When Malcolm Ericson’s phone rang, he stopped
pretending to study and happily welcomed the distraction. Upon reading the caller ID, he was even happier to see it was his friend Jericho Sanders.
“Hello?”
“Dude! Dude!” Jericho panted. “You need to get the fuck
over here! Get over here right now!” Mania tinged his voice, but it was a tone Malcolm had grown used to hearing.
“What’s up?” Malcolm asked calmly.
“You know my brother James? He’s not himself dude! He’s been replaced!”
“What do you mean, replaced?”
“I mean the real James has been kidnapped and a clone or
a replicant or some other shit has taken his place! Get over here!”
Malcolm knew better than to believe his best friend’s
nonsense. It seemed that every other week a new fantastic
conspiracy was barreling down upon them, and yet if he,
Malcolm, were being completely honest, he’d have to admit the
imaginary incursions provided some of the only adventures
available to him in his boring suburban neighborhood.
“You coming?!” James asked.
Malcolm looked down at his textbook and frowned. It wasn’t like he was retaining the information anyway… “Yeah, I’ll be over in a bit.”
Glad for the distraction, he rushed downstairs, passing a
wall laden with trophies his older sister had earned, then tried to quietly sneak out the front door.
“Malcolm?” He heard his mom call. “Where are you going?”
Malcolm sighed. “Heading over to Jericho’s for a bit. He
needs some help with a school project.”
“How’s your studying going?”
A deluge of anxiety-ridden equations and factoids momentarily flashed through his mind before disappearing. “Good.” He said, giving a slight smile. “I think I’m really getting the hang of it.”
He could tell his mom wasn’t convinced, but she didn’t seem to want to argue. “I don’t like that Sanders boy…That whole family is rotten. No mother, and a drunk father, and those two boys aren’t exactly doing much with their lives.”
“I know mom.” Malcolm had heard her tirade against his only friend multiple times, and though he couldn’t argue with her
logic, he still craved friendship.
“Just remember that ACTs are fast approaching, and it’s a
big step for you. You need to study so you can get into a good college like your sister.”
“Don’t worry mum…I will.”
And with that he slipped out the front door, temporarily
leaving his worries behind.
…
When Malcolm arrived at the Sanders’ house he saw his best friend lurking in the side yard, half obscured by a jumble of
overgrown, ill-kept bushes.
“How’s it going?” Malcolm asked.
Jericho gestured for silence, then slid between the bushes
and brick wall and peeked inside the window.
“Look.” He whispered in a raspy hiss.
Malcolm followed, though his stealth was far less calculated. He broadly peered into the kitchen and saw Jericho’s brother James sitting at the table, simultaneously talking on the
phone and writing down something on a piece of paper.
After several minutes of this silent spying, Malcolm had to
sigh. “So?”
“So? Look at him!”
“I am. What’s so sinister about what he’s doing?”
“It’s not what he’s doing that freaks me out, but what he’s not doing. Look!”
Again Malcolm looked, but this time Jericho narrated.
“He’s not smoking pot, he’s not playing video games. In the last couple days he’s put in close to two dozen job applications and already gotten three calls back.”
“Good for him.” Malcolm nodded.
“Doesn’t that strike you as suspicious?”
“Not really. Maybe he was just tired of living in the basement and wanted to make something of himself?”
This prompted a barking laugh from Jericho. “My brother? Bettering himself? That’s about as likely as my dad giving up booze.”
Almost as if the universe heard this quip, Jericho’s dad
entered the kitchen. He made an unheard statement, then opened one of the cabinets and retrieved a bottle of bourbon before disappearing once more.
“Is he gone?” Jericho asked.
Malcolm nodded.
His friend rose to his full height and once more peered
into the kitchen. Jericho had always had a tenuous grip on reality, and Malcolm had occasionally wondered if maybe his half-cocked conspiracy theories weren’t some sort of survival mechanism. The real world certainly hadn’t been kind to the Sanders brothers, and between their abusive drunk of a father and completely absent mother, it was no wonder they had developed as they had. One had found solace in video games, weed, and anything else that could temporarily waylay the pain and drip-feed him his next serotonin fix.
And the other chose to invent his own reality to
compensate for the low-quality default one.
