I nipped at Jesse’s ear and ran my hands up the back of his shirt. His skin was sticky with sweat. He smelled like the ocean.
“Never stop,” whispered Jesse.
“I don’t plan to,” I promised, and meant it.
The ride slowed, and our bodies began to separate, but that only made me hold Jesse closer. He kissed me so hard that I cut my lip on his teeth.
Jesse and I disappeared into a world where we two alone existed.
“Honestly,” said Audrey as the ride slowed to a stop, “can you stop dry humping my best friend?”
But we pretended we didn’t hear her, and I wrapped my arms around Jesse’s neck, and he kissed me like the world had fallen out from under our feet. We were two bodies floating in space, brighter than stars.
• • •
When the ride ended, Diego left me and Audrey hanging out by the Tilt-A-Whirl while he hunted for a toilet. I didn’t say much, and neither did Audrey. I was pretty sure we were both thinking about Jesse. Audrey picked at the peeling paint on the side of the ride and kept repeating that she was having so much fun. After the hundredth time, I craned my neck to look for Diego.
“How long have you guys been together?” Audrey asked.
I was standing on my tiptoes, looking over the crowd, and her question didn’t register right away, so I said, “Yeah, sure.” Then, “What?”
Audrey had this way of making you feel like the dumbest person in the room. She didn’t do it on purpose, but when she looked at you, you knew her brain worked on a level many times greater than yours. “I’m glad you’re not with Marcus anymore. If he doesn’t roofie someone before graduation, I’ll be shocked.”
“Diego and I aren’t together. He’s straight.”
“Really?”
“Yup.”
Audrey furrowed her brow like she was staring at a math problem that had been marked wrong when she was certain it was correct. The calculations didn’t make sense, and Audrey hated for things to not make sense. “The way you were looking at him on the Gravitron . . .”
“I was thinking about Jesse.”
“Oh. But you like Diego, right?”
I wanted to tell Audrey how conflicted I felt. How I sometimes thought about Diego while jerking off; how, when I tried to recall memories of Jesse, Diego appeared in them instead. Jesse was dead, he’d committed suicide, but I still felt like I was betraying him for liking a guy who wasn’t even capable of liking me back. Audrey was maybe the one person who could have understood, and I wanted to tell her, but I didn’t. “Drop it, okay?”
“Fine. What do you want talk about?”
I spotted Diego walking toward us, but he stopped in front of the bumper cars, and I couldn’t see why. “I don’t know, Audrey.”
“Come on. Don’t be like that.” Everything about her was pleading with me to let it all go. Her eyes and her lips and the way her shoulders slumped.
“We did fine not talking at all for the last year,” I mumbled.
“Maybe you were fine, but I needed you.”
Diego had clearly run into someone, but I couldn’t see who it was. “I was here. I’m not the one who left.” I just needed that stupid kid with his stupid balloon to get out of the way so I could see who Diego was talking to.
“I was hurting too, you know.”
Standing in the middle of the fair was not where I wanted to have this argument. I didn’t want to have it at all, but Audrey was maddeningly persistent. “Yeah, you were hurting so bad you took a three-month vacation to Switzerland. That must have been horrible for you.”
“Henry—”
A passing family obscured Diego, so I turned my full attention to Audrey. The festering wound split open anew, spewing a geyser of pus. “You didn’t even say good-bye, Audrey. I showed up at your house, and your dad told me you’d gone to stay with family in Switzerland. I thought you’d come back after winter break, but you were gone for three months.” People turned to stare at us, but I couldn’t stop draining the abscess. “Jesse killed himself, and you were the only person I could talk to about it. I needed you, but you didn’t answer my e-mails, my calls, nothing. My boyfriend, your best friend, committed suicide, and you abandoned me. You both abandoned me.”
