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“I don’t know,” I tell him.
“Well, what would you say your type is?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him again.
In my life, this is more often than not the most honest answer I can provide.
I am even more tired in the afternoon, but again, it seems like I’m in the same boat as everyone else. Even the teachers seem more lethargic, and the lessons billow rather than strike.
I only have one class in the afternoon with Sam, and he keeps largely to himself. I don’t know whether this is because he’s been caught passing notes in here before and knows better than to do it again. Or maybe he’s just tired, too. He seems lost in his own thoughts, emerging every few minutes to take in the teacher, or to send me a hello glance. I doodle in Mark’s notebook, then remember to tear out the page and throw it out at the end of the class.
Basketball practice is directly after school. I’m relieved that it’s not a game—that’s too much pressure. In slower sports, I can access the things I need to know—the names of teammates, the meaning of plays, the things I know about the opposing team. But basketball is too fast, too reactive. Especially at the end of a long day.
The movement wakes me, though. I release myself into the physicality of it—the push and pull on the court. Unsurprisingly, Sam and I are a team within the team—when there’s a chance to pass, his eye goes right to me, and mine goes right to him. Even though he’s short, he’s got speed, and because he’s got speed, he’s got respect. Mark, I can tell, is never going to be a star. He is a supporting player, the space between the stars that keeps them in place.
There’s a big game coming up, and the coach is relentless. We are working on shots, running the court, practicing plays, facing off against one another—like most coaches, he wants us to have the grace and efficiency of machinery, and he wants to be the machinist. A new kind of exhaustion hits me, but it’s an alive exhaustion, not an asleep exhaustion. I am keeping up my paces and hitting my marks. When one of my teammates botches a shot, the coach tells him to stop being a girl. I wish I could tell him that I was a girl two days ago, and two days before that. Nothing is different. A shot is a shot.
At the end of practice, the coach tells us to walk off the strain we’ve just put our bodies through. Sam gravitates toward me, asks me if he’s still giving me a ride home. I tell him yes. Of course. When I hit the shower, he’s nowhere to be found. I get out, towel off, get dressed. He comes racing through, running late. He says he’ll meet me by the car.
This gives me ten minutes of empty time. I never know what to do with it. There’s no one for me to text, no book for me to read ten minutes of. I could make conversation with the other guys leaving the locker room, but I don’t know who they are, and I won’t remember them tomorrow. The empty time remains empty. I try to remember the name of the girl I was two days ago, and the one I was two days before that. The name Alicia comes back to me, but that’s not right. I’ve already forgotten.
Sam doesn’t say much to me as we head to the car. Complaints about the coach, worries about the game coming up, resentment that Alex (whoever he is) is not a team player. I don’t have to do much more than faintly agree, and then faintly disagree when Sam says he’s complaining too much.
“But what about you?” he asks. “What’s on your mind?”
There have been moments in the past when I’ve been tempted to answer this last question truthfully, to let myself be part of the conversation. But the temptation fades under the cover of reality. I cannot share myself because, as far as Sam is concerned, I have no self. I don’t exist. Only Mark exists.
“I guess I’m just tired,” I say.
“Me too. I’m tired of so many things, you know?”
“So many things,” I echo.
We drive on for a few more minutes. The trip seems longer than the trip to school was.
I access to see if Sam and Mark had specific plans for tonight. I can’t find any. So I ask, “Where are we going?”
Sam smiles. “I’m kidnapping you. I was waiting for you to notice.”
“And where is the destination of this kidnapping?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
He sounds happy. Awake.
He makes me play Twenty Questions to figure out where we’re going. Not knowing what the options are, I’m not particularly good at the game. I find out that where we’re going is bigger than a trailer but shorter than the Washington Monument. It’s not in a city, but it’s not in a field. It is neither yellow nor purple. It is not a place where you’d find horses or falafel or the Amish. It is somewhere Sam’s been before, but not (to his knowledge) somewhere Mark’s been before. It doesn’t smell like sewage or Tater Tots or strawberries. It has never appeared on reality TV. There have been no songs written about it. It doesn’t require a change of clothing, or an admission fee, or a note from my doctor. It is not a church.
He makes me close my eyes as we pull up. I have seen no signs along the way, no telltale markers. All I can see is how proud he is of himself.
“All right. We’re here.”
I open my eyes and see an old, battered sign that says FUNLAND.
“I used to come here all the time as a kid, because my uncle was one of the owners. I don’t know if you remember, but I told you about it when we first became friends, and you drew a complete blank. So you could say the plan to come here was hatched out of that blank.”
The gates look locked to me.
“We’re going to break in?” I ask.
