I let Brian watch Tv at five, but only for half an hour. After last Easter when the TV got ruined my dad Greg bought a new big-screen one and put a satellite dish on the roof. There are lots of satellite channels that are inappropriate for kids. We're only allowed to watch channel z — my dad Greg's rule. He watches TV a lot now. Not me. TV ROTS YOUR BRAIN!
I clean up. I make sure the games are all square on the shelf. The edges have to be even and matched up equally, which is called symmetry. We learned it in math.
And then I wash my hands. Sometimes I wash them too long and they get all pink and sore, but that just means they're clean.
Hey, I almost forgot: it's Easter, almost. Moron!
AT 5:34 THE GARAGE door goes up and the bike comes growling inside like always, and then my dad Greg is in the kitchen in his security guard uniform and he picks me up under one arm and Brian under the other and spins us around. I sometimes forget how big my dad Greg is: he's like four of me, maybe more.
We sit at the table in the kitchen while he makes beans and toast and eggs for dinner. He sings, Beans, beans, the magical fruit and makes fart noises and stomps around like he's crazy, and the whole house shakes. Brian laughs but then he does that thing where he starts rubbing his face with his knuckles, so my dad Greg has to come over and put Brian on his lap and hold his hands for a bit. Wanna stir the beans, BG? he says to me, so I go over and do it.
When everything's ready my dad Greg puts the beans out on plates with the toast and eggs. He puts mine down and he points at it to show me the toast is cut in triangles and there's an egg on one side and the beans in a little neat pile on the other, how I like it. Symmetry.
After dinner he tells me to go do my homework while he gets Brian ready for bed, but I don't have any homework (because it's Easter) so I go up and clean my room, make sure everything's straight and lined up and there's no dust anywhere. I have my own Handyvac but I'm only allowed to use it once a week and I already used it on Sunday.
Then it's almost bedtime. I put on my pajamas and go brush my teeth and wash my hands. After, I go into Brian's room to say goodnight, but he's already asleep with this big smile on his face, so I lean over the railing and whisper-yell, Goodnight Greg! to my dad Greg who's watching Tv and he turns down the volume and whisper-yells, Goodnight BG! and I go into my room and wait until it's exactly 9:oo so I can get in bed.
For a bit I lie there thinking about Brian's Easter egg hunt and running my hand over the pillow, feeling for feathers sticking out. I pull them out with my fingernails and drop them behind the bed. One time my dad Greg moved my bed to put up a shelf for my books and he found a big pile of feathers and asked me, Are you taking feathers out of your pillow? I said no. It felt weird, but my dad Greg just smiled and said okay.
Lying in bed, through the window I can see the moon. It's just a sliver but it's still there. Soon there'll be no moon at all for a few days, a new moon, and then the moon will come back like it's just been hiding or taking a break, slowly, bit by bit, until it's full and as big and round in the sky as the sun.
I started thinking Mom was the moon when I was little. It was a secret from my dad Greg. I could talk to her and stuff, every night. I know it's dumb now. But it's like tradition and there's nowhere else she can be. Sometimes you can see her and sometimes you can't but every night all around the world Mom the moon is busy pushing oceans in and pulling oceans out. Tides. And all us people are basically water too and at night the moon pushes us into sleep.
11:38. I'VE BEEN lying staring at the moon and planning the egg hunt for like three hours. I'm going to have to make a list, write it down so I don't forget, so nothing happens like chocolate getting into the Tv again. I keep thinking about Easter, imagining Brian going around with his little basket and finding eggs, all smiles and laughing and happy.
But maybe I have insomnia? Insomnia is when you can't sleep, my dad Greg has it sometimes. You just stay awake forever. You can die from not sleeping. Yeah, I think I have insomnia. I should count sheep.
One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty twenty-one twenty-two twenty-three twenty-four twenty-five twenty-six twenty-seven twentyeight twenty-nine thirty thirty-one thirty-two thirty-three thirty-four thirty-five thirty-six thirty-seven thirty-eight thirty-nine forty forty-one forty-two forty-three forty-four forty-five forty-six forty-seven forty-eight forty-nine fifty fifty-one fifty-two fifty-three fifty-four fifty-five fifty-six fiftyseven fifty-eight fifty-nine sixty.
Nothing. Sixty seconds is a minute. Sixty minutes in an hour times sixty seconds = three thousand six hundred seconds. Twenty-four hours in a day =?
Hold on, I need to write this down. I just have to turn on the light and find a paper and pen.
24 hours in a day = 1440 minutes = 86,400 seconds. And that makes… 604,800 seconds in a week. How many seconds in a year? Whoa, hold on.
31,339,600.
The other thing you can do if you can't sleep is have some warm milk. So I wait until exactly 12:00 midnight and get up to go down to the kitchen. I stop on the stairs. My dad Greg is still up. I can hear the TV. I lean over the banister and look into the den, all quiet. Like a spy.
The TV's on. There's a lady moaning, like she's being hurt or something? My dad Greg has the sound way down, but I can hear it. He's sitting on the couch — I can see him, with his feet sticking out from under a blanket. He's sort of twitching or something and the couch is going creak creak, and the lady on the TV is going uh! uh! and he's making noises too, like grunting. Creak creak, uh uh, grunt grunt.
I take another step down on the stairs and lean even more over the banister so I can see the TV and there's a lady with her boobs shaking and flopping around, like slapping up against herself, and now there's a man on her too with his butt in the air and I realize he's humping her, and the blanket on the couch is shaking in time with the boobs and the butt and I can see my dad's face and his face is different, it's like a secret side of him I've never seen, mean and hungry and weird, and the couch goes creak creak and the lady with the floppy boobs goes uh uh and my dad Greg goes grunt grunt. But then something in my tummy goes gloop and I have to pull away from the banister because my head is all funny, and I turn away and run upstairs to the bathroom.
And then I'm washing my hands. I didn't even turn the lights on, so now I'm washing my hands in the dark with hot water and lots of soap, hard, and the water's too hot and it hurts and I can already feel my hands burning from it, I know they're going pink but I don't care.
I hear someone behind me but I don't look. I hear my dad Greg go, BG. He leaves the lights off and comes over, so he's right behind me. I still don't look.
He reaches over and turns off the tap. My hands are sore, my stomach still feels weird and like gurgly. BG, he says again. I don't turn around. We stand there in the dark. Then he reaches out to put his arms around me but he sort of stops and just stands there, and then he pulls a towel off the rack and holds it out to me, but I don't take it. I just want him to go away.
PENIS: DINK DICK wang schlong dong winky wiener cock peter rod pud monkey johnson prick willy member purplehelmeted-warrior tackle twig-and-berries banana sausage meat doodle noodle package privates one-eyed-monster rocket hard-on boner steamer stiffy erection.
THE NEXT MORNING I wake up at 7:47 but it's not really waking up because I didn't sleep very much, obviously. I have to wait until exactly 8:oo to get out of bed, so I just lie there for thirteen minutes thinking. The curtains are closed now, my dad Greg must have come in during the night and closed them, and that makes me feel weird — the idea of him being in my room when I'm sleeping, looking at me, standing over me, being there.