Everything is Impossibly Annoying is an experimental piece inspired by Anna Karenina, Grief is the Thing With Feathers, and Vine compilations on YouTube. Told in three parts, it follows a boy, then a young man, who seeks friendship from an internet-fluent bird who appears only after he drinks.

Only on his deathbed, in a camp outside of what used to be Nashville, situated on a scorched and angry earth, did Al Gore consider that the Internet may have been a mistake.

September, 2009

It’s an ordinary living room on an ordinary day.

Frankie is thirteen. Do you see him there? Go on, look. You might have to bend down, he’s on the floor.

Frankie is thirteen and he’s on the floor and he’s reading a book. The book is nonfiction and it’s about the Challenger disaster. It charts all the things that went wrong in order for that one, big thing to go very wrong. All the mistakes NASA made to lose all those astronauts, all at once.

Frankie is into space travel right now, or he thinks he is. He is actually interested in human error, which, incidentally, he is due for. In his thirteen years on god’s green earth, Frankie hasn’t done much. The kid’s all sponge, absorbing everything but juicing nothing. He watches, reads, and observes, studying how to act, think, and speak for the day when he’ll actually need to act, think, and speak. For Frankie, so much of the world seems coded in a language he doesn’t understand; a private joke he missed out on because his mother said no TV after nine, no music with swears, no no no no no. He spends his life, a quiet life, one in which he is more often than not alone, waiting for his parents to shut the front door behind them, because that’s when he gets to watch VH1 without anyone telling him to turn off that trash.

Trash is brilliant, isn’t it?

For someone as invisible as Frankie, trash can be everything. Trash can fill all the empty bits inside your life and spoil it with glitter and noise. Trash can save you, if you let it.

Frankie is lying on the floor on top of a rug in front of a boxy black television. This is where Frankie’s days pass when he’s not stuck at school. He drags books and fruit snacks and pillows there to set up camp. When he gets tired of his books, he watches his TV, and when he gets tired of the TV, he reads his book.

Wait, hold on, he’s — it’s starting.

Frankie’s eyes drift from the page and he sets the book down on his chest. He’s a pale, scrawny sort of kid, with brown hair and brown eyes, and freckles on his forearms. None of the puberty-that-was-promised has seemed to kick in yet. His t-shirt is striped, and his pants are cargo, and his socks are floppy, pilled things.

Frankie stares into the popcorn ceiling. In the late nineties, suburban ceilings across the country sprouted bumps and grooves. Scientists are still searching for answers to explain this phenomenon. Then, he flips onto his stomach, resting his head on his hands.

Maura and Dean are away for the weekend, celebrating their fifteenth wedding anniversary. This is not Frankie’s first time home alone, though it is without a doubt the most significant. Like all good stories, this one starts with a cocktail.

Frankie eyes his parents’ liquor cabinet. It lords over the living room, in a grey wooden wash with unlocked metal latches.

Alcohol, Franke knows, is very cool, he’s just not sure why. At school, kids brag about sneaking water bottles of alcohol to parties. He doesn’t know what happens at these parties after the bottles are all drunk up, and why everyone laughs in that one, weird, knowing way when they reference them.

But he’s been thinking about it a lot recently and he wants to be prepared, in the off chance that anyone were ever to invite him to one of these parties and offer him some alcohol.

So he puts the book aside and opens the cabinet and reaches his hand into its depths, coming out with a glass bottle of Vodka.

That’s when it starts.

June, 2019

On Sundays at The Outpost, from three to four in the afternoon, vodka sodas are a dollar each. No more than one minute after the designated hour, we meet dear Frankie at the bar, standing five foot three in blue jeans and a white t-shirt and scuffed leather Converse high tops. He orders two vodka sodas for himself. Two for one. He drinks one at the bar, sipping, sipping, then shoulders back through the ropes of people, glittering and milling in his way.

The Outpost’s Sunday Funday Vodka Soda Free For All is like church, if Christians allowed themselves an ounce of fun. The sinners descend upon Chelsea every Sunday, walking pilgrimage from the L train to the bar, bowing their heads at the cup of lime and vodka and bubbles, and are cleansed by their healing powers. It’s also just a really good deal, let’s be honest.

