Spare Change

“The reality we perceive

is the reality we believe.”

I can’t remember who said it, or if anybody actually said it, really. It might’ve been written down somewhere, or carved into the side of a bathroom stall for all I know. Either way, it just sounded like some sort of new-agey, feel good bullshit to me. But not to Terry.

Oh hell no, not that idiot Terry. A couple of months ago he saw this fake-ass documentary pushing the religion of some cult out in Washington state under the guise of ‘quantum physics’ and he just ate that shit right up. When I told him this dumbass line about rearranging everything, he ate that shit right up, too.

I tried to tell him how stupid it was. “Terry,” I’d say, “you know I’m standing on this very particular spot of the sidewalk right now, right?”

“Nuh-uh Frank,” Terry said, facing away from me. “Quantum super-positioning means that you’re everywhere until I see specifically where you are!”

My eyes widened in mocking surprise. “Oh man, and you can rearrange reality and place me anywhere you want, can’t you?”

“Yup.”

“You can rearrange me into a crocodile with a balloon tied onto my tail that’s so big it’s lifting me off and carrying me back to Egypt where I’ll sit at the mouth of the Nile with Osiris, watching over the dead!”

“If I really wanted to, I could.”

I took some change out of my pocket and threw it at the back of his stupid head. “I really want you to stop being such a fuckwit but that’ll never happen either, Terry.”

Terry bent over, rubbing his head with one hand while he scooped up the pennies with the other. “You don’t have to be such a jerk about it, Frank,” he said as he handed the coins back to me.

I snatched them out of his hand and stuffed them back in my pocket. “But I do, Terry,” I said. “Some things have to be how they are and there’s nothin’ we can do about it.”

“That’s not true.”

“Why don’t you rearrange me into someone who doesn’t think you’re so stupid, then?”

“Maybe one day I will.”

Over summer break that year we got invited to a party at Rachel Winters’ house. Her parents had gone out of town for the weekend so obviously she had to throw a party and invite the whole school so that we could wreck the place and she could panic trying to clean it up at the last minute. You know, that old teen movie cliché. Why they didn’t take their daughter out of town with them, I’m not sure, but it might have something to do with her being an insufferably vapid piece of shit.

I’d say it’s a mystery to me, how anyone could hear something out of ‘Dianetics’ or Fox News and say “Oh gosh! Y’know that’s a real ding-dong zinger of an idea!” but I’ve been hanging out with Terry for so long now that no depth of stupidity can surprise me anymore.

I guess that’s the only thing that made Terry ever think he had a chance at getting with her: she was just as big an idiot as he was. Maybe he thought they could bond over that. But he just couldn’t understand that not only was she way too hot to let him defile her with his greasy-ass body, but you also don’t throw parties and shit unless you’re trying to stay up on the top of that social ladder.

“This is high school Terry,” I said to him. “That social game is cutthroat. You let one butt-ass ugly guy get near you and start talking about changing the molecular composition of water by taping nice words to a glass and you’re out.”

“I’m not that ugly, Frank.”

“Compared to her you are! Shit, most of the people we know are.”

Terry just stood there, clutching his Jack and Coke and staring across the room at Rachel like a dog that you can tell really wants that piece of that chicken you’re eating but is too polite to beg outright for it.

“C’mon man,” I said, nudging him. “Forget about her. It’s never gonna happen.” I took a quarter out of my pocket and waved it in front of his face. “Let’s grab some people and play.”

Terry batted my hand away, knocking the quarter to the floor. He took a defiant swig of his drink and tossed the now-empty cup over his shoulder. What a genuine badass he must’ve felt like right then. “I know this game,” he said. “And I’m going to rearrange the rules to my liking.”

I picked the quarter back up off the floor and said “Whatever, man. You go waste your time. I’m going to get drunk.”

Despite the big show he made of being all confident, it still took Terry a few minutes to gain the composure he needed to go sling his game at Rachel. By the time he was finally walking over to her, I’d set up a table with six other people and our game of quarters was in full swing.

I made sure I got a seat the table where I could keep an eye on Terry’s personal Mission: Impossible. Rachel stood in the middle of the living room, behind the iron curtain of the semi-attractive and semi-popular that separated the filthy, communist outsiders from the capitalist elite who had parents with the types of houses you could throw good parties in. Terry was having trouble breaking his way through at first, but after I looked away to grab my quarter after a missed bounce, he was gone.

