Before We Go Extinct

by Karen Rivers

  And for her, I have to miss basketball practice, which used to be the best part of my day. But you know what? Screw it, because I quit.

  I’m going to quit everything that I can quit.

  I can’t quit school because it would give Mom too much to grieve, but right now I feel like I would if I could.

  I look across the street to the spot where he’d normally be waiting for me, smoking, shirt untucked, looking insouciant, which is exactly the kind of word he loved.

  And there she is.

  Ms. Daffodil Blue, age seventeen.

  She sees me. Yeah, well, I quit her, too. I already have, but right now, in this second, I know that I have to make it official, I just don’t know how. So I do the only thing I can do, which is run. She yells, “Wait, you jerk! Sharky, wait for me.”

  But I can’t.

  I jump over a garbage can to avoid a crowd of little kids on their way to the playground. I sprint. When I don’t see her behind me, I stop and type, Arrête. And the word flies into her pocket, fast and low, like a weapon swinging and hitting, spinning her right out of the neighborhood. I run again. I haven’t run like this for ages, glancing off surfaces, climbing things, jumping gaps. I run so hard and so fast that I can’t feel my feet on the ground anymore, I’m flying, I’m soaring.

  I’m a pigeon, swooping high and far.

  I’m flying.

  All I need now is a Nimbus 2000, and I’d be out of here for good.

  Last Halloween we went to the party as Harry Potter, Ron, and Hermione.

  Daff was Harry. I was Ron. There are pictures of us howling with laughter on Facebook, the three of us, The King’s face crumpling so hard that his eyes vanish into the folds of his cheeks and he looks so happy and he looks so young and weird and crazy and his hair is hidden under his Hermione wig and he’s laughing, and he’s everything he was and wasn’t at the same time.

  That’s the picture that People magazine used when they ran his obit.

  That’s the one everyone thinks was really him, mouth open, eyes rolling, wearing a girl’s uniform from Hogwarts, looking like an idiot.

  They have no idea who he was. They have no idea who he could have been.

  Harry Potter fan, they said. Like that was something sordid. Come on. Everyone liked those books when they were kids. The costumes were a joke and the media made too much of everything, that’s a fact.

  I’m standing on top of a chain-link fence. I have no idea how I got here. I stop to breathe, my heart hammering. Someone yells, “Hey, kid!” and I am going again and running down an alley like a guy who has stolen a purse and can’t be stopped, not now. Not ever.

  My phone buzzes.

  U can’t run 4evr, she texts.

  Pls, she texts. I’m gng 2 puke.

  I run faster and faster and my heart beats out the words, I quit you, I quit you, I quit you. I run light and hard, people staring, wondering if they should stop me, looking for the nonexistent purse under my arm, searching for blood on my hands. They’re confused by my uniform, my tie and white shirt. Should they do something? They are all too well dressed and too dazed, actors playing the part of fancy New Yorkers who don’t know what to do with this interruption in their regular scene.

  No one does anything. Because that’s what people are like. That’s what they do, which is to say, they don’t. They wait for someone else to solve the problem, fix the leak, stop the end from coming.

  They don’t do anything.

  I am running from something I’ve done. I’ll be running from it forever, but I’ll never be able to get away.

  That’s how it works. You can’t quit your past. That’s just how it is when your best friend is dead and your other (newly former) best friend is chasing you through the streets of Manhattan, sweat streaming down both of your faces, not knowing how it’s ever going to end or if it can. Because all I really want is for her to catch up to me. All I really want is for her to hold on to me tight.

  9

  Then it’s the last day of classes. Did I take exams? Did I pass?

  Do I care?

  The grief counselor wears pale pink suede sandals with three-inch heels that look like they’ve been dipped in actual gold. A newborn lamb died for those, I bet. A fetal pig. Something small and pink. Her toenails are painted like the Fabergé eggs that Daff’s mom collects. Her calf muscles look like they were carved out of soft stone. “You’re doing fine,” she tells me. “You are going to be fine. Keep this.” She presses a crystal into my palm so hard that it hurts.

