The End of FUN

by Sean McGinty

  I made it inside just as the first raindrops began to spatter across the windowpanes.

  > yay!

  said Homie™,

  > let’s stay inside and play pizza trivia challenge! yay! for new mega pizzazilla™ from pizza barn®! can u name the 12 meats on pizzazilla™? name the meats for FUN® original boy_2!

  “I don’t want to.”

  > come on!

  no one can resist to name the meats!

  Just to get it off my back I took the challenge, but I didn’t really try, and in the end I could only get nine meats.

  > ouchers!

  u got a C+ at pizza barn® academy of pizza™ studies! u missed pancetta flecks prosciutto flakes and summer sausage slices! yay! u will receive +1 for each correct answer! say yay! for collect!

  “Yay.”

  I stood at the kitchen window. Now that the rain was here, the horses had settled down in their corral, resigned to getting wet. But their trials weren’t over yet. It began to hail. Just like that: rain one second and hail the next, tiny white stones boiling over the earth, bending the rabbit brush and grass. The metal roof tinked and panked overhead. Still the horses didn’t move. Where would they go? I watched the hailstones bouncing off their backs—tiny from my vantage, but not so small when you were up close, I’m sure.

  Sometimes it must really suck to be a horse.

  I woke the next day feeling bummed about the dig and called Katie to see if that would cheer me up. I told her about what I’d found buried under the tree.

  “The whole thing is a joke,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “If it isn’t, feel free to tell me what it is.”

  “I don’t know—I’ve been dealing with my own problems.”

  The quarantine had been lifted, but when the extermination squad was taking care of the leper mites, they discovered all these code violations in the foundation, and now her building had been condemned.

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “Well, I’m packing up my stuff right now.”

  So I drove into town to help Katie. What are friends for, right? Anything = better than digging up more stupid forks. When I got there, her place had changed. Where before it had been kind of spare, now there was crap everywhere, books and boxes and clothing, like a packing bomb had exploded.

  Katie had changed, too. She had on this big gray wig that went down over her ears like a helmet.

  “What’s with the wig?”

  “It’s for the play. Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party. I’m ‘Meg, a woman in her sixties.’ The director wasn’t happy I’d be in Tahoe for a week, but he really doesn’t have much choice. I’ve actually done this play before, so I pretty much know all the lines: Is that you, Petey? Pause. Petey, is that you? Pause. Petey? And then Petey says, What? and I say, Is that you? There are a lot of pauses. That’s what Pinter is known for: the ‘Pinter pause.’”

  “You’re going to Lake Tahoe?”

  “My dad’s visiting from Spain. We’re staying at my sister’s for a couple weeks, then he’s coming back here to see the play. God! I didn’t realize how much crap I had until I started going through my boxes. I guess it’s a chance to simplify. They said to just leave what we don’t want. And when the workers come in they’ll be like, Hey, Tom, I wonder what kind of person lived here. Pause. I don’t know, Bob. Pause. But she sure had a lot of crap.”

  It was true. Katie had a lot of crap. It was going to take hours. The working conditions weren’t great. They’d had the place sealed, and it was stifling hot in there and smelled like burnt rubber. Our progress was slow. Every time I tried to do something I just made more work for Katie. Like, I’d fold a sweatshirt and catch her five minutes later unfolding and refolding it, or I’d fill a bin with bathroom supplies and she’d dump it out and replace it with socks.

  Mostly I just sat and sweated and watched her sort through her stuff, while a stunningly inefficient box fan whirred on HIGH in the window. The sound was like an airplane engine, but the breeze was just the faintest whisper. I stuck my fingers through the dusty grill and let the plastic blades whap at the tips.

  As I watched Katie pack, a question began to worm through my mind. Why? Why just friends? Why not more? The spark was there. I’d felt it. The light in the monkey. So she was a little older, so I was technically a minor—what did it matter in the face of the spark? I changed my mood to LOVESTRUCK, but of course she couldn’t see it.

