August 13, 2015

Jerome:

I can do this. It can't be that hard. It's like I'm proposing to him or some shit. If it's this fucking hard to ask him out for a decent date, I can't imagine what it'd feel like to ask him to marry me. It wasn't this hard when we were kids. Yet again, he was only ever half-there when we were kids – at first I thought he was just kind of a weirdo but then it turned out I was talking to the shell instead of the turtle. I still wonder if we woulda been such good friends if he'd been born with a male body, or even if he'd come out before he moved to Jersey and had higher self-esteem. I think I have the bullies to thank for a lotta that. It's hard to find friends when they suddenly put you on the other team in PE and everyone in the class thinks you have cooties, including the teacher. Definitely didn't help our video game addiction either, knowing he'd probably get the shit pounded out of him if we went too far away from the house. I wonder how things woulda turned out if he hadn't moved back to Montreal for fifth grade. From what I heard, they didn't try to pants him like cavemen up there. Then people wonder why I turned out like I did, lurking around the dark corners of the internet and shutting shit like this down. I'm a better Batman than Ryan is. Kinda surprised none of our classmates have found Mitch's channel yet. I'm waitin' for that darude shitstorm to hit full force. I've been waitin' a long, long time.

I head downstairs with the print-outs folded up in my pocket and I duck my head in the kitchen to see if Mitch's there. Alex is eating a yellow bag of something with his headphones in, watching something on his laptop while he frowns. He clicks a bunch of times in a row and drags his finger across the touchpad. Must be editing something for Benj. I crouch down a little more and sneak over by the stove and I slowly move up towards the top of his computer screen. He glances up to see what the movement is and jumps with the damnedest look on his face, like I just stuck a burrito up his ass. He pouts at me as he pushes his screen shut and grabs his crinkly bag of noms defensively. It hasn't even been a month yet and I bet he's already thinking about moving out. We have a bet going that he's gone before Halloween and I really don't wanna pay the price of losing that bet.

"Damn it, Jerome! Why would you do that?!"

"Heya, Dondo. Had to. It was just too perfect."

"Fuck you."

"Not today, friendarino. You seen Mitch?" He points out to the pool with his thumb before he snatches up his stuff and hurries past me to the stairs. He's like a hamster with his little hoard of treats stashed in his room and his scurrying around all the time. "Where ya goin'?"

"Some things can't be unseen, or unheard," he snickers as his feet pound up the stairs and I hear his door click shut. I bet the sneaky little fucker watches us from upstairs. Not like we were planning to do anything, anyway, but who knows with Mitch. He's always the one with all the bright ideas. Where the hell do I find all these nutcases? Or better yet, how do they find me?

I grab a nice, cold, smoking Monster from the fridge and head outside to look for the King of the Hunger Games. It's about dinner time so that name's truer than ever. I see his old-as-fuck Kindle sitting on the lounger where he must've been reading through the first draft of the book. Looks like someone actually got shit done today besides Dondo. He's been the worst influence on both of us, now that we can just let the dishes and videos pile up. Poor sucker didn't know what he was in for, joining our lobby with a water pistol and big dreams. I look around the backyard again but I don't see him anywhere. He's not drowning in the pool and I don't see any bloodstains anywhere. Where the fuck...?

"So you finally climbed out of bed, huh? You know it's four in the afternoon, right?" I look up and he's leaning on the rail of the balcony upstairs in just his shorts with his hair all flattened down and curly from the water. I'd burn all his goddamn hoodies if he'd look like this all year.

"You're gonna turn into a fucking fish if you don't stay outta that pool, Mitch. Look. You've got gills already." I point to a spot on the side of his neck down by his collarbone where he knows he has a long, blue bruise from our wrestling match the day before yesterday. He always wants to play rough so I gave it to him. I'm kinda scared of what he's gonna do to me now, but it'll be worth it. I hope.

"Hardy-har-har. I have to get our money's worth out of it before Lachlan flies in again and starts spawning frogs and toads and all kinds of disgusting shit in it. We should have Alex talk to him about that."

"Now he's our PR guy, too? Poor Dondo. He never stood a chance."

"I still hold to my bet. He is going to stick it out just to spite us, watch and see. Plus, he seemed pretty keen on going on the ski trip. I give him until the end of January, then I bet he ditches us." He pads back down the rickety ass spiral staircase and goes over to grab his Kindle, grabbing my ass as he goes past. I don't think I'm ever gonna get used to that. In a good way, of course.

"What are we gonna eat?"

"I'm not eating pizza again. No pizza, no calzones, no pasta, no normal breadsticks, no cheese breadsticks, no dessert breadsticks, and no cookie pizza. You have to pick something else." I fiddle with the folded-up papers in my pocket and follow him inside and upstairs to his room. He sets the Kindle on his dresser and heads to the bathroom to stick just his head in the shower like the lazy ass he is. He washes the gritty chlorine out of his hair and grabs the beach towel off the side of the shower door to dry his head off before he goes over to the counter to put a shit ton of gel in it. What's new there, though?

"Cheeken. We need more cheeken." He turns and blinks at me while he tries to get his hair to stand up. "What? I'm El Pollo Man." I toss him the fish t-shirt off the side of the tub and he catches it on his foot like the showoff he is. I wish I had something else to throw at him now so I could make him fall and bruise his ego.

