Beast(43)

EIGHTEEN


Another day of epic bullshit; signed, sealed, and delivered. What fun I had pretending people weren’t laughing under their breath as I hobbled by. How delightful it was trying to get up the nerve to ask Ethan and Bryce to confirm that they were only kidding, right? They’re not really going after Jamie? And oh! How proud I was of myself when I chickened out every time.

I didn’t eat lunch today. I didn’t know where I would sit, didn’t know who would have me. What if the entire school has secretly hated me this whole time and I never knew? I didn’t feel like finding out.

This was supposed to be my year, dammit.

I shuffle over to the bed in my room. My pillow waits for me and I smother my face with it and yell. Not loud, but enough. I take the pillow off my face and stare at the blue, blue, blue ceiling above. When I was in the second grade, I wanted to paint it sky blue because that’s where my dad was. Up in the clouds.

Hey, Dad.

It’s me. I know it’s been awhile.

If you’re in heaven, you’re really tall now, like miles high, so here’s a joke I get all the time: How’s the weather up there?

If you thought that was funny, ha-ha, me too! I love it when people say that to me, it never gets old! If you didn’t, I don’t like that joke either. It drives me insane hearing it over and over, right? Except I don’t know your thoughts on the matter. I wish I did. I wish I knew what made you laugh, because even though everyone tells me you were a funny guy, that could mean anything. I really don’t know what your sense of humor was like.

I want to.

I wish you’d talk to me and help me out, like you do for Mom. She misses you. I miss you too, in case you didn’t think I did, because I do. I just pretend I don’t sometimes. Like when I shrug off seeing other kids’ dads pick them up after school and stuff. It’s easier that way, but it doesn’t make me miss you any less.

I’m hoping you can help me out, just for a second.

I’m thinking if I was dead inside and soulless, it’d be a really handy way to get through high school. You’ve seen JP—you know what a dick he is. And I’m stuck because he has the entire school on lockdown. He put me on the outs and that’s it for me; I’m done.

So please make me horrible. But not like with Jamie how we used to be horrible, and how we had the greatest days of my life together. I mean really authentically awful, so if I can’t be with her, I can at least survive the rest of high school as a miserable stone-faced curmudgeon.

P.S. Please make me stop growing.

And make me six inches shorter.

And a hundred pounds lighter.

And have no back hair.

Thank you.

Bye, Dad.

I miss you every day.



I close the door on my letter to a dead man and add an addendum to the universe: please, someway, somehow, take away my feelings for Jamie.

That has to go in the postscript, because I don’t want my dad to know how bad it is. All I want more than anything is a sign from above. Since I don’t know what he thinks—what he thought—about any of this stuff, I’m worried all I have is his disapproval. I mean, what if I like Jamie and Dad doesn’t? I’ll never get that sign. He’ll never talk to me.

As if the thought of my dad never talking to me weren’t scary enough, I’m worried my clock is ticking too. If my candle is set to go out at the age of twenty-six, just like his, then I kinda want Dad up in heaven to be waiting for me with open arms.

But this connection I have with Jamie won’t go away. As soon as the front door shut last night, I knew I was sunk. It’s a very strange and uncomfortable feeling because I don’t know which equation will solve the problem.

I have these crazy thoughts where I reach my hands into my own chest, through the skin and muscle and past the sternum, and grip my feelings for her. It’s like dipping my hands into a barrel full of warm rice, pressing from all sides. Soothing and awesome. I take it, gather up all these scattered grains, each one a different atom of her, and pull them from my heart and hold them. Her wit, her laughter, her jokes. How she surprises me, how I want to hear what she has to say. How I want to tell her things.

They’re too wonderful to throw away in the Dumpster, but I’m terrified to put them back.

I can’t stop thinking about Jamie. In an aching, need-to-be-with-her way. But if I’ve learned anything from missing my dad, it’s that I’m really good at cramming all this stuff away in a drawer for later.

Or never.

There’s a knock at my door, and I slam that drawer shut. Mom hasn’t come here to talk to me forever. If there’s ever a time for one of her cheesy “You’re superduper” pep talks, it’s now. I’ve been missing them, but I’ll never tell her that. “Hi, Mom,” I call out.

The door opens and I sink. It’s JP. “What the f*ck are you doing here?” I tear over to him, ready to rip him in half like a phone book before he gets the chance to say it’s taco night. Because he’s always here for taco night. “Get the hell out, JP, or I’m going to finally do to you what I couldn’t in the cafeteria.”

He grabs on to the doorjamb, as if that will stop me. “Go ahead, you frigging animal, I’m not here for you anyway. I’m here for me.”

I snort and it’s bitter.