We All Looked Up (12 page)

A
nita

EIGHT DAYS AFTER THE ANNOUNCEMENT
, on a misty Valentine's Day morning, Anita clandestinely packed a small suitcase. She included a week's worth of clothes (good for even longer if she mixed and matched), her toiletry kit (this was to be a grand gesture in the name of independence, not a stand against personal hygiene), and a sleeping bag and pillow (in case she ended up spending the night in the back of the Escalade). In her view, the jailbreak was equal parts running
away
and running
toward
. The first half of this equation was pretty obvious; in the last few days, her parents had totally lost the plot. At dinner on Wednesday, her father had thrown a full plate of food at the wall, then dabbed at his mouth with a napkin and politely excused himself from the table. Her mother was acting out in a different way, hiding all her anxiety behind a creaky facade of sunniness, like that thick cake of foundation some girls tried to use to cover up their acne. Anita saw her parents now as if from some stupendous, galactic distance. For the first time in her life, she felt sorry for them. They were both so stuck in their ways, so unhappy without knowing it. But it wasn't her job to fix them. The only person she could save was herself.

As for the running
toward
, that was harder to explain. She only knew that something was out there, calling to her, and if she didn't go now, she wouldn't get another chance. This was (according to her mother, at any rate) the end of days. The Rapture. The Second Coming. Anita had heard it all described in the most lurid detail on any number of groggy Sunday mornings. The book of Revelation—­“revelation” being the English translation of the Greek word
apokalypsis
, as some minister or another had taught her—said that the end times heralded the return of Jesus. But that seemed unlikely in this case, unless he was planning to ride in on an asteroid like a white-robed space cowboy. Anita never thought the last book of the New Testament fit in very well with the rest of it. You started off with this incredibly nice guy who spent his time with prostitutes and preached forgiveness, and you ended up with eternal damnation and the Whore of Babylon. That was the first thing that had shaken her faith, followed soon after by ninth-grade biology. And according to a fair number of sermons she'd heard, those doubts meant she had an eternity of hellfire to look forward to. Good times.

Anita knew she was supposed to be terrified at the thought of death. So then why did she feel this unbelievable lightness of being as she zipped up her suitcase? Why couldn't she stop smiling and humming to herself as she slipped out the front door? Why did she find herself laughing as she drove past the Broadmoor gatehouse, as the stiffness of eighteen years of pretense and submission suddenly fell away from her, golden chains snapping as easily as uncooked spaghetti? It scared her a little; she didn't know whether madness was the kind of thing you could actually watch overtaking you, or if being aware of your developing insanity was enough to prevent it.

The mood at Hamilton was understandably subdued, so Anita had to keep her exhilaration on the DL. Only a little more than half the student body was bothering to show up anymore, which left the halls strangely wide and quiet. Certain classes, specifically the ones in which Ardor was never referenced, became surreal exercises in trying to ignore the unignorable. Anita's mind, usually a faithful partner, began to cheat on the chalkboard equations with random thoughts and daydreams. It stole out of the present moment and into the future, wondering what tonight's show at the Crocodile would be like. Though she couldn't imagine enjoying Andy's music (based purely on the way he dressed), she still felt confident that she was meant to be there to hear it.

When eighth period rolled around, Anita went to the discussion group that Mr. McArthur and Suzie O had put together. It had already become her favorite part of the school day. This week they were discussing ancient philosophers; Anita had spent the last couple of nights reading about the Stoics and Cynics, the Epicureans and the hedonists. Socrates believed that in a perfect world, every person would be doing the thing that they were born to do. Which meant that if you really believed your true calling was as a singer, to do anything else would be to break the most fundamental rule of the universe.

The subject today was happiness—an appropriate one, given ­Anita's current state of mind. Having read all the relevant texts, she still wasn't sure where her sudden joy had come from.

“Some people think happiness is impossible in the face of death,” Mr. McArthur said, “but Epicurus tells us that there's no reason to fear death, because we don't get to meet it. While we exist, there is no death. And when death comes, we're not there anymore.”

“That's stupid,” some junior boy said. “Waiting for something is the worst part. Like when you have to get a shot or something.”

“Epicurus would argue that anticipation is the stupid thing. Why spend your life worried about something that hasn't happened yet?”

“I didn't get the hedonists,” said Krista Asahara, Anita's chipper student-council nemesis. “What kind of life would that be, just pursuing pleasure all the time?”

“An awesome one,” somebody joked.

“Actually,” Suzie O said, “the hedonists weren't as selfish as most people think. Sure, they valued pleasure above all else, but they also thought that most people didn't understand what true pleasure really was. The hedonists believed that justice and virtue were the real pleasures of life, while sex and meals were only good for a ­couple hours.”

“Even that's pretty optimistic,” Mr. McArthur said.

“Depends who you're with,” Suzie answered, and everyone laughed.

Mr. McArthur had been right—there
was
consolation to be found in reading the works of all these dead people who'd struggled to figure out what life was about. The first day of the discussion group, Suzie O said that the secret goal of all philosophy was to figure out the best way to die. Weird how the most depressing stuff could turn out to be the most comforting.

Anita didn't say much at the meetings; a few dozen students usually turned up, and in any group that size, there would always be a couple of people willing to speak for everyone else. But that Friday, after the discussion was over, she followed Suzie back to her office in the library.

The counselor was already Skyping with a pretty girl in a dorm room when Anita came in.

