The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To (23 page)

When I wake up from a nap that afternoon he's there in the living room and everybody from the band is gone. I remember there was something I wanted to ask him this morning but I don't remember what. On the coffee table, Eric has smoothed out the wrinkled picture of the Thragnacian Containment Pylon from my front yard. He's staring at the picture until he notices I'm awake. He smiles and says, I guess about the drawing, “We did a really good job.”

I agree with him and before I can say anything else he's gone to take a shower to wash the desert off.

Aside from all the living-room shows, there are real shows too. The actual shows at actual venues are not much different than the living-room shows, it's the same kids and some of their friends, except now there's a raised platform and sometimes amplified sound. And when there's amplifiers there's usually more dancing. These kids really like dancing, in this sort-of-ironic-but-not way which is the same way they talk, the same way they do everything, sincere like sincerity is new, as surprised as I am to find out that they really mean it.

I don't dance. Eric I've never even seen in the same room as dancing, with the exception of the time we went to an arcade and tried Dance Dance Revolution and waited for each other to admit that we hated it and were exhausted so we could go play the zombie-killing games.

Even the real venues aren't what you would consider big concert spaces. Mostly we end up at this art gallery place downtown that also has shows in the back. It's called Circumference. And at Circumference on this particular night we're watching The Achievables,
who are from Olympia, Washington, but before that the opening act is up. They're called Ten Who Dared, even though there are only eight of them. Eric has a good point when he says he could understand calling your band that if there were like, four or five of you, but eight is so close to ten all the irony is lost. This seems like a pretty good observation, and I'm repeating it to Chelsea 2, not necessarily giving Eric full credit, when she says, “Have you seen them?”

“No,” I say, “not yet,” because maybe that will make it seem like I've been meaning to see them, trying really hard to see them, it's just circumstances that have stood in my way.

“They're local,” she says, which, I have come to learn, is a good thing.

“Oh,” I say.

“Yeah, they're really good,” she says. “You HAVE to dance.”

I am skeptical and sure that when they are done tuning up their instruments the six guys and two girls onstage will not be able to do what numerous DJs haven't been able to make me do, which is dance. Well, okay, not numerous. That one DJ Mike at that one drama party that one time.

But when they start playing it's not weird or obtuse or arty or difficult to get, it's fun and simple and pretty catchy. And kids start dancing, and I guess it's not really good dancing in the technical sense but they commit really hard to it and it doesn't look intimidating. Chelsea 2 has her hair up in pigtails and as she moves around the ends of the pigtails bounce off her cheeks, and her cheeks have freckles, and when she grabs my hand and pulls me towards the center of the room where kids are bouncing up and down and side to side and girls are flipping their skirts around their ankles and laughing, I go with her and I feel like a retard and a spaz and all those other things but I sort of don't give a shit, and I think of that one time with that one DJ when I didn't dance, all those theater kids and Christine, and how different this is and how long ago that was except I guess it's not that different because when the song is over and the singer says “Thank you, we're Ten Who Dared and
we're from Cave Creek” and everybody cheers, someone taps me on the shoulder and I turn around and it's Christine.

“I wanted to come say hi to you before it seemed, like brutally obvious that I wasn't coming to say hi to you,” she says. “Besides, I miss you. Can we go talk somewhere?”

It's kind of cold outside but I'm all sweaty from dancing or whatever you want to call it so it actually feels nice.

“So how've you been?” I say, the words sort of catching in my throat.

“Okay I guess,” she says. “I just really want to apologize for everything that happened with me and Eric. Everything just got fucked up so fast, and when he started acting really weird towards you … I mean, I couldn't understand it. I can't believe you're still friends with him.”

“He has his reasons,” I say.

“Yeah, well. It's good to see you guys. Even if you can't, like, talk to me. Where is he, anyway? I saw him when I came in, but…”

“I think he's smoking with Aaron and Paul by the fire exit.”

“Aw, neat. Those guys love him. Everybody loves him.”

