Jorge lied on the lawn face down, shirtless, feeling the funny feeling on his skin, thinking about how cows can eat grass but humans can’t, the sun blazing on his back. No parents home to say otherwise. No crying little sister. No older brother to call him weird.
And then the orange light shinned on the grass. He looked up as high as he could. A red orb floated before him. He froze. It approached him. His body shook. It hovered in front of him.
“Nebe nabe veru,” it said.
And the images flashed before his eyes:
His mother cut by the broken glass he forgot to pick up, cursing in Spanish.
His future wife.
His future children.
The catastrophic collapse of the world market.
His divorce.
His older brother’s incarceration.
His baby sister becoming a nun.
His mother’s final days.
His father’s heart attack.
His mother cut by the broken glass he forgot to pick up, cursing in Spanish.
Everything went black.
. . .
“Jorge. Get up,” his father said.
Jorge stood up, clippings covering his body.
“What are you doing?”
“Tanning,” Jorge said.
“What?”
“I saw it on TV.”
“On TV? Do they wash dishes on TV? Cause you’re grounded. Two hours we let you stay home and you can’t do abything around the house like we said?”
He peaked around his father. His older brother, David, stood smiling at him.
“Next time you go to church with us.”
“Damn it!” His mother walked onto the back patio, foot covered in blood. “I cut myself, Manny.”
. . .
Jorge and David sat in the hospital waiting room.
“Why you gotta be different?” David said.
“What?” Jorge said.
“All you had to do was go once and say it’s not for you. You think I believe in all that stuff?”
And then he thought about his brother’s future arrest, the wrong crowd that led to it, the drugs, the stealing, the lies to his parents and then the life sentence.
“You want to go looking for crawfish?” Jorge said.
“What?”
“At the creek. Remember we used to do that?”
“Crawfish? You’re thinking about crawfish?”
His brother stood up and started toward the bathroom. “You’re weird.”
Mavthewriter 