Young Writers Society

Trey. Is silly.

_____

Everything is easy.

It is as if the whole world fits into my head, with still space left over. And it’s not just the world fitting perfectly, it’s the way that every piece makes perfect sense, every idea, every tragedy, every triumph. Knowledge drips like a broken faucet and once I decided I wanted to switch it off, I realized I couldn’t.

Now that I’m at the ripe old age of fourteen, I know everything.

The curiously frustrating part about this is that it is useless. I look around me and I see nothing worth saving, no one worth loving. And I laugh angrily that everything put together can’t stop me. I’m bored, I’m so very bored.

People have told me, ‘If you could just understand you would want to do the right thing!’ or, ‘If you knew everything about this you would want to help me!’ I am the one who proves them wrong. My very existence tells them that they don’t matter; because I know everything and I see no reason to pick up the pieces, cry for the dead child, love those with no one.

That sounds cruel, but it’s simply the product of knowledge. You are forced to truly know that not only are you incapable of changing anything, but also there is nothing worth changing. I can hear you saying it, ‘Even people without your power have changed the world!’ or, ‘Knowing everything is loving everything!’ Both ignorant assumptions are wrong. I have read about people who ‘changed the world’, people who give their whole lives to entropy--it’s a waste. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, things will always get worse.

You call me cynical, disgusting, pompous; I agree. But those are just truths, anyone who is not that way is simply lying to themselves or stupid.

I live in a city. One of those cities that is not really a city, but enjoys calling itself one for very conceited reasons. My city had a population of 94,000 people, before I decided to make it an even 90,000. I do what I can.

I will not give my city a name; a name would dignify its existence and dignity is the last thing it deserves. A city where 4,000 people can die in their beds and the so-called ‘authorities’ arrest and execute an innocent man. Thoroughly despicable; something that made me vomit in the sink. The toilet is out of order at the moment. In any case, I find this city to be more than slightly idiotic and I have formulated a plan to sink it into the ocean, just like Atlantis.

Kidding. These people are much more miserable alive than dead, and I refuse to do them any favors.

I have parents, a sister and a baby--but the baby is not mine and neither is the sister, if you think about it.

You assume that since I’m so ridiculously intelligent my parents must be at least smart enough to have more than three kids. But, alas no, they are like everyone else. They obey, they lay down when they’re told, they speak when they’re spoken to and they believe everything they hear on TV. Quite disheartening in the fact that they are the least unique people on this dreadful planet.

Two sons and a daughter, how fantastically original. My sister is a sweet little girl, I expect her to be more like me than my parents. I have been teaching her, waiting for her to give away the disease she might have incurred from fate. And if I never see it, of course I’ll know it’s there.

The baby is ordinary; not only because he has a different father than me--a father that my father knows nothing about--but for other reasons that need not be discussed.

I suppose I’m Trey, and I think I’ll screw with you.

_____

The lights in the Library are much too bright. The Librarian told me once, at a moment of weakness, that she put the wrong bulbs in on purpose. She told me that she hated the children, and she wanted to keep them from studying so that they would all feel as awful as she does. I admit that her tearful confession didn’t manipulate me into compassion, like she had hoped.

The slightly ironic part is that her little six-hundred watt bulb trick has severely injured her eyes, and she will be completely blind in five more years. I snicker when I see her: badly dyed red hair, watery eyes and unnatural bulge seem unnecessarily accentuated under the fluorescent glare.

“Hey, Ms. Souture, I am succeeding in life. Thanks to you,” I say, grinning at her widely. She doesn’t like it when people succeed. Her fingers curl, scratching the keyboard. “Oh, and I think you’re really hot.” There is a short silence where she simply gazes at me dumbly. “Kind of like a Santa Claus that molests children and then gets run over by a truck.”

Her expression finally changes. It’s a violent shade of purple as I back away. I’ve decided I won’t see her ever again.

It’s pale and slightly sticky outside; the autumn acting as something between the humidity of summer and the chill of winter. It doesn’t fit in my mind, unlike most things. The trees touch me as I walk beneath them. They think I’m an abomination. They would rather eat me. But I just tell them how it might be a long time before we meet again. I just tell them how ninth grade no longer interests me. I just don’t really care if they’re listening.

_____

The door slams to my room and I throw myself onto my bed, grabbing my pillow and hugging it to my chest. I wonder if I actually care about my sister at all. It seems a pertinent question, but not a particularly interesting one. Knowing everything has its limits, despite what you might think. Everything is never properly defined, and I’m not going to give away what it really means.

I bet Claire will kill me one day, if I don’t kill her first.

“Trey! Come watch your siblings while I get my hair done!” My mother’s voice is screechy and I chuckle to myself, imagining how her life might end.

“I am definitely coming right now!”

I listen, waiting to hear the door slam behind her and the baby begin to cry. Before I can drive myself further into insanity there is a knock on the door and I bury my head in my pillow. An unnecessarily ominous creaking tells me that Claire has figured out the ease of getting into my room and will soon be throwing herself on top of me. She doe not seem to like it when mother is gone. I am annoyed by this.

“Trey?”

I hear the muffled cries of the baby. They remind me of laughing. My laughing.

“The baby is crying.” I force myself to rise from my suffocating position and I glance at the pixie-like girl at my door.

“No lies?”

“Well, I don’t know what to do with it, so you do something.” She shrugs indifferently and then kicks the door shut, leaping onto my bed. “What is really at the end of the rainbow, Trey?” Roughly, she runs her hands through my hair and tries to make it stick up at stranger angles than it already does.

