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1. I don’t know what I’m doing, but then again, I never know
what I’m doing, or what I’m trying to do, or anything like that,
anything like what a hero is supposed to know in order to save anyone
sometimes things just work out for the best despite the winding twists
and the conspiracies, the lies and half-truths and smoke-clouded mirrors
and the distorted reflections that smile like the sunlit glint of gunmetal
hovering centimeters from your face as your girlfriend’s father holds you
down by your neck, pins you to the hood of her blue Mazda like a dog.
Everything spins like you might throw up and there’s a lead brick in the
pit of your stomach and you don’t even know the real feeling of heaviness
not yet you don’t, but you will, you’ll come to know it better and more
intimately than you know anyone at all, closer than you know yourself and
skin-clinging, some sheen you can’t scrub off shake off rid yourself of no
matter how hard you take a washcloth to it and even if you could get rid of it,
it’s not like you’d really have a choice to do so because almost no one else can
do the things that you can do and the ones who can choose not to and if you
don’t save everyone then no one will and you’re not alone, you know you’re not,
you know full well that you have friends and lovers and your beatific mother
and people who aren’t quite your friends exactly but they stand with you against
things even scarier than they are and that’s all you really need from them.
You’re not alone because even if the rest of the world runs out on you,
even if they walk out and leave the door gaping open and the cold October air
rushing in while your mother sobs and hurls a glass to the kitchen floor, lets it
shatter on the linoleum while the old sedan’s engine kicks into life and she’s not
wearing shoes so she could cut herself but you know full well that he isn’t coming
back except to send his sister, your aunt, the one who one time gave you a
two-hundred dollar check for your birthday because she hadn’t seen you since last
Christmas and didn’t want to encourage how much you loved Wonder Woman,
in his stead to serve your mother with the divorce papers that they talked about at
dinner, the single worst most horribly awkward dinner of your entire life before or since.
Even when the rest of the world decides that they don’t need you and they never did
that they can’t stand with you can’t keep up with you can’t deal with you anymore,
even when they figure out they could do better, find a hero who actually wants
the job instead of just accepting it because no one else cares enough to take it on,
even when they exit stage front door the way your father did and your chest aches with
their absences like your lungs are catching fire closing in on themselves forgetting how
to let you breathe like they’re supposed to—even when the other doors slam in your face,
you’ll always have him, your almost brother, the one who’s shared your clothes your life
your bed and his and Batman sleeping bags under the stars in his backyard because
your mother couldn’t pay for summer camp that year and he wouldn’t go if you couldn’t go
so you slept in a tangle and counted constellations and pretended that you didn’t care
about all the adventures you were missing or how the other boys would talk about them
once school was back in session because he’s all you’ve ever really needed, the only one.
I didn’t care about missing out on campfire songs and nature hikes and starting fires
in a pit with boxes of waterproof matches and templed sticks put together in a pile all
while some fumbling counselors in training looked on and tried to tell us not to hurt
ourselves and the future Ken doll team captain punches out the other boys for calling
his best friend a fag then turns around and says that I’m a sissy, I’m a girl, I’m weak and
that I’m nothing because it’s one thing to say some guy’s a faggot, that’s not allowed,
there’s nothing wrong with Danny just because he’s gay, but I cross-dressed for Halloween
and not for shock value or anything like that but because I really wanted to be Wonder Woman,
and I can’t watch The Little Mermaid without crying until my lungs flare up and spasm
and the snot leaks down my lips and everything around me and within me burns when
King Triton blows up Ariel’s grotto and her human trinkets, and Danny’s gay but that’s no
good reason to pick on him, but me, I’m different, because I cry too much to be allowed.
I didn’t care about missing out on that; I’m just sorry that I made you feel like you had to
stay behind with me when you probably wanted to be there with them instead and who
could blame you for wanting to get away from me. Even before it all went wrong, I only ever
dragged you down and I remember that too vividly, I’ll never get away from it because my
brain has some insane capacity for high-definition replays of everything that I’ve fucked up
and there’s nothing that hurts worse than the times I know by heart, the ones I’ve carved
into my soul forever because they’re the times when I hurt you and the times I held you back,
the one person who’s never really left me, not for long. And that’s why I’m writing all this down
for you. Because this motel room stinks like corpses and my heart can’t decide if it wants to
really beat or not and I don’t know what I’m liable to try to do right now or what’s going on
inside my head or why my fingers itch the way they’re itching and this could all go really badly
and in case the worst should happen, in case I fuck it up in ways that you can’t fix or glue back
together, in case there’s no coming back from this one, I just want for you to understand.
In case I go where you can’t follow, I just want you to know that it’s not your fault and there
was nothing more you could’ve done for me. You did everything I ever could’ve asked and more.
I never forgot that and I never would. Even now, the lights flicker and the mildew insists upon
itself and everything goes dark around the edges and it could all fade out at any second but I still
remember the time you tried to make a birthday cake and set your mother’s oven on fire and the
kitchen stank for months but you didn’t want to let me go without a party just because we were
putting all our money into mom’s nurse practitioner program that year and dad hadn’t gotten the
big promotion yet to Special Agent but he was saving up for a trip to Disneyland that never came
and you thought it wasn’t right for your best friend not to have a party on his birthday.
Except for this, I don’t have any affairs to set in order, and it’s more important than any
other thing that could come up. Please be happy. Please be okay without me. You will be but I still
have to ask because I know you and I know you’re thinking that there’s no way you could possibly
manage on your own and I know you’re thinking that I’m selfish for even asking you to think
about being okay if I do the thing that’s clawing at the back of my skull and telling me to get on
with it already, give in because it’s too hard just to keep my spine straight and my head held up,
leave you on your own like you never would’ve thought to do to me. You’re thinking that because
it’s probably true no matter what they tell us about how people are just in pain so much so that
they’re thinking only of themselves. But I want you to know: none of this was ever your fault.