This had led Jericho, and by extension Malcolm, into a
number of hijinks; from attempting to capture rare Marble-beaked finches (“Their feathers actually contain a gram of gold. If we can find a flock, we’ll be rich!”) to searching for a secret garden of glass plants left behind by an eccentric artist (“He totally used to live in this town, and he’s got hundreds of delicate sculptures in the woods somewhere. If we find them, we can sell them and make a fortune!”).
Malcolm was always happy to go along with his friend’s schemes. They were rarely fruitful in any real way, but they gave him something to do, and while he had a far nicer home life than his friend, his dull existence sometimes had him putting aside his doubts, throwing all caution to the wind, and following Jericho into the wilds of his imagination.
“Look! You paying attention?” Jericho hissed.
Malcolm drug himself away from his own thoughts and back to the window. James had risen from the table and was walking to the fridge.
“Watch…Watch…Are you watching?”
“I’m watching.” Malcolm confirmed.
He watched James open the fridge door, reach inside, pull
out an orange, close the door, and return to his seat.
“There! Look! You see what he’s doing?”
“He’s peeling an orange.”
“Exactly! He usually stuffs his face with shit! Chips and
pizza and things! What the fuck is he doing eating a piece of
fruit?”
Again Malcolm sighed. “It’s like I said. He’s just trying to
be a better person.”
But Jericho wasn’t convinced. “This morning when I walked past him, he didn’t smell right.”
Malcolm gave a skeptical frown. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Everyone’s got a smell! Surely you realize my house smells different than yours, right?”
Malcolm nodded.
“Well every person has their own smell. When I walked by him this morning I was already skeptical of him, but his altered smell confirmed everything I needed to know. He doesn’t smell like himself, he smells like…Well, like a salad!”
Malcolm wasn’t sure whether he should try changing the subject to something that would cause less stress in his friend, or if he should let his curiosity win out and press forward.
“What’s a salad even smell like?” He asked.
“Like him!” Jericho hissed.
Before Malcolm could respond, his friend slipped between the bushes and started toward the backyard. “Come on! I’ll show
you!”
The pair made their way to the back of the house, opened the rusted screen door, and pushed the splintery back door open.
They squeezed through the laundry room, which had become a
sort of closet for old tools and broken car parts, then passed into the kitchen.
James, with a mouthful of orange, was now staring up at them with a gleeful expression. “Malcolm! Good to see you!” He smiled.
Malcolm nodded. “Same to you.”
“What are you two up to?”
Before Malcolm could answer, Jericho cut in, “Oh, we’re thinking of heading up to my room and trying out this new game we found online. Wanna come up and play with us?”
James shook his head. “Nah, sorry. I’m pretty busy.”
“Busy with what?” Jericho’s words were fast and tense, and the suspicion in his tone seemed obvious to Malcolm. “Getting a job…Oh, and I may have a gal come over later
this week.” James said with a proud smile.
“Excellent, excellent.” Jericho nodded, feigning passive
interest. “Hey, you don’t mind scooting in a little so we can get through and grab some water?”
James pulled himself closer to the table and the two younger boys squeezed to the sink.
“Did you smell him?” Jericho whispered when they’d gotten to the counter.
“What? No! That would be weird!” Malcolm hissed.
“You don’t need to put your nose in his hair! Just walk by
him and see if you can catch any subtle hints!”
Both boys filled their cups and carried them out of the
room.
“Excuse me.” Malcolm apologized to James. “Just passing
through.” He made sure to inhale as he squeezed past, but other than the faint hint of spray-on deodorant, James seemed to smell quite normal.
“Jerry? That you?!” His father slurred as the pair entered
the living room. Jericho said nothing, and instead slipped past the hallway and up the stairs before another word could be spoken. This time Malcolm carefully mimicked his friend’s stealth, and before long the pair were safely locked in Jericho’s room.
“Well?” Jericho asked, slamming his cup of water dramatically onto his dresser.
Malcolm sipped his, then answered thoughtfully. “He was
wearing deodorant.”
“Exactly!”
But Malcolm could only sigh. “Look, let’s say hypothetically your brother really was trying to be a bit
better…Wouldn’t you expect him to be wearing deodorant? Don’t you think he’d be trying to look for a job? Wouldn’t he start dating? All of this seems pretty normal to me.”
“That’s if he wanted to better himself!” Jericho argued.
“And that’s a big fuckin’ if!”
