he blew up a bus, and I wonder if he has a reputation that I don’t know about that’s rubbing off on me just by being seen talking to him that will get me lots more attention from idiots. But I may have embarrassed myself just as much by using the word “doodling.” I look around, sort of like “does anyone know this kid? I don’t,” and see that Cecelia and her friends are still looking at Eric like, “That’s him, Officer, he’s the one who laughed when those kids who thought they were going to school went to Heaven instead.”

“You know that kid that always draws cartoon characters?” Eric says.

“Tony. Yeah.” He’s going to suggest Tony and I would make good friends since we both draw. Lindsay Skinner once told me Tony and I should be “drawing buddies.” Lindsay will never know what that remark cost her, and what it cost her was me asking her out, something I had been psyching myself up to do for weeks until the “drawing buddies” comment. So I didn’t get to stand in front of Lindsay’s locker and stutter out one of the eighty-five variations on “Do you wanna go do something sometime” I’d been weighing the pros and cons of, and Lindsay didn’t get to shoot me down.

“Do you think he’s good?”

“Tony’s alright, yeah.”

“Oh,” Eric says, the same way he said it when I told him I wasn’t drawing a comic book. “I think he’s awful.”

“Really?” I look around, this time to see if any of Tony’s friends are around. Then I realize Tony doesn’t really have friends, just what I like to think of as freak-show admirers.

“Yeah,” Eric says. “He never draws anything original. You originated these characters, right?”

“I mean, they’re just… y’know… doodles, but yeah.”

“I think that’s great,” Eric says. “I couldn’t draw anything, original or otherwise, if my life depended on it.”

“Yeah?” I say. “That sucks.”

“It does,” Eric says. He folds the sheet back up the way it was and gives it back to me.

The bell rings. Eric hustles back to his seat to get his stuff. I throw my notebook and The Great Gatsby in my bag and I’m out the door when one of Cecelia’s friends, Jen, catches up with me.

“Hey,” Jen says. “Do you… talk to that kid?”

I shrug. “I dunno,” I say. “Not really.”

“Oh,” she says, “never mind,” and starts off down the hallway.

Eric comes out of the classroom, his backpack way too high on his back.

“See you tomorrow,” he says. “I know it’s not a comic, but you should consider trying your hand at one. Seems like you have the chops, drawing-wise, along with the originality to not just sketch other people’s copyrighted material plus drugs.”

“It’s not a comic, but, uhm,” I say. “It’s actually a movie trilogy and a series of novels.”

“Awesome,” Eric says, breaking his weird stillness to hop just a little on his toes. It’s geeky but it’s pretty much the way I’d want somebody to react if they were the first person I told I was planning a movie trilogy and a series of novels. Eric is the first person. He says “awesome” again and we go off to fourth period in opposite directions.

“What’s it about?”

Eric is standing over me again the next day towards the end of third period. No “hi” or “what’s up” or anything, like our conversation from yesterday never ended.

“The movie trilogy and series of novels.”

“It’s sort of a lot to like, go into,” I say. “You know the loading dock by the auditorium?”

“Yes,” he says.

“I eat lunch over there,” I tell him.

“Okay,” he says. “Fifth-period lunch?”

“Yep,” I say.

“Good,” he says all conspiratorial like we’re planning a high-stakes daylight robbery. “Good.”

When I round the corner of the auditorium, Eric is sitting cross-legged on the concrete loading dock in direct sunlight, his lunch spread out in front of him.

“Aren’t you hot?” I say.

“Hmm?”

“Aren’t you hot?” I say. “I usually sit in the shade.”

At lunchtime, the way the sun hits the school there’s a big wedge of shadow on one side of the dock. It’s cool up against the brick and easier to read over there.

“Oh, right,” he says. “Thanks.”

I don’t know why he’s thanking me, I didn’t really do it for him. The truth is he’s so pale that in the sunlight he sort of hurts to look at.

He starts packing up his lunch to move. There’s four or five little Tupperware containers and something wrapped in tinfoil. He puts them all in a small paper bag and moves toward the shade.

“So?” he says.

I start unwrapping my lunchroom burrito. I have two chili-cheese burritos and a fountain Dr. Pepper. I remember coming to high school when the fact that they had soda seemed like a huge deal. The thrill has worn off but I still get it every day.

“It starts with this scientist who works for the government. He invents these cybernetic modifications for soldiers. His technology ends up causing the deaths of millions of people. Then one day he stumbles upon the technology to make time travel possible, and he knows that if the government gets their hands on it, they’ll make things even worse. Then he realizes that he can actually use the technology to go back and prevent those millions of people being killed. But the government busts in just as he’s about to go and there’s a shootout and he ends up getting sent too far back in time, to the Stone Age, through a temporal distortion.”

I take a bite of my burrito. They’re pretty messy, but I’ve figured out how to eat them so not too much stuff leaks out one end.

“Then in the Stone Age…” I won’t repeat the rest here but there’s cybernetic cavemen and a race to an energy crystal at the heart of the universe and the dead and the living keep switching places. When I finish I realize I’ve never said the whole thing out loud before, or any of it, really. Then I realize I forgot a bunch of things.

“That’s dynamite,” Eric says. “Really.” In the time it’s taken me to tell the whole thing he’s worked his way through four of the five Tupperware containers (string beans, some kind of potatoes, spinach, fruit salad) and half of what was wrapped in the aluminum foil, which turns out to be a pork chop sandwich.

“Who packs your lunch?” I ask.

“I do,” he says, and I remember I have a lunch.

“Leftovers?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “I cook.”

I expect he’ll talk now so I can eat without it being awkward but he doesn’t, he just sort of stares straight ahead. I eat anyway, and when I’m done I chew on the rim of my Styrofoam cup.

“What if the scientist—?” he says.

“What if the scientist what?” I say.

He shakes his head. The bell rings.

Wednesday in English Mrs. Amory splits us into groups for group projects. When she announces that Eric is in the same group as Cecelia, Cecelia sighs and looks at Jen and her other friend Teresa. She goes up to talk to Mrs. Amory when we’re all supposed to be getting together with our groups. After Cecelia and Mrs. Amory are done talking in very hushed tones, Mrs. Amory calls Eric and Ashlyn Taylor up and tells them they’ll be switching groups. My group is Chris White, Alicia Henry, and some girl whose name I always forget but I think might be in choir. Alicia has already divided the project up into four equal sections, assigned one to each of us, and written her e-mail address on three identical-sized strips of notebook paper so we can just e-mail her our sections when we’re done and she’ll assemble them all in a nice little binder before the due date. She actually says “nice little binder.” We all just give in to how badly she wants to get into a good college and go back to our desks with lots of class time to spare.