by Libba Bray
Believe I can bowl. Right. I can bowl. I step up to the line, pull my arm back, and let it fly. Right away it starts heading for the gutter. But then, something miraculous happens: it corrects itself. The ball rolls straight down the center, and the next thing I know I’m listening to the crash of pins hitting the deck in a perfect strike, my first ever.
Ruth jumps up and down. “That was amazing, Cameron! See? See what happens when you embrace the positive? Go again.”
“Beginner’s luck,” I say. “Won’t happen again.”
“We’re all winners here in the Church of Everlasting Satisfaction,” she says softly, and I want to believe her.
“Okay, thanks for taking care of my amigo here. This looks like fun, and we wish you well and shit,” Gonzo explains to the crowd. “But we got, like, a mission of our own to get to. So if somebody could just give us a ride to the bus station—”
I pick up a second ball and let her rip. Bam! Right down the middle.
“That was awesome!” I shout, pumping my fist in the air.
Ruth throws her arms around my neck. “See? The universe doesn’t want us to be unhappy, Cameron. The universe wants you to be happy all the time!”
“Yeah,” I say. Yeah, why not? Why shouldn’t I have whatever I want when I want it? And what I want is to be happy and safe like these guys. I don’t want to think about prions and fire giants and Dr. X and saving the universe. I just want a smoothie.
“Cameron, we gotta motor,” Gonzo says.
“I don’t want to go yet.”
I march over to the next lane and roll another perfect strike followed by another. Everybody claps and makes some noise. They tell me I’m wonderful just for being, and that I’m increasing their happiness with my happiness.
Four lanes over, Thomas bowls another flawless game, but he doesn’t seem happy about it. At one point, he purposely throws the ball out of the lane and into the next one, where it sails down the center and knocks down every pin. Thomas stares at his feet. There’s a small, muscular, ebony-skinned girl with a shaved head standing next to him. Besides Thomas, she’s the only one who’s not smiling. Suddenly, Thomas starts to bawl, and the alarms go off again. Ropes drop from the ceiling, and the commandos shinny their way down. They make a beeline for Thomas and usher him toward the door. Someone wraps him in a big yellow CESSNAB blanket, covering every part of him but his head.
After my rousing victory in the Church of Everlasting Satisfaction, Daniel and Ruth take me to the CESSNAB Snackateria. They ask Gonzo if he wants to come, but he says he’s going to kill things in the arcade to “get the slime of happiness off.”
The Snackateria has everything you could ever want—chips, soda, candy, pizza, burgers, fries. Every table has ordering stations where you can look through catalogs of stuff and order whatever you want. The shipping times have been crossed out and now there’s an Instant button. When you push it, somebody rushes in from a back room and brings it right to you.
“Having to wait for things hurts your happiness,” Ruth explains. “Want some more fries?”
I say yes, and she gets me a new batch. They’re perfectly hot and crisp, like the first batch.
“I’m sorry you had to see that with Thomas earlier,” Daniel says, shaking his head. “Some people just can’t adjust to being happy all the time.”
“Omigosh,” Ruth says, midfry, her eyes wide. “When I first got here, I was a mess. Just a total and complete mess. Remember, Daniel?”
“Hmmm,” Daniel says meaningfully, though he seems way more into his fries than what Ruth is saying. He’s arranging them in straight lines and putting a thin string of ketchup directly over the middle.
“I used to do pageants and stuff, but then I developed an allergy to spray tanner and I couldn’t compete anymore? My whole world crumbled. I totally went into a depression, got all messed up on drugs and stuff,” Ruth explains. “I was hurting my happiness. So they sent me to CESSNAB.”
“Whoa,” I say.
“Oh, not because they didn’t want to deal, but because they loved me so much. I see that now,” she says, biting her already ragged nails. “The first time I bowled and hit all those strikes, it was like I’d won the evening gown competition and finished it off with a speedball! I totally cried. Everybody was so happy for me. And I just wanted to keep doing that, you know? To keep being all happy.”
Daniel lays out another line of fries and does the ketchup art on them again.
