The Social Contract

Creative Differences

I suppose you'll eventually want to hear about what Abraham and I look like; a proper writer would've described us in lovely poetic detail chapters ago. Well I'm not going to tell you. In the first place, even if I waxed flowery about approximate height and eye color and all that sort of thing, the people you would picture still wouldn't be Abraham and me. And in the second place, it isn't even a little bit relevant to the story, because to me Abraham just looked like Abraham. I hardly looked at him anyway – we liked to rendezvous in the park when we had need of it and sit back-to-back, all hunched up, like action heroes in the zombie apocalypse, because some things are easier to discuss that way. And I didn't spend much time looking in a mirror at myself, apart from the week I learned to shave, so I refuse to do one of those girly scenes where I gaze at my reflection in the bathroom, contemplate all my major flaws and features, and conclude that everyone must be repulsed by my completely average face. Besides, we've changed considerably in appearance since we were kids, so I'd have to stop every other scene and explain that Abraham had shot up six inches since you last saw him and I'd sprouted my first gray hair. These things may have been exciting at the time but they're quite outside the scope of this narrative. So just imagine we looked like you and your favorite cousin, if you like, because we looked like young us, until slowly we grew to resemble old us.

Most of the time, Abraham held three to four of the erasers. I always needed help with my homework in elementary school, and he was better at explaining things than my dad. Of course, the erasers weren't the only price I paid for his assistance.

“Ants in pants, Abraham, I don't want to learn the Fraction Song!” I shouted at him one Sunday. “Just tell me what I'm supposed to do with these things.”

“I am!”

“With your words, I mean. Does this look like a concert hall to you?”

And he shook his head. “You clearly don't understand the quirks of the human memory.”

He continued singing the Fraction Song all afternoon as we hammered away at his miniature windmill, because Abraham didn't build normal things in his backyard.

The next morning I was walking down the hall, barely conscious, and without even noticing, I started singing under my breath. 'Numerator, numerator, on the top, do a flip-flop...' until I realized Ross was staring at me.

“What are you singing, Tyler?” he asked.

I laughed sheepishly. “It's not me. My brain's singing.”

And, very seriously, Ross said, “That's pretty neat! My brain never makes any noise at all.”

In the early days I was always a little afraid there'd come a time when he wouldn't remember, or would remember and laugh because obviously a contract you made when you were ten could expire whenever its cosigners grew bored with the game. But the more it brought in returns, the more we didn't have the heart. Only once, in a weak moment, did I nearly drop the whole thing. And that was plenty.

The first few weeks of junior high, my social circle received an unexpected boom. My sainted mother, whom I'd dismissed out of hand up until then, imparted a piece of wisdom to me on the eve of registration which improved almost every aspect of the next year.

Sneaking down the stairs at ten thirty in the evening, just like a bathrobe ninja, she'd caught me. I should have been in bed, at least physically if not in spirit. Instead, both my body and my brain were camped out at the dining room table, blearily trying to stuff all of my brand-new school supplies into the pencil case, nearly cracking the cheap plastic protractor in the process.

Mom didn't ask what I was doing. She just sat down across from me and started sharpening pencils.

“Don't worry, hon,” she told me. “Junior high will be great.”