Bream Gives Me Hiccups (4 page)

FUDDRUCKERS AND AN UNRELIABLE NEW FRIEND

Yesterday, Matthew and I went to Fuddruckers, which is a place that sounds like a swear word but actually just sells disgusting hamburgers that you have to make yourself.

We were supposed to meet someone named Lyle that Matthew met on the Internet. Lyle told Matthew to meet him at Fuddruckers at three o'clock but Matthew insisted that we get there a few minutes early, “just to be polite.” And Lyle told us to come alone, not with our parents, which was fine for me because Mom has been encouraging me to have experiences that “don't include” her. But Matthew had to lie to his mother so he told her that we had to stay after school for a science project.

As soon as school ended Matthew grabbed my arm and we snuck out the back door, past the buses, and started walking
to Fuddruckers. On the way, Matthew wouldn't stop talking about his new friend Lyle. They met on the Internet because they were both fans of the band Serial 17, which isn't even a real band. Serial 17 is just four teenage boys who sing but play no instruments, and Mom taught me that bands like that shouldn't be called bands because “they only exist to boost the heart rates of fat girls and pederasts.”

Anyway, Lyle is the president of the Serial 17 fan club and he started emailing Matthew after Matthew posted a picture of himself at a concert. Matthew kept saying that Lyle was “so funny” and “so mature” and that he knew all the lyrics to every Serial 17 song. I wanted to say, “That's easy. All their songs sound exactly the same,” but I didn't want to hurt Matthew's feelings so I just said, “Cool.”

Matthew had never actually met Lyle in person and I was happy he was taking me to their first meeting, but also a little annoyed by how much Matthew seemed to like him. I know it probably sounds weird to say this, but the more Matthew talked about Lyle the more I started to hate Lyle.

I knew why Matthew liked him so much. It's easy to like someone on the Internet. When you're with someone in person you have to see all of their weird things. Like Matthew cracks his knuckles and it's kind of annoying. If Lyle knew that Matthew cracked his knuckles maybe he wouldn't like him, but I know about it and still like him, so that means our friendship is real.

We got to Fuddruckers at exactly three o'clock and I could tell that Matthew was a little annoyed with me for walking slowly because he said, “You seem like you're kind of out of
shape.” We looked around but there was no other boy sitting alone, so Matthew and I got a table by the window and waited for Lyle. I could tell that Matthew was nervous so I asked, “Do you want me to build us burgers?” because at Fuddruckers you have to build your own burger. But Matthew kind of scowled at me and said in a mean voice, “How would that look to Lyle?”

I was thinking about how that would look to Lyle when we heard police sirens. I looked outside and saw four police cars screech into the parking lot. Matthew ducked under the table and said, “My mom found out I'm not at school!”

But then I saw why the police were there: they were forcing a man onto the ground, facedown, and putting him in handcuffs. It was so strange to see somebody be arrested in real life. Usually on TV the person getting arrested is struggling and yelling at the police, but this man was just calmly lying on the ground. Almost like he was
waiting
to be arrested.

Matthew started cracking his knuckles. And, for some reason, it calmed me down.

But then the weirdest thing of all happened. The man stood up in the handcuffs, turned to me and Matthew, saw us through the window, and
smiled
right at us. It gave us the willies at the same time. The man was so creepy! He was wearing baggy sweatpants and a sweatshirt and there were wet stains on them, like he'd been wearing them for a long time or eating TV dinners in them.

I whispered to Matthew, “Let's never come here again.” And Matthew whispered back, “I can't wait to tell Lyle about this!”

After the man got taken away, Matthew and I got burgers
and waited for Lyle, who never showed up. I was actually relieved, but I didn't want to make Matthew feel bad so I said, “He probably just got busy with Serial 17 stuff.”

And Matthew said, “Yeah, he's the president. Did I tell you that?”

And I wanted to say, “Yes! You told me that a million times!” But instead, I just said, “Cool.”

Matthew looked at his watch and said, “If he's not here in the next fifteen minutes we can go.” So Matthew and I waited but I had a feeling Lyle was not going to show up.

And it was actually kind of nice to just sit with Matthew. I realized that we hadn't done that in a while and it made me think that it didn't matter if Matthew liked Lyle. Even if you're best friends with someone on the Internet, you can't just sit with them quietly. And sometimes, when Matthew and I are just sitting with each other quietly, I like him the most. Matthew will crack his knuckles, and even though it makes me nauseous, it also makes me feel like I'm real.

That's why I'm giving Fuddruckers 1062 out of 2000 stars and Lyle 97 out of 2000 stars.

