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

“Let’s go around back,” I say.

“Why?” Eric says.

I shrug. Eric nods. We go around back.

The pool light is on even though it’s October. All the lights in the house are off except for what I guess is Alan’s bedroom. I know it’s Alan’s bedroom because through the blinds I can see Alan lying on his bed and a girl is lying across him, going down on him. We were sneaky and quiet before but now we are frozen. The pool filter hums and Alan’s got some sort of music on, loud, not the kind of music I think I would put on but what the fuck do I know. Though he’s my brother’s friend and Eric’s tormentor I don’t think either of us has ever seen this sort of thing before. I definitely haven’t outside of the Internet and I don’t know that Eric has, ever. I don’t even know if he knows there is such a thing.

“Oh my God,” Eric whispers.

The girl is rubbing her boob up and down Alan’s cock.

The thing that’s weird about it, besides all the things that are obviously weird about it, is that it’s real: I know that sounds dumb or oversimple but it’s the fact that, like I said, up until this point the only time I’ve ever seen anything remotely resembling this is in porn, and this is most definitely not porn. Alan is sort of fat and the girl, who I actually think I might recognize, is almost too skinny and they’re more dressed than they are naked. Alan has this hoodie on that I recognize from when he forgot it at our house for like a week and it was draped over the chair by the front door, green with white lettering that reads THE WORLD’S BEST FUCKING SKATERS, and it’s real and if it’s happening right now it’s happening all over in the backs of normal-looking houses all the time while Eric and I sit indoors and draw. I mean, you hear rumors, even if you’re not friends with anyone named in the rumors, but I guess I always figured it was like fights: you know, people say they’re going to kick each other’s asses but all they really do is meet on the basketball court after school and push each other and call each other “bitch” enough so that nobody will be considered one when they both end up walking away and not actually fighting. Just like fighting is mostly just talk about fighting, I figured sex at our age was mostly just talking about sex. But it really happens. People born not long before me rub each other all over each other in their bedrooms with the music up.

“Let’s go around front,” Eric says.

It is a good five seconds before either of us moves.

Back around front we’re a couple of kids with rotten eggs on Halloween and even though we’re not dressed as Disney characters and saying “twick or tweat” with adorable speech impediments we might as well be. We’re standing on the curb. Eric takes the eggs out of the bag, opens the carton, and looks at them. I grab one and throw it at Alan’s house. I guess the driveway is longer than it looks or I am weaker than I already feel because it doesn’t even make it. It breaks in front of a red clay pot next to the front door. I am wondering if being so awful at being a teenager that you can’t even prank right counts as originality when my brother’s car pulls into the cul-de-sac.

Eric struggles to close the egg carton and get it back in the bag. He gives up and drops them to the concrete.

“Well well well,” my brother yells out his rolled-down window in his British hooligan voice, “what’s all dis den?”

I take off running. Since it’s a cul-de-sac, really I’m running towards the people we’re trying to get away from.

“DARREN,” Eric says. I turn. Eric tilts his head back the way we came, towards Alan’s backyard. It’s kind of a cool move. I’ve never seen Eric have a cool move. Then he runs in the direction he nodded. I follow. My brother gives chase, plastic sword thwapping against his thigh. Tits has jumped out on us too, and whoever else was in the car, a couple of dark forms following my brother when I look back over my shoulder. I hope Eric’s not planning something stupid like jumping in Alan’s pool. I hope somebody tripped over the wood-stain can.

Eric runs around Alan’s pool. There’s a back gate I didn’t notice when we were zoning out on Alan’s sex triumph. Eric blasts through the gate, I do too, and we’re in a back alley between fences where there’s trash bins and a couple of old couches and trampolines. My brother is right behind us.

“Throw eggs at moi mate’s house, will you?” He cackles like a fucking demon.

I had no idea this alley was back here. I didn’t know we had alleys. We come to what I guess is the end of the block. It looks like a dead end and I’m bracing myself to slow down and take whatever shoulder punches and nut punches and kicks in the gut from Tits are coming to us when Eric cuts into a dark corner and disappears. I run that way. Some steel rods demarcate a place where the alley opens onto a dry wash. Eric scrambles down the sharp gray rocks that look unsteady as hell and, as I find out when I try to scramble down as fast as Eric, actually are unsteady as hell. Rocks clatter against rocks. I fuck my knee up bad a couple of times but manage to stay right behind Eric. Behind me, the thwappings of the sword against my brother’s leg get farther and farther apart, and the cackles get less and less demon-ish. Eric hangs a right and climbs out of the wash. He holds his watch up, presses a little button that lights up the face. “We might be able to make this work,” he says. As I’m climbing out of the wash a shape flies past me and clatters on the pavement. A plastic sword, still in its sheath. I look over my shoulder. My brother stands panting in the dry wash. It doesn’t look like Tits ever even made it down there. They’re heavy smokers, of everything.

I try to tell Eric we could probably slow down but before I can he’s let his little watch light go out and has jetted down the block we’ve just climbed up to. Most of the houses are under construction. At the end of the street, another shuttle is just pulling up.

“The eleven fifteen,” Eric pants, “right on time!” Its doors open and Eric sprints up the stairs without stopping. I climb on and nod to the driver, who’s not Eulalio.

“GO GO GO!” Eric says when he gets to his seat, though he has to see no one’s chasing us anymore. The bus pulls away at its own pace.

By now, I imagine the commotion has disturbed what Alan had going on. I don’t know if it’s a regular thing for him or a one-time full-moon Halloween anomaly, all I know is Alan has been to a place I haven’t been to, and I’m really smart and I once heard Alan pronounce the word especially like this: “eck-specially.” So I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m not sorry.

We sit there catching our breath. I am so out of shape it feels like my body has given up trying to draw air from my underused lungs and is trying to run on a heart full of caffeine and a stomach that only knows Hot Pockets, and it’s having a bitch of a time. Still, it’s kind of great. We have these characters the Agtranian Berserkers, who jab each other in the chest with big syringes full of super-adrenaline before they go into battle, so they’re so euphoric they don’t give a fuck if they die. As soon as I stop feeling like I’m dying, I start feeling like that.

“Your house won’t be safe for a while,” Eric says. “We can go to mine.”

I’ve never been to Eric’s house. I don’t know what I’m expecting. I guess one of those homeschoolers’ houses we talked about that one time: weird-smelling and dark and crammed with spelling workbooks and homemade candles, his mom in a dress like a farmer’s wife, listening to religious radio. But it’s not like that at all. It’s normal. Big, even.

“How did you do that?” I say as we walk up the gravel path to Eric’s front door. “You were like a fucking ninja.”