“Hey, Suzie. Are you busy? I can come by tomorrow or something—”

“No, it's fine.” She turned to the girl on Skype. “I'll call you back in a bit.”

“Okay,” the girl said, and shut off her camera.

“Who was that?” Anita asked.

“My daughter. She's a senior at Rutgers.”

“I didn't know you had a daughter.”

“Well, now you do. So what's up?”

“I had a sorta weird question.”

“I love weird questions.”

Suzie sat there expectantly as Anita figured out the best way to word it. “I guess I was just wondering if I should be worried. About myself.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm . . . happy.”

Suzie frowned. “You're worried because you're happy?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you feel hysterical?”

“No. I feel peaceful, actually.”

“And why do you think that is?”

“I guess because I realized that nothing really matters.” A few bars of Freddie Mercury's “Bohemian Rhapsody” played in her head.

“Are you sure about that? We've still got a shot at surviving.”

“I know. But I don't mean that nothing matters
anymore
. I mean nothing
ever
mattered. Like, if it's all so fragile anyway, then it was never really real, you know? Even if there weren't an asteroid, I could still die tomorrow. So why worry? It's like Andy said. ‘Whatever it is, it's not worth it.'”

“Andy's a good kid, Anita, but I'm not sure I'd pick him as a philosophical role model. We all have to believe in
something
.”

Anita shrugged. “I guess.” She wasn't exactly sure what she'd expected to get out of this conversation; it wasn't as if Suzie was going to tell her not to be happy. “So what's your daughter studying at Rutgers?”

“Economics.”

“It must be hard to have her so far away, huh?”

Suzie smiled. Then, without any warning, her face crumpled up like a paper bag. “Shit, I'm sorry,” she said, and let her head fall into her hands.

“Oh, it's okay.”

Anita put her arms around Suzie's wide shoulders and held on until the shaking stopped, as if the emotion were just a bit of turbulence. She tried to remember the last time she'd seen her mother cry. Had she ever?

“It's just a sore spot right now,” Suzie said, pulling a Kleenex from a box hidden inside a porcelain turtle. “I thought she'd come right home, but she's got this boyfriend who lives in New York that she doesn't want to leave. And we haven't always gotten along.” She blew her nose. “I'm really sorry, Anita.”

“Don't be.”

“What a load of good I'm gonna be, huh? The students need to see someone keeping it together.”

“Are you kidding?” Anita said. “I think you should cry in front of everyone who comes in here. Then they'll know it's okay not to be okay.”

“Thanks.” Suzie shook out her hands and blinked away the last of the tears. “All right, I think I'm stabilizing. And even if I've lost all credibility as a counselor, at least I proved my point.”

“What point was that?”

“There's still time for you to do things that matter. Even if it's just being there for someone who's freaking out.” Suzie took hold of ­Anita's hand and gave it a squeeze. “Don't forget that.”

Anita hadn't been downtown since the night of Esperanza Spalding's show, and things had definitely changed. There were so many people out on the streets, as if a big concert had just gotten out and nobody wanted to go home. The Crocodile was packed wall-to-wall with Seattle's misfits—aging rocker types in studded leather pants, pairs of spiky-haired girls holding hands, big-bearded metalheads with arms as densely decorated with tattoos as the venue's bathroom stalls were with graffiti. Anita sat at the bar, alone with her suitcase and a glass of orange juice, feeling scared and lonely and excited all at once. She was really doing it. She was running away from home.

Now all she had to do was find a place to stay.

The first band was made up of four guys who might have been contestants in a Dracula look-alike contest. One of them played a synthesized church organ. Next up came a group of skinheads; the lead singer liked to take the whole microphone into his mouth while screaming into it. The dance floor looked like a breakout at a mental hospital for the criminally insane.

Around ten, Andy and Bobo stumbled onstage and began to set up. Both of them had clearly been drinking. Their music was messy, bland, and painfully loud all at once. Over the feedback and the constant shimmer of crash cymbal, it was impossible to make out a word of Bobo's manic screech. He was a decent front man—struttingly confident and unafraid to look crazy—but the songs themselves were incomprehensible.

Anita was disappointed. In spite of herself, she'd been expecting magic. All she was getting out of Andy's “band” was that special sort of despair she always felt after listening to truly terrible music. Well, that and a ringing sound in her ears.

After a period of time which might have comprised two songs or two dozen, Andy stumbled out from behind his drum kit. He was so thoroughly wasted that you could see it in every part of his body; his limbs moved like overfilled water balloons, and he almost dropped the guitar when Bobo handed it to him. He grinned goofily out at the crowd—kinda cute, actually.

“This is a song of mine, about not wanting to deal with other people's shit. Maybe you can relate to that. Or not. Whatever. It's called ‘Save It.'”

He hit a couple of wrong notes before locking into a slow arpeggio, clear and quiet, reverbed like a rubber band. And what came out of the speakers after that was, without a doubt, the craziest thing Anita had heard since the news that an asteroid might soon blow them all to kingdom come. The little skater punk, with his too-tight jeans and bangs that wouldn't stay out of his eyes, was playing soul music. His voice was frail and unsure, and the audience was thrown by the sudden shift in tone, and even Andy himself didn't seem to totally understand what he was doing, but Anita got the message loud and clear, like neon runway lights pointing the way toward her future. Like second star to the right and straight on till morning. Like fate.