A CRAWFISH BOIL AND DAD'S NEW FAMILY

Last week I visited Dad and his new family in New Orleans, Louisiana, which is a town that Dad says proves that “poor people are happier than rich people.” And every day I was there, we had the exact same thing for lunch: a crawfish boil.

A crawfish boil is where you put a lot of weird creatures that look like a cross between shrimps and spiders into a huge pot of boiling water with garlic and corn and potatoes. Then you take the dead crawfish out, remove their heads, peel back their tails, and eat the middle part of their bodies. It takes a really long time to eat a tiny bit of chewy meat.

And I think the crawfish boil is kind of like Dad's new life in New Orleans: he works really hard for a tiny reward.

This is what happened to Dad:

When Dad left me and Mom, he moved to New Orleans to
“find himself.” I didn't know what that meant, but Mom said he was really just trying to find some “hotter, dumber woman who would steal his money in exchange for making him think he's still attractive.”

But Dad's new girlfriend, Izzy, is not dumb and she is definitely not prettier than Mom: she has short hair like a man and weird teeth and wears men's clothes, like dirty boots and ripped jeans. And she runs a big company that builds houses for poor people who lost their homes in a hurricane. When Dad moved to New Orleans, he started building houses for Izzy's company as a volunteer and then fell in love with Izzy, which seems hard because of her hair, teeth, and clothes, but I guess she was easier to love than Mom, who was always yelling at him. Now, Izzy and Dad run the company together and take care of Izzy's son, Edgar, who is five years old and not a good person.

And Izzy definitely didn't like Dad for his money because they lived like homeless people if homeless people were allowed to have homes and still be called homeless. Their house was really ugly and small and rotting and their backyard was overgrown with weeds and broken potted plants. I thought it was interesting that they lived like this because their job is rebuilding other people's houses. It almost seemed like they were punishing themselves for not losing their house in a hurricane.

And it was weird to see Dad in his new life. He looked older
and
younger than I remember. He had a beard and his face was tan and wrinkly, but he also seemed calm and his body seemed like it had more energy in it. And I think I never
saw him smile before but it was actually kind of creepy because it was a familiar face doing an unfamiliar thing. And when he hugged me I felt a little weird because it felt like a stranger was hugging me. He squeezed me really hard and held me for a long time, but not in a way that felt like he meant it, but in a way that felt like he was trying to make up for the last year when he didn't visit or hug me once. I tried to pat his back because I thought it might end the hug but he just started patting my back. Then we were both just squeezing each other and patting each other's backs, but I was doing it to end the hug and Dad was doing it to keep the hug going.

Dad said that Izzy was out building a poor person's house and that she would be back in time for lunch, which was going to be a crawfish boil (surprise, surprise!) in the backyard. Then Izzy's son, Edgar, came running through the house like a dog that just got let out of a cage. He was five years old but he acted much younger and was very dirty and didn't make eye contact and always had some dried snot hanging out of his nose that he sometimes licked by sticking his tongue high out of his mouth and trying to reach the snot. Seeing this made me nauseous.

I thought I might feel jealous of Edgar because Dad was now taking care of him and not me, but when I saw Dad with Edgar I just felt sad for Edgar. Dad seemed to pretend Edgar didn't even exist. He just let him run around the house knocking into things and he didn't even introduce him to me. And I started to remember that Dad used to act the same way to me but I never noticed it because he was my dad and I was used to it. I guess sometimes it's easier to see how people act when it's not happening to you.

When Izzy came home, Dad tried to give her a hug but she said, “I'm filthy,” and walked straight into the bathroom. When we heard the water turn on, Dad turned to me, smiling in an embarrassed kind of way, and said, “That's Izzy.”

All three crawfish lunches were the exact same experience: Izzy and Dad talked about the poor people whose houses they were rebuilding and how sad the hurricane was while Edgar ran around us, holding the dead crawfishes like they were monsters trying to attack us. Dad and Izzy just ignored Edgar, which was probably the reason he had no social skills, but they also ignored me, which just made me feel left out.

Dad never asked me anything about myself or school and he definitely didn't ask about Mom. The only thing he would say to me was “Can you believe that?” after he would say something sad about the hurricane, like how many people drowned or why the government didn't like the black people because of racism.

And I thought it was strange because a part of me wanted to be angry at Dad for not asking me about myself, but I also felt guilty being angry at him because he was ignoring me to talk about something sad. And I guess I felt like he was doing a good thing by rebuilding the houses, but I thought it was weird how he felt so much for the strangers in New Orleans but nothing for me who is his son.

