Free The House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni

near the front windows. On the wall opposite the windows was a gargantuan television with an elaborate sound system attached. Above the television was a small brass cross with Jesus splayed across it. I had never been to church, but I’d seen the image.
    “Go ahead,” said Janice. “Just go up and knock on his door. I’ll make some grilled cheese sandwiches.”
    I walked to the end of the hall to a staircase. I was about to go up when I noticed a closed door with an enormous poster of a shirtless man covering it. The man was sitting on the hood of a shiny black car, and his hair was dripping wet. He seemed to be looking right at me. Across his broad hairless chest in thick black marker read the words “MEREDITH’S ROOM.” Then, on his flat, sweaty stomach, it said, “STAY OUT!” I could hear a slight murmur from behind the door, then a laugh. I hurried past.
    The stair steps were covered in worn red carpeting. I ascended all the way up to a narrow hall about the same width as the staircase. At the end of the hall, on the right, was a door. The only thing that was on the door was a short command scratched into the wood. “Rise Above!” it said. I stuffed my helmet under my arm and approached the door. I knocked four times. A few long seconds passed, then the knob turned and the door opened a crack. An enlarged eye looked out at me through a fogged lens.
    “Hi,” I said.
    The door opened slightly wider, and Jared wiped the condensation from his glasses. He removed a mini white headphone from his ear.
    “Hey,” he said.
    He was wearing black pants and a black shirt that had the chest and arm bones of a skeleton on them. The shirt was supposed to create the effect that Jared was a skeleton-man. Unfortunately, the bones were way too big to be realistic.
    “I apologize for not telephoning,” I said, “but Nana sent me on an errand nearby.”
    Jared nodded. “What kind of errand?”
    He still hadn’t opened his door all the way.
    “Paint,” I said.
    “Paint,” he repeated slowly.
    He tapped his fingers on the door, then looked back into his room. I examined his hair. There were drops of moisture clinging to his individual scraggly black locks. He looked at my helmet.
    “Did that come with a tampon?” he asked.
    I didn’t respond. Instead, I just held out the paper bag I had been carrying.
    “What’s this?” Jared inspected the bag.
    “It’s for you,” I said.
    I had been holding it so tightly that the paper was crinkled. It looked like a piece of trash now. Yet Jared’s skeleton arm took the bag. His glasses were clouded over again, and he wiped them and peered inside. He pulled out the disc. Despite the wear and tear of the sack, the compact disc itself was still shiny, the plastic wrapping untouched.
    “Where did you get this?” he asked, staring at the cover.
    “At a disc shop.”
    “How did you buy it, I mean?”
    “With a twenty-dollar bill.”
    Jared blinked twice behind his lenses. “Come in,” he said.
    He opened his door all the way and I followed him inside. The room had dark carpeting, and every inch of wall space was covered in photographs of musicians. Cutouts from magazines. Rail-thin men with bald heads or just a single row of hair down the middle. They were frozen midshriek, midleap. Guys with black guitars, spitting great arcs of water into the crowd. Across from his bed were two giant shelves of compact discs and record albums, some of them stacked on top of a computer (it must have been the one he used to contact me). There were also discs on the floor and on a bedside table next to some small plastic devices that looked medical. A humidifier huffed out dense clouds of mist in the corner. The temperature was balmy.
    Jared picked at the wrapping on the disc. “I don’t have this one,” he said quietly.
    “What’s that smell?” I asked.
    Soon after I entered the room, I had noticed a strong vinegary odor.
    “Nothing,” he said. “There’s no smell.”
    He walked