Starlight and Dumpsters

I've had an exceptional weekend. I couldn't have asked for better on my twenty-fifth birthday. I spent plenty of time with friends on during the week and went to my parents place for the weekend. There's been lots of food and games and companionship. There was also the boat.

My dad has a sporty sleek red and white boat. He got it a few years ago so that he could share one of his favorite activities from when he was a kid with us. The first time couple times out, I hated waterskiing - I just couldn't get up. All water skiing did for me was to flush out my sinuses with copious volumes of water. However, now that I've got the technique down I love it. Dad knows that, and the morning after I got home, he had my siblings and I up at seven. By seven thirty we were on our way to the lake.

I was groaning about the time - I'm not too much of a morning person, but my pops is wise about water. When we launched the boat the water was slightly rough, but not bad. By the time we propelled to the other side of the reservoir the water was a calm glassy mirror. I've never seen such perfect water before, and it stayed that way for as many hours as I had strength. We did everything - skiing, wakeboarding, slalom skiing, coasting around the lake soaking up the sun; everything.

Well, I'm not in great physical condition and it wiped me out. We'd planned to go spelunking in the afternoon, but I was so exhausted that we changed our plan to accommodate naps and a movie. I slept well that night, but I was plenty sore the next day. The night after, when I arrived back at the mansion, I was even worse. I was stiff and walked with a strange kind of half limp. Everything hurt. My legs, my arms, my neck, my gluteous maximus, and everything else was screaming for a Tylenol.

Wadsworth welcomed me home with warm yet stately salutations and promptly drew a bath for me. He suggested a cold one with ice as the "most effective remedy for the soreness of overtaxed muscles," but I'm too wimpy for that kind of thing so we went with a hot one. I napped for the rest of the afternoon. That turned out to be a poor choice, as I was exceptionally restless that night. Since I couldn't sleep I decided to go outside and enjoy the stars, and maybe stretch out my legs a little bit.

I lingered in the garden for a while, breathing the fragrant air in deeply; but the trees obscure much of the night sky, so I ventured out a little further. The nearby mountain range cut a black jagged path through the stars at the horizon. There are very few lights in my neck of the woods aside from the ones in the mansion house, and it was a cloudless night, so the rest of the stars were perfect and brilliant. I stuffed my hands into my back pockets and leaned as far backwards as I could without falling over. My back objected stiffly, but the stretching helped. Finally I lay down on the perfectly manicured lawn and put my hands behind my head and contemplated the eternities.

My meditations were interrupted shortly by a metallic banging sound from the back of the house. I figured it was Will, thrashing around in his "bedroom." Just like Beezle, he came with the house, and I've never quite understood why he sleeps in that thing. I don't challenge it though - he's an adolescent, and those can be wonderfully emotional, illogical, and unfathomable things.

Things went quiet for a while. Then there was more banging, followed again by silence. After not too long the motion sensors on the back patio blinked on, hurting my eyes. I shield them, and listened quietly to the dumpster lid rising the rattling of the metal as Will climbed out and the slam of the lid falling back into position. Will yawned and padded toward me across the cement of the pool.

I'm not sure how he didn't see me in the blinding 240 lumens of the floodlights, but he didn't. I was content to just lie in wait. I won't do that again. He walked within a foot of me, stopped, and started to relieve himself. I leaped up with a cry of surprise and alarm. He leaped to the side with the same frightened shout. Fortunately, I escaped the situation unsullied. 

We hurriedly turned away from each other. While he finished his business I asked, "Do you make it a habit to pee on my lawn?"

"I guess."

"You know there's a restroom in the house right?"

"This is closer. Besides, it's nice out here at night. I like the feel of the grass on my feet."

"Uh huh. Well, as nice as that is, I'm not so keen on the idea."

"Why do you care?" Will's voice cracked. It's been doing that a lot recently, "You didn't even know about it till just now."

"Because," I said, doing my best to keep my cool, "I sometimes like to lie in this grass. I don't like the thought of putting my back into your personal cesspool. So please, empty your bladder inside from now on."

"Fine. Whatever."

Will padded angrily back to the dumpster and opened the lid. As the lid closed back down on him he said something but I didn't quite understand it between the muffled sound and the echoes. I wanted to tell him to come out if he wanted to talk to me, but thinking that it was better to pick my battles (like what was a restroom and what was not), I lifted the lid and poked my head inside.

"What?" I said, "I couldn't hear you?"

He glared at me with one of the special teenage faces. It's the one that silently says all of the above, "Why are you such an idot? Why can't you just leave me alone? Nobody understands me, because like you they are all stupid. I hate your guts." I thought about just slamming the lid on him and letting him come talk to me when he wasn't being melodramatic. Instead, I decided to cut him some slack. It was late, we were both tired, he sleeps in a dumpster, and he no longer had the privileged of wiggling his tows in the lawn while he watered it.

"I said," he drawled, "'can we put a door on here?' I hate crawling into and out of it."

"I'm not sure. I'd have to call a welder about it. What if you just take one of the bedrooms? The mansion has plenty of them."

"No," he muttered, "I like this better."

"Why?" I'm afraid I let some frustration creep into my voice. He detected it, and read volumes into it.


"I just do! Never mind. Why did I even bother asking? Shut the lid please."

I took a deep breath, said 'Goodnight' and shut it. I went back to my bedroom and fell asleep trying to figure out what was appealing about sleeping in trash. I haven't had a chance to talk to Will since. He's definitely avoiding me. I've decided to go ahead and call a welder, but in the meantime I'm still stumped. What's so great about the dumpster? Any thoughts? If you come up with something brilliant, plausible, or even ludicrous with merit comment below. I've got to figure out how this kid ticks.