Bear, Otter, & the Kid 03 - The Art of Breathing (25 page)

Corey sounds amused when he says, “You know, for how smart you are, you can be pretty dumb sometimes.”

I ignore him because I’ve already gotten going. “This is how it starts, you know. Baby-making farms. Pretty soon, babies will be genetically bred to specifications, and we’ll all lose our humanity in the process. The machines will rise and the world will be thrown into chaos until a ragtag band of mercenaries rise up and fight back.” I pause, considering. “I may have seen too many sci-fi movies with Otter.”

“Undoubtedly.”

But now that I’m thinking about it, I can’t stop. “And why do the women in this baby-making farm do it? They get paid, I’m sure, but why would they want to get pregnant over and over again? It’s got to be, like, an addiction, right? Like to drugs. Or like that one guy on that TV show, where he was addicted to licking his cat’s fur.”

Corey rolls his eyes. “Obviously, it has nothing to do with the joy of giving others a family.”

“No one’s that altruistic,” I say with a scowl. “There is something more sinister behind this. I think Bear and Otter should hold off until I can get to the bottom of it.”

“And they do it because they’re addicted like the cat-fur licker?”

“Exactly.”

“So just so I can make sure I have this right, if Bear and Otter try to have kids, it will lead to the baby-making farm machines rising up and take over the world?”

“That’s a broad generalization, but you have the gist of it.”

“Gee, lucky me. And when they
do
have the kids, they will be some kind of white-haired, blue-eyed spawn of Satan.”

“With a lust for blood and flesh that will never cease.”

“And this has nothing to do with your personal feelings at all.” Whether he is asking or telling me, I don’t know.

“
What
? How dare you!”
Of all the nerve!
“Of all the nerve! Of
course
not. I just want them to think things through before they start the end of the world. I really don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

He looks at me and his eyes narrow. “You did it again.”

“Did what?” I ask innocently as I bat my lashes.

“Oh no. Don’t you try and look at me like that. You know exactly what you did.”

“I’m so tired,” I say as I yawn. I stretch to prove to him just how tired I am. “I may just take a nap right here on the beach. Watch over me so my virginity isn’t spoiled while I sleep. My precious flower is important to me.”

“Tyson James Thompson!”

Goddammit.
“Blah, blah, blah.”

“You got me to change my own subject!”

“I didn’t make you do anything.”

“We were talking about Dominic.”

“I don’t know what you’re speaking of.” I yawn again. Gosh, I sure am tired!

“You’re slightly manipulative. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Look! The college boys are giving in to their urges and touching each other’s buttholes!” They’re not really, but with the way they’re groping each other, I’m sure one has accidentally slipped a finger in. It’s not as hard to go into a butt as one might think. Well, at least I don’t think so. I’m not exactly an expert on the matter. How depressing.

I can tell he almost wants to look, but somehow he manages to keep his eyes on me. I make a mental note that this is the first time Corey was able to resist my powers and I must take him out before he can become any more powerful.

“Fascinating,” he says. “Back to questions.”

“Strike you down, motherfucker,” I mutter.

“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than—”

“Don’t you
dare
!” He told me once that he didn’t really understand the love and adoration of
Star Wars
. I very seriously considered at that moment trying to get him evicted from this planet. He tries to quote it every now and then to piss me off. People who don’t appreciate
Star Wars
are adding nothing to humanity and should seriously consider repositioning their priorities.

“Jar Jar Binks said that, right?”

“I will fuck you up, you blasphemous cretin.” And I will too. In the face.

“Tyson.”

“What?”

“You have questions. About Dominic. He has answers. Talk to him. It’s that simple.”

“It’s not.” It really is, but I can’t let Corey win that easily. The greatest moments in life are the ones you work hardest to achieve. You can quote me on that.

He sighs. “Emotionally stunted.”

“How does
that
make me emotionally stunted?”

“Some guy broke your heart. Boo hoo. Poor you.”

“Shut up, Corey.” Now I’m getting pissed.

