by Barry Lyga
“Oh, well, that’s all right then. I can’t believe I’m gonna let you put that diseased shit in my player. It’s gonna infect it with the digital equivalent of herpes.”
While we wait for the un-fast-forward-able commercials to finish, Evan asks, “What are you going to do while I’m gone this summer?”
“Oh, didn’t you know? When you’re out of Brookdale, the whole town packs up and goes into storage.”
“Stop it.”
“No, seriously. Everything just shuts down and we all go into our charging closets to receive software upgrades so that we’re ready when you come back.”
“You’re such a smart-ass.” He lazily triggers the remote when the menu comes up, and groans with mock horror. “Jesus, even the Disney logo looks ancient!”
I throw a pillow at him.
By morning, we’re reduced to monosyllables, grunting, eyes lidded, stomachs churning and gurgling with unholy concoctions conjured from the deepest recesses of our minds and Evan’s fridge. We’ve watched nearly sixteen hours of movies, half of them from the last two years, the other half dating most recently from 1995. The sun has risen, and we’re bleary-eyed and incoherent even in the confines of our own skulls.
By tradition, we have to stay awake until eight o’clock, when Evan’s family has its big Sunday breakfast, imported from the 1950s and updated for modern times, Mr. Danforth at the head of the table with an iPad instead of a newspaper, Richard Jr. snarkily tossing mals mots from his side of the table.
Mrs. Danforth wouldn’t risk her coiffure or her silk or her chemically enhanced complexion or her reputation by essaying something as prosaic as cooking, so the Danforths have a cook named Angus who comes in on weekends and for special occasions to use the million-dollar kitchen.
We eat and then it’s time for me to go, my head buzzing and muzzy and all out of sorts. As I pass over the front-door threshold, it lands on me that I won’t see Evan again this summer, and I suddenly feel like a small child whose mother was right there a minute ago but has now disappeared. I want to hug him, to cling to him, and I’m not sure why; I manage, instead, to give him a grin and a clap on the shoulder. I tell him to have fun learning how to rule the world, and he tells me he will.
In the car with Mom, it hits me anew: a summer without Evan.
I know what that means. What it will mean, this change in the status quo. During the school year, I always had school to distract me. Over the summers, I always had Evan.
Now, for the first time in a long time, I’ll be alone with myself and with the voice from far back in my brain.
I thought I might be sad, leaving Evan this last time, knowing I’ll never see him again. But instead, I’m happy. Happy that I’m leaving him with good memories. At least I accomplished that much.
And now I don’t know quite what to expect.
Or maybe I do. And that’s both the problem and the solution.
A little more than a week into summer vacation, I’ve managed to keep myself together. It’s not time. Not yet. Still waiting for the Yes to come at night, waiting patiently. I have nothing but time. I have the rest of my life, literally.
I get some e-mails from Evan. I keep up with his Instagram and Tumblr. That helps.
It’s not that I’m trying to forestall things, but I’m not not trying either. I’m exercising control. There are no rules. Nothing to say I can’t try to enjoy one last week, one last month. There are books to read and movies to watch and things still worth experiencing, for now.
A job is not one of those things. I’m not going to spend my last days on earth at work. I’ve convinced my mother that I deserve at least a small break, a caesura, if you will, between the end of school and the beginning of my “productive endeavor,” whatever that will be. She’s backed off for a little while, but I know that won’t last.
I can’t tell Mom. Can’t tell her that her insistence on my productivity doesn’t matter. That her insistence that I think about my future doesn’t matter. None of that matters.
I won’t be around in the future. The decision has already been made. I won’t be around. Whether it’s now or in a week or in a few months.
It’s going to happen. Soon.
I’m almost relieved.
One of my more annoying but—in perspective—mellow failings as a son is that I never, ever think to get the mail. It just never occurs to me because mail is mostly bills (for Mom), catalogs (for Mom), and junk mail (for Mom or “Resident”). Mail doesn’t ping my radar.