Ruth claps. “Oooh! Tell him your story, Daniel.”
“I had major control issues,” he says, eating his fries one at a time. “I grew up playing sports and being in honors classes, which was cool when I was on top. But by the time I hit sixth grade, I wasn’t getting the top grade in math or pitching the best game. They’d built another school in my town and these other kids were really good. I couldn’t handle it. I cracked under the pressure. One day, I crawled into a locker at school and wouldn’t leave it. They had to use the jaws of life to get me out. That’s when I had my awakening. All that competition and winning and people being better at things than other people? It hurts your happiness.”
I squirt a whole bunch of ketchup on my plate. It splatters my fries. Daniel looks a little sick. “But doesn’t it also make you want to try harder? That sense of competition?” I can’t believe I’m saying this. I’ve never tried hard at anything in my life.
“That’s where you’re wrong, my friend,” Daniel says, smiling. “It’s our culture that teaches that. Not our nature.”
Ruth looks me right in the eyes. “Don’t you just wish you could let that stuff go? All that worry?”
“Yeah,” I hear myself say. “I do.”
Daniel puts his arm around me like we’re best buds. “That’s the great thing, Cameron. You can! Being happy is a choice totally within your control. The universe has arranged for you to be happy. You just have to accept it.”
“And here at CESSNAB, we’ve got a lot of products to back that up, to keep the happiness going, so you never have to feel unhappy. Not for one, single second.” Ruth smiles at me in a flirty way. “You seem happier since you bowled, Cameron. Am I right?”
“Yeah. I guess so,” I say.
“See?” Daniel pats me on the back. “That’s the power of this place.”
“We like to think of CESSNAB as a gated community for the mind, and the stuff that doesn’t increase our happiness we just keep out,” Ruth chirps. “Like your friend, Gonzo. He’s … troubled,” she says, using the word Daniel supplied earlier. “Full of fear. Fear is such a negative emotion, you know?”
“We find we don’t need that here,” Daniel says. “That’s why we have the commandos, why we work to keep out the bad things. So we’re always safe all the time. And if we’re safe all the time—no rejection, no bad news, no negative thoughts, no failure—we stay happy, and then our parents are happy that we’re happy, and, you know, it’s all good. It’s a pretty simple philosophy, but it works.”
“How do you pay for all of this?” I ask.
“We put together SPEW tests for the entire nation, plus all the prep materials, ‘Everything you need to SPEW without a second thought,’” Daniel says.
“So, what were you doing out on the road?” Ruth asks. When I don’t answer, she puts her hand on mine. “Hey. It’s okay. We’ve all been there.”
Everybody’s been so nice to me here. It’s the first time since my diagnosis that I’ve felt sort of normal, and I’m afraid of fucking it all up. “You wouldn’t believe me,” I say.
Ruth and Daniel stop eating and give me their full attention. “It’s okay,” Daniel echoes. “There are no secrets here. Secrets hurt your happiness.”
I’m too tired to keep hiding, so I tell them everything about my mad cow disease, our mission to try to find Dr. X and save the universe, the Wizard of Reckoning, and the fire gods on my ass. I half expect them to kick me out, but they don’t.
Daniel takes hold of my shoulder in a protective way. “No o
ne’s gonna get you here, Cameron. The world is not going to end. I promise you that. You’re one hundred percent safe. As for your disease, doctors are wrong all the time. They need sick people in order to make money.”
“Only people who want to get sick actually get sick. They do it to themselves,” Ruth adds. “You can even think yourself well if you want to.”
“Yeah? You think so?”
“I know so!” Daniel says. “I’ve seen it happen. You can beat it.”
I think how easy it would be to stay here, but Dulcie told me that I need Dr. X to be cured. Then again, where the hell is she?
“Cameron? You’re making a frowny face,” Ruth says.
Just thinking about Dulcie has soured my happiness, and I am pretty happy here. I could stay at CESSNAB and bowl and have a big smoothie and take it easy.
“Are you okay?” Ruth says, her hand hovering near the commando alarm.
