EMMETT SHOWS up promptly at nine that morning, an hour early, and wakes me up by hacking into my phone, attaching it to a speaker, and playing the loudest and angriest song he can find at full blast. Needless to say, he is successful. I keep some violent music on my cell phone. I roll over with a groan and swear loudly in his general direction and do my best to sic the sleeping dachshund at the foot of my bed on him. Sarah, in response, only stretches and repositions herself, licking my ankle before sleeping again. My mom yells at me from her bedroom to use kind language with my friends.
Emmett bows out to go to the bathroom, claiming that my mom sent him to wake me up, but the idea could easily have come from either of them, and I am not sure what to believe. I pretend not to notice that his smile is a little strained and that there are bags under his eyes. I forget it the minute that I roll out of bed. I dress quickly and find Emmett eating a cinnamon roll at the table while my mom puts suitcases into the trunk of our car.
I join Emmett in a cinnamon roll, thankful that my mom has requisitioned my favorite food to start off this miniature vacation. We eat quickly and load into the car, me in the passenger seat and Emmett in the back as always. We’re running late, but that’s really nothing new at all. I’ve grown used to it in the past seventeen years. Emmett’s followed Darwin’s guidelines and has likewise adapted to our tardiness, at a rate almost as impressive as his texting abilities.
It’s partly due to luck and mostly due to my mother’s driving speed that borders on highly unsafe that we make it to the train station with time to spare and find ourselves on the platform waiting for the train to arrive.
When it pulls to a stop, we stow our luggage in a corner and settle into the uncomfortable pleather seats that will be our home for the next two hours. My mom pulls out a book, and I pull out my phone, to write down any ideas I may want to voice in the interview, but I end up playing games and getting distracted.
Twenty minutes later I pause to look up, and I see that Emmett is hunched over a pad of paper, not unlike the ones I tend to use, but his is bigger and probably homework-related. He is humming an old song by The Doors that I played for him once.
“What are you doing, Emmett?” He looks up, revealing an earphone that was hidden under his shaggy hair, shifting to look at me.
“I’m writing a thing,” he mutters enigmatically before hunching back down, subtly turning up the music on his phone, now visible.
“What kind of thing?” I press, leaning forward.
“I’m writing a poem,” he admits.
“Why are you listening to The Doors, then?”
“Shut up.” He squints at the notepad that contains three words and a rough sketch of a famous face that I vaguely recognize, and he is obviously crushing on. “This is conducive to writing.” He sticks his tongue out at me.
“Conducive? That’s a good one. Learn it in your dreadfully boring English class?” I smirk.
“I’m not answering any more of your questions.” He hunches back over the pad and scribbles hair onto the visage of whatever celebrity he’s thinking about.
It’s maybe three minutes later that Emmett looks up and frowns at my amused expression. I’ve been unashamedly watching him write. I want to know if he can write a poem.
“You know, I’ve gained a whole new respect for the art of crafting a poem, Carter.” I nod at him, encouraging the man to explain himself. He refuses. Eventually, I elicit a response.
“I love the fact that you don’t need any grammar at all to make a poem good. There’s no punctuation, you can make the spacing do whatever it wants, and you pretty much rule how it flows. They’re random little snippets of adorable,” he supplies while I nod.
“It’s freeing and loose, like sitting on a hill in flowy clothing in the wind and having no responsibilities in the world, and it’s utterly fantastic,” I reply. Emmett nods.
“I like that feeling. Let’s climb a hill and wear flowy clothing and have no responsibilities.” Emmett develops a dreamy look in his eyes.
I think about possible places where we can do exactly that, but my imaginary hill becomes steep and muddy and uncomfortable once a new thought strikes me.
“We could do that back home, in all fairness,” I start nonchalantly. “But I couldn’t. All my flowy sitting on a hill clothes are tank top things.”