So even though I’ve been home all day with nothing to do, it still falls to Mom to trek down to the end of the driveway when she gets home and fish the mail out of the box.
Today she comes in shuffling the deck of mail. I feel my usual momentary pang of guilt for not getting the mail earlier. And she looks up at me quizzically and asks, “Do you know someone named ‘Fahim’?”
It takes a moment to break through. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
The envelope is small. Thank-you card sized. My name is printed in such neat, regimented letters that for a moment I think it’s a font, but I can feel the slight, irregular indentations from the pen.
“Are you going to fondle it or are you going to open it?” Mom asks.
I tear it open. Inside is a top-fold card with an American flag waving over script that reads, JOIN US ON THE FOURTH…
Inside, a list of what-when-where-who, with handwritten answers:
WHAT: FOURTH OF JULY COOKOUT
WHEN: FOURTH OF JULY, OF COURSE! :) STARTING AT ONE P.M.
WHERE: 149 FOX TAIL DRIVE
WHO: THE FAHIM FAMILY
And a postscript: WHY—JUST OUR WAY OF SAYING HELLO TO OUR NEW NEIGHBORS!
And then another postscript, this one in a different ink and in a different handwriting: Whatever you do, don’t ride your bike here. I want you to make it in one piece. —Aneesa
That night, I look up my name online. Sebastian means nothing more exotic or interesting than “from the town of Sebaste.” My name is pointless.
I look up Aneesa, too, and I can’t help it—I smile. It’s nice.
So, yes, I’ll go to the party. I’ll see her again. Because…
Well, I guess just because I want to.
I spend the days between the invite and the party playing old video games I pirated online. They’re so old that the hardware to run them hasn’t been made since my parents were kids—games like Pitfall II and Cosmic Ark and Atlantis. You have to download the ROMs from sketchy sites, then run them with an emulator that tricks your MacBook into thinking it’s a two-kilobyte Atari 2600 from 1980.
I am loathe to admit it, but this love of all things old stems from my father. Old junk from his childhood, left crammed into Lola’s room, just waiting to be unearthed by a bored kid with too much time on his hands. Things from another era, an era that predated me and anything I’d ever done or imagined. They seemed to be from a better world.
And suddenly I was obsessed, haunting garage sales and estate sales and the corners of the Internet for this stuff.
Like the games. I love these old games. The simplicity of them. You master them. You play them. You play until you lose. There are no complicated button combos or secret cheat codes or hidden trophies to collect. The achievement lies in lasting as long as you can, until you die.
Like life.
Last as long as you can. Hold on as long as possible. And there’s no shame in losing, because everyone loses. It’s just that everyone has a different score.
And the scores don’t really matter after all. They disappear when you turn off the game.
Mom says I should bring something to the party, even though there is nothing in the invitation to indicate this. “It’s polite,” she says. “It’s what people do.” And I wonder in which class do people learn this fact about modern life? What if I missed the class, skipped over it to take chemistry or biology? What other important social ingredients does my etiquette larder lack?
“And what if I don
’t bother?” I ask her. “What then? Why is being a little out of step such a major felony?”
“Just do it. Don’t examine it; don’t dissect it.”
“You’d think if they wanted me to bring something, they would say so.”
“They don’t want you to. But you do anyway.”
“That makes no sense. Doesn’t it make more sense for us to agree on something, together?”
She sighs, but it’s not her annoyed sigh. It’s her my son is so goofy and so smart sigh, the much rarer variety. But since things are going well right now, I figure maybe this is a good time to broach another topic: “Like back on the last day of school. You wanted to talk and I didn’t and—”
“What do you mean?”
“When you brought up Lola and I threw up?”
Her face goes tight. “Not now.”
“Look, I just wanted to… I’m just thinking that maybe we need a way to talk about it. Her. You know? Isn’t it time?” Past time. I should try, I should make a real effort, before I go. Go away.
With a grimace, she flaps her hands. “You’re going to be late. Don’t be rude to these people.”
