Thirsty - M. T. Anderson [16]
Tom hardly talks to me when we’re at school now. I know the only way I can win him back is to be wide awake. I have to be extra funny to keep his interest. He is starting to hang out with other kids at school, like Chuck O’Hara and Andy Green. He hangs out with Jerk and me after school still, because he doesn’t know the others well enough yet. Yet.
I want to tell him about Chet the Celestial Being, about my vampirism, and about the Vampire Lord in the lake. But I can’t, not yet.
He still hasn’t forgiven me for getting his lower left leg in the mud at the reservoir. Every time I speak to him, especially at school, I can tell that that lower left leg is hovering there between us, always making him angry, accusing me like a vengeful dismembered piece of Edgar Allan Poe ghost, dripping duckweed.
I don’t want anyone to notice anything different about me — the sleepiness or how I’m starting to get cranky and a little afraid of mirrors. I have to just keep smiling, that’s the thing. Keep smiling for another few weeks, until the curse is lifted. Keep smiling, I think, while my teeth are still square.
One day my father keeps looking at me nervously, as if he’s about to say, “Son, you know you have three eyes and a horn on your head?” But he doesn’t say anything.
Then I hear my mother talking to him. “It’s getting embarrassing,” says my mother. “Just go up and tell him. What is so . . . ?”
“It’s a turning point, Jennifer,” says my father.
“A turning point?” says my mother.
“It was just yesterday he was in diapers. That’s all I’m saying.”
“For his sake, Norm,” says Mom.
My father comes trudging up the stairs. I can hear his footsteps on the powder blue carpet. He picks up the stack of science magazines and National Geographics that are sitting three steps up. He brings them up and sees me.
“Hey, Chris,” he says.
“Aloha, Father,” I say.
He is looking at me with the three eyes/horn look again.
“Chris.” In his hands he flexes the magazines first one way, then the other. “Your mother and I were just thinking.”
“I hope it didn’t disturb your daily routine much,” I joke.
He laughs a very little. “It’s about time you shaved,” he says. He coaxes the magazines into the shape of a tube — first, one that is a science magazine tube, then backward, so it’s a National Geographic tube. “You’re getting a little, you know. A little.” He points at his upper lip. “You’re a late bloomer, I know,” he says.
I reach up and feel, and it is a little bit mossy on my upper lip.
“I can show you how,” he says. “In the bathroom.”
“I was just going to go watch television,” I say.
“Your mother really would prefer if you got this over with.”
“Please!” my mother contributes from the bottom of the stairs.
My father walks to the bathroom door (down the hall, first door on the right) and opens it. He turns on the light. I follow him in. He closes the door.
We are crowded together in the bathroom, my father and I, surrounded by mirrors and the mylar wallpaper’s loud-beaked cockatoos. There is silver bamboo all around us on the walls. It’s a jungle in there.
“You’ll find there’s nothing much to this,” he says. “Soon you’ll be doing it every day.” Brief nostalgic pause. “My son.”
“Paul already shaves,” I say. “It’s like no big deal.”
My father says in a very professional way, “I think it’s probably better that you learn to use a safety razor. The electric razor doesn’t give you as smooth a shave.”
“No? Well, I want a smooth shave,” I say.
He shows me how to put on the shaving cream and wets the razor with hot water for me.
My mother says from the other side of the door, as if she’s concerned, “How’s it going in there, Chris?”
“Just fine, Mom,” I say. “I’ve just learned about the foam. All systems go.”
“Now take the razor,