by Sean McGinty
“Just aspirin? But I was, like, tripping.”
Oso looked at me. “Whatever you felt, it was all you, bro.”
Huh. Wow. Weird.
“But hey,” he said. “I got a question for you. That story about the softball? I don’t remember that. Did that really happen? Were we even in the same P.E. class?”
“Well, yeah, about that…” I looked at Oso’s dark eyes. “Technically it was another guy—Lester something-or-other. Remember him? Everyone called him names?”
“The Choad, bro! Yeah, I remember him. So he was the guy who helped you around the bases?”
“Look—I couldn’t just tell the judge that you stole Mindy Howland’s gym shorts and gave them to me as a birthday present, now, could I?”
“Ha. I forgot about that.”
“Or how about when you got ahold of all the geography answers and you handed them out to everyone in the class—not just your friends?”
“That was a mistake. Nelly Avila ratted me out.”
“Or how about the time that guy who was supposed to buy beer for us ripped us off, and so you stole two forties by hiding them down your pants?”
Oso was grinning now. “I get it. My shit’s too scandalous for a court of law.”
The days grew shorter, the nights longer and colder, and in the mornings I was woken to the sound of heavy machinery. They were clearing out Coyote Heights, bulldozing what was left into charred piles, hauling the piles off in big gray Peterbilt® dump trucks (YAY!). V-shaped formations of geese and other birds glided southward through the cold blue sky, but I knew now they were mostly just FUN®. Dad returned from his tour and took Bones. She was excited to see him, her old tail wagging back and forth.
I applied for a job washing dishes at Lucky Pedro’s. That way I could at least start paying Dad and Evie back. I also decided to make good on my word to get my GED. There was this program where if you attended all the classes, they’d pay for the test. The classes were MWF evenings at the elementary school, and they weren’t hard or anything, but it was hard to concentrate. One night I excused myself to the restroom and wandered out back to check out Katie’s portable. Only it wasn’t hers anymore. Her name was gone from the door, and when I looked inside, all her posters and fish tanks or whatever were gone.
I took the long way back to class, through the gym and past the library, where there were all these boxes stacked outside the door. Like piles and piles of them. And each box was labeled with the same word in black magic marker: TRASH. I looked inside one and it was filled with books. They all were. They were finally getting ready to digitize the library. It kind of bummed me out, I don’t know why. Just the fact that the world keeps changing, I guess. I thought about that book my grandpa was always trying to get me to read, True Tales of Buried Treasure. I didn’t feel like returning to class, so I wandered outside, and that’s when I bumped into Evie.
“Hi. Dad said you had class.”
“Yeah. We’re done for the night.”
“What were you thinking?” she said.
“Huh?”
“I mean just now. You had this funny look on your face.”
“I don’t know—nothing really.”
“Well, here,” she said. “I brought you something. Brain food.”
She handed me a paper bag, the smell of baked goods wafting up through the creases in the top.
“What’s the occasion?”
“Isaac asked me to move to New York with him.”
“Wow. What’d you say?”
“I told him I needed some time to think.”
“The cautious route. I bet he was pleased.”
My sister scowled in a smiley kind of way. “I like Isaac. But it’s funny. I also like the life I have here.” She bit her lip. “What do you think? Am I just being a scaredy-cat?”
“Since when do you ask me for advice?”
“Since right now, I guess. I just want to know, is this one of those instances where, now that I’m finally faced with something I’ve wanted so badly for all these years, I’m too scared to take it?”
“I don’t really know, Evie. I’m new at this. I mean—so what did Sam say?”
“Sam?” Evie sighed. “Oh God. When I told him, he broke down crying, and then I broke down crying, and then we put on our Christmas aprons and baked snickerdoodles.” She touched the paper bag. “Which, full disclosure, came out a little on the burnt side. But even so, there are some good ones in there, too. I put them on top.”