I give her a big smile. “Yeah, I’m good. Really good. In fact, I’d like to stay for a while, if that’s okay.”
Ruth gives a little shriek and hugs me. Daniel claps me on the back. “That totally increases my happiness, friend.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
About What Happens When I Learn the Secret of Perfect Bowling and the Revolution Goes Down Big-time
For five days, I’ve been learning how to become a part of the CESSNAB Crusaders family. In choir group, I picked up four new songs—“Who Wants to Be Happy,” “Happy Time Starts Right Now,” “Everything About You Is Totally Perfect,” and “Your Name Is Spelled Like ‘Special’ (Only with Different Letters)”—and got to do a big tambourine solo, which I rocked. Daniel and Ruth took me to the CESSNAB video gaming center where we played Extreme Self-esteem Builder! and How Awesome Are You? And of course, there’s church. Every day, we congregate in the huge, gleaming bowling alley, think our most positive I-am-special thoughts, and bowl perfect game after perfect game, which Daniel says is proof that we’re doing everything right. The only blip on the happiness road came on day one, when I had a small seizure and woke up surrounded by five hulking commandos with giant smoothie cups at the ready. So I had some vanilla yum through a straw while Daniel explained that it was not the prions attacking my brain, I just needed to say my mantra over and over—I am special; special people don’t die—and maybe order more stuff. And it’s been great ever since.
“Dude, you are living in a dreamworld,” Gonzo says as I ponder ordering a pair of Extra-Cushion-Action CESSNAB Bowling Shoes from the Instant Satisfaction station in the Snackateria. He is definitely not increasing my happiness. “They don’t even have any killing games.”
“Mmmm-hmmm.”
“Five days, dude. Five fucking days of Smiling Zombie Nation. I can’t bowl or make CESSNAB T-shirts or smoothie it for one more minute. I’m telling you, these guys are freaky. Don’t you think they’re freaky?”
“No, I don’t. And don’t forget you thought they were serial killers.”
“They totally still could be, dude. They’re fattening us up for the kill.”
“No, they’re helping me get well.” I’m not going to let him defrost my happy chill. “Why don’t you order something, friend? A new jacket or some tunes? You like music.”
Gonzo snorts. “Yeah, real music. Not this hideous, bowling-for-God CESSNAB shit that’s been raping my eardrums all week.”
I take a deep breath; in my head, I list five things I love about myself. “You know what, Gonzo? I want to help you find what I’ve found. Here, have a key chain,” I say, handing him one of the sunny yellow giveaways they hand out whenever you do something even remotely good, like remember to put the toilet seat down. Sometimes they give you a key chain just for showing up.
Gonzo drops my key chain present into a trash can. “Yo, cabrón, aren’t we supposed to be on the road to Dr. X?”
“Aren’t you supposed to have a spot on your lung?” I snap, and then I remember myself. “Look, Gonzo, I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt your happiness.”
“Dude, you’re not hurting my happiness. You’re just totally freaking me out.” He waves his hands in front of my face. “Look at this place, man. It’s some kind of happiness cult. It’s not real. You don’t want to stay here.”
“But I do. I feel great. No symptoms. No weird dreams. No sign of the fire giants. Gonzo, I think this might be the cure. There’s no need to save the universe, because nothing bad can happen to me at CESSNAB.”
“Bad things can happen anywhere. That’s life, amigo.”
“Well, I’ve got a new life now, friend, and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop messing with it.”
I don’t want to get all worked up, so I leave Gonzo there by the Instant Satisfaction station and head for the library. I recognize the girl with the shaved head who’s behind the counter. It’s Thomas’s bowling friend. Her CESSNAB shirt has a faint line through NAB and the word POOL has been scrawled just above it.
“Can I help you?”
“Hello, friend,” I say with a big smile. She doesn’t return it, which is weird, because everybody smiles at CESSNAB. “Um, I wanted to check out a book?”
She points to the floor-to-ceiling stacks. “Help yourself. Be happy.”
“Okay, thanks. Hope the day is as special as you are,” I say, quoting the line I saw on a T-shirt here.
She snorts. “Yeah. Me too.”
