The Wanting by Michael Lavigne Page B

come here as a child.” And then, out of the blue, she told me her story.
    But a bright greenish light interrupted my memories, the headlights of a truck, which I could hear rolling toward me across the long miles of desert road. It was soon upon me; its great brakes squealed under the weight of its huge tires. The driver leaned out his window and shouted, “Everything okay?”
    “Everything’s fine,” I said. “Just taking a leak.”
    “All right then. Good night.”
    “Good night.”
    “Be careful out here.”
    “I will.”
    He set the truck in gear and continued his way south. I also started up my engine. I would be home in an hour and a half. Anyusha would be angry, of course, disappointed in me, whichwas hard to bear, but it would pass quickly because—well, she was Anyusha. It was so easy to visualize her face—the crazy haircut, the onyx eyes that always blazed with troublemaking, the goofy smile with teeth still too big for her face, the white, doll-like skin—but then, down by the horizon, rising like a second moon in an alien sky, I saw it, blotting out every pixel of Anyusha’s face, its Cheshire fangs grinning, the gore of its torn neck forming a crescent of blood, a smirk, a wink, a suggestion, a dare—and just like that I turned the car about and headed toward Bethlehem.

    I lied to Shana’s mother and told her Babushka was coming to stay with me. I still call her Babushka, the Russian way, I can’t stop myself. But I just wanted to wait for Dad by myself, and also I was already bored with them, well not bored, because Shana’s not boring, but they don’t really talk about anything. I’m not saying they’re not fun or they’re not nice, because they are and I love them, but I have been thinking about things lately. I have been thinking about what’s going on and why things seem so difficult for me. I have been thinking about my problem a lot, which I have never actually written about in my diary. So I came home to the empty house. Everyone is very worried about Pop, but Daphne, Shana’s mom, keeps saying he’s just dealing, by which she means he’s basically psycho right now. I feel that sometimes I am, too, but I always have been. I’m just psycho. So what?
    I like our house, I do, but it’s not like normal houses. It’s sort of bare. Actually barren would be the word. Everyone else has all these photos of their family on their refrigerator, or they put up all the drawings of their kids from the time they were two, stuff like that. But this is against Dad’s aesthetic. He’s a postmodernist or a neomodernist, I’m not sure which, only I know he’s not a modernist, because everything modernist is so straight lines and he doesn’tbelieve in straight lines. He is what he calls a minimalist. One picture all by itself on the wall. One chair all alone in the middle of the room. And
nothing
on the refrigerator! On the other hand, the place currently is a total complete gross-out. Dad threw out all the flowers people sent, but aside from that he just stopped picking up, and crap is piling up everywhere. Dishes, clothes, newspapers, everything. This is called
entropy
. (Greek.) You can’t blame me, because I’ve barely been home.
    Anyway, I decided to call Yohanan. I’ve been spending a lot of time with him lately, but it’s not what you might think. We’re not
doing
anything. It’s completely platonic, totally intellectual. Plato of course was a homosexual, so it’s not clear to me what “platonic” really means. I have not yet read too much Plato, but he is on the list. Yohanan and I discuss our graphic novels and manga, and then we study things Rabbi Keren has given us. We do the graphic novels at my house and the Rabbi Keren stuff at his house. I can’t tell Pop, and I also can’t stop the reading and the talks with the rabbi because if I did, well, I think I truly would go psycho. So maybe I am a liar. But I don’t think it’s so awful that I don’t tell my father