Chapter One

An alarm goes off. It’s mom’s phone from the other room. I know it’s Mom’s phone because the ring tone’s Beethoven – Fur Elise. My mom loves Beethoven. I’m not sure why she likes Beethoven so much. Maybe it's because my grandparents named her Elise and she thinks the song’s for her. I don’t like it as much. It stays in my head too long. I hear it during Math class instead of numbers. If I wasn’t so sleepy, I’d get up to turn off Fur Elise.

My dad’s ring tone is Wagner’s The Valkyrie. I like that more. It sounds like something very exciting is happening – like Superman is about to walk into the room. My dad hates Wagner, though. He says that he only uses it as an alarm tone to make sure that he gets up to turn it off.

My dad has a strange name. His name is Odin. He tells everyone to call him “O” instead. My cousins call him “Uncle-O,” his students call him “Mr. O,” and I call him “Daddy-O.” I think that name is stranger than the name “Odin” because “O” is not really a name, it’s just a letter. But I didn’t tell him that because when people call him “Mr. O” he seems to be happier. He makes an okay sign and winks at them. I don’t like calling him “Daddy-O.” When people who don’t know him hear someone call him “Mr. O,” they sometimes start giggling.

Dad told me that his name is “Odin” because Grandpa was a history professor and Grandpa liked Norse mythology very much that my dad was named after a Norse God. My name is Lucas, but my dad calls me Loki. Loki is also a Norse God. Dad started calling me that after my Grandpa died. My mother says that Dad has “unresolved issues” and she wants him to see a therapist. I don’t know what “unresolved issues” means but it doesn’t sound good.

Mom’s clock is always 5 minutes ahead. So the time now is probably 5:25 am. In 20 minutes, mine would go off too. I am awake, but I’ll stay in bed and try to sleep again. I always find it strange how I want to keep sleeping in the morning even when I don’t even really like to sleep. I want to stay up and do other things because when I sleep, I‘m not really doing anything.

Either my mom or dad has to get up first at 5am to turn on the kettle to make hot water because the water is very cold in the morning. I always get up second. Mom or Dad wakes up first and makes hot water. Then, afterwards it’s my turn to bathe. If Mom got up first, she’d help me with my clothes. If Dad got up first, he’d help me with my clothes.

Dad likes my clothes loose so I could be more comfortable, or maybe he’s in a hurry. He’d grab the nearest pair of pants, the first shirt he pulls out of the closet, and throw my school uniform over it.
I like the neon colored shirts dad makes me wear under my cream-colored uniform. It looks as if I have a superhero uniform hidden underneath my boring school clothes. But I have to make sure that I put my dirty pants in the hamper; otherwise, I might be wearing the same pants the next day too. Dad can’t tell the difference.

Sometimes mom has to change my clothes again because dad forgets that we wear uniforms and he puts denim jeans and loafers on me. We can’t wear those to school. Mom always makes sure that my clothes follow the uniform guidelines in the parent’s manual. Dad doesn’t. He thinks the manual is feces (or was it fascist).

Mom would tell him, honey, you think everything is feces. You think I’m feces. And then Dad would tell her, you’re not feces, love, you’re just new-robotic (or was it neurotic?). And then mom would hit dad and they would both laugh. I’d laugh too even if I didn’t know what was funny.

When it’s mom’ turn to help with my clothes, she goes through my closet looking for white undershirts to make sure that my cream-colored uniform appears cream-colored. Whenever my dad sees me in my uniform sitting next to my mom in her work clothes he would tease Mom and say, “No one told me it was 1984” or “Do you have a meeting with big brother?” I would ask Mom about it and she’d say that dad was making an inside joke about a silly book that an old man wrote. Big Brother, she says, is the leader of a country, like a president, and he watches everyone and makes sure that everyone follows the rules, otherwise, they're punished. “That sounds scary,” I say and ask her why it's funny. She just shrugs and puts her arm around me.

Whoever gets up first makes breakfast. On Mondays and Wednesdays, we have pancakes and cereal because mom makes the breakfast and she doesn’t eat meat. On Tuesdays and Thursdays Dad makes bacon and eggs or he tosses a few slices of pizza from last night into an oven along with a fruity pop tart for Mom. Dad doesn’t like sugary, sweet pancakes or frosted cereal.

Today, I’m having cereal so I know that it’s a Monday. I like frosted cereal, but not because it’s sweet. I like it because I can make floating figures with my frosted cereal. I can put a few flakes over the milk and move them around with a spoon and I can make different archipelagos. Sometimes I would carefully put the cereal flakes in a single cluster at the center of my bowl. I would tap at the side of the bowl with my spoon and the flakes would scatter. Dad tells me that this was how the continents came about. He says that all the Earth’s continents used to be one big cluster of cereal and after a few bowl-taps they moved apart. This, Dad says, happened over a period of millions of years. So, sometimes I don’t tap at the bowl at all and just watch the cereal drift and scatter from the center very, very slowly. I imagine how it would look if the cereal flakes were real islands with their own valleys and mountains and it’s all very exciting. Then I imagine myself to be a cosmic giant who goes to different galaxies going from planet to planet, eating islands.

Whoever wakes up last has to drive the car while the other people sleep. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I can’t sleep in the car on the way to school because Dad likes to sing when he drives. When he’s not singing, he’s making jokes. Dad always has to do something else while driving because he gets bored really fast. The few times Dad is quiet in the car, Mommy would be grinding her teeth. She does that when she sleeps.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Dad and I stay in the backseat. Mom makes him sit in the back because she has to focus when she drives. There’s no music or “unnecessary noises” allowed. I like how Mom drives. The car doesn’t jerk or halt. It feels like we’re on a boat. I fall asleep very fast. Today, Mom drives a little extra fast because I have to get to school really, really early. It’s my first day of school.