“Well, the windy hill of responsibility freeness is a judgment-free zone. Besides, your dress for tomorrow shows that all off anyways, right? It proves how much you’ve overcome and how you have your battle scars and all that stuff, and I love you in the most fraternal, platonic way possible, and I’d probably be hopelessly in love with you if I didn’t love guys so damn much. So, you know, in conclusion, smile and stuff.” Emmett finishes awkwardly before finding himself being hugged in a most violent manner by me.
“Are you aware of how perfect you are, my dear Emmett?” I accidentally say it to his shoulder.
“I’ve heard it said before, I won’t lie. But you’re pretty awesome too, getting me out of school and letting me ignore my homework. It’s so boring. If I have to spend one more day in that class, I’m going to beat myself with a Spork.”
I have to laugh at him before reminding him that the day is Saturday.
“But why with a Spork?” I ask curiously, having finally processed the last bit.
“Because they are dull and will keep me awake in class and stuff. The teacher has an incredibly dry delivery of the same lessons we learned last year.” His words are rushed, as if he’s been building up an arsenal of reasons to go crazy since the first day of school. But with this being Emmett, he likely has.
“And would you have a Spork handy for the very moment you lose it?” I keep the conversation open, waiting to see where Emmett takes it.
“Alas, I would likely not. But I would make sure to have a handy dandy Spork at the ready if I were to ever go to prison.” At this latest response, my mom looks up from her book. She’s intrigued too.
“Why in the world would you ever go to prison, Emmett?” Mom easily slides into the conversation.
“Probably for attempting to stab someone with a Spork,” he replies just as easily.
“I see,” she replies seriously. I wonder how we’d sound to passersby if there were any.
“Wouldn’t they confiscate your Spork?” I ponder, and Emmett nods gravely.
“It is likely, but the best way to eat Jell-O is with a Spork, and if we were to have Jell-O one day, I would request a Spork to eat it with. And they would give me one because I am so well behaved. And hopefully they won’t have my record so they wouldn’t know about my unfortunate Spork-related history. Then I would hide it in my shoe and bring it back to my cell and thus dig my way out of incarceration.” I share a glance with my mother, wondering why Emmett chose to bring the conversation that way.
“Why would you dig out of incarceration with a Spork? If the prongs get dented, doesn’t it render it useless?” I easily poke a gaping, Spork-shaped hole in Emmett’s plan.
Naturally, he is not to be outdone.
“Well, if that were to be the case, I’d have a spoon for backup, because spoons are nice, and consequently beneficial for digging out of the prison of your choice. Also, I can use a spoon to eat cake if they serve it in prison. And if all else fails, and I am unable to escape, I will use either my Spork or spoon to hit people over the head with for long enough that they go insane.”
Emmett nods once, satisfied with his discussion and turns his music back on, no longer listening to me or my mother. I think back on what Emmett just said, and I have to admit that we’ve talked about weirder things. For example, the ending of a dinosaur movie: All the dinosaurs die, a meteor hits the Earth, and all that fun stuff. But Emmett wanted to know what would happen if the dinosaurs had survived.
I said they’d probably develop technology or something, and Emmett ended the conversation with the idea of raptors in human clothes, parading around to the tune of “All dinosaurs are equal, but some are more equal than others.” He proceeded to name it Jurassic Farm.
So, all things considered, Emmett knows how to make any conversation infinitely more interesting. I’ve lost my train of thought, which is funny because I’m on a train, so I bring myself back to the present, and more specifically, the train.
I lean over to have a miniature discussion with my mother. “Remind me to keep him away from Sporks in the future.”
“Oh that’s a given. And you should encourage him to write more. He has quite the interesting brain. I’d like to see that Jurassic Farm you two were planning the other night when I was making salad.” I gape at her.
“Why were you listening to us?”
“Isn’t it obvious, Carter? Your friend knows how to carry incredibly interesting and fairly eloquent conversations.” I nod soberly, because she is right, finishing the conversation, choosing to lean back into the uncomfortable seats that squeak whenever you put weight on them.
Sometime after that, I fall into a light sleep, lulled by the annoying clacking of train wheels.