All Three Stooges

by Erica S. Perl

  I asked because sometimes Dash bails on me for no reason. To my relief, Dash said, “Sure thing, Maxx.”

  —

  But that Saturday afternoon, I got a text:

  Maxx: Can’t do sleepover. Sry!

  I replied:

  Me: Maxx! Y not?

  In return, I got:

  Maxx: My dad needs me here.

  What was that supposed to mean? Maybe he needed Dash to clean his room or help reorganize the comedy album collection. I texted back:

  Me: What for? I can help!

  No response. I kicked my desk in frustration.

  “Woink! Woink, woink, woink!” Spud’s cage sits on my desk, and he often misinterprets seismic disturbances. I reached down and picked him up.

  “Sorry, boy,” I told him, scratching his ears. “There’s no earthquake. It’s just Dash being Dash.”

  Spud seemed disappointed by the news. He tried to eat my shirt to console himself, so I put him back and gave him some timothy hay instead.

  “Razz? Hey, Razz,” I called, shaking my pencil cup, which my cat sometimes mistakes for the sound of the treat canister. Everyone knows quality pet time is the best remedy for when your best friend ditches you for no reason. Everyone except for Raspberry, apparently. I wandered out to the living room and gave the cup a shake. Jenny was on the couch, drinking tea and watching basketball. She looked up at the sound.

  “Cat treats?” she said. “No, thanks. I’m trying to cut back.”

  “Have you seen Razzie?”

  “Nope,” she said. “But the Guinness World Records people were just here looking for her, too. Something about crowning her the World’s Most Aloof Cat?”

  I sat down next to her on the couch and sighed dramatically.

  “Lemme guess, Dash changed his mind about the sleepover?” Jenny asked.

  “He didn’t change his mind,” I corrected her. “He just can’t do it after all. His dad needs him. Whatever that means.”

  “Bummer,” said Jenny. I nodded. We both sat there while they instant-replayed a layup shot several times.

  “You hungry?” she asked.

  “Always.”

  So when Karen got home, they took me to Z-Burger for an actual meat hamburger. Enid was at a friend’s, so we didn’t even have to listen to a meat-is-murder lecture on our way out the door. But all those lectures must have taken root in my brain, because after we got home, it felt like a big lump of dead cow was camping out in my stomach. Thankfully, the World’s Most Aloof Cat finally slunk out of Enid’s room to sit on my belly. And since I couldn’t sleep, my moms let me stay up and watch SNL. We streamed it on Jenny’s laptop and watched it together, all three of us curled up in their room in what I used to call the big bed. It wasn’t as good as SND would have been, but it did help a little.

  What helped the most, though, was the text I got from Dash at midnight:

  Maxx: Next weekend i promise!!!

  All week long, I prepared for SND. Dash wasn’t at Hebrew school on Tuesday—a dentist appointment, apparently—so I had to plan our strategy on my own. I watched tons of comedy clips and made lists of the best ones—guaranteed pee-your-pants-funny hits, one and all. I packed my overnight bag three days early. I spent my allowance on Dr Pepper. I even cleaned Spud’s cage ahead of time so when it came time to go to Dash’s house, my moms couldn’t notice it hadn’t been done and delay my departure.

  Finally, at long last, it was Saturday evening. It was just about time for me to head over when I heard a knock on my door. “Yeah?” I said, and both my moms came in.

  That was my first sign that something was up. My moms’ usual motto is “Divide and conquer.” As in, one mom per dealing-with-kid situation, whether it’s me not finishing my homework or my sister playing her music too loud. Unless I’m in trouble. When that happens, I always get both moms.

  “Hey, kiddo,” said Jenny.

  “What’d I do?” I asked, looking from mom to mom.

  “Relax, you’re cool,” said Jenny.

  “We just need to talk to you,” said Karen.

  “Okay,” I said. “But I need to get over to Dash’s house pretty soon.”

  “That’s actually what we need to talk to you about,” said Karen.