This is no one’s fault at all but if it were anyone’s, it would be mine. Not yours, mine.
And more than anything else, I need you not to blame yourself for the stupid things I did.
2. So you came back to our motel room, this dank little pit we’re sharing
for the night because we can’t make go back home and still make it to the cross-country
meet on time tomorrow, and you saw me hovering by the window, I don’t know how I
looked but I kind of felt like I might die or something like my hands wouldn’t stop
shaking if you gave me money to stop and like the entire world could slip through my
fingers nothing solid nothing permanent nothing even ephemeral because that’s too kind
a word for how transient to the point of nonexistence everything around me is right now
and if you’d seen what I just saw if it had been your dad and not my mom then I know
you’d have felt the same way that I felt and that I still feel now like the world’s crushing
your shoulders, bending your spine, and like your wobbling knees could give out underneath
you at any moment no matter what you do and there’s no way that you could stop it.
I kind of felt like I might die or something and you’re going to hate me for saying this
I hate me for even suggesting it but I don’t think I minded that feeling as much as
I’m supposed to have minded it if anything it sounded kind of nice noncommittally so
granted but all the same, nicer than whatever it is I’m doing now and maybe if I saved a
few people it would be worth it. I could save them having to be let down by me, having
to wait for me to put the pieces together when I don’t ever manage that quickly enough and
to wait for me to figure out a plan I didn’t even come up with on my own or anything and
people keep getting hurt, people keep getting killed, I can’t save them, I can’t stop it, I can’t…
But I guess I must’ve looked okay to you, not bleached bone pale and trembling
but calm enough that when your phone buzzed with a text, you finished brushing your teeth
and left for who even knows what reason because I’m fine, I have to be, I’m always fine
except for all the times I’m not and I can’t even mention those anymore I don’t have the right
because you handcuffed me to a radiator once and you treated me like a dog, gave me a bowl
with my name on it and everything, but I still haven’t made up for the two times when this first
started and I tried to kill you, how can I even begin making up for the first one when I don’t
remember it at all, my lungs ached, my heart raced and clawed against my chest, everything went
red and then a rush of fire-retardant chemicals hit my face and you stared at me mouth gaping
eyes wide and bugging out of your skull like you couldn’t recognize me anymore, you who
know me better than anybody else does, you who know me better than I know myself sometimes.
But you didn’t recognize me then and you looked at me the way I feel now and I still remember
how you looked at me even though I know you didn’t mean it and even though you later said
you understood and you knew it wasn’t all my fault, I just couldn’t control myself or stop it
happening because everything was new again and we’d only just put the pieces together and her
father shot me in the woods underneath a full moon’s light. And I don’t remember any of it, just
the things you’ve told me, how my eyes glowed golden and I jumped up on the lockers, how I
chased you down like I could smell your blood and like I wanted to destroy you rip your throat
out just for the sake of doing so for the sake of killing something with a pulse, I don’t even get any
flashes of it and I can’t imagine how the two of them can cope with having lived through fugue
states like I’ve never experienced because losing those two minutes of my history makes me feel
sick to death, two days must be so much worse and never mind all the time that he lost.
But the worst part of anything was how you looked at me and there’s nothing strong enough
to scour that from my memory. It shows up at the oddest times, in the dark when I’m alone and
in class when I look over at you and the sunlight filters through the blinds and hits your profile
just so and it works against the fluorescent lights and it makes you look kind of pasty and
maybe just a little carsick but you’re beautiful until I remember the way you stared but didn’t
see me, couldn’t see me because I wasn’t quite myself and I wasn’t quite your friend then at that
moment because the friend you’ve known since childhood wouldn’t try to kill you the way that
I did but I was your friend and I’m still your friend and nothing’s changed except for everything.
Maybe I’m really not the friend you knew anymore.
Maybe I haven’t been that guy for the whole past year.
Maybe too many things have happened and no explanation will ever
make them any better because the pieces are in a heap and tangled up
like we once were and I could reassemble them but not in the same shape
they don’t make the same picture anymore, they don’t make the same model
they changed like everything changes and they’re slipping through my fingers
like everything always does and I ball up my fists inside your t-shirt
cling to the hand that you throw down in my direction but nothing works
and anyway someday you could look at me like that again, you know me now
but that could change maybe slowly or maybe all at once but we could wake up
some morning to the realization that we don’t know the guy who just crawled through
our bedroom window and I’d blink at you and you’d stare back and your eyes
would be empty and your mouth agape at the sight of some demon dressed up in a
skin-suit that looks like some strange someone who used to be your brother.
And I don’t think that I could take that happening
and maybe we’re already heading down that road right now
the door slams behind you and you don’t even tell me where you’re going
you don’t let me answer to tell you how I don’t think that I’m okay
but was I really in the wrong for hoping you’d be different from all the
teachers who lined up to tell me about my slipping grades and wandering thoughts
and how skipping classes wasn’t like me but they didn’t ask what was going on
and they didn’t talk to me just scribbled on my tests they didn’t do anything at all
but they talked behind my back about me developing bad habits they didn’t really care
and I wanted you to be different from them but maybe the fact is that you’re not.
Or maybe you’ve just realized that you’d be better off without me
you might not know it consciously yet and I know that you’d deny it
if I ever thought that I could call you out on anything.
