Jacinthe and Agnes are reading quietly in their room when Jake appears at the doorway and says, “Weed. My room. Midnight.”
Agnes: “Oh!”
Midnight. Jacinthe shows.
Dwayne: “Where’s Agnes?”
“Like there’s a chance in hell of that.”
Jake, rolling a fatty: “Now that we’re all here, we’ll move to the first order of business. What is the next comic? Jacinthe?”
“Well, I favour The Story of the Earth, volume 1, ‘Attack of the Killer Asteroids’.”
Dwayne: “Oh. I would read that. You know, I never knew this, but I got it from your geology class. There was some time like, I don’t know, billions of years ago, when Jupiter and Saturn got into this,” he makes two different circular motions with his index fingers, “rhythm, where one was orbiting the sun exactly twice as fast as the other, so every time around their gravity was lined up and, you see what I’m saying, reinforcing instead of cancelling out, and suddenly, wow, all sorts of minor planets from the asteroid belt went yow everywhere and it’s like look out! Craters on the moon! And look out prehistoric life! And that’s where we came from.”
Jacinthe: “That is good weed. Pass that over.”
Jake: “Courtesy Gerry.”
Jacinthe: “Fuckin’ pimp. What, if we get stoned we’ll put together another hit comic?”
“That’s the plan. Any ideas so far?”
“What about BB & PL?”
Big Bad and Precious Little was the comic panel they did in the Moncton High School paper. Each cartoon featured the tiny Precious Little posing a problem and the tremendous Big Bad offering an inappropriate solution. They used to do the characters at drunks, back in The Bend. They start in now.
Jacinthe: “Oh, student tuitions are rising again!”
Jake: “I’ll sit on them with my ass.”
Jacinthe: "Ninjas are everywhere!"
Jake: "Break out the nukes!"
Jacinthe: “World population is growing and growing!”
Jake: “I’ll kick them in the nuts.”
They laugh and laugh.
Jacinthe: “Oh fuck, I miss that.”
Jake: “Good times.”
Dwayne: “I know what you should do. You should do a story about tai chi.”
Jake: “That’s true. The field of tai chi action comics has barely been scratched. I wonder why?”
Dwayne: “No, dude, it rules. Shayne and Shawn are tough but they’re great teachers. We’re doing Taekwondo, Shaolin White Crane and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Next week we get swords.”
Jacinthe: “Hm. Something has been going on. There’s a professor who’s been attacked by an assassin twice this year.”
Dwayne: “We’ll catch that slippery eel too.”
Jake: “Eh? Where’s this? UNB?”
Jacinthe: “Jake! Here! Get out of the house!”
Jake: “All right, all right. I’ll download some martial arts pictures and start working.”
Dwayne: “No need of that, man. I’ll model for you.” He gets up on the bed, strips off his shirt and strikes a classic kickboxing pose.
Jake (rubbing his face): “Oh, God.”
Night. Clouds scud across the full moon. Emily M. and crew are climbing the iron ladder to the roof of Convocation Hall. Each one has a flagpole attached to her back by a belt around the waist and another between the armpits and the bozoom. Each flagpole bears a white bedsheet, each bedsheet the logo of the F5. They’re going to set them up on the four corners of the roof with the fifth in the centre of the colonnade. Halfway up Emily M. turns back to Lou’Eaze and says, “Do you hear music?”
They get up on top and then it’s clear: someone is playing a Chinese fiddle. The bittersweet tune drifts across the roof. They walk over, flags rustling softly. Da Xi Shuai is seated on a crate, face to the moon, playing a haunting love song. The tune ends and Da Xi Shuai turns to the group.
“’The attainable world will shun you, so love the unattainable moon.’”
Emily M.: “Hell, bitch, F5 love you.”
Nellz Bellz: “Weren’t for you we would’ve Christmas graduated out of this one horse town.”
Ire-Ene: “Got that right.”
Lou’Eaze: “You’re our mo’fu’ role model.”
Henrietta: “We want you to win, hobo.”
They wrap their arms around the orphan.
Emily M.: “Come back to our crib. We’ll show you some appreciation.”
F5 plant the flags, take Xi by the sleeves and head for home. Emily M. pauses at the head of the ladder, looks you square in the eye, and goes:
“Yo, Gentle Reader,
I see your frowns.
You’re feeling a need
For more pronouns.
Cause there’s sex comin’ down
But what’s the gender?
Well, love is a drink
That’s made in a blender.
So mix what you like,
And raise your glass.
And if that don’t suit you
You may kiss my ass.”
And to carry the point home she moons you.
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