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

Then Christopher says something about how quiet I am, then after we’re done with lunch they take us back to their place, which they share with two other guys but it’s still really clean, and it’s theirs and it doesn’t smell bad in the least, and there are five couches in the living room because “people crash here a lot.”

Christopher is right, people do crash at their house a lot. Albert, one of the housemates, is in a band and they’re off on tour, but he offers up the house to other bands that come through town and they do the same for him, I guess, when he’s in their town. So Eric gets a couch and I get a couch and the other couches are split up at different times among members of Get Your Own Back, Tears In The Schoolyard, Andre The Client, and a singer-songwriter named Randall Coats. They’re almost all really nice guys. If they’re staying here it means Albert and his band are staying at their places in other states which means there are houses like this in a lot of towns all over the country, and I have to admit it’s kind of cool. But for a while I don’t want to.

A lot of time Eric forfeits his couch to these guys, since he doesn’t need a place to sleep.

“Someone is trying to kill us,” Eric says. “I mean, we don’t know that for sure. In fact, that’s probably the last thing he wants to do. At least to me.”

“That must give you a lot of comfort,” I say.

“Sorry,” Eric says. “But for the purposes of self-preservation, to trigger our deepest self-preservational instincts, we have to think of it like somebody’s trying to kill us.”

“So what you’re saying is, we shouldn’t just sit on the couch reading comics all day?” Because that’s what we’ve been doing since we got here: picking our way through the Preacher series, which Christopher says is his but we can totally read them if we want, in fact, we totally should.

“No. We want these guys to think everything’s cool, and we’re normal, and we want them to not mind having us around because having a place to go is the only thing that’s keeping us… well, ALIVE, if we’re going to think about it like we’re going to get killed. Which I said was a good idea.” He’s doing that more often now, sort of rambling, and where before he would talk for a long time but everything he said would be a new thought and you understood it was relevant even if you didn’t understand exactly what he meant, now he’ll talk and not everything means something. And it takes him a second to get back into his Preacher book, a second of just sort of staring off into space.

I wish I could say that that’s what’s bothering me, that someone is trying to kill us, or capture us, or whatever. It isn’t. It’s more that this place kind of seems like the scene of the crime, the crime being Eric and Christine. Or if not the actual physical scene of the crime, the criminals’ postcrime getaway flophouse where they brought their haul, spread all the money on the bed and fucked on it. Or any one of these couches for all I know. So Christopher forgive me if I’m a little quiet, it’s me still being angry about it and feeling like shit for still feeling angry because I guess if I’m being honest with myself it’s what I did when I was angry that brought us here.

All of the houses where Eric and I live are new, probably newer than either of us, but out here by the college everything’s about as old as it gets for the desert, meaning one-story houses from the fifties and sixties. It’s kind of cool, actually. Randy and Christopher’s house is mostly shaded from the street by a lemon tree that must be older than anything in our suburb, the movie theater, the Olive Garden, our high school, any of it. Before dinner our first night, Eric says something pretty important that I somehow hadn’t thought of up until this point:

“What are we going to tell our parents?”

“Well, my dad’s easy. Your parents actually give a shit. That might be more difficult.”

“Right.”

“The Man said he was from the college, right? When he met with your parents.”

“Yes.”

“Great,” I say. “He just gave us our out.”

I tell Eric to see if he can borrow Randy’s phone. Eric wants to know why I don’t just ask to borrow Randy’s phone. I tell Eric he’s in better with these kids. Eric says okay.

“Randy my good man,” says Eric, finding Randy in the kitchen, cooking: “Would you be so kind as to lend me your cellular telephone for a brief moment?”

Randy laughs. “Sure,” he says. “Don’t, like, call Asia.”

We take Randy’s phone and go out front since the house is kind of noisy because Randy and Christopher have a couple people over who are all in the living room playing Super Nintendo. My feet crunch on a carpet of leaves underneath the lemon tree. I dial Eric’s house phone. Eric looks at me, biting one of his knuckles without thinking about it.

“Hello… Mrs. Lederer? Hello! This is Albert Praetoreous from State. I believe you spoke to my colleague the other day…. Yes! That’s him. Yes. Well, as I’m sure Eric told you, some honors students from his school were visiting us today on an orientation field trip—What? He didn’t?… Yes, I suppose he can be a space cadet sometimes, but he’s also one bright little guy, if you don’t mind me saying so. Yes, well interestingly enough, I confided to the students today that we had two foreign scholars who were meant to attend a longer orientation program we often do in the spring, which is this week, and they were unfortunately not admitted to the country. Visa troubles…. I know. I know. I completely agree, it has had a chilling effect on international travel. Well, I was saying this, and Eric piped up and suggested that he and a Mr. Darren Bennett take the place of these scholars in the program…. Right, I had that reaction myself initially, but I actually cleared it with our dean of admissions here, and I said to Eric, if it’s alright with your parents… Yes! Of course. He’s right here.”

I hand Eric the phone. He gives me a panicked look. I wave at him like, “Just do it.” He puts the phone to his ear.

“Mom? Yeah. Yeah… I’m actually way ahead on homework. Yeah… It seems really good…. Next Wednesday. Yes… I’m really far ahead on homework. No. No, yeah, it’s okay. I’ll come back and get stuff. Clothes and things. Tomorrow. Okay… Okay. Love you. Bye.” He hangs up.

“Did they buy it?” I say.

“I think they bought it,” he says. “That was a pretty good adult impression.”

“Thanks,” I say. I would’ve killed it in Mr. Hendershaw’s “theater piece,” I think to myself. Then I think how, not that I ever wanted to, but how if that whole Theater Division thing were something I wanted to do someday, now I pretty much can’t, even though it’s only sophomore year. And if I wanted to do it in college, I probably wouldn’t, because I hadn’t done it in high school and I would be way behind everyone else in terms of experience. And then it’s weird to think that once I’m out of high school, that will have been high school. Like, the high school years, the ones everybody gets, those will have been mine, written in stone, unalterable forever. And I guess they haven’t been bad so far. I didn’t talk to anybody and then I made a best friend and then I fell in love and lost my virginity. Soon I’ll learn how to drive. Soon I will escape from the clutches of evil with a mutant best friend and we will return to those awkward halls triumphant.

Eric looks alternately thrilled and scared at going out on a big rebellious limb like this. He also looks very tired. I take the phone back from him and pick out another number on the speed dial.

“Hey, Dad?… Hey, I’m going to that college retreat thing…. The college retreat thing. The thing I told you about. In Tempe…. Like a week, I think…. Yep, I have my phone on me…. Okay, uhm, love you, too.”