Gone, Gone, Gone(29)

I stay out to see the sunrise, and when I get home . . . oh shit. My parents, both of them in their flannel pajamas, the ones I guess they wear when they’re not going to have sex. I wish they’d had sex. That’s really gross, but maybe they wouldn’t be glaring at me if they had.

But they probably would be. I think adults can probably have sex and a life at the same time, which is sort of a foreign concept for me.

“Where the hell were you?” my dad says.

I hold up the dog leashes.

My father says, “Jesus, Craig. Can you really be this incredibly oblivious?”

“I’m not oblivious. I’m also not going to let my dogs, like, atrophy because a few people have been shot.”

“A few innocent people!” my father says. “A few people who were shot for absolutely no reason except for where they happened to be.”

But . . . but, no, I’m calling bullshit, because entire lives are determined by where we happen to be. It’s the only reason we care about the cities we care about. God, it’s the only reason we fall in love. It’s where you happen to be. I’m not going to spend my whole life f*cking freaking out about it.

“I’m not going to get shot,” I say. “You’re not actually sitting here thinking that I’m going to get shot, come on.”

Mom has her head in her hands. She says, “I know you’re not. But you scared your father and me to death.”

“But what are you scared of, if you know I’m not going to get shot?”

Mom breathes out. “I know it must seem to you like there are so many other people out there who could be—”

God, Lio and my mom and everyone need to shut up about numbers, I don’t care, I don’t care, I just care that I’m not going to die because I’m not.

I don’t think I’m ever going to believe that I’m vulnerable the way other people are vulnerable, and fine, that’s stupid. I get it. But all this shit keeps happening and I’m still here, so what else am I supposed to even think? I shut the door to the basement and tramp down the stairs. Fine. It’s stupid. But I don’t know how to change it. I don’t know how to convince myself that I could be like the people I see on the news or the people I imagine at Cody’s school. Do I need to put a gun to my own head to feel it? I’m not going to die, and this is my life, and I feel it in my f*cking bones, so am I supposed to understand how it’s possible to not be alive? Being alive is all that I am.

This is all such bullshit. Hiding. Running in zigzags. The only thing I have to do is be me. That’s the way to not get shot. Be self-aware. I don’t mean that the dead people didn’t have a sense of identity or something. I just mean . . .

I don’t know.

They weren’t me.

I’m not going to die.

And I know how stupid it sounds, but even when I try to convince myself that it’s the dumbest way ever to think, I can’t talk myself out of it. It’s the same voice that keeps me from killing myself every time I want to a little. If I’m dead, who’s going to be me?

My cousins were supposed to visit this Sunday from Pennsylvania, but now they’re not because their parents don’t think it’s safe to be in Maryland. They’re worried about the kids, and it’s so stupid, because no one’s been shot since Friday, and he lived, and there haven’t been any kids.

“Your kids are safe at school.” The police chief said so himself. I mean, if anyone knows, it’s him. They’re probably safer here than in Pittsburgh, if you take air pollution into account, and the fact that if you trip in Pittsburgh you’ll probably get, like, speared through by a f*cking piece of steel or some shit like that.

No emails from anybody, except that old one from Lio still sitting in my inbox. I’ll answer it later, I will, I will I will I will. That movie we wanted to see, Phone Booth? They’re postponing the release because they think it’ll be too upsetting this close to the shootings. I bet Lio’s really pissed off and confused about that, because even I can’t believe the rest of the country even knows about the shootings, since I bet the same number of people have died in every single state in the United States this week, probably more, so God knows why they’re postponing a movie because of us. I really am starting to sound like Lio, I think, and I wonder if that means I’m starting to think like him too. I’m wondering what it’s like in Lio’s head.

The shootings are on the news stations, all the time, which is how I guess the whole world knows. It’s like, weather, sniper, sports, sniper, international, sniper, local? No, local means more sniper. Can’t they report something different? It’s been days since anyone was shot, and I really don’t need to think about this all the time, but it’s getting to be like a song that’s stuck in my head, which is such a crude way of putting something where people are dying, I know, but with the news stories and ads for bulletproof vests and my father’s phone ringing again and again, it’s not as if I’m the first one making this vulgar.

Li—

I don’t know what to say to you. You were really an *. You’re probably still really an * while you’re reading this.

I guess D.C. is more important to me not even because of Cody’s dad, but because it was D.C. and that was where I was.

But it did suck about Cody’s dad. But you didn’t know that.