  I glanced around. My room was kind of messy. They had probably come to say I couldn’t go until I tidied it.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, trying to throw my room together before they could tell me to clean it. I yanked the pair of jeans under my desk chair closer to me. The chair teetered precariously, and Jenny reached out a hand to steady it, then lifted up one side of the chair so the jeans came free.

  “Listen, Noah?” said Jenny. “Stacey called.”

  “We’re not sleeping at Stacey’s,” I told her, balling up the jeans, then tossing them through the basketball hoop atop my hamper. “Swoosh! All net!” I added, palm out.

  “Nice,” said Jenny, delivering a high five. “She called to say that Dash can’t have a sleepover tonight after all.”

  “What?” I couldn’t believe Dash was bailing on me two weeks in a row. “I’m going to kill him! Why not?”

  Jenny shot Karen a look but said nothing.

  “Is it because he didn’t finish his homework?” I asked. “I could help him get it done, honest. Can you call her back and ask?”

  “It’s not that, Noah,” said Jenny. “It’s about Gil.”

  “Gil? What about him?” Maybe Dash’s dad was mad because we’d left the basement such a mess. Or maybe we got popcorn grease on his computer keyboard one too many times. Without waiting for an answer, I offered, “Well, then can Dash sleep over here? We haven’t gotten to have a sleepover in, like, forever.”

  “Yeah, hon, that’s not going to work tonight,” said Karen.

  “Noah, something happened,” said Jenny. Her voice sounded tired and sad, like it did when she got laid off that time, even though Karen said she was better off without that stupid job.

  Her voice made it sound less like a popcorn spill and more like a car crash. Serious car crash?

  “Is Dash okay?” I asked.

  “He is,” said Jenny.

  “Okay, good,” I said, relieved but confused again. Karen started to cry, which surprised me, even though I’ve seen her cry lots of times. The weirder part was that Jenny looked like she was going to cry, too, and she never cries, ever.

  “Then why can’t we have a sleepover?” I asked.

  “It’s because of what happened with Gil, Noah. Stacey said he’s not okay. That is, I mean, she said he—”

  “Can I try?” Jenny interrupted, putting her hand on Karen’s arm. “What we’re trying to say, Noah, is something happened to Gil. We’re not a hundred percent sure of all the details, because Stacey didn’t elaborate. But we know it was bad. And the thing is, he didn’t make it.”

  “ ‘Didn’t make it’? Like died?” I asked.

  Jenny nodded solemnly.

  “Died?” I repeated. “Like dead-died?”

  I looked from Jenny to Karen.

  “That’s a joke, right? You’re joking,” I said. It had to be. This was Gil we were talking about. One of Dash’s and my favorite scenes from The Princess Bride came to mind. It’s the one where Billy Crystal, playing this super-old crackpot healer named Miracle Max, explains that Westley isn’t actually dead. “There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead,” he says. “Now, mostly dead is slightly alive. Now, all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing that you could do….Go through his clothes and look for loose change.”

  We watched that movie with Gil a bunch of times. He’d quote it to us and we’d quote it to him. We’d done the sword-fighting scene with bananas, for crying out loud, only a couple of weeks earlier. There was no way the Gil I knew, jumping around the basement brandishing a banana sword, was dead. He couldn’t even be mostly dead. The whole thing had to be a bad joke. Or maybe something Dash made up as an excuse for bailing on our sleepover two weeks in a row.r />
  “That’s not funny,” I told my moms.

  “It’s not a joke,” said Jenny.

  “Then it’s a lie!” I yelled. Now that my volume was up, I couldn’t turn it down, and it felt very important to pack up more sleepover things, even though I had already packed a bag. I ran around throwing stuff into it, like my clock radio and a random book or two and a stuffed animal I threw up on the day I won it at a carnival and still smelled like puke a little but was the only thing I ever won so I couldn’t get rid of. I pulled my jeans out of the hamper and threw them in, too.

  “We wish it were a lie, sweetie,” said Karen. “I wish there were—”

  “Stop saying that! Gil is fine! This is just Dash being a—a—dick!” I tugged on the zipper of my backpack, which was caught on my pajamas, and waited for my moms to react to me for using that word. I needed to get out of my room, out of my house, out of this stupid bad dream. “I’m going to go over there right now and tell him so.”

