More Happy Than Not (9 page)

“I didn't know you read that series!”

“Hell yeah,” Thomas says. “I brought my copy to the midnight showing and readers signed their names and underlined their favorite passages.”

I wish I'd gone. “Did you dress up?”

“I was the only brown Scorpius Hawthorne,” Thomas says. He tells me about other midnight showings too, where he had people sign the video game cases and comic book anthologies that inspired them all. These are all cool mementos. But I'm just happy to have another friend who's read and seen the Scorpius Hawthorne series.

We look at the movie posters to decide what we're going to see. Thomas wishes a new Spielberg movie was out but is ready to settle on a black-and-white film about a boy dancing on a bus. “No thanks,” I say.

“What about that new movie,
The Final Chase
?” Thomas stands in front of a poster of a pretty blue-eyed girl sitting at the edge of a dock like it's a park bench, and a guy in a sweater vest reaching out for her. “I didn't realize this was out yet. You down?”

I'm pretty sure the commercial for this movie leans toward the romance side of things. “I don't think I can.”

“It's PG-13. You are of age, aren't you?”

“Yeah, smart-ass. Looks like something Genevieve might like. There's nothing else you want to see?”

Thomas looks around and turns his back on movies promising explosions and gunfights. “I wouldn't mind seeing that French movie again. It starts in an hour, though.”