Stupid Fast - By Geoff Herbach Page 0,44

I was nothing more than a friendless squirrel nut like three days before that.

***

Back home, I looked up chill pill online. According to urbandictionary.com, it’s something someone says to another person to tell them to relax or it’s something someone says to another person to tell them they’re an asshole or it’s LSD, which I also had to look up. According to drugzczar.com, LSD is a psychedelic drug that makes you hallucinate, dance really well, and sometimes fall off of buildings to your death.

I was pretty sure Jerri wasn’t suggesting little Andrew take LSD, so she probably meant the first definition or maybe the second. Neither of them was that big a deal.

Hmm.

At that point, I did have a very bad feeling about the situation. I wasn’t blind.

CHAPTER 25: WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE PROBLEM, OFFICER?

The last like week and a half of June slid by without terrible incident. Jerri wasn’t even remotely normal, but she wasn’t exactly hostile either. She just didn’t do mother stuff or Jerri stuff.

Mostly, she stayed in her room in bed or out in the living room on the couch. She read what appeared to be romance novels or sort of sex novels, judging from the covers (lots of bare-breasted muscle men with long hair carrying half-naked ladies). They were library books, so I know she must have left the house at some point, but I didn’t see her leave.

Reading these books was definitely, totally out of character for her. But so? She’d spent years reading philosophy books and spirituality books and poetry books. Look where it got her, I thought. She didn’t have any friends. Her not talking to Andrew and me was weird. But okay. Talking to us clearly got her nowhere too. Her not mowing the lawn was really weird. But not that big a deal. I sort of thought she was doing what I was doing—trying on a whole new lifestyle. Good for her!

Yeah.

Andrew thought it was a huge deal.

“She’s completely lost her mind,” he told me.

You’ve lost your mind, Andrew. I didn’t say that out loud.

He sort of had lost his mind. Jerri wouldn’t let his friends come over, and she wouldn’t let him play piano because it apparently rattled her nerves, and he didn’t go anyplace, although I’m sure he was free to go, and he started winding up really hard. Every time I saw him, he called me a name or slung some kind of serious insult at me. I considered telling him to take a chill pill because he was such a jerk.

I don’t know.

Jerri stopped cooking and stopped grocery shopping, which was a problem. Andrew and I ate bread and cheese for the most part. Then cans of kidney beans, then green beans, then peas. Then cans of corn, which we don’t like. Then there wasn’t a single can of anything in the cupboard except sauerkraut, which I eyeballed but didn’t open.

“You going to get groceries anytime soon?” I asked Jerri one afternoon when she was lying in bed reading.

She looked up from her book. Looked at me all confused. Shook her head like she was trying to shake out the cobwebs and then looked back down and started reading without saying a word.

“Jesus Christ,” I hissed.

Okay, I was worried.

Huge thistles grew. They grew up like three feet high in one week and were here and there all over the yard and a lot in the garden. They were taller than any of the plants Jerri put in during spring (yes, she’d stopped gardening).

“Those thistles remind me of you,” Andrew said one morning late in June when I rolled up on my bike after the paper route. He was digging around in boxes Jerri had piled in the corner of the garage years ago. “You grew really fast, and you’re ugly.”

“Andrew, come on. That’s not very nice.”

“So sorry. Really I am.”

“What are you looking for?”

“The key to life as we know it.”

“What? You’re weird as hell.”

“So?” he shouted, standing straight and turning toward me. He breathed hard and glared over his plastic nerd glasses. His cheeks were red. I didn’t say anything, but I stared hard back at him. He turned and went back to work sifting through junk, his little skinny body bent in an awkward looking way, his legs spread wide. “Are you going to football practice again?” he asked.

“Weights. Weight lifting. I have to change.”

“Can I come?” he asked without looking up.

“You want to come with me to weights?”

“I really should leave the