Trevor by James Lecesne Page A

doubt she would have enjoyed having the whole thing explained to her, so I kept my mouth shut and kept on pretending to be dead. Knowing Mom, she probably was able to figure out what I was up to and just wasn’t that impressed.
    In any case, she reached down and quickly snatched the knife from the lawn. Then she wheeled herself around and headed back toward the house without a word. She didn’t even bother to yell at me. Maybe she thought I was doing this as a ploy to get attention, but I was just trying to keep myself entertained. It’s fun to be pretend-dead and then lie there as the world goes on without you. In my opinion, this is a much better use of my time than playing baseball.
    The mower started up again, but I could hear Dad’s voice shouting over the sound of the revving motor.
    â€œTREVOR,” he yelled. “GET UP. I HAVE TO FINISH THE LAWN AND YOU’RE IN THE WAY . . . TREVOR!”

Two
    I don’t want to give you the impression that Mom and Dad are uncaring people who are insensitive to my needs; they are merely busy. Mom works as an administrator processing applications for insurance claims—or something like that—at the local hospital. Dad is a regional manager for a company that distributes products designed to make things that stick, like tape and industrial-strength glue. As an artist, I am not exactly inspired by the type of work they do, but I totally appreciate the fact that ever since I can remember they have kept a roof over my head and sent me to school fed and fully dressed. As their only child, I have always had pretty much everything I need. We are not rich by any means. I guess you could say that we are comfortably well off. Mom and Dad are tired at the end of the day—the result of their hard work—and they like to relax in the evening by parking themselves in front of the TV and watching some dumb game show or a televised talent contest in which people are pitted against one another until one of them wins a chance to be recognized by strangers in shopping malls across the country.

    One night, while they were watching TV, I walked into the living room and fell dead to the floor. I held my breath a good long time. No response from them. That was when I decided that their ability to spontaneously respond to their environment (and me) had been compromised by the television. Unless I happened to be dancing with a star, I don’t think they would notice me—and I have never danced with a star in my whole life.
    Sometimes instead of hanging around in my room surfing the net, drawing, or just being ignored to death by my parents, I sneak out of the house and go over to Zac’s house, which is just four blocks away. Zac and I have been friends since second grade, but now that we’re in high school and we don’t do kid stuff anymore, we have been working on more grown-up activities. For example, one night Zac asked me if I wanted to come over and check out his new microscope. I said yes, hopped on my bike, and went upstairs to his room without his parents knowing what was up. And wow! Let me tell you, we saw a lot of crazy activity through the eyepiece of that microscope. His sperm was amazing! Zac said that people used to think masturbating could cause a person to go totally deaf. Apparently he had read all about this and, according to the Internet, it was something they told to young boys in order to get them to stop “abusing” themselves.
    â€œI am no expert,” I told Zac, “but I’ve never heard of a single case where someone went deaf due to masturbation.”
    â€œWhat’d you say?!” Zac asked, pretending to be deaf.
    We had big laugh over that one.
    Then things got ugly.
    He asked me if I was planning to dress up for Halloween, and I told him that I was considering going as Lady Gaga.
    â€œWhy?” he asked, and I could tell that he disapproved of my idea.
    I explained to him that Lady