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When Todd had been growing up, he had always wanted to be more like the other kids. It had always seemed just out of reach, though.
The other kids didn’t live with their uncle, especially not with a whole lot of other men coming in and out – were they his uncles too? He wondered that sometimes, but he didn’t ask. It seemed better not to ask a lot of things at his house.
After all, when the teachers started asking stuff, it was never going to turn out well. They’d lean in to Todd like they were sharing a secret, and the first couple times he’d gotten excited. But all they ever did was ask questions, a bunch of questions he didn’t know how to answer. And Uncle Jack was gonna get mad about it.
Uncle Jack didn’t usually get mad at Todd. He’d get mad at everybody else, though, boil up and simmer over. He knew that Uncle Jack had been in jail, but he didn’t know what for. People didn’t like the things that Uncle Jack got up to, he said. But “a man had to make his money”, Uncle Jack always said, “and it’s no one’s business how a man makes his money.”
So Todd tended to feel the same way. Some things were just nobody’s business. Like everything with Jesse – none of that was anybody’s business, not even Uncle Jack’s. Because as Todd got older, he was beginning to think that there were some things that Uncle Jack was just never going to understand. And Todd had never been good at explaining stuff like that.
Jesse might, though, because Jesse had what Todd had heard called “a way with words”. He figured it meant he could convince people of stuff if they weren’t sure about it.
It was hard to say no to Jesse, hard to not want him around. Jesse was weird, always crying and getting mad and stuff, but Todd wanted him around.
Maybe Jesse could teach Todd how to be a little more like him, even if Todd didn’t know exactly what that meant, sometimes.
***
Todd didn’t remember a lot of his childhood, even when he tried really hard. Sometimes he would get flashes of running around with the other kids, climbing up treehouses and swinging on swings, but he wasn’t always sure whether that had really been him or whether he had seen it in a movie sometime and had started to think it was his own life.
Once, when Todd was in middle school, some other kid had said he’d known Todd when he was little, that he remembered Todd knew the capital of every single country in the world even though he was only like, four.
Todd wasn’t sure he knew any countries now, but maybe that was why Grammy had gotten him that set of encyclopedias. Maybe she remembered that, too. Or maybe she had just wanted him not to ask about any of that stuff from before.
He wondered if Jesse had ever had an experience like that. He’d have to go down tonight and ask him.
It wasn’t the same when all of the guys were around. They were always trying to get Todd to act like some kind of a tough guy, but it wasn’t in him. That was why Uncle Jack had set him up with Vamanos Pest and Ira’s team in the first place; he’d said that “this just might not be for you, Toddy.” He’d given him a punch on the shoulder, and that had hurt a bit, but the disappointment had hurt more. He wanted Uncle Jack to be proud of him. After all, he was the only nephew who Uncle Jack had, at least as far as Todd knew. Maybe he had other nephews somewhere, but he just didn’t visit them or have them live with him. You didn’t have to be close to your nephews, really, like there wasn’t any law about it.
***
“You got any nephews, Jesse?” Todd asked. He was still thinking about it as he watched Jesse going back and forth in the lab, cooking. Jesse was good at what he did, even if he didn’t wanna do it.
Jesse looked over at him, with a look that Todd had never been quite able to read. It was a look that seemed like Jesse was wondering if an answer might get him hit, but Todd hadn’t hit him in a long time, not really. That wasn’t what this was supposed to be about.
“No,” he ventured, simply. “No nephews.”
“You know, this could go a lot easier if you would just talk to me more, Jesse. I mean, you’re here anyway and I’m here, and we could, ya know, we could be friends.”
Jesse’s eyes widened.
“I don’t want to be your friend, Todd. You have me here, captive. Like… That’s not how you make a friend.”
Todd cocked his head to the side. Maybe Jesse could teach him a lot about this kind of thing. And maybe by the end of it, Jesse would see that Todd didn’t want to hurt him, it was just a whole weird situation and that it was all going to work out all right in the end.
“I don’t know… I mean, you meet them, and you hang out, and you spend time together and like the same stuff.”
Jesse reached up and rubbed at his eyes.
“I can’t explain it to you if you don’t know, Todd. Jesus. But this isn’t the way.”
***
Todd lay back in his bed, staring at the ceiling. He wondered if Jesse was thinking about him. He couldn’t explain the way that he felt about him – and, well, no one had asked him. Uncle Jack had said that Todd spoiled Jesse, but that would mean he was a kid or a dog or something, and Todd knew enough that he wouldn’t have felt this way about a dog. He’d never had a kid, so he didn’t know – maybe he would be protective of them, too.