Tears filled Audrey’s eyes, and I hated myself for causing them. I hated myself for needing her. I wanted to hate her for leaving, but I didn’t, and I hated myself for that too. “You got to see Jesse at his best, but I saw him after he punched a brick wall so hard, he broke his fingers, when he cut his thighs with razor blades, when he put out lit cigarettes on his hands and told you he’d burned himself baking brownies. I was the one who cleaned up his blood and made sure he didn’t drink himself to death. Me, Henry. Not you.”
I didn’t learn about those things until after the funeral. I spent weeks scouring old texts and pictures, looking for the clues I’d missed. Thinking about the times I suspected something was wrong but didn’t push Jesse to talk about it keeps me awake most nights. I failed Jesse. We all failed him. “Why’d you leave, Audrey?”
“I needed space to breathe.”
“So you went skiing?”
Audrey was shaking. I looked for Diego; he was still by the bumper cars. She clenched her fists so tightly, I thought she was going to punch me. “I wasn’t in Switzerland, Henry.”
“What?”
“I don’t have family in Switzerland.” Audrey bit her bottom lip and said, “My parents checked me in to a psychiatric hospital. I spent eight weeks there and then another month with my grandparents in Jersey.”
I was tempted to believe she was lying to gain my sympathy, but going on an extended vacation after the death of her best friend had never seemed like an Audrey thing to do. I’d accepted it as the truth because she’d given me no reason to think she was lying. But this—that she’d been in a hospital—made sense. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Jesse and I had a pact. He swore he’d call me if he were thinking about hurting himself. He called me that night, but I didn’t answer. He was upset all the time and . . . I needed a night off.” She paused. “I thought it was my fault he’d killed himself, and I didn’t tell you because I couldn’t bear for you to blame me too.”
“Instead you ran away, and I blamed myself.” The crowd blocking my view finally moved. Diego was talking to a short girl, perky with pink glasses and a blue stripe in her blond hair. I think she attended our school, but I didn’t know her name. She covered her mouth with her hand when she laughed and kept touching Diego’s arm. Diego hugged the girl and pointed toward me and Audrey. He probably wished he’d come with her and was likely plotting some way to ditch us.
“I needed to leave,” Audrey said. “I was hurting so bad that I wanted to die too. It took me a long time to realize Jesse’s suicide wasn’t my fault. Don’t you know how sorry I am? I don’t know what else you want me to do.”
Diego walked toward us; the crowds parted for him. He waved. I returned it robotically.
“I wish I’d killed myself instead of him.” I kicked at the ground, blinking to keep from crying.
“I wish no one had died,” Audrey said. “I wish Jesse were here, singing and telling bad jokes and going on and on about some stupid book he read.”
“But he’s not,” I said. “And it’s our fault. Yours, mine. It’s everyone’s fault. Or no one’s. Fuck. I don’t know.”
When Diego reached us, he stopped a foot away and said, “What’s going on?”
Audrey wiped her eyes. “Sometimes I hate him, Henry. Mostly I miss him.”
“Yeah.”
“And I miss you.”
I didn’t know what to say. Audrey had been Jesse’s friend first, but I missed her too. My feelings for her were buried under scar tissue built up over 103 lonely nights spent wondering what I’d done to drive away everyone I cared about. My father, Jesse, Audrey—they’d all abandoned me. Audrey had her reasons, and I could see that, but it didn’t erase the pain. Not entirely. I stood there
, my arms hanging limply at my sides, unsure what to do next.
Audrey glanced at her phone. “Maybe we should call it a day.”
Diego furrowed his brow. “But we haven’t even gone on the Ferris wheel yet.” His voice was filled with a child’s enthusiasm, a desire for life that Jesse’s suicide had stolen from me and Audrey both.
The suggestion of a smile played on Audrey’s lips. “What do you think, Space Boy?”
“Don’t call me Space Boy.”
Diego threw his arm around my shoulders and Audrey’s, too, drawing us to him. His skin was warm and sweaty, but I didn’t pull away. “No deal. You’re our space boy, Space Boy.”
