"Uh . . . Remember Josh?"

"Josh Metzger?"

"In Hebrew school I thought you were in love with Josh."

"Why did you think that?"

"I thought everyone in our cla.s.s was in love with Josh."

"Josh was depressed all the time."

"No, he was all sullen and, uh . . . and dreamy."

"Greg, it sounds like you're in love with Josh."

"Harf!"

This was unexpected. It had never happened before. Rachel had made me laugh. I mean, what she said wasn't that funny, but I just really wasn't expecting it, which is why instead of a normal laugh I made a sound like harf. Anyway, that's when I knew I was in.

"You really thought I was in love with Josh."

"Yeah."

"And that broke your heart?"

"Of course it did."

"Well, you should've said something."

"Yeah, I was being really stupid about it."

One of my few effective conversational tactics is to throw previous versions of myself under the bus. Twelve-year-old Greg was a jerk to you, you say? He was a jerk to everyone. And he had like thirty stuffed animals in his room! What a loser.

"Greg, I'm sorry."

"No! No, no, no. It's my fault."

"Well, what are you doing right now?"

"Nothing," I lied.

"You can come over if you want."

Mission accomplished. I just had to call Earl.

"Hey, Earl?"

"Sup, ike."

"Ike" is a good sign. It's slang for "dude," and when Earl uses it, that means he's in a good mood, which is rare.

"Hey, Earl, I can't watch Alphaville today."

"Why the h.e.l.l not?"

"I'm sorry, man, I have to hang out with this girl from, uh-this girl from synagogue."

"Wha-a-at."

"She's-"

"Are you gonna eat her p.u.s.s.y?"

Earl can be sort of profane sometimes. He's actually mellowed out a lot since his middle school days, believe it or not. Back in middle school he would have asked this in a much more violent and horrible way.

"Yeah, Earl, I'm going to eat her p.u.s.s.y."

"Heh."

"Yeah."

"Do you even know how to eat p.u.s.s.y?"

"Uh, not really."

"Papa Gaines never sat you down, said, Son, one day you're gonna have to eat the p.u.s.s.y."

"No. But he did teach me how to eat a b.u.t.thole."

When Earl is in full-on Gross-Out Mode, you have to play along or you'll feel stupid.

"G.o.d bless that man."

"Yup."

"I would teach you some p.u.s.s.y-eating technique, but it's a little complicated."

"That's a shame."

"I would need some diagrams and whatnot."

"Well, tonight maybe you can draw some up."

"Son, I don't have time for that. I got like twenty p.u.s.s.ies over here that I need to eat."

"Is that right."

"I'm on p.u.s.s.y deadline."

"You've got twenty v.a.g.i.n.as, all lined up in a row."

"Aw, what the h.e.l.l. What the h.e.l.l. No one's talkin bout v.a.g.i.n.as. Greg, what the h.e.l.l is wrong with you. Man, that's nasty."

Earl likes to mix it up sometimes by pretending that you're being gross and he is not, when he's clearly being much grosser. This is a cla.s.sic humor move that he has perfected over the years.

"Oh, sorry."

"Man, you're sick. You're perverted."

"Yeah, that was really out of line."

"I'm talkin bout p.u.s.s.y. I got a little honey mustard over here, a little Heinz 57, and a whole lotta p.u.s.s.y."

"Yeah, that's not gross. What I said was gross, but not what you just said."

"Got some Grey Poupon up in this. Got some h.e.l.lmann's."

Gross-Out Mode can last indefinitely and sometimes you just have to change the subject without warning if you actually have a message to convey.

"So yeah, sorry I can't watch G.o.dard tonight."

"So you wanna watch it tomorrow?"

"Yeah, let's do it tomorrow."

"After school. Try to get some of them little steak tips."

"OK, but I don't think Mom is making beef tips tonight."

"Steak. Tips. Give Ma and Pa Gaines some love for me, ike."

Earl and I are friends. Sort of. Actually, Earl and I are more like coworkers.

The first thing to know about Earl Jackson is that if you mention his height, he will windmill-kick you in the head. Short people are often extremely athletic. Earl is technically the size of a ten-year-old, but he can kick any object within seven feet of the ground. Additionally, Earl's default mood is p.i.s.sed, and his backup default mood is Mega-p.i.s.sed.

It's not just that he's short, either. He looks really young. He has a sort of round bug-eyed Yoda-esque face that makes girls go all motherly and start cooing. Grown-ups don't really take him seriously, especially teachers. They have trouble talking to him as though he's a normal human being. They bend down way too far and speak in this ridiculous up-and-down singsong: "Hel-lo Ear-rul!" It's like he gives off an invisible force field that makes people stupid.

