Everything Sucks! • Toliver

Five

 Turns out, Tyler's parents weren't all... that bad.

I spent most of the car ride talking to Tyler, answering some stupid questions he made up, but as we got into Boring I realized they were taking me to their house. They didn't ask where I lived, or about my parents' phone numbers. Which was honestly for the best, but I hadn't expected that from them. I wasn't sure how I imagined his parents to be but it definitely wasn't like this.

His dad didn't talk much. In fact, he actually drove off after we got out of the car, and Tyler said it was because he had to go to work. But Tyler's mom said...

"You can come here any time you need, hun." She had a weird thing for calling people hun. Well, maybe only me, since she never called Tyler that. But it was sort of calming. She was a thin white woman with graying brown hair, and she made me hate my own parents even more. They were nothing like her.

She told us to talk to her if we got hungry, and left Tyler and I alone in the kitchen. I guess she expected us to hang out or bond or something, and even though the idea of hanging out with Tyler for almost a whole day kind of sucked, it sounded better to me than actually going home while I was supposed to be in school. Plus, I couldn't really say no to him. He was starting to grow on me.

So he led me up to his room, clearly jazzed at the idea of us being friends.

Why was he so excited?

I kept wondering why as I looked around his room. Messy, as I'd expected, but it actually had some sort of style to it. Plenty of posters up, from video games to stupid nerdy movies that I'd expect only someone like him to enjoy.

He plopped down on his bed, laying on his back, before looking up at me. I smiled, only because I wasn't sure what the fuck he wanted me to do.

"Sorry it's a mess!" he apologized, but I didn't care, knowing my room was worse than his. "I have video games, movies... or we could take a walk! Oh, it's cold though, isn't it..." Tyler mumbled, sitting up. He stared at the ground in thought.

I watched him with amusement, a small smile on my face. Then the answer came to me. The reason Tyler was so excited to be around me was because he looked up to me.

I had to think about that for a while. Tyler, looking up to me... and how badly I'd treated him before all of this went down.. why did I fucking do that? Tyler watched me from his bed, his curly brown hair a mess. I figured he didn't have time to brush it after his parents woke him up to come get me.

We ended up playing video games and getting hungry around eleven, when Tyler's mom made us pizza.

I was still holding a slice of pizza in my hand when we walked outside. It had warmed up a little and Tyler really wanted to walk to a cemetery, for reasons beyond me, but again I agreed. When he got excited over something, you couldn't really argue with him over it.