One Hour More || Falsettos

Part 9

"How was school today?" Marvin asked that Friday evening as Jason was getting into his car.

Jason buckled his seatbelt with a shrug. "It was fine," he said vaguely. "Not much going on. School really isn't as interesting as grown-ups think it is."

"Okay, that's a good point," Marvin admitted. "Well, what about the rest of it? How's your life going?"

"I don't know, Dad. It's the same thing, day after day after day. This weekend is exactly the same as last weekend. Nothing new, and you can stop asking." He was worried he had been a little too harsh, but Marvin just smiled.

"All right. I just wanted to know what my son was up to."

"I'll tell you when something happens," sighed Jason.

The truth was, his life had been pretty repetitive in the last couple weeks. All he did nowadays was talk with Whizzer in his room or try to study for school. The latter often got boring, so he would switch to talking with Whizzer, and that was how he spent most of his days. But he wasn't about to explain that to Marvin. It was starting to get easier to keep the whole Whizzer thing from his family. The only problem was when they actually asked about his life.

Finally, they got to Marvin's place, and Jason wondered if they would see the neighbors outside like they usually did, but it turned out they weren't home. That was fine with Jason. No distractions, and he could just head up to his room and, once again, talk to Whizzer.

"I'll be down here making dinner if you need me, okay?" Marvin told him. Jason nodded and went upstairs.

Whizzer was there a second later, and Jason smiled when he saw him. "I was worried you weren't going to show," he teased.

"Come on. Cut me some slack. It took me a while to remember what your schedule was."

"That's alright," Jason said, leaning against his bookshelf. "Man, I'm tired."

"Do anything fun today?"

"No. I wish people would stop asking that. Why do they care so much about a 13-year-old's daily life? I don't even care that much."

"I'm not a person, remember?" Whizzer grinned. "But if you don't like that, I'll stop asking. I see you all the time anyway. I'm sure if something happened, you would tell me."

"For sure," Jason assured him. They were both quiet for a few moments. Outside was the usual late fall weather of rain and heavy clouds. Jason found himself less and less interested in doing anything fun, especially out there. At least he could always talk to Whizzer.

"So. Want to know what I've been doing?"

Jason looked up in surprise. Whizzer almost never talked about his life— afterlife, that is. And Jason didn't mind much either way. But if Whizzer had something interesting, he figured it couldn't hurt.

"I've been spying on people," Whizzer said when Jason didn't answer.

"What? How?"

"I'm able to hide myself from view, remember? So I've been going around and, y'know, checking what everyone's up to. I've found it really easy to find the person you want to find. These days, they're all either in their houses or just leaving."

"Have you spied on my dad?"

Whizzer scratched the back of his neck. "I've seen him a couple of times. But no, I haven't really been spying on him."

"Why not?" Jason wanted to know. "Don't you miss him? If I were you I would want to see the love of my life every second of the day."

"I don't know, Jason. It's just different when I know he can't see me. And so it's more fun to just go spy on random strangers who don't know I'm there."

Jason sighed. "So you like to cause trouble, is that it? Not much different from when you were alive."

"Exactly. Except it is." Whizzer sat down and crossed his legs.

Jason just looked at him. He couldn't blame Whizzer, really. If he were a ghost, he would probably do the exact same thing with no shame. He was kind of impressed.

"Jason! Dinner's ready!" Marvin called up the stairs, interrupting his thoughts.

Jason straightened up. "Well, that's my cue to leave. It was nice talking to you. As always. I'm really glad you came back here, you know that?"

Whizzer gave him a smile. "Just doing my job."

Down the stairs Jason went, meeting Marvin in the kitchen. "What's for dinner?" he asked his dad.

"Linguine. Keeping it simple tonight," replied Marvin.

Jason shrugged. He didn't really care what was for dinner, as long as it was food. After a long and boring day at school, he was just hungry.

The two of them ate their dinner in almost complete silence. Jason had to stop himself more than once from breaking it by telling Marvin all about Whizzer. How could he be expected not to? It was a hard secret to keep from someone that you had just been talking to their dead lover upstairs. Still, he fought the urge to say something, mainly by stuffing his mouth with linguine.

"Jason," Marvin said sternly. "Manners."

"Sorry," Jason apologized with his mouth full of pasta. That was the only talking that went on until dinner was over.