The Book of Joe

indented from its collision with the window. The street in front of the house is completely deserted.
    There is the sound of soft breathing behind me, and I turn around to find Jared sleeping on the living room couch in jeans and a black T-shirt that says “Bowling for Soup.” I don’t remember seeing him there when I came in last night, although that can hardly be considered conclusive. “Hey, Jared,” I mumble. Four beds upstairs, and we both slept on couches.
    “Hey,” he grunts back, not opening his eyes.
    “You’ll be late for school.”
    He opens one eye. “Doesn’t really pay to go, then, does it?”
    The eye closes.
    He’ll get no argument from me. I head upstairs for a shower, pausing only long enough to doff my shorts and perform some spastic dry heaves over the toilet. The light hits my eyes like needles, so I shower in the dark, leaning against the cold tiles in an effort to wake myself up. The hot water pummels my scalp soothingly, cascading in torrents down my face and shoulders, and my mind wanders. I think about Wayne and then my father and the scrapbook I found last night. It’s unbelievable to me that before yesterday they and the Falls were such a remote part of my life, distant memories more than anything else. Now they threaten to consume me, the protective barrier of the last seventeen years dissipating like a mirage.
    I step dripping into my bedroom, feeling hungover and old, to find Jared clipping his toenails on my bed. “Look at you,” he says with an inquisitive smirk, taking in my battered face and bruised ribs.
    “You look. I’m too tired.”
    “You know,” he continues disinterestedly. “Statistically speaking, blocking at least some punches in a fight will usually lead to a more favorable outcome.”
    “I’ll take that under advisement.”
    There’s another bang from downstairs, and we both look out the window to see a green station wagon disappearing around the corner. On the lawn there is now a second copy of Bush Falls splayed out fairly close to the first one. “What’s up with that?” Jared asks, not concerned, just mildly curious, and then leans back to resume clipping his toenails.
    My cell phone rings, and Jared picks it up off the night
    table and tosses it to me. It’s Owen, calling to see how things are going. I update him on my father’s condition, and he clucks and murmurs in all the right places. “And how has it been otherwise?” he asks pointedly. “You know, your return to the Falls?”
    “Pretty crazy.”
    “I knew it!” he exclaims gleefully. “Do tell, do tell.”
    I quickly relate all of the events of the past day, listening to Owen’s delighted gasps while Jared watches me, listening raptly, smirking when I include the incident of his coitus interruptus. “So let’s review,” Owen says when I’m done, not even trying to conceal his merriment. “In the last twenty-four hours, you’ve returned to your hometown, where essentially everybody hates you, you’ve been reunited, however awkwardly, with your estranged family, you’ve walked in on a sexual liaison, gotten in trouble with the law, been assaulted on two separate occasions, and met up with an ailing friend and gotten drunk with him. Am I leaving anything out?”
    I consider telling him about the flying books, but I haven’t gotten my mind wrapped around that one yet, so I leave it out. “That’s pretty much it,” I say.
    Owen whistles softly. “I wonder what you’re going to do today.”
    “You make it sound like I planned all of this.”
    “Au contraire, mon frère. For the first time in god knows how long, it’s spinning wonderfully out of your control.”
    “And what the hell does that mean?”
    But Owen has to go. “Listen, I’m late for something. We’ll talk later.”
    “Wait.”
    “What?”
    “Did you finish the manuscript?” I ask hesitantly.
    “It’s interesting that you refer to it as ‘the’ manuscript,”
    Owen says. “Most writers, passionate about their work, will always refer to it in the possessive, as in ‘my’ manuscript.”
    “What’s your point?”
    “It seems you’re already distancing yourself from your work.”
    “Oh, fuck off,” I say. “Did you read it or not?”
    “I did.”
    “And?”
    “I have,” he says, inhaling as he searches for the right word, “issues.”
    “So I gathered,” I say dejectedly. “What do we do now?”
    Owen sighs. “Well, we could make some changes and I’m sure I could still sell