The library is packed with more books than I have ever seen. I’m hoping they have Don Quixote so I can finish my reading for Spanglish class—not that I’m going back, but I would like to know how it all ends. The bottom two rows only seem to be filled with copies of Don’t Hurt Your Happiness, so I go through the next two rows and the next. It’s just more of the same, in hardcover and paperback. The whole library is stocked with copies of just that one book.
“Excuse me,” I say, hopping off the rolling ladder. “But where are the other books?”
“We don’t have any other books,” Library Girl says. She’s using a highlighter on her copy, underlining random words to make new, slightly naughty sentences. I wonder if she should be doing that but decide not to say anything.
“But … it’s a library. Right?”
She speaks slowly, like she’s talking to a little kid. “We found that a lot of the stories or words or even ideas contained in most books could be negative or hurtful or make you question your happiness or even question the concept of happiness as an ideal, and that just wasn’t working for us.” Now she gives me a big smile that reminds me of Dulcie.
“Well, isn’t that the point of books? To make you think about things? Come on. You have to have a copy of Don Quixote back there. It’s a classic.”
She whips open a drawer and pulls out a stack of papers stapled together, which she runs through until she finds what she’s looking for. “Ah. Sorry. Don Quixote. Complicated ideas and language. Some people found it hysterical, but others felt inadequate about not understanding it right away. We don’t like to induce nonpositive experience feelings in people, so it had to go.”
“Catcher in the Rye?”
“One Holden Caulfield, sixteen, very angry, very negative, visits prostitutes and says bad words.”
“Lord of the Flies?”
“Too violent.”
“Comic books.”
“Wow—out on all counts.” She ticks off the points on her fingers. “Too dark. Too scary. Superheroes have unattainable powers, and are therefore not relatable and might make kids feel bad about themselves. Also, some suggestible kids might get ideas about jumping off buildings or trying to mind-meld the weather.”
“Ha—got one,” I say. “Winnie-the-Pooh!”
She shakes her head. “Bears don’t really talk. Might confuse the little ones.”
“Fine. I’ll take a copy of Don’t Hurt Your Happiness.”
She stamps the card and hands me the book. “You can turn it in at the end of the week. Or whenever, really. It’s just a formality. We find that requiring things of people and
making them responsible is a big drag, and that is so not happy. Enjoy!”
Grumpy thoughts threaten to invade my new sunny-day brain. I push them away and settle into one of the ergonom-ically correct Day-Glo yellow chairs and open to page one. You are special, it says in big block letters. Everybody is.
“Hey,” I say to the guy sitting next to me. He’s totally into his CESSNAB electronic bowling game. The beeping digital score card shows three hundred perfect strikes in a row. “Have you read this?”
“Some of it,” he says, without looking up. “But I have friends who know other people who’ve read it and they told me everything.”
“Well, I was just wondering about this thing on page one: You’re special. Everybody is.”
“Yeah?”
“How can you be special if everybody is?”
“You’re just part of the specialness, I guess.” He makes another strike and the game congratulates him with an electronic “That is awesome, friend. Way to go!”
“Oh,” I say. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
Page two: Happiness is the new Manifest Destiny. Go stake your claim on it!
Page three: If you start to feel unhappy, buy something.
Page four: Embrace the positive!
I look up for a second. Library Girl is staring a hole through me. I start toward her, and she quickly opens the books on the return desk, stamping them a little forcefully.
“Finished already?” she asks in a fake-happy voice.
“Yeah.”
“Was it enlightening? Life-changing? Mood-altering? Did it increase your happiness?” She fiddles with one of the ten earrings along her left ear.
There’s no doubt she’s playing me. There’s also no doubt that she’s pretty hot.
“I’m a-tingling with joy,” I say, matching her smile and wiggling my fingers like I’m on some highly caffeinated drill team. It’s sarcastic, and I know sarcasm hurts your happiness, but it feels kind of good to do it, like stretching a muscle I haven’t used in a while. The corners of Library Girl’s lips twitch into something resembling a smirk, an expression that feels one hundred percent real.
