A Very, Very Bad Thing

by Jeffery Self

  I decided it’d be best to leave it for one night and text him tomorrow.

  The lights were on and I saw the silhouettes of both my parents through the window. I was dreading having to walk into whatever had transpired since the morning’s dramafest but figured I might as well go ahead and rip off the Band-Aid.

  The house reeked of sage, which wasn’t necessarily uncommon. It usually suggested a special occasion, and when I turned to the living room and spotted my parents seated, holding hands, and chanting ancient Sanskrit aloud, I saw that this evening was no exception.

  “Good evening, Marley,” Mom said, looking up at me, her face smeared in lines of colored paint, something she’d picked up and racially appropriated from some ritual in some country I’d forgotten about her visiting. “Beautiful timing. Come, join us, we’re healing.”

  Beautiful was not how I, personally, would have described this timing. Nor was I in the mood to partake in my parents’ “healing” … but what else was new? I plopped down beside them; their faces shimmered with reflections of the messy pile of stones and crystals sitting before them.

  “Marley, as you know, this morning, Greg and I were in the midst of a tailspin of negativity,” Mom purred as she took my hand, each of us locking fingers with the person next to us, forming one of their little circles of enlightenment (their term, not mine).

  “Sharon and I exchanged some charged words and negative energy.” Dad squeezed both my and Mom’s hands a little tighter with each word. “But we are here to release that deprecation.”

  “Let us conjure the gloomy auras surrounding this house, ourselves, our financial woes, our morning. Let us bring all dubious spirits into our realm. Let them hover here,” Mom called out to the ceiling, as if it was going to answer her. The only difference between having parents who are extreme hippies and parents who are witches is that witches would actually make the ceiling talk, whereas hippies just like to stare at it.

  They went through all their usual ritualistic antics: the chanting of mantras, the deep breathing, the offering up of our mistakes like sacrificial goats. I remained pretty tuned out but was happy to see that they were okay. Or rather, their version of okay.

  As Mom began lighting the candles of peace, I asked, “So have you guys figured out what to do about the house yet?”

  Both of their faces fell.

  “Marley, this isn’t about that. This is about healing.” Mom glared at me, the flames from her peace candle lighting her from below.

  “Houses are tangible, Marley,” Dad said. “Money is tangible. We can only figure out the tangible details of life if we’ve figured out the bigger things first.”

  “But, you guys, the bigger things can’t exist if we’re suddenly homeless because you screwed up and lost our house!” I said, bold for once in my life.

  “Marley, that is not the enlightened way to look at all of this.” Mom’s words were sharp and pointed, like the amethyst quartz scattered in front of her.

  “Well, maybe we don’t need to look at this with enlightenment,” I snapped back. “Maybe we should be figuring out what the hell is going on and doing something about it!”

  Both of their faces twisted into frowns of disappointment. They didn’t shout back at me—that wasn’t their way. That might have actually helped, might have at least made me feel like I was being heard.

  “I think you should go upstairs and cool down,” Dad said coldly. He didn’t even need to finish his sentence, because I was one step ahead of him.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Christopher’s parents and the difference between them and my own. Sure, we agreed on very little. Sure, they preached some pretty harmful stuff. And sure, they fought against the acceptance of their own son so much that they were constantly sending him off to be “cured” … but, in my current state of annoyance, I couldn’t help but respect that at least they fought for something.

  Respect is a big word, I guess, especially when talking about two people who would likely rather I never existed at all than kiss their son.

  I grabbed my phone and began typing a message to Christopher.

  Hey. Long day here. My parents are totally nuts. Kinda wanna crawl into a hole and sleep for the next year until I can move out.

  I sent it before rereading it, in my brave attempt to be unpassive, but I regretted it immediately. Before I could have time to completely hate myself, he responded.

  Join the club. I’m grounded.

  Why? I wrote back.

  YOU, he typed, followed by an emoji with its tongue out, as if anyone would ever actually make that face.

  REALLY? I asked.

  Wanna sneak out and meet me for fro-yo?

  This was literally all I wanted and hadn’t even known it.

  YES!!!!!! I wrote, then after a second thought, deleted the exclamation points and simply sent: YES.

  Fro-yo (or frozen yogurt, as it used to be called before people found it too time-consuming to include those extra few letters) is the cheapest imitation of ice cream. Yet despite my strong views on this particular dessert front, I found myself sitting at the back table on the patio of Yogurt Time with Christopher, and I wouldn’t have chosen to be anywhere else in the entire world.

  “So then they sit me down in the living room, which is the one room of the house we never use. Wherever we are, they treat the living room like some museum for ugly furniture,” Christopher explained through spoonfuls of white-chocolate-chip-covered yogurt. “So when they said they wanted to talk in the living room, I knew something was up.”

  He looked so cute in his T-shirt for a sports team I’d never heard of, his skinny freckled arms hanging out like sticks. I was trying really hard not to grin like an idiot.

  “That’s when they launched into their whole routine about how they’re so worried about me and think I need more help and how they feel like they’re failing as parents and blah, blah, blah,” he went on.

  “More help? Like more of that stupid camp?” I asked.

