Munmun(4)

I knew I would never hear the song again without this floating seedflowerbirdhouse to sing it to me, so that was the ache, every musicswell and beautybloom was a fist clenching my heart.

I put my head in one door and looked inside and it was a girl my age, eyes shut.

I tried to squeeze through into the house, noluck, the air netted me. She opened her eyes and smiled.

“Uh,” I said. “Well, ofcourse, hi. I’m Warner. What’s your name.”

But she just shook her head.

“That’s okay, don’t tell me,” I said. “But, heresthething, I have an idea for something I could make you, so come out and let me make you something, please.”

She shook her head again.

“No, but please,” I said. “I don’t think you understand. I’m really good at this, and I would make you something really good.”

“It’s time to get up and go to morningschool,” she told me in a dark little voice that hollowed me out completely, and the morningschool part was how I knew this girl was middlerich, and that’s why it hurt extra much when it dissolved and vanished and I woke up with the tears not all the way dry on my stupid littlepoor face.





LIFEANDDEATHWORLD


But I didn’t get to worry about the girl very much during the day or night because it was time to pursue Prayer’s crappy plan.

Sure, Prayer was cute. She had the big deep eyes and the wide bright mouth that the agreement among men is, that’s cute. She also had the rubywine skin that some guys especially like who like ruby skin. On the minus side, her head was narrow and shaped like a bean, and her arms were too long with big knobbyknuckle hands on the end like paddles. And long legs which men like but huge feet which men don’t like. Her hair was very fine, by which I mean thin and not good, and there wasn’t quite enough and if you got too close you could see through to her weird pink scalp. So what I’m saying is, she was cute, not amazing, but maybe I just think that as her brother and actually some men love to see some scalpskin the color of a baby rat, who knows.

But Prayer was definitely cute enough that some of the local squads and crews wanted to involve her in a big bangsesh in some garbage somewhere, and anytime she left the coastguard station she wanted me to bodyguard her, other boys too if possible.

It was usually me and Usher. Usher was a publicgarden orphan, grayskinned and squinty, a year older than me but smaller with incredible shrimpiness and a little bit of palsy. He was ofcourse pointless in a fight. But he could atleast scream pretty loud, and maybe from a distance you just see two boys with a girl, you don’t see that the two boys are pretty young or that one is a shrimp, so you decide not to chase them, and anyway Usher was lovesick for my sis Prayer, so, sure, let him help bodyguard.

The point is, Prayer needed to meet middlerich guys, not just in Dreamworld but also intheflesh. So where was the best place for that.

“Warehouses,” I suggested.

“Nope,” said Prayer. “It’s all middlepoors in there.”

“Business offices,” I said.

“Those men are married or old,” complained Prayer.

“I think you want old,” I said. “Old guys are lonely, desperate, might die tomorrow. Perfect.”

“I guess you’re not thinking of this as How Prayer Meets Her Soulmate,” said Prayer.

“You already have a soulmate,” I pointed out. “Usher.”

“Ugh,” she said. “Shut up.”

“Right now Usher is thinking about you and either crying or banging a hole he made in the sand,” I said.

“Warner, it’s time to shut up,” commanded Mom. “I’ll tell you where Prayer is going to find a husband. Law school.”

“Ohcrap,” I said.

The closest law school we knew about was twenty miles away, on the other side of Lossy Indica, in the suburb of Sand Dreamough.

“What about business school,” said Prayer.

“Law school,” ordered Mom.

“Business school though has guys learning to make deals, sell products, start a big corpo in a little garage, build munmuns and power out of just your thoughts and words and confidence, that might be exciting maybe,” daydreamed Prayer.

“Law school puts guys in the bank and the government,” said Mom. “That’s the most safe, safe is the most important, most important is what you need to focus on. Prayer, you’re going to law school. Warner, you’re going with Prayer and you’re bodyguarding her, also if you find other ways to help out, that would really be great. Me, I’m giving myself to a church.”

“No, no, no. Nope,” I said, for lots of reasons. I didn’t want to be the assistant to stupid Prayer in her gross quest to find a bangpartner for life, and I didn’t want to leave for a strange new place full of middleriches who were smarter than me, and I didn’t want my mom to go sleep sickteen to a room with randos in the leaky littlepoor shelter of some crummy church.

But my mom can make her mind tougher than mine, tougher than Prayer’s, and she flattened us with it. So after a few days of fighting we wheeled her off to Middlechurch of the Lord King God and said our goodbyes, and she wouldn’t cry even when we did.

The first phase of Find Prayer A Husband was even just getting on the road somehow. We had nineteen munmuns that I had folded deep in a pouch, but that was emergency munmun you can’t spend on transport. So how to get there for free? Well, you could hike through the city. But Sand Dreamough was all the way past Sentrow and basically right up to the mountains. So the hike would have taken atleast a month, forget that hopefully. As for the bus, the muncounter near the door has a special broom for littlepoors trying to sneak on. If you’re by yourself you can hop buses from the outside sometimes, scramble up the tire when it stops and hang out in the wheelwell, but with two people, basically forget about it. Metro made the most sense but who even knows how to use that thing? First of all, you have to read the Metro map and who has any idea how to read? Usher, that’s who.