Edward Adrift

trip, Kyle chats happily on my bitchin’ iPhone with his mother,and as he hangs up, he tells her that he will call again when we reach Cheyenne Wells. After the phone is back in my hands, he reminds me that he’s part of the way to a Tim Tebow jersey. This annoys me.
    Near the small town of Deer Trail, 119 miles from our destination, Kyle tells me to pull off at a rest stop so he can pee. It’s good timing—I have to pee, too, and we’re now able to renew our contest.
    We’re alone in the restroom, which is a nice development, as I’m feeling a little silly about this even as I’m powerless to stop it. This is one of the struggles of my condition, particularly the obsessive-compulsive part of it. I wonder what Dr. Buckley would say if I told her that a twelve-year-old boy and I were comparing our levels of urination. It’s difficult for me to even imagine telling her such a thing, although I surely would if she were still my therapist, because I told Dr. Buckley everything. I have not reached that level of trust with Dr. Bryan Thomsen. I suspect that Dr. Buckley would say this is the sort of compulsion I should work harder at controlling.
    Having learned how to pee into the bottle at our previous stop, I fill mine with no trouble. From the stall next to me, where Kyle is, I hear a gurgling sound.
    “What’s that?” I ask.
    “Nothing.”
    I walk around to the front of the stall and peek through the opening between the door and the wall. I can’t believe what I see.
    Kyle is kneeling at the commode, and he has pushed the bottle into the toilet water to fill it up. This is cheating. This is also really, really gross.
    “Kyle!”
    He jumps and drops the bottle into the toilet.
    “Shit!” he yells, and I make a mental note to add $10 to his debt.
    “I can’t believe this,” I say. “You’re cheating. Did you cheat at the last rest stop, too?”
    He leaves the bottle in the toilet water and slams through the stall door, almost hitting me in the face as it swings open.
    “Shut up, Edward.”
    “That’s another ten dollars for being rude. With that and the
s
-word you just said, you’re at two hundred twenty-one.”
    Kyle’s hands are balled up into fists. “Do you think I care? I’m never paying you, so you can just forget it. You can forget your stupid game, too.”
    “It’s your stupid game, Kyle. You’re the one who wanted to do it, and that’s what I’m going to tell your mom when I tell her that you’ve been cheating.”
    “‘That’s what I’m going to tell your mom,’” Kyle mocks me in a sing-song voice. “You’re not going to tell her about this, you big tattletale. Don’t be stupid. How do you think that’s gonna look? ‘Hey, Donna, Kyle and I were peeing into bottles.’ You’re an idiot.”
    Kyle has really hurt my feelings now. I’m not an idiot. I’m developmentally disabled, not stupid. He’s right that I probably shouldn’t say anything about this to Donna. I suspect that her reaction would be similar to Dr. Buckley’s, if not worse, and while I do not like to trust supposition, I’m not willing to seek out the facts on this matter.
    Kyle is already out the door of the restroom. I follow him, tossing my bottle of urine into the trash as I go. I call for him, but he doesn’t look back. He just flips me the bird, which is a euphemism for holding up one’s middle finger. He’s at $231 now.
    I jog to try to catch up to him. The whole thing flummoxes me. We were doing so well, and now we’re not. Kyle is sitting inthe passenger seat of the Cadillac DTS, and his face is pressed against the window, as if I’m holding him prisoner.
    I climb into the driver’s seat and start the car. Kyle doesn’t face me and doesn’t acknowledge me.
    Darkness is coming. We have two hours to go on our drive. Michael Stipe is singing about going all the way to Reno. I look to the west, where Reno is. That’s where John Charles Fremont and Charles Preuss went, or close enough. Charles Preuss didn’t like it out there. I don’t like it out here. I wonder why I came, but I can’t stop now.
    I put the car into drive and head back to the interstate.
    I feel alone. I used to like that. It’s the worst feeling ever now.

TECHNICALLY THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2011
    I’m glad we’re here for only two nights. This bed is too hard. I cannot blame that for why I am awake at 4:21 a.m., however. My father visited me in my dream again, and now I am flummoxed, because we were not in