by David Arnold
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome. Also—if it’s okay, I’d like to visit you sometime.”
The old man stared for a minute, pointed to his goiter: “I won’t talk about this.”
“Okay.”
He gently stroked Bonkers. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s just—I see you every day. On my way to school, on my way home. I see you out walking. And you’re always alone. And I’m not saying that’s bad. Maybe you want to be alone. But it also occurred to me that maybe you think no one in the whole world really sees you. I know I feel that way sometimes, like no one really sees me. And I wanted you to know that that wasn’t true. That someone else in this world sees you. And if you’d like to tell me your story, or just talk, or whatever . . . I’m here.”
Bonkers purred, and the man said, “Okay,” and I could tell he was still trying to figure me out, but it also looked like he might cry, so I smiled at him, reached out, and scratched Bonkers on the head.
“Would you like to come by tomorrow?” the old man asked.
“Sure.”
Next day after school, I knocked on his door, and he opened it, and the first thing he said was, “What would you like to know?”
* * *
I pull Whitman off the shelf, flip to the poem “I Sing the Body Electric,” and how perfect that the Fading Girl should use this for her email address, that all this time I’ve associated her video with the slow deterioration of the body, when perhaps she sings it electric. “O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you,” says Whitman, and I’m beginning to suspect a plot wherein my Strange Fascinations have been conspiring together to remind me that this world is both very real and full of very real magic.
I reread the message from singthebodyelectric@yahoo .com: What would you like to know?
100 → a beautiful piece of land
“I don’t know,” I say, and it’s true. Mom and Dad don’t say anything, just look at me, and I can’t meet their eyes so I plow on: “I don’t know what I want. Next year, or the next ten, I don’t know,” and it feels good, this emptying of my head, my heart, “and my back is fine, I’m not injured, I lied about that, and I’m sorry. I wish I hadn’t,” and still, my parents say nothing. “I’m not even sure I ever loved swimming as much as everyone thought I did. It’s like—your yams, Dad. I ate them once when I was a kid without really thinking about it. And then every time after that, you piled them on my plate, all, ‘I know how much Noah loves yams,’ only I didn’t, not really. So maybe I’ll go to college. Maybe I’ll swim. Or maybe I won’t. I don’t know. But swear to God? You make me go? And I’m going to Europe. You’ll go to sleep one night, wake up the next day, and I’ll be gone.” Mom and Dad still aren’t talking, which I find somewhat disarming, but at least they aren’t physically restraining me for basically losing it in the kitchen. “You’re always telling me I can tell you anything. So there it is, there you go. That was me telling you anything. Everything, really.”
Dad starts crying, because of course.
“I’ll make mistakes,” I say. “But they’re mine to make. Right?”
They both nod, and now all three of us are hugging, and it reminds me of how things once were, years ago when I was little, the pre-Penny days. And while I can’t imagine our family without her in it, there was something special about it being just the three of us, something intangible and charmed, and whatever that was, it’s here now. The hug ends and on my way out of the kitchen, I take a last look back to find my parents beaming at each other. They’re still crying, but they’re smiling even more, and I realize that whatever intangible charmed thing we had when it was just the three of us, Mom and Dad had a whole different life before even I came along.
It makes me think of this beautiful, empty piece of land. And maybe people build something on that land, like a barn, and maybe that barn houses all these animals, and it stands strong for years, and then one day a son or a daughter gets married in the barn, and all the old people who built that barn look around at it with loving eyes. Because they remember how this used to be an empty piece of land, and while that was beautiful, they think of all the animals who have called this barn home, and of their children who will always remember being married here, and the old people are happy, so happy they built this barn.
Mom and Dad’s smile really is a beautiful piece of land.
* * *
↔
The cursor blinks . . .
I write some things. They suck, mostly. But there they are, right there on the screen in front of me, all existing and whatnot.
So annoying.
I write some more things, and they suck to even greater degrees. So many words, a parade of progressing suckage: suck, suckier, suckiest.
Mila Henry said she always had difficulty writing the passage-of-time chapters because she “preferred minutiae,” and “which detail should I leave out?” I always found it interesting that Henry somehow managed to implement the practice of including everything—right down to which socks were worn on which days by which characters (from Babies on Bombs)—while still maintaining the ideal that “writing is less about the words and more about the silence between them.” But that’s life, I guess. It is complex and nuanced and not one thing any more than it is another.
The cursor blinks . . .
I shut the laptop and it makes that thop sound when the screen connects with the base of the computer. On my worst writing days, it sounds less like thop and more like stop, which I interpret as my computer telling me to just quit already.
Outside, gray clouds loom, looking for all the world like the floodgates of the heavens are about to open, the springs of the great deep bursting forth. And for some reason I think of the smile I just saw in the kitchen.
I open my computer.
“No, I don’t think I will stop.”
epilogue → and lo! the world emerges a strange and fascinating place
January 8, my birthday: the ultimate bookmark in the Passage of Time.
“Noah, it’s freezing,” says Mom, but she can tell from the look on my face that I’m going out anyway, that when I announced my decision to take “nightly walks,” I did not mean, “nightly walks, except during inclement weather.” I bundle up—gloves, hoodie, coat, boots, earbuds under double-layered hats—and hit the streets, like that.
It’s what I do.