And then I started thinking about Mom, who is kind of the opposite of Dad. She spends every day doing selfish things and doesn't help anybody who's poor, and when we pass a homeless person on the street, she holds her nose like she
might get sick if she smells them. And she's not even that nice to me, but at least she treats me like I exist.

I guess if I was a homeless person from New Orleans, I would like Dad more than Mom. But I'm just a kid from the suburbs and that's not my fault.

And that's why I'm giving the crawfish boil and Dad and Izzy and Edgar 213 out of 2000 stars.

MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

Yesterday we took a class trip to the Museum of Natural History, which is a place where you're supposed to learn about history but all you really do is look at dinosaur skeletons and eat lunch. And it's so strange because it's really sad to see the dinosaur skeletons because not only are
those
dinosaurs dead but
all
dinosaurs are dead. It was kind of like visiting a cemetery, but instead of everyone being buried, their bones were above the ground and held together like they were still trying to be alive.

But instead of feeling sad for the dinosaurs or just being quiet like you're supposed to do at a funeral, all the kids were making jokes and acting stupid. And even though the dinosaurs were scary and would probably eat me if they were alive, I started to feel bad for them.

The woman who works for the museum explained that there were three different kinds of dinosaurs: some were carnivores, which means they ate the other dinosaurs, some were herbivores, which means they were nice and didn't eat each other, and some were omnivores, which means they ate everything. Billy, a kid in my class, is an omnivore because he will literally eat anything on a dare. Last week, he ate an entire pack of gum, even the wrapper, and then threw up and got to miss gym.

The dinosaurs were also very mean to each other. They would fight and use their mouths and teeth and claws to attack each other. The Tyrannosaurus Rex was the meanest one. He looked the meanest and his name sounded the meanest and he ate all the other dinosaurs. The one who was the nicest was the Apatosaurus because he was really big but he had a tiny little head and he never ate any other dinosaurs. And I thought it must have been scary to be an Apatosaurus because he just wanted to be nice but there was probably a lot of pressure to be mean because he was a dinosaur.

All the kids wanted to take pictures in front of the dinosaur skeletons and they were laughing and making stupid faces like they were imitating the dinosaurs. I started to imagine the dinosaurs coming alive and watching the kids do this in front of their dead bones and I suddenly got angry for them. I asked the museum lady if I could go to the bathroom and she said it was okay and that I should meet everyone back in the Museum Cafeteria. Usually we're supposed to bring a buddy to the bathroom but I didn't really feel like I had a buddy, so I went alone and waited in the stall until lunchtime.

In the Museum Cafeteria, everyone got dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, which were like regular chicken nuggets but formed into the bodies of dinosaurs. I thought it was strange to eat dinosaur-shaped chicken because the dinosaurs were dead and it felt like we were making fun of them by eating their bodies in fun-looking shapes. So I just got a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then Billy called me a faggot, which means gay. I wanted to tell him that he's a faggot too because he was eating the body of a dinosaur, but I didn't want to say the word “faggot” because it sounds mean so I just looked down at my sandwich and sort of lost my appetite. I think if Billy was a dinosaur he would be a Tyrannosaurus Rex and I would be an Apatosaurus and I wouldn't try to hurt him but I would also not be bullied because the Apatosaurus is much bigger than the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

On the bus ride home, everyone was texting each other the pictures of themselves doing funny things in front of the dinosaurs. Mark Schwartz made it look like he was picking a Stegosaurus's nose by standing close to the camera and sticking his finger up. Madison Greenwood was pretending to dance with a Triceratops' leg. Even Matthew took a picture doing a split with his arms stretched out like a bird underneath a Pterodactyl. I thought it was weird because Matthew usually behaves better. Sometimes he does bad things to fit in, but I think this is probably because he doesn't fully know which dinosaur he wants to be yet.

Everyone was laughing at the pictures together and I started to feel a little lonely, like I wasn't involved with the group or like everyone was laughing at a joke that I couldn't
hear. And I thought that maybe I should have eaten the dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets and taken a picture in front of a dinosaur doing something stupid. I would have been uncomfortable for a few minutes but it would mean that I would have been able to fit in with my friends. Or maybe I would have had a bathroom buddy. Or maybe I wouldn't have had to hide in the bathroom at all.

And I guess it's like what the dinosaurs had to do. They probably didn't want to always be so angry and they probably definitely didn't want to eat each other, but I guess, if you want to be part of a group, you have to make compromises sometimes. And I guess, in that way, we aren't that much different from the dinosaurs. And even though we think we're better and smarter because we wear clothes and speak English, maybe we're all just trying to fit in even though it means we sometimes have to do things that make us uncomfortable. That's why I'm giving the Museum of Natural History 1109 out of 2000 stars.