And maybe this is all my fault because I know I ruin everything
I’ve dragged you down for years at this point and you’ve said so yourself
you meant it as a joke but it’s not funny because it’s kind of true.
And if you can realize that much without me telling you about it
then maybe we’re both better off and maybe you won’t blame yourself
if I do something that I can’t take back and that you’ll probably never forgive me for.
And you’d be quite right not to, considering what I’m thinking now. I don’t know. I never know.
3. I wanted to explain things for you when I started writing this
but so far everything’s a mess of shitty penmanship and feelings that I have
no right to have. And I owe you better than that, there is no question.
Even if I don’t make good on these things I wish that I weren’t thinking,
I owe you better after everything you’ve done for me and all the things I had
no right to ask of you in the first place, no right to impose the way I’ve done.
Maybe this will make more sense if we pretend it’s all about someone who isn’t us.
Maybe all the pieces fit together better if we take ourselves out of the picture and show off
vacation photographs from Disneyland and San Francisco, Manhattan, the Alamo, and Zacatecas
but we lie and say that we were never there and there’s no evidence to say we were
because the pictures are all of landmarks and buildings and streetscapes and strangers and
pigeons picking at street vendor pretzels in Central Park and there aren’t any signs of us at all
though you could write a history book about the other people and we wouldn’t leave behind
a fingerprint, much less a sign that we existed, that you breathed me in and I let you leave me
bruised and dented and wavering between two lives that I can’t ever reconcile.
Maybe the story has a better narrative if I’m not in it fucking it all up the way I always do.
So let’s pretend that we’re not there, this story’s about someones else who look like
else, two someones we’ve never met before: once upon a time, there are two boys.
They meet each other on a playground when they’re not old enough to know better
before they can even fathom the things they’ll put each other through or handle
with each other because they’re five or six years old and monsters are only real in the
storybooks and animated movies and death only happens to make way for evil stepparents
and they’ve never heard a word like cancer or divorce and the brown-skinned boy has no
idea that not everyone thinks like his dad that he has to choose between Irishness and
Mexican and not everyone would tell him that it’s better to lie and say that he’s Italian
or some kind of Mediterranean and that’s why his skin is darker than his father’s and the
cottage cheese-skinned white boy’s never been to a funeral before not even for some
great aunt he’s only met once in his life and he has no idea that his mother’s sick or that
her ovaries have made themselves a home for cysts and later tumors and he has no idea
that there’s such a word as metastasize let alone what it could mean. He just knows that he
likes Batman so he’s wearing a Batman t-shirt on the second day of school and the
brown-skinned boy, he can’t believe that because he thinks Batman is a jerk, and so he says this
and the white boy gets offended and he throws a punch but misses and they fight each other
but they don’t know how to fight each other so they roll around the woodchips, tussling
and getting messy when the brown-skinned boy promised his mother that he wouldn’t get
any dirt on his nice new clothes that she bought on layaway because most of their extra money’s
going to her night school classes so she can be a nurse practitioner and maybe get a better
paycheck so the family won’t be strapped all the time, it was special to her and he fucked it up.
But the white boy insulted him for not appreciating Batman and at least they don’t get blood
on anything because nobody gets a bloody nose in the first place. Their punches don’t land and
their slaps are at best half-hearted because they don’t really want to hurt each other and then the
white boy gets the brown-skinned boy pinned on his back in the woodchips and he screams
that he bets the brown-skinned boy hates dinosaurs and Spiderman too because the he’s only
met the brown-skinned boy just now and as far as he knows the brown-skinned boy hates
everything the white boy loves. But he’s wrong because the brown-skinned boy tells him so and
the brown-skinned boy likes Spiderman and dinosaurs and they fall apart from fighting and
decide that they’re best friends now because neither of them has one already and they want one.
Once upon a time, there is a brown-skinned boy and his lungs don’t really work quite right.
He tries his best and he works out but running leaves him short of breath and wheezing and
feeling like his chest’s on fire. And his dad tells him that he shouldn’t tell his mother because
actually there’s nothing wrong with him, he’s fine and the only problem is he’s lazy and he
spends too much time at his best friend’s house not getting outside and exercising like kids used
to do when dad was his age and the genes this boy has on his mother’s side, they make him more
predisposed to obesity and diabetes and if his lungs act up, it’s in his head, he made it up for
sympathy instead of addressing all the ways that he’s somehow deficient. So the brown-skinned
boy pushes himself harder and every single gym class, he doubles over coughs and hacks like he
might die and his best friend insists that there’s something wrong and tries to tell his mother but
the boy says that it’s all fine because his dad said that and he trusts his dad to look out for his best
interests until one night it’s not all fine, it’s terrible in fact, because the boy wakes up with a start and
his lungs spasm and flop around but won’t draw breath and his cry is strangled but he gets it out and
his mother’s home instead of at a class tonight and she recognizes what this is: an asthma attack.
But his father still won’t believe in this even though the boy’s mother is almost a nurse practitioner,
so they get a second opinion from another nurse and then three doctors and they all echo off the
same damn thing: he had an asthma attack. He has asthma and it’s real. So the boy gets handed
some prescriptions for oral steroids and an inhaler but still his dad says that he made it up, that he’s
faking everything even though the boy can’t lie that well to save his life, and he hides the boy’s inhaler
and he watches the boy work out and cut back on everything sweet and most things carb-laden just
because his dad said that he was getting fat and lazy and he’s eleven and he’s skinny but he’s on a diet
anyway and no matter what the boy does for himself, his dad says that he’s not doing enough that
he could be doing so much better, he could stop trying to convince his dad that he’s any kind of sick.