  As for Katie’s mood, it was fairly breezy. She flitted from pile to pile, practicing her lines as she packed. It was confusing. I could tell she liked me, she really kind of did, but OTOH she acted like we were just two good friends hanging out in a sweaty apartment.

  At some point I had the bright idea that she could store it all at my grandpa’s place—anything to buy a little more time—and at first she was hesitant, but then she agreed, so we drove the boxes out there and stacked them in the other bedroom. It was almost dark by the time we were done. I walked her to her truck.

  She thanked me and gave me a little hug, and there was that spark again, and I couldn’t keep it in anymore.

  “Katie. Can we talk?”

  She looked at me in the twilight, and I could tell she knew exactly what I was going to say, even if I didn’t know exactly—something about the spark and all that—and I watched the recognition flash across her face like lightning, and I watched her face change, and when she answered me, it was in her Meg voice. “The caretaker had gone home. So he had to wait until the morning before he could get out. They were very grateful. Pause. And then they all wanted to give him a tip. And so he took the tip. And then he got a fast train and he came down here.”

  “No, but seriously.”

  “Wrong line. You say: Really? And I say, Oh, yes. Straight down. Pause. I wish he could have played tonight.”

  “I’m done playing. Can we just talk?”

  “We are talking. You say, Why tonight? And I say, It’s his birthday today. And you say, His birthday? And I say, Yes. Today. But I wasn’t going to tell him until—HEY! OW!”

  She looked up at the wig dangling above her head. I’d scalped her.

  “That was fastened to my hair, Aaron!” The Meg voice was gone.

  YAY! for the Meg wig, manufactured by PrettyJane® Charm Accessories, with durable synthetic weave and adjustable comfort hooks. Katie grabbed for the wig, and I flung it into the brush.

  Two blue eyes glared at me. “You go pick that up.”

  So I did. I handed her the wig, and I said, “Katie.”

  And she said, “What.”

  And I took a breath and said, “I like you and…I think maybe you like me, too.”

  Katie blinked. “Oh, Aaron. What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “No, it’s—the truth is complicated. It’s the Space Amazon. Don’t you get that?” She tried to smile. “Come on, you’re seventeen. You’ve got, you know, a little growing up to do.”

  “Sure. Everyone does.”

  She closed her eyes and sighed again. “Can’t we just be friends? What’s so hard about that? Or like sister and brother.”

  “I’ve already got a sister.”

  “Then a friendly younger aunt.”

  And I was like, “Give me a chance. I’m gonna be eighteen pretty soon. A legal adult. Old enough to buy cigarettes. Old enough to go die facedown in a ditch on the field of war or whatever. So why not old enough to be with you?”

  “Aaron—please.”

  “Look inside your heart. At least just think about it.” It was some pretty cheesy shit to say, Look inside your heart, but I meant it. I really did. I meant it so much, I couldn’t shut up about it. “It’s like, there’s a light in the monkey. That’s what they say. There’s a light! Just give it some thought, OK? When you’re in Tahoe. Take as much time as you want. Meanwhile, I’ll be here. Just growing up more and more.”

  “Ugh!” she said. “Why do you have to—”


  “Just look in your heart, Katie. That’s all I ask!”

  The next day I changed my mood from LOVESTRUCK to LOVESICK and returned to the dig, not hoping to find anything, just to distract myself from the feelings I was feeling. The Russian olive was shiny after the rain. The water had washed away some of the dirt, and I saw something gleaming in the sun. Not a fork, not a spoon—something else. Something made of glass. A bottle.

  And I was like, Yes! A message!

  But no—it was just a bottle with some dark liquid it. And as I lifted it out of the earth I knew then that the old man was crazy, he just was, and everything up to this point had just been a colossal waste of time. Light in the monkey, my ass. I unscrewed the cap and gave it a sniff. Some kind of booze. Dead man’s liquor.

  Homie™ popped up.

  > what up original boy_2?

  u r a FAIL!

  u have 1 call(s)

  from evelyn o’faolain!

  “Guess what?” she said. “Isaac surprised me—he came to town a week early!”

  “Who?”

