I don’t need him.
(AGE SIXTEEN—APRIL, THREE MONTHS AGO)
I know Dad killed himself because of me.
Mom thinks that his recent jail stint tipped him over the edge, that his many chemical imbalances caught up with him.
Now I keep searching for happiness so I don’t end up like he did.
I learn about this town called Happy in Texas and think about how that must be the greatest place to live.
I teach myself how to say and read and write happy in Spanish, German, Italian, and even Japanese but I would have to draw that last one out.
I discover the happiest animal in the world, the quokka. He’s a cheeky little bastard that’s always smiling.
But it’s not enough.
The memories are still rattling around my head, twisting into me like a knife. I don’t want to wait around to see what comes next for me in this tragic story I’m living. I open up one of my father’s unused razors and cut into my wrist like he
did, slit in a curve until it smiles so everyone will know I died for happiness.
I was expecting relief but instead it’s the saddest pain I’ve ever experienced. I never once stop feeling empty or unworthy of anyone’s rescue, not even when the thin line on my wrist makes everything go red.
I don’t want to die and I didn’t.
I spent a few days at the hospital where I met with this therapist, Dr. Slattery, who was the worst. I thought it was just me who couldn’t stand him, but I read his reviews online and saw I wasn’t the only one who thought the man was a joke:
“Dr. Slattery drove me crazier.”
“Dr. Slattery wouldn’t shut up about his own problems!”
And on and on.
Genevieve is taking much better care of me than that clown did. My mom finally let me out from under her watch, and Eric’s watch, too—both of them missing a lot of work as I stayed home from school. They let me out to celebrate my one-year anniversary with Genevieve.
She must’ve thought we’d run around the city having fun to keep my mind off of things, but instead I’m stretched out on her couch crying with my head on her lap because of all the pain I can’t reach. Pain someone else can remove.
“I don’t see how a Leteo procedure would really help you,” Genevieve says. “When my mother died, it was brutal, and—”
She doesn’t understand. She didn’t have to find whatever was left of her mother’s body on the plane’s crash site like I had to find my father dead in the bathtub. “I would forget finding him. That’s gotta be fucked up enough for Leteo to scrub out.”
“Yeah . . .” Genevieve says, crying too. “It’s gotta be.”
The TV’s volume is raised high so Genevieve’s dad can’t hear me cry. I’m not embarrassed, but I think it makes him uncomfortable. A commercial for this new movie, The Final Chase, comes on and it’s like a punch in the gut when I think about all the new movies I won’t see with Collin, all the comics we won’t read together, and how he’s basically acting like I never happened.
He’s undoing himself and I need to do the same.
(AGE SIXTEEN—MAY, TWO MONTHS AGO)
After an hour with Dr. Slattery, where I cried and cried out of frustration, I decide I want to spend some time outside—even if it means my mom has to sit out here with me. There’s a moving truck parked in front of Building 135. When I go to check out the new neighbor, I see Kyle wheeling a shopping cart of boxes into the back of the truck. I still half expect to find Kenneth right behind him, minding his own business.
One of the boxes falls out of the shopping cart. I pick it up and hand it over to Kyle, who won’t look me in the eyes. “Going somewhere?”
Kyle nods and drops the box into the truck.
“Where?”
“Doesn’t matter. Just can’t be here anymore.”