Tonight we had chicken cordon bleu on trays in the basement while watching Wait Until Dark, Penny’s latest obsession. Family movie nights are like a thing now, and I don’t know—I love it, but it also makes me sad, like the four of us are trying to soak up what time we have left together. Penny pretends to be inconsolable about my leaving, but I think deep down she’s excited at the prospect of flying alone.
Cold in my bones, Bowie in my ears, I walk the streets of Iverton, and I say, “Happy birthday, buddy,” and Bowie says, Cheers, mate, and there is nothing like this, like seeing your breath in front of your face as if it’s trying to prove your own existence to you, nothing like the rhythm of one foot in front of the other, each step a contract between your mind and the robot that you are, quite literally, in this thing together.
Suddenly, and without meaning to, I’m on Piedmont, pulling my earbuds out from under my hat, letting that salient, immortal voice float up into the winter-black sky.
Next door, an empty porch: Kurt and Abraham are in for the night.
From the curb, I stare up at the Lovelocks’ house like it’s an off-limits diorama in a museum after closing. There is a form of reverence here, but mostly disgust and fear and a strange sense of connection, and it occurs to me that if I’ve intentionally avoided Piedmont on my nightly route—and I have—then it’s no accident I’m here now.
I step through the yard, up the porch steps, knock on the door now, and there’s that violent urge—but that’s not why I’m here, n
ot why I knocked, not why I’m ringing the doorbell.
Why am I ringing the doorbell?
The door swings open.
Since last summer, I’ve seen Circuit once: in his car at a stoplight. I almost vomited on my steering wheel.
“Hey,” he says, and behind him there are voices, laughter— as if this were a completely normal house. Circuit says, “Noah,” but I can’t talk yet, so I just shake my head once and that seems to be enough.
I focus on Circuit now, on where he has been: the emotional hell he must have gone through with his father’s passing, the way his father passed, and the tragedy he endured. I’ve heard the cultivation of empathy grows stronger with use, and so I try to use it now. Surely, this kid in front of me would be an entirely other person had those things not happened. Surely, it wasn’t his fault, not really.
I forgive you.
Difficult enough to think, much less say.
So I stand on the porch in silence, and Circuit waits, and just when I think, It’s no use, just knock his fucking teeth out already—it begins to snow. Not a dusting, but a heavy, thick-flaked snow. He says, “Come on in, man,” but I don’t. I let the snow land where it may and wonder at the longevity of its history: its lakes, oceans, and pools; its cave rivers; its underground civilizations. And because every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you, I wonder how many bodies this snow has sung electric only now to land on mine. “History is a long time,” I say; and that’s when I know I will forgive him.
But not until I can mean it.
“Okay,” he says, but he’s gone now, and Piedmont, too, and Iverton along with it, the whole world consumed, and from way up here I see those subtle connectors stretching through time and space in that most peculiar way, skipping from one snowflake to the next like smooth stones across a pond.
You know those movies where the guy shows up on the girl’s front porch in some grand romantic gesture?
And I wonder what truths might be found in a conversation that never happened.
I adore snow. My love of snow runneth deep.
“Noah,” says Circuit. “You okay?”
A guy shows up with snow, that’s either destiny or wizardry.
“I’m fine,” I say, and I don’t know if those stones ever land in the same place twice, but I think it’s time to find out. “Is your sister home?”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks directed here ç Arnolds and Wingates for signing that family contract. Love the whole bunch of you.
Also here → Ken Wright and Alex Ulyett at Viking, I am running out of creative ways to denote your brilliance. So: you guys are brilliant. Same goes for the rest of my Penguin family: Elyse Marshall, Jen Loja, Theresa Evangelista (for my gorgeous glam rock cover), Kate Renner (for its equally gorgeous interior design), Dana Leydig, Kaitlin Severini & Janet Pascal (copyeditors extraordinaire), Carmela Iaria, Venessa Carson, Erin Berger, Emily Romero, Felicia Frazier, Rachel Cone-Gorham, Mariam Quraishi, John, Allan, Jill, Colleen, Sheila, Doni Kay, and all those top notch sales and marketing people.
And here, of course → Dan Lazar (Agent Royale), Torie Doherty-Munro, James Munro, Cecilia de la Campa, Natalie Medina, and all at Writers House; and Josie Freeman at ICM.
A hearty “thanks, yo” to → Adam Silvera for being the greatest muse a guy could ask for. It really is sad how much you love me.
Noah and I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to → Courtney Stevens, Becky Albertalli, Jasmine Warga, Nic Stone, Yamile Mendez, Melanie Barbosa, Ellen Oh, Kelly Loy Gilbert, Jeff Zentner, Brendan Kiely, Bill Konigsberg, Blair Setnor (for all things swimming related), Brian Armentrout & Jared Gallaher & Kelly Meyers (for answering my many medical inquiries), Nicola Yoon, Victoria Schwab, Michelle Arnold, Gary Egan, Rebecca Langley, Abby Hendren, Teddy Ray, Michael Waters, Stephanie Appell & the beautiful people at Parnassus Books, Amanda Connor & the beautiful people at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, and all the fabulously smart librarians and booksellers who do truly heroic work on the daily.
But mostly → Stephanie and Wingate, thanks for floating through space with me—even if it is most peculiar.
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