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Willie came around the corner into the kitchen chewing on what looked like a dog toy.
‘Where’d you get that, pal?’ Jayson asked him.
Willie froze. He knew that he wasn’t supposed to be eating food that wasn’t portioned out to him. The problem was that he only remembered this rule when he got caught.
‘Hand it over, Silly Willie,’ Jayson said. He held out his hand. ‘And spit out whatever’s in your mouth. That isn’t food.’
Willie paused for a moment, his slow synapses debating whether there was a way to continue chewing on the marrow-flavored rawhide dog bone that he had found in the field out back. Concluding the inevitable, he spit out the one chunk he’d managed to soften and bite free.
‘That’s my boy,’ Jayson said, realizing the sad parallel of addressing his brother like a pet while simultaneously holding a hunk of chewed up rawhide in his hand. ‘We can have a snack later.’
Willie shuffled off into the mud room, already refocused on finding another morsel of something edible in the yard.
Jayson looked out the kitchen window at the twins’ house next door. A movement caught his eye from the upstairs left window. Trey’s window. A second later he saw Trey walk by the window again. He was shirtless in the late August heat.
Jayson tried not to think what he was already thinking. Trey was like a brother to him. But he’d found himself falling further and further into a crush throughout the summer. To clear his head, he went back up to his room to work on finishing the Dallasty! cliffhanger script.
That it contained J.B. and Amethyst Carrington’s steamiest kiss yet was pure coincidence.
As Jayson breezed through the twins’ kitchen later that afternoon, he called out to their mother, who was sewing daisy-patterned curtains in their dining room.
‘Hiya, Terri!’
‘Please call me Mrs. Wernermeier, Jayson,’ she called back sternly, ‘I’ve asked you a hundred times.’
‘No probs, Mrs. Wernermeier,’ Jayson responded. ‘And you can call me Mr. Blocher.’
Jayson didn’t even try being polite to the twins’ mother anymore. Terri’s main goal in life–second only to serving her LordGodJesusChristSaviorOfAllMankind–was making the Blocher family miserable. While most of the neighborhood had taken issue with one or another of the Blochers’ escapades, it was generally Terri who made the first phone call to Child Services Department; the Police Department; the Fire Department; the Animal Control Department; and, in one particularly memorable accidental fish hook injury, the Hunting and Fishing Department. Toni often swore that Terri must have the government services Yellow Page ripped out and stuck to their refrigerator.
Perhaps what bothered Terri the most was her children’s friendship with ‘an avowed eventual sinner’ like Jayson. However the twins’ father, Tom, had always been more than cordial toward Jayson and his family. Like Terri, Tom had also gone to high school with Toni. As Toni had once told Jayson, he’d fingered her at Homecoming.
Trey and Tara were downstairs, sharing a green and yellow beanbag chair imprinted with a Green Bay Packers logo.
‘Voila! The final script!’ Jayson said, bellyflopping on the couch behind them. ‘Here, I typed up two copies.’ He threw them into the twins’ laps. They were both engrossed in an afternoon rerun of theirs and Jayson’s favorite sitcom, Disorder in the Court, which TV Guide described as ‘the madcap adventures of a curmudgeonly family court judge and his six boisterously lovable inner-city foster children.’ It was a blatant rip-off of Diff’rent Strokes, but Jayson was willing to overlook the breach of copyright ethics because the show featured Devlin Williamson. Jayson knew everything about Devlin Williamson. He ripped out every magazine article he could find about him in the library or while waiting in line at the grocery checkout. Jayson knew Devlin’s favorite foods, his lucky number, his dog’s name, his birthday…which was only three months before Jayson’s. They were almost exactly the same age. Devlin was officially Jayson’s first crush. Or at least the first crush that he could share with the twins. He wasn’t about to admit to his newfound feelings for Trey.
Devlin Williamson played Andy Andrews on Disorder in the Court for the show’s first season and a half. He’d become sort of a pre-teen idol for a while. Jayson had no idea what Devlin was doing currently–his star faded as quickly as it arrived. But it didn’t matter to Jayson since he could still be seen on television each and every day on channel 4 from 3:00 to 3:30. Every time Devlin shrugged his shoulders, turned toward the studio audience, and impishly uttered his catchphase, ‘It wuzzzzzn’t me!’ Jayson’s heart melted a little.
Jayson and the twins finished watching Disorder in the Court before the twins picked up and began reading through their Dallasty! scripts.
‘Another kissing scene?’ Trey asked after he’d turned the last page.
‘Yes, of course.’ Jayson tried to brush off Trey’s concerns. ‘It’s the season finale. The audience will expect it to be action-packed and extra steamy.’
‘What the fuck? I die?!’ Tara interrupted as she reached the final page.
‘As an actress,’ Jayson explained, ‘having your character killed off at the height of a show’s popularity can be an amazing boon for your career. It frees up your contract, and most likely another network will build an all-new series around you.’
‘I don’t know if I feel up to it today,’ Trey said, crossing his arms behind his head and sinking further into the beanbag. Jayson noticed that Trey’s biceps seemed to be growing larger by the day. Jayson also noticed that he was noticing things like Trey’s biceps more and more.
‘Okay. No problem. We can do it after Toni gets back in town.’
‘Your mother’s going away?’ Tara perked up. ‘Where?’ This was what Jayson liked best about Tara. She was remarkably lazy–until an opportunity for delinquency presented itself. What was doubly beautiful about her nefariousness was that she was so genetically innocent looking. Long straight blonde hair, a gangly athletic build, and angelic pristine blue eyes. Both of the twins exhibited a sort of prized Wisconsin Aryanness that excused them from blame for almost any caper. They looked like protagonists from a Disney movie, but behaved like After School Specials.
‘She’s heading to Chicago for the weekend. For some artsy thing,’ Jayson continued nonchalantly. ‘But don’t say anything to your mother. I don’t want to get into trouble.’
‘MOOOOOMMMMM!’ Tara turned her head and yelled up the stairs.
‘Shut up!’ Jayson mouthed.
‘Yes, hon?’ Terri yelled from the kitchen.
‘Jayson wants us to teach him how to pray over at his place tonight. ’Kay?’
It was pathetically easy for the twins to deceive their mother. Terri’s God might be omnipotent, but He created Terri practically non-ipotent.
Terri’s head appeared at the top of the basement door, smiling widely.
‘Well it’s about time! May God be with you kids!’
‘And may the force be with you too, Mrs. Wernermeier,’ Jayson beamed back.
‘Where’s the booze?’ Tara asked, slipping through the torn screen on the sliding glass door. Jayson was just pulling out the seventh cookie sheet of Gino’s Pizza Rolls from the oven. He’d set up the kitchen island with assorted frozen appetizers, having read in Parade