When Terry showed up out of the blue a few minutes later, shoving his phone in my face and saying “I told you so!” it took me a few seconds to figure out what the hell was going on.

I grabbed the phone for a better look. I don’t know why – it’s not like I knew Rachel’s number. It had the right area code but that hardly made it genuine. I handed the phone back to him.

“Yeah right it’s probably fake, Terry.” Gotta give it to the kid straight.

“You’re just jealous, aren’t you?”

“Call it right now and prove me wrong.”

“I’m not going to call it right now! You have to wait a couple days before calling on a lady.”

“’Calling on a lady?’ Seriously?” I snorted a laugh as I bounced the quarter and missed. Bill slid it back to me from the other side of the table. “Are you one of King Arthur’s knights now or some shit?”

“I could be,” Terry said. “Reality is perception.”

I groaned. “I can’t handle any of more of that bullshit right now, Terry. You want in on this game of quarters?”

“Not tonight. I think I’m going to go home.”

I told him I’d catch him tomorrow and watch him dial that number. I’ve always heard from older people that hangovers are murder. I guess that means I’m still young because I drank like an absolute monster that night and woke up the next morning on the Winters’ lawn, feeling great.

A walk home, a shower, and a change of clothes later I caught up to Terry at his place. He was in the basement, eating cereal and watching anime. I know this will sound weird, but I couldn’t rip on him for that. There’s a lot of pretty bad anime out there, but he usually managed to pick the stuff that doesn’t suck. I sat down with him and watched until the episode ended with the words “SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY…” nestled on the bottom of the screen.

“So,” I said, turning to Terry, “you going to dial that fake number, or what?”

Terry set his bowl of cereal aside and picked up his phone. “It’s real,” he said very matter-of-factly. “And yes, I am. Mostly because it will get you to stop pestering me.”

“You wanna bet?” I asked.

“How much?”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. They all added up to maybe a couple bucks. I dropped them onto the couch cushion between us.

“I’ll be happy to take that from you right after I get a date with this beautiful woman.” Terry said through his smug grin.

I leaned back. “Sure thing Terry. Whatever you say.”

I watched him as his fingers bounded happily across the buttons on his phone, maneuvering through the menus that led him to the number Rachel had added last night. I could see it in his eyes, his fingers, even the way he sat, all straight-backed and proper; this was his moment. He was going to prove me wrong once and for all. The years of being berated and told he was wrong – that people don’t teleport around and water can’t be happy and sometimes people won’t like you and there’s nothing you can do about it – those arguments of mine were about to be swept away like a tide of optimism washing away a castle made of cynical sand.

Finally, he pushed the big green ‘CALL’ button and hit speakerphone so I could hear. It rang three times before someone picked up. Terry stumbled when the voice of a grown man came through the speaker.

“Hello?” The man said.

“H-hello. Is uh.. Rachel there, please?”

“Who?”

The weight of realization began to drag Terry’s grin downward. “Rachel Winters, please?”

“Look,” The man said, his voice rougher now that he realized what was going on. “I don’t know anyone named Rachel.”

“N-no. That’s not right, it’s this number. This is her number.”

“No, kid. She probably didn’t want you calling her. Shit happens, get over it and find another girl.” It was eerie that the man said almost exactly what I wanted to before he hung up. I was ready to rub salt in the wound until I saw Terry’s face.

I’d heard of vets coming back from ‘Nam and shit that would get that ‘thousand yard stare’ but I’d never seen it. Terry’s face at that moment might be as close as I’ll ever get. Looking at him was like looking into the abyss where Lovecraft kept horrors beyond the understanding of us fleshy little three-dimensional beings caged away. All the belief, all the understanding he had built up about the way the world should work had just been drained from him. It was really the most unsettling thing I think I’ll ever see and I really hope I’ll never have to see it again. I didn’t know how to snap him out of it, but damned if I didn’t try anyway.

“Hey, Terry,” I said. “Sorry, man. That sucks. Really. You can uh… keep the money.”

Terry’s gaze slid down to the pile of coins. He picked up one of the quarters and stared at it for a minute. “You know what, Frank?” He said as he stuffed the coin into his pocket. “I think I will.”