“Yeah, it's cool. Your friends are really nice.” I've run out of things to say, or anyway, say-able things, so I ask: “What about your theater friends?”

“Ugh, don't get me started. Some friends. Mr. Hendershaw came up for review this year for what the administration refers to as some of his ‘questionable choices,' and they had this town hall meeting, and NOBODY stood by him. Nobody he didn't cast in absolutely every role they ever thought they deserved, which is nobody, of course, so everybody just, I don't know, copped out, and so it doesn't look like he'll be coming back next year….”

She continues, and I don't particularly care about the theater kids, but now I'm really glad I asked, because something slides into place for me, and I really want to go back inside. Not to get away from Christine, she's fine, she can go or stay, it really doesn't
matter, but inside are the bands, and inside is Chelsea 2. It's not like I like her, but I COULD like her, and I like what she represents. If I told her I liked her because she represents possibility, she'd probably hit me. But she does represent it, the same way Eric represents the fact that anything is possible.

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE
. It always sounded like a dumb cliché that escaped from a Disney movie, and it was the thing that I dismissed first when I started collecting what I figured were the opinions mature people have, that most everything is bullshit and you can't trust anybody and there is no magic to be had. But these kids are older than I am, they go to college, and they don't seem to think that everything is stupid, not everything. And Eric, whom I sold out over the girl standing next to me, proves that not only is everything not stupid but everything is possible, the world is movie-quality like we always hoped it was.

I am thinking of a good way to get back inside and enjoy the rest of the concert when red and blue lights start flashing down the street. This venue gets a lot of noise complaints. Some of the cops might even be the same ones that busted Christopher's house earlier this week for a noise complaint, and that will be a pain in the ass. I'm thinking about going around the side of the building to tell Eric that if he's smoking weed he should probably ditch it when out of the second cop car that pulls up steps a guy in a suit. The Man. When I see him I get the power of flight and use it to get around the side of the building before Christine even knows I'm gone.

Eric seems to know why I'm tear-assing toward him and his semicircle of weed smokers and without thinking about it he starts booking in the same direction three steps ahead of me. The smokers follow suit, thinking they know why we're running and figuring they ought to too. I guess they're right, there are cops here and for them the consequences of being caught in public with a joint and whatever else they have in their pockets might include spending the night at the police station, an embarrassing call to their parents
if they're in high school, a misdemeanor charge if they're not. But their lives will continue and they'll get to keep going to shows. Eric and I, who knows, but if we keep running and don't stop and don't get tripped up at least we get another day of running.

And we do keep running, really pretty good at it now, and the smokers break off after what they figure is a reasonably safe distance from the cops, and we must look incredibly paranoid to keep sprinting with nobody in blue chasing us. But we keep looking behind us and seeing The Man, always coming around the corner no matter how fast we run. Downtown is pretty barren tonight since there are no sporting events, and our feet are loud as shit among the skyscrapers. Eric's breathing is loud too, raggedy, I guess maybe from smoking, but on top of that something sounds broken. He keeps running, though. I think like that Dance Dance Revolution game, we're both waiting for the other to stop.

By the time we seem to have lost The Man we're in what I guess you would call the barrio. I throw my hood up and sit in a bus shelter with a broken light.

Eric takes out his phone.

“It could be tapped,” I say.

Eric nods like, of course, then crosses the street and calls Christopher from a pay phone. Christopher is, I imagine, still at the show or maybe in the back of a paddywagon or maybe having his nuts shocked by mysterious government agents in order to get him to surrender our location, so Eric leaves a voicemail, something along the lines of we're sorry we got them mixed up in our mess, we never meant to drag them down with us. It sounds overdramatic but we haven't been home or at school in almost a week and we're fugitives from some cipher with whole stores of really good drugs and we're feeling pretty overdramatic, if you want to know the truth.

We walk south down side streets parallel to Central Avenue, not wanting to actually go down the well-lit main street. “I used to have T-ball down here,” I say.

“Oh yeah?” Eric says. “Were you good?”

