Glitch. Part 10

"Rules only apply if someone's watching." Jon said. We entered a stretch of road bordered by trees on both sides.

"Also don't tell Mom I said that," Jon added.

I grunted.

We completed the turn around circle road and came to the lights on Mississauga Road. Jon took a right without checking for traffic or pedestrians. The car skidded.

"Are you drunk?" I asked.

Jon puffed out his cheeks and stuck out his tongue, like one of those girls on the animes he watched. The face looked displaced on my tall, muscled, five-o'clock-shadowed brother.

"Tell me about the exam or about Nicole," he said. "I'm not going to listen to your c.r.a.p music for the next hour."

It was half an hour back to Brampton. "Test was okay," I said. "Except I had to say a bunch of stuff about Kublai Khan."

"That poem you hate?"

"Yep."

"So you slammed it?"

I shook my head.

"There are, rules and stuff," I said.

The snow on Mississauga Road glowed orange in the streetlamps. Jon pushed the car through it. If it kept snowing like this, the tracks we left would be covered by morning.

We didn't usually get heavy, soft snow like this. Usually it came hard and windy, with icy teeth that burned cheeks and shook the dead leaves out of trees. This snow fell like a blanket.

"You know I read that thing after you were complaining about it," Jon said. "I don't get it."

"It's just a stupid opium dream," I said. "Some guy gets high and writes about it."

"You don't have to say it's good if you think it's stupid."

I bit my lip. Kublai Khan was more than stupid.

"There are rules though," I said. "My prof has this fu-stupid idea that art is this spontaneous thing you can't control."

I bit the rest of my opinions down, because if I let them out I'd never stop.

If art was truly spontaneous, something truly uncontrollable, studying art was pointless. If it couldn't be controlled, it couldn't be understood. Professor Simon's idea of the poem shat on the money I paid her to teach me.

"So write that out," Jon said, like it was easy.

"It's not just the profs," I said. "It's the f.u.c.king-sorry-stupid people in the cla.s.ses who fawn over them and enable this sort of sycophantic cl.u.s.terfu-orgy. Thing."

"There's no meaning in any of it," I said.

I looked out the window, at the dark streets racing by. There wasn't meaning there either, just cold snow and wind.

"And it's so boring," I finished. "Really, really boring. We're not learning methods or theories, just interpretations."

"And you haven't asked your prof about this?" Jon asked.

"There are rules," I repeated.

Jon was silent for a while. After a bit, he turned the radio to 91.1 and soft jazz mumbled through the speakers. Jon thought about whatever Jon thought about. I thought about rules.

After Jon died, I forgot about rules.

"Sam? You up?"

Horrible brightness shocked the living room.

"Aaaah," I held a hand up to s.h.i.+eld my eyes. My vision blurred. I blinked and felt stinging tears pour through my crusted eyes. "What the h.e.l.l man?"

The living room looked worse now; that was my fault.

I felt a lot worse too; that was on me as well.

I'd made a camp on the sofa in front of our TV. Aside from pillows, blankets, and two flashlights, I'd also stockpiled beer and food. The overall presentation did not look good. It didn't even look sane.

The food was on the other end of the couch: a sandwich made of bologna, cheese, and tomato. It was teetering on the sofa arm, dangerously close to falling. The beer was even closer: an empty pack of Coors lay on the floor, neatly squared against the sofa. The pack's handle was ripped, and the tear broke apart the pack's printed mountain scenery to show corrugated cardboard. More importantly, the tear made two bottles roll out under the sofa when I opened them. I'd spent a good five minutes last night trying vainly to retrieve the bottles without getting off the couch.

Greg, standing at the entrance of the hallway in suit-jacketed sternness, did not look impressed. I motioned for him to turn off the light. He shook his head.

He wormed out of his jacket and folded it across his arm. "Sorry man."

"I was sleeping." I lied. I hadn't really slept all night. I'd dozed. Every ten minutes my head had nodded off, and I'd entered a zone of grey thoughtblurs and semi-restfullness. But every time, I'd jerked awake, checked my mirror, and saw the blue eyes staring back at me.

I s.h.i.+fted my a.s.s and bottles clinked around me. My back hurt from sitting too long.

"How's the arm?" Greg draped his jacket lightly over the TV.

I looked at my arm. Purple bruises swam across the wrist and knuckles. A lukewarm Coors bottle nestled under it. It radiated sickly warmth.

"Needs more cold." I coughed, then groaned. "What time is it?"

"Eight o'clock." Greg said. He raised an eyebrow at the bottles. "You realize it's a work day."

Eight o'clock.

I scrunched my face and hoped sleep would come. It didn't. I just felt nervous, sick, miserable.

"Where were you?" I asked. I felt around and realized I still had pants on. Point one for Sam.

"Late night at work," Greg said as he walked over to his room. He vanished into the hallway and shouted: "Decided to stay at Carrie's. You should've seen it-there was this GIS report due because of some new software. Everyone was going crazy."