He watches as his son slips off the sofa, gasping for breaths that he can’t get, and tells him that he’s
acting and once again, the boy’s best friend tells him that there’s something wrong with all of this and
that this isn’t the way a good parent treats their kid and he tells the boy that it’s okay to cry about the
whole ordeal because everything about it’s wrong and when the divorce happens and the boy’s mom
finds out about what her ex did to their son, she digs her fingertips into his shoulders as she cries
in some chest-heaving way that burns her eyes with tears and apologizes because she just didn’t know.
When she calms down, she asks her son why he didn’t tell her about what was happening, and he
tells her that dad told him not to, and she asks why he didn’t realize his dad was wrong, and he says
that his best friend told him that but he didn’t think that dad would ever hurt him even though dad
got him into trouble once at school by telling him to lie on a class project, tell them he was Italian or
some kind of Mediterranean instead of letting anybody think the boy is Mexican on his mother’s side,
that her grandparents came up north from Zacatecas, some place he knows by name but only vaguely
and that he’s never seen in his entire life so it’s okay for him to lie about it, it’s not like they’re connected.
And that doesn’t make her any happier, it really makes her more distraught, and she tells him not to
listen to his bastard father, that his best friend was right and has been this entire time, and when the boy
tells his almost brother about that conversation, he expects to hear I told you so but he doesn’t and he
appreciates that, he does, but he still gives away his Halloween candy so he won’t gain any weight.
Once upon a time, there is a beautiful girl and her strawberry-blonde hair is always perfect
and the white-skinned boy falls in love with her because she’s beautiful and because she tries to
act so vapid but she gets the top grades on all their tests and he thinks there must be more to her
than the face that she puts on and because this boy loves mysteries he wants to figure her out
he wants to learn what she’s really like. But the problem is, she doesn’t notice him much less
have the first idea what his name is and he tries to talk to her but she ignores him and when they’re
old enough to think about kissing, the brown-skinned boy spends his allowance money on a wig.
Not a good wig, it’s pretty cheap and it doesn’t really make him look like her, the red’s too red
and not orange enough and he has to fight to keep it from getting tangled in a giant knot. But he
puts it on anyway and he studies how she walks because she doesn’t notice him either and he
studies how she talks and the specific way she flicks her wrist when she knows she’s got the answer
right. He gets really good at faking like he’s their grade’s queen bee, something that he only does
inside his bedroom for the white-skinned boy when no one’s around to catch him doing this, and then
they kiss each other with their mouths open and their eyes closed. It’s messy at first. It’s sticky and it’s
inexperienced and one time they give each other mononucleosis but they get better at kissing each
other as long as the brown-skinned boy pretends that he’s this snow-colored little ginger girl and as
long as they pretend it doesn’t matter. And maybe for the white boy, it really doesn’t. Maybe his hand
resting on the brown-skinned boy’s ass, snaking up and down the curve and sinking into flesh and
muscle is only feeling up an image of the beautiful girl who he’s distantly in love with who doesn’t
notice him at all. Maybe when they sprawl out on the mattress and the white boy stretches out to
coffin length on top of his best friend, in his head, he’s really stretching out on top of her, and he
doesn’t touch his best friend’s chest because the lack of tits would blow up his precious make out
fantasy and leave it dying in a ditch. Maybe he doesn’t feel things the way that his best friend does.
But it’s enough for the brown-skinned boy to just be close to his best friend like this
because he’s got no idea what he’s feeling but he dreams about his best friend’s lips and
in the middle of class, he zones out to thoughts of his own lips caught between his best friend’s
teeth, and he thinks he wouldn’t even mind getting his heart broken as long as it was his best friend
who did the breaking. But he doesn’t get his heart broken because the thing is that they just don’t
talk about it, because it’s not supposed to mean anything. They’re best friends and they make out
but it’s just so they can get some practice before they start making out with girls or maybe other boys
because some day, the white boy’s gonna make his red-haired imaginary girlfriend love him and
the brown-skinned boy will find somebody else because they’re best friends and brothers in an
emotional sort of way and some lines just shouldn’t get crossed like that and they agreed at the outset
that this doesn’t matter, they can kiss each other and it doesn’t matter because they’re just friends,
not lovers or boyfriends or anything like that, they don’t love each other except as almost brothers,
and if the brown-skinned boy’s cock gets hard, then it’s just hormones and not him feeling anything
for his best friend, and certainly nothing as such romantic because that’s what they said and that’s
what they agreed on and that’s the story that they’re sticking to even if they only tell it to themselves.
They could talk about it and he’d get his heart smashed to pieces.
He knows he would because his best friend is not in love with him,
he’s in love with a beautiful strawberry-blonde girl with perfect pink and pale skin
(skin that the brown-skinned boy could only dream of having and he has not just because
it would make him look more like her but because maybe if his skin were white, his father
wouldn’t tell him that he has to lie about where his mother’s family comes from and he
wouldn’t have to know that everything is insufficient, no matter what he does).
His best friend is in love with a girl who wears high heels like razorblades and knows every
answer even though she doesn’t always raise her hand and she’s smarter than this boy is and she’s
better looking and she’s a girl which is important because there’s nothing wrong with being gay,
he’s known that since Danny came out back in fourth grade and he learned what gay meant in
the first place, but it’s important that she’s a girl because maybe his best friend is completely straight
and maybe they’ve only been kissing each other because the brown-skinned boy can act convincingly
enough like her to fool his best friend for a while, enough that sometimes his best friend brushes his
lips along the boy’s smooth cheek and whispers her name instead of his. And their names sound
nothing alike, his is blunt and short, staccato, like a rock thrown at a window, hers has melody in its
three syllables, it ebbs and flows and lilts off his best friend’s tongue so perfectly that the boy doesn’t
even really mind how different their names are, he bumps his forehead against his friend’s between
their kisses and pretends his best friend might someday be in love with him, and anyway it’s better than
nothing, pretending to be this girl who’s everything he isn’t as long as the boy can keep these kisses.
