Free Eeeee Eee Eeee by Tao Lin

watching
The Breakfast Club.”
    A few kids laughed, and then Ellen raised her hand. “Why are you acting like that?” she said.
    “Like what?” said the substitute teacher.
    “I don’t know,” Ellen said.
    “Speak to me after class,” said the substitute teacher, then drew a caricature of George Orwell on the blackboard. It was pretty good, but the class had lost interest in her, and began to talk to each other about
Family Guy
, online role-playing games, and how it would be fun to wear football helmets and light fireworks and then hit the fireworks back and forth with tennis rackets at each other’s heads. “If I don’t do that tonight I’m beheading myself looking in the bathroom mirror,” someone said.
    “What’s your name?” said the substitute teacher after class to Ellen.
    “I don’t know,” Ellen said.
    The teacher laughed. She didn’t stop. It seemed like she didn’t stop. Ellen walked out of the classroom. In her next class she drew a picture of a Native American leading an army of turkeys to the White House. The turkeys looked like cupcakes. She drew arrows at the turkeys and wrote, “Turkeys.” After class, a girl wearing a shirt that said “Mineral” approached her. “Hey,” she said. “I like what you drew.” Ellen blushed. “Did you tell that substitute you didn’t know what your name was? That’s good.” Ellen didn’t know what to say. She never knew what to say. “I hate school,” she said. A group of kids walked by and the girl with the “Mineral” shirt went with them. Ellen sat through three more classes. After school she wanted to smash things. She walked home, across a field and a street. At home she sat on her bed. Sometimes she sat thinking, “Ellen … Ellen … Ellen … Ellen … Ellen …” and she did that now. She thought about dying. After a while she lay down. She felt hungry. She stood and a dolphin was there.
    The dolphin quietly went, “Eeeee eee eeee.”
    “Do you want to play with me?” the dolphin said.
    Ellen looked at her feet. “Okay,” she said.
    The dolphin held Ellen’s hand.
    They went in the backyard and the dolphin opened a trapdoor.
    They climbed down a ladder.
    Halfway down a bear was coming up.
    “Use teleport,” the dolphin said.
    “I don’t have it,” the bear said.
    “Why not?”
    “I just don’t,” the bear said.
    “Are you sure?”
    “Oh yeah. Wait. I forgot that I had the ability to teleport,” the bear said.
    “A sarcastic bear,” the dolphin said.
    “A bear. A sarcastic bear. A bear, a dolphin,” the bear said. “A stupid bear. A fucking moose.”
    “We have two people so you go down,” the dolphin said.
    “Fine,” the bear said. “Life is stupid anyway.”
    The dolphin and Ellen and the bear went down the ladder.
    There was a corridor.
    “Thank you,” the dolphin said to Ellen.
    The dolphin hugged Ellen.
    “I like you,” the dolphin said.
    The dolphin looked at Ellen.
    The bear scratched the wall a little.
    “Thank you for coming, Ellen,” the dolphin said.
    Ellen looked at her feet.
    She had plastic sandals.
    The sandals were green and blue.
    The bear made a quiet high-pitched noise.
    Ellen made eye contact with the bear.
    “Do you want to come?” Ellen said to the bear.
    The bear scratched the wall and looked at the dolphin.
    “No,” the bear said. “I wouldn’t have fun anyway. I can’t have fun in groups of three.”
    The bear knelt and opened a trapdoor and tried to crawl in but didn’t fit.
    The bear stood.
    “I don’t need to go there,” the bear said.
    The bear had a blanket and it folded it neatly.
    “I don’t know,” the bear said. “I’ll go work on my novel I guess.”
    The bear went up the ladder.
    The dolphin and Ellen walked to a cliff.
    The dolphin knelt and opened a trapdoor.
    They crawled through a tunnel.
    There was a room.
    It had a bed, a refrigerator, a Christmas tree.
    The Christmas tree had blinking lights.
    “Are you hungry?” the dolphin