Words I Might Have Ate

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I knock lightly on the rough wooden door and wait for a response or any other signs of life. I’m met with silence. I pause for just a moment more outside the door before knocking again and cracking open the bedroom door.

The entire room is pitch black, the curtains shut tightly to drown out the sun. The fan is on low, spinning around in lopsided circles as it creaks ominously. The room itself is surprisingly neat, for one of us anyway. All of his clothes are either hanging up in the closet, in his dresser or in tidy stacks on the floor under his window.

I walk gingerly into the room, my grip on the cool glass of water and the bottle of aspirin never loosening. It would be just my luck to trip on a stray shoe or a worn book and spill the drink all over the already warped floorboards.

The glass and medicine goes on his bedside table and I glance down at my unconscious best friend for a moment. I had picked him and Tré up at nearly four in the morning last night and they had passed out after a rather drunken Sonic the Hedgehog match in the living room. It had taken me nearly half-hour to drag a semi-conscious Mike to his bedroom and Tré to the living room sofa to settle them in for the rough morning they’d be sure to experience today.

It was nearing two in the afternoon and both of them have yet to rejoin the land of the living. I was getting a bit worried. They’d have to awake soon so I could make sure they got some food in their system and take some medication so they’d bounce back more quickly.

“Mike,” I say softly, leaning over the bed and prodding him experimentally with my fingertips. “Mike man, wake up.”

His deep breathing carries on heavily and I stifle a frustrated sigh as I run my hands across my tired face a few times. I had been up since ten with my nose stuck in that damn book. I had gotten quite a bit of reading done but not nearly enough to catch me up to the deadline that David had set forth. The plan was to return to the book as soon as I took care of the boys until it was time to leave.

I bend over his sleeping form once again and shake his body gently. “Hey man, wake up. It’s two in the afternoon; you need to get up.”

His face screws up immediately and I can only watch in sympathy as his hands fly up to his surely pounding head. His eyes crack open and he stares up at me with bloodshot eyes. “What?” He croaks, his voice hoarse and rough.

“You need to take some aspirin and get something to eat to settle your stomach,” I announce quietly as I nod at the supplies I had brought in from the kitchen. “And then you can go back to sleep. But if you don’t, you’ll be even worse off than you already are.”

He is stationary for a moment with his eyes closed and just as I reach out my hand to shake him again, he slowly begins to sit up, clutching at his temples in agony. Feeling rather generous, I push the water and drop two tablets into his open, sweaty palm.

“Bottoms up,” I chirp, watching as he pops the drugs into his mouth and throws them back with expert ease.

He takes a few more timid sips, the water obviously feeling good against his parched throat. His head rests back against the wall and he closes his eyes as he struggles to keep his nausea at bay. I stand up from the bed, intent on returning to the living room and reviving my drummer but Mike speaks up so quietly that at first I thought I had been imagining it.

“So are you going to tell me about that book now?”

I freeze with my back to him and silently curse his ability to remember the smallest detail despite the alcohol that should still be clouding his mind. But you did promise him that you would talk about it today. You owe it to him—he’s your best friend. Just tell him and get it over with already.

I nod to myself and turn around slowly, taking in the sight of Mike sitting upright in his bed with a quizzical look on his face. “I’m reading the book for a project with David. I—uhm, he’s helping me finish up my high school credits,” I say finally, pulling at the skin on the back of my neck nervously. I can’t bring myself to look into his eyes partially because I’m terrified of what I’ll see there, whether it be disappointment or pride.

The room is quiet for so long that I almost rise to my feet and trip blindly from the room in my haste to get away from Mike and his penetrating stare. But he nods slowly and clears his throat to break the awkward silence that has settled upon us. “Why?”

“I’m just sick of working myself to death at a fucking boring job that doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody wants to hire someone who didn’t even graduate high school. And the way I figured it is, is if I at least go back and get my high school diploma, I can probably get a better job than pouring other peoples’ booze. And if I get a better job, I can make a bit more money and I can sink that money into Green Day.” I sigh, frustrated with myself for getting so worked up over something so simple.

I stand up and begin to pace back and forth, kicking aside an old bass magazine and nearly trampling Zero to death. “For fucks sake Mike, I don’t even own a car. I can’t get to and from work on my own. I was so broke that I was going through the sofa cushions just to scrape together enough money to buy a meal. I just don’t want to live like that anymore; I-I can’t do it.” I pivot around on my heel and look back at him with wide, pleading eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you and Tré sooner. I just…I don’t want anyone to know. If I fail at this, I’ll just end up disappointing everyone. Again,” I add on bitterly, going over Adam’s sneering face in my mind.

“What do you have to do?” Mike asks curiously, setting his drink on the table beside his bed and watching me closely.

My mind casts back to the worn little novel that’s sitting facedown on my bed, open to the middle of the chapter. “I have to read Catcher in the Rye and write a paper on it, I have to pass a test in government and math and then fill out a massive packet in biology. It doesn’t seem like a lot—“ I begin but Mike cuts me off with a knowing smile.

“But it’s a lot when you’re also working full time and have a popular band to manage,” His eyes are twinkling merrily and I can see the beginnings of a smile dance on his lips.

And inside, my heart resumes beating normally—thankful that he understood. I shouldn’t have gotten myself so worked up over this. This is Mike, Mike always understands, no matter what. An overwhelming wave of relief pours over me and I sink down onto the mattress, cupping my face in my hands.

“Well,” Mike attempts to crack a joke, despite the obvious hangover he is still suffering through. “Better get back on your reading then, huh? Who’d have thought little old Billie-boy’d go back to high school after all these years?” He teases, his eyes glittering wickedly.

