“Sure, Kid. We’re kinda early anyways.”
I see a sign for a rest stop ahead and move off onto the exit. The parking lot is empty and it’s drizzling outside. I pull into a space in front of the bathrooms, already knowing the routine. Ty sits patiently in the car while I walk into the men’s room to make sure it’s empty. It is. I walk out the door and wave. He gets out of the car and walks up to me.
“Bear, you’re going to wait right here, right.” It’s not said as a question, but as a command.
“Sure am.”
“Okay, I’ll be right back. Make sure you wait right here.”
I nod, knowing that I’ll be here just as sure as he knows. Ty refuses to use public restrooms when there is anyone else in them. He always makes me check first. When I give the all-clear, only then will he go in. He doesn’t allow me to go in with him, stating very plainly that he is “old enough to know how to work his parts.” But before he does, he makes sure of where I’ll be. And I mean in the exact spot. If I move a foot or two away from where I said I would be, he notices. I know he understands that I’ll never leave him like that, but he still needs those reassurances. It’s the same with what time I will pick him up from school or what time I’ll get off of work. If I’m late, he has sort of a panic attack, where his breathing becomes constricted, and he has thoughts run through his head that he knows aren’t true. I took him to a doctor at a free clinic who suggested putting him on some kind of anti-anxiety medication that was supposed to be all the rage these days. But Ty told the doctor and me plainly that he didn’t want to become “one of those kids.” I try not to be late. It’s easier.
I can hear him humming while he pees, his sign that he’ll be a while, so I turn and look out at the rain. It’s the end of May, but in Oregon that doesn’t matter. It can still be cold and raining whenever it wants to be and there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. Especially when you live in Seafare, a small town on the Pacific Ocean, like we do. For anyone never having been to the Oregon coast, the ocean there is nothing like the ocean in California. It’s cold and foggy and rainy pretty much all the time. Oh sure, we do get sunny days, but the Pacific Northwest has its reputation for a reason. I hear that a lot of people commit suicide up here. Weirdos.
We’re currently making the sixty-mile trek to Portland to pick up my best friend, Creed Thompson, from the airport. I haven’t seen him since he came home for spring break. He’s a junior at Arizona State, majoring in computer science. Pretty soon he’ll graduate and go to work for IBM or Google and make a bazillion dollars per year, but as of right now, he’s still Creed, the guy I’ve known since my first day at Seafare Elementary School in the second grade. We were instantly connected at the hip, maybe just because of how opposite we were. He’s outgoing and can talk to anyone, whereas I don’t like most people. His parents are still married (and around and alive). They’re rich, but not so much that you became distracted by all the stuff they have. I’m obviously not rich. So life goes.
Mr. Thompson had had some sort of computer company in Seattle in the late eighties and early nineties and sold off everything before it all went to hell. He then decided he hated living in a big city and hated having a lot of stuff. He sold all the things he didn’t want and moved the family to Seafare. I always found it funny how Mr. Thompson seemed to be the only rich person who hated being rich. It still didn’t stop him from buying one of the biggest houses in Seafare, where I’ve spent a lot of time through the years. The same house where we are having a surprise birthday party for Ty soon, providing I can keep it a secret.
Creed’s parents are cool as far as parents go, but I’m glad that they’re gone. Not gone-gone but off in some country on some kind of retreat, helping to build homes in Africa or curing leprosy in Sweden, I don’t know. I know they’ll be gone until November so there’s a big empty house for us to use this summer. It’ll be nice to get out of the crappy apartment for the next few months.
Don’t get me wrong; I have friends. It just so happens the majority of them are at school somewhere else and living their lives, doing whatever it is they do. Most don’t come back to Seafare if they can help it. The rest might be imaginary. Creed comes back a lot, saying that Arizona is actually located on the surface of the sun, not next to California like a map says. But with his parents being gone the majority of the year, he can always come back here, and it’s like he has his own private vacation home, which is cool if you’re into that kind of thing. When I told him this, he just looked at me funny, saying he never thought of it that way. We didn’t talk about it anymore.
