Wigan Imberline | D8 [done]

Do you want to hear a joke?

What did you call a fake noodle? An impasta!

How about this: Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field!
No?

Well—I never said that I was very good at jokes. But I don’t think you have to be funny to be good at them. I like to tell real groaners because then people can think a little bit less hard about things. I used to do it with my cousin Gilly all the time. She’d be sitting there with her math homework, already doing algebra with all the other older kids, with a scrunched up look on her face. And then she’d grumble about trying to figure something out, and so I’d come over to her, and sit at the kitchen table, and start to tell terrible jokes until she started yelling at me to go away. Except I didn’t stop until she burst out in a fit of laughter because that’s what we did for each other.

My parents would wake up before the sun rose and get back late at night, so most of the time I spent over at Gilly’s. We don’t have a big family, like the Hopes. We were just me and Gilly, and our parents. That was enough, you know? Sometimes it just takes a little bit of love to make something strong. Little things get bigger depending on what angle you view them from. And as Gilly taught me, sometimes you’re just using the wrong measurement.

I, however, am not good at school. I repeated the eighth grade, and mostly because I didn’t feel like doing what they put in front of me. I mean—what’s the point in doing anything when we’re just getting put in a bowl over and over again? I don’t need to know half the things that they teach us, I don’t have to go in and just learn all the things they want me to learn. Is it interesting sitting in one of those hard little wooden desks, watching the teacher scratch across the board and prattle on about something I’ll forget tomorrow? And I’m not dumb. I know I’m not dumb, if I try. But I haven’t felt like trying for a long time—I’ve felt better thinking about all sorts of other things.

Like dancing. I’m pretty good at that. Moving my body back and forth, holding onto the hand of whoever’s next to me, leading them along—that sort of stuff comes naturally. And putting patterns together, I don’t think I have any problem with that. School here doesn’t teach me the way I think—they don’t teach right. Like dancing, it’s a different way of thinking, it’s moving forward, and backward, and having a girl stand in front of you and making sure you keep your eyes on hers, so that way she can know you’re really looking back at her.

Want hear a joke about construction? I’m still working on it.

Now comes the part where I’m supposed to tell you about how much it hurt to lose Gilly. So—yes, it did. I mean, for a long time I felt like my heart had fallen into my butt, and someone had taken a wrench, and twisted, and twisted, and twisted… and twisted my head so that it throbbed every single day. I cried a lot—because you’re supposed to cry when you lose someone. I think it might’ve been better it I didn’t think she died so close to the end. She wasn’t even twelve years old, and she lasted six whole days.

You know what? The rotation of earth makes my day.

I didn’t get picked on for it. I mean—there were always the boys that kind of hated me, gave me trouble for looking after Gilly instead of hanging out with them. You know the types—the kids that just kind of have to pick on someone else to make themselves feel better, especially if you have a kind of thing that they want. But that was back when I was smaller, too. You know, I’m almost six feet now, and I don’t think that most of them come up to my shoulders.
They still call me fuzzball, on account of my hair, but, if that’s the worst that I get, I’m not going to pay much mind.

They all sort of—treated me nicely when she died. Well, they said that at least Gilly wasn’t a total loser, which from a fourteen-year-old boy is as close to a compliment you’re probably going to get. I think we all saw ourselves in Gilly, you know? She dreamed about things, she wasn’t afraid to be different. She didn’t care what anyone thought. And I hope she knew that I was proud of her, too.

That graveyard looks pretty crowded. I think people are dying to get in.

Things changed, now—I still go see her mom and dad. They have a hard time getting through the day, sometimes. Gilly was the only kid that they could have, and—so they just miss her real bad. I tell them jokes, because if it makes them feel better, that’s good. And the best I can do is to make sure that they’re okay. (Except her mom sometimes cries and tells me my jokes are terrible, and to stop).

We weren’t too different—Gilly and me. I’d like to imagine myself as some sort of tightrope walker, or circus kid. Run off from town to town, and then outside the district. But I don’t think I see things as clearly as she did in her head. It’s heard to slip out of a world that you’ve always known, and disappear into the make believe. At least, not when you’ve seen what the real world can do.