Adverbs by Daniel Handler

Author:Daniel Handler
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780061983504
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-12-16T06:49:30+00:00

“I washed it with the water bottle,” Steven says, “right after we fell and right before you came. Just distract me.”

“Distract?” Eddie says. The wound, she remembers, was not wet when she looked at it.

“Just say something, or tell me something.”

“I’ll tell you about a dream I had,” Eddie says, and this is what I mean. Why would she tell him this? This story does not take place at a time when there are soothsayers. A dream, who cares? And yet we say these things because what would it mean if no one was interested? “I’ll tell you a dream I had last night, I think, and I keep thinking about it.”

“Does it have specific details?” Steven asks. “I read someplace that specific details can distract you from the pain. Like on a battlefield they give you specific details. Think about your sweetheart.”

“Thinking about your sweetheart doesn’t sound specific,” Eddie says, “but I guess it is. No, this is just a dream, but I’ll put specific details in. In the dream I’m dating this guy I knew in high school. I’ve been on a couple of dates with him I guess, in the dream. In real life I didn’t know him at all, not even really in high school. Hank Hayride.”

“That can’t be his real name,” Steven says.

“You’re right,” Eddie says. “It can’t be. I never thought of that. I just woke up and thought that I dreamed I was dating Hank Hayride. But that can’t be right.”

“Maybe it was right in the dream,” Steven says, but Eddie is not paying attention.

“Hayride,” she says. “Where did that come from? Hayride, hayride. Haythorne? Maybe Hank Haythorne? It was Hank something, definitely, but anyway I think someone told me he’s dead. But that might be in the dream too.”

“This isn’t distracting me from the pain at all,” Steven says.

Eddie slaps him on the shoulder very lightly, not meaning it, and then keeps her hand there for a second. Steven definitely notices this. She is looking out at the slope where Steven supposedly fell. You couldn’t fall from there, and receive a wound like the one she saw. She didn’t think so. But what could it be? Why would you lie about that and then do nothing, just sit by a brook and hear made-up stories? Eddie can’t imagine.

“So I was dating Hank Hayride,” Eddie says, as if changing the subject, “in the dream, and we had gone on a few dates, and then he said we had to talk, or he had something to say to me, or something. I don’t really remember. But it was—I think it was that talk, you know, when you go out with someone for a while and then you finally have the talk where you tell them something.”

“Like you’re gay,” Steven says.

“No, not like you’re gay,” Eddie says, “like you’re married, or you used to be married and you lost a baby and you’re not ready for a commitment, or you need to know what’s going on after six weeks of just sort of dating.

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