"That does sound crazy," I said. I eyed the light switch on the other side of the room. I wished Greg would turn it off.

Greg came back into the living room. He'd changed into a new pair of khakis and a starched, daffodil dress s.h.i.+rt. He b.u.t.toned the cuffs and asked me without looking up, "So are you going to work today or what?"

"Not feeling good," I said. I curled my clammy toes against the sofa.

"Wonder why," Greg said. He got both cuffs b.u.t.toned and patted the s.h.i.+rt down. "By the way, turns out the s.h.i.+rtless Santa's had a Facebook page all along. I think he manages it himself."

"I see." I said. I lurched upright and planted both feet on the ground. I clumsily grabbed at the table and heave myself up. The blood rushed out of my head. Stars exploded in my eyes. My legs gave way and I crashed back into the sofa. Bottles clinked and the sofa springs creaked to welcome me back.

Looked like I was staying put.

"Anyway, we'll do something simple next week," Greg said. He retrieved his suit jacket from the TV and put it back on. He pulled the lapels and the fabric fwumped like a sail in high wind. "I guess I'll see you tonight?"

I had hardly heard him. I just nodded. My eyes closed. My head spun. Colours danced behind my eyelids.

"Cool. Uh, feel better." Greg's disembodied voice said.

I heard footsteps, and the sound of an opening door.

"Wait," I groaned. "Wait-about that photo you took-"

The door clicked shut. Greg was gone. I was alone.

Well, not quite alone.

I waited for the stars to pa.s.s. They did. The dizziness cleared and I felt the machinery in my head slowly choke, rattle, and finally jerk to life like an old engine with a few kilometers left in it.

I slowly patted myself to get an idea of where all my body parts were. I found my hips, found my jeans, and then felt a tiny, hard circle inside my front pocket.

f.u.c.k.

I reached into the pocket. My hand came out with a simple gold earring looped around my index finger. After so long in my pocket, it matched my body heat perfectly. Greasy whorls smudged the metal where I'd touched it.

So, it was still here.

I thought of getting up again, but my head was still reeling from my last attempt. Instead, I threw off the blanket.

I leaned over the sofa and looked down. The floor stared back at me. I had to get down.

But how would I- I leaned too far. My balance vanished. I whipped my hands out but they struck empty air. I twisted. The blanket tangled my legs. I was dropping. Down down do- I was on the floor now.

Mission accomplished.

I raised my head. The dark green blanket tugged my feet as I s.h.i.+fted. I kicked it off and got to my knees.

Okay. So far so good. I crawled on the floor to the windows.

The entire north wall of our living room is windows, looking out to the other apartment building across from us. Greg said it looked like money. I said I didn't want people staring at my junk. Greg's inevitable response to this was the a.s.surance no one wanted to stare at my junk. Touche, Greg.

The thin, blue blinds were the only barrier between the world and my obvious inebriation. I crawled over to them now, stumbling over the cold, bare floor.

I reached the little blind-control stick at the end of the last window, and spun it. The blinds slanted open, and revealed the apartment complex. A small, orange sun was rising in the east, and it cast pumpkin-coloured light on the manicured lawns and asphalt byways below.

The light was too much. I closed the blinds.

I coughed again, and gagged on my own breath. I thought of how I must look: a sweat-stained, unclean, alcohol-ghost. Wrinkled clothes, messed hair, breath smelling like rancid sick. Slats of light striping my hands and back. Clinging to the floor. Baffled by gravity. Disgusting.

It was the earring's fault.

The earring.

I'd dropped it at the foot of the sofa leg. It was still there, half-hidden under a drift of green blanket.

I stumbled on all fours away from the windows. The curved gold caught the faint light in the room and concentrated it to a point-a single, unblinking eye.

The earring ruined everything. I could ignore my eyes-still blue, still glow-in-the-dark-by avoiding mirrors. h.e.l.l, I could pretend I always had blue eyes. But the earring was something incontrovertibly real.

I tripped. My knees skidded on the floor. I sprawled forward on the ground, right in front of the earring. Not so small anymore: it towered, a wall of inscrutable gold with its single point of light, watching me.

I hated it. Especially because hating the earring was easier than the vague sense at the back of my head that, somehow, I had landed in something terrifying, and then f.u.c.ked it up.

I grabbed it. I squeezed it in my palm and felt the edge dig into my skin.

"f.u.c.king thing." I grumbled. My eyes shut and this time I thought sleep would come. I thought I'd fall asleep, and wake up safe and warm and normal. But no sleep came.

"f.u.c.king thing." I whispered. Then I groaned, and tossed the thing away.

I really needed a shower.

It was such a stupid thing.

I slouched against the shower wall, pinching the earring in my thumb and index, observing it for any imperfections or hidden letters that would only appear in warm soapy water. I found none.

It was just a goldish circle, broken only by a tiny lever to separate it. I knew three different places where I could get better-looking jewelry than this.

But last night, Amrith said this earring could find the thing that had changed my eyes.