The way Audrey looked at me—as if we could somehow fill the canyon that had grown between us with laughter and meet again in the middle—made me want to hug her and tell her how much I’d missed her, but I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
“Fine,” I said after a moment, “let’s ride the goddamn Ferris wheel.”
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14 November 2015
Life isn’t fair. That’s what we tell kids when they’re young and learn that there are no rules, or rather that there are but only suckers play by them. We don’t reassure them or give them tools to help them cope with the reality of life; we simply pat them on the back and send them on their way, burdened with the knowledge that nothing they do will ever really matter. It can’t if life’s not fair.
If life were fair, the smartest among us would be the wealthiest and most popular. If life were fair, teachers would make millions, and scientists would be rock stars. If life were fair, we’d all gather around the TV to hear about the latest discovery coming out of CERN rather than to find out which Kardashian is pregnant. If life were fair, Jesse Franklin wouldn’t have killed himself.
Life is not fair. And if life’s not fair, then what’s the point? Why bother with the rules? Why bother with life at all? Maybe that’s the conclusion Jesse came to. Maybe he woke up one morning and decided he simply didn’t want to play a game against people who refused to obey the rules.
• • •
I lay in bed all day Saturday, thinking about Jesse. Sometimes thinking about him made my body too heavy to move. The fragments of Jesse left behind were dense in my pockets and weighted me down, pulling me toward the center. I thought about Jesse and I listened to the sounds of my brother making a mess in the kitchen, and of my mother arguing with Nana, trying to get her ready to go visit my great-uncle Bob, who lives in a VA home in Miami. The sounds eventually quieted, and I knew I was alone. I still didn’t move, not until the shadows grew longer across my bedroom and the bright morning light began to dim.
With great effort, I rose from bed and sat at my desk. Waited for my computer to fire up. I wanted to see Jesse, so I pulled up his SnowFlake page. The Internet is a strange place for the dead. All those digital pieces of you become frozen. You will never again post selfies with friends from the movie theater or while waiting for a concert to begin. Your friends will never tag you in another photo at a drunken party. You’ll never update your page with your thoughts about how shitty South Florida drivers are or about how the lonely asshole in front of you at Target just bought twenty frozen dinners, an economy-size bag of cat food, and the box set of Bones; is using twenty coupons; and is paying in quarters. The Internet version of you becomes enshrined so that pathetic people like me can visit occasionally and try to pretend you’re not really gone. That some small part of you lingers.
I’ve spent so much time on Jesse’s SnowFlake page that I’ve practically memorized it. There’s Jenny Leech’s wall of text about how Jesse touched her life in ways he didn’t even know, despite the extent of their relationship being the one class they shared in tenth grade. Coach VanBuren’s picture of Jesse running a 440 against Dwyer High—Jesse lost that race, but from the picture you couldn’t be faulted for believing that he was about to sail to victory. A hundred variations on, I’ll miss you, dude, from people who probably stopped missing him before he was in the ground. Audrey’s last post was a picture she’d taken on the sly of me and Jesse kissing by her pool. We’d spent the day turning lobster red, drinking iced tea, and laughing. I don’t even remember what was so funny; I only remember thinking I’d suffocate before I stopped laughing.
That kiss wasn’t our last. It was just another one of many, or so I’d thought. I think if I’d known Jesse was going to kill himself, I would have locked my arms around him and never let that kiss end. I would have pulled us into the pool together and died like that, his lips on mine, certain that I loved him and that he loved me.
The last thing I posted on Jesse’s SnowFlake page was a picture of a book I wanted to buy the next time we went to Barnes & Noble. Jesse and I spent hours roaming the stacks, paging through books. It was our favorite place to go. Sometimes I wish I could post something new so the last thing I said to Jesse wasn’t about buying Naked Lunch, which I only wrote because Audrey despises the Beat writers, but his profile is locked. I’ve said everything to Jesse I’ll ever say.
