I ignored him and read the note.
Kyle says he’s still not awake. Doctors are saying it’s a coma.
I wasn’t just reading now. I was absorbing it. My eyes scrolled over the words again and again, trying to make sense of it. He? Who the hell was “he”?
My gaze slowly shifted up from the note to Aaron’s empty desk.
“MR. HUBBARD!”
This was the part where Mr. Spinelli was going to tell me to get my punk ass the hell out of his crib and march my shit over to Principal McCaffrey’s office, stat.
I stood up from my seat and marched to the door before he could say anything.
I was out the door, down the hall, and strolling through the main offices.
I opened the door to Principal McCaffrey’s office and marched right in.
Sure enough, she was on Facebook. Watching a cat video. Her laughing smile did this awkward, flustered transition—like, surely no one ever had the nerve to interrupt a cat video—before transforming into her trademark authoritative scowl.
“Dammit, Cliff!” she said. “I swear, if you punched another kid in the face—”
“What happened to Aaron Zimmerman?”
That was probably the last thing in the universe she expected me to say—ranked only slightly above I like eating hair.
McCaffrey’s eyes narrowed. She paused her cat video.
Shit was real.
“Take a seat, Cliff.”
I took a seat.
She interlocked her fingers, squeezing her hands into a tight ball. “Aaron Zimmerman is in a coma.”
Well yeah, I had already gathered that much. McCaffrey didn’t say anything else for a long, seemingly eternal moment of silence. So I prodded her along with an “Okay…”
“He and some friends took a boat out to the lake. They were water-skiing or wake boarding or something. I don’t know. Anyway, Aaron fell in the water—right as another boat was coming along. They didn’t see Aaron and…”
McCaffrey didn’t finish. She didn’t need to finish.
“Shit,” I said.
“Shit is right,” said McCaffrey.
I didn’t know what to feel. Which was weird. I mean, I should have felt happy. I came to school with one purpose today—revenge—and I didn’t even need to do anything. The universe served him up a nice, steamy bowl of karma. Aaron got what was coming to him. And yet…
I didn’t feel anything.
Actually, that wasn’t true. I did feel something. I felt emptiness. This tangible nothingness billowing inside me. This black hole in the fabric of space-time, bending gravity and sucking everything, even light, into its infinite, abysmal event horizon.
I felt alone.
“Are you okay, Cliff?”
I blinked. McCaffrey was looking at me, head cocked slightly.
“Yeah,” I said.
It sounded like a no coming out of my mouth.
I didn’t give the conversation one more second to continue. I stood up and escorted myself out.
I didn’t go back to class.
A psychologist named Abraham Maslow once created a pyramid chart that ranked the stages of human need. This chart became known as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The foundation of the pyramid started with the most basic human needs necessary for survival—food, water, air—and advanced to more evolved stages of need such as “self-actualization” and even “transcendence.”
Alas, I was just a lowly Neanderthal. I was hardly that evolved. Right now, I just needed to get high. The need was rudimentary. Physiological, even. I needed it to survive.
I didn’t have any money, but I was willing to negotiate.
“What?” said Frankie. He blinked because surely I did not ask what he thought I just asked.
“Do you have any free samples?” I said again.
Carlos snorted, stifling his laughter. Jed responded with this sort of confused and inquisitive look, as if to ask, Uh, do we?
“Free samples?” said Frankie. “Free samples? Does this look like Costco?”
“Uh…”
“Does this look like some Asian food joint at the mall? Do you see Tegan out here with a tray, handing out little joints on toothpicks?”
Tegan laughed a little too hysterically at this remark. “Toothpicks! Little joints on toothpicks!”
She was clearly baked like a three-story wedding cake. I was jealous.
“Well, how do I know your stuff’s any good?” I said.
The corner went silent. Tegan blinked her glazy eyes, and Jed and Carlos exchanged glances that deserved to be canonized in the Archives of Holy Shitdom.
