“Positive.”
“Hmm… we’ll come back to that.”
“I really don’t think we need to,” he says before he grabs me and drags me into a hug. “Listen to me!”
“I’m trying! I really am, but… oh no… there’s… there’s something… happening!” I cry as I lift Blow-Up Randy and jab Jackson in the cheek with his blow-up penis. “I can’t hear you over the penis!”
“You better listen to me!”
“I’mtrying,but… the penis, Jackson, the penis!”
He reaches over and bites Blow-Up Randy’s penis, making me gasp.
“Jackson! His ween!”
“He shouldn’t have had it in my face.”
“He’ll never be able to forgive you,” I whisper.
“I bet he will,” Jackson says as he pries the blow-up doll out of my hands and grabs my face. “Are you listening?”
“I’m listening to Blow-Up Randy’s cries of ‘How dare you nibble on my dingaling!’ Did you hear that? Just now? Such cries!”
“Fine, you torture that child all you want. Is that what you want to hear?” Jackson asks.
“It is!” I’m proud as can be while I hurry down the stairs to where Waylon is sitting on the couch. I lean over and ruffle his hair. “I hope you’re as excited about tomorrow as I am.”
“I’m… afraid I’m not,” he says with a grimace.
I ruffle his hair some more. “I’ll be back to join the movie in a second. I… I need to make some calls… about tomorrow.”
“Please don’t. Video games are so much fun.”
“Can’t hear you!”
I swiftly escape into the sex dungeon where I will not be heard as Cayenne, our red mutt we adopted, and Sarge, the Doberman who joined our household after being part of a Doberman army hired to protect Jackson, scramble after me.
I shut the door and make my first call.
TWO
JACKSON
Waylon catches my arm before we reach the car. “W-Where’s Leland this morning?” He’s looking behind him like Leland might pop out from behind a bush or something.
“I’m going to be really honest… I have no idea. He jumped out of bed and just… ran off,” I say as I pass that godforsaken fence that is the bane of my existence. Ever since my pants got caught on it, it’s haunted me every day of my life, and as if that wasn’t enough, Leland chose to tear the panel of fence out of the original yard the moment he heard it was going to be demolished. And instead of tossing it in the dump where it belongs, he moved it to our front yard. He treats it like it’s some monument, but I guess one good thing did come of it: Leland and all of the chaos he brought into my life, which led me to our friends and Waylon.
“Do you think if you glare at it enough, it’ll go away?” Waylon asks. “I bet I could make a bomb that would decimate it if you want.”
Oh, to watch that thing go up in chunks. “No, that’s… no, you shouldn’t be making bombs!”
“It’d be for a good reason,” he says, eyeing it. “I think. I don’t know. I just want to be useful.”
I glance over at Waylon as I get into my sports car. “You realize you don’t need to be ‘useful,’ right? Like… we’re not keeping you around based on your usefulness.”
He’s quiet, and I look at him while I start the car.
“Waylon,” I say, since I’m not sure what I said sank in.
