Happiness is the most treacherous emotion. When you’re happy, all you want to do is stay happy.
DAY: 26
TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 1300
“You would like Gimli best,” Bastien said, and Tariq said “Ooooh” like it was a witty insult, and maybe it was, except my knowledge of Lord of the Rings characters was woefully limited.
We sat in the bed of Tariq’s pickup truck. Bastien’s car was parked beside us, engine running, headlights casting two long bright trails across the ragged lines of pine trees. His stereo thumped out classic rock, dumb empty songs, but the rhythm was nice and the mood was mellow and I didn’t hate it half as much as I would have hated it a week before.
Bastien took a long hit and then offered me the joint.
“Matt gets high on life,” Ott said.
“No shit,” Bastien said, handing it to him instead. “How’s that working out for you?”
“Pretty great,” I said and pointed up at the sky. “Did you guys know about stars? A bunch of bright dots in the sky for no reason? That shit is totally trippy.”
Everybody laughed.
“Legolas is where it’s at,” Bastien said. “Legolas kicks just as much ass as Gimli, but he does it with class and wit.”
“Trav says Legolas is a fairy,” Ott muttered.
“My brother’s an idiot,” Bastien said. “Everybody knows Legolas is an elf.”
“That’s not what he means.”
“Oh.”
Silence. Bastien had no comeback to that, bested again by his absent brother. “Then who does he like? Galadriel?”
Ott whispered, “Aragorn,” reverently, and Bastien nodded.
“Who’s Aragorn?” I asked.
“The King,” Bastien said. And I remembered from the movie: tall, handsome, brave, strong, perfect, tiresome. Mighty warrior, wise commander, total bore.
Tariq groaned and stood up. “You’re all a bunch of ugly little hobbits, and we need to stop talking about that wack-ass movie right now.”
I tuned out their halfhearted objections. I focused on my secret boyfriend, his dark hair and mighty scowl in the late twilight and the back-glare of Bastien’s headlights. His charcoal-gray hoodie, the softest object in the known universe. His huge hands, thumbs hooked into his belt loops.
And then I focused my powers on the two boys beside me in the truck. The connections between them, the thick and complex coil of bonds that stretched from Bastien to Ott and back again. Bright feelings and dark ones, some too strange and complicated to decipher, but others stark and simple and raw. Ott’s feelings of inadequacy beside his smart and funny friend; Bastien’s guilt and pity toward the poor buddy he’d soon abandon for college and the decent life his father’s privilege would buy for him.
Tariq plucked a soccer ball from the bed of the truck and proceeded to work it like a hacky sack. Kicking it straight up, keeping it in the air through nimble leaps and leg thrusts and judicious application of shoulders and chest and back. I watched, transfixed, barely seeing the ball.
“You know what I’m looking forward to?” Ott asked. “Like, in life? Bar fights.”
“Bar fights?” Tariq asked, palming the ball and pulling a bent cigarette pack from his back pocket.
“Yeah!” Ott said, high and happy and out of his mind. “Don’t you think that’ll be something? Getting drunk, legally, with a bunch of people, and then when you see something you don’t like? Being able to do something about it.”
“I feel like, overall?” Bastien said. “Avoiding getting hit is a pretty good life goal.”
“You only say that because you’ve never been hit,” Tariq said, lighting two cigarettes and handing me one. I could taste the wet of his lips when I put it between my own.
“Maybe,” Bastien said.
“Wait, what?” Ott’s voice was high and shocked.
“What do you mean, what?” Bastien said.
“Oh, here we go,” Tariq said. He went back to the soccer ball. The cigarette bounced between his lips as he moved.
“Have you never been in a fight?”
“No,” Bastien said. “Am I supposed to be ashamed of that?”
“Never been punched in the face?”
“No.”
Ott howled and leaped up to stand beside Tariq. “You’re kidding me. You’re lying—right? That’s a joke?”