“Never. Yes, all the time. I don’t know.”

“Maybe the leprechauns haven’t told the truth,” mumbles Claire, hitting me in the side of the head when my hair won’t go the way she likes it.

“Ouch,” I say, rolling on top of her and then knocking her off the bed.

Instead of complaining about my cruelty, she just says, “The baby s crying louder.” I step on her as I leave the room.

The baby is crumpled. His clothes are decorated in chocolate frosting from a cupcake of long ago and when he sees me, he reaches out. I am tempted to stick my tongue out at him and walk away, but then I kick myself--which is actually impossible for someone like me--and decide to pretend to be compassionate.

When I conclude the long trek back to my room, I find Claire sprawled in the same position on the floor that I left her.

“Don’t bring him in here! Put him--”

“He’s already in hell, stupid,” I say, falling back on the bed and letting the baby sleep on my chest. I wonder if he thinks about his real father, and if he dreams about adultery. Somehow I hope not.

“I‘m tired of this,” mutters Claire, crawling back onto the bed next to me.

“Tired of what? We aren’t doing anything to be tired of.”

“I was thinking about something,” Claire says, drawing something with her fingernail on my arm. I decide to ignore her and close my eyes. She says something about China, and something else about the lack of success in the area of Eugenics, and possibly a little about the drool soaking into my shirt. But I’m not paying enough attention to respond.

“You should go to bed,” I say finally. Yet I know she won’t.

“You weren’t listening to me,” she says diffidently. “But I won’t go to bed. Not until one of them gets home. Actually, I hope they die. And I only hope because--because I know it won’t help.” The baby begins to squirm, its face scrunching up and tears leaking from under its closed lids. “Do you think,” she says slowly, “do you think they would care if I died, Trey? Would they care if you died? Or the baby?” She says it like it has little or nothing to do with her. I wonder if it does.

“No. Yes. Stupid.” Of course they would care, but not more than they care about running over a raccoon, or forgetting a credit card at a supermarket.

“Do you think Alan Rickman cares about me?”

Before I can answer the door bell rings and she throws herself off the bed, racing into the other room. I get up and follow her, acquiring a migraine from her stupid question. Dirty clothes and discarded toys litter the living room floor--I assume the maid hasn’t been around yet this week. Claire fumbles with the locks, aggravation written in her freckles as she jerks the door open violently. Ha, she looks like me.

“We didn’t order a damn pizza,” Claire says dully, but dangerously angry at the same time.

“I think you did.” The kid reads our address off a scrap of paper and looks up. “That’s your address, right?” Claire glares.

“I told you we didn’t order a pizza--I don’t care if that’s our address!” She turns to me. “Trey, make him leave!” Her screech somehow doesn’t wake the baby and I step forward, pushing her out of the way where she immediately kicks the bookcase as hard as she can and then begins cursing like a demon.

“Baby for a pizza?” I ask, making a face.

The kid stares at me for a moment and then backs up. “Um…”

“Well, she’s right. We didn’t order a pizza and--”

“Wait, you‘re not her dad, right? So, would you mind if I get her phone number?” He grins sheepishly, and Claire jumps to her feet.

“I’m only eleven, you freak!” I step back and she slams the door, locking it ferociously, her emotion quite a bit exaggerated. “What was wrong with that guy? I hate those guys, I hate them all--I want dad to get home…”

“I’m going to lay the baby down and then you’re going to bed.” She doesn’t respond. “Claire, you have--”

“I’m going to sleep with you tonight.” Abruptly, she jumps up from the couch and runs into my room, kicking the door shut fiercely. I groan, but the baby doesn’t stir, now too dead to the world to care. When I lay him down in his crib his mouth remains half-open and there is a crease on his cheek from where he rested on my t-shirt; I study him half-heartedly, but continue to see nothing. When I return to my room Claire is cuddled under the covers, staring, and hoping to see nothing.

“Claire, why--”

“Because it’s scary when no one--When…” She stops, pushing her face into a dirty-looking pillow. I wait. “When no one is alive,” she finishes, her voice muffled horribly.

I mostly know what she means, but I would rather not admit it, so I just pull my socks off and throw them at her. One hits her in the head and she puts it in her mouth and gags. Shaking my head, I throw myself on top of her and she squirms, screaming something unintelligible.

“I don’t think you’re any less scared in my bed, sweetie.” I say it mockingly and roll off of her, stretching out on my back and wondering why I’m still wearing my jeans. “I’m not exactly trustworthy.”

She giggled and hit me in the side of the head. I deserved it. “It’d be better if you killed me in my sleep than if I dreamed of myself. Dead, dead, dead… always dead.” There was a short silence. “Are you dead, Trey? Even in your dreams?”

“I don’t. Have dreams,” I say quickly, rubbing my head.

“I’ll give you mine,” she says, yawning widely and then laying her head on my chest. “And then I’ll tear your heart out with my teeth while you sleep. You’ll think it’s a dream. But it won’t be.”

I take a deep breath, digging for a comeback. “You’re in the ceiling.” She laughs.

“Shut up, idiot-boy. You’re scared, too. That’s why you don’t kick me out.” I shoved her off the bed.

“Damn you!” she screams, jumping on top of me and trying to pull all my hair out of my head. I yell something about justice and then roll on top of her, yanking her hands out of my hair. “You--weigh--a lot--” she gasps.

“I don’t,” I say nonchalantly. But I roll off of her. And then we go to sleep.

______