The worst part is that his whole family is taller than him-all of his brothers and half brothers, his stepsisters, his cousins, his aunts and uncles, his stepdad, even his mom. It's not really fair. At family barbecues, he gets his head playfully rubbed by someone about every ninety seconds, and it's not always someone older than him, either. He is constantly being pushed out of the way by people who don't even realize they're pushing him out of the way. He can't wander out into the open; if he does, his brothers take turns running up and leapfrogging over his head. You would be perpetually angry at the world, too, if this was your life.

However, from some perspectives, Earl's home life is awesome. He lives basically unsupervised with two brothers, three half brothers, and a dog in a huge house a few blocks above Penn Avenue, and they play video games and eat Domino's pizza pretty much all of the time. His mom lives in the house, too, but she usually restricts herself to the third floor. What she does up there is rarely discussed-especially with Earl around-but I can tell you that it involves Bacardi Silver mojitos and chat rooms. Meanwhile, downstairs it's six guys in a house, living it up. Nonstop party! What problems could there possibly be?

Problem 1. Well, there is the troublesome matter of the house's finances. There are no dads in the house-Earl's dad is in Texas or something, and the half brothers' dad is in prison-and Earl's mom provides little in the way of income. Two of the half brothers, the twins, Maxwell and Felix, are in one of Homewood's enterprising gangs-Tha Frankstown Murda Cru-and provide some of the family's financial support by dealing drugs. Earl himself has done most of the major drugs, although these days, he smokes only cigarettes. So, there's some drug dealing and gang activity in the house, which probably counts as a problem.

Problems 2 and 3. I guess I should also note that there's a bit of a noise problem-video games, music, yelling-and a smell problem as well. There's generally garbage lying around, often with little pools of garbage juice underneath, and the brothers don't really do that much laundry. Sometimes someone will also get really drunk and throw up on the floor, and that can take days to clean up, as do the frequent hills of p.o.o.p created by the dog. I don't want to sound like a "p.u.s.s.y-a.s.s b.i.t.c.h" (Felix's words), but this is surely less than ideal, as living situations go.

Problem 4. It's also not an incredibly scholarly environment. Earl is the only one still attending school every day; Devin and Derrick can go for weeks without showing up; all of the half brothers have dropped out, including Brandon, who is thirteen and probably the most violent and aggressive of the bunch. (For example, he has a huge painful-looking neck tattoo that says "TRU n.i.g.g.a" next to some pictures of guns. Brandon himself owns a gun and has already managed to impregnate another human being, even though his voice hasn't dropped all the way yet. If the city of Pittsburgh gave out a Least Promising Human award, he would be on the shortlist.) Due to the noise problems mentioned above, the Jackson house is not a great place to try to read, or do homework, or do any kind of work; also, if someone finds you alone in a room with a book, sometimes this is considered sufficient grounds to whup the h.e.l.l out of you.

Problems 5 through 10. The house itself is kind of falling apart-there's a big chunk of the gutters lying in the front yard, and the ceiling drips in some of the bedrooms, and usually at least one of the toilets is clogged and no one really wants to deal with it. In the winter, the heating generally conks out and everyone has to sleep in their winter coat. There's definitely a rat problem, and a c.o.c.kroach problem, and it's not a good idea to drink the tap water.

The video games, however, are solid.

So Earl and I, when we hang out, usually hang out at my house instead. By now Earl is almost a member of the family: the chain-smoking vertically challenged son my parents never had. They're the only grown-ups besides Mr. McCarthy who even sort of know how to talk to him without p.i.s.sing him off. Emphasis on "sort of." Their interactions with him are always kind of surreal.

INT. LIVING ROOM OF MY HOUSE - DAY DAD is sitting in his rocking chair, contemplating the wall, as he likes to do. CAT STEVENS is asleep on the couch. Enter EARL, on his way to the front door, smacking a fresh pack of cigarettes against the palm of his hand.

EARL.

How's life, Mr. Gaines.

DAD.

echoing mysteriously Life.

EARL.

patiently How's your life.

DAD.

Life! Yes, life. Life is good, as I was just telling Cat Stevens here. How's your life?

EARL.

It's goin' awright.

DAD.

You're going out for a cigarette break, I see.

EARL.

Yeah. You want to come?

DAD.

five seconds of unexplained staring EARL.

Awright then.

DAD.