“Poor Tyson! He loved and it wasn’t returned, and so he ran away and stayed away.”

I wish I smoked, so I would have a lighter, as I would give very real consideration to lighting his ridiculously tiny swim shorts on fire. I tell him as much. He responds that he wishes I smoked as well, because then I would probably have tiny little burn scars down my arm where I’d burned myself because I have so much angst and that I have the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old. I laugh and contemplate out loud how much it would hurt if I decided to punch him in the mouth. He laughs along with me, pointing out that if I were to decide to punch him, he probably wouldn’t feel it because my arms are desperately lacking any sort of muscle definition. I demur, reminding him that I’d lifted weights (failing to bring up that I was super bored by the whole concept and lasted only five minutes, in which I spent the majority of that time wondering why people spent an inordinate amount of time in the gym when they could be off doing much more productive things like curing cancer). He did not fail to bring up how I’d only gone the one time, reminding me that I’d complained loudly the whole time, all the while lifting the pink five-pound barbell weight above my head like I was some kind of soccer mom attempting to get that stubborn sagging in her front to disappear so her husband would stop looking at the secretary with the bodacious breasts from his office. This, of course, leads to a discussion that one, the barbell weighed more than five pounds and that it was most certainly
not
pink (it weighed seven pounds and was purple) and that two, no one in their right mind should
ever
consider using the word “bodacious” in
any
kind of conversation, as it brings a complete lack of civility to the proceedings and therefore shows that any point the user of the word might have attempted to have is totally without merit and will not be considered.

“We have a very odd friendship,” he tells me.

“We’re very odd people,” I remind him.

“I love you, Tyson.”

Aw. Warm fuzzies. “I know. I love you too.” I’m not mad anymore.

“You know I’m right.”

Warm fuzzies gone. Stupid bitch. I’m so pissed off. “I know nothing of the sort.”

“Tyson.”

“I know!”

“You don’t have to spend the rest of your life wondering.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You would.”

I really would. “I don’t even know how to start.” How does one repair years of idiocy when one still wants to act like an idiot? This is not a question I’ve had to ask myself before. I don’t normally play the role of the idiot. That’s not conceit, just fact.

Well, maybe a bit of conceit.

“Knocking on his door would probably be a good way to go.”

I laugh nervously. “I can’t call him first?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” he asks with an evil gleam in his eye. “And you’d chicken out.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you.”

Well, that’s a super bummer. “Shit.”

“Pretty much.”

“This is probably the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

“Probably.”

“This is probably going to set me back at
least
three years, and if you think I’m emotionally stunted
now
, then just you wait.”

“Probably.”

“This is probably going to be my tipping point, and I’ll lose it completely and end up in a psychiatric ward, rocking in the corner of my room, and the only times I’ll be let out are when I have to go to electroshock therapy that will do nothing but further send me down the cavernous black hole that is my decimated psyche.”

“Probably.”

“Won’t you just feel so guilty at the sight of me?”

“Probably.”

“You’re still going to make me do it, aren’t you?”

“Definitely.”

A ball bounces in front of us, kicking up bits of sand. “Hey,” one of the college boys with thirty-seven abdominal muscles calls. “Toss it back?”

Corey stands and does just that. It’s a good throw, and Corey looks good doing it.

“You want in?” the non-gay college boy asks with a completely flirtatious smile as he sizes Corey up.

“In more ways than one,” Corey calls back. The college boys laugh and wave him over. Oh, college boys. You’re so progressive.

“You okay to stay here?” he asks me.

I roll my eyes. “I think I’ll survive while you go join the pseudo-hetero parade. Also? I’m insulted that instead of asking me if I wanted to join, you assumed I wanted to stay here.”

“Do you want to join?”

“Ew. They’re all sweating. Of course not. How dare you ask me.”

“Do you think one of them will give me a piggyback ride if I ask?”

“I’m pretty sure they’d do a lot more if you ask. Straight guys are so gay.”

“Think about what I said, okay? About Dominic.”