November came and it snowed, the first snow of winter—or, actually, I guess it was still technically autumn. Just a light snowfall, a few flakes falling out of the gray, but it lasted all day, and by evening everything was covered in white. White mountains, white hills, white Russian olive rising out of a hole in a field of white brush. The next day the sun came out, but it didn’t get above freezing, and the snow stayed. That afternoon I got a call from my dad.
“It’s Bones, Aaron. I found her under the back porch this morning.”
“What about her?”
“She’s dead.”
“Dead? What happened?”
He was quiet a moment. “I don’t know. She was old. She’d been through a lot. Maybe it was just her time. We’re coming out there, me and Evie.”
“Here? Why?”
“To bury her.”
They showed up in Evie’s CR-V, opened the back, and took out the bundle. She was wrapped up in a blanket.
“Here,” said Evie. “I think this is yours.”
She handed me something. A neon-green shoe. My long-lost Osmos™IV (YAY!).
The three of us started out across the brush.
It was a pretty good day for a funeral—by which I mean pretty miserable. Snow on the ground, gray sky overhead, dead birds here and there. At least we didn’t need to dig a hole for her. There was already one there. At the edge of the hole under the Russian olive my dad set down his bundle and carefully unwrapped it. Bones. The wind picked up and blew a dusting of snow across her body.
Evie had brought along the yellow bag that said BIOHAZARD, and after Dad laid Bones in the hole she climbed down there, too, and I watched as she undid the twisty top and, one by one, removed the tiny gray bodies and nestled them next to their mother where they belonged.
Then Dad took the shovel and threw on that first scoop of dirt. It was just awful, the way it rained down on Bones and her puppies. After that, I couldn’t even look. I just helped. It was a big hole, and it was going to take a long time to fill it in.
I don’t know who started it—Evie, probably—but at some point someone threw a bird into the hole, and after that it became our task. We wandered across the brush, gathering corpses and tossing them into the hole. One final flight.
It was late by the time we finished. There was a little bit of earth left over—there always is—but the birds were gone and Bones was gone and her puppies were gone and the hole was gone…and it was all just gone. Even so, Dad kept scooping more dirt on top, and Evie pretty much had to pry the shovel from his hands to get him to stop. He walked around the earth, smoothing out the rough spots with the side of his shoe. He hadn’t been wearing any gloves, and I caught a glimpse of his hands, palms all dark and bloody.
The three of us stood at the edge of the dirt to say good-bye.
“You were a good dog,” said Dad. “You were a good dog,” he said again. “And I—”
He kind of settled to his knees and stayed there.
“Dad?” said Evie.
It took me a second to figure out what was going on. He wasn’t crying. More like weeping—whatever the quiet kind is. When Mom left, when we buried Grandpa—nothing. And now this. And I knew it wasn’t just for Bones—it was for all of it, everything, all the sadness. I looked over and saw that Evie was pretty much weeping, too. And then me.
And so that’s it.
That’s pretty much my History, aka The Story of How I Got From There to Here. Somewhere along the way—I couldn’t tell you
exactly where—I came to a decision I’d been coming to for a long time. I didn’t really want out of FAIL. I was ready to stop having FUN® altogether.
In order to do that, I had to apply for an Application for Termination, but in order to do that I had to get out of FAIL, and in order to do that I had to catch up on my YAY!s—which is why I decided to do the History part of my Application here in the YAY!log. It occurs to me now that I was probably a little more thorough than I needed to be. I bet you’ve never seen a History that long before.
Anyway, so here’s my rundown again:
name: aaron o’faolain
username: original boy_2
age: almost 18
region: america
mood: ok fine
status: fail
history: (see what you just read)
reason for application: (see history)
And I guess if anything I just want to also say that despite the parts that sucked, and despite all my griping, I have seen the light that is wonderful and holy. I can’t even really explain it, and that doesn’t matter, because it’s not about explanation anyway. It’s about everything. It was here before we got here and it will be here when we’re gone. It’s +10 magic super beautiful. It’s a song that sings itself.
