in the middle of the living room my entire mind goes blank.
W2 stands with his arms crossed over his chest, flanked by my oversized uncles. He looks pitiful and small. I would laugh except for the looks on my uncles’ faces. They are not red-faced and furious as I expected them to be. No, what I see is much worse.
They look scared.
No one says anything for a long moment.
“What did you do to me?” W2 whines, breaking the silence.
Uncle Dune slaps a hand against the back of W2’s skull, accompanied by a soft, “Shaddup.”
W2 is an idiot, so instead of shadduping, he clutches the back of his head as if mortally wounded and wheels on Uncle Dune. “Do you know who I am?” he demands.
There’s a hole in the garage wall the size of Uncle Rod from one of Uncle Dune’s punches. For all their power, though, Uncle Dune’s fists fly incredibly slowly, which at this moment is very lucky for W2 as Uncle Jet quickly steps in and grabs hold of the fist headed toward W2’s stupid face.
“Not now,” Uncle Jet tells Dune. Then he looks at me. “This boy says you were at a party last night.”
I know better than to try and lie, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna volunteer information. I simply nod in response.
“And you brought moonshine with you?” Uncle Jet continues.
Damn, how did W2 manage to blab so much so quickly? I nod again.
“And you gave this boy some of that shine? Personally drinking and toasting with him?”
“Yeah, we did the toast.” I sigh and roll my eyes like a petulant asshole, trying to convince everyone I’m the wounded party here.
“What did I tell you?” W2 exclaims, pushing past Uncle Jet. I wince, waiting for blood to flow, but for some reason Uncle Jet not only allows W2 to interrupt his interrogation but lets him get in his space too. “She said, ‘Make a wish.’”
Now it’s my uncles’ turn to wince.
“And I said, ‘I want brass balls so when some pissy girl tries to knee me in the nuts you’ll just hear a loud old gooonnggggg.’” W2 makes the gong noise all dramatic, his mouth open in a wide O and his whole body vibrating like it’s been rung. “And then she said, ‘Wish granted.’”
“That is not what I said!” I explode.
W2 shrugs. “Right, right. You told me stainless steel would be better, it’s dishwasher safe and lasts forever. And I was like, ‘Yeah balls of steel. I like that.’ Then you said some alla-kazoo wish bullshit and we both drank that nasty booze you brought to the party.”
Uncle Dune growls low in his throat, but W2 doesn’t seem to notice.
“And I thought, ‘Well this swill is sure as shit gonna make my head pound tomorrow.’ But instead when I woke up this morning to take a piss, you know what was aching?” W2 grabs his junk. “My balls! My freaking balls were killing me, and when I scratched them they made this weird clinking noise.” Of course, he demonstrates. “So I jerked down my shorts, took a peek, and guess what I saw?”
I say nothing. This is a joke. I mean, of course, it’s a joke. It has to be a joke.
W2 hooks his thumbs inside his track pants and jerks them down. “This is what I saw!” Both hands gesture to his crotch, in case anyone was confused about where exactly to look.
I throw my hands up to cover my eyes.
“You scared to see what you did?” W2 yells. I can hear him coming closer. “Look, bitch. Look, you little cu—”
W2 is cut off by the thud of flesh and bone colliding, immediately followed by the louder crash of a body plowing through drywall.
I peek between my fingers to find the solid wall of Uncle Dune’s back between me and everything else. Leaning slightly to the left to see around him, I immediately spot the new dent in the wall and W2’s slumped form beneath it. Uncle Jet and Uncle Rod are leaning over him on either side. At first I think they’re checking his vitals to make sure Dune didn’t kill him, but then I realize their attention is focused between W2’s legs.
Uncle Rod gives a long whistle. “She’s done it now,” he says in a low voice as he bends to pick up W2.
I suppose after last night, the sight of W2’s bare white buttocks slung over Uncle Rod’s shoulder on their way out the door should give me some