“Suicide?” The word tastes like acid in my mouth.
“Calm down, Murphy. I didn’t die by suicide. Don’t go all psychotherapist on me. I just think, you know, I didn’t take my own life, but I didn’t really save it, either. Could be a half-terrible sin.”
“And how are you being punished?”
“Like life is taunting me. It’s all a big tease. The things I wanted, the things I miss. Almost living it, but not quite. It’s excruciating.” He picks up an ice chunk and chucks it.
“But then how can you sometimes think it’s a reward? What happens then?”
He laughs now, softly, and his voice cracks a little when he says, “Strangely enough, it’s sort of the same thing. Except sometimes I really like how excruciatingly sweet almost living can be.”
“Wait. What do you mean?”
But instead of explaining, he disappears. The trees groan in the wind and I turn my head toward the sound for a second, and when I look back, he’s gone. No matter how many “come to Jesus” moments we have, one thing is unchangeable. Mason is an enigma.
I always used to think that the universe handed out the bad stuff sort of evenly, so if nothing bad had happened to you for a while you should probably prepare for disaster. This meant that when I was happy, it was hard to not brace for the other shoe to drop. And vice versa. If life dealt you a couple of catastrophes, then in my mind it should take a break for a while, give you some recovery time, focus on passing out crises to a bunch of other people. But that was before my friend died, I found out I was going blind, I almost froze to death, and I got caught doing something illegal.AndI almost killed somebody, or it felt that way at least. So no, life doesn’t give you a break. But could that also mean that sometimes you get to be happy without it triggering a universal alarm that you need a takedown? That would be refreshing.
I hesitate outside room 38, having just excused myself from Spanish class, following the instructions on the little slip of paper Mr. Pinksi gave me. What am I afraid of anyway? It’s just a class, a stupid class, and all the kids in there have fucked up, too, so they can’t even judge me without being hypocrites.
Okay, so go then.I swing the door open with such force it flies out of my hands and bangs against the wall inside. I flinch. The group gathered looks at me. The only adult speaks.
“Nothing like making an entrance.” It’s Ms. Clark, the GlobalStudies teacher, which is weird because I thought a program like this would be taught by the nurse or the school counselor or something. I guess they didn’t want to be here, either. Maybe Ms. Clark violated the school behavior code, too.
“Hi, sorry about that,” I say, closing the door as quietly as I can.
“Not at all. I forgot you were joining us, Hattie. Go ahead and grab two placards.”
I grab the signs from the table next to her and sit in the closest chair. Everyone else has their placards in their lap, so I do the same. There are four boys in the group and one girl, and none of them are from the play or the ski trip. I guess there must be quite a few sections of delinquent class. I’m relieved. Misery might love company, but humiliation loves anonymity.
That being said, I vaguely recognize these boys as seniors, and they make me feel immature right away because they all have some sort of facial hair: two with goatees, one a full beard, and the other a mustache that I’m guessing is meant to be ironic because he looks like he’s spent his entire life perfecting being bored. He’s also so tall that even though he’s sitting opposite me in the circle, one of his feet is hooked around the leg of my chair. I have to keep my feet tucked way to the right to avoid resting my foot on his, which I’m going to be absolutely sure not to do.
The girl next to me is Ellory Fiske, her long brown curtain bangs completely hiding her eyes as usual. Ellory has been in various classes of mine since seventh grade, but I have nomemory of ever hearing her speak, and I doubt today will be any different.
“Okay, you find a fifty-dollar bill lying on the sidewalk. You pick it up and put it in your pocket. Then you see a woman searching for something on the sidewalk. You avoid her and hurry away.” Ms. Clark looks up from her paper, her lips pressed together, eyebrows raised in a sort of prejudgment look.
I flip my placards over. They say “okay” and “not okay.” Wow, they’ve really put us in morality preschool. No wonder Mustache is bored. We all hold up our “not okay” signs, and Ms. Clark moves on with about a hundred more of these unrealistic scenarios. I use a tiny sliver of my brain to hold up the correct card every time she pauses, and the rest trying to figure out what the other kids in the group did to get stuck in here. They’re probably doing the same to me.
I’m marveling at how a clock can tick so loudly while at the same time seem to not advance at all when I hear the door open behind me. The Better Bets class perks up in their chairs. Even Mustache pulls his foot back and lets his eyes focus. I turn.
It’s Asha.
“Line at the ladies’,” she says by way of explanation. “What’d I miss? Wheel of Addiction? Responsibility charades?” She strolls around the circle and sits next to Mustache. Now she notices me for the first time. “Hey, Hattie,” she says, sounding formal but not unkind.
“Hey,” I say back. What is she doing here? What could my super-perfectly-put-together friend possibly have done wrong?And how could any mere mortal grown-up have caught her at it? I hate how many secrets seem to exist between us. I cock my head at her, question marks filling the air around me, but the answers will have to wait.
There’s no denying that the class is a lot more interesting now that Asha is here. She cracks jokes about each hypothetical situation in such a charming way that even Ms. Clark is chuckling. But Mustache is the most charmed of all. He hasn’t stopped smiling since she sat down next to him.
The bell rings, signaling both the end of class and the end of the school day. This is it. I can’t take it anymore. I need to fix this thing with Asha, and I don’t even care if it’s humiliating. I wait for her in the hallway. When she emerges, Mustache is right behind her with his hand on the small of her back.
“Lincoln, Hattie, Hattie, Lincoln,” she says by way of introduction, and I notice a hint of a flush on her face. It dawns on me that this must be the first-date guy from the other night.
“Hey,” we say to each other.
“Meet you in a few? By the vending machine?” she says to him.
“You got it,” he says, enclosing a few stray hairs of hers between his fingers and placing them gently back behind her shoulder. “Hattie.” He nods to me then and ambles down the hall.
As she turns to me, my words start tumbling out. “Let me start before you say anything. I know I’ve been pretty MIA lately and I know I’ve been weird—well, more weird than usual. I suck. And I know I said I was fine when I really wasn’t fine. But Ipromise I’m all done running away, and I’m done attacking. I miss you. And I’m really sorry.”
