Munmun(47)

“Nope nope, super different kid,” I said to this faceboy, prepared to run or pulp.

“Dave, be chill,” he urged. “I’m not a faceboy anymore. I left that squad, left Sand Dreamough, they don’t know where I am. Just wanted to say, I know your wild dramahistory with that squad, I got one too.”

“Best if we don’t talk about it, Bullfists,” I pleaded.

“Fillup, my name’s Fillup again,” he said. “You ever need me, come find me in Drivy Track, likewise I need to know if I can count on you in a brawl.”

“Allright Fillup, got your back forsure, now let’s be secretly chill about it,” I begged, and bumped my clean red hand against his dopey goatbull so he would leave, don’t want to be seen friending this former goon.

“Bytheway how come you never talk about your home or family,” asked Brand.

“What’s there to say, just average boring middlepoor, hey how about you show me some wrestling vids,” I lied.





DREAMWORLD


I didn’t want my crew to think of me as a cityboss pet so I told them nothing. It would have felt crazy talking about Hue Family Palace down in gritty grubby Eat Votech anyway, like pretending you commute every morning from a fairytale.

Infact all of Wet Almanac became like Dreamworld to me.

The busride from Eat to Wet was like falling asleep, the roar and chatter of Votech stops echoing in the ears while you drift up on switchback zigzag middleroads into a heaven for giants.

Step off the bus, the halfhour walk to Hue Family House is the dream’s beginning, clean, sweetsmelling, quiet, stroll past rolling lawns and humming homes under the vault of treebranches.

Walk inside and smell dinner prepping, starchy roots roasting, birds and fishes grilling, whole gardens hacked to bits on woodenslabs.

You’re supposed to be studying for retrack but sometimes the dreamy magic of middlerich paradise swallows you and before you know it you’re riding a dog, watching a vid, just wander the house in a stupid daze, run fingers along delicious textures and wonder everynight, canthisbereal.

? ? ?

But soonerorlater during these lazings and wanderings, Kitty would appear and remark, “Hey, what a coincidence, I happen to be holding these studymaterials for you,” infact a lot of times when I got home she was waiting in the sunroom with screens and books.

She sat on the wickerchair, I sat between her knees on the footstool, a screen sat in front of us. And I tried reading articles and storybooks, tried learning how letters fit into math, tried swallowing the basics of science and history and humanstudies, the world slowly widened in my rattled battered head.

Was I a little in love with this cute braidheaded girl who saved my life, wanted me to succeed, sure, a little bit, I mean ofcourse, you would be too.

But it’s not the love of, I want to hold you in my arms for a million sunsets, if I don’t get to marry you I will starve myself to death. It’s a different kind of love when the girl outscales you by five.

You ask, Warner what the heck do you know about love, look, I know I’m young and I don’t have the deep feelings of forexample Usher but I know a few things about love. Warner’s kissed a few girls and not just in Dreamworld, also in Lifeanddeath, even banged a girl once.

The bang was back when we lived in the abandoned coastguard station, a few weeks after my dad got crushed. This older girl named Kelly took me aside and said hey, cute little sadface, I know how to make you feel better, comewithme. Tobehonest I didn’t really want to but didn’t want to say no either, longstoryshort we banged in a sandpit and then I ran away. Prayer found out and yelled at me, Warner you’re going to get a million diseases if you bang Kelly, so I started hiding from her, then a few weeks later she left for the desert with some psycho boneblue todds and that was that, story of my first bang, why am I even telling you it, definitely no love in there.

My point is, do I know what love is, well maybe, a little, and it’s different when you love someone way bigger than you, richer than you, incontrol and knows it. I think it’s like loving a god you can see.

You don’t get to kiss a god. The god and you don’t cuddle or canoodle. You can’t even sit on a god’s lap, that’s too weird.

Instead you and the god talk, trade attention, focus energies on each other. And when the god loves you back, smiles at you, tells you goodjob, it feels incredible. But when the god ignores you to talk on the phone, it twists you up inside. Part of you thinks, ofcourse she gets to ignore you, she’s a god. Other part thinks, that’s just because she was born a stupid god, I could be a god too if I got born that way.

And most of the time you’re together, your mouth is all twisted up too, can’t talk to this god the way you do with the other normal human poors. Your words are stiff, your jokes are bad. The only time your tongue gets loose is talking to her about your sad past, the sadness of being a littlepoor, the only kind of person you get to be with her is a noble sufferer.

“Dang, if only littlepoors got to learn equations at a younger age, maybe it would all be different, such a tragedy,” is the kind of dumb crap I heard myself saying.

“I keep telling my dad, what if Lossy Indica was the first in the Yewess to build state littleschools,” she said.

“With a littleschool to go to, whoknows how my life would have ended up, I could have been the president,” I heard myself agreeing like a robot pet.