“Bite me,” I grumble at him. I don’t plan on doing anything of the sort. As soon as Corey goes on the prowl, I’m going to take the car keys and leave him here and cross into Canada to begin my long-standing dream of becoming the French-Canadian Zamboni driver named Pierre. Nothing will stop me. Nothing will keep me from realizing my dream. Nothing at all.

And then he says something so stupid, something so ridiculous, something so fucking life-altering, that I can’t even begin to process what it means, and my dreams of becoming a Zamboni driver disappear as if they were never there at all. “And besides,” he says, “I’m pretty sure he’s at least bisexual. You were too busy resolutely ignoring him to see, but his eyes never left you the day we got arrested. He watched you like you were the only thing that existed in the world. For him, I’m pretty sure you were. For at least those moments. Who knows what could happen?”

I gape at him as my synapses misfire. I’m pretty sure I can smell the burning coming from inside my head.

“Close your mouth, dear,” he says. “It’s unattractive.”

“You… there’s… motor skills failing….”

“Don’t read too much into it,” he warns. “It could be nothing.”

“You… bastard….”

He sighs. “I knew I should have kept that to myself.”

All I can do is nod in agreement.

Corey leaves to go play gayball, and I am left to ponder that just when I think everything is going well, that I have my life in order and things are looking up, all of a sudden I find myself in a position where I am so completely and utterly fucked.

It’s inevitable
, it whispers, sounding just like Dominic.

Where Tyson Decides to Man the Fuck Up

W
ELL
,
SORT
of.

“Are you absolutely sure about this?” I ask Corey, sure I’m close to a complete freak-out. I’m pretty sure my voice is so high-pitched that I sound like a mosquito. “Seriously. Let’s do this later. Like tomorrow. Or never.”

“Or you could do it now because you told me you wanted to.”

“How do you even know this is his house? This could be the wrong address and I could end up interrupting some kind of séance where an elderly woman is trying to communicate with her husband who died suddenly and without warning. I would feel so
terrible
about that.” And I really would too. Unless her husband turned out to be an evil ghost. Then I would feel like I saved the world. It’s a precarious line to walk.

“It’s good to know that even when you’re on the verge of panicking, you sound so completely sane.”

“It could happen! How do you even know this is where he lives?”
I
know where he lives, but Corey shouldn’t. Unless he’s stalking Dom.

“I have my ways.”

I scowl at him. “You don’t have
ways
. I changed my mind. Home, James. Take me far from here.”

“No,” he says as he puts the Jeep in park. “You’re going up there, you’re knocking on the door, and you’re going to stop being a whiny little bitch. Grow a pair, Tyson.”

“You know, this tough-love thing you’ve got going on is really annoying,” I tell him as I stare up at the unassuming brick house set back from the roadway. There’s an old Ford Bronco sitting in the driveway. It fits him, somehow. This whole place does. There’s a small yard in the front, the grass green and well maintained. There’s a bird feeder hanging from the eaves of the house near the front door, catching the late afternoon sun. The garage door is open, and I can see a bike hanging from the ceiling, and I remember (whether I want to or not) a time that he told me he never really could ride a bike, that they were always too small. That he looked ridiculous trying to ride one. I spent the next four weeks scouring the Internet until I found an old used bike on eBay. I gave Bear the money I’d saved, and he bought it for me. I was only ten. Dominic was sixteen. The look on his face when I rolled it out to him knocked the breath from my chest. You would have thought it was the grandest gift to have ever been given.

We rode around that summer. Everywhere. For hours. We didn’t have a single care in the world. Sure, my mom had abandoned me. Sure, his dad had murdered his mother. Sure, we’d just lost Mrs. P. Sure, we were still recovering from loss and death and sacrifice, but those hours spent riding along the boardwalk, birds crying out overhead, the crash of the surf off somewhere to our right, those hours when it was just me and him were spent without a care. All the worries would still be there when we got back. All the hurt. All the sadness. That would all still be there.

He was my therapy then. He was the reason I understood the art of breathing.