L U K E
I was studying, or trying to, when my dad walked into my bedroom, without knocking, as usual. I closed the YouTube tab on my computer, and opened the document where I had already changed the type font to Times New Roman and the size to 12. I had been happy enough with that progress to give myself a break.
My dad asked, "What are you doing?"
I pointed at the computer screen, "Spanish project."
He said the obvious, "There's nothing on there."
"I just started." I had started half an hour ago.
"You were on YouTube just seconds ago."
I pretended I was insulted, and said, "No, I wasn't."
"Yes, you were, because I literally saw you closing the tab."
I crossed my arms over my chest, "That's impossible because –"
He did the same, "Don't start."
"I'm not –"
"Don't you have anything to tell me?"
I threw my arms in the air, "Fine, I was on YouTube –"
"I know. That's not what I'm talking about."
I frowned, "Then what are you talking about?
"I just got a call from Meredith Allen."
"I don't know who that is."
"That's Jason Allen's mother. I'm sure you know who that is."
"He's my best friend."
"I need you to stop with the jokes."
"I literally can't."
"You can, and you will," he stopped me, rolling his eyes before saying, "Anyway, Mrs. Allen called to apologize for her son's behavior, because apparently, he got in a fight with you at school. Of course I had to pretend I knew about this, because apparently, you decided not to tell me –"
"I told you about the fight!" I stopped him. "The same day it happened I told you. You asked how my day was, and I said I got in a fight, and you laughed –"
"I thought you were joking."
"Why would I be joking?" He was going to say I always joking.
"You're always joking," he said, and he was right. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. Mrs. Allen feels very bad about the whole thing, and she wants to make it up to you, so she invited you to spend the weekend at their lake house, which I thought was very nice of her, so I said you were going."
I sat up straight on my chair, "Why would you say that?"
Dad wasn't impressed, "Because you're going."
"I'm not," I said.
"You are," he said.
"Why would I want to spend the weekend with the guy who tried to punch me in the –"
"Why did he try to punch you in the first place?"
I shrugged, "He asked me to go to prom with him and I said no."
"That's not funny."
"I agree." Except I thought it wasn't funny because homosexuality shouldn't really be a punchline, and dad thought it wasn't funny because of something I would rather not think about ever.
"Luke," he said. He was wearing one of my plaid shirts or maybe I had been wearing one of his all this time. I didn't care. It was a nice shirt. The look on my dad's face, however, wasn't very nice at all.
I took a deep breath, and said, "It was this whole thing with his girlfriend. It doesn't matter. It was a misunderstanding."
"Daisy?"
"Yeah."
"Do you like her or something?"
"No."
"Really?"
"Yes."
He massaged his temples like I had given him a headache. I probably had. Then he said, "Well, she's gonna be there too, and Jason, obviously, and some other girl I don't–"
"Zoey?" Should I tell him she had actually taken Jason's punch for me? Probably not.
"Yeah, that one," he said.
"Well, I'm still not going." Obviously.
"You never go anywhere."
"You're forgetting I'm plagued by childhood trauma."
"That's not funny."
"I know." This time we had the exact same reasons not to find it funny.
"You're going. It's gonna be good for you."
At this he turned around and left my bedroom. I heard him go down the stairs, but I still said, loud and clear, so he would hear me, "I'm not going!"
I did go, but only because dad promised he would buy me a video game of my choice, and because mom had been happy to hear I had been invited for something for once, and I had been sort of happy to indulge her fantasy of having a well-adjusted son.
So, Friday night, a green SUV stopped in front of dad's house and out came a man, as tall as Jason, with a big beard, and a hair line receding as much as my dad's. I had only a backpack with me, but he insisted on helping me with it.
"I'm really sorry about Jason. He's going through a rough time," he said after hello.
I told him it was fine. I had, after all, been the cause, although not on purpose, of this said rough time. Mr. Allen told me to call him Stephen and then opened the trunk of the SUV to throw my backpack inside. Daisy and Zoey were smiling at me in the backseat. Jason was sitting in the front, going through the radio stations. I still couldn't believe he was dating Daisy. Life made no sense.
"My wife works Saturdays at the hospital, so she's only joining us on Sunday," Stephen said, walking up to the front to sit behind the wheel again.
I got in the backseat. Daisy was smiling at me. Next to her, so was Zoey.
"Do you do this a lot?" I asked. I meant go to her boyfriend's lake house with his family.
"Only when Jason hits someone at school," Stephen said instead of her. "So basically every weekend."
"Very funny," Jason said, having given up on the radio and instead struggling to connect his phone to the car. "I didn't even hit Luke. I hit Zoey."
"Which is even worse," Stephen countered. I liked Stephen.
Jason didn't agree. He said, "That's really sexist."
Next to me, Daisy sat up very straight and said, "Fuck no! We're not listening to your shit music the whole ride there!"
"Daisy!" Stephen warned her.
"Dad, he got to pick the music last time –"
A rap song started playing almost immediately, so loud, Daisy might as well not be talking at all. I couldn't hear a word she was saying – no one could – and in any case, I was too busy dealing with the fact that she had just called Stephen dad, which meant, she wasn't Jason's girlfriend, of course, but her sister. She was his fucking sister! Why had no one told me?
Stephen turned the sound down and sent Jason a look, who shrugged, and leaned back against his seat. We were a block away from my house and the world made sense again. They weren't dating. Of course not. Jason had punched me because he was her brother, not her boyfriend. Of course. How could I have thought they were dating?
"Well, I'm not gonna listen to some shit boy band," Jason said.
"That's enough!" This was Stephen. He was looking at Daisy in the rearview mirror. "We'll listen to Jason's music on the way there and then yours on the way back. Is that better?"