It’s hard to maintain normal friendships when you’re the guardian of the smartest eight-year-old in the world. Most couldn’t understand why I did what I did. Hell, there are times that I don’t understand it, either. The only way I can rationalize it is that a person can do strange things when they don’t have any other choice.
The only other person I really care to see is my sort-of girlfriend, A
nna Grant. But she lives in Seafare, too, commuting back and forth to the next county to go to the community college there, so it’s not like I don’t get to see her. She was the second person I met after Creed way back in the day. We’re together more often than not, but it’s not a lot of the time. It’s not a joke: one time we did get back together and broke up five seconds later when I accidentally told her that her nose looked flat from the angle I was at. I didn’t mean it as a bad thing; it kind of just popped out of my mouth. She got mad and stormed off. Five seconds. But she’s my other best friend, so I generally try not to worry. I find if you worry too much, you spend less time doing other things.
Like standing outside in the rain at a rest stop, waiting for your brother to get done peeing. I turn back toward the door and hear him humming still. I look down at my watch. It’s two thirty. Creed needs to be picked up in a half hour, and we’ve still got a few miles to drive. “Hey, Kid? You good? We gotta get going.”
I hear him stop humming. “Bear, I don’t talk to you when you’re going to the bathroom,” he says matter-of-factly.
Touché.
A few minutes later he comes out. I make sure I’m standing in the exact spot he left me in. I see him give me an appraising look, finding me there. I hold out my hand and he grabs it, and we walk out back into the rain.
“THERE he is!” Ty points out excitedly. I see Creed standing at the entrance to one of the terminals. He sees me coming, and Ty’s waving like mad, and he laughs. Most girls think Creed is “mad crazy hot” (his own words) and I guess, from a male perspective, he’s okay-looking. He’s got short blond hair that kind of does whatever it wants, white even teeth, green eyes, and even I’ll admit he’s built like a truck. From the looks of it, he has put on more muscle than even the last time I saw him in March. And he’s tall, which is the bane of my existence, being only 5’9” myself. And my hair is dark. And my eyes are brown. And I’m pale. And I think for some reason that I still have one of my baby teeth because one tooth is a lot smaller than all the others. I tell Creed the only reason I’m his friend is because he is a big, tan rich kid. He says the only reason he’s my friend is because I’m little, white, and I live in the ghetto with my baby teeth. We get along great.
He opens the door and thrusts his bags over the seats to the back, next to Ty. He gets in and grins over at me. He reaches over and puts one arm around my shoulder, pulling me into a hug, and I feel rain water roll onto my cheek. He pats my back with the requisite three-pat man-hug and pulls away. “What’s up, dude? How’s coastal life?”
I smile and shrug. “Same as when I talked to you last. I think you would know if anything major was going on.”
He grins again and looks over his shoulder into the backseat and quickly rubs his hands over his head, spraying water all over me and Ty, who laughs out a mock protest. “What’s up, Kid? Bear treating you okay, or do I need to take him down a few pegs for you?”
Ty puts his hand to his chin in concentration and thinks for a moment. Then, “Maybe just one peg. He wouldn’t let me get that new documentary about PETA from the video store.”
“That was a month ago!” I protest, knowing what’s coming.
Ty glares at me. “I remember things.”
Creed laughs. “One peg it is,” he says and punches me on the shoulder. Yeah, he’s definitely put on more muscle.
“Bastard,” I growl, rubbing my arm. “You should have seen this movie. It was all about how to become an ecoterrorist and fight against the system. If the Kid had gotten it, he probably would be blowing up some celebrity for wearing fur right now.”
“Eh, what can you do?” Creed says. “At least it wasn’t like last time when he said three pegs for not getting him the right brand of soy milk.” How could I forget? I had a bruise on my arm for a month.
Ty speaks for me. “He gets me the right kind now. And, Bear, I can’t believe you said it was about how to ‘fight against the system.’ I guess it’s disheartening for any child to learn their big brother is still living in the Reagan years.”
I don’t even know what that means.