sources.”
“No Adam Frykowski blog posts then?” Ishmael joked from his chair next to me.
“Correct. Now, exhibit B is—”
“More Seekers have shown up, you know,” Ishmael interrupted, bored with my research. “And more of Oz’s myTality distributors.”
I scowled. “Oswald again. I want to get rid of him.”
“Like…kill him?”
I sighed hard enough to make the papers in front of me flutter. “No, Ishmael. I don’t want to kill him. I just want him to go home to California. Or anywhere.”
My brother gave me a searching look. “What’s your problem with the guy?”
“Is it not apparent?”
“I know he’s annoying or whatever. But you super hate him. Like, way more than there’s reason to.”
Where to begin?
I hated Oswald because he was a liar. A cheat. A con man.
But most of all, I hated how easy life was for him. How we lived in a world where his unique blend of personality traits was revered. No matter how smart or talented someone was, no matter how much time and energy they dedicated to a project, there would always be a J. Quincy Oswald who could use his charm to take it away in an instant.
I didn’t know how to sum that up for Ishmael, though. So I simply said, “He’s my nemesis.”
“This isn’t a comic book, dude,” Ishmael said. He idly opened a container on my desk and began sifting through loose electronic components inside, as if he had any idea what he was looking at.
“Nemeses aren’t just for superheroes. For instance, take Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke—”
“Could we maybe not make this conversation about Isaac Newton?”
“It’s not about him,” I insisted, moving the electronics box away from Ishmael and firmly closing the lid. “It’s about Oswald.”
“You get that you’re turning the hoax into some weird competition between you and Oz, right?”
“Yes, but…how could I not compete?”
Ishmael shrugged. “You just don’t.”
“You’re telling me you don’t feel any element of competition right now?”
“This isn’t about I win or he wins. It isn’t sports or something. And even sports competitions are friendly.”
I knew countless people, Father included, who would not agree that sports were friendly competitions. This was likely one of the reasons Ishmael never became the baseball player Father hoped he’d be.
I thought for a moment. “What about last year, when Braden took out classified ads listing Irving High School for sale?”
“What about it?”
“Didn’t it bother you? You’re the one known for pranks.”
“So? It was an awesome prank,” Ishmael said, grinning. “It made me laugh. Why would that bug me?”
“Because…” I sputtered. But I didn’t entirely know what to say. “What about when you and Kyle both applied to be delivery drivers for Pizza Haus and he got hired? You wanted that job so badly.”
“It was just a job,” Ishmael said. “Besides, Kyle was totally more qualified.”
“How does one become ‘more qualified’ for a job at Pizza Haus?”
“He had a paper route before. He was used to doing deliveries.”
I looked at Ishmael for a long moment, trying to detect a lie on his face, but I didn’t see one. He truly didn’t have the urge to compete. He didn’t live with the same bitterness I did. He probably never looked at his peers and silently itemized the ways he didn’t measure up.
“Gideon,” Ishmael said after a moment. “You know you don’t need to, like, prove yourself to anyone.”
“But I do.”
“Is this about the universe again, and how you feel insignificant?”
Wasn’t everything about that? I didn’t say so, though. I said, “Can we focus on Oswald?”
“Sure,” Ishmael agreed. “What do you wanna do?”
“I don’t know. To start, I want more information about what he’s up to.”
Was he just trying to make money with the new product or was there something more? My mind flashed to him in the middle of the road, shouting at the sky. I still entertained the possibility that part of him actually believed aliens were visiting.
“We can go over there right now,” Ishmael said.
I glanced at my phone. “It’s late.”
“Do you have a bedtime or something?” (The average teenager requires 9.75 hours of sleep to function optimally. Given the early start time of high school, having a bedtime was both practical and necessary.)
“I don’t want to wake Oswald up,” I said. “I don’t relish the idea of talking to him at all.”
Ishmael shook his head like I was hopeless. “We’re not gonna talk to Oz. He’ll never even know we were there.”
“We… What?”
“We’re gonna spy on him,” Ishmael said, his eyes lit with the gleam I knew too well.
“No,” I said simply.
Ishmael flashed