Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (16 page)

It was actually sort of awesome. The constant alcohol-related freaking out of Withnail reminded us a lot of Klaus Kinski in
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
, and we were fired up that there were accents that we could try to do. In general, I would say Earl is slightly better than me at accents, but that doesn’t mean he’s actually any good at all.

“How does he say it? The Irish man in the bar? ‘I—Aye cahlled him a ponce.’”

“Naw. He say it like, ‘OI CARLLED HEM A PON—A PORNCE.’”

“Ha!”

“PAWWWWRNCE.”

“Oh man. That’s not it, but that’s a lot funnier.”

The word “ponce” kind of dominated one of the scenes. It turns out it’s British slang for “child molester.” We thought it was a little fucked up that they had a slang word for that, but then Earl pointed out that in America we say “motherfucker” all the time, which is just as disturbing.

“It fyeels like a pyig shat in my head.”

“HOW SHID OI KNOW WHERRRE WE AHRE? ET FEELS LOIKE A PEG SHAT IN ME EDD.”

“I think that’s a different British accent.”

“Yeah. It’s the one from
Fish Tank.
”

Fish Tank
is an obscure recent movie we saw about an insane
English girl from the projects. We loved that movie. We gave it an A for accents, A+ for profanity.

“So in this remake—”

“We gotta have ‘ponce’ in the title.”

“Yeah. That’s a good idea. We could call it
Poncy Scheme.
”

“The fuck’s that mean.”

“It’s like, a play on Ponzi scheme. Like the whole Madoff thing that happened a few years ago.”

“The fuck you talking about right now.”

“It’s fine. Never mind.”

“This title don’t have to be all clever and shit. We could just call it
Two Poncy Dudes.
”

“Actually that’s not bad!”

“
Ponce-Ass Dudes on Vacation.
Simple as hell.”

“That’s perfect. So I think you should be Withnail.”

“Withnearl.”

“Yeah. So I think the plot is pretty straightforward. Most of the time you’re drinking and then freaking out.”

“Lighter fluid and shit.”

“Yeah, that scene is going to be awesome.”

“I’m also gonna be that gay uncle. Draw a fake mustache and pretend to be all fat and shit. Be like, Boy, I’m gay as hell. I’ma fuck you.”

At the end of the movie, Withnail is bellowing at some wolves in the zoo. This scene was on our minds for some reason, so we decided to shoot it first. However, we didn’t have access to wolves. Instead, we decided that Earl should try bellowing at
Doopie, the Jacksons’ big terrifying dog. This meant we had to go to Earl’s house.

“Maybe when we done with this we should visit Rachel at the hospital,” Earl commented as we got on our bikes.

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. I don’t know if today’s OK to visit or when visiting hours are or whatever.”

“I called em,” said Earl. “We can show up anytime before seven.”

This was sort of surprising to me, and I was thinking about it on the ride to Earl’s. I mean, deep down, Earl is obviously a much better person than I am. But I still didn’t expect him to go to the trouble of calling the hospital for visiting hours and stuff. I guess it’s not really that hard to make a five-minute phone call, but it still struck me as something I wouldn’t have done unless someone made me do it.

Then I continued thinking about it and I got kind of depressed that I don’t even have my shit enough together to call the hospital and figure out when I can go visit. I really needed to step it up, or I was going to be the worst friend in the history of dying girls.

Basically I was thinking, thank God for Earl. Because I don’t really have a moral compass and I need to rely on him for guidance, or else I might accidentally become like a hermit or a terrorist or something. How fucked up is that? Am I even a human? Who the hell knows.

INT. JACKSON LIVING ROOM — LATE AFTERNOON

MAXWELL

Roll your damn pants down.

EARL

I biked over here.

MAXWELL

No one wants to see your weird-ass socks.

EARL

Nobody care about my socks.

MAXWELL

angrily

No one wants to see them
nasty socks
.

On our way in, we stumbled into Maxwell, one of Earl’s half brothers. Earl had his pant legs rolled up. This caused Maxwell to become enraged.

If you are confused as to why this would cause Maxwell to become enraged, that is totally understandable. I’ve learned over the years that basically anything can get anyone in the Jackson house enraged.

Cause:
Madden ’08 disc is scratched

Effect:
Maxwell hurls Brandon into the television

Cause:
Humidity

Effect:
Felix uses Derrick’s forehead to inflict damage on Devin’s face

Cause:
There is a bird outside

Effect:
Brandon strides around aiming blows indiscriminately at people’s testicles

When a fight breaks out, everyone is fair game, and unfortunately that includes the doughy, slow-moving white kid. As a result, my reflexes at Chez Jackson have become pretty quick. The moment someone takes off their shoe to hit someone else in the face, or someone else has their elbow in another kid’s mouth, I am halfway out the exit. If we’re not near an exit, I try to hide behind some furniture, although then when it gets shoved into a wall, sometimes I become part of that wall.

Anyway, Maxwell put Earl in a headlock and punched his head while Earl thrashed around. The commotion attracted the attention of several brothers, including Brandon, the thirteen-year-old psychopath with the “TRU NIGGA” neck tattoo. He came hurtling down the stairs like a missile with elbows. His teeth were bared, and his eyes were locked on mine. I made a small shrieking noise and turned to run.

Maxwell and Earl were in Brandon’s way, so I actually did make it out of the door before Brandon was able to elbow me in the head. The problem is, I got too excited. When I got to the end of the porch, instead of jumping, I sort of dove, as in, headfirst.

