No More Dead Kids

by Thomas Marshall

  CHAPTER 10.

  Going To Pasalacqua

  I THANKED MR. DARCY again once school resumed, handing him a bag of Café Moto coffee beans I picked up in downtown as a thank you. I also friend requested Lila, she accepted the same day. Later that month, after some weekends of cramming, I’d take the SAT for what I hoped to be the first and only time, and by the middle of February, I got my results. Twenty-three-hundred, I was damn happy I didn’t have to sit through another day of standardized testing until the AP’s came around. My parents asked what happened to the other 100 points; though I was hoping they’d instead congratulate on the 2300 I did manage to score. I was instead reminded that nothing was ever good enough for them, or at least for my mother, who really hammered the point home; my father, on the other hand, had checked out some time ago. I, on the other hand, was quite happy with good enough. But it’s still ridiculous what an average kid has to do to get into college nowadays, barring extreme extenuating circumstance and extreme money; on top of good grades a kid needs multiple extracurriculars, work experience or internships (not like the kind my grandpa had), hours and hours of community service, and a good helping of pure luck to have a chance of beating an acceptance rate under 10%. We wear ourselves thin by the time we graduate, and for what? Debt and the absence of employment? I don’t know.

  . . . . .

  Junior year would begin to wind down, then wind back up as finals and APs came around, and I continued the normal apathetic crawl towards summertime. I’d row, go to regattas (competitions), and go to regionals and then the season would be over; I’d study, do homework, take tests, then take AP’s and final exams and the scholastic year would be over; I’d hang with Dan, and complain about falling into what seemed like the trap of being a confidant to Ken; I’d listen to, talk to, and read Kenneth’s writing; I’d sit in my room, listen to music, and jerk off and wonder how many future Einstein’s or future Hitler’s I’d just thrown away in that tissue.

  . . . . .

  I’d go to two dinners and one Saturday barbeque, at the Darcy’s before summer came. At the barbeque, I came guessing that I’d help cook with the Mr. but was mistaken when I was only there early to watch him grill. He refused to let me help prep, saying that he’d love for me to cook for them some other time, but this was his treat, and he loved grilling. And so, while he flipped meat and vegetables on his big Smokey Joe, humming Clarence Clemons’ closing sax from ‘Thunder Road’ and drinking a San Diego craft beer, Lila and I chatted next to him. When Mr. Darcy began to sing Bon Jovi, she invited me upstairs to listen to ‘good music’ in her room.

  She opened the bedroom door and showed me her pastel room, illuminated by fairy lights; that’s always such an intimate experience, being shown someone else’s room, you’ve just been let inside someone else’s world. I looked around, saw Polaroid photos, shelves of books (some were beautifully old and hard-covered, others were wonderfully worn paperbacks that she must’ve read five times apiece, including all seven Harry Potter’s as well as John Green’s entire canon of work), and a trunk of LP’s. She was the kind of girl that had a record player. She sifted through the vinyl’s passing every Beatles record, AM, Pure Heroine, New Skin for the Old Ceremony, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, The Queen Is Dead, Born to Run, Blood on the Tracks, Darkness on the Edge of Town, Contra, Bookends, Making Movies, and a plethora of others, until she picked out the brand new Born to Die: Paradise Edition LP, put down side A of record 3, set the needle, and let it play. As she reclined on her bed the record began its soft crackly whisper; violins swelled, a piano pulsed, and then a sultry voice cooed out the line “I’ve been out on that open road, you can be my full-time daddy, white and gold…”

  I looked around, and noticing there wasn’t a chair, I sat at the edge of the bed, looking around the room as the next song began to play, “Play house, put my favorite record on, get down, get your crystal method on, you were like, tall, tan, driving ‘round the city, flirtin’ with the girls like, you’re so pretty. Springsteen is the king, don’t you think?” I was looking at Lila stretched out pretty over her white sheets.

  In that moment I felt the feeling of butterflies fluttering inside of me, and a sinking fear gripping me as my heart swelled in my chest. What was I doing, I should just digest the butterflies and move on. But in that moment the walls of apathy I had built up, the constant compulsion not to fall in love, the urge not to put my heart on my sleeve only to be broken, were all beginning to be shattered. That moment seemed to last forever as I looked at her hair unfurled out above her, her taught, porcelain stomach stretched out from under her blouse and above her blue jeans, her thick and dark eyelashes, her blood-red lips, and her slender limbs all laid out atop a downy cloud of bedsheets in-between four posts, one of which I reclined on.

  And as the violins swelled into the next song, Lila’s father called out that dinner was ready. She got up, removed the needle from the spinning record before the lyrics started, and walked me downstairs. We all ate, I helped Mr. Darcy with cleaning the grill as Lila, and the missus did the dishes. And I left, listening to the road and the music in my head on the way home. I wish I could have just shrugged it off, but she was already the voice inside my head. And when I got home, I laid in my bed in my dark room and saw her illuminated, imagining her beside me. So yeah, I guess I started to fall in love the way I fell asleep, jerking off to forget the day and then reluctantly.