So he agrees that it all means nothing because that’s the only way he can keep getting what he wants
and still, it happens more than once, the thing where their making out is unimportant but the brown-
skinned boy still feels his cock get hard as if determined to betray him. They’ll be slumped and spilled
out on his comforter, and he’ll be warm and flush and writhing underneath of his best friend’s body
chest against chest and hips against hips and legs all jumbled up and twisted like a rehearsed speech
when you get stage fright and the words disappear from memory and your tongue swells up like a zit
and you can’t make it move the way you want it to and your thoughts are all a mess, they bleed into
each other without any sense of boundaries, the boy and his best friend are that inextricable from
one another. And they’ll breathe each other’s scents and taste each other’s mouths and they’ll rut
against each other without really knowing what they’re doing, his best friend will drag along the
boy’s hips and he’ll grope his best friend’s ass the way his best friend sometimes gropes at him
and he’ll tell himself not to let it happen because there’s only so many times he can slip up before
it means he loses access to this thing that he wants more than anything. He’ll think about all the things
he shouldn’t have eaten today and whether or not he ran hard enough in gym to compensate.
He’ll think about how his father hasn’t called him back, it’s been two weeks without a word this time
and maybe this’ll be the time when dad doesn’t get back to him ever again and leaves him hanging
until the boy gives up, the way he should’ve done so many times before.
He’ll think about how his best friend doesn’t really love him and how his best friend never really will,
at least not in the way the boy loves him and wants to be loved back, but it doesn’t make a difference:
his cock has a will of its own and the heat flushes his cheeks and twists around his stomach and he
gets hard again, his cock strains at his jeans and smacked upside the head with a bag of bricks, his
best friend remembers that he isn’t making out with his dream girl, but with the boy instead, with his
best friend who is not supposed to love him with heart flutters and stomach-shaking butterflies or
with daydreams of making out that really means something, that the boy can say means something
anyway because it’s meant something to him this whole time but he’s not allowed to say that now
because they agreed this wasn’t like that, they agreed that feelings weren’t involved.
Every time, they laugh it off. His best friend says the boy will screw around with anyone who
tells him that he’s pretty. His best friend calls the boy a horndog and asks if he’d even respect him
in the morning. And the boy wants to pull his hair out. He wants to shake his best friend by the
shoulders and tell him that all he wants is to make his best friend happy and all he wants is for his
best friend to smile at him like he smiles when he talks about a beautiful girl who doesn’t acknowledge
his existence. I’m right here, the boy wants to scream so loudly and so hard that he gives himself an
asthma attack, the worst one of his life. I’m right here and I love you and I don’t know how long I’ve loved you
but I love you. I love you and I want you. I love you and I’d die for you. I love you and I’ll be anything you want,
you just have to tell me what it is, even if you want me to change everything I am. I love you more than anyone.
I love you and I don’t know what to do. I love you even though I know you don’t feel the same and that’s okay, you
don’t have to feel the same for me because I don’t expect that and I never have. Just stop ignoring how I feel, okay?
There’s nothing I can do because I can’t do this with you anymore. I love you so much and it’s killing me.
But every time, he swallows that back because it would make things awkward and the boy has no idea
if he could live with losing the best thing in his life, even if he never really had it to begin with. It’s
better to get this imitation of the thing he really wants than to go back to getting nothing at all.
4. Jesus, though, I don’t know why I’m telling you this story now because
I know full well that it’s not going to make you feel any better and if I
don’t make it back from this one, you’ll find this and you’ll have to live with
thinking that I killed myself because you didn’t love me and I swear to God that
it’s not like that, it’s not like that, I’m sorry and it’s not like that, not even a little bit.
If I kill myself tonight, it’s not because you didn’t love me. It’s because I can’t do this
anymore, I’m not even halfway decent at saving people never mind balancing that with
work and school and trying to have a life, I’m sorry but I’m just not strong enough, I’m
sorry but I can’t go on, I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m barely getting by as is and
I can’t keep asking you to hold my hand and get me through something that’s always even
worse than we predicted it would be, but I guess I just don’t want to die dishonest.
I don’t want to die without telling you that you make my throat close up around itself and you
rip the rug out from under my feet, you don’t even have to try, it’s just something that you do.
I haven’t had asthma symptoms for a year by now but I feel them starting up again every time
you wear that off-kilter smirk that says you’re probably doing something that you shouldn’t,
and there’s so much that I still haven’t told you even though you tell me everything because
I don’t want to be the two-ton weight around your ankles any more than I already am.
I haven’t told you that I skipped dinner every time I tasted Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups on your
tongue when we made out because I knew calories didn’t work like that and I knew my dad was
full of shit to ever call me fat but I didn’t want to risk it because I couldn’t slip up, I can’t slip up,
it’s not like I have a problem and I’ve only thrown up on purpose twice or maybe three times,
one of them is kind of fuzzy (it was right after I got turned, I could smell everything and everything
made me feel sick and I might’ve puked without taking it into my own hands but I didn’t want
to lose control of that like I’d lost control of every other thing in my life right then, so I waited until
the locker room was empty and took a toothbrush to the back of my throat, I hadn’t even cheated on
my diet not even vicariously because I kissed you when you’d eaten something that I can’t, I just didn’t
want to throw up unless I chose to do it and I didn’t tell you because you had enough to worry about,
you already did enough for me. I brushed my teeth and gargled Listerine and I couldn’t even taste
the stomach acid when I lied and told you I was fine, as fine as new-turned werewolf could be anyway).