  “My b—” She stopped herself. “My friend from New York. He got in last night. We’re going tubing and we need a fourth. Want to come?”

  “When?”

  “Right now. We’re on the way.” I heard a muffled sound, like she was covering the phone, then my sister hissed at me: “Be nice to him, OK, Aaron?”

  Sure. Why not? Anything was better than digging.

  Five minutes later, her CR-V pulled into the drive. It was just the two of them. Evie and her new special friend.

  “Aaron, this is Isaac. Isaac, this is my little brother.”

  The guy smiled and thrust out his hand. “Wow! Nice place! I’m really thrilled to go tube with you today!”

  He was a tall guy with dark hair, and he had on short khaki shorts and a safari shirt, plus one of those weird baseball caps with the flap in back to keep the sun off your neck. Also, he was having FUN®. Username: ec0g33k. YAY! for Isaac. Coming from New York, I’d expected more of a, I don’t know, sophisticated hipster kind of dude, but this guy was pretty much a big dork. I could see why my sister liked him.

  “Where’s Sam?” I asked.

  “Sam has work. We’re meeting Shiloh out by the river.”

  I changed into my swimsuit, grabbed the bottle of dead man’s liquor, threw it in a bag with a towel, and piled into the backseat.

  Isaac was driving, and as we turned down the road, he caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “Hey, Aaron, you eat any breakfast yet? You hungry?” He held out his hand. “Purple Jolly Rancher. Don’t worry—it’s sugarless.”

  Now, when someone says hungry—I’m never really hungry for candy. Especially not for breakfast. Especially not sugarless Jolly Ranchers™.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Sure?” After a moment he withdrew his hand, unwrapped the Rancher, and popped it in his mouth. I could hear it clicking against his teeth as he drove down the road. “Breakfast of champions.”

  Evie craned around. She was wearing this big, goofy smile. “Yeah, Isaac’s got a bit of a sweet tooth.”

  She said it the same way you might say: Yeah, Isaac likes to skydive. Or: Yeah, Isaac is an MMA fighter.

  “Aaron,” he said. “I have question. Earlier, when I said, ‘I’m thrilled to go tube with you today’—was that correct?”

  “What?”

  “He means,” said Evie, “is that how you’d say it?”

  “Exactly,” said Isaac. “Can a person quote unquote ‘tube’?”

  “Isaac’s interested in local vernacular and native customs. Which is one reason we’re taking him tubing.”

  “Well, there we have it! You said tu-bing! Is that the correct way, then? Tubing instead of tube?”

  “Gosh,” she said. “I don’t know. I think one could also say tubed. It’s acceptable either way—don’t you think, Aaron?”

  I tried to play along. “I don’t know. It’s like boonie stompin’. You wouldn’t say I boonie stomped. You’d say, I went boonie stompin’.”

  “That sounds intriguing,” said Isaac. “What exactly is boonie stomping?”

  “Stompin’. Just some shit you do in high school when you’re bored.”

  “It means to drive a truck around in the brush,” said Evie.

  “Ah,” said Isaac. “To drive a truck around in the brush. Does that mean we are boonie stomping right now?”

  “I guess it does!” she cried.

  “Well, hey. All right!”

  Actually we weren’t, because for one thing we weren’t in the brush, we were on a gravel road going through the brush. And second of all we weren’t going fast enough, just barely moving at a crawl. Third, there wasn’t any alcohol or firearms involved.

  “Hey,” I said. “You know there aren’t any speed limits out here.”

  “Actually there are speed limits,” said Evie.

  “I like taking it slow from time to time,” said Isaac.

  “That’s just Isaac’s way.”

  “What can I say? I prefer to exercise caution.”

  “Mm,” said Evie. “You know I like caution.”

  Isaac chuckled, and my sister leaned over and put her mouth to his ear and whispered something. I couldn’t hear the words, but I could see her lips moving, and what I thought I saw her say—it kind of shocked me. “Caution makes me wet.” That’s what it looked like from my angle. It was like, Evie didn’t just say that, did she? No way! But then why were Isaac’s ears suddenly all red?