“No. What, that’s supposed to make me less of a man or something? Because I don’t look forward to getting in fights?”
Ott stared at his best friend, mouth open, face askew, his grasp of the English language inadequate to express what he was thinking. Seeing, perhaps, just how wide the gulf between them truly was. Reminded again of how different they were; forced to contemplate the possibility that maybe he simply did not know the person he liked the best in the world.
Or maybe he was just passing gas.
“I’m going to punch you in the face,” Ott said.
Bastien laughed. “No, you’re not.”
“Yeah I am. I have to! You can’t go through life without knowing what that’s like. I’m doing you a favor.”
“Stop playing.”
“No one’s playing,” Ott said, and stepped into a fighter’s stance.
“Holy shit,” Bastien said. “You’re really serious?”
“Stand up.”
“I won’t.”
“Suit yourself,” Ott said, and drew his fist back.
Bastien looked to Tariq and me for confirmation that this was crazy, or wanting one of us to step in. I avoided eye contact, and Tariq said, “Good luck with that.”
Bastien stood up. “I’m sorry, buddy, but I’m not going to let you punch me in the face.”
“You can’t stop me either. So, what happens next?”
They stared at each other. I could see the bonds between them flicker and knot in the air, watch the colors shift.
Finally, Bastien smiled. “Do it,” he said. And before the sentence had ended, Ott punched him in the mouth. Hard enough to knock Bastien back down to sit-lie on the bed of the truck.
“Well that sucked,” he said, after a long silence. He pressed his hand to his mouth. When he took it away his palm was wet with blood.
“Was it good for you, too?” Tariq asked Ott, who frowned down at his fist and said nothing. Tariq spun the soccer ball on his finger, faster and faster, and then, slipping me the tiniest of tiny winks, he tossed it up and tilted his head and caught it on his cheek, where it continued to spin. Because of course it did. Then he tossed it into the bed of the truck and jumped up after it. Ott followed him. When Tariq lay on his back to look up at the sky, I sidled in beside him and did the same. The other two followed suit.
“You’re right about stars, Matt,” Bastien said, hands behind his head. “They’re totally trippy.”
We lay there, looking up. The four of us—friends?
Why had I wanted so badly to believe that they’d hurt my sister? Because it hurt my heart less to believe that something terrible had happened to her than to know she abandoned me. Because a Mission of Bloody Revenge had given me a purpose, let me fool myself into believing there was something I could do about it.
“Anybody know any constellations?” Tariq asked.
“The Big Dipper’s over there,” I said, pointing. “Beyond that I don’t know.”
“Back in the day we’d know,” Tariq said. “We’d have to. In order to be hunters, warriors, in order to navigate . . . The modern world has spoiled us. Filled our heads up with stupid, meaningless knowledge.”
“You’re only saying that because you’re gonna fail your precalc test next week,” I said.
“These are unconnected facts,” he said, and kicked me.
“Don’t the stars make you feel so small?” Bastien said, and there was a slight roughness around his words from where his lip was already swollen.
“People always say that,” Ott said. “I don’t understand it. The stars make me feel . . .” I could hear the gears turning, the struggle as Ott tried to cram the whole huge tapestry of his thoughts into the meager words of his vocabulary. “They make me feel big. A giant cosmic accident. Like—what are the chances that I would even happen? You know? If my parents hadn’t met, if the dinosaurs never died out . . . we might not be here. But here we are. And we get to look up at the stars at night. Who would appreciate them if we didn’t?”
“Whoa, Ott,” Tariq said. “Unlikely Voice of Profundity.”
“Profundity means deep thoughts, Ott,” Bastien said.
“I knew that,” Ott said, and then, after a second, laughed and said, “I totally didn’t know that.”
Tariq’s fingers found mine. Our hands clasped in the dark, secretly, watching the stars, and Ott was right: I felt strong, I felt lucky, to be here, to be alive, to be able to appreciate what was wonderful in the world, even as I let what was ugly in it tear me apart.