I haven’t told you that her father’s kind of racist, that he specifically asked if I drink tequila during
that Hellish dinner while you were handling bigger problems and he’d look at me the way that my own
dad used to, the way dad looked at me while he told me to pretend I was Italian, and her father all but
pulled out a sombrero and asked if I would dance around it but he didn’t know that I’m a werewolf
at that moment so he didn’t have any reason to go as over-the-top protective as he did. Except that I’m
not white and my mom’s family comes from Zacatecas and there’s no way I could call him out on that
because he can kill me or keep me from seeing her and I didn’t tell you this because it didn’t matter,
not really, it’s nothing I haven’t dealt with and anyway there was nothing that you could’ve done.
I haven’t told you that this isn’t the first time I’ve wanted to die or the first time
I’ve thought about offing myself. My head’s a clouded mess right now, my thoughts
are racing and nothing makes any sense to me, there’s something going wrong and
there’s something here that isn’t wholly me but I can’t fight it because it isn’t coming
out of nowhere, the thoughts were all already there. And I haven’t told you this
because I knew that, if you knew, you’d never look at me the same. If you still looked at
me at all, you wouldn’t recognize me and you’d wonder what kind of changeling replaced
the best friend who you used to know (because that best friend would never do a thing so
self-absorbed and selfish as killing himself even though nobody needs him and no one
would even notice if he was gone) and you’d probably never smile at me again and I
really don’t know what I’d do in that scenario. Finally kill myself for real, probably.
Sometimes, I wonder if you know how deep this whole mess goes.
You know I’m picky and you know I don’t switch off and you know that
every so often, I come up with some excuse to get out of eating lunch
and maybe you even know that I feel like I can’t eat if I weighed too much
in the morning or if I didn’t get the grades I wanted or if I was slightly late to
work the day before. But I wonder if you know how closely I keep track of
things or about the series of three-subject college-ruled spiral-bound notebooks
where I write down everything (how much I eat and what it is and when I work out
and what I do and for how long and everything I taste on you or everything I tasted
on her and how I thought I was going to die when he wanted to follow me to dinner,
it’s not like I’d ever kick him out, he’s a good guy really and he’s got nowhere else to go,
but eating with him’s awkward because he’s not used to my weird habits about food and
I’m used to eating alone if I don’t eat with you and if he thinks that anything’s weird about
the way I eat, he’ll tell you first or maybe mom and I’ll get in trouble and you’ll be upset).
More accurately, I think that you’d be disappointed,
the same way you’re going to be when you find this letter,
because you did so much, you tried to hard, you stood up for me
when no one else would do it, and in the end, I let you down,
I left you behind and didn’t even have the decency to let you keep
your mistaken notions about the kind of guy I always was. I’m sorry.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,
I swear to God, I’m sorry. Repeating it so often doesn’t make it true
and I should have something better to say for myself because you deserve
a better explanation, not just a litany of empty words that I threw up
because after everything you’ve done for me, I owe you that much, I do.
I’m sorry that I don’t have something better I can tell you.
I’m sorry that I couldn’t find the strength to carry on.
I’m sorry that I used my last actions to tell you things I should’ve said
before I decided that I wanted out and back when there was something
that you could’ve done with them, something more than wonder why I
would’ve locked something like that up away from you when it was
killing me so much to keep it quiet, and I’m sorry that you’ll never get a
resolution but selfishly, I don’t want to know what it’s like to see you
stare at me like you can’t recognize me anymore all because I told you that
I love you. I’m sorry I could only tell you because dying before I said so
wasn’t any kind of option. I’m sorry that I took that choice away from you,
I’m sorry that I lied (by omission anyway but that still counts as lying in my
book), I’m sorry that sometimes love is not enough and I’m sorry that I
chose to protect my heart instead of risking it on the statistically improbable
chance that maybe you could ever love me like you love her.
I’m sorry about all the times I masturbated and I thought of you,
thought of your fingers combing through my cheap red wig,
thought of you whispering her name against my skin and pretended
that you were saying mine instead. I’m sorry about not being careful
enough. I’m sorry that I lost control and fell in love with you and then
went off and died like some tragic song about a war hero and his loving
bride and I’m sorry for making you the girl in that scenario but I’ve been
the girl for you for years now and it’s not like that’s a bad thing.
I’m sorry that a litany of sorries will never make this bullshit better,
I wish it would, I wish that there was something you could do, but like I said,
you’ve done enough and all I want anymore is for you to please be happy.
That’s the last thing I’ll ever ask from you: however you do it, please be happy
because I’ve ruined your life for the past year or so and you deserve to get something more.
5. I still don’t know what I’m doing here and all these drafts have only made me
convince myself that there’s no hope, that even if I stayed alive, there wouldn’t be
because there’s something wrong inside of me, something that’s barbed wire twisted
and jagged like the broken glass on my mother’s kitchen floor. I never told you that
I think that you were right back when this started, when you told me I was cursed and
I wanted to go to a party and I wanted her to love me because I knew you didn’t and
I briefly thought that someone else could manage it, someone else could find the flowers
springing up between the cracks within my pavement, and I didn’t listen and I should have
and it didn’t even work out that well because she won’t talk to me about where we stand
and when the full moon rises, I think about you instead of her because I lost her, I pushed
her away without meaning to do it, it wasn’t my fault at first, but then we were supposed to
talk and it still hasn’t happened yet and now it won’t because I’m going to die tonight
and I should’ve listened to you when I had the chance to keep this all from happening
because you’re right and I am cursed and you would’ve could’ve saved me all this trouble.
