Just kidding.
~
“Sometimes, Nick, I’m not sure if you’ll ever learn.”
The three Jonas kids were sitting in their sort of bland living room, the late afternoon sun reflecting off the flashing television in a very irritating way. Nick was stretched out on the muted grey carpet that might have been mouse vomit, and he was staring at the ceiling in an apathetic way. Joe and Kevin were both on the couch, Joe’s head resting on Kevin’s shoulder; neither looked interested, in anything.
“I’m always learning,” said Nick. But his eyes stayed sort of blank, and the way his dull, curly hair fanned out around his head made him look more like that SNL guy from Hot Rod than a teenage heartthrob. Even Nick sometimes had a hard time understanding what made him popular.
“Nick,” Kevin said again, using his bossy-big-sister tone, “you put the television behind the couch when we moved in here. You tried to install Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 on your CD player. You don’t even know how to watch TV.”
Joe snickered and Kevin elbowed him in the back. He fell off the couch and swore loudly in four different languages.
“So, Kevin, just because I laugh at your stupid jokes now means that you get to -- to --” Joe’s stuttering helped him get away with not admitting that he really didn’t know what he was saying.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” said Kevin. Nevermind. He didn’t get away with it.
“I’m just -- I’m just tired of you,” said Joe, the scorn in his voice resembling that of a pissed off middle school girl talking to her thirty-second boyfriend. It didn’t bode well for Joe.
“Anyway, I was trying to tell Nick how absurdly pathetic he is when you rudely interrupted. Idiot.” He paused. Joe just crossed his arms and stuck out his lower lip. “So, Nick,” Kevin continued, “I hope you remember the time you threw up your birthday cake because you believed me when I told you I had used the blood of your dead fish to make the frosting pink. Everyone thought you threw it up because it was pink, and boys should never eat pink frosting, but it was because of that stupid fish. The fish that you saw me flush down the toilet. How you imagined I had followed it through the sewer to --”
“Finding Nemo,” said Nick. He almost looked angry. Joe tried not to laugh.
“Excuse me?” said Kevin.
There was a short silence where Nick opened and closed his mouth half a dozen times before deciding he had didn’t want to try (and fail) to trick anyone into thinking he knew what he was talking about. Something he and Joe didn’t have in common. Joe always tried to fool them, and always failed; Nick just didn’t try.
“Is that the doorbell?” said Joe suddenly, jumping to his feet.
“We don’t have a doorbell, asshole,” laughed Kevin, reveling in his sense of superiority.
“That was the television,” said Nick quietly, excessively proud that he had figured that out all by himself.
“Good job, Nick,” said Kevin, quite astounded.
Joe just stood there. Too embarrassed to sit back down and too angry to leave and give them the pleasure of his absence. After a moment he decided to sit down on top of Kevin. Nick began to giggle to himself as Kevin and Joe got into ‘I can slap you in the face until you cry’ fight. It went on for a good ten minutes, and by the time they were finished, their favorite episode of Hannah Montana had ended and they were so angry they started the whole thing over again. Nick eventually fell asleep.
The sun went down. Kevin and Joe slowly grew weary of slapping each other and sat back down on the couch in the exact same position they had started in. Joe’s absurd head resting on Kevin’s vaguely intelligent shoulder, and Nick swimming in and out of consciousness on the floor. Kevin often told him he had no real consciousness; he just had a subconscious, and a sub-subconscious. It was sort of true. And no one ever knew that that was how Harpo Marx described himself, and that Kevin committed heinous plagiarism every time he said it.
By the time dinner came around they were all asleep. It wasn’t until Kevin was rudely woken up by a loud pounding on the door that he realized he was hungry for some cream cheese and ketchup on granola; his favorite snack.
“Nick, get the damn door. Joe fell asleep on me again.”
Joe snored loudly. Nick didn’t move.
“Nick, you damned idiot! Wake up and get the door!”
The pounding on the door grew louder and Joe rivaled it with his snoring. In a fit of rage, Kevin threw Joe off his lap and onto the floor, where he rolled on top of Nick, hoping to suffocate him. Swearing filthily, he got to his feet and stomped to door, stomping on Nick and Joe multiple times before actually reaching the solid oak door. Not bothering to look through the ultra-security peephole, he threw the door open and was ready to throw all his cleverest insults at whoever had caused him such rage, when he suddenly realized who it was.