Frankie moves to the terrace, swaying slightly to the music with a determinedly dreamy look on his face. It’s all eyes out here. Eyes and mouths sucking up cigarettes and talk. Frankie surveys the crowd. There are big boys and small boys and girls enchanted, delighted to be involved in such sacrament. They merge and ebb and oscillate and Frankie is reminded of the starlings that flocked overhead in the late, winter afternoons of his childhood. He squeezes a lime into his second drink and tongues the thin twin straws. Closing his mouth around them for a looooong sip, Frankie tastes Lime and Vodka and Bubbles.

Where do vodka sodas go when we empty our cups?

Down
  The
    Hatch.

A slip and slide of pink insides. The elixir rushes down, kissing the early days of tumors and ulcers that have decades of waiting around before a doctor says, I’m afraid I have some bad news.

  Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Halfway down the trachea, Vodka parts ways with Lime and Bubbles. Did you know that alcohol is absorbed into the body differently than other drinks? Could be true, probably not worth looking up at this stage.

Vodka, friendly, self-assured, kind, waves goodbye to its short-lived friends. ‘Have fun on your acid trip!’ it says.

Bubbles, bright, accommodating, kind, swirls down the drain. ‘Say hi to Parrot for me!’ it says.

Lime — this is classic Lime. Lime says nothing. Lime just makes a sour face.

And now, we stick with Vodka. Vodka has work to do. It makes its way over to Frankie’s heart which is purple, leather, and pumping rapidly. Vodka thinks to itself, I will take care of this. I will wash his heart of nerves. I will bathe him in fun. I will I will I will.

So Vodka swirls around dear Frankie’s heart. It wooshes and wooshes, faster and faster, faster and faster, faster and faster, until finally an orange beak pokes through the right atrium. A yellow eye with a big black center emerges from the heart and twitches. It belongs to a red head which nudges, shakes, and struggles under the heart’s meaty muscles until Parrot is fully birthed. Upright, Parrot’s white talons perch atop the heart, digging into the flesh and timing its ga-bump ga-bump ga-bump.

The voice of American Horror Story’s Madison Montgomery, played by Emma Roberts squawks through Parrot’s mouth. ‘Surprise bitch! I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me.’

Cue: Laugh track. Parrot winks at us. We eat it up. We love this colorful feathered fella, he’s a real fan favorite.

No time to waste, Parrot makes his way up to Frankie’s piehole. He takes a right at the base of it, following the echoing sounds of Kim Petras.

Meanwhile, Frankie side steps and slurps up the last dregs of his second vodka soda. He wiggles his mouth side to side, trying to soothe an itching feeling that’s nagging his right ear. It’s familiar but uncomfortable. Mercifully, Parrot sticks his beak out of Frankie’s ear hole and shimmies his way out. He hovers in the air for a moment, flapping his wings awkwardly before settling down on Frankie’s right shoulder.

‘Oh,’ Frankie says, ‘Hi Parrot.’

Parrot responds in the voice of America’s sweetheart, Keke Palmer. ‘Oh oh oh oh oh, I know it ain’t — I know it ain’t the staaaaallion. You know it’s your giiiiirl!’

Frankie sets aside his plastic cup and walks back into the dance area, encouraged by Parrot’s presence. His eyes dart up down left right. So so so much to look at. Hairy butts. Tattooed chests. Tank tops. Kissing, rubbing, laughing, cracking. Hands interlacing, mouths in ears, hands on chests. Everyone knows everyone knows everyone. How is that everyone knows everyone knows everyone? Surely in a city of this size there are still some strangers left.

Frankie remembers 2004.

2004 was a horrible year. He arrived a day late to Camp Watitoh and felt like everyone was already best friends. He spent eight weeks, the whole summer, playing catch up.

High-pitched screaming — other people having fun.

Parrot turns to Frankie. ‘Another drink?’ he asks.

Frankie shakes his head and Parrot replies in the voice of Spongebob, Season 1, Episode 1c, original air date May 1, 1999. ‘I don’t need it. I don’t need it. I definitely don’t need it. I don’t need it. I don’t need it. I don’t need it.’

Frankie laughs. Spongebob was one of their first connections, a shared sense of humor that bonded them and bestiefied them. Out of respect for their years of friendship, Frankie concedes, nods, and saddles back up to the bar.

He orders another vodka soda, forks over a buck, and sips it, rubbing his hand on his chest and listening to the music.

