Edward Adrift

he persists. It’s getting to be a pain.
    Donna was calmer than I would have been, so I’m glad she’s the one who spoke first. “But you like Edward, so maybe you ought to focus on that.”
    Kyle didn’t say anything to that, but he did walk over and sit on the far edge of the couch, away from me. He still had a twistedlook on his face, the kind of face that my grandpa Sid used to call “puckered up like a chicken’s asshole.”
    I waited for a commercial break to talk to him.
    “How tall are you now?” I asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    “You were five feet six and seven-sixteenths inches tall on June first. You look a lot taller than that now.”
    “Duh.”
    “Can we measure you?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because that’s weird, you douche.”
    “Hey!” Victor said.
    Donna, clearly mad, came over from the recliner she was sitting in and put her face directly in front of her son’s.
    “You know I hate that word. I won’t have it here, or anywhere else. You apologize to him right now.”
    Kyle didn’t even look at me. “Sorry.”
    The game was back on now, so I left him alone. After stopping the Giants on their first second-half possession, the Cowboys were trying to get moving, but Tony Romo got sacked.
    “Come on, Romo,” I said.
    I have said this many times since Tony Romo became the Cowboys’ quarterback—far too many to count, and I’m glad I don’t keep track of such things.
    “Suck,” Kyle said.
    “Huh?”
    “They suck.”
    “They’re still ahead, Kyle.”
    “You suck.”
    Donna was on her feet. “That’s it. You’re done, kid. You can’t be with civilized people, you’ll be alone.”
    She grabbed Kyle by the arm, lifted him to his feet, and led him out of the living room. Kyle swung his left arm violently and dislodged her hand. That’s when Victor left his chair and stepped toward Kyle, who seemed to shrink physically, although that’s not technically possible. But he definitely knew that he was in trouble and that he didn’t want to tangle with his stepfather.
    “Bed,” Victor said. “Now.”
    Kyle didn’t protest further. He left the room, with Donna trailing him.
    Victor sat back down and faced me.
    “He doesn’t mean it, Edward. He’s angry. Confused. There’s a sourness in him that we just have to ride out.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know. Hormones, maybe. It hasn’t been an easy transition for him, being here. He doesn’t know these kids very well. Junior high is a pretty tough time under the best circumstances, as I recall.”
    I nodded. All of school was tough for me—not necessarily the subjects, although some of them were. I didn’t have friends, and that’s hard for a kid. That’s hard for anybody, as I’ve learned since all my friends left Billings. I’ve been so frustrated with Kyle today, and now, remembering what things were like for me thirty years ago, when I was his age, I feel like I understand him. I wouldn’t want him to live through the kinds of things I experienced.
    “He’s so big,” I said.
    Victor laughed. “Tell me about it. Four inches, at least, since the end of the summer. He wears a size ten shoe. We’ve had to buy new clothes twice.”
    “What should I do?” I asked.
    Victor’s face went from laughter to solemnity (I love the word “solemnity”) in a single moment.
    “To start with, keep being his friend. He needs one. We’ll see how it goes.”
    That’s what I’m contemplating here in the darkness. Being Kyle’s friend.
    The fact of the matter is that Kyle was my first good friend. Donna and I are close now, and I can feel myself becoming better friends with Victor. But Donna and I didn’t start out that way. I didn’t like Donna when I first met her, and I don’t think she liked me very much, either. Kyle, though, made things fun the first time I met him, on October 15, 2008, when he helped me paint my garage.
    Maybe that’s what is missing from Kyle—fun. He looks miserable, and he surely is making his parents miserable. He’s making me miserable, too. As Dr. Buckley would say, that’s an awful lot of power we have given one boy over all of us.
    In fairness to Kyle, he’s not the only reason I’m in a bad mood. The Dallas Cowboys really messed up tonight. They led by twelve points, 34–22, with five minutes and forty-one seconds left in the game, and they still managed to lose. Eli Manning passed for one touchdown, and Brandon Jacobs ran for one, and with a two-point conversion, the