Try as he might, Malcolm realized he couldn’t convince his friend, so instead he changed the subject. “You mentioned a game on the computer?”
“Huh?”
“Downstairs you told James that-”
“-Fake James.”
Malcolm’s mouth thinned. “Fine. You told Fake-James that you found a game on the computer?”
“That was just a distraction…Although I did find a cool
new website…”
And before long the pair got sucked into the internet’s
embrace; Jericho forgetting his worries, and Malcolm nearly
forgetting his.
…
Heavy rains were falling when Malcolm got on the bus. He ignored the usual din and chaos of his peers and made his way to the seat where he and Jericho always sat. His friend was staring out the window, muttering to
himself under his breath, clearly lost in thought.
“How’s it going?” Malcolm asked.
Jericho turned and frowned at him. Malcolm frowned
back. “Jesus, what happened to your eye?” Malcolm asked.
Jericho moved his hand subconsciously toward it, but stopped halfway and allowed his arm to fall back to his lap once more. “Nothing.” He mumbled. “You know.”
Malcolm nodded. He did know.
Jericho sighed. “He was extremely apologetic this morning, said he’d take me and James out fishing next weekend.”
“Well, that sounds fun, I guess.”
“I’m not going anywhere with that asshole.” Jericho spat.
“And anyway, my brother’s been replaced by a clone, so the real-him wouldn’t be there anyway.”
Malcolm had hoped his friend would have found a better, more entertaining conspiracy to latch on to, and was a bit
disappointed that he was still stuck on the same one as before.
“So you’re still on that, huh?”
Jericho nodded. “I have even more proof.”
“Oh?” Malcolm feigned interest, but honestly his thoughts
were elsewhere. Tests…Grades…Studies…
“You remember that scar he’s got on the back of his leg
from that time dad-…From when he cut it on that glass?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“Well it’s still there.” Jericho exclaimed in a way one might after definitely proving some controversial point.
Malcolm blinked. “Doesn’t that prove he hasn’t been replaced?”
Jerry shook his head. “Of course not! It proves that whoever cloned him was very detail oriented. It wasn’t a sloppy job.” He clasped his chin, deep in thought. “We’re dealing with real professionals.”
He continued rattling on about the potential implications,
but Malcolm stopped listening. His mind was focused on the
looming ACT…
He needed to study, and ensure he truly excelled at math
and science…
He needed to get a lot of scholarships…He couldn’t afford
to pay his way through college…
He needed to get accepted into a good school…
He needed to make sure he lived up to the reputation his
older sister had set…
He couldn’t disappoint his mom or dad…Mostly his mom.
He looked past Jericho and watched the wet, gray world
become even wetter and grayer… Puddles… Clouds… Depression.
He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.
“What’s up with you?” He heard Jericho ask.
“My fucking brain.” Malcolm heard himself reply. “It’s
useless.” He punished himself by pounding his skull a few times. “I wish I were smarter.”
“If you were smarter then I’d hafta start listening to you
instead of the other way around.” Jericho said, shaking his head deep in thought. “No, no I don’t like the thought of that. I think it’s better this way.”
“You think you’re smarter than me?” Malcolm asked, a faint smile forming. If he couldn’t escape his stress, he could at least invite a little amusement inside the wall of suffering.
“Well yeah. I mean you don’t even realize my brother is a
clone, even after seeing him. Last night I went to his room to look around and he wasn’t there, and I think-”…
…But Malcolm stopped listening once again.
Instead he listened to the ambient sounds of the bus, his
peers talking and laughing and shouting, and secretly wished he could be nearly any one of them. They didn’t have to struggle to live up to impossible expectations…He knew in his heart-of-hearts that each of them led happy, vacuous lives. They didn’t struggle. They didn’t experience sadness the way he did. They were joyful little background characters content to continue their peaceful existences.
He listened to the rain falling outside the window. He felt
tempted to just get off the bus and run…Run far from his little town…Run to a part of the country where no one expected anything from him…Keep running. He’d run from his responsibilities and his identity. He’d run and hide and start a new life.
His ears throbbed louder than the tempest outside; each
beat a brand-new headache.
He felt his face growing hot.
His stomach churned.
He wanted to run and run and run…But he was
trapped…Trapped on the bus, trapped in his life, trapped in his head, trapped on the way to school where, yet again, he’d be reminded of his intellectual shortcomings.
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