Chapter 57: I Wanna Talk About Me

Warm morning sunshine spills through a window onto threadbare blue carpet, its brilliant backsplash illuminating the white walls. It slowly creeps across the floor and slides silently across a bed with a simple blue blanket. Without warning, a mixed race with a paper bag on his head and wearing pajamas springs like a jack-in-the-box and starts dancing. Music swells from nowhere and fills the tiny room. "My name is Johnny," he sings, "my name is Johnny, I'm friends with Stella, Sid, Liam, and Ronnie."

His words cut off when a tennis shoe crashes into the back of his head.

Record scratch.

"You sound horrible," Lincoln muttered from his own bed, "shut up."

Johnny shoots his brother an angry, narrow-eyed expression, but turns back around and smiles again. "Anyway, my name's Johnny Velazquest. I'm twelve years old - almost thirteen - and I live across the street from the Loud family. They have ten daughters." Johnny whistles. "That's a lotta flower, amirite? I knew families got that big on farms and stuff, but this isn't exactly farming country." He walks over to the window and looks out at a quiet residential street. "See? We're in the suburbs. No reason to have that many kids, but whatever, I don't judge people."

The boy pauses. "Okay, I judge a little, but hey, I'm working on it."

Standing by his bed, he continues. "You all know my brother Lincoln but you might not know me. Or maybe you do and you're here just to see my beautiful face." Here he strikes a pose for an imaginary camera. "First of all, like I said, I'm basically a teenager, which makes me the next best thing to an adult."

"You're not responsible like one," Lincoln says.

"Shut up, Lincoln," Johnny snaps. "He's not wrong, though. I am kind of irresponsible. I mean, I can be responsible when I have to be, but by nature, I'm a fun loving free spirit who tries to squeeze as much from each day as possible."

"You're a spaz," Lincoln says. "Now shut up, it's Saturday, I'm sleeping."

In the bathroom, Johnny looks at himself in the mirror. "Again, as much as I hate to admit it, my little brother is kind of right. I do spaz out over things I'm passionate about, but who doesn't? Like..if you call my favorite band dumb, I get upset. Not enough to rage quit or anything, but I'll definitely get a little tense. I'm sure we're all like that, even if we front we're not." Johnny brushes his teeth. He spits into the sink and smiles at himself. "Clean as a whistle."

Next, Johnny walks into the empty kitchen and sits down. "It's not easy to sum yourself up in a few words because people are complex. No one is entirely good, no one is entirely bad, and people do things that subvert your expectations of them all the time. Like Saddam. Remember him? He was a brutal dictator…but he also wrote sappy romance novels. Then you have Mother Teresa, whose name is a byword for saintly goodness. From what I heard, her orphanages were miserable places." Johnny kicks his feet up onto the table. "What I mean is, I'm a deep and complex individual so I can't describe myself in one or two words. Anyone who can, well…" he shrugs. "There must not be much going on in their heads."

"Anyway," Johnny says, "I live with my Mom, my Dad, and my brother Lincoln. He's a year younger than me." He snaps his fingers and suddenly three people are at the table scarfing down bowls of cereal. Lincoln, a middle aged woman who looks just like Lincoln, and a big black man in a tiny red and yellow shirt that barely covers his man boobs. "Here go the squad right here. You got Linco, Mom, and the great D-A-D. Dad's a gruff and strict blue collar guy, but he's alright."

"Get your feet off the table," Dad commands.

Johnny instantly obeys. "Dad don't play and me and Linc respect him. Except when it comes to his obsessive love of professional wrestling."

Mom looks at Dad and narrows her eyes. "That shirt is way too small for you, Jason. You need to get rid of it."

"I've had this shirt since i was five, Elizabeth," Dad says. "It's not going anywhere."

Across the chest was HULKAMANIA in red lettering. Somewhere on it was Hulk Hogan's signature.

"We've been in this house -"

Here, Lincoln cuts him off. "We don't live in this house anymore. Remembeer?"

Johnny looks sheepish. "Oh, right. There was a tornado a while back and it wrecked the place. Now we live with the Louds."

He snapped his fingers again, and suddenly they're in the kitchen of the Loud house. The table is packed with screaming, fighting, ravenous girls. Lynn Sr. comes over with a pan of cinnamon rolls and Johnny takes me. "Good looking, my man," he says and takes a bite. "I love baking, and when I got the need to knead, I see my main man Mr. Loud." He blushes and touches his chin. "We're baking buddies."