  He nodded and rolled his eyes at once, teenage sign language for my parents are douche bags.

  “Apparently some colleague of my dad’s runs a ‘retreat’ an hour or so out of town. How convenient, huh?”

  “What did you say?”

  “I didn’t say anything. I knew that if I did, they’d call me combative and out of control. That’s what they always do. So I just sat there with my mouth shut, and when they finished the lecture I asked if I could go get some yogurt. That’s one good thing about having parents who think you being gay is the end of the world—they don’t worry about you going out late for frozen yogurt. My dad’s just worried about his own reputation. People at his mega-church in Missouri flipped out when they heard I might be gay. It’s one of the reasons we moved here, so God forbid that same thing happens again. Literally.” He snorted at his own joke before going on. “I feel like a prick—I keep complaining about my life and you haven’t gotten to complain about yours. And I know that’s, like, your favorite pastime.”

  I could tell he was only half joking and liked that he already knew me well enough to do so.

  “Shut up,” I said, also only half joking. I could tell that he liked that he already knew me so well. “My mom found out about the house.”

  “Oh crap.”

  “Yep. Crap indeed. She and my dad had a big argument this morning—or quarrel, as they call it. For some reason they think the term argument is more destructive than the word quarrel. These are the things they worry about instead of, oh, I don’t know … paying for our home.” I kept going. “So you would think that this would lead them to the first step in fixing the problem, right?”

  Christopher shrugged his broad, bony shoulders.

  “No. Instead I came home tonight to find them meditating with their crystals in the living room over their negativity toward each other.”

  Christopher pursed his lips, holding in a laugh like you would a burp when reading aloud in class, but he couldn’t hold it in and b
urst out into a giggle fit.

  “I’m sorry. Crystals?!” He choked through his laughter.

  “Oh yes. Crystals. Not to mention prayer beads, dream catchers, and every other ritualistic device they can appropriate from other cultures to distract themselves from actually doing something about what’s going on.” I hadn’t even touched my yogurt, so when I shoved a few spoonfuls into my mouth, it was more of a tart room-temperature soup.

  “But they’re not idiots, they can figure it out. Right?” Christopher said, more as a question than as a declaration.

  It was my turn to shrug my less broad but still bony shoulders. We sat looking at each other for a while. Maybe it was just a few seconds, but in my mind it felt like forever because every thought I’d had all day disappeared as we sat there.

  “Are y’all done with these?” an utterly joyless girl in a bright yellow Yogurt Time polo shirt and visor asked, appearing at our table with a tray and snapping me out of the dazed moment.

  “Sure,” I said, handing over my barely touched pool of melted yogurt and Christopher’s completely empty bowl. The yogurt lady walked away without so much as a thank-you.

  “Do you think it gets better?” Christopher asked, scratching his thumbnail across the tabletop, where generations of other teenagers in the same boat had scribbled their initials and various profanities, ancient cave drawings of students who had moved on. “You know, like they’re always saying on TV and stuff?”

  I didn’t have an answer, certainly not the one he was hoping for, because I wasn’t sure if it did get better.

  “I don’t kn—” I started before he cut me off.

  “Yeah.”

  We sat staring at the table for a while. I could make out at least five obscene renderings of the male anatomy drawn with Sharpies.

  “My parents just think the universe will fix everything,” I said, without even meaning to.

  “And mine just think that Jesus will,” Christopher added, as much to himself as to me.

  “But what if they don’t? You know what I think? When you become a teenager, they should teach a class that tells you how much your life is going to suck. How much you’re going to disagree with your parents, how lame school is going to seem, how stuck and alone you’re going to feel as you wait for your life to happen. Because that’s what being our age is like, isn’t it? Just waiting for something, anything, to happen to us.”

  A mosquito landed on Christopher’s hand and I instinctively smacked it. Its small black body oozed tiny drops of blood against Christopher’s pale flesh like the first brush of color on a painting.

  “Sorry,” I said upon his flinch, grabbing a napkin and wiping off the nasty scene. As I did so, he took my hand into his and squeezed it tight.

  “We have to make it better,” he said. “You’ve talked a lot about a purpose or ambition or whatever you want to call it. But the only thing that we should really be worried about is making our lives into the lives we want them to be. Maybe things don’t get better until we make them better.”

  I had never thought of it this way, but he was right. For the first time I felt something I’d only read about or seen in movies: hope.

  “Let’s make each other a promise,” he went on. “It sounds stupid, but let’s do that for each other: Let’s help make things better.”

  “Okay. Deal.”

  “Or we die and get reincarnated into something with less crap to deal with,” Christopher added.

  I laughed.

  “If you could come back as anything, what would it be?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I mean, it’s silly, but, like, I always think about how when I die I hope I come back to life as a ladybug,” he said, rolling his eyes before I could do it for him. “I know that’s a ridiculous thing to say, but ladybugs get to be whoever they want and people don’t care. In fact, people think they’re cute. They’re not even like other bugs. Nobody smacks a ladybug like you just did with that mosquito.”

  “Well, it was biting you,” I said defensively.