Frankie looked like I had just insulted his dead grandmother, the Virgin Mary, and Tupac all in one breath. He stepped toward me until we were just a breath apart. Then he lifted a little joint, pinned between his fingers, and stuck it in my face.
“You see this?”
Actually, I couldn’t see it because he was holding it right in between my eyeballs. I refrained from pointing this out.
“This ain’t no normal marijuana. We call this Stairway to Heaven. My cousin Zack is a chemical engineer. Graduated from Stanford. And he grows this shit in his basement. Do you know how much a chemical engineer makes?”
I didn’t know if this was a rhetorical question, but I shook my head anyway.
“A shit-ton. Do you how much a chemical engineer would have to make selling pot to decide it was worth farming in his basement?”
“Uh…a shit-ton?”
“Damn straight. This shit has thirty-three percent THC. That’ll send you through the roof and to the moon, bro. Send you up to Jupiter.”
“THC?”
“Tetrahydrocannabinol, man,” said Frankie. Now he sounded like a chemical engineer. He stopped and studied the cluelessness written all over my face. “Do you even smoke, Neanderthal?”
Had I smoked? Yes. Shane got ahold of some joints every now and then, and we got roasted in the Monolith. I could probably count the number of times on one hand.
Okay. One finger. I got roasted once. Leave me alone.
“Yeah, I smoke,” I said. “So you gonna give me that free sample or what?”
“I’ve got your free sample,” said Tegan.
This turned everyone’s heads.
Tegan lifted the Magic Dragon she’d been Puffing all afternoon. She then turned it so the lit end was facing her lips. She pinched it delicately between her teeth. And then she started slow-dancing her way over to me. Her hips were a pendulum, and her arms were swaying in sync.
I was hypnotized. It was the weirdest, sexiest thing I’d ever seen in my entire life. And apparently I wasn’t the only one mesmerized. Jed and Carlos both stared, slack-jawed, like they had stepped into a real-life porno.
Frankie just scowled.
Tegan grabbed me by the shoulders, and pulled me down to her level—a solid twenty inches. She leaned into me on her tiptoes, her face hovering inches from mine. Her whole body was inches from mine. She gently nudged the joint into my mouth. Her lips were so close, I couldn’t even process whether or not they brushed mine, but I felt her breath caress my face, and I breathed it in.
It smelled like McDonald’s. Somehow, even that turned me on.
“There’s your free sample,” said Tegan. “You know where to come for more.”
Remember when I told Aaron the English language was my bitch? Well, currently, I didn’t know a verb from a noun. And, like, prepositions and shit? Forget it.
I got the hell outta there.
I thought smoking a used joint would be low-key. Like Tegan might have smoked half the “high” out of it or something.
I had made a dire miscalculation. Whatever the hell that THC stuff was that Frankie was talking about…
Merciful Jehovah.
It came in three phases:
Phase One: Coughing—I couldn’t stop. I probably sounded like I had asthma or whooping cough.
Phase Two: The details! Like, when did the world suddenly be
come so intricate and shiny and beautiful and, like, shit, have you ever looked at a concrete sidewalk up close? It’s composed of all these tiny little bumps and air pockets and imperfections that form together into this mosaic of modern art that people just trample under their feet—the uncultured bastards! (Naturally, I was observing this on my hands and knees.) And leaves! Oh, don’t even get me started on leaves. They’re so beautiful and unique with their own personalities—like flat, green people growing on trees, aging and dying the same time every year.
I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I’d cry.
Phase Three: I was a superhero.
BAM! I was at the Monolith—so fast, I didn’t even remember why I came there to begin with.
Not only that, but my brain was superhuman. Every thought that had ever been conceived in the history of the universe was orbiting my posterior cingulate cortex, bouncing around like bingo balls, each one falling perfectly into place, and the answers made sense. The glass was half-empty because water was in a constant state of evaporation. The Meaning of Life was to find out what things gave your life meaning, duh! So cake was definitely up there. And the CIA was obviously covering up the existence of aliens because the world was so damn bigoted, how the hell were we supposed to handle beings from another planet?