“No,” I say, “terrible.”

Come to think of it the aluminum bat I had for T-ball got thrown in my brother's trunk the night he and his friends were supposed to take care of our problem. I am sort of disgusted that something from my childhood was almost used to bludgeon somebody, but then I think how if it actually had been used to bludgeon somebody, I might be home in bed instead of walking down side streets parallel to Central Avenue, and Eric might be home, not in bed, listening to early music on the NPR affiliate or thinking about fractals. I feel a weird mix of emotions, none of which seem like they go together but they all get felt at the same time. I'm getting more of these lately.

Central terminates at the mountains. On the other side of the mountains is our neighborhood and lots of others. We hit a cul-de-sac and just keep walking. I remind myself that they're not even technically big enough to be mountains, they're really just hills we call “the mountains,” but it's dark and past midnight and there could be coyotes and God knows what else up here, the homeless junkies who've been kicked out of their model homes, anything. But no one would think to look for us up here. So two unathletic boys stumble upwards in the middle of the night toward the big TV antennas with red lights on them that always meant home to me after coming back from vacation or summer camp.

“This is really scary,” Eric says. I'm glad he thinks so, too.

When we get to the top of the mountains or the hills or whatever they are, I am not surprised to see there are not actual TVs mounted on the antennas showing what they're broadcasting. It is too bad the red lights are serving their purpose of keeping planes from flying too low: if they were low enough we could grab on to their bellies and get away.

“What if we left?” I say to Eric. “Like, drove away, or flew? Went to California?”

“No,” Eric says, right on top of me. “Running is just running. Let them come.”

With our neighborhoods spread out below us, most everything dark except for the orange streetlights wrapped in strands around blocks with mansions and blocks with normal houses and blocks with no houses at all yet, Eric tells me we'd better just stand and fight.

“You don't have to if you don't want to,” he says.

“Nah, I will. I will. But who are we fighting and what are we fighting them with?”

“I gotta show you something,” Eric says, and starts down the hill towards home.

It's faster going downhill and by the time we get to the bottom the cuffs of my jeans are full of stickers and cactus needles. Nothing has stuck itself straight up into my shoe yet, which is good, but I'm looking forward to walking on pavement again at the bottom of the hill. There's a fence and on the other side of it are construction sites that become neighborhoods farther along. We hop the fence and Eric veers right, towards more desert. We're heading away from the hills, walking alongside civilization, houses on our left and more desert on our right.

There used to be desert behind my house, then they threw a band of highway a mile or two away in the desert and filled that space with houses, and that's where Eric's house is. Someday they'll throw a highway to our right and fill the space we're in now with houses. It's just starting to get light on the very edge of the sky by the time we get to where I guess we're going, which is the desert that's behind Eric's house right now and won't be anymore someday. I followed him out here one day and caught him looking like Lord of the Flies. I know sort of where we are because of the fast-food signs I can see from here, the Sonic and the Wendy's and the Exxon that go together near the freeway. My head does that thing where you had no idea where you were and everything's a strange blur but then you see a landmark and that orients you and suddenly you can fit everything in your head.

Eric stops, looks around. “We can rest here for a while until it gets light.” He lies down with his back against something big and artificial, a dug-up drainpipe or something. I lean back against it as well and start trying to pick stickers and burrs out of my jeans but it's dark and I can't really see and I keep pricking myself, so after a while I just lay my head back and fall asleep.

Later the sun's up almost completely and I sort of forget where I am and I really want to get the sun out of my eyes so I turn my head to the left. There's some graffiti or something on the drainpipe near my shoulder. It's this elaborate, bent fleur-de-lis: the banner of the Thragnacian Sentinels, who are charged with keeping a baby wormhole from devouring the universe in
TimeBlaze
. I didn't know Eric did graffiti. But the symbol is kind of way too good and intricate to be graffiti. I think I must still be asleep but I'm pretty sure it's broad daylight two miles out of town and I am dozing with my back against a Thragnacian Containment Pylon.