"No," Daisy said, as a matter of fact. "We listened to his –"
"You're such a spoiled little brat," Jason whined, like a spoiled little brat.
Daisy showed him the middle finger when Stephen wasn't looking and then leaned back on her seat. I decided if the rest of the weekend was going to be like this, just sitting back and watching them be dysfunctional, maybe I wouldn't mind it so much after all.
Next to Daisy, Zoey didn't seem to mind any of it either. She had wrapped herself around a thick scarf and laid her head on Daisy's shoulder. There was a scab on her bottom lip where the cut from Jason's punch had once been. She closed her eyes.
We got in the highway. Some other rap song came on. Jason started singing along. Next to me, Daisy rolled her eyes. I opened my mouth. I couldn't help myself.
"I thought Jason was your boyfriend."
"You're disgusting," was her reaction.
"You could have told me he was your brother."
"It's not something I'm proud of."
"Fuck you," Jason said from the front.
"Dad!"
Stephen shrugged, "You did just say you weren't proud of having him as a brother. That's not very nice, is it?"
"You want me to lie?" she asked.
"I want you to stop being mean to your brother."
"So you want me to lie."
I wasn't finished, "You would rather I thought he was your boyfriend? Isn't that worse? You don't choose your brother, but I like to think you get to choose your boyfriends."
"I didn't know you thought he was my boyfriend." She shrugged. "That day at the hospital, I thought you were just trying to be funny."
"I'm always trying to be funny."
"You're definitely a joke," Jason said. Stephen sent him a look. "No offense."
"I mean, lots taken," I said.
He turned the music up, "Sounds like a you problem."
Daisy turned to me, "Ignore him."
I pulled my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans, my earphones were still plugged into to it from the movie podcast I had been listening to over breakfast.
"I downloaded a bunch of episodes of Bojack Horseman, if you want," I told her.
"I don't know what that is," she said with a frown.
"It's a show about a depressed horse who used to be famous back in the nineties. It's really good."
In the front, Jason turned the sound all the way down, and then turned around, "I swear to God –"
"God hates you," she said.
"If you even think about watching that show with him, I'll lose my shit in this car."
"What's wrong with you?" she asked. I wanted to ask the same thing.
"I told you about that show months ago and you made fun of me for it –"
"Because you watch adult cartoons –"
"This is an adult cartoon," I said.
"Oh."
"Oh!" Jason said, louder, much louder. Stephen sent him a look but kept on driving. We were, after all, going at almost 70 miles per hour.
"Well," Daisy said, with a shit-eating grin on her face, hand going for an earpiece. "I think I'll give it a try, since you know, it was recommended to me by someone who doesn't go home from school to watch an animated cat in space."
"I do that too actually," I admitted.
Jason laughed, "You watch Final Space? It's fucking great, right?"
"What is happening right now?" Daisy asked.
"I'm starting to like your boyfriend, that's what's happening," Jason said. I smiled. Both because he thought I was in Daisy's league, when I was way, way out of it, and because he had said he was starting to like me, which was something I mostly heard out of grownups who were forced to spend time with me because of where they worked. Shoutout to Aida.
Daisy didn't smile. Obviously. Instead, she made a face, and said, "He's not my boyfriend."
"Daisy," Stephen said, looking at her from the rearview mirror.
"What?"
"You don't have to look so disgusted about it."
She turned to me, "No offense."
"Again, lots taken."
"Can you stop offending the poor kid?" Stephen said. "The whole point of this –"
"I'm sorry," Daisy said, stopping her dad halfway through. "I'll watch the sad horse show."
"What the –"
"Jason," Stephen cut in again. "Just leave it. You didn't watch that glee club show with her either, did you?"
I stopped listening to unlock my phone. I had downloaded other shows, but now that I knew Daisy had an aversion for animation, I didn't want her to see them.
Next to Daisy, Zoey went on sleeping. In the front, Jason went on being mad about everything everywhere. Stephen went on driving. Daisy and I watched one, then two, then three episodes. When we went on to watch a fourth episode, she turned to Jason, and admitted that he had been right about the sad horse show. It was pretty good.
Eventually, we stopped at a gas station. Stephen wanted to stretch his legs and get himself a coffee or anything that would give him the energy to deal with all of us together. He hadn't said that last part. I could just feel it. Daisy and I got out too so we could get gas station food. Lots of it.
By the time we came back, Jason was turned backwards on his seat, trying to balance an empty water bottle on top of Zoey's head, who was still very much asleep, according to Daisy, because she had been doing a week worth of homework for all of last night so that she could come along this weekend. The reason she had a week worth of homework to do, also according to Daisy, was because she hadn't had the time to do it with all the babysitting she was doing.
I, for one, hadn't finished my homework, but dad had said this was more important. He was a therapist, after all, so I had taken his word for it, mostly because I hadn't wanted to do my homework, not really because I agreed that people needed friends. Mom wasn't a therapist, but she agreed with dad, which should be telling in and of itself, because they almost never agreed on anything. On this, however, they agreed almost religiously. People needed people, real people, not the ones on screen, or on the pages of books. I had, of course, been trying to discredit them over the years by going from a lot of friends in elementary, to not so many in middle school, to no friends at all in high school. Instead, of course, what I had done, slowly, but surely, was forget altogether how to have a good night's sleep, sometimes even just a night of sleep, or how to take anything seriously, ever, including myself.
But walking back to the car, the handles of the gas station plastic bags digging in the palm of one hand, pennies stuck to the other, Daisy walking next to me in her green sweater, laughing about something I said, for a moment, I almost believed my parents, or maybe I just wanted to.