I walked out onto the concrete lip overlooking Happy Valley. The sun was a fiery sliver, retreating behind black silhouetted mountains. Shadows elongated, forming bars of darkness, trapping the town in a metaphysical prison. As the flow of Supreme Omnipotent Consciousness flowed through my elevated state of mind, I took one look at the crumbling architecture around me—one look at the meaning behind everything—and I knew what I had to do.
I ran out of the Monolith.
I ran down Gleason.
I turned left at Randall.
Considering my superhuman speed, this took a lot longer than I anticipated. But it didn’t matter because I was there. It glowed before me in neon red like the fiery bowels of hell. Except the opposite, because hell is bad, and this place was good because it contained the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, and it had nothing to do with the number forty-two—no offense, Douglas Adams—and not to mention my mom worked here.
Hideo’s Video.
I walked inside. Except my walking was more like running. The doors flew open, and I ran to the front register where my mom observed me like I was some psycho druggie off the street.
“Mom, I need to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey RIGHT NOW!” I said calmly. Except my voice came out kind of loud like I was screaming.
Why was she still looking at me like that? Didn’t she know how important this was?
“Cliff,” she said. “Are you high?”
Of all the audacious accusations.
“What the hell, Mom?” I said. “Of course I’m not high. I just…I smoked a little pot, but I’m fine. I need to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey. You know, the one Stanley Kubrick made? Stanley Kubrick…he’s the guy that made The Shining. You know, with Jack Nicholson? Anyway, I need to see 2001: A Space Odyssey.”
My mom was still looking at me like I had antlers growing out of my nipples. “Cliff, you’re high. I can smell it.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. Why couldn’t she just understand?
I started crying.
“Shane wanted me to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey,” I said/cried. “It’s the last thing we watched together before he killed himself, and I know he was trying to tell me something, and the Monolith is the Door of Life, and I need to know what’s on the other side, and I just need to watch it because I want to know, I need to know, why we weren’t good enough for him, why I wasn’t good enough for him because I can’t keep living like this, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I just can’t do it anymore.”
It’s funny how we try so hard to hide from the truth. We tell ourselves that it didn’t happen. We say it enough times that we start to believe it. We live in a lie that exists only for ourselves. But the Truth is still there—dangling above us, hanging on a very weary thread. Out of sight. Out of mind. Until the thread of our self-denial breaks, and the Truth comes crashing back down. Shane found his Door of Life in the Monolith. Our Monolith. He found it when he stole a gun, brought it into our old hideout, and blew his brains out the top of his skull.
If life was a door, Shane opened that son of a bitch wide open and stepped into the darkness.
My mom was crying now. That’s when I knew I was screwing up magnificently. But it didn’t stop her from hugging me. She hugged me and hugged me and kept hugging me as I fell apart completely—this six-foot-six, 250-pound thing unraveling in her arms. And somehow, she held it all together.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
I knew she was lying. She knew she was lying. But it was okay. I needed someone to lie to me right now. I needed someone to make me believe, if only for a little bit, that everything was going to be okay. Even if it wasn’t.
Especially because it wasn’t.
I didn’t go to school the next day.
Or the day after that.
On the third day, a miracle happened.
Whispers filled the halls of HVHS like misty vapor—seeping into every social crack and crevice, sticking to every surface.
“Aaron’s back!”
“He’s awake?”
“He’s here, he’s here!”
A miracle—that’s the word that the doctors were using. Apparently, after eleven years of premed, med school, and residency, doctors didn’t have a better medical word to explain it. Despite what was typical for a coma victim, his brain was no worse for wear. They MRI’d, but there wasn’t even a hint of damage. Nothing. So they released him.
As if all this wasn’t enough, Aaron had the audacity to say that he felt “fantastic.”