  . . . . .

  Okay, so I wasn’t really head-over-heels in love immediately, I was more so just in lust at first. But that still scared me, I didn’t want to want someone. I didn’t want her to open up to me (well, you know what I mean), I didn’t want to get to know her, I didn’t want to really fall for her. Because I know how it would end, she’d just turn me down. No wonder Ken’s so fucking depressed, he puts himself out there and is rejected all the goddamned time; I just can’t do that to myself. So, instead, I just tried to digest those butterflies in my stomach and move on. I failed miserably.

  CHAPTER 11.

  Modern Jesus

  THERE WASN’T MUCH ceremony for the end of junior year, we just got ‘senior’ class shirts and were then ‘promoted’ at an assembly, and then it was summer. I was expected to drive up the coast with my mom to visit colleges (at least only to the private schools, UC schools didn’t take visits into account when tallying applications), write a personal essay, fill out a bunch more applications, and be ready in every way to hit ‘submit’ on the Common App and UC system app by the time November rolled around. But aside from those haughty tasks, I was free to spend another aimless summer doing next to nothing.

  The closest thing to ceremony was the last lecture of the year Mr. Darcy gave us in class, and us all reading our last pieces out loud.

  Finally, Mr. Darcy talked about what he said was the most important sentence in the English language, Jesus wept.

  “Jesus wept,” he started, “the shortest sentence in the whole Bible. Two words, probably only one in Greek because of the stuff that they do with subject-in-verb endings. If Occam was right, this means it’s the most important sentence in the Bible too. The most important sentence in the most important book ever written. I’m not making a religious statement, I’m just going by the numbers. The Bible, it’s in the top of every bestseller list ever, everywhere, #1 New York Times Best Seller every week since King James read it himself; the only question is, Fiction sellers list or Non-Fiction? But that’s beside the point. It’s the most translated book in history, the most copies printed of any book ever, it’s a bound collection of words that have shaped human history, caused wars, inspired invention, progress, destruction, hatred, hope, and everything in between.

  “But anyway, back to the main character in Part 2. ‘Jesus wept.’ Why is this important? It’s because it’s the breaking point, it’s the humility, it’s the humanit
y in a literal God shown for the first, last, only time in the whole religious text. Jesus was a man, plain and simple, and in two words he’s stripped of all of his divinity. The miracles, everything, they all mean nothing in the face of death because just like every single other human on this earth, Death terrified Jesus. God the father never had to contend with that, immortality has its benefits therein; but when he decided to become man and live that life on earth, walk in the footsteps of his own creations, Death terrified even Him. Jesus wept because he was staring into that same abyss that we all one day look into, and in that moment God was no more of a man than any other sack of meat meandering through his hour upon the stage. So, Jesus did weep, not for our sins or our souls, but for his own life. And in that moment, he was man.

  “Dante said that the greatest sin a man could commit was Despair because Despair is the loss of hope in salvation; when Jesus wept, he cried tears of desperation. He was as scared and naked as Adam and Eve cast out of Paradise, he was as hopeless as the drunken Noah, he was as lost as Moses in the desert, and he was as desperate as Job. God had to face the one thing he never had to before, the one thing he dangled above his creations since the beginning of time, Death. Cold, black, empty Death. He wept,” Mr. Darcy paused for a moment, the class rapt in his attention, “I’d dismiss class now, but this is a pretty grim point, so I’ll say this, what I hope you’ve learned this year in this class is that words have power. You have power. Do you want to know the one thing that all writers have in common?”

  The class nodded “yes.”

  “They Write. As a high school student, you have all the building blocks you need to be a writer, that’s it. Now all you need to do is write. Write every day, write anything, just write. And read. And live. Get as many experiences as you can and put them to paper. Writing is an incredible gift and an incredible responsibility, you can help people, educate them, and shape the world. Or you can just write for yourself, and in doing so becoming a better, more empathetic, and wiser person along the way. And that’s what this class has been about. Writing is an incredible and positive tool, but every single person in this room can use it and get better at it too. I can’t wait to see what you all accomplish. And it’s been a pleasure reading and hearing from all of you this year. Thank you, and have a great summer.”

  The class left with their thoughts about words, and power, and death. I thought about death. I wondered why this was though. I wondered why people were so afraid of death, why we couldn’t all just be like Meursault and not care. Then I wondered why we not only fear death but hate suicide (aside from the aforementioned sacrificial suicide). Why do we hate suicides so much? Is it because we’re angry? Is it because we think that it is the most selfish thing one can do? No, I started to think. It’s because we’re jealous. We are supremely jealous of the courage that it takes to truly do the one thing that takes your own life into your own hands. We think about it, we think about it all the time. That’s why we’re so afraid of heights. Because we know it’d be so easy, just one step further and we end it. But we’re afraid. More than pain, more than our suffering, more than anything else we’re afraid of death, and we hate those who prove to us that they are not. So, why do we hate suicide so much? Jealousy, envy, fear. I didn’t want to think about that more though. I didn’t want to fall into despair ever again.

