How to Be a Normal Person (10 page)

“Whoa,” Casey said. “Dude. Hard-core.”

“I mean it.”

“But what if something amazing happens at nine twenty-six?”

“Save it for the next day.”

“But what if it’s life altering and you must be immediately made aware of it?”

“I don’t need to know your stoner thoughts about how you wish you could taste colors and how awesome it would be to lie in a pile of marshmallows.”

“But—”

“Casey!”

“Fine. Are you going to freak out when I leave? You look like you’re going to freak out.”

Gus was kind of offended. “I’m not going to freak out!”

He was so going to freak out.

“Uh-huh,” Casey said. “Well, don’t not freak out too much, okay? I have plans for you.”

“That sounds… ominous.”

Casey grinned. “Good night, Gustavo Tiberius.”

Then he was gone.

And Gus?

Well.

Gus freaked out.

IN FACT,
he spent most of the night freaking out.

Harry S. Truman was not amused as Gus paced in his Yasser Arapants up and down the hall from the living room to his bedroom, passing by Pastor Tommy’s closed door. He rarely went into the room, maybe once or twice a month to clean and to air it out. But mostly he kept away because it still hurt to see his father’s things the way he’d left them. Maybe one day it wouldn’t hurt, and memories of his father would be nothing but happiness, but everything was still too fresh in his head and heart.

But that didn’t matter now, because right at this moment, Gus had much bigger problems to deal with.

Namely one Casey Richards and the chaos he brought with him.

At eight fifty-nine that night, Gus got a text from a number he didn’t recognize.

Its b4 9. I haz rspct 4u.
Trust4life bcuz YOLO. xx =)

He didn’t understand what any of that meant.

“I don’t speak your slang!” Gus cried to no one in particular, but saved the number in his contacts under
HOW IS THIS MY LIFE
.

Gus was stressed.

He had problems.

He had to solve said problems.

Then he wouldn’t be stressed.

He went back to the first encyclopedia, but the entry under asexual was relatively short and didn’t provide much information as to why an asexual hipster wanted to work his way up to
hugging
, and Gus
didn’t know what to do with that
. For the first time in his relatively short life,
Encyclopaedia Britannica
had failed him by not providing the information necessary to solve this most vexing of problems.

(But to be fair, he did learn about asexual plant reproduction, given that both homosporous and heterosporous life histories may exhibit various types of asexual reproduction, and wasn’t
that
interesting?)

He went to bed, sure things would make sense in the morning.

He fluffed his pillow and laid down his head.

He pulled the comforter up and over him.

He said, “Today was a… weird day. Tomorrow will not be weird. Tomorrow will be okay and everything will be fine.”

He stared at the ceiling for a long time.

HIS ALARM
went off.

His eyes felt grainy.

He rolled out of bed anyway.

He did his exercises.

He stood.

Glared at the calendar.

“Don’t you give me any sass today,” he told it. “I am not in the mood.”

He tore off the previous day’s message.

Took a breath.

And read:

In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take.

If the inspirational calendar had been a person, Gus would have punched it in the face.

GUS DEBATED
calling in sick to work.

Granted, he was his own boss and didn’t need to call in sick to anyone, but the sentiment remained the same.

He’d never done that before, not even the time he’d been ill with the flu and felt the need to vomit at least once every four minutes. The store had smelled pretty gross that day and the We Three Queens had chided him until he’d gone to the back office and slept in the office chair while they’d watched the store.

But today was Tuesday.

Tuesdays were ninety-nine cent rental days.

He usually had at
least
four customers.

Excluding the We Three Queens.

It was an absolute
madhouse
.

But still.

No. He couldn’t let down his customers.

He showered and avoided the mirror, because he knew he probably looked like a crack baby.

He dressed and made sure his name tag was straight.

He ate his apple. Harry S. Truman played with his pellets.

They left the house.

The sun was shining.

He glared at it. It was most certainly not
his
inner sunshine, that was for sure.

People waved hello.

He scowled at them.

He stomped across the street.

And stopped when he heard his name through the open door of Lottie’s Lattes.

“—just need to be careful about Gus,” Lottie was saying, voice drifting through the door. “He’s not like other people.”

“I know that,” Casey said, and Gus almost felt guilty for eavesdropping. Almost. “He’s abnormal and weird and strange.”

That stung. It shouldn’t have. They were things he’d thought about himself. They were things he knew others thought about him. But to hear it said so carelessly hurt more than Gus had expected. He didn’t know why he cared so much. He wished he didn’t.

“He’s always been like that,” Lottie said. “Even when Pastor Tommy was alive.”

“His dad?”

“Yeah. Sweet man. Sweet, sweet man. Night and day difference between him and Gus. Not that Gus isn’t sweet, I guess. In his own way. It just takes… time, I guess, to see what Gus is made of.”

Ow. Right in the feelings.

Casey chuckled. “Gus does scowl and glare a lot.”

“It’s kind of his thing,” Lottie agreed.

And Gus had heard enough.

He walked away.

HE TOOK
Harry S. Truman home.

He walked back to the Emporium and put a sign on the door: OUT SICK. IT’S NOT EBOLA OR DYSENTERY. WILL BE BACK TOMORROW.

And then he went on a walk.

When Gus was younger, and the problems of the world became too much (school and teachers and lack of friends and things said like
Pastor Tommy,
maybe he has a
social disorder
or
anxiety disorder
because he obviously is
disordered
, don’t you think?
And Pastor Tommy would just laugh it off because
no, no, that’s just how Gus is and there’s nothing wrong with him
), he would sometimes walk for hours and hours, trying to clear his head from all the clutter. It helped to soothe him. It gave him purpose.

After Pastor Tommy had died, Gus had walked for days.

