That night I was about to slip out of the house to strike up an ineffably prearranged and coincidental acquaintance with my future boyfriend when…

“Where are… (hiccupping)… you going Phil?” Tob yelled from our couch where he slouched next to Charles, both their eyes glazing over in front of the TV set. Tob was this neighbor of ours, an obese meatball of a kid who had absolutely no bones at all (this I knew because I beat him up half a dozen times before) and who, whenever he had the chance, would drop by our place to watch television with my dad. I strongly suspected that he did so only because Charles was the only adult who could condone and come to appreciate his strong addiction for TV and also, that Charles was the only guy in the world he could pathetically bully into switching channels when he didn’t like what was currently on TV.

“Hmn…(hiccupping)… yeah, where are you going Phil? (Further hiccupping)” Charles chimed in, squeaking. Man those popcorn were really starting to choke these two.

“I’m gonna hit the sack,” I announced but instead opened the front door.

“This too early for bed,” Tob glanced at me with a dazed expression on his face, didn’t notice anything peculiar, and went back to watching his show.

Charles didn’t even bother to say good night. He just scooped up the remnants of the last popcorn and shot a surreptitiously triumphant grin at Tob, the way a rat would when having swiped his bit of cheese without arousing the mousetrap.

Theirs was a big brown chocolate cake of a house where I had stalked them to the other day, with the usual nice white icing everywhere and all. When you start on the first floor and count to the third great delicious lump of icing on the left, you’d get to the very room of the most glorious boy on earth.

I pushed myself up the windowsill. It was pure poetry and providence of the Almighty that he was actually in his room. It was also pure poetry and providence of the Almighty that I could, from my very position, study with an awed fervor the positive set to his cheekbones, the warm brown effulgence to his skin, the air of self-assurance to his every movement when doing… doing whatever he was doing. But it was so not pure poetry or providence of the Almighty that my fingers had started to slip from my sweat and I lost my balance and practically teetered forward and fell head down into that wonderful boy’s room without so much as any fanfare or professional announcers or any other elaborately contrived and convoluted intricacies that should have involved in introducing me.

The boy started. He stared at me with those eyes of his, so wide and unblinking in its intensity that he seemed forebodingly unreal. And when he finally spoke, as much as I wanted to deny it, there was this warily hostile edge to his voice and worst of all, what he actually said was way beyond my comprehension and to such an extent of ambiguity that everything had suddenly gone berserk.

He said, “Are you a Jedi or a man-eating penguin? Because if you’re neither I’m gonna scream.”

I blinked. Then blinked again, “Why would I be a Jedi or a man-eating penguin?”

Like a good boy who always kept his words, he started screaming.

Footsteps sounded down the hallway, tolling like some kind of an imminent death knell.

I started screaming, too, like he was the intruder and I had every legitimate right to be there in the first place. “You’re gonna get us both killed!” I yelled, “See? Your wicked witch brothers are coming to roast us up alive like Chicken McNuggets!”

Before the groan of an open door would ever have the time to reach my ears, I had beaten the hell out of the place, hanging on for dear life.

That night I lay in bed gazing into the infinity and nothingness that was the sky and felt depressed. I turned away and stared at the bopping, dappled shadows which were displaying themselves on the wall like puppet shows instead, but decided they were disturbingly palpable enough to enter my most grotesque nightmares and felt depressed. I burrowed myself into the stomach of my stuffed teddy but suddenly felt it a stiff and bulky and lifeless thing that was just staring at me and wouldn’t even go roller-skating with me and I felt depressed.

Suddenly a head poked out from out of my window.

I did the most reasonable thing a brave big girl like me would’ve done. I screamed. Loud enough to scare Benedict Arnold out of his grave pissing mad, but not loud enough to scare away the intruder, who was now climbing down from the window sill with such nimble stealth and assurance that he could’ve easily put a professional acrobat to shame.

It was that wondrous boy.

This was the first gracious greeting from me, “How the hell did you climb up a six-story building all the way to my bedroom window?”

The look he gave me was of wonder and hurt disappointment, “Aw, I thought everybody does that to get into his own room.”

This was the second, more gracious greeting from me, “How the hell did you climb up a six-story building all the way to my bedroom window?”

He was incredulous, “I can’t believe you’ve got that beautiful fire escape out there in the front and you just let it go rot and wasted.” He really looked as if he could not believe that humanity had been reduced to such a pitiable state that people no longer enjoyed using the fire escape to get into their own rooms anymore.

This is the third, most gracious greeting from me, “How the hell did you climb up a six-story building all the way to my bedroom window?” Because everyone knew that all fire escapes ought to be in the emergency rooms themselves, being all rickety and precipitous like a bunch of out-of-joint skeletons, and that the only people who climbed them were more half-dead than alive anyway.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“People just ain’t no fun anymore,” he plunked onto my bed and heaved a brilliant sigh, one miffed little person sorry over the final destruction of humanity. I almost felt sorry for humanity’s destruction, too, but decided I was too confused to go on worrying about stuffs like that. “How did you find me here…?”

“Shh,” he interrupted rudely.

“Why did you wanna find me…?”

“Shh,” he cut in again.

“What did you come here for…?”

I would’ve repeated the 5W’s and an H indefinitely and made my English teacher proud, but the boy turned on me with such a look that I shut up immediately. For approximately three seconds. “When did you realize that it was me who barged into your room and…?”

“I’ll answer your questions,” he said slowly, like a fed-up teacher trying to teach a kid how to count to three without the kid forgetting what one or two was, “when I figure out what’s so wrong with me that I could not answer your questions.”

