Grasshopper Jungle. Andrew Smith

MI Plague Strain 412E, wasn’t anything remarkable unless it came into contact with human blood.

      Contained MI Plague Strain 412E really was contained and harmless inside Johnny McKeon’s glass universe.

      Tyler dropped that universe directly onto the spot where earlier that day Robby Brees began spelling out GRANT WALLACE MURDERED ME in his own blood.

      The Contained MI Plague Strain 412E was happy to meet Robby Brees’s blood.

      Robby Brees was my best friend. He taught me how to dance. We smoked cigarettes. He kissed me. To be honest, I kissed him back. Robby was homosexual. I didn’t know if I was anything.

      I wondered what I was. None of that mattered. Nobody knew anything about it except for me and Robby.

      The man whose scientific company invented the Contained MI Plague Strain 412E died when his plane crashed into the ocean. The plane’s engines were destroyed by billowing plumes of caustic ash. The ash came from a volcano in Guatemala. It was called Huacamochtli. Robby Brees’s dad was filming the Huacamochtli eruption at precisely the same moment that Dr. Grady McKeon’s jet disintegrated on impact with the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

      Water is unyielding when you’re moving at 500 mph.

      We were in seventh grade then. My brother, Eric Christopher Szerba, joined the United States Marines that year. At the same moment Huacamochtli was being filmed by Robby’s father and Dr. Grady McKeon’s body was being torn apart by the force of impact, my brother, Eric, was on his way to boot camp. Robby Brees’s dad never came back to Ealing, Iowa. He didn’t want to see Robby’s mom ever again.

      We found this out later:

      The Contained MI Plague Strain 412E said hello to Robby Brees’s blood on the asphalt in Grasshopper Jungle.

      And the end of the world began at about 2:00 a.m., around three and a half feet away from a discarded floral-print sleeper sofa infested with pubic lice in Ealing, Iowa. One time, Travis Pope unfolded the sofa and fucked his wife, Eileen, on it.

      Both of them had pubic lice.

      It didn’t matter.

      History is my compulsion.

      I see the connections.

       PART 2:

       WATERLOO CORNFIELD