  I asked if we could maybe listen to the radio or something, and Evie put on NPR because of course. It was some kind of quiz show about the news. She and Isaac kept shouting out the answers and laughing together at the same parts, and it was sort of cute and embarrassing and confusing all at once—confusing because there wasn’t anything to laugh at. I’m telling you, none of that show was funny. And yet every once in a while they’d just bust up. Not ironically, either. They were really into it.

  We headed leisurely in a southeasterly direction—15 mph tops—tracing the eastern slope of Ass Mountain out past the mobile homes, turning finally up the dirt road that parallels the Humboldt River. One of the panelists on the NPR quiz show was being supposedly hilarious about some movie I hadn’t seen, and I was starting to get kind of sleepy, but then we rounded a bend and there was Shiloh, leaning against her red Jetta, in a tie-dye shirt and jeans. We stopped to let her in, the plan being to drive up to the turnaround in Evie’s car, tube back down to Shiloh’s car, and then drive it back up to retrieve Evie’s.

  “Morning!” She slid into the backseat.

  “Purple Jolly Rancher?” said Isaac.

  “Um, OK.”

  Shiloh took it and opened the wrapper and popped it in her mouth. I watched her suck on it. Then I was like, Dude, stop watching her suck on that Jolly Rancher™. The car shuddered over a cattle guard, scaring up a pair of crows from the brush. Around the next bend the land opened upon a wide flat area, ringed by aspen, where the cows had been. This was our spot. We got out, and Isaac began inflating the tubes with the little electric pump he’d brought along.

  “How much pressure do we want here? Forty P.S.I.? Fifty? We are aiming for a fine balance of buoyancy and resiliency. I imagine there are pointy objects lying in wait.”

  “Truly,” said Evie. “Prickers and thorns. How’s that one look, dear brother?”

  “What, the tube? It looks fine.”

  “There we have it! Confirmation from the master himself. Now everyone gather round—it’s sunscreen time!”

  My sister squirted a fat dollop on my hand, then Isaac’s, then Shiloh’s.

  “Be liberal in your application. For the sun’s rays do burn the flesh.”

  “Truly,” said Isaac, smearing lotion over his ears.

  It was pretty embarrassing, this loverspeak of theirs, like some kind of foreign language, like the kind you’d have to study using Rosetta Stone® (YAY!), the gold standard in computer-based language learning.
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  Shiloh and I looked at each other and kind of simultaneously rolled our eyes—and that was kind of cool.

  Then it was time to float. But Evie wasn’t ready yet.

  “You men travel onward. Shiloh and I must tarry here a moment to discuss…lady things.”

  “Verily,” said Isaac. “We will travel slowly that you might apprehend us.”

  “We would be honored.”

  So then it was just me and Isaac and the river traveling verily slowly. The current was lazier than I’d seen it in a long time. We drifted side by side like two widgets on the world’s slowest conveyor belt. It was going to be hours before we made it back to the car. I suspected Evie had put me out with Isaac so we could “get to know each other,” and I gave it my best, but I have to say we were on two different levels. The river drifted in a lazy S and widened, and we found ourselves stopped at a shallow spot, a sort of sandbar made up of little rocks. We sat in our tubes and waited for the ladies to catch up, and I unzipped my backpack and took out the booze. “Want a drink?”

  “Um, OK.” He took a sip, made a face, handed it back to me. “What is that?”

  “Dead man’s liquor.”

  “Never heard of it. Regional brand?”

  “Pretty much.”

  I gave it a sip. It was pretty nasty, all right.

  “So Evie said you’re a biologist?”

  “Environmental impact engineer. I’m studying the Avis Mortem.”

  “Bummer.”

  Isaac nodded. “The Avis Mortem is very distressing. My firm has been contracted to investigate the possibility of electromagnetic radiation as a contributing factor. So far, results have been inconclusive, but there’s some promising evidence. Our suspicion is that the specific waveform utilized by full immersion reality generators—like, for example, FUN®—may have something to do with it.”

  I felt obligated to ask a question, so I was like, “How’s that work?”