Pasha Malla - The Withdrawal Method

Brian's gone all still. I smack him again on the belly. Wanna get up? I say, and he goes, Yes! Yes! and nods his head so hard he nearly shakes me out of the bed.

TOP SECRET LIST OF EASTER EGG HIDING PLACES! (SO FAR)

Kitchen — between the Wheaties and Sugar Crisp boxes

Kitchen — in the handle of the silverware drawer

Kitchen — on top of the breadbox

Kitchen — in the fruit bowl

Kitchen — under the kitchen table (stuck with tape!)

Den — between the couch cushions

Den — on top of the VCR

Den — under the lampshade

Hallway — on the frame of the picture of me and Brian

Stairs — one egg on every stair, in the corners

MY DAD GREG spends the whole morning in the garage working on his bike, which is good, because after me and Brian play like a hundred games of Trouble, at lunch (1:24) when he comes in to heat up some Chunky for us he's weird and doesn't look at me really. He puts our bowls of soup down and coughs and just stands there for a minute. Then he grabs an apple and goes back into the garage. Then at precisely 4:09 he sticks his head into the kitchen where I'm reading Harriet the Spy and Brian's colouring and he says, Hey, stopped raining, taking the bike for a spin. The way he says it is too happy, like he's trying to be happy, and he's got this fake smile. I just nod okay. He's quiet for a bit, then he goes, You okay holding down the fort? So I nod again and then he's just gone.

Granny's coming tomorrow to make us Easter dinner. At 5:14 she calls and says, Happy Easter! and tells me about the great ham she got. Ham? Grody. But I don't say that. I say, Yum. I say, Sounds good Granny. I tell her my dad Greg is out on his bike but should be back soon and she asks if we're okay. I say, Sure. Then she wants to talk to Brian. He gets all excited and takes the phone and yells, Hi! and Yes! and then just laughs a lot.

When Brian hangs up I notice something sort of smells so I get down and sniff his bum. Yup. He crapped himself. This is one thing I can't handle: crap. So I tell him to just stand in the middle of the kitchen until our dad Greg gets home, not to touch anything. I open the window and sit there watching him, glad he's wearing pants with elastic ankles.

My dad Greg gets home at 5:58 and smells Brian right away and goes, Woo-wee buddy! He picks Brian up over one shoulder like a fireman and carries him upstairs. The tub goes on. I can hear them both laughing from my spot at the kitchen table and the water splashing around while my dad Greg washes the crap off my brother.

After dinner (fried baloney, Tater Tots, hot V8) we watch a movie on satellite. My dad Greg tries to get us to all sit on the couch together with the blanket overtop like usual. I tell him I'm okay and sit on the floor. The opening credits come on and I can feel someone like nudging me in the back with their toe. I just stare at the TV as if I don't notice but it's hard to focus on the TV, it's like I can see the pictures but my brain can't figure out what they are.

The movie we watch is The Parent Trap. My dad Greg is all excited because it's a movie that was out when he was a kid. At dinner he told me, It's more for girls than boys — you'll like it, BG. When he said the name I thought, Cool, a parent trap, what an awesome idea. You'd dig a hole and cover it with sticks and leaves, maybe put a case of beer on the other side for dads. Something else for moms? Then dads would come along and be like, Oh great, beer! and when they went to go for it they'd fall through and into the hole. A parent trap. Then you could study them and stuff, poke them with sticks, do experiments and tests.

But it turns out to be Disney! The worst! There's this girl and she's got a twin sister but she doesn't know or something, and then they try to get their parents married. There's no trap really, just a plan, and not even a good one. I squirm around on the floor a lot and my dad Greg keeps going, You want to come up here with us? But I don't say anything to that.

The movie gets done at 8:58, kind of late, so my dad Greg hustles us off to bed. And then goes back downstairs, so I'm left lying there wide awake, thinking about what he's maybe doing down there under the blanket with the groaning ladies on the Tv. But I guess I'm tired from the night before so after not too long I forget about my dad Greg King of the Perverts and start to get really sleepy and before I can even check out the window to see the moon I fall asleep.

I WAKE up and I feel swampy and slow but I have this idea there's something I should be doing. It's — 4:17 a.m. There's something, but everything feels cloudy and my brain is only just winding up, still maybe half asleep. I roll over and then I'm drifting off to sleep again, when it hits me.

Easter.

The egg hunt.

In like three hours Brian is going to get up and go hunting for eggs and I forgot to even finish my list, let alone hide any eggs. I wait until 4:20 (which isn't perfect, but this is an emergency) and swing my legs over the side, get out of bed and it's like slow motion, all heavy and weird, and in the dark my room is sort of blue from the moonlight through the window.

Moving out into the hall I still feel underwater, swimming, looking around, trying to adjust my eyes to the dark. Wait. There's an egg on the floor outside Brian's room, a little dark lump against the carpet. I lean down and it's like I can't believe it and for a second I think maybe the Easter Bunny really did come. But then I realize who would have put it there, who knew it was my job and went and did it himself anyway.

I pick up the egg. The foil around the chocolate is starting to peel so I smooth it down and put it in the pocket of my pajamas. I look at my dad Greg's bedroom door which is closed with only black showing from the crack underneath, and then I start to tiptoe down the stairs, slow.

Guess what? There are eggs lined up in the corners of each stair JUST LIKE I WROTE ON MY SECRET LIST. The eggs go into my pockets and it's like I'm doing a weird kind of front crawl or something, down one step and reaching, then the next, eggs into my pockets, but feeling I'm maybe sinking, maybe drowning, and the house is dark and still with only the hum of the fridge from the kitchen to prove the world is even alive.

I move around the house, silent, leaving the lights off, looking in all the spots I wrote down, taking the eggs and loading up. Between the cereal boxes: check. On top of the vcR: check. All of them. He's put them in other places too, stupid places like lined up on the kitchen counter. Way too easy. But even finding eggs in places I didn't have on my list makes me feel weird — my hands go prickly for a second, I feel my face hot. Once the egg disappears into my pocket the feeling goes away.

Around 4:50 my pockets start to get heavy — they're sagging and bulging with eggs. I look around one more time but I'm pretty sure I've got all of them. So I go to the back door and put on my shoes.

Outside it's still dark. The sky is navy blue, almost purple, all clouds left over from yesterday's rain. There's no stars. Only the moon glowing in a little white fingernail behind the night. I shiver a bit in my pajamas, and it's hard to walk with my pockets full of eggs, the way they swing heavy at my sides. I have to hold my pants up by the waist to keep them from falling. I close the back door quietly and drop a single egg there. The porch light shines off the silver wrapper. It twinkles.

I go out across the lawn all wet from a day of rain, soaking the bottoms of my pants and cold on my ankles, and then onto the street where my footsteps echo a bit, tap tap tap in my runners on the pavement. Every twenty steps exactly I drop an egg. I count twenty and duck and put one down, then twenty and duck and put one down, again and again all along the curb of the street. I put one right in front of Jared Wein's house and think about knocking on his window, getting him to help, but I decide no, this is something I have to do on my own. Then at the end where there's the path I look back and there they are, all in a line lit up by the streetlights.