“Oh, Sarah. Hi.” The amazing way he had twisted his face slowly melted and he tried to smile. No luck.
Sarah had blonde hair. And her jeans were skinny, and her shirt was pink, and her eyes were little oceans of make-up, and there were always loud bracelets on her tiny wrists that competed with her loud laugh and her loud flirting and her loud way of complaining about how ugly she was.
“Hi, Kev --”
“It’s Sarah, guys!” screamed Kevin, and he turned around and marched back into the living room. He hated straight girls. The only girls he could stand were the raging lesbians. And not many raging lesbians were interested in teenage heartthrobs who were supposed to be profoundly straight. None of the Jonas kids were particularly straight, but it was difficult for them to convince the lesbians of this, and they weren’t the most talented communicators on the planet, so, as they deserved, most of the girls they knew were straighter than their absurd hair. Which was very straight, by the way.
“It’s Sarah,” mumbled Joe, rolling off Nick and wiping the drool off his chin into Nick’s hair. He got slowly to his feet, still groggy enough to seem drunk, and stumbled over to Sarah who was standing at the entrance of the living room, smiling blankly and looking like she thought she was fooling everyone into thinking she knew exactly what she was doing. Luckily, no one cared. But, if they had, Sarah would not have accomplished her supposed accomplishment. “C’mere, Sarah,” he slurred, and he pulled her into a tight hug where she remained, suffocating, for a good minute before Joe went back to sleep standing up. Sleep causing him to lose his balance, his toppled on top of her with a loud crash.
“Hi, Joe,” said Sarah, remaining surprisingly calm and shoving Joe off of her. “Bad time?” she asked, getting to her feet and allowing her hands to dart around her face and body fixing all of the features of her outfit that Joe had destroyed.
“Absolutely not,” snapped Kevin, turning up the television so loud that Joe and Nick jumped to their feet and screamed in horror. “Sorry, guys,” snickered Kevin, enjoying their pain and watching Sarah grow more and more confused.
“Turn the damn thing off!” screamed Nick, his eyes wild and his hair sticking up at unusual angles. And then he threw himself at the television and shattered the screen on his head. There was a loud buzzing noise and then everything was quiet.
“Nick? Are you alright?” said Sarah.
Kevin and Joe were both so hysterical that they were unable to speak for another three minutes.
Nick didn’t respond. Sarah knelt down beside him and brushed his hair out of his eyes. “Nick? Nick, can you hear me?” Her voice shook dramatically and Joe and Kevin were suddenly confused as to how a cheap sitcom could still be playing when Nick had just destroyed the television. It didn’t stop their laughing, but their eyebrows knitted a little and there mouths grew more serious.
“I feel amazing,” Nick said finally, his eyes still closed and glass still falling lazily out of his hair.
“Can you hear me, Nick?” said Sarah, her voice rising. “Nick, can you hear me! Are you alive?”
This was too much for Nick. He had used all his energy to say the words that he was sure would get rid of the extremely straight girl at his side and it hadn’t worked. She continued to shout nonsense. With a speed that was uncharacteristic of the Jonas child, his hand shot out and caught her in the mouth. She fell back unconscious and Nick got slowly to his feet. Kevin and Joe were still laughing.
Nick stared at Sarah. “Do we like girls?” he asked suddenly, brushing the glass off his clothes.
There was a short silence where Kevin swallowed four times, and then took a deep breath. “Not straight one’s.”
“But if they’re lesbian, we like them, right?” said Nick, beginning to sound panicked.
“Sure, sure, Nick,” aid Kevin.
“Then I’m straight?” screamed Nick, his shoulder tense and his fists clenched at his sides.
“Yes, Nick!” yelled Kevin back. “You are!”
Nick calmed down and then kicked Sarah in the head. “Straight girls are ugly.” And then he lay back down on the carpet and fell asleep.
Joe dragged Sarah out onto the porch and slammed the door. Then he lay back down on Kevin’s lap and fell asleep. Kevin pretended he was watching his favorite episode of Hannah Montana. They were all happy.
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