Telling my History has taken a little longer than I expected—and I know I rambled in places, and I apologize for that—but anyway I see I’ve fallen further behind on my FUN®, so I’ve got a bit of quick catching up to do: just a few more YAY!s and (with your approval) I can stop having FUN®.
So here we go:
YAY! for FUN®, and the newly released version 2.0.
YAY! for Evie, who made a trip to Reno to get chipped and lensed for FUN® before she left for New York. She was excited to go, all giddy like that time when she won the MathOlympics competition, which is a moment I will never forget: the way she stood there, just beaming up at the bleachers. As for me, I was slouched against the wall, pretending I didn’t care. Why do I do stuff like that? Here I am, Evie. Over here. Waving like a madman. Can you see me? You’re going to do awesome in New York, I just know it.
YAY! for my dad, who also started having FUN® so he could mindtalk™ with Evie in NYC. Dad—I want you to know I know it wasn’t your fault Mom left. I mean, I always kind of knew, I just didn’t want to admit it. It was easier that way, but it wasn’t fair. And overall I have to say you’ve been pretty cool with me, especially lately, what with the dropping out of school thing, and the Katie thing, and all of it. Know what I think? I think you should get a dog. Some kind of puppy. A little feisty one that will just chew the shit out of your shoes.
YAY! for Sam, who said he would never have FUN® and then did—I told him he would—and who is my brother, and who helped me out of the hole. Thanks for not murdering me when you found out about the thing with Shiloh.
YAY! for Shiloh aka shiloh_lilly and her 10 stars.
YAY! for Oso, who did not start having FUN®. He said he couldn’t on account of his newfound sobriety. Also because of the terms of his probation. Also because he is El Oso.
YAY! for Anne Chicarelli. YAY! for her sister, and her horses.
YAY! for Homie™. You were almost my friend.
YAY! for the whole world, YAY! for all the creatures who inhabit it, real and unreal, on land, at sea, or in the sky. YAY! for the birds—what’s left of them. They are a memory of how good we had it, how good it really was, and how good it could have been—but also how good it could still be. But not really. It won’t ever be like it was when there were birds. Even so, YAY! for Animals of Wonder & Light®, the entire menagerie, from the Armadillodile™ to the Shaarkvark™ to the just-released Zebracuda™.
Which reminds me: YAY! for you, whoever you are. Thanks for the YAY!s. And if you BOO!ed me, that’s cool, too. I won’t hold it against you. YAY! for your mom, and YAY! for my mom, and YAY! for MOM Brands® cereal, maker of Apple Zings™, Coco Roos™, Fruity Dino-Bites™, and Creamy Hot Wheat Malt-O-Meal™. Mom, I haven’t mentioned you much, but that’s only because you weren’t around—and it doesn’t mean I don’t think about you.
BOO! for the hole. BOO! for war. BOO! for hard lives and suffering and the Avis Mortem and sad days and absent parents and all the sucky parts. But OTOH also kind of YAY! for the BOO!s—which, now that I think about it, are sometimes how we learn to enjoy the YAY!s. That’s how it worked for me anyway.
Finally, as we come to the end, YAY! for my grandpa, who I never really got to know, but sort of kind of did, and who made this whole thing possible. Just the other day I finally had your tombstone inscribed, just like you asked, in the biggest font that would fit:
IT COULDD
HAVE BEEN
WONDDERFUL
ANDD SOMETIMES
IT WAS
And I wanted to tell you, Grandpa, I finally got around to reading that book you gave me, True Tales of Buried Treasure by Edward Rowe Snow (YAY!). You were right. It’s a pretty cool book. I wish I wouldn’t have been so stubborn when you gave it to me, because it would’ve been nice to talk to you about it when you were still around. So far I’ve made it to chapter 15, “The Skull’s Revelation.” I was right at the part on page 225 where Mabel is about to reveal the mystery of the skull and she’s all:
“You’ve got to believe what I tell you, George. It will seem too fantastic at first, but remember—you’ve just got to believe…”
And just then there was a knock on the door.
