Backup Parents

His mother said "Rise and shine, mister man" on a Tuesday and again on Wednesday, same inflection, same two knocks on his door frame. Eli kept his face in the pillow until she left and then reached for the composition notebook under his mattress. He wrote Tuesday phrase repeated Wednesday beneath yesterday's entry, which read Monday phrase repeated Tuesday. He had eleven days' worth now. Downstairs she had made scrambled eggs with the rubbery tops and the wet middles, same as every morning. His father sat at the table reading the sports section of a newspaper they didn't subscribe to. Eli had looked for the subscription once, checked the mailbox every day for a week, but the paper appeared on the kitchen table at 7:14 each morning already folded to the box scores. His father turned the pages at regular intervals whether or not he'd finished reading. Eli had timed it: forty-five seconds per page, regardless of content. Ads got forty-five seconds. The obituaries got forty-five seconds.…