Typical. She brings it up; I recoil. I bring it up; she recoils. We’re never in sync.
And there’s no arguing with parental authority. At her insistence, I bring a two-liter bottle of soda, as well as a truly gigantic bag of potato chips. Balancing the two of them while riding my bike would be impossible, so I have no choice but to accede to Aneesa’s snarky wish and walk to her house.
The cookout is attended by maybe fifteen people, a decent enough total for a backyard barbecue, perhaps, but a poor representation of the neighborhood in general. Easily four hundred people live in this development. How many did the Fahims invite? I’m willing to bet most of them.
There’s a red, white, and blue paper tablecloth on a picnic table piled high with bags of chips and pretzels, a card table stocked with drinks and cups (to which I add my two-liter bottle, it vanishing like a chameleon among its fellows), and a large plastic tub filled with ice and bottles of water. No beer, I notice.
The grill billows forth great gusts of fragrant smoke. I take a peek—burgers and dogs, along with delicious-smelling basted barbecue chicken skewers.
“It’s Alexander the Great!” Aneesa’s dad says, spying me lurking by the grill.
“I didn’t cut your cords,” I remind him.
“More like Theseus, then,” he amends.
“Maybe more like Ariadne.” Theseus navigated the labyrinth, true, but Ariadne was the one who gave him the ball of twine and the idea in the first place, so let’s give her her due.
He laughs and slaps my shoulder, then wields his barbecue tongs with a flourish, gesturing to the grill. “What can I get you?”
I’m not a big eater, but it smells so good that I want one of each. “I’ll try the chicken.”
“Good man!” He tongs a juicy skewer onto a paper plate for me and presents it with a little bow. “Enjoy. Aneesa’s around here somewhere.…”
“I’ll find her. Thanks, Mr. Fahim.”
He pauses just a moment, then says, “Call me Joe. Everyone does.”
“Okay, Mr. Fahim.”
“Joe,” he admonishes, shaking his tongs in faux outrage.
“Joe. Right.”
I step off to the side with my skewer and do what I do best: watch. Mingling has never been my strong suit. My public life began with concentrated doses of overwhelming pity (“You poor boy!”) before transitioning into a bewildered scrutiny (“He’s still around?”) and then finally settling into a resigned acceptance of my continued existence, marked mostly by tight smiles and sharp nods and general avoidance of conversation.
Most of the people in the neighborhood ought to be able to manage at least that level of politeness. I don’t need people to approach me, just as long as they don’t outright avoid me. Mr. Marchetti and his wife are here, without her son, Don. Too bad. He’s older than I am, but I could have at least made small talk about the comic book he publishes in the school lit journal. He’s probably off somewhere with his girlfriend, a noted psychotic who has spent as much time in a mental ward as at school.
The chicken is delicious, slightly cumin-y, with a hint of garlic in the sauce. It’s skewered with marinated onions and peppers, and I’m in some sort of chicken heaven, scanning the backyard for Aneesa, thinking how great it is that I can joke around with Mr. Fahim, when it hits me: The Fahims don’t know about me.
About who I am and what I’ve done.
If I hadn’t come to the party, there would be no reason for the topic of me to come up, but with my presence, how can it not? How can someone here not mention the past to Mr. Fahim?
My gut contracts with fear and guilt. I feel like I’ve been getting to know Aneesa under false pretenses. Getting to know all of them. Like Mr. Fahim would never have told me to call him Joe if he knew what I’d done. He came here and he opened their house to me and he was nice to me and I smiled and shook his hand and lied.
The chicken has changed not at all, but my appetite for it plummets. I look around for the trash can, wondering if I can surreptitiously dump the chicken and slip away before anyone realizes I’m even here.
As I sidle into the shadow cast by the house, I notice Mr. Fahim double-checking something with a tall blond woman near the sodas. This has got to be Aneesa’s mom, and there’s a part of me that’s surprised to see she’s not in hijab. And then I wonder why I’m surprised and I wonder why I wonder so many things. Which is probably a sign that I should get away from decent people and go home.