“Come in!”
But no one came, so I got up to see who it was.
There she was, Katie, standing in the snow by the shed in a puffy blue coat, looking up at the roof.
“There was a bird,” she said.
“A bird?”
“Yeah.”
“Like an actual bird?”
“I think so? A yellow one. I thought it flew up there, but now I don’t see it….”
I looked around. No bird that I could see, just sagebrush and sky. The wind had picked up. It was blowing Katie’s hair all around her face.
“I came for the rest of my stuff,” she said.
“Right. Well, come on in.”
I hadn’t lit a fire yet, so I brought some wood in and loaded up the wood stove. When I first started using it, I didn’t really know how to stack the wood inside—I always got ahead of myself, put too many big logs on, but over time I’d learned how to do it right. You put a big log on either side, and then you crumple your paper in the middle, and put a couple small logs over that, then some medium logs, and a big one on top. Then you light it up with a $100 bill and close the door, but not all the way. You need to give it some air at first.
Katie watched me crumple up the paper. “Holy wow,” she said. “Is that real money?”
Funny, but I’d gotten so used to it, I didn’t even think about it anymore. Turns out the old US dollar is pretty great for starting fires. In a matter of weeks I’d burned up twenty grand, easy, with dead presidents smiling out from the flames.
“I was too late to exchange it for amero. You want some coffee?”
I poured her a cup, and we sat down on the sofa.
“I’m so sorry about the treasure,” she said. “Would you like to keep any of my furniture? You can have whatever you want. The chair…the desk…the other chair…”
“I’ve been using the tiny lamp.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “You should have the tiny lamp.”
“So are you moving to Tahoe, then?”
“Right—I didn’t tell you. That job I interviewed for? I got it. Teaching sixth grade.”
“In Tahoe?”
“Yeah. It starts in two weeks.”
“Oh.” I tried to sound upbeat. “Well, congratulations.”
“We can keep in touch,” she said. “I’d like that. You can mindtalk™ me sometime.”
“Actually, I’m getting off.”
“Off?!” she said. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m just done having FUN®—I me
an if I can complete all my yays and they accept my Application for Termination.”
> oh u don’t want to stop FUN®!
said the Homie™.
“But I thought you were all about FUN®,” said Katie.
“Yeah, I was. But I think it’s time for the next thing.”
> this is the next thing!
yay for FUN®!
“Well,” she said, “you were right about one thing. FUN® is fun, but it’s also addicting. Have you ever played Tickle, Tickle, Boom!? Oh my God! It’s like a drug! One good thing, though: I did quit smoking. I only smoke smókz™ now.” She lit one up and blew a cloud of bonuses. “Yay for me, right?”
“Yay for you, Katie. But listen—are you sure you want to move to Lake Tahoe? What with all the trees and beautiful houses and delicious restaurants and crystal clear water? I mean, besides all those things and your cool new job, what could possibly make you want to—”
She was smiling now. God, her eyes. Even with the lenses they were just—I don’t know. Like looking at Earth from outer space. I won’t ever forget them. And it occurred to me I’d never really told her about her eyes, how beautiful they were—“beautiful” isn’t even the word for it—and I wanted to say something, just to let her know, you know? And then suddenly there was this loud SMACK.
Right behind us, like someone had run up from the yard and slapped the pane. Just this loud—SMACK!
We went outside and found it, eight feet out from the house: a little yellow bird lying motionless on the snow. I’m not kidding, that thing had bounced back eight feet from the house. Talk about the elasticity of glass.
“That’s it!” she said. “That’s the bird!”
Its eyes were closed, and its wings and feet were tucked against its body. I watched the tiny yellow feathers tremble in the breeze. It was so real. And yet it could have been a Christmas tree ornament; the only thing missing was a loop of thread coming out of its back.