He punches me in the index finger, probably by accident. He doesn’t break it or anything. But my finger bends backward a bit more than it’s supposed to, and it does not feel good at all. I cry out in pain.
Though multiple parts of my body hurt, at least I’m not embarrassing myself the way I did last time we wrestled. It’s important to always improve.
We punch each other in the face at the exact same time.
Our faces hurt. Our hands hurt. And I feel like we’re both wishing this fight was over. I’m in the mood to cry some more.
“Why did you do it?” I wail.
“Do what?”
“Ruin my life!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he cries.
“Yes, you do! Why did you do it? That’s all I want to know! Is it because you’re jealous of me?”
“No!”
“Are you sure?”
“How could I be jealous of you? You’re poor!”
“I had a girlfriend and a band!”
“I have a girlfriend!”
“No, you don’t!”
“She lives in Canada!”
“You are lying! You don’t text or call anyone from home!”
“She visits on weekends!”
I punch the ground. Obviously, I meant to punch Blake instead. But the ground is softer than his body, and it’s actually a nice change of pace.
“Why did you do it?” I demand.
“I didn’t!”
“Is it because you’re evil?”
“I don’t believe in the concept of evil!”
“A different question then! How much did it cost to bribe everybody to attend our show at the Lane?”
“I didn’t bribe them!”
“Yes, you did!”
I punch the ground again. This time it is on purpose.
“Ten bucks,” Blake admits.
“Each?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Ten bucks isn’t that big of a bribe.”
“It was like five hundred bucks to get all those people to go.”
“Right, but the individual bribes weren’t that big. For ten bucks, they’d still have to kind of want to see the show, right?”
“I guess.”
“It was an incentive, but it can’t have been the whole reason they went.”
“How much did you think I spent?”
“I don’t know. Fifty bucks?”
“That would’ve been twenty-five hundred dollars.”
“If I can imagine you spending one thousand dollars to bribe people, I can imagine twenty-five hundred. How rich are you anyway?”
“I shouldn’t have spent that money. My mom is gonna kill me.”
“Can we stop fighting now?” I ask.
Blake punches me in the arm.
“You can’t punch me after I call for a truce!”
“I didn’t accept the truce. That was a fair punch.”
“Please tell me it cost more than ten bucks each to turn the kids in school against me.”
Blake nods. “My mom is going to be furious.”
“Then why did you do it!”
“I don’t know!”
“Yes, you do! You have to know!”
“I don’t!”
“Were you going to start dressing like me and take over my life?”
“No!”
“Are you sure? You weren’t trying to date Audrey and be the lead singer of Fanged Grapefruit?”
“I can’t sing!”
“I know that, but maybe you don’t!”
“I wasn’t trying to assume your identity!”
“Were you doing research for a novel?”
“No!”
“Are you sure?”
“Quit asking if I’m sure! I think I’d know if I was doing research for a novel or not! I don’t like to read!”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t want to inflict your torture on people who like to read! This was research! Admit it!”
“Are you saying that I’m trying to ruin your life to research a book about another kid who’s trying to ruin his cousin’s life?” Blake asks, bewildered.
“Well, it wouldn’t necessarily have to be his cousin,” I admit.
“Listen to yourself, Rod.”
“I am! I’ve been listening to myself this whole time! But I’m out of ideas! I need to know why you did this! Was it a bet?” I prompt.
Blake doesn’t say anything.
“A bet?” I ask. “This was a bet?”
Blake shrugs.
“You ruined my life for a bet? You wiener!”
“Are you going to hit me again if I say yes?”
“I’ll stop hitting you if you tell the truth.”
“Okay.”
“Will you stop hitting me if I stop hitting you for telling the truth?” I ask.
“Yes,” says Blake.
“Deal. Was this really a bet?”
“Yes.”
“With who?”
“Myself.”
“What?” Even for Blake that makes no sense.
“I made a bet with myself.”
I want to hit him again, but that would be a violation of the terms of our agreement. “What do you mean you made a bet with yourself?”
“I was jealous, okay? When my parents told me I’d be staying with you, I was really mad about uprooting my life for them to take a trip without me. And I expected you to have a miserable life. And when you weren’t miserable, it made me feel bad about my own life and how miserable I felt being away from home. So I figured I could salvage the situation by making you feel worse so that I’d feel better.”
A car pulls off to the side of the road next to us. An old man in a cowboy hat gets out.
“Are you two fellows okay?” he asks.
“Yeah, we’re good,” I assure him.
“Not really a safe place to be arguin’.”
“We know. We know,” I say. “We’ve stopped. We were just about to get up.”
“Want me to call you a tow truck? Your car is lookin’ a little combustible.”
“Nah, we’re fine. We were going to finish up our discussion, and then I was going to call somebody. Thanks for stopping to help though. We appreciate it.”
The man tips his hat to us. “You two have a good day then. Make sure you put some ice on those bruises. They’re pretty ghastly.” He gets back in his car and drives off.
Blake and I stand up.
“Okay, so you were saying?” I ask.
“Right. I figured you’d be wallowing in self-pity. That’s what I’d be doing in your place. But then I discovered that you were happy. Genuinely happy. You had a girlfriend. Not as hot as mine, but still. And even though your band was clearly awful—”
“We’re not awful.”
“Yeah, you are.”
“I’m going to disagree with that.”
“Maybe it’s your genre. Nobody actually likes punk rock music. They might say they do, but they’re faking it.”
“Don’t make me break our truce.”
“Anyway, what I saw is
