The cry echoed down the stairs, bouncing through the kitchen into living room as Maddie pounded on the ceiling from behind a locked door. Justin jolted awake with a wheeze. He rubbed his aching head and tried to check his phone, but he’d forgotten to hook it onto the charger before he fell asleep. Roku City greeted him on the television through the evening gloom. “Dude?” Justin called up the stairs. “Are you dying or something.”
Justin leaned over and grabbed a slice of half-eaten pizza from the greasy box leaning precariously off the corner of the coffee table. A glob of grease dripped onto the fugly rug beneath.
“He’d better be or I’m gonna kill him,” Maddie burst through her door in a sports bra and a pair of running shorts. She’d started working out before bed even though you aren’t supposed to do that.
Taylor took the stairs so fast it sounded like he was falling down them. He almost crashed into the wall rounding the corner. He stopped just short of Maddie, panting, “Skibidi Dab Guy killed himself.”
“Tragic,” Maddie blinked. Taylor looked her up and down.
“Dude,” he huffed. “Put a shirt on.”
Justin groaned as he stood. “Why’d he kill himself?”
Taylor threw his hands in the air. “Do I look like I know?”
Maddie crossed her arms. “Am I supposed to know what we’re talking about?”
“You don’t know about Skibid Dab?” Taylor’s wide eyes went back and forth between the two of them. Justin pinched the bridge of his nose as Taylor searched for words.
Maddie rolled her eyes. “Explain it like we’re almost thirty.”
Justin whipped his phone out and checked his dead Instagram page before Taylor could get going, thumbed over to Reddit where three different people had DM’ed him to tell him how stupid his latest post was, then he scrolled on Pinterest and Substack.
“Skibidi Dab is an avant-garde YouTube channel that comments on the effects of mass communication on the human psyche through meme-humor. Characters hear voices in radios, televisions, phones—”
“Did you ask Chat GPT for a summary before you came down here or something?”
“Maybe you’d understand culture if you weren’t dicking around in the backyard all the time!”
Maddie absent mindedly reached for the pocket where she used to keep her cigarettes. “We’re not gonna be able to afford food in a few months,” she growled. “You’d better hope I figure out how to garden.”
“What if you got a real job?”
“Look who’s talking asshole! And I have a real job in case you forgot.”
“It’s either that or fix your voice. Amazon does not count.”
He stepped between them, wondering if his homelife explained his whole YouTube career, cringing at the thought he actually considered it a career. Justin worried they were all going to try to kill each other one day. “I’m sorry Skibidi Dab guy killed himself. Don’t take it out on Maddie.” Justin turned to Maddie. “You get kinda cranky at the end of the day because—”
Maddie laughed. “No say it, Justin. Why do I get cranky?
“I feel like your estrogen levels drop at the end of the day.”
“That’s so interesting,” Maddie nodded.
“You don’t have to agree with me but you do—”
“I do not! That’s sexist.”
“I said drop, not increase!”
“I know what you said!”
Taylor cocked his head. “You took estrogen and got moody and that makes Justin sexist?”
“Shut up Taylor.”
“Are you two fucking again?”
Justin sighed. “We were never—”
“Yes!” said Maddie.
“Gross.” Taylor went back upstairs.
Maddie and Justin sat on the couch. “I’m sorry—” Justin started.
“I hate him,” said Maddie.
“It’s the autism,” said Justin.
“No, it’s not.”
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“I just want you to know I thought they were dropping—”
“You’re still blaming my mood on hormones.”
“But like when they drop—”
Sometimes Maddie does this thing where she lets out a little burst of air that’s supposed to be high pitched, but it sounds more like a groan. People who don’t know her think it’s to sound feminine, but Maddie knows it doesn’t. She does it to make people uncomfortable, so they’ll be quiet. Justin didn’t know what to think when she told him that.
“Does the fact he was being an asshole count for anything?” Maddie stormed over to her room and slammed the door.
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