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  I have not told you anything about Dean. Dean is on his own planet, as you can imagine. I wonder if Dean will have a chance to visit Earth in his lifetime. Dean perhaps was given a tad too much Ritalin when he was growing up. I remember him as a wiry, weird, and wired young kid who liked to ride his bicycle straight into the lake on purpose and shoot peas out of his nose during meals. He drank a lot of Kool-Aid and gave teachers a really hard time in school. And then he was medicated.

  He stopped shooting peas out of his nose, no more bike trips into cold water, and his teachers reported he was “more polite” in school. Before Dean settled down, and back before I lost my first set of parents, we roamed the woods, skateboarded in the parking lots, and rode our bikes to the lake (and he into the lake). And then I went through my thing. And Dean. Dean settled down. And, like me, was never quite the same again. So we share that. We were both someone else at one point.

  Dude, the next note said, what about the Russians? You can pay to go up in space, right? Have you ever checked into the fares?

  He used the word fare like it would have been posted on Expedia or something. One way to the space station so much. Return fare, so much. Did they have first class and economy or just one price? Did you get a free meal or just a bag of nuts?

  I smiled and wrote back. Dude, it’s gotta be very expensive.

  Start saving your quarters. I slipped it to him.

  He smiled. He was satisfied with my answer.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Did you ever think about the word “dilemma?” I discovered that the true meaning of the word is a problem with two unpleasant solutions. This means you get in a screwed-up situation and you have two choices for finding a way out. Neither one is good but you do have to choose one. Whichever one you pick, somebody or something pays. They use the phrase that you are on “the horns of a dilemma.” Makes it sound like an animal—a bull or a moose, maybe.

  I think a lot of life is like that. You have to choose. You have no choice. But it’s not always easy and you pay. Back then, after the accident, the doctor on my case wanted to put me on some kind of medication. “It will ease the pain,” he said. “It will get you through it.” I don’t know why I chose not to do this. I think I was just stubborn. And the truth is this: I wanted to feel the pain. And feel it I did.

  The new parents coming on board helped get my head back into the so-called real world. I had drifted off to very, very distant islands and forests and mountains. Big time. Will and Beth MacDonald walked the wilderness until they found me and brought me back. I still don’t know how they did that. But the pain was still with me. Will always be with me.

  So what do you do to get through your life, making sure that you never have to feel that sort of pain again? Well, you try not to care so bloody much about anything.

  And I’ve tried that. In fact, I’m still doing it. But that’s one of those dilemma situations, too. You protect yourself, but you sacrifice as well.

  Dean calls me up and wants to know if I think he should be a marine biologist. “Someone has to look out for the fish,” he says.

  “Dude, I think you’d make a great marine biologist. You’d get a boat. Hire some really cute girls—cute but really smart and eco-friendly—to work with you and you go do your thing.”

  “I’d really like to study the Mariana Trench.”

  I knew that the Mariana Trench was possibly the deepest part of any ocean on earth.

  “It’ll be pretty dark down there.”

  “I’m okay with dark.”

  “And such a long way down.”

  “A lot of pressure, I know.”

  “But if that is what you want to study, you should go for it.”

  “Maybe I will. I was just watching a documentary on the Discovery Channel and it kind of made me think this is my life’s calling.”

  “How are you doing in biology?”

  “Not all that great.”

  “Then you might need to try harder. What about math?”

  “I think I’m passing.”

  “Passing is good.”

  “Thanks, dude. I just needed to call and run this past you.”

  “No problem.”

  “Did you know that Mars has two moons?”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Phobos and Deimos.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Everybody knows that.”

  “Right.”

  That was a fairly typical Dean phone call. I don’t know what will become of the Deans of the world. I think they need to be protected—like an endangered species. Dean is vulnerable, as you can imagine. The Oliver Julians of the world love to make fun of him. He’s easy to make fun of. It’s not that he’s stupid. In fact, I think he’s quite smart. He just fell off the truck and the truck moved on—figuratively speaking. I hope he wins the lottery, gets rich, and blows it all on a trip with the Russians to the space station where he falls in love with a very beautiful and loving lady Russian cosmonaut (if they’re still called cosmonauts), who is there observing the two moons of Mars. I hope they get married on a boat floating above the Mariana Trench back on earth and have some really cool, happy kids. That’s what I hope.

  Dreams and aspirations. An interesting combination of words. It’s also a title of the False Prophets first album. The concept is all about what if. What if we got to live out our dream? What if we got to do what we really want to do in life? Would there still have to be dilemmas? Probably.

  It was my mom today who initiated the career conversation with me. It must be Career Week in the world. “Any ideas what you want to do with your life, Joe?” It was breakfast. I’m not that awake at breakfast. Neither was my dad. My dad just looked down at his muesli.

  “Dean says he wants to be a marine biologist,” I said. “Maybe I’ll do that. He and I can be a team.”

  “How is Dean?” Will asked, trying to change the subject.

  “Dean is Dean.”

  Dad-2 nodded. Mom-2 paused and then proceeded. “You can take over the store if that seems to be your calling.”