  For the last assignment, Ken and I both wrote poems, I thought it might have been a weird copout to write about rowing, but I really like the poem.

  “The world is a different place when you look at it backwards.

  In rowing, as opposed to life, you watch the world move away from you,

  And get smaller as it turns into the past.

  In life, you are always expecting,

  Moving forward as things grow and pass by quickly,

  Things become inconsequential as you always expect to pass them.

  In rowing, you wait, and watch,

  As the world moves from you, you can watch things, and places, and people as they get smaller and disappear.

  It allows you time, beautiful time,

  To sit and watch and think on all that is around you and in you,

  As it moves away from you and into the past.

  I feel time and control slip away from me,

  Like sand between my fingers,

  And I surrender.”

  Ken wrote a more direct and classically, hopelessly romantic poem. He read it aloud like he was The Bard reincarnate.

  “I am a fool and a beggar at the feet of a goddess,

  I am not in your shadow, but always behind you,

  You are there and always have been, just as I,

  Yet I know nothing of you,

  Except what you have told me and the little I have heard.

  But yet, this that I know, I love, and want to know more.

  I have been a fool, and not chosen to know you,

  And now that that is all I want, I am left to beg.

  Looking up at you, in perfection and perfect humility,

  As grace, and beauty, and kindness, and genius,

  And everything that I miss and am without.

  Words escape the feeling you give me,

  When you are near, or in my thoughts.

  The words home, and warmth, and contempt, and security, and peace and belonging,

  And Love,

  Cannot even come close,

  Cannot even come close because with each of these things

  Is the pain that Love and Want carry on their backs.

  The deep pain of seeing you and knowing you,

  And knowing that we are not together, and knowing

  Knowing that I do not deserve you.

  So now, all I can do is tell you.

  I Love you.

  I need you.

  I Love you.”

  I wondered if it was about Brooke. Maybe Beatrice, he’d mentioned that name before too. Either way, it was met with the same reverent eye-rolling a poem of such subject should always inspire. And then that was it, I’d never be in a class taught by Mr. Darcy again. I mean, I’d see him around, but I’d still never be his student ever again.

  CHAPTER 12.

  Mr. Fish

  ONCE SUMMER BEGAN, I spent a lot of time with Dan, I spent time with Ken (being out of school seemed good for him, though being home did not), I emailed with Mr. Darcy, I occasionally messaged Lila over Facebook to say ‘hi,’ and I started reading On The Road: The Original Scroll. Lila told me she was in the middle of re-reading Lolita, a favorite of hers, as was The Bell Jar, (something I would later be told is known as a ‘red flag’). But, of course, she also love-loved Gatsby, which was good to hear, not that I needed more reason to respect her tastes in things. She was really smart, she was close to if not at the top of her class, but she was far from nerdy, she was just very driven. As if I didn’t need more reasons to like this girl though. I tried to take it all in stride, to try to just be friends with her, and to see if anything happens, but I don’t really care if anything doesn’t though, I tried to insulate myself that way.

  Dan and I would hang out and toss around the idea of going on a cross-country road trip that summer, no, next summer, after we graduated, as a sort of victory lap or something. We entertained a lot of great fantasies, backpacking through Europe, taking the Trans-Siberian railway, summiting Everest, but this one seemed more tangible though, and it sounded pretty great. I couldn’t appreciate Dan more for being such a constant support in my life. I’d call him a brother again, but I do realize how weird that is coming from an only child, so I’ll leave it at ‘bro.’

  Ken would complain to me
about finding out about ‘his group’ doing summer things he wasn’t told about or invited to. He told me he was ‘falling hopelessly in love with Brooke’ again. And he’d send me passages from his typed journal for my review.

  I spent all of yesterday and today reading a Tumblr blog that I found accidentally, it was Brooke’s. Well, I didn’t find it, my friend Reuben did; he told me about it the day before, he said he came across it when he was Googling himself or something, even though I don’t think he’s mentioned on the blog at all. I think that it was just meant for her and her friend from her old school. She doesn’t really say anything about me; I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing yet. She did have a post about her ideal guy, so I think I might just try some of those things out; I’m not adding muscle anytime soon, I’m still a fucking twig, at least I’ve got the tall, and dark hair down.

  I think the title of the blog was ‘Limerence’ (I don’t actually know what that means though). I don’t remember many specifics, but this was one of the first things I remember seeing:

  “Things I love:

  •How inexplicably cute Kurt Cobain is in the music video for ‘In Bloom’