Cue Spongebob laugh.

During breakfast, all the Loud girls sidle up close to him and give him loving looks. "I'm catnip to these girls," Johnny says. "I don't know why. Actually, I do." He fingers his paper bag hat, making it crinkle. "Ladies love the bag."

The scene changes to Lincoln and Johnny working on bikes in the garage. "Before Dad got a promotion at work, we were pretty poor." Johnny kneels down beside a bike and spins the tire. Wheeee. "We didn't have much and the other kids clowned on us pretty hard. Because of that, Lincoln and I started hustling them for money. They all hated and thought we were weird ripoffs.."

Flashback to young Lincoln and Johnny surrounded by angry kids at the park. "We want our money back," one says.

Johnny holds up his hand and closes his eyes. "Sorry, kid, no refunds."

The kid snacthes Johnny by the front of his shirt and Johnny pales. "Okay, refunds, refunds."

Next, they're in the cafeteria at school, sitting alone and shunned by the others.. "This sucks," Johnny says.

"Wanna not do this anymore?" Lincoln asks.

Johnny agrees.

"We reformed and now we have friends."

Sid flies by on her skateboard, Stella walks past looking at her phone, and Liam chases a pig through the garage.

"We also went straight," Johnny says. "Now instead of running scams, we run businesses."

A montague plays, showing Lincoln and Johnny fixing bikes, servicing homemade vending machines, and selling lemonade. "We're basically Mr. Krabs at this point, trying to get every red cent we can," Johnny explains.

Next, Johnny and Lincoln are in their room, Johnny laughing at cat videos. "I like corny humor," Johnny says. "The world's such a hardcore place thast it's nice to forget about it and laugh at Dad jokes."

"Dad is the joke," Lincoln says.

The door bursts open and Dad runs in wearing face paint and arm tassels like The Ultimate Warrior. Lincoln cowers. "NOW YOU MUST DEAL WITH THE CREATION OF ALL THE UNPLEASANTRIES IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE AS I FEEL THE INJECTION FROM THE GODS ABOVE!" Dad threw his head back and pounded on his chest like an ape.

"Go get injected somewhere else," Lincoln says,

Dad runs out again and a few seconds later, Mr. Loud cries out in horror. "He's doing it again!"

"Jason!" Mom calls. "Get down here this instant!"

Head hung, Dad trudges down the stairs.

"As you can see, my Dad's pretty much insane."

Johnny frowns. "Speaking of insane."

The scene changes to Johnny lying on the ground and twitching. "I got brain damage a few weeks ago," Johnny said. "I'll tell you more about it later, but that's not the hot topic right now. It's what it caused. Nope, I'm not intellectually disadvantaged now…I just hear voices."

Johnny looks to his left as a snotty, condescending voice speaks. "Your father is mentally unstable and should be committed. No grown man should galavant about in tights."

He looks to the right. Another voice speaks, this one childish and unhinged. "I like tights. Tights are fuuuuuuun."

"I rest my case," the first voice says.

Johnny sighs.

Finally, Johnny's lying in bed. "So, to sum it up, I'm kind of flippant and irrelevant and don't take things seriously. Until I do, and usually, it's the wrong things to take seriously. I joke a lot and talk mad smack, but I love my family and friends and am grateful for what I have. I want more, but, you know, I don't need more. I'm in a good place and I'm generally happy. I can't wait to see what the future holds for me."

"It holds a butt kicking if you don't shut up and go to sleep," Lincoln says.

Johnny jumps off the bed. "You been bucking up a lot lately," Johnny says. "Maybe you forgot who the teenager here is,"

"Barely," Lincoln snorts.

Suddenly, Lincoln and Johnny are rolling around in a big chaotic dustball, sucking everything around them in like a tornado. Lynn Sr. runs screaming down the hall, but he's overtaken and drawn in. Dad, in a ref shirt, runs up the stairs, but when he sees that he can't handle the violence, he runs away again.

Mom finally separates them and sends them upstairs again, grounded. "I shouldn't have reacted that way," Johnny says. "But Lincoln chaps my butt sometimes." He grabbed Lincoln in a headlock and gave him a noogie. "But I love him and would do anything for him."

"Will you go to bed?"

Johnny sighs. "Fine."

In bed, Johnny's voices lull him to sleep. "Goodnight, life," he said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

He claps, and the lights go out.

In minutes, he's snorting.