Reality Boy

I answered, “I’ll take the naughty chair, please.” Then I got up and walked to it, sat down, and went back to Gersday and my ice-cream cone. One kid there wanted me to be on his kickball team. Another kid wanted me to go bike riding with him, and he didn’t care that I still used training wheels. I finished my ice cream and thought it would be nice to have another one. And then Lisi was there and she handed me a vanilla cone with rainbow sprinkles. She had chocolate with chocolate sprinkles. We walked down a bunch of roads until we got to our house.

Mom was there and she hugged us when we got in and told us to finish our ice cream in the kitchen. When Lisi and I sat down at the table, Mom asked us how our day was and we told her how wonderful our day had been. When we were done, she said she had a surprise for us and took us to the hallway and showed us our new school pictures, framed and hung on the wall. Lisi looked like a little movie star. I looked like the cutest five-year-old who ever lived. There was one other picture—of Mom and Dad in that semi-embracing pose, her head leaned in on his chin a little. They looked so in love and happy. I stood back and looked at those three pictures and I cried happy tears. That’s what Gersdays were all about. Happy tears. Ice cream. Mom not ignoring Lisi and me because she was too busy fussing over Tasha. That couldn’t happen on a Gersday because on Gersday, Tasha didn’t exist. Which means she didn’t put plastic bags over Lisi’s head or call me g*ytard. She couldn’t do those things because she wasn’t there at all. As Nanny would say: Simple as one, two, three.

“Did you hear that?” Nanny asked.

“What?” I asked.

“The timer. It buzzed three minutes ago. You were off with the fairies for all that time. Smiling.”

I checked to make sure I wasn’t still smiling. “Sorry,” I said.

“Gerald, you and I are trying to work on some very serious behay-vyah issues and I can’t do it without your help.”

“Yes.” Close-up of me nodding. I could see the camera’s lens swirling right into my face.

The boom camera panned left as Nanny hugged me. It was a fake hug, like we were onstage. Her rib cage stabbed me. “I can help you do it, but I can’t do it for you. You undah-stand that?”

I nodded because the director nodded.

“Good. Now go tidy up your room and get ready for suppah. Your favorite tonight! Spaghetti and meatballs.”

Thirty minutes later, I was chasing Tasha down the upstairs hall with a plastic lightsaber. When I caught up with her, I hit her with it so hard that it finally broke. The sharp edge of the broken plastic scratched her arm a little. There was no blood or anything, but when Mom saw it, she acted like I was some kind of an ax murderer and gathered Tasha into her arms and yelled at me. I ran back down the hall and down the stairs and was about to run out the door when I felt the tight, skeletal grip of Nanny.

She dragged me to the behay-vyah chart in the kitchen. All my stickers for the day were removed and replaced with black dots and Nanny told me I’d be sent to bed with no spaghetti and meatballs. Tasha stood there and watched. She was pretend-crying—one of those noises that drove me to violence.

“See what you did?” Nanny said. “Only a few minutes away from your favorite dinn-ah and you ruin it by being mean to your sist-ah! Gerald, I don’t undah-stand you at all.” When the cameras panned to me crying, Nanny checked her hair and makeup in the oven door. She was wearing shiny pink lipstick, like pink mother-of-pearl.

“Cut!” the director yelled. After conferring with the other guys in charge and Real Nanny, he called Nanny over. Then he came over to me, Mom, and Tasha.

“Look, our guys didn’t catch that fight with the lightsaber. I sent Tim out to buy a new one and if it’s okay with you, we’d like to get Gerald and Tasha to reenact it so we can get it in the reel.”

Mom looked at the guy like he was insane. “You want my daughter to get beat up again for the sake of your show?” she asked.

“We’d just like them to reenact it. If you don’t mind. Tim will be back in a minute. There’s a Toys“R”Us only a few minutes away. In the meantime, I’ll explain to Gerald and Tasha exactly what I want them to do. No real hitting.”

Real Nanny didn’t look happy about this, either. She crossed her arms and said something to Fake Nanny, but Fake Nanny just shrugged.

Mom blinked back tears and gave her precious Tasha to the director. I went willingly because this might be my chance to actually kill Tasha once and for all. On camera.

The director set us free until Tim came back with the new lightsaber. I went straight into Mom’s walk-in closet and squatted over her favorite pair of penny loafers and left a hot, steaming turd inside each one.

The reenacted fight was far lamer than the real fight because Tasha just sat there and cried and didn’t scream or punch me the way she had before. Plus, my lightsaber didn’t break, so I couldn’t try to plunge the sharp end into her eye or brain. Afterward, the cameramen went back downstairs because we were going to have a one-on-one scene with me and Nanny before she sent me to bed with no dinner.

Then there was a scream from my parents’ room. The cameramen raced in to see the fuss as it unfolded. They started wide, with a view of Mom’s amazing closet and her impressive collection of shoes—from her dressy heels to her walking-sneaker collection—and then they zoomed in until the only things in the shot were her penny loafers and my turds.

While Tasha and Mom were freaking out on camera, I escaped back to the kitchen. I sneaked a Rice Krispies Treat and went back to Gersday to buy another ice cream. In Gersday, there’s ice cream everywhere. Nobody’s there to storm into your room and knee you in the stomach to make you chase them with a lightsaber. Nobody is drowning.

8

“CRAPPER!”

It’s Nichols. He walks past our stand and gives me the finger up high so I can see it above the heads of the people waiting in line. After our short break to eat leftover chicken and fries from the matinee at the PEC Center, it’s time to get ready for the five o’clock hockey game, and there are seventy people waiting in front of us.

The hour before the game starts is a blur of large Pepsis, five-dollar Molsons, pretzels, fries, hot dogs, and nachos. All the while, I’m eating ice cream in Gersday because I can live in two days at once. This is another advantage I have over lesser humans.

When Nichols comes back, he’s still flipping me the bird as he approaches my register.