  Will nodded again, smiled. I knew that had always been his dream, but he knew it might not be mine. “I like the store,” I said. “Maybe that will work out.”

  “We’re moving into more fresh fruits and vegetables,” my dad said, still smiling. Fewer jars with vitamins and pills. More fresh mesclun (which are greens, by the way, not drugs) and pomegranates. I tried to contain my excitement.

  “Well, I’m just trying to get through high school,” I said.

  “Understood,” my mom said.

  Will and Beth both looked caringly at their adopted son and you could tell they were worried about him.

  So, during school that day, I, too, began to puzzle over me. What if I did not “find my place in the world?” Certainly I would not be alone. Dean would probably be there with me. And Gloria, maybe. Gloria, like Dean, was fragile. Would she ever be able to survive out there? School is bad enough. But everything after that could be so difficult. And what about me? Would the world let me drift? Let me daydream? I truly had no ambition to be a marine biologist. Someone else would have to save the jellyfish and the shrimp. I couldn’t see myself as a teacher or an investment counselor. And I guess the store was a fallback position. But a life among vegetables and fruits? I don’t know.

  Alternate time line. “If you see a fork in the road, take it.” According to baseball legend, Yogi Berra said that. I’m not sure I know who Yogi Berra is but it’s funny. Daydreaming today in health class, right when I should have been paying attention to information about the endocrine system— which may be of use to me someday—I came to the fanciful conclusion that there is another time line with another me somewhere. I don’t know where, just somewhere, even if it is just in my head.

  The other me is, of course, the one who did not lose his first set of parents to a garbage truck. Henry and Seal came home that night and they had a small argument. Yes, they were arguing a
bout the movie. But I can’t remember the name of the movie. I had finished my homework for Mr. Ogden and was watching a rerun of a TV sitcom. I was tired and almost asleep. I asked my parents about the film. “How was it?”

  “I didn’t like the ending,” my mother said. “It was unrealistic.”

  “How else could they end it?” my father said, sounding a little miffed. This was quite unusual for them.

  “Let’s just go to bed,” my mom said. And they went to bed.

  I turned off the TV, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. As if nothing had happened.

  Because nothing had happened. No crash, no ambulance, no cop at the door near midnight. In the morning, whatever little disagreement had existed between my parents had ceased to be. My guess is they had had sex and made up and all was well. (I would not have known this at twelve but, at sixteen, I could see how things worked out for a married couple.)

  Joseph—that’s the other me—got up in the morning and went to school as usual. In the schoolyard, he watched for Charlene to arrive. (I had almost forgotten about Charlene.) Charlene was happy to see me and I was happy to see her.

  But back to real life. There was a girl named Charlene back then. Charlene called me Joey. We had started out as friends but I found myself with a crush on her. Charlene was a little cool to me at first, if memory serves me well, but I had cheered her up after her dog died and she started being nice to me.

  Nice meant that we walked around outside the school together and traded sandwiches at lunch. I loaned her lunch money one day when she’d forgotten sandwiches, and I wouldn’t let her pay me back.

  And we’d hang out after school. I’d go to her house. She’d come over to mine. Sometimes we were alone in my house or hers. Our parents didn’t seem to mind. Her parents liked me; my parents liked her. Charlene was smart, fun to talk to, and in a twelve-year-old sort of way, really cute. Other kids made fun of our “relationship.” Oh, and did I mention she wore braces? Yes, she did. Her parents wanted her to have straight teeth.

  After the accident, I was in a fog for a long while. (I can’t say exactly how long—maybe the fog never fully lifted.) Charlene called me but I was not home. I’d been placed with some temporary foster parents. I called her but when she answered, I didn’t know what to say so I just hung up. This happened more than once.

  Here’s the thing. We never actually had a chance to get back together after that. I got transferred to another school. I gave up trying to call her. She must have given up trying to get in touch with me.

  But in my alternate time line where my parents just have a small argument but no accident, Charlene and Joey become loyal to each other—great friends who decide that what they have is more than a friendship. If twelve was too young to actually fall in love, thirteen was not. Thirteen was just right. And thirteen was just around the corner.

  Now, if you are still following this little fairy tale, you will roll your eyes and say, “No way,” out loud when I tell you that in this other time line they continue this relationship right through high school, through all the ups and downs of adolescent life, through all the stupid shit thrown at you when you are that age. They graduate and—get this—they get married.

  I don’t know what happens after that. I really don’t. Do they have kids? Do they live happily ever after? (Does anyone live happily ever after?) Would they have even gotten together if Charlene’s dog, a cocker spaniel named Ted, had not died?

  What if all of this actually existed on some other time line? I now pronounce you man and wife. I now give you a life. What if it is actually happening now? Joey-1 is still with Charlene. They are not married yet but still in school. They are sixteen. Are they having sex? Is it really love? What if?

  After the accident, though, Joey-1 probably ceased to exist. The Charlene thing ended. And Joseph woke up in the morning to this other life, his only life. The one where he is now sixteen, daydreaming his life away, certain that nothing makes sense and not expecting it to ever change. The boy is certainly not thinking about marriage and he is certainly not getting any sex.