Moments like these, long, telescoped moments when the alcohol has only just begun to kick in and the laws of society that keep Frankie at a distance are still in place, suck. These are moments when Frankie looks at his phone, or fixes his hair, or clears his throat, or takes a shot.

Thankfully, Parrot knows how to get a party started. ‘Carly Rae Jepson could step on my neck,’ he says.

‘She could murder me.’ Frankie agrees.
‘I want her to murder my vagina.’
‘Parrot.’
‘Bring in the dancing lobsters!’
‘Stop.’
‘Manda manda manda manda manda manda manda manda manda shooooow!’

A couple attached at the lips break free for a moment to glare at Frankie.

‘Sorry.’

Frankie looks down at his feet.

‘Not me getting glared at for talking to Parrot.’
‘Parrot.’
‘Just got death stares for interrupting a make out by talking to Parrot. My bad.’

Frankie shakes his head, playing.

‘No, that’s not it.’
‘If you saw me at the Sunday Funday Vodka Soda Free For All talking to an imaginary Parrot, no you didn’t.
‘Ha, exactly.’

Frankie draws out his phone, types Frankie’s words into Twitter, then hits X and saves it as a draft. Frankie never Tweets anything until it’s spent at least a few hours in his drafts.

Satisfied, Parrot bobs his head to the music. Is he dancing or is he just being a bird, Frankie wonders.

‘Do you ever get tired of that?’
‘Of what?’
‘Of bobbing your head. It looks tiring. Does it ever feel, I don’t know, like the hiccups?’
‘What are the hiccups?’

Frankie points to his throat.

‘They’re like a convulsion in your throat that you can’t get rid of.’
‘Do you have the hiccups?’
‘No.’
‘But you’ve had them before?’
‘Yes.’

Parrot shrugs his wings.

‘So you can get rid of them.’
‘Well, yes. That’s true. But in the moment it feels like they’ll last forever.
‘I couldn’t stop bobbing if I tried.’
‘And you don’t mind?’

Who else but Lady Gaga chirps through Parrot’s face. ‘My fans don’t care and neither do—’

He interrupts himself.

‘Frankie.’
‘Parrot.’

Parrot leans in closer to Frankie’s ear and whispers.

‘Someone is looking at you.’

  

!!!

  

SOMEONE IS LOOKING AT FRANKIE.

Frankie scans the crowd, searching for the someone. The bar mixes like a blender until he narrows in on a set of pink tinted sunglasses. As a test, as an experiment, (as a humbling mechanism), Frankie looks away. Down below, feet writhe and stomp and flat tire each other.
Frankie’s vodka-soaked heart leaps into his mouth, leaving his chest an empty cavity for moths to flutter about in.

Parrot looks to camera. ‘It’s a common misconception that humans feel butterflies while they’re nervous. They actually feel moths.’

A low-res graphic of a star riding a rainbow.

‘The more you know.’

And then (and then!) he looks up again.

Would you believe it? Frankie can hardly believe it himself. Even Parrot is skeptical because this guy is pretty hot. Pink tinted sunglasses still looking right at him and, get this, smiling.

Parrot, as Nikki Blonsky in the 2007 film adaptation of Hairspray, ‘I can hear the bells.’

What to say, what to say, to describe the magnitude of this event. To be perceived as more than just furniture. To be noticed, in a sea of other, better looking options. To be worthy of a look.

Parrot briefly shapeshifts into James Corden wearing a wedding dress, ‘Me, after one (1) guy looks at me in the bar.’

Then, as another test, Frankie holds Pink Sunglasses Man’s eye contact and twitches the corners of his mouth into a sorta-smile. Bodies between them, music blaring, a phenomenal amount of noise and movement and distraction, and yet. Two faces, a smile painted on each, link from opposite ends of the bar.

Oh fuck, he’s coming this way.

‘Oh fuck, he’s coming this way,’ says Frankie.

Parrot springs into action, hovering in front of Frankie’s face, quickly applying blue shadow and crystals around the corners of his eyes.

‘Remember,’ Parrot says, ‘Be a Maddy, not a Cassie.’
‘Okay, Parrot.’
‘Bitch, you’re my soulmate.’
‘Okay, Parrot!’ with more urgency.

Pink Sunglasses Man is here. Everyone be cool.

‘Hi,’ he says. Good opener.
‘Hi.’

Parrot chimes in. ‘Hiiiiieeeeeeee.’