Apparently, there was a long, epic debate between Principal McCaffrey and Coach Slater concerning whether or not he should still be allowed to play football again. Principal McCaffrey was reluctant. Coach Slater, however, was of the opinion that Football Is Life, and if you don’t play, what’s even the point?
Ultimately, it came down to parental consent. And let’s just say that Mr. Zimmerman and Coach Slater shared the same sentiment.
Just like that, HVHS’s quarterback reclaimed his throne.
It was like the stars had aligned. We both came back to school on the same day.
So I could kick his ass.
Just kidding. I was pretty sure there was a rule in the High School Ass-Kicking Handbook that says: No ass is to be kicked within twenty-four hours of the ass-kickee leaving the hospital. And kicking the ass of one who has just awoken from a coma is an act of the utmost douchebaggery.
I’d kick his ass next week.
Everyone was mobbing and paparazzi-ing him. They came in droves, hugging him, patting him on the back, ruffling his hair. I even saw one or twelve people slap his ass. Not that I was looking or anything. It’s just hard to focus on the empty half of the hallway when the other half is involved in a fully clothed, sexless orgy. He was the sun of the Happy Valley galaxy, and everything within fifty thousand light-years was in his gravitational orbit. People cheered and applauded as he rounded every corner and entered every room. Hell, even a teacher or two stood up and clapped. The only thing missing was the signed autographs.
There was only one problem. Actually, it wasn’t so much a problem as it was a strange detail—a detail so peculiar and near invisible, nobody seemed to notice.
Aaron kept looking at me.
I mean, yeah, I was looking at him, too. But still. We kept doing that awkward “make eye contact/look away/make eye contact again” thing. Yeah, he was hugging people and high-fiving and fist-bumping and everything else you do when you’re being assaulted in the friendliest way possible. But then, in the midst of it all, I’d catch him looking at me again.
Still, that didn’t stop me from actively contemplating his demise. At the moment, I was thinking about h
itting him with a school bus, Regina George–style.
Everything changed when I sat down for lunch.
Let me tell you something about lunch—it’s like the perfect metaphor for my life. Here you are, surrounded by hundreds of beautiful people. They are all so happy and talkative, blissfully absorbed in their own social spheres. And then there’s me, smack-dab in the middle of it. All by myself. There was always this barrier of empty chairs around me, like I was surrounded by this invisible quarantine force field. Watch out, everyone! You might catch Neanderthalitis!
I left the lunch line with two chimichangas, corn, custard, fruit salad from a can, and chocolate milk—all of which I was rather fond of—and sat down at my usual spot.
By myself.
As usual.
And that’s when Aaron Zimmerman sat down at my table.
He didn’t just sit down at my table. He sat down directly across from me. This was a clear barrier breach of my invisible quarantine force field.
“Hey,” he said.
Hey. Just like that. Like we were bros or something. He was smiling like he knew the greatest secret in the world.
My whole body tensed up. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Admiral Ackbar was surely spinning in his swivel space chair, proclaiming, It’s a trap! I had no doubt that Kyle cock-waffle Dunston or some other football asshole was sneaking up from behind to dump custard on my head.
I looked to the left. I looked to the right.
Nobody was sneaking up. On the contrary, everyone seemed well aware of my invisible quarantine force field. However, the whole cafeteria became quieter. Because everyone was watching the resurrected Aaron Zimmerman sitting next to the caveman kid. That left only one option:
Aaron Zimmerman was here to mock me.
My head turned back to him like the slow rotation of a cannon. Screw the High School Ass-Kicking Handbook. I was going to stab Aaron to death with a chimichanga.
“It’s Cliff, right?” said Aaron.
This question completely defused my offense.
“Huh?” I said.
“Cliff—that’s your name, right? You know, the thing on your birth certificate that people call you by? I mean, unless your parents actually named you Neanderthal.”
Neanderthal Opens the Door to the Universe Page 4