When I started writing, I wanted you to understand but I
think the only thing you’ll get from all these pages is that I’m
a headcase and I always was and probably you’re better off.
There’s only one story left to tell, at least, and it’s the most recent one so you know
the most about it, and it all goes like this: once upon a time, there was a monster,
a big bad wolf who needed a pack. He killed his niece and stole her power and in the
woods, he met a boy who was really nothing special, who tried his best and tried to
do the right thing the way his mother taught him, but he wasn’t smart and he wasn’t funny
and he wasn’t strong or fast or really that good looking. But the big bad wolf was getting
desperate, he needed a pack and wolves love it when wayward teenager wear red hoods,
so he bit the boy, he made the boy a monster like himself, and then he left the boy alone,
partly he was sick and healing, and partly he just wanted the boy to be a killer, and when
the boy wouldn’t kill anyone, the big bad wolf howled and tried to force his hand.
And the boy resisted but the facts remained the same: there was something dark inside
him now, or maybe it had been there all the time, but maybe it was some animal that the
big bad wolf had left behind, and the boy didn’t want to be a monster but he couldn’t get
away because the curse was with him now, always and forever, locked inside his marrow and
the inflamed pathways of his lungs, beating through his blood like fists into faces and boots
into teeth, with every sick hard pounding of a heart that he no longer recognizes because he
used to be such a sweet young kid with his whole life ahead of him. Maybe he’d never start a
revolution and maybe he’d never change the world, but he could’ve been happy being no one
except that the big bad wolf had other plans and in the end, they weren’t about the boy at all.
And once upon a time, there was another wolf, the big bad one’s nephew, and he was
just as big but not quite bad, but not exactly good by any definition either, and he tried to
help the boy stay safe, but he wasn’t all that good at being helpful and in large part, he was
only looking out for himself. He needed a pack too and he wanted the boy to be his pack so
they could get revenge for his dead sister together and be some kind of Bonnie and Clyde,
if Bonnie and Clyde were ever werewolves. And maybe they weren’t always friends, maybe
there were times they hated each other more than they thought they could hate anyone, but he
and the boy did care about each other, and the boy never wanted the brooding angry wolf to die.
But still he found himself looking down over a lethal edge in an abandoned mall, staring at the
corpse of the first other werewolf who told him how to keep himself within control, seeing him
sprawled out across an escalator, hacked up and bloody, and knowing in his heart that there
was no way anybody could survive a fall like that. Not anybody mortal, anyway.
And once upon a time, there was a princess and although he was a commoner, the boy
fell in love with her. Her skin was soft and white like moonlight and her hair came down in
dusky curls and he thought that if she loved him too, then he could really be somebody
and he realized too late that this wasn’t fair on her. He didn’t realize until they were too deep
inside each other that he had no right to pin his sense of self on some poor girl still fighting to
get out of her parents’ ivory tower, especially when her hair wasn’t long enough to let some
suitor up into her bedroom. But he loved her anyway, he loved her smile and her laugh and
the way she gloated when she beat him at something, the way her watermelon lip gloss tasted on
his mouth, the way she wanted to be powerful and the way she could’ve killed him if she wanted to,
but she chose not to because she loved him too. He loved the way he felt when he was with her,
and he loved the way she looked at him like he meant something, anything, and even when she
shot him full of arrows under the guidance of her wicked aunt, even when she blew him off after
four months without a word when she first asked if they could talk, he loved the princess and he
wanted her to be happy and he was fine to retreat into the woods if that was what she wanted from him.
And once upon a time, there was a hunter, a lonely man who pushed away the people who he
loved, and he tried to kill the boy on more than one occasion because the boy had never killed
anyone himself, but he was a werewolf, he was a monster, and the princess was the hunter’s daughter
and the hunter didn’t want some brown-skinned werewolf whose mother came from Zacatecas
getting his saliva and his hormones all over the princess’s perfect mouth. And the hunter loved his
father, but his father was a wicked man. Dying of some dreaded illness that the doctors and the sages
and all the court magicians couldn’t cure him of, the elder hunter sought power and a magic bite
as a way to end his suffering, no matter who he had to kill or what he had to do to get these things.
And the boy tried to stand against him, the boy tried to protect the innocent people the elder hunter
put within his crosshairs, but the elder hunter was a clever, tricky enemy and the boy had to trick him
in his kind in order to keep anybody safe—for some open-ended value of safe, considering how many
people died before the boy could put a stop to this. And all so he could stopper death, the boy lied to
everyone he knew, everyone except the scholar who helped him make a plan, and it sort of worked and
no one died and the elder hunter bled black blood but the boy still didn’t feel good about the things
he had to do. Even when the brooding angry wolf forgave him, he couldn’t quite forgive himself.
And once upon a time, through every other thing that happened, there was another boy, who
thought that he was nothing special, just pale skin and fragile bone and a certain hard sarcastic edge,
a way of turning phrases that could keep the wolves at bay (and also several people who were not wolves
but who had means of attacking him that this second boy couldn’t stand up against on his own), and he
was in love with a devastating girl whose voice was hard and her skin was soft and one time, the wolf-boy
kissed her because he was angry and she was grateful and he didn’t really want her, well he did, he wanted
her and he wanted to taste her lipstick and he wanted to feel wanted, but more than any other thing, he
just wanted to understand what it was about her that made the phrase-turning boy go cross-eyed with
sick desire, and the phrase-turning boy was his best friend and she was best friends with the princess
and they never should have let themselves fall together in the way they did, but they still did it and
they couldn’t take it back and the wolf-boy still thinks about it sometimes because he wants to be the
devastating red-haired girl, the force of nature on high heels, because maybe then, the phrase-turning
boy will give him a second glance as more than his best friend who’s become a creature of the night.