‘I’m Dave.’
‘I’m Frankie.’
‘I’m Parrot’

Frankie tries to shake Parrot off his shoulder and does a weird shrug. Dave touches his arm.

‘Frankie. I like that name.’
‘Thanks.’

Parrot nuzzles into Frankie’s chest and hears his heart bum bum bum bum bum bum.

‘Do you want to dance?’

The crossing guard inside Frankie’s esophagus who manages when Frankie speaks, slurps, or yawns, trips over a bit of Lime pulp. Frankie sputters a bit, then nods.

They move a few feet into the crowd and face each other. Dave seems to know what to do with his hips and Frankie follows his lead, wagging them from side to side and picking one foot up then the other. Frankie tilts his head back, one of his favorite things to do in settings like this, because he can close his eyes and smile and think to himself, I’m dancing, I’m dancing, I’m dancing.

Is this what it is like? To be invited.

One August night in Camp Watitoh, Frankie experienced the astounding realization that the voices in his dream were coming from another reality — ours. Frankie’s eyes blearily opened to a wooden roof riddled in Sharpie signatures, the sound of cicadas, and hushed, insistent laughing. An LED light flicking around.

‘Cmon, cmon, cmon!’

Boys out of their beds, boys awake in the night. Boys leaving Frankie Freak to his sicko dreams, toilet paper and silly string in hand, mischief in hearts. The creaking of the cabin door and one last boy, looking back to see Frankie’s eyes were open.

‘You keep watch, Frankie, okay?’

He tiptoed out. The practical joke sprung worms in Frankie’s tummy. What fun, what fun. He peered out from his sleeping bag, eyes darting to the bunks of his teenage counselors who neither knew nor cared about the campers out of bed. Later, after an hour of vigilance, the boys returned.

‘How did it go?!’ Frankie had to know.
‘SHHHHHHHH!’

In the morning, at the flagpole, the basketball courts strung up in single ply. The boys of Cabin 12 were told to clean up their mess. Even the one who just kept watch.

‘You’re really cute,’ says Dave.
[                         ]
‘So are you,’ says Frankie.

In the gap between Dave’s ‘You’re really cute’ and Frankie’s ‘So are you,’ there is a blankness in Frankie’s eyes; the slight but distinct sound of fluttering wings. A place he goes, a veil Dave can perceive but not penetrate. Behind it, Parrot, is smiling from ear to ear. Have you ever seen a parrot smile? It’s kind of unsettling.

Dave and Frankie dance. They dance for three songs and they both scream when the DJ plays ‘Cool For the Summer’ by Demi Lovato. The bodies accept them and Frankie feels for the first time a part of the crowd, shifting and swirling in its beautiful murmuration. This place! Frankie thinks. This moment! This city!

‘Do you need a drink?’ Dave asks.

Parrot nods enthusiastically, ‘Cocktail time! We are gonna have a great cocktail.’

Frankie shoots a meaningful look to an empty piece of air. Shut up, Parrot.

‘Sure,’ Frankie says. ‘Vodka soda?’
Dave smirks. ‘Do they even serve anything else?’

He turns towards the bar and looks over his shoulder to wink. Frankie lightly moves to the music, feet lifted two inches off the ground.

Okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay.

For a long time, for the longest time, for what felt like a lifetime, Frankie was all alone.

Then, Frankie stole that bottle of vodka from his parents’ liquor cabinet. Frankie drank and drank and puckered his face and felt warm, grain feelings in his chest. He did vodka and Snapple, vodka and Snapple, vodka and Snapple until there was no vodka left and his head floated to the ceiling like a helium balloon.

That’s when Frankie met Parrot.

Parrot somersaulted out of Frankie’s nose and said, ‘Hello! Party’s here!’ in the voice of Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, breakout star from MTV’s Jersey Shore.

Parrot made him feel like he wasn’t alone. Parrot spoke all the languages and translated each and every one of them for Frankie. For Frankie. For Frankie.

What happens when you meet someone who makes you laugh — who says you can be yourself, in fact, you can be more of yourself, I’d like that very much. Chemically speaking, our cells swell, their proteins producing small golden hairs, which tickle the inside of our ribs. Frankie knows in his bones that Parrot is the best friend he ever had.

But loving him was hard.

Frankie drank four, five nights a week, just to see his friend, but Parrot couldn’t be there in the mornings. He tried that in college and got a write-up for slurring his words in 8 AM Social Psych. Parrot couldn’t be there for driving or exercising or operating heavy machinery. Parrot couldn’t be there for sober sex, if anyone were to ever offer it to Frankie.