I calmly reach over and smack him across the chest with his pillow. “Piss off, man. I’m doing this for Green Day.”

“I know,” Mike is serious once again. “And we appreciate it—even Tré, who doesn’t know anything about this?” He asks, raising one eyebrow.

I nod and shrug. “I guess I have to tell him now too.”

Mike nods and I stand up from the bed, running my palms across my jeans in an attempt to dry them off. “There’s leftover Mexican in the fridge from my dinner last night, if you want any. Just make sure you don’t let Tré near it.”

“I know,” Mike leans back onto his pillows and shifts around into a comfortable position. “I remember well the great Mexican incident of ’93. We nearly all died because of him.”

“It was pretty bad, wasn’t it?” I grin, revealing my crooked teeth as I recall the fateful day when Tré found leftover Mexican food in our refrigerator and decided to eat it. For the next two hours, our apartment smelled so bad, Mike and I had to open all the doors and windows so we could stay conscious.

“We almost died,” Mike’s muffled voice slips out from his blanket as he burrows down deep into the bed. “I don’t know how much I can stress that.”

I shake my head and without another backward glance at the bed, cross the room and shut the bedroom door behind me with a soft click. I hear Tré’s loud snores from the living room and I smile a bit at the noise. Things were changing around here.

-X-

What is the main difference between the prokaryote and eukaryote?

I make a disgruntled noise in the back of my throat and glare down at the paper in front of me before pulling the thick, ancient biology textbook David had brought home from school closer to me. I bite down on the end of my pencil as I scan the page for the answer.

Somewhere deep in the house, a clock chimes nine thirty and the faint traces of Lizzie’s laughter floats down from upstairs. Across the table from me, David clears his throat gently and rustles his newspaper as he continues to read an article. Heather was in the kitchen with us, quietly cleaning up the dinner dishes and loading up the dishwasher.

I glance up from the book at the newspaper and scan the front page’s headline—something about Proposition A, a school sales tax extension, failing to pass, despite the heavy campaigning the supporters had done over the past few months.

I look further up the page and catch David’s amused eye before ducking my head and returning my gaze to the textbook in front of me. It almost felt a bit like I was a little kid and I had gotten caught with my hand in the cookie jar. I resume my scanning of the page, my eyes searching for some clue words that will help me find my answer more easily.

My frustration only climbs as I realize that there is nothing in this chapter that discusses whatever the fuck those words are in the question. Who the hell makes a take-home exam this difficult? Don’t the teachers want their students to pass? What kind of self-respecting molder of young minds is evil enough to purposefully make the final test so that all of their students fail it?

Muffling an annoyed groan, I poise my pencil over the blank space beneath the question and think for a moment, tapping my chin with my eraser before beginning to write in my messy scrawl. ‘They’re spelt differently.’

I add a full stop to the end of my sentence with a particularly vicious stab from my pencil and smile to myself at the mental image of David’s face when he read over that answer. He’d probably have a heart attack. And then skin me alive for wasting valuable points. But viciously tearing my skin off aside, death would totally be worth seeing the look on my brother’s face when he read my smartass answer to this stupid, pointless question.

This biology final was nearly ten pages, almost three hundred questions compiled from a year’s worth of biology. As I wasn’t allowed to take the textbook home to the apartment with me to work on—not that I blamed Dave or anything, I wouldn’t trust an expensive book like this in a house with Tré either, considering our track record when it comes to important and/or flammable things—I had to work on this final on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the two nights a week that I went over to David’s house, for the few hours that I could squeeze in before I had to leave for the night.

The first ten or fifteen minutes of the evening were set aside to go over what I had read in my book. If I had a question, Dave would listen to my theories with a critical ear and discuss his own assumptions with me. I found that I rather grew to enjoy this Holden character, despite my initial dislike of the kid—he was an asshole, there was no denying that. But he had a certain likeable quality about him that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. But in the end, he wasn’t so bad. I was actually beginning to like the reading assignment.

That’s not to say that I went out of my way to hole myself up in my room with the book every free moment I had during my day. I still had a full-time job and a band to manage. But I found myself thinking about Holden during my breaks at work or as I was sitting in the car on my way home after a show.

Both Mike and Tré were fully supportive of me. After talking to Tré and finally letting my two best friends in on my secret, things were back to normal. Well as normal as things got with the three of us.

The first few days Tré had spent teasing me endlessly whenever he caught sight of me reading. But he eventually lost interest and stopped calling me ‘nerd’ and ‘book worm’ as he found other things to occupy his time. Mike, going back to his junior year in high school when he had read the book himself, would answer any questions I had the best he could. If he didn’t know or didn’t remember, he flat-out told me but the majority of the time, he sat and listened to my excited ramblings with a tiny smile on his face.

I had seen how proud I made him in his eyes, though he never voiced his thoughts aloud to me. He didn’t have to, not with me, at least. After being best friends with him for over eleven years, I could read Mike like an open book. I knew him well enough to realize that in his own way, he was trying to help me because he was rooting for me just as much as David and I was—if not more than the both of us.

My stomach dips uncomfortably as I remember that I’m working on my exam. My answer seems to taunt me down on the paper—obnoxious and childish now instead of amusing. I wasn’t giving my everything to get a good grade on this final.

If I continued flippantly answering these questions and I turn this in, I won’t just be letting down myself. I’ll be letting down both Mike and David and I wasn’t about to disappoint them. I had worked too hard and for too long to just let all of this slip through my fingers once again.

With a bit of a sigh, I flip my pencil around and smudge out my answer before brushing away the eraser shavings with the back of my hand. I reread the question and turn back to the book with a serious look on my face, determined to find the right answer this time through.