  Jenny grabbed me in a bear hug and I fought her, hard, howling and wailing the whole time. I’m sure Enid heard the whole thing, because she always hears everything that’s happening in our house, even when her music is blaring. Seriously, she must be part bat—it’s like she has sonar or something. But, thankfully, she didn’t come in to investigate. I cried for a long time. I’m not even sure how long, but I remember Jenny on my bed and Karen in my chair next to the bed and feeling their hands resting on top of my blankets. I wasn’t asleep, but my eyes were closed to shut out the world and everything in it. They must have thought I was asleep, though, because I heard them tiptoe out at a certain point. I opened my eyes and saw that it was dark out, and it crossed my mind that I never had dinner.

  And that thought made me start to cry all over.

  Dash’s dad would never have another dinner. No Z-Burgers. No chili dogs or pepperoni pizza. No G-Force-grilled anything ever again.

  I thought about going and climbing into the big bed, like I used to when I was little. I knew my moms wouldn’t laugh at me or tell me I was too old for that. But I also knew seeing them would make it all real again.

  So I lay there in the dark for a long time, unable to sleep and unable to think about anything but Dash’s dad. How could this have happened? What kind of fatal accident could he possibly have had? All I could think of was Ben Franklin flying a kite in an electrical storm (I don’t think he died?) and that Australian guy on the Internet who holds the world record for juggling chain saws while riding a unicycle—really dangerous don’t-try-this-at-home stuff. Dash’s dad wasn’t like that. He was a comedy nerd like us. And pratfalls and nyuk-nyuk-nyuks are supposed to be pretend. They’re not even supposed to hurt, like Dash told Noa.

  Dash. It suddenly occurred to me that he was probably in his bed thinking about all this, too. The night before, he’d had a dad. And now he didn’t. Just like that. I wondered if Dash had gotten to see his dad one last time and say goodbye. Or if, like me, he hadn’t known that the last time he saw him would be the last time. And so he hadn’t said anything special at all. I tried to recall the last thing I said to Gil. It certainly wasn’t “You’re the coolest guy I know” or “I’ll never forget you” or anything even close. I was pretty sure it was something unimportant like “I don’t need a ride home.” Or maybe even just “It’s okay.” Which felt ironic, because it was definitely not okay.

  Once, when I went fishing on Long Island with my grandparents, my grandma Beth took a porgy that I’d caught and cut its head off on the dock and gutted it.

  “Is it going to be okay?” I asked her afterward.

  Enid was standing on the dock, too, watching the whole thing. “That,” she said, pointing to the fish, “is pretty much the definition of not going to be okay.”

  Dash’s dad was not a fish.

  His house was nowhere near a dock.

  This made no sense.

  And I had a feeling it never would.

  —

  When I woke up Sunday morning, it was still mostly dark out. But the light in my closet was on, and there was this beam shining on my overnight bag on the floor. It reminded me of how, when Dash and I were little, he was really bad at sleepovers and always decided to go home around midnight. His dad invented this thing he called sleepunders, which meant that Dash would bring pajamas and everything but he’d get picked up around nine-thirty at night and returned at about seven-thirty in the morning. We’d then watch cartoons and build with Legos and tape together cut-up paper towel tubes to make racetracks for our Matchbox cars and eat pancakes that Jenny would make when she eventually woke up. And it would be just like a sleepover except Dash got to be in his own bed for the sleeping part. It was genius. Dash’s dad was genius.

  Was?

  That couldn’t be right. Gil couldn’t be a was.

  The whole conversation with my moms the night before had to be a bad dream. Except if it was, I would’ve been in the bottom bunk at Dash’s, or he would’ve been on the blow-up mattress next to my bed. No mattress, no Dash. Okay, fine, not a dream, but definitely some sort of mistake. Not a joke, exactly—Dash wouldn’t prank me that hard—but a mix-up or something. Like the time I made breakfast in bed for my moms but forgot to use a coffee filter, so I ended up with brown sludge all over the counter and dripping into the silverware drawer.