  I nod mutely. My palm feels bruised. The first thing I will do with this crystal is throw it as far and as hard as I can.

  “You may want to start talking again,” she says. “You may find you have something to say.”

  I nod. Shrug. Try to arrange my face appropriately.

  “Okay,” she says. “Okay.” She gives me a pat on the shoulder. Pat, pat, pat. I feel like I’m something that she’s efficiently checking off her list. I stare at her.

  “You can go,” she says. “You’re done.”

  Then I’m free. That’s it. My shoes squeaking on the hallway floor. The bang of lockers. Filling my bag with crumpled papers and textbooks that I don’t know what else to do with. Teachers leaning in doorways, looking depleted. People whooping and tumbling into each other like suddenly they take up too much room to be contained in this building, like they are bursting to be gone. There are ties all over the floor because that’s a thing that happens on the last day, you take off your tie and throw it.

  I wonder what happens to those ties. Each one costs forty-nine dollars at the school uniform store. I keep mine on. When no one is looking, I scoop a few extras from behind the trash. I’m always losing my stupid tie.

  “Dude, have a good one, see you.” “Catchya after break.” “Smell ya next year.” “Text me if you wanna…” Words thrown over their shoulders so they won’t see my face or have to wait for an answer. I stare at them so hard they disappear, whisper thin, until I can see past them, through to the wall, then through the wall, outside, past buildings and cars and sidewalks on the other side to The King’s gravestone and then I think, Get over it, you sick maudlin freak, you need to just get over it.

  From a distance, I see Daff dumping her books into a garbage can, her tie tied around her hair like a bandanna.

  There once was a blue girl named Daff / Who made the Sharkboy laugh / She rode on the train / To protect her hair from the rain / Because she hates when her hair looks like crap. I can’t explain Daff except to say that when I see her, it’s not like a magnet pulling me toward her, it’s something so much more powerful than that. I want to be close to her. I need to be close to her. I would kill to make her laugh. I want to ride down the railing at her building on my board. I need her to get excited about something she’s listening to and reach over without warning and jam her earbud into my ear. I want her and me and The King to grab some falafel and go to the place in the park where there’s a cave, an actual cave, and to eat them there, even though it stinks like a drunk’s piss. I need to touch the skin of her shoulder with my tongue.

  I hate that I still want her.

  I hate that I still love her.

  I want to not think about the funeral every time I see her.

  I want to not think about how weird she looked, like someone who was not Daff dressed up as Daff. Her overly made-up red lips, her fake tears, her look-at-me pose, the way she smiled just slightly at the cameras, the way she knew they loved her.

  Don’t think about the funeral. Don’t think about the funeral. Don’t think about the funeral. Don’t—

  And then, bam, like the time travel machine that Mrs. S. will never have access to, I am hurled back in time to the church and there I am in that cold stone room, the light filtering through the stained glass splashing inappropriately beautiful rainbows in patterns on the pews. The oppressive presence of a God that The King didn’t even believe in is everywhere, from the worn leather on the kneeling bench to
the oily marks on the backs of the benches from people pressing their foreheads there. I couldn’t sit, so I stood in an aisle. My legs wouldn’t bend.

  “Are you…?” Daff had said, hesitating, her hand hovering near her face. I wanted to touch her face so bad. But I couldn’t. My arms were paralyzed. “… okay?” Then she’d lifted her hair back, winding it up behind her head, knotting it into a bun. Everything she did looked like she was performing it. Her dress was dark red, something expensive from a movie that was black-and-white. “I mean, are you going to be okay? Obviously not. But. Why didn’t you call me?” Her hand on my arm, her hand on my arm, her hand on my arm. I love you, I wanted to say, but didn’t. I didn’t say anything. I shook her arm off. In the pew beside me, Number Six was crying for real, her shoulders shaking, making a strangling sound. In front of her, Number Seven’s lips were set in a straight line, as flat as a tabletop. She was, for some reason, staring at me. The King’s dad looked stoically through me and Daff. His eyes drifting away from everyone’s face.

  Stoic was all wrong for this occasion. Monster.

