Free Lunch

Rex is sent to play outside and hangs out with his neighbor, Benny. Benny’s older brother and his friend come to bother them. Benny’s older brother offers to show Rex and Benny “something rated X” (56) and takes them to his uncle’s apartment where a boa constrictor sits in a terrarium. The boys take a live rabbit out of a cage and put it in the terrarium, and Rex watches with horror and curiosity while Benny panics. The snake refuses to eat the rabbit, and when Benny’s uncle comes home, he explains that the snake tends to refuse animals that aren’t healthy (as the rabbit is blind). That night, Rex ponders his place in the world, and whether he’s a rabbit or a snake. He wants to be a snake, but feels more like a rabbit, both at home and at school.

Rex laments that his mother takes him and Ford to McDonalds several times a week. When he complains that the food is starting to make him sick, Luciana calls him ungrateful and says he doesn’t know anything. When she takes Rex to McDonalds again the next night, Rex wonders why, and she snaps at him.