He’d tried to leave Abby on foot, tried to get past Glide even, but he hadn’t quite been able to make himself leave the only real area that he’d known his entire life. Even when it had felt like he couldn’t breathe, that he too was dying because Pastor Tommy was gone, gone, gone, he couldn’t make himself leave. So he walked in a great circle through the small surrounding towns. On the streets. Through the woods. For days.

Finally, he had stopped because he had obligations that had been passed on to him.

He’d gone home and started his new life.

It was nowhere near as bad this time. Gus was slightly hurt and slightly dazed, but not lost in the tide of grief as he had been before. Nothing could compare to that. Nothing
should
compare to that.

Still, this was the very reason why he didn’t allow himself to have things. Or people, really. The We Three Queens had wormed their way in regardless, and he couldn’t get rid of them if he tried. He knew (he
really knew
) that Lottie hadn’t meant it the way it’d sounded, and he couldn’t quite figure out why he cared what Casey thought at all (because of
course
a hipster had an
opinion
).

So he walked.

It was maybe an hour before his phone buzzed. A message from
HOW IS THIS MY LIFE
.

Saw ur note. U Sick???? No bueno. :-( xx

“You are not Hispanic,” Gus said with a frown.

He typed back, slow and methodical.

I am fine. Just the flu. Will be fine.

Kk. Bring u sumthin?

“Christ,” Gus said. “And you’re supposed to be a writer?”

No. I am fine. Just the flu. Will be fine.

Kk. Ur scowlin at ur fone rite now >:{ <--Grumpy Gus

“I am
not
scowling at my phone,” Gus said as he scowled at his phone.

No. Your spelling is atrocious. You should be ashamed.

LOL. Wuteva.

“What the hell does
that
mean?” Gus asked. “Lawl? Lole? I don’t speak youth!”

He put his phone away and ignored it for a while.

Now, it should be said that Gus was an overthinker. It was just the way he was wired. And combining that with anxiousness, fear of the unknown, and asexual hipsters, it was really a never-ending spiral of what-the-hell, and Gus wasn’t quite sure he was thinking with his right mind.

Which is why he thought over and over what Casey had said.

He’s abnormal and weird and strange.

Well, yes. Yes he was.

And look where that had gotten him.

He owned a business. Multiple buildings.

The house was paid off.

He had a ferret for a pet.

A 1995 Ford Taurus that ran smoothly when it wasn’t cold.

He frowned a lot. He scowled even more.

He was not really a friendly person.

People spoke
at
him or
around
him.

Never really
to
him.

Aside from the We Three Queens. And Lottie. And Casey.

But even
they
were trying to better him, weren’t they?

The inspirational calendar.

Asking him every day what he’d learned.

He’s abnormal and weird and strange.

He had to fix this, right?

He had to make a change.

He didn’t want to be abnormal and weird and strange.

He wanted to be like everyone else.

Not abnormal, but normal.

Not weird, but normal.

Not strange, but normal.

Okay.

He had a plan.

He would go home and research it on the Internet. It had to be the best place to start.

He felt better already.

Really.

He could do this.

GUS ARRIVED
home, walked through the door, and realized he didn’t
have
Internet connected at the house.

Or a computer to connect to the Internet.

Or a smartphone that could connect to the Internet.

“Goddammit,” he muttered.

His phone buzzed. Repeatedly.

Bertha:
Sick? Are you getting enough fiber?

Bernice:
Being stopped up is never any fun.

Betty:
It’s all that jerky you eat. It’s like a plug!

Bertha:
Yes, the jerky. Really, Gus.

Bernice:
Eat the fiber cookies. They taste gross, but work wonders.

Betty:
And I’ll make you an appointment for a colon flush.

Gus growled at his phone. He didn’t know if he’d ever been texted more in his life. It was disconcerting.

(But then he realized that normal people get texts so he responded as politely as he could:
I am fine. Just the flu. No colon flush. Seriously. NO COLON FLUSH.
)

Okay. He didn’t have Internet.

But he needed Internet.

Conundrum.

“To the library!” Gus said.

A LIBRARY
card was needed to log into the computers at the library.

Gus didn’t have a library card.

“God
dammit
,” he said.

“Shh,” the librarian said. Her name was Margo Montana (curse thy alliterative name!). She tended to rent romantic dramas from the Emporium and would bring the DVDs back scratched. Gus was not a fan of Margo Montana. But, to be fair, she was not a fan of his either. He’d never had anyone rent movies more curtly than she. It all stemmed back to when he was fifteen years old and she’d blatantly hit on Pastor Tommy right in front of him, all the while looking upon Gus with disdain. Not only had Pastor Tommy politely turned her down, but Gus might have called her an old cow with a better chance at contracting necrotizing fasciitis than she had of going out with his father.

Pastor Tommy had been amused.

Margo Montana had not been amused.

“I need a library card,” he said.

“Hmm?” Margo Montana said without looking up at him.

“A library card,” he said through gritted teeth. “Please.”

“Oh,” she said, finally looking up from her magazine whose pink cover proudly proclaimed it had
69 SEX SECRETS TO ANALLY PLEASE YOUR MAN
and
THE BEST MEATLOAF RECIPE EVER
on the inside.

Gus didn’t think that was a pleasant combination. He didn’t understand magazines geared toward women.

He also wondered what number Margo Montana was on in anal sex secrets and he was glad Pastor Tommy had never gone out with her because that would have been disgusting.

“Why, Gus,” she said with a smirk on her face. “I didn’t even see you there.”

“Uh-huh,” Gus said. “Okay.”

“What can I help you with today?”

“I need a library card,” he said. Then, “Please.”

“Ah,” she said. “And what do you need a library card for?”

He stared at her. “To do stuff. At the library.” Because it should have been obvious. To a
librarian
.