He needed a someone.

Frankie knew it. Parrot knew it.
Dave knew it too.

Which is why he walks to the bar,

wow, look at his hair from behind

orders two vodka sodas,

what a cool feeling,

pays,

being bought a drink

and deliberately turns his back to Frankie,

does he not see me?

in search of a more casual thing. Dave doesn’t want to be anyone’s someone. Finding a better option in a Black Mesh Tank Top on the terrace, Dave tucks into the crowd and vanishes. Frankie’s heart sinks down to the bottom of his chest, like a plastic bag when the wind dies.

Parrot opens his beak and Wendy Williams’ voice comes out. ‘Clap if you’ve ever wanted to kill somebody.’
Frankie stops him. ‘It’s okay.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘That drink was for you.’
‘I said it’s fine, Parrot.’

But Parrot’s really getting up in arms. ‘He can’t do that to us!’

Frankie whips his head around to his shoulder, all his dejection channeled into a cocktail of itchy, red rage and blue, heavy, loneliness. Liquid lavender, spiraling spiraling spiraling.

‘He didn’t do that to us, Parrot. He did that to me. He rejected me. He spent five minutes with me and said no, no thank you. Why do you have to make everything about you? This isn’t about you. You’re not even real.’

Parrot tucks his head under his wing. Frankie can’t help himself.

‘I’m so fucking tired of you crawling out of my ass and distracting me from the real world, the second I try to enjoy myself. I can’t have one fucking drink without you whispering nonsense into my ear. I’m over it. I’m over it, Parrot.’

Parrot hesitates a moment, combing through server farms of data. Scrolling through Vines and TikToks and television and movies and gifs and Tweets and content, so much god damn content, mining the world wide web for the one thing to say that will free him of saying what he must: That he is no longer needed. That Frankie is ready for a life without him.

The unmistakable vocal fry of Kim Kardashian escapes from his beak.

‘If you know how I feel, why would you say that?’
‘This is exactly what I’m talking about.’
‘Like you put me in such an uncomfortable situation, like you know I’m not happy. You know that I’m trying to see if it will work out here and I know that it’s not.’

Frankie grabs Parrot by the neck, squeezing hard enough that his eyes bulge from the pressure.

Oh god, this is it. Oh, it’s so terrible. We can’t look away.

Frankie begins to twist, oh no, oh don’t do it, and Parrot’s talons squirm and his wings flail. With one more twist Frankie would easily snap Parrot’s neck.

eeeeeeeeeeeeugh

He loses his nerve. Grunting, he tosses Parrot to the ground instead. Frankie doesn’t even turn around to look at the bird one last time before he storms out. He walks through the door. He just leaves.

Toned and chubby and hairy and hairless legs shuffle around Parrot. He gets kicked by a right-footed Air Jordan 1 and rocks around the crowd like a tropical cancer losing steam; unseen, unwanted, unhuman.

It’s all over. It’s all over. It’s all over.

A black leather Doc Marten boot rises above Parrot as Caroline Polachek’s ‘So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings’ spins above the bird and the boot and the bobbing heads and the bar and the best city in the world. And as the boot falls, as it rushes towards our little winged friend at such a speed that indicates certain death, Parrot thinks only of flying. He thinks of cloudless blue skies. He thinks of warm thermals that carry him higher and higher. He thinks of wind.

The sound of his paperthin bird bones crushed beneath the boot is deafening to only us. No one else even detects it.

A rooster crows and the hour is up. It is over.

Everything is eight dollars. Everything is dead parrot. Everything is impossibly, impossibly, impossibly annoying.

June, 2019, Minutes Later

It’s another seven minutes before the next L train arrives at the 6th Avenue subway station.

Frankie paces the length of it.

There’s a mother and her child sitting on the wooden bench, both staring into their phones, thumbs swipe, swipe, swiping. There’s a man wearing snow pants and a down jacket, despite the sweltering heat both above and below ground. He’s surrounded by plastic bags and looks down the track impatiently. There’s a group of women, swinging around the vertical beams that hold up this dark, dank cave. Their laughter, the laughter of day drinking, of brunch, of mimosas with only a whisper of orange juice, sails high above them.