There’s a convention in films where, when someone is flying
through the air, time slows down. The person gets to observe all of the various details of their environment, reconsider their course of action, maybe even contemplate the notion of God. Anyway, this convention is a lie. If anything, time
sped up.
My feet left the porch and immediately I was lying all scraped up on some cement with a broken arm. Almost as immediately, Brandon was standing over me.

“Yeah, nigga,” he piped, in his not-all-the-way-dropped thirteen-year-old voice. “Yeah, clumsy bitch.” He kicked me kind of halfheartedly.

“OW,” I said. This angered him. He kicked me harder.

“Shut the hell up,” he said, but the second kick actually hurt a lot, so I began screaming. This made Brandon slap my face repeatedly. Fortunately, Felix had just arrived on the scene, and according to his own mysterious logic, his reaction to what he saw was to grab Brandon by the head and throw him across the yard.

He turned to me. We stared at each other. His eyes were cold with disgust.

Eventually, he said: “Fuck outta here,” and walked back into the house.

So, that was how I came to be in the same hospital as Rachel. Although it was a completely different wing of the hospital—hers was the chemotherapy area, and mine was the broken-arm-that-had-somehow-become-infected area. No one seemed to know how my broken arm got infected. Pretty quickly I stopped asking about it. I was worried I would find out that there were other basic medical facts that the nurses didn’t know, like where skin comes from, or how surgery works.

But yeah, my broken arm got infected, and I ran a fever, and all of that meant a lengthy stay in the hospital. And that meant visitors. Each of these visitors had various points to make.

Mom

• Poor, poor sweetie.

• We’re gonna get you out of here soon.

• Oh, my poor brave boy.

• You must be so bored.

• Here are some books that I collected at random from your
room or the library.

• I’ll just put these books on top of those other books from last time.

• You have to make sure to do your schoolwork.

• You have to make sure to tell the nurses if
anything
feels funny.

• If you have even the slightest headache, you need to get on the phone and call the nurses
right away because it might be meningitis.

• I said
it might be meningitis.

• Meningitis is a fatal brain disease, and in hospitals you’re sometimes more vulnerable to—

• You know what, I don’t want to scare you with this.

• Just if you have even the tiniest headache, call the nurses.

• I’m just being crazy, but seriously, call them.

• Does your phone work?

• Let me just see if it works.

Mom accompanied by Gretchen

• We thought we’d come here and cheer you up.

• Gretchen, do you want to say anything to your brother?

• Gretchen, can you just cooperate for
fifteen minutes.

• Gretchen.
This is not a game.

• I can’t
believe
you refuse to cooperate
even with this.

• Just go wait outside then. You are really being awful. You are being just awful and I wish I knew why. I’ll be outside in five minutes.

• Jesus.

Mom accompanied by Grace

• Grace drew you a picture!

• It’s a picture of Cat Stevens!

• It’s a what? Oh.

• It’s a bear.

• Grace drew you a
very handsome bear.

Earl

• sup, ike

• i talked to some a your teachers

• you gotta write an essay or some shit

• you gotta do a list of problems outta some book

• ms. harrad says don’t worry about the test friday, you and her gonna talk about it when you get back, also she hope you get better

• mr. cubaly want you to do some test while you in here but i got no idea how that suppose to happen so my advice is don’t worry about it

• you got
mulholland drive
in the mail from netflix so i watched it

• that shit is fucked the fuck up, no joke

• we gotta watch it once you get out of here

• that shit is crazy as hell

• lesbians and shit

• look at you

• you gonna be a weak little bitch when you get outta here

• you just lying in bed all damn day

• what else, what else

• oh i went to see your girl again

• she got a bald-ass head right now

• she look like darth vader without the helmet

• chemo is no joke, son

• she axed me for some of our films last time so i lent em to her

• i dunno which ones, i gave her like ten of em

• whoa

• what the hell are you yelling about?

• are you being serious right now? are you being serious with me right now?

• you need to calm your ass down

• you need to be
toning this shit down
right about now

• man, that girl has a damn bag full of chemicals in her body right now, she need something to cheer her the hell up, she happy as hell about these films

• i mean no she is not happy as hell but she was smiling and shit and that’s a major improvement so don’t be trying to bitch me out about this

• yeah, that’s right, tone it down

• the fuck you think i’m gonna say no to this girl be dying out of cancer and shit.

• damn

• this is what papa gaines would call an “extenuating circumstance,” am i right

• goddamn

• look

• you’re being dumb as hell but i do feel you

• you know i don’t like to show this shit to no one

• but you can’t say no to this girl

• i do feel you, but it’s like, i dunno, you do not understand how much she like our dumbass films, but she like the hell out of em

• so don’t give me shit

• aight, i’m done

• feel better, son

Dad

• Well, well, well.

• You seem rather jolly today!

• No, I know. I’m just making a little joke.

• No, it can’t be much fun to be in here.

• Although you do get to lead a fairly decadent lifestyle, don’t you.

• With the constant television, and the food brought to you, and the mountains of books.

• Not all who stay in hospitals enjoy such luxury.

• When I was hospitalized in the Amazon, the patients were all quartered together in a single room, and instead of television, all we had to watch for entertainment were the giant hairy spiders lying in wait for prey on the thatched ceiling, maybe eight feet above our faces.

• Spiders the size of your fist.

• Fangs glistening with venom.

• They each had hundreds of little black eyes that would twinkle dimly at night.

• And how they used to battle the wasps!

• Sometimes in the darkness a wasp would strike one of them, and in their struggle they would come tumbling down onto the bed, biting and stinging and thrashing and—