  “No, no. I don’t care about that. I’m just saying, who doesn’t smile when they see a ladybug? People just like them for who they are.”

  “I get it,” I said. And I did. “Well, if you’re going to be a ladybug, can I be a ladybug too?”

  He grabbed my hand; his was cold from holding the cup of frozen yogurt.

  “Absolutely.”

  We stayed like this—hands held, eyes locked, hope felt, ladybugs—until the place closed and the joyless fro-yo girl asked us to leave.

  I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A pessimist. I always suck at sports because I just assume I will lose. I rarely study for a test because I figure I’ll forget whatever it is I studied anyway. When I blow out my birthday candles I don’t even wish, I merely wonder what stupid thing the universe will throw at me next.

  There was such a large amount of optimism and kumbaya peace and love BS that my parents had shoved down my throat that by the time I developed thoughts of my own, I resented any kind of sincerity. But that’s the world we all live in. Every blog, every tweet, every TV show, every headline is weighted in this disconnected sarcasm that has become the language of my peers. For some, it is just another passing fad. For others, like me, it gets in our blood and we stop seeing the world for what it can be but instead see it for what it is.

  But do you want to know a secret? I have hated this about myself for as long as I can remember feeling it. But it’s like that thing when you make a silly face and your teacher tells you to stop or else it’ll stay that way. When you see the world through that negative lens for too long, it stays that way. You get stuck in a hopeless outlook that, sure, can make you and your friends laugh as you mock pop culture and whatever is seen as cool and trendy at that particular moment. However, I’ve grown to believe that way of thinking about or seeing the world destroys you bit by bit without you even noticing. You can’t only see and joke about what’s wrong; you also have to force yourself to stop and look around. Then, once you’ve done that, fix what you see is wrong.

  That’s what Christopher did for me. For the first time in my life I stopped and saw the world as something other than a constant punch in the gut. And as we laughed together, shared secrets, and dreamed about a better tomorrow, it wasn’t just the first time in a long time I’d encountered the strange feeling of hope; it was also the first time in forever that I was making someone else feel it too.

  This is an intoxicating feeling. And like all intoxicating things, it’s fun until it’s poisonous … and usually you realize that just before it’s too late.

  THE GOOD NEWS WAS THAT a week had gone by and the world hadn’t ended. The bad news was that Mom and Dad appeared to have zero plans for how to save our house and Christopher’s parents had taken away his phone and grounded him from socializing outside of school after they found out he’d had frozen yogurt with me.

  Audrey had gotten the role of Cinderella’s Stepmother in the school production of Into the Woods—which, based on Audrey’s reaction, was the worst news of all. She wouldn’t have any song of her own or any real moment to shine. Instead, she swore, she’d do what all great actresses do and conjure everything in her power to steal the audience’s attention in every scene despite her role not being important. I didn’t have the heart or energy to explain to her that I was pretty sure that’s not what great actresses do.

  There are few things worse than really liking someone and then suddenly being forbidden to see them. Even if you’ve only known that someone for less than two weeks.

  Lunchtime had become these little half-hour binges on all things Christopher. Over our room-temperature teriyaki chicken bowls, we’d barely have time to breathe in between stories of everything from what I’d watched on Netflix the previous night to what kind of shampoo he was currently using to the fact that we’d both dreamed of each other every night since our kiss at The Spot.

  By the middle of the week it had become clear that seeing e
ach other for just those thirty short minutes a day was only going to drive our angst-fueled teenage hearts into hysteria. I devised a plan for both of us to sign up for the tech crew of Into the Woods. Christopher’s parents wouldn’t forbid him from participating in after-school activities even though painting the trees for an amateur production of a Stephen Sondheim musical might be the only thing gayer than sneaking out to meet your boyfriend for frozen yogurt.

  The plan worked and the crew had its first session Friday afternoon. Mrs. Reichen, a parent volunteer who seemed way over her head and genuinely terrified by her leadership position, had instructed us to bring 1) a pair of clothes we wouldn’t mind getting paint on and 2) a good attitude. With an old pair of Dad’s overalls, I was good for one of the two requests.

  The crew members that assembled were a ragtag team of peers who had nothing better to do on a Friday afternoon. It was comforting to be around so many of my lost brothers and sisters. Christopher waved at me from across the room as I snuck in a few minutes late, just as Mrs. Reichen began her welcoming speech.

  “Thank you so much for signing up to help out with the set of the fall production of Into the Woods.” Mrs. Reichen’s voice trembled with anxiety, as if she were being forced into this volunteer set-painting experience at gunpoint. “I’ll be filling in for Mrs. Watson, whose knee injury has made her unable to help out this year. This is my first time leading so many people, so … be nice!” She forced out a giggle that all but shouted desperation.

  Christopher and I met each other’s glances, immediately having to stifle laughs.

  “So …” She read from a xeroxed sheet of directions that was shaking in her sweaty hands. “Get a partner and grab two brushes from the paint closet located backstage left. Please do not let the students be alone with any spray paint or other aerosol products—oh, I’m not supposed to read that part.” She bowed her head in humiliation.

  Christopher and I buddied up and joined the line outside the paint closet.