And once upon a time, although I didn’t mean to do it, I fell in love with you,
I slipped into it and I still don’t know what happened but you overpowered me without
intent to do so—how could you mean to do it when you didn’t know the way I felt
or the way you set my bones on fire just by looking in my direction even when your
smile wasn’t meant for me? And I don’t know how not to be in love with you. I’ve tried to
turn it off but it isn’t like a light-switch, and I’ve tried to ignore the way I feel, I’ve tried to
run and keep it down but that just made it worse, that only made it push back harder because
it had to, because it wanted to survive, and I’ve tried to put the fire out but I think I poured
vodka on the flames instead of water and now they’ve engulfed the house and the fire
department doesn’t come to this side of the tracks and the only thing to do is watch it burn
and be grateful that my mom’s at work so she’ll live through it. And I want everything you
have to give but at the same time, I don’t want anything because I know you wouldn’t
give it freely and I’d never want to make you think you had to love me back, I’d never want
to make you feel obligated to give me anything else when you’ve given me so much already.
Because all these stanzas are the same story and ultimately, they all boil over to the same point:
even though you’ve deserved so much better and even though I could’ve done so much better for you,
you were never unappreciated. I always loved you. I should have said it sooner and I should have
told you how much I’m grateful for the things you’ve done, I treasure you, I want to keep you safe
from everything that could leave you bruised and broken even though I know I can’t, the world is an
awful place and you’ll always find a way to get yourself in trouble no matter what I do and I would
never ask you not to change because everything always changes and we’re all constant works in progress,
but I’m not anything, I’m nothing and I’m no one, I know that no one needs me, they only need the
things that I can do. If I hadn’t gotten bitten, then I’d still be no one, I’m only not no one because of
something that I never wanted that isn’t even about me but was always about him and was always
about his power and him getting his revenge and no one in their right mind would want me because
there’s nothing I can offer, there’s nothing I can do, there’s nothing I can do except for my abilities,
these abilities that are not mine and that were never mine and that have nothing to do with me at all.
But once upon a time, you didn’t love me but you saw something in me,
and you looked at me like I was still a person even when I always thought I wasn’t,
and I wish that I were strong enough but the fact is that I’m not and I’m sorry that I
didn’t tell you sooner because I was scared and the sweat kept beading up on the back of
my neck and my palms itched and I thought about it but I also thought I might throw up
without digging my fingernails back against my throat and I thought you’d see me for what
I really am and I thought you’d either slam the door or leave it hanging open while the cold
October air rushes in and your old Jeep’s engine kickstarts into life and the glass slips through
my fingers and shatters on the kitchen floor and I couldn’t handled that, I couldn’t.
Even when I loved her, even while I still love her, I loved you too and I don’t know how to
make it stop just like how I don’t know how to save myself or anyone this time.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I know the words mean nothing but they’re still true and I’m sorry.
Please be happy. Please live your life and please be happy. Please go to Disneyland,
please go to college, please get a job you like doing something that you love, please find
someone who loves you in all the ways I never could, please treat them well and kiss them
the way they want you to kiss them, and please be happy because even when you weren’t
that great, even when you handcuffed me to a radiator chained me up like a goddamn dog,
no one else has made me happier. Even when it all went wrong, you made me happy and
you made me feel like there was something here worth living for and that’s everything I want for you.
6. It’s one-thirty in the morning as I write this draft.
You’re sleeping now, or dozing maybe, and I’m still alive.
I almost wasn’t but you weren’t supposed to show up, not by
yourself and not with them, not at all, but you showed up anyway
and you still don’t really know what happened which probably
defines our friendship more than anything else at this point so
maybe I should tell you what happened before the two of them get
back and we go sleep somewhere else because we have no idea what’s
going on with this fucked up motel but it’s better not to take any risks.
You made me take six showers before you were satisfied that the gasoline
was gone, that I stank like your body wash and off-brand motel soap instead of
like my suicide attempt, but I can still smell the traces of it, I still feel the sheen of it
clinging and oiling against my skin. And when I glance over at your mattress,
you don’t rouse or anything. You don’t notice me, not really, because that’s something
new and different for us. You don’t see the way I look at you just like how you
didn’t see me stumbling out the door and down the stairs, you didn’t see me force
the bus doors open (which wasn’t hard, you’d already done the hard work for me), you
didn’t see me pour the gasoline all down myself like I could drown in it and I almost
wish I had (that would’ve been much kinder and I wouldn’t have to live on with the smell).
It wasn’t me who lit the road flare. My hands moved, my hands held it,
my hands ripped off the plastic cap, but it still wasn’t me who did that.
Something got inside my head and made me move, maybe a ghost or maybe
something else, I don’t know because I never know, but the spark flared up in
my eyes and my thoughts cleared like at the sunrise, the mirror undistorted,
and I wasn’t lying when I said it was just me and it was the best thing that I
could do for everyone else. I believed that then and I believe that now
and the only thing I can’t believe is that I thought that I should leave a note
and that I thought I could explain things in a way that didn’t make me terrible
and that I tried to tell you that I love you because it’s true, it is, I love you,
but there’s no reason that you need to know that. And if it kills me, then so be it.
Maybe next time, I won’t fuck it up so badly.