  “D’accord. Je suis désolé,” I whispered into Daff’s perfect ear, the last of my voice feathering the air like tiny wings. I could smell apples.

  “Everything totally sounds better in French,” she said, like we were still friends, agreeing about something. “Desolated. It’s a way better word than sorry.”

  My legs suddenly remembered how to move and I turned and ran, pushing people out of my way. Old people, young people, famous people, whoever. Daff yelled something, but I don’t know what it was. Then I was outside. Throwing up. On the steps. Running the gauntlet of cameras and gawkers.

  Then I left.

  I walked to the Broadway-Lafayette station, down those stairs, down deeper and deeper and deeper than any grave, wishing the station would collapse above me and squash me, bury me in the rubble of everything I was doing wrong. When I finally got on the train, it was empty except for a group of old men playing some kind of flutes, the music of that so thin and delicate that I wanted to claw off my own ears. I didn’t need that. I needed something angrier. Something with drums and a guitar solo that tore through your skin. The train broke down like it always does at the worst times and I was trapped. I sat there for an hour, that flute music wrapping around me in thin threads like a cobweb, while somewhere in Manhattan, people (and Daff) sang hymns around The King’s coffin and pretended not to be scanning the crowd for famous faces that they could whisper about afterward on the Internet.

  I missed the funeral. My best friend’s funeral. What kind of person does that?

  I do. I guess I’m a worse person than his dad, after all. I’m the bad guy.

  I did it.

  It was me.

  10

  I pack my stuff to take to my dad’s: T-shirts. Shorts. Trunks. Hoodies. I don’t know what I’ll need. I don’t care. I throw in some flip-flops and a pair of boots. It’s cold in Canada, right? I’ve seen pictures that Dad has sent of the island where he lives. It looks shadowy and treed and like it possibly never stops raining, like even the air is wet. The ocean is a cold green-gray. His photos never have people in them. It’s almost as if he lives on a different planet, a place where no one exists. I stuff in the sweater that Daff knitted and a pair of too-small kicks and a few extra T-shirts that aren’t quite clean, but good enough, including my favorite that says, I ♥ nuns, which was funny only to me, Daff, and The King. Mom throws me a bag containing sunscreen and kid medicine, like Benadryl and After Bite. Granola bars. Vitamins shaped like gummy bears.

  “Here,” she says. “Got some stuff you’d probably forget.”

  I stare at her, bewildered.

  “It’s all they had,” she says, defensively. “Your dad might not have this kind of thing. I think there aren’t any … stores.”

  She suddenly hiccups and then starts to cry the kind of tears you cry when you’re pretending not to be crying. She looks confused, like this wasn’t her decision, or maybe like she didn’t notice that I am not a little boy anymore, wearing imaginary red boots, staring out to sea. She has dyed her hair a light mauve in preparation for her trip. It makes her look older, grayer, more tired. Or maybe she is just older, grayer, and more tired.

  “I’m going to cut your hair,” she says suddenly. “It’s so shaggy. Can I cut it?”

  I hesitate, then nod.

  I follow her into the kitchen and I sit at the table and stare at the clock on the microwave. I wonder how many times I have sat exactly here while she cut my hair, how I’ve somehow gone from being a kid to being me all under the flashing blades of her scissors. The clock glows green. The microwave hasn’t changed. Nothing is changed except the colors. I wish I had a time-lapse image of our kitchen, of the layers Mom has added, covering up each and every mistake. Every new boyfriend she had, once he left, the kitchen would change. Every new job. Every new thing. I wonder if I could take a lesson from that somehow. Just add more layers and more layers until the paint covering me would be so thick it would be armor. The clock blinks. The scissors cleave my hairs into pieces. The time always seems to change while I’m blinking. She cuts and cuts and cuts, the sound of my hair being sliced cuts through me and makes me want to cry like the kid I used to be, sitting here, doing this. She paints the ends with bleach, so that it looks like my head is glowing gold. But bleach isn’t like paint. Bleach doesn’t add a layer, it takes one away, leaving that hair more exposed than it was before. Like how I feel when I see Daff.