When Jesse’s SnowFlake page loaded, I knew something was wrong. Jenny’s lame memorial was still there, as were all the semi-heartfelt good-byes from barely there acquaintances. But staring at me from inside of Jesse’s pictures was an alien face. My alien face. Someone had Photoshopped the image of me on the floor of the locker room into every photo on Jesse’s SnowFlake page. They hadn’t simply vandalized his photos; they’d vandalized my memories. Whoever had done this had practically gone to Jesse’s grave, dug him up, and desecrated his rotting body.
I collapsed in the chair. I couldn’t take any more. January 29 wasn’t soon enough; I needed the pain to end immediately.
Mom kept sleeping pills in her bathroom. One handful, and I could reunite with Jesse.
Beautiful resolve flowed through me. I imagined it was how Jesse had felt when he decided to hang himself. I wasn’t scared; I wasn’t conflicted. This was what I was meant to do. If nobody else was going to play by the rules, then neither was I.
I flung open my bedroom door and nearly bowled Zooey over. She was standing in the doorway with her fist raised like she was about to knock. I stumbled into her, and we fell into the wall. I babbled an apology and tried to get away, but she was talking too, and rubbing her swollen belly.
“I didn’t think anyone was home.”
Zooey smoothed out her long violet shirt. Her face looked fuller, and sometimes her belly resembled a beer gut rather than a baby, but she glowed as if her entire body were bragging to the world that she was growing a life inside of her. “Charlie’s working at the house with my dad, and he asked me to get him his tools, but I don’t know where they are and I thought you might help?”
I nodded and slid past Zooey into Charlie’s room. Clothes were flung everywhere, the blinds were shut, and it smelled like sweaty feet. It was a miracle Zooey could stand to sleep there. Charlie’s toolbox was in his closet. I handed it to her.
“Thanks.” She turned to leave but stopped and stared at me for a moment. It felt like she knew what I’d been on my way to do. Like it was tattooed on my skin that I was a weakling, a loser, that I was planning to give up and die. “I can give you a ride somewhere if you want.”
Zooey and I didn’t know each other well. She was my brother’s girlfriend. I’d seen her sneak from his room to the bathroom in her underthings, and she was carrying his kid, but it’s not like we were friends. “Where?”
“Wherever you want. I’m not in a hurry.”
If I stayed home, I was going to end up swallowing those pills, but the certainty I’d felt minutes earlier
was retreating. I’d loaded Jesse’s SnowFlake page because I needed to feel close to him, and they’d taken that away from me, but the need hadn’t abated. I needed Jesse more than ever.
“Can you drive me to the bookstore?”
“Sure.”
I carried the toolbox for her. “Okay. Yeah. Let’s go.”
• • •
Zooey drove a little blue Volvo that was so old, it still had a tape deck and crank windows. The inside smelled like vanilla or roses—I couldn’t tell which, maybe both—and her music collection included every terrible power ballad in existence. Worse yet, she knew all the words to every song.
“Are you excited about being an uncle?” Zooey asked after a while. She looked at me until the persistent thump of the road dividers told her she was about to get us killed.
“I guess. Are you excited to become a mom?”
I expected Zooey to answer yes immediately, but she didn’t. She kept her hands on the steering wheel and her eyes on the road. “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m fucking scared as hell.”
“Of giving birth or the stuff that comes after?”
“All of it,” Zooey said. “I constantly worry about whether I’m taking enough vitamins or the right kind of vitamins. I worry about whether the pot I smoked before I knew I was pregnant hurt the baby. My older brother has schizophrenia, and I worry it might be genetic and I might pass it to my child. Every action I took in the past and that I’ll take in the future could impact my baby, and that scares the shit out of me.”
Maybe that should have shocked me, but I admired Zooey for admitting those things to me. “You’re going to be a great mother.”
“It helps knowing I won’t have to do it alone. I don’t think I’ve seen Charlie this excited about anything.”
“Listen,” I said. “I love my brother because he’s my brother, but he’s going to be a terrible father.”
I waited for Zooey to yell at me or slap me or tell me I was wrong. Instead she giggled. Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones.
We Are the Ants Page 13
