Free Wonders of the Invisible World by Christopher Barzak Page A

ended.
    “She kept telling him to stop filming her,” I said. “No means no, dude. You get what you deserve.”
    Jarrod chuckled and took a swig from his bottle. We were on our fifth beers, and I was feeling fuzzy around the edges. A different fuzzy than how I usually felt. This felt like I was somehow lighter, like some kind of pressure had been relieved. This felt like the opposite of those times when a migraine would come for me.
    When Jarrod finished his beer a second later, he stood and went to the kitchen to retrieve the last two, then came back with the top already taken off mine. “I don’t think you should drive home tonight,” he said as he stretched to pass me the bottle. “I couldn’t live with myself if you got into an accident after drinking over here.”
    “I guess I could stay here,” I said. “I’d just have to call my parents and tell them.”
    “Sure,” Jarrod said. “Just don’t sound drunk when you talk to your mom or she’ll be over here in a hurry to get you.”
    “It sounds like you’ve had practice at doing this,” I said, laughing.
    Jarrod laughed too. “Okay, okay,” he said. “You’ve got me. But learn from my mistakes, grasshopper. Practice makes perfect.”
    So I practiced talking out loud for a while, just to make sure I wasn’t slurring my words, which I didn’t do at all. Which surprised me. I’d always expected that the first time I drank anything alcoholic, I wouldn’t be able to stand, let alone talk coherently. The beer, though, hadn’t hit me hard. Probably because it was the cheapest stuff Jarrod could find in the coolers of the shadiest little convenience store in the next town over.
    After all that practice at talking sober to fool my mother, though, it turned out to be my dad who answered the phone when I eventually called. He said staying over at Jarrod’s was fine, but he expected me home early enough to help him with chores the next morning. I said, “Sure thing. Will do. Thanks, Dad.” And when I clicked my phone off a second later, Jarrod slowly raised his fists into the air, shaking them victoriously, like we’d just won a championship ball game.
    “Come on,” he said, and got up to lead me back to his room.
    While the carpet in the trailer was something I remembered from hanging out there as a kid, Jarrod’s room seemed different. It was the size of a matchbox, made even smaller by his bed, which was this huge sleigh-shaped thing that barely fit. It took up most of the space, leaving only a person-sized path to walk around its edges. In my memory, the room had been way bigger. Maybe, though, I only remembered it like that because I’d been a lot smaller.
    “You can have the bed,” Jarrod said, nodding toward it. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”
    I looked at that narrow strip of free space around the edge of the bed and said, “No way. That won’t be comfortable at all.”
    “I’ve slept in worse places,” Jarrod said, shrugging. I wondered what he meant, but didn’t ask.
    “I can sleep out on the couch,” I offered instead, turning back to the living room. “I don’t mind. Really.”
    “No,” he said. “My mom will come through there when she gets home from work, and if she smells beer on you she’ll go crazy. I already put the other evidence in the trash can out back. I don’t usually have anything around to set her off, but I figure what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her.”
    “It’s your call,” I said. “But it’s also your bed. Why don’t I take the floor instead?”
    Jarrod opened his mouth, but for a moment he just stood there, saying nothing, as if he’d lost all of his words. A strange look passed over his face. Then quickly he sat down on the edge of the bed, put his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, and he started to mutter, saying how stupid he was, how he wished he wasn’t so goddamned stupid.
    “What’s the matter?” I asked. But he just kept shaking his head and mumbling about how he was