The trash can is under the deck, on the other side of the house. I make my way there and see Aneesa, coming down the stairs, wearing a flowing skirt with a loose white shirt and a head scarf in patterned red, white, and blue. It’s not quite an American flag, but it’s festive, and it makes her face seem to glow.
“Chicken no good?” she asks, noticing me about to dump it into the trash.
“No, no, it’s great.” I make a show of eating some. “It’s great.” Fortunately, I don’t have to lie because it really is great. It’s my gut that isn’t completely on the level right now.
She quirks her lips into a wry smile, but says nothing about my aborted chicken disposal. “Did you just get here?”
“Couple minutes ago.”
“Where’s your mom?” She peers around.
“Oh. I, uh, I didn’t know she was invited.”
“Of course she was invited!”
I deflect and shrug. “I don’t think I can stay very long.”
“I get it. Stay as long as you can.”
And the next thing I know, the sun is low along the horizon, its light stretched deep pink like pulled tufts of cotton candy. The coals on the grill glow like spots of lava on obsidian. Aneesa has located a couple of sets of clean skewers and scrounged a bag of marshmallows, which we’ve speared and now drape into the heat still wafting up from the grill.
I should have left. I couldn’t. Let’s add one more row in Sebastian’s ledger of guilt and shame.
Mr. and Mrs. Fahim (she wants me to call her Sara, and I manage to do so out loud, but not in my head) bundled the trash into large garbage bags, then gathered the paper tablecloth into its own sack and stuffed it into the big plastic toter. I should have helped. I’m useless.
“Neesa, we’re headed to the fireworks,” her dad says. “Sebastian, can we give you a lift?”
Before I can speak, Aneesa says, “We’re just gonna stick around here, Dad.”
Mr. Fahim nods slowly. “Don’t go inside until the grill’s out.”
“I won’t.”
Mrs. Fahim comes to her, favoring me with a small but sincere smile. She kisses her daughter on the forehead, whispers something just below my hearing, and then Aneesa’s parents are gone, leaving us alone with the marshmallows and the grill and the quiet and each other.
“Here’s a secret,” I tell her, before the quiet becomes too loud. “Yo
u don’t have to go to the school parking lot and fight traffic to see the fireworks. Most of the good ones will come up right over the tree line.” I point. “Mom and I usually sit on our back porch and watch them.”
“Speaking of your mom… I thought you weren’t able to stay very long.”
I hope the darkening night conceals my blush. “Well, if I left now, I’d miss the marshmallows.”
She groans with regret. “I. Am. So. Stuffed. I can’t believe I’m contemplating this.” She waggles her skewer.
“Everything was great.”
“My dad’s awesome on the grill. Both of my parents are good cooks.”
“I can cook.” I don’t know why I just told her that.
“Really?”
“Well, pretty much just pizza.”
She laughs. “Does your recipe involve a lot of—” She mimes tapping on a phone screen.
“No, no. I mean it. I make really good pizza.” Why am I arguing with her about this?
“You’ll have to prove it to me.”
“How?”
“Make a pizza for me sometime.”
One of the two marshmallows on my skewer is golden brown. I pluck it off and pop it in my mouth just long enough to suck off the outer carbonized shell, its burnt sweetness hot and strong on my tongue. The gooey center I respear with the skewer and put back over the heat.
She laughs. “How many times are you going to do that?”
“As many as it takes.”
“We have a whole bag of marshmallows. You don’t have to make them last.”
It hits me: The first time I saw that toasted marshmallow trick was from my father. I shut down the memory immediately, force myself back to the present.
Aneesa has snatched one of her own marshmallows and tucked it between her lips. Her mouth is comically distended around the whitish-brown plug of sugar and her throat works for a moment. Then, slowly, the marshmallow splits down the middle and melted goo plops onto the grass at her feet. Her tongue, coated in marshmallow, wags for a moment.