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learning disability but I’m not illiterate. I can read some but it takes me a while, so I avoid it whenever possible.
    “So he wrote ‘Fuck you.’ I assume that’s a message for you and not me.” But I’m dying inside because I know this means that Malcolm won’t help me. I wonder if he’ll even allow me to deliver for him.
    He mashes the paper in my face a little too hard to be a joke. “Goddammit. I gave you one fucking job and you managed to fuck it up. It’s a wonder you could get a job even delivering packages, you stupid fuck.”
    When I say I’m not ashamed of my learning disability, it doesn’t mean I’m immune to insults. Malcolm’s words sting badly, but I cover that pain by pretending he hurt my nose. He tosses the papers aside and they flutter to the ground.
    I don’t use Google because stuff is even harder to read on the computer than on paper. The letters don’t just swim on the page, they leap at me in 3D, and it’s a real headache trying to figure out what their correct order is. Since I have a decent paying job, I’ve given up on trying to learn how to read. The only reason I even have a smartphone is because dispatch uses it to convey instructions, orally, to me.
    I have a good memory, can read most street signs with practice, and locate the majority of businesses by landmarks. I watch television, everything from comedies to documentaries, but I’m not a reader and never will be. I refuse to be ashamed about this but I’m not dumb which is what most people associate the inability to read with.
    “I couldn’t force him to sign it,” I protest.
    “Goddammit!” Stomping off into one of the two bedrooms, he releases a few more curses and then yells at me. “Don’t fucking leave. I’ve got another delivery for you.”
    “Jesus. Fine.” Because I’m well acquainted with Malcolm’s hair-trigger temper being expressed primarily through slammed doors and shouts but no real violence, I take the opportunity to rifle through Malcolm’s refrigerator, which is surprisingly well-stocked for a bachelor’s. He has cold pizza, cold Chinese food, and sandwich makings. “Can I have the leftover shrimp fried rice?” I yell.
    He mumbles something that I assume is agreement. After the contents of the box are heated, I unhook the sides and lay the cardboard flat on the table. Malcolm and I discovered the magic of the Chinese takeout box when we were teens and have never eaten leftovers any other way.
    He must have heard the completion ding of the microwave because he stomps out of the bedroom he uses as an office. Jerking out a drawer and grabbing another fork, he huffs into a stool next to me and starts eating the leftovers. It’s like we are twelve and fourteen again, back before testosterone overtook Malcolm and turned him into an asshole.
    Before then he was a Skylander-playing, Pokémon-loving goofball. Somewhere around the end of fifteen, on the cusp of sixteen, he left it all behind to become this woman-hating, amoral jerk. Twelve years later, he’s perfected what he started—only now he’s a criminal, woman-hating, amoral jerk. I wonder idly whether Malcolm fits the profile of a sociopath.
    “How’s Sophie?”
    “She’s…” I start to say “fine,” but she’s not and I don’t know why I would pretend with him. “She’s hanging in there.” I push the food around.
    “I can get Sophie some good weed. I’ve got a nice shipment in,” he offers. At my raised eyebrows, he shrugs. “I don’t hate her. Not anymore, I guess.”
    Malcolm’s dad left his mom for my mom. If I’m objective, I can understand his dislike for us. But who the hell is rational when it comes to someone you love? Not me and not Malcolm either. Neither of us pay much attention to Mitch Hedder anymore. He walked out on my mom when I was sixteen and Malcolm was eighteen. The old man is a shiftless piece of work who inveigles his way into women’s lives and then ruins them.
    I guess Malcolm thinks