  Revealed, somehow. Too seen.

  So I won’t see her.

  I’m just trying to explain it to myself, you know.

  I lie on my bed when Mom is done and I smell the chlorinated smell of my own head, and I watch Sharkwater over and over again, all night. I’ve watched it so much, it’s like now I can remember actually doing the stuff that I’m seeing. The lines are blurred and blurred and gone. She’s made my hair look even more like his. Now we’re twins, clones, the same person and I’m the one who was diving with the sharks. I was releasing sharks from long lines. I was the hero.

  I think when I’m old, I’ll forget entirely that it actually wasn’t me. And probably no one will know the difference.

  Sharkboy.

  Sharky.

  Great White Me.

  11

  America is a monotony of land punctuated by sharp mountain ranges far below the plane that is hurtling me north and west. I don’t think I ever realized how meaningless everything looks when it’s small. How dry and tiny and squared off.

  Just looking at the barren wasteland makes me crave water, a tall glass with ice cubes, not this plastic cup of warm toxins in front of me on the fold-out table that presses down on my knees. The lakes and rivers out the window are shrinking veins. The towns and cities are small tumors.

  It’s so easy to hate it from up here.

  Then a blanket of clouds erases everything and I sit back in my chair and try hard not to think.

  I heard someone say that flying was a suspension of disbelief and I guess it really is. If this metal tube weighing thousands of pounds can stay up, why couldn’t one kid fly?

  I think of how his shirt billowed, wanting to inflate.

  I turn my phone back on and it buzzes.

  Daff: R U GONE?

  Daff: F U. SRSLY. F U.

  Daff: MISS U. <3

  Daff: TXT ME.

  Daff: Pls.

  Delete, Delete, Delete. Delete all. Je t’aime, Daffodil Blue. Au revoir. Je ne regrette rien. Je regrette tout. Je wish I had been paying enough attention in Français class to dit what I really mean. I wish I had been paying enough attention in French class to know why I’m doing this. Je ne sais pas. Je sais rien.

  I text The King instead: Have a great summer, man. See ya in the fall. Catch ya on the flip side. Smell ya in September. Dude, text me if you wanna hang out. Send, Send, Send, Send, Send. A flock of pigeons breaking free of the plane and soaring on the exhaust back to the East Coast, taking all
my meaningless words with them to dissolve on a screen that is buried in a freaking coffin under the ground and what is wrong with me? What?

  I take a photo out the window and filter it through so many filters that it just looks like a brown-tinted blur, crosshatched with tiny lines. Send again, because why not? A picture of my kicks. A shot of the aisle. A picture of the crappy cup of water. I can’t stop. I am sending and sending and sending. I can picture the grass that must now be growing on his grave, vibrant and lush, sprinkled on the hour by a fancy irrigation system, vibrating with every notification on his phone even while his body is decomposing, which is a word that is dead leaves in my mouth, thick and fetid and brown, and, after all, how can anyone breathe in this tin can? The taste in my mouth is foul compost because I am rotting from the inside out because we both died that day because I deserve to die too because of what I did and because of what he saw and Daff. Daff. Daff.

  Seriously, stop.

  I can’t make it stop.

  The look on his face when he came leaping up the stairs of her brownstone, flinging open the door, and saw us. And she had just said, “Sharky,” in a voice that meant that something was going to happen and my hands were in her hair in her hair in her hair and her face and my face and neither of us had been drinking and we were going to … It was going to happen and before he barged in, shattering the air like so much glass, like he’d stomped on something crystal with heavy shoes on. And he’d gone, “Whoa!” And we’d jumped apart, guilty, but for what? Nothing, nothing, nothing happened.

  But his face. I mean, I don’t know. I didn’t know. He was …

  It was a face you didn’t forget, then I knew.

  I got it.

  He loved her, I guess.

  He loved her and I got her.

  But now neither of us does, so I hope he’s happy wherever he is, I hope he knows that nothing will ever work now, ever again, between me and her. Or me and him. Or him and her.

  It’s all gone away, as soon as he let go, and his shirt