  And Charlene had faded entirely from his memory, from my memory. Until now.

  In my mind, I saw her braces first, then I saw the rest of her. I remembered how sweet she was. How she liked it when I said nice things to her. (Joey was like that.)

  And I guess that’s when I heard the voice of Joey-1. “Find her, dude,” he seemed to say. “Find her.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Gloria was still depressed again in school today. I found her staring into her open locker. “The arguments are getting worse,” she said.

  “What do they argue about?”

  “Money,” she said. “And me. My mom thinks there’s something wrong with me.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re perfect.”

  “I’m not perfect. My mom says she thinks I’ve got a serious problem. But then my dad yells at her and tells her to stop saying that. What should I do?”

  “What can you do?”

  “I don’t know. I think that they’re thinking of breaking up. And it’s because of me. And I need to stop it from happening.”

  “Do you think you can do that?”

  “I don’t know. But I feel that it’s all my fault.”

  Joey-1 had snuck up on me again. That’s how I felt, he seemed to be saying inside my head. “It’s not your fault,” I said. But I didn’t know if I was saying it to Gloria or saying it to me.

  In biology class, we discussed a cheerful little theory devised by an English biologist (also an economist, I think) named Robert Malthus. Mrs. Godot called it the “Malthusian population theory.” You recall how much I like theories, so I was quite alert and not drifting off to anywhere.

  Bobby Malthus, who must have been a real wet blanket at parties, suggested that the number of people on earth would increase at a geometric rate but that the food supply (and other resources) would increase only moderately, or not at all. So, the more the population increased, the less food and everything else you’d have to keep everybody alive. The result would be massive poverty and starvation. The so-called “good news” is that there will be an almost automatic decrease in the population from disease, famine, high infant mortality rates, and—that good old standby used to reduce population down through the ages—war.

  Malthus made a small suggestion that some of the nastiness could be offset by what was referred to as “moral restraint.” Mrs. Godot thought that meant people being nice to each other and sharing what they had so everyone could live. Fat chance of that working. It also meant to stop having kids. Malthus probably thought this meant not having sex. His theory was published in 1798 when birth control was iffy at best. So he was maybe thinking that humans would stop having sex in order to save the world from pestilence, plagues, wars, and so forth. I can just imagine the morally restrained husbands of the world saying to their wives, “Honey, let’s not do it tonight so that you won’t get pregnant and the world will have one less mouth to feed and we’ll avoid the deaths of thousands, if not millions.” No, I can’t see that happening.

  But then I am a guy who has not had sex yet. What would I know about “moral restraint?” At least no one can blame me personally for the wars, the shortage of food globally, and the high infant mortality rate in Third World countries. The word for not doing something (like sex for example) is “abstinence,” which my trusty two-volume Oxford English Dictionary defines as “the act of withholding.” To abstain is to not do something. Abstain from sex, abstain from drinking, abstain from eating.

  So once again, not doing something can have very positive results. Like the Buddhists say, “Don’t just do something, sit there.” Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.

  So me not having sex is probably good for something. I’m helping to save the world by not having sex today. Robert Malthus would be proud of me. Of course, he had his detractors. The ones who said that we are a smart and compassionate species and would not keep allowing ou
r fellow man (woman and child) to die. Technology would come to our aid and we’d devise new and better ways to feed, house, and save everyone’s ass. Everyone who has money, that is. Everyone who is not dirt poor.

  I have this feeling that the other me, Joey-1, would have had sex by now. Possibly with Charlene if they’d still been together.

  Possibly with Rachelle Drummond in the school closet. Hey, maybe I would have turned out like Oliver Julian. Or not.

  Gloria was not in my biology class and I had decided that a discussion of the Malthusian theory would not cheer her up. I didn’t know what to do to help Gloria, but all that thinking about abstinence had made me a little weird. Fired up the hormones or something.

  So between classes, I tracked Gloria down at her locker— she was staring into it again like there was someone there. I turned her around, took off her glasses, and I kissed her. No lie.

  I kissed her and then waited for a response.

  It was not a masterful kiss, I admit. It was a kind of kiss of dare. I had dared myself to kiss her. And almost wimped out.

  It was a kiss of desperation. I had to kiss someone. I could have done nothing, I know—my big kick of negative capability. “The less you do, the more good you will achieve.” But I was in denial or in rebellion against dark forms of tyranny— like the French in 1798, rising up against oppression.

  Exactly why did I kiss her? you (whoever you are) might wonder. I had never kissed her before. Most would even say she didn’t look like a girl you’d kiss. She didn’t look like a girl who wanted to be kissed. As previously noted, the world does not make sense. There is no discernible meaning. So it was a random kiss in a random universe. And people were watching.

  Where had this idea come from? you might ask. What kind of freak am I? Thoughts about the death and dying of millions, a planet full of starving humans, talk of population decline, war and pestilence. Does that make a boy kiss a girl? I think not.

  Instead, an idea to act in some small positive (and somewhat hormonally charged) way burst like a bubble in the brain of Joseph. Joey maybe coaching him. Time to make up for lost time, Mr. Joe-Seph. Maybe that.