It is so clear to Frankie that there is nothing for anyone to be glad of, and their laughter irritates him.

Has it been a minute? Surely it’s been a minute, and still the screen says seven minutes.

A pigeon swoops down the steps, settling on the tracks, sensing no danger, or no danger that it couldn’t quickly escape, and Frankie thinks of Parrot.

In all the years he’s known that bird, he hasn’t thought much about where Parrot comes from or where he goes. Usually, he’s there with him when he falls asleep and gone by the time morning comes knocking. Frankie thinks Parrot is the reason he gets such a headache, the bird rubbing bruises and pecking pangs into the inside of his skull.

Really, it’s just dehydration.

Sometimes, when the night wears on and Frankie sobers up before bedtime, he’ll turn his head to say something to Parrot and the bird will be gone. Poof, just like that.

He always comes back, Frankie thinks. He always comes back and this time is no different. He’ll pick up a case of White Claw after work tomorrow and by the third or fourth one, Parrot will arrive. He’ll be a bit cagey at first and say something like, ‘Apologize, bitch,’ and the thought of it, just the thought of it, makes Frankie smile.

The creases around his mouth slowly fade, as Frankie remembers the feeling of bird claw, scratching at his skin.

The screen says four minutes now.

More people are joining the platform. Frankie recognizes a gaggle of them from the bar he just left. It looks like they got their money’s worth from the hour of dollar vodka sodas — they skip down the platform, hand in hand, arm in arm, flesh slick with humidity and sweat. Frankie desperately wants to know them, wants to be loved by them.

‘Stop, I’m literally gonna pee my pants.’

They go past and the noise of it forces his eyes open. From behind, they are pure joy, pure comradery. They are the kids in school talking about their parties, they are the boys in the bathroom looking through him, they are the same.

‘Hey!’

A straggler pokes Frankie on the shoulder and scares the ever living daylights out of him.

‘Hi.’
‘You were at The Outpost, right?’

Frankie uh huhs and wishes more than anything that Parrot were here to tell him whether this is safe or scary.

‘Place is such a mess, we had to get out of there.’
‘I know, it probably shouldn’t be legal to sell vodka sodas for a dollar.’

The words come out of his mouth and the boy laughs and Frankie could kiss him for being so kind.

‘We’re gonna go back to my friend Sal’s place for afters.’

He points to a baseball-capped boy typing rapidly on his phone ahead of them.

‘Do you wanna come? Should be fun, we have a good group going.’

Frankie can hear everything. He can hear the dripping of the water on the sides of the station, the cars and buses and taxis rattling above them. He can hear music and videos playing from people’s phones and TikTok audios and YouTube clips echoing inside his own mind. He can hear the clouds forming above Manhattan, threatening to rain down upon it. He can hear himself lie, saying ‘No, no thanks. That sounds fun, but I’m meeting up with someone’ and he can hear the boy reply, ‘All good, see you around!’

When the voice of the MTA announces that the train is approaching, Frankie looks toward the gleaming headlights. He walks up to the yellow rumble strip and crosses its boundary, feet edging towards the tracks, where the pigeon has already flown away. The train blares its horn and rushes into the station and for the briefest of moments, Frankie pictures what it would be like to take one step forward. To meet the screeching metal and fall to the wet stone basin of the Brooklyn Bound rail. To be welded like a seam, a zipper of metal wheels sewing him up at the center. To stop traffic, to be mentioned on Twitter as the reason for the L train delays.

Then the train dings its bells, opens its doors, and welcomes Frankie inside. He sits on an empty bench and watches the platform disappear behind the closing doors. The train winds up and speeds off, the light of it barreling down the tunnel into the darkness, flickering, growing dim, until it is quenched forever.

September, 2009

‘It was the O-rings,’ Frankie says.
‘What?’

At the center of a coiled rope rug, a boy and a parrot lie on their backs, flanked by empty bottles.

‘The O-rings. They were designed for launches in a warm climate, but it was really cold that day and they failed, 73 seconds into the flight.’

Parrot clacks his beak. A bottle rocket without a shot in hell.

‘Some of the engineers at NASA warned people about the O-rings.’
‘Really?’
‘But no one listened to them.’
‘Houston, we have a problem.’
‘Wrong accident.’
‘I love Tom Hanks.’

In the quiet of the living room and the softness of euphoria felt for the first time, Frankie sees stars in the ceiling. He is not alone.

---