Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos

can even pass the pipe along, Jorie jumps up and takes it from me.
    “Dudes! Not my brother.”
    “I was just being neighborly,” the guy says.
    “It’s all right,” I say. “I can just say no.”
    The room erupts in laughter, except for Jorie. I realize too late that I sounded like one of those terrible anti-drug posters in the gym teacher’s office. She laughs sarcastically and goes to another room. I stay on the couch and try to disappear completely.
    Long after my curfew, Jorie finds someone to give us both a ride home. I think the guy’s name is Dutch. Or Hutch. It’s got an “utch” sound.
    Jorie sits in the front seat. I’m nervous; Utch seems very high. I want to be cool and not embarrass my sister, who has gone out of her way to make me comfortable all night, even after I accidentally made everyone laugh at her. Seems like I’m always guilty of something that ends with Jorie being punished.
    “Holy shit,” Utch giggles, “was that purple thing a
dinosaur?
”
    “What?” Jorie says.
    “It was a purple rhinodactylus! One of those flying things!”
    “What the hell are you talking about?”
    Utch is looking over his shoulder at me.
    “Did you see it?”
    “I didn’t.” If I had seen a flying purple thing, I would be very, very frightened. As it stands, the fact that the guy driving saw it should frighten me more.
    The car is going very slow and we’re sticking to back roads. Jorie navigates and Utch keeps talking about seeing things.
    “Are you tripping?” Jorie whispers.
    “I can hear you,” I say.
    “I’m way past tripping,” Utch says.
    I can hear the things my father would say about this.
This is what you do with your time? This is the way you choose to live your lives? This is the smartest decision you can make—get a ride home from the highest guy at the party?
    “Go slowly,” Jorie says. “Don’t kill me and my brother.”
    I want to have faith that nothing will happen. Whitman would say that I should have faith in the universe. I can’t think of any lines relevant to this situation.
    Then Utch drives into a parked car.
    After a moment, I get out of the back seat. Jorie gets out of the front seat. There’s steam or smoke or an angry car spirit misting from the front of Utch’s car.
    “You should get out of here, James,” Jorie says.
    “Should we leave him?”
    “No. You should go. Cops will be here. You don’t need to be here.”
    I look at Jorie and she’s wilted. Her night will never end. I wonder if all her nights have been like this since she got kicked out.
    We go over to help Utch out, but he waves us off. The driver’s side door makes a magnificent crunching sound as it opens. I look at the dark and crackled windshield. The streetlight or the moon reflects in it. I want to take a picture, which seems stupid, but there it is.
    “Did I kill it?” Utch says.
    “What?”
    “The rhinodactylus!” He has a giggle fit and then sees blood on his hands and gets quiet.
    Jorie pulls me away and urges me to leave. She points me to Batch Road, which I can follow all the way back home. I start walking and listen for the sounds of cops, but the night is quiet except for Jorie reading her friend the riot act.

22.
    WHEN I GET HOME there’s a note on the front door that reads: “This is entirely too late.”
    It’s my mother’s handwriting.
    I open the door quietly and head upstairs. Pictures of my mother and father line the upstairs hallway. Other relatives are peppered here as well, but the constant inclusion of my youthful parents has always suggested to me a strange vanity. Hold on to youth, ignore life with kids. My parents do not seem emotional in the pictures; they mostly embody verbs—they blow out birthday candles, they raise hands in the air along with a crowd of others, they shield their eyes from sun, they throw Frisbees, they barbecue. Even in shots of them hugging or smiling, I sense no real emotion. Maybe I can’t see them as people; maybe they will