“Oh so have your figured out what’s wrong with you…?”

“And I need silence. Jedi meditation needs silence.”

So we just meditated for five whole minutes which involved nothing but sitting around and getting bored like hell. I thought I was gonna get ADHD if nobody would ever say a thing.

Finally he looked up, “I think I have a perfectly presentable reason now.”

“What is it?!”

“My stomach is suffering greatly from hunger,” he announced, seriousness written all over his face. “It is thus wildly texting messages to my brain and commanding my brain not to answer any questions until I’m treated with a nice hearty meal before twelve.”

So I had to bring him something to eat lest he started meditating all over again. And man was he a weirdo eater. He dunked whole soggy slices of double cheese pizza and a frankfurter into his cereal instead of the regular cornflakes. He ate his PB & J upside down, with the bread sticking out in the middle between the peanut butter and the jelly, which got sticky all over his fingers when he tried to hold it. He even had coffee, only he added half a gallon of milk and chocolate and caramel with no coffee in it. And he hated vegetables.

“What, in the name of the force, is that?” even when his mouth was full, his voice was all contemptuous music.

“Lettuce, maybe…?”

“That,” he singled out that poor little green piece of lettuce, eyed it suspiciously, and instantly threw it out of the window as if he had caught the plague or something, “is undoubtedly the evilest, most atrocious living being that has ever walked the planet!”

You get the idea. It was insanely amazing and drove me nuts at the same time

He finally finished his meal and was ready to answer my questions. “What were your questions again?” he asked absently, licking his fingers one after the other.

I was real patient and repeated to him the 5W’s and an H.

He cleared his throat real ceremoniously. I could tell that play time was over and he was now all business-like all over again. “I have come such a distance of lonely miles across fair oceans and lands,” he announced with solemnness, despite the fact that his house was only a few blocks away from mine, “for honor, justice, and candor upon the name of my family.”

I groaned too loudly.

He turned on me sharp, “Upon leaving our house, you have slandered my brothers with the most heinous of blasphemies by addressing them… by addressing them… Wait what did you call them again?”

“I only just called them your evil witch…”

“That’s right! You have slandered my brothers with the most heinous of blasphemies by addressing them my evil witch brothers, and therefore I have the justice to declare you guilty as…”

“I haven’t slandered anybody!” I had finally had enough and started screaming to make my point.

“You called my brothers witches!” he hollered back.

“They are witches!” I screamed even louder so as to talk sense into him even though I knew it’d be a long shot.

“Are not!”

“Are too!”

“Are not!”

“Are too!”

“Are not are not are not are not are not…!” Man it was the first time I’d dealt with someone more unreasoningly pigheaded than Charles. I felt like that as civilized as I was, I had to cut the screaming crap and talk things out properly or else I’d be mistakenly categorized as a loony right alongside him.

So I told him the half-truth that my dad was a crack witch hunter with a license and salary. (The part I didn’t tell him being that Charles had shredded his license to pieces and ate them whole four months ago when we were playing Truth or Dare. He picked eating his license over admitting the truth that his boss Mr. Field, who would forget to pay him salaries every other month, was a bigger nastier miser than old Mr. Satan.) I also told him the half-truth that my dad was a callous, merciless gunslinger who shot people around for fun, especially when it comes to ignorant little kids who ever dared to take his profound understanding of the identification of the black arts too lightly. (The truth in it being that Charles was indeed callous and very much merciless when it comes to pitting against me for more pizza.)

This last point got the boy very silent at first.

And then he said, real carefully and slow, “So… it’s like if your dad says that the lady selling ice-creams and all down there in the alley is a demon from hell, she really would be the one go to hell and have a nice cup of Americano there after a long day’s work?”

“Exactly.”

“It’s like, if your dad says that your homeroom teacher who hands out all the smiley stickers and homemade cupcakes during parties is actually a blood-thirsty hell hound, she really would plan to gobble you up like Harringtons grain-free wet dog food?”

“Exactly!” I was getting excited.

“Like when your dad says that your next-door neighbor is the voice of God, you guys really would strut around the neighborhood wearing nothing but your light sabers and underwear, only because he tells you-all to do so and oh thus goes the will of the Almighty?”

“Exactly!” I was really beginning to feel gratified by the heights my sense of logic and reason could reach.

“So… it can be concluded that…” he said, chewing his words now nice and slow, “that when he says that my two brothers are witches, they’re actually normal high school seniors and have nothing out of the ordinary to contribute to such a stigmatizing title.”

“Exactly! That’s what I… Wait, huh?”

Before I could properly correct myself, he was already howling with peals of delight at his ill-gotten victory. He rolled around in bed and plunked down on the floor still laughing, all sprawled up full-length like a sea star and trembling, trembling with such sporadic hiccups to a point that he could scarcely see or breathe.

That made me a whole lot madder. “You jerk!” I screamed, grabbing for my pillows and pelting him on the head with all the vehemence I could muster, “You cheating, good-for-nothing, asshole jerk!”

And it turned into that half-scuffling, half-swearing sort of fight which involved a tumultuous racket, much of uselessly frenzied screaming, and an elaborate use of more dirty words swung in the air than apparently necessary in such a brawl.

But finally, as truth and justice always prevail in the stories, I won, beat him up like hell, and sat on him triumphantly. “So whaddaya say to that? Ain’t your brothers witches?” I yelled, savoring the sweetness of success that had gathered up in my chest.

He didn’t answer.

I looked down, ready to give him another sock in the eyes or the solid uppercut I was so famous for.

But the boy was already fast asleep.

I had to tow him all the way back to his house and put him to bed like I was his mother or something.