When Todd had been in middle school, he’d had some classes where you had to read part of the newspaper and respond to it. Uncle Jack never got the newspaper delivered because he said it was all lies and stuff, so this was Todd’s only chance to flip through and see what was going on out there. But all the car crashes and bombings and wars, that didn’t interest him. (But it must have interested somebody because they were always on the front page.) He would always flip to the advice column.
In their local paper, it was Dear Abby. And everyone would write in and ask her for advice. They would ask about their relationships and their families and anything that they needed help with. Dear Abby seemed to know everything.
Todd thought about writing in to her, but where would he even begin? What question could he ask that she could even give him an answer to? Maybe he just wanted to know that he was normal, even though he was starting to think that he was not.
That was the thing that he didn’t always like. When he’d been at home, just sitting around, watching TV or hanging out with Uncle Jack, he usually felt like the most normal person in the world. No one had ever been this normal in the whole history of the world.
But then, when he would see the other kids and hear about what they were doing, it didn’t seem that way at all. It seemed like he was out in his own little world, doing his own thing. And that could be lonely, sometimes. It would be nice, he’d think, to have a friend to confide in.
Like Dear Abby.
***
“Hey, Jesse. Did you ever write to like, Dear Abby or Ann Landers or any one of those?”
Jesse stared at him.
“I have no idea who either of those people are.”
Todd blinked. Maybe he was wrong about Jesse knowing about all the ways of the world. Maybe he didn’t read the paper enough. Todd wasn’t going to hold that against him, though.
“They were advice columnists. Like, they were competitors, too. But I heard once that they were actually twins. But if you dress twins alike, they grow up to hate each other.”
“I didn’t know that,” Jesse said after a long pause. But of course he didn’t, because he hadn’t even known who they were. What was wrong with Jesse, sometimes? He just seemed so sad and depressed and what a drag he could be.
But he was the only friend that Todd had, so maybe he shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. That was a phrase he had heard a lot of his life, but he still didn’t entirely know what it meant. Maybe it meant like, quit your bitching and be happy with what you have, rather than wishing you had something better.
“What if I wrote a letter to her for both of us?”
Jesse stared back at Todd, but Todd knew that as soon as he got home and stretched out, he could start writing. It would be great. Maybe, this time, now that he had a really good letter, Dear Abby would answer it.
***
Dear Abby,
That was the way they were all supposed to start, right? Todd nibbled on his pencil as he thought about it. He hadn’t ever even written many letters, that he could remember. He would have written to his family members, but the only one he ever really talked to was Uncle Jack, and he was there already anyway, so there was no point in sending him a letter.
I’m not going to give you my name, because I want to remain anonymous.
Maybe Todd didn’t need to have bothered to write that part. Everyone wrote in with a fake name, anyway. He could probably scrap that part out. But he should say something about himself and why he was writing. Wasn’t that the whole point? Abby couldn’t help if Todd didn’t explain the situation. But how could he even start?
And Uncle Jack wouldn’t want him talking about what was going on with Jesse. That would be snitching.
So he’d have to change it. What was it called – a metaphor. He’d make it a metaphor.
I have this friend who is staying with me while we’re at a summer camp together. We’re supposed to stick together, but sometimes I don’t think that he likes me very much.
Since we are stuck together, what can I do to make him like me? I don’t want to seem desperate or anything.
Also, there is an older woman that I like, too, but she is hard to impress. I think, if things go well with my friend, then maybe she will see how I can be, too. Then everything will be good.
Sincerely,
The Lovelorn
Because that was always the kind of thing people signed as. That was the letter. Now that he read it over, it didn’t sound like a very good letter. But he’d fold it up and send it in, anyway.
If Abby answered his letter, he would show it to Jesse. They could bond over it. Or, maybe Jesse would have to do whatever Abby said, because she was the expert.
It seemed like Jesse was always listening to experts. After all, he had always seemed so close to Walter White.
***
Todd kept buying the newspaper every day. He’d go to the newsstand, and he would bring it with him and open it on his way to the lab. Jesse would be sleeping when he got there, always, and every day that Todd didn’t see his letter get answered, he would sigh and climb down the ladder to start his day. No need to get Jesse’s hopes up, after all.
But with all of this money, Todd would never run out of papers.
And she’d answer him one day. He was sure of it.