"Why is it that you only eat like five things?"

"Bacs are simple creatures, Mitch. All we need is an axe, some chicken, and some sugar-flavored sugar," I hold up my half-chugged Monster, "and we're good to go."

"Biggums, you would die if I set you loose on a chicken farm with an axe and a bag of sugar. You just like chicken because it's deep fried. It probably isn't even chicken." He slips his shirt on and I watch in satisfaction as half of his hair gets flattened down again. That's what he gets for makin' fun of my chicken.

"They say it's chicken, so it's gotta be chicken. Why would they lie about something like that?"

"What if it's actually deep-fried roach meat? They probably have little kids who sit in the back and catch them, and the old grandma hunches over in the corner and peels the legs and wings off before they-"

"You're an asshole, you know that?"

"Aww, that's the nicest thing that I've heard all day. It's a shame I've already heard it from fifty other people on Twitter in the last hour. Apparently, I'm not allowed to congratulate Adam on his kid being due soon. Apparently, that makes me the bad guy." Here comes the ranty bitchfest again. But I get where he's coming from – he can't do anything right online anymore and it's fucking annoying, even to me. I didn't realize half our fans were politicians in the making.

"The salt levels'll go back down. Someday."

"I don't get it, though. Half of them want all of us to get back on good terms and record together again, and the other half want us to keep fighting and ignoring each other like children. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that? All I ever do is piss someone off." He walks down the hall to Lachlan's old room and knocks on the door. There've been so many horrible, unspeakable things go down in that room that no one wants to go in there anymore. "The Bacca's nagging for Hooter chicken. Do you want anything?" Alex gets this terrifying smile on his face and he nods before he takes his headphones off.

"I'll have what he's having," he says as he points to me before he gets this look on his face like he's rethinking his order. "Minus the Mitch meat. I ship it but I won't dip it."

"You were never getting that to begin with. We'll be back in about an hour and a half, so please don't go nuclear on the poor house." Alex smirks and gives us a thumbs up before he fades back into the stockpile of videos with wide eyes and a mouthful of crispy vinegar chips. I'm still watching the zombified guy on the bed when I feel Mitch drag me backwards by my shirt. He's gonna do that on the stairs one of these days and be rid of me once and for all. "If you want chicken, you're coming with me. I'm not going to Kroger's this time of day without some kind of entertainment." I follow him downstairs and press myself against him so tight he can't even walk. "Not that kind of entertainment. Not yet."

"I can work with that."

---

August 13, 2015

Mitch:

"What's up with you today?" He looks at me blankly while he shreds his way through another buffalo chicken strip, his eyebrows knitted together in a confused frown. Something is on his mind but, for once, he doesn't seem to want to talk about it. I steal another fry out of his box and he doesn't mind anymore. If he didn't want to share his dinner with me, he shouldn't take twice as long as me to eat.

"Nothin'."

"You're worried about something. Did some shit go down online last night?"

"Nah."

"Then what is it, Jerome?" He bows his head and looks at me like a guilty puppy, shrugging his shoulders forward while he munches on his crunchy mystery meat. I am going to have to make sure he has good health and life insurance policies with the way he eats; at this rate, he is going to have a heart attack by the time he turns thirty.

"I got you something but I dunno if you're gonna like it or beat the crap outta me about it." I try to keep my face as neutral as possible, but hearing him say that makes me sick to my stomach. I hope he didn't go out and buy me some kind of ring. I don't know what I would do if he did that – I don't want to hurt his feelings, but we have only been dating for a little over a month. He can't honestly expect me to go that far, that quickly. It's just way, way, way too soon for something like that. "I've never been with a guy before and I really don't know how this's supposed to go. But I got you this. These. For us." He reaches down and fishes something out of his pocket and slides it to the middle of the table.

"What is it?" I carefully unfold the little creased square of paper, wondering how long he has been carrying this around with him. The print date says today, so it couldn't have been too long. I scan the small black text on the page, not quite sure what to make of it. It's difficult to read when he's staring at me like that.

"It's tickets. There's a Habs game on December nineteenth in Pittsburgh. Thought we could hit it up before we went home for Christmas." When I look down at the papers again without speaking, he shrinks down in his chair even more and keeps talking. "I didn't book the flights yet 'cause I didn't know if you'd actually wanna go or not."

"Of course I want to go. You really didn't have to do this." His face lights up a little bit and he looks less terrified for his life.

"I had to do somethin'. Believe it or not, I really like you, Mitch."

"I like you, too, Jerome." I reach over and grab the last chunk of spicy chicken from his grease-stained box and sit back across the table where he can't reach me as easily. His jaw falls open and he almost loses his mouthful of food as he tries to snatch it back from me. I dip it in my little container of buttermilk ranch, laughing as he scuttles around the end of the table like a tall, lanky crab.

"No! I don't like you that much. Gimme that!" I take a big bite out of it before he can get it back from me and I toss it back in his box, watching his face go pale in horror as the whole thing slides closer to the edge of the table. "Jes-us, Mitch. The disrespect! You wanna use that nasty bird shit, go put it on some carrot sticks." He gets back on his perch and gets a good grip on the poor chicken strip, glaring up at me with a classic creep face while his feathers slowly unruffle. "Last time I buy you a present."

"Last time I'll buy you chicken."

"You wouldn't. You can't do that to a Bac. I'd die."