  Gil couldn’t really be dead. Maybe I had misunderstood. Maybe what they meant was that he was really badly hurt, like so bad he could die. Life-threatening, but not necessarily life-ending. So he could pull through, like some superhero, against all odds. He might even have a nasty scar or amnesia, but he’d still be okay. He had to be okay. Right?

  The house was quiet. So I did what I always do when I need answers. I tiptoed into the living room and clicked on the computer. But when I saw the cursor blinking at me on the search bar, I hesitated. What was I searching for, exactly? Answers, sure, but what was the question? I typed in:

  “Is Dash’s dad okay?”

  I deleted it and tried again:

  “Is ‘mostly dead’ really a thing?”

  Delete.

  “What could make people think you’re dead when actually you’re not?”

  This time I hit return, but the results were so crazy I had to shut the search window. I felt frustrated and clueless, like some dumb little kid. According to my moms, when I was five or something, I proudly announced that I had googled them. They were confused until I showed them my search, which had two words in the search bar: “MY MOMS.” Jenny actually took a screenshot of this and printed it out. It’s probably still pinned to the bulletin board in her office.

  This wasn’t going to work. I needed real answers. So I went to the Happy Valley, which is what my moms call the charging dock we’re supposed to leave our phones on at night (at nine, as if!). I unplugged my phone and texted Dash.

  Me: Hey.

  Me: U up?

  No response. Maybe he was still asleep. While I waited, I went to the kitchen and poured myself a bowl of cereal. Finally, my phone lit up.

  Maxx: Ye

  Maxx: *yes

  Quickly, I texted back.

  Me: What happnd with yr dad? Is he OK?

  The response came a moment later.

  Maxx: No

  No?

  Me: What happnd?

  Maxx: GTG

  Me: Wait!

  And then nothing. I tried again.

  Me: Maxx?

  More nothing.

  I took my cereal bowl back to the computer, opened a new window, and watched a bunch of classic comedy clips on YouTube. After watching a few, I pulled up the SNL “Bass-O-Matic” sketch, but when Dan Aykroyd says, “Yes, fish eaters, the days of troublesome scaling, cutting, and gutting are over,” I thought about the fish I’d caught and Dash’s dad and what my moms had said and Dash’s text. And I had to click out of it and go back to bed. I took my phone with me, but it stayed silent and dark. I thought about texting Dash again, but I didn’t know what to say. I picked up the phone. Th
en put it down. Then picked it up. Scrolled through my messages. Put it down again.

  Unable to figure out something smart to do, I did something stupid instead.

  Me: Hey

  Noa: Hi! What’s up?

  Me: Did u hear about dash?

  Noa: Hear what?

  Me: Dash’s dad

  Noa: What about him?

  Oops. So, I guess she hadn’t heard. I mean, why would she have heard? But now I had gone and told her, sort of. So she knew, but she didn’t really know. And it was on me to tell her.

  Noa: ????

  I couldn’t do it. What would I say? And what if it wasn’t true? Sure, Dash had said that his dad wasn’t okay, but that could mean a lot of things. I put the phone on vibrate, but as soon as I put it down, it started vibrating. Noa’s name appeared, along with an image of a cow’s butt that I’d assigned to her contact. I stuck the phone under my pillow, where it continued to vibrate. It finally stopped, only to start again a moment later. I peeked to see if it was Dash. Nope, just Noa calling back.

  My bedroom door opened and a bright purple head of hair appeared. With raccoon eyes, just like Dash’s dad.

  “Answer your phone,” Enid said sleepily before the door closed again. Only someone who’s part bat could hear a vibrating phone from two rooms away with the doors closed. I obeyed, only to hear the voice I least wanted to hear.

  “What about Dash’s dad?” demanded Noa, like she hadn’t just texted the exact same thing.

  “I…uh, I don’t really know,” I admitted. “Something happened.”

  “Something like what?” she asked.

  “Something bad,” I told her.

  “Like a car accident?” asked Noa. It surprised me that she went right there, not wasting any time on spilled popcorn or other less lethal hazards. Or venturing into electric-shock and chain-saw-juggling land.