Edward Adrift

before. I can’t prove this empirically, because I never bothered to measure my pee before I started taking this pill. That would have been gross. But I can tell.”
    It now seems to me that we’ve gone about as far as we can with this subject, but Kyle keeps going.
    “I bet I can pee more than you,” he says.
    I laugh. This is ha-ha funny. “No, you can’t.”
    “Wanna bet?”
    “Kyle,” I say, “you’re being silly. I’m older than you, I’m bigger than you, and I’m sure I have a bigger bladder than you do. There is just no way you can pee more than I can, unless you have a bad medical condition, in which case we should get you to a doctor.”
    “If I pee more than you, will you erase what I owe you?”
    This question flummoxes me. On one hand, I don’t want Kyle erasing his debt by any means other than being nice to his mother and being sociable with me. On the other hand, this idea that he could pee more than I can is anatomically laughable. I counter with my own question. “This is purely hypothetical, because there is no way you can pee more than I can, but if you do, will you still call your mother and still take walks with me?”
    “I guess.”
    “I want a yes, or it is no deal.”
    “Yes, OK, I will.”
    I take my right hand off the steering wheel and offer it across the seat to Kyle, who shakes it.
    We’re strange.

    Kyle and I agree that we will store our pee in empty water bottles for comparison’s sake, and he drinks the contents of two to make room. He wants to drink three bottles of water, but I tell him that he can’t because I don’t want him to get water poisoning, and he laughs at me as if I’m making something up.
    “Water isn’t poison.”
    “Well, no, it isn’t technically,” I say. “But if you drink too much water, it can kill you.”
    “No, it can’t.”
    “Yes, Kyle, it can.”
    I wish he wouldn’t do this to me. I don’t make things up; it’s against my nature as a fact-loving person. I proceed to tell him about a story I read in the
Billings Herald-Gleaner
, long before I worked there. It seems that a radio station in Sacramento, California, held a contest called “Hold Your Wee for a Wii,” in which it challenged a woman to drink as much water as she could to win a video game console. She didn’t win the game. She died.
    “You’re lucky,” I tell Kyle. “You got your Wii from Santa Claus.” I don’t like telling Kyle a piece of fiction like this, but I also don’t think it’s my place to tell him the truth about Santa Claus if he doesn’t already know it. That’s up to Donna and Victor.
    He already knows it.
    “Yeah, right,” he says. “Santa Claus is my grandpa. You’re stupid if you believe in Santa Claus.”
    “Now you did it,” I say. “You are back up to owing me two twenty-five.”
    “Wait a minute!”
    “You called me stupid.”
    “No, I said you’re stupid
if
you believe in Santa Claus. Do you believe in Santa Claus?”
    “No.”
    “Then you’re not stupid.”
    I don’t say anything for a few seconds. I don’t like being outsmarted.
    “You owe me two fifteen,” I say.
    Kyle slaps the leather seat happily.
    We’re driving past Rawlins on the interstate now, and I do something I’m not supposed to do and look away from the road and at Kyle, just for a second.
    “What?” he says.
    “When did you find out that Santa Claus isn’t real?”
    “Two years ago. I found where Mom hid all the presents.”
    “Did you tell her?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “I don’t know. She likes Christmas and stuff. Anyway, I think she knows that I know.”
    “How?”
    “She’s not making a big deal out of it this year.”
    “Do you know what you’re getting?”
    He laughs, only it’s not a ha-ha-funny laugh. “Probably nothing, the way things are going.”
    “They’ll get you something.”
    “I guess.”
    “Do you know what I want for Christmas, Kyle?”
    “No.”
    I feel my cheeks getting hot, which is strange. And then I realize that I’m embarrassed to say what I’ve been thinking. But I do it anyway.
    “This trip with you.”
    He doesn’t say anything. I make sure my eyes stay fixated on the road. I’m afraid that I’ve embarrassed him or made him uncomfortable, so I don’t want to make it worse by looking at him.
    “Edward?”
    “Yes?”
    “When did you find out about Santa Claus?”
    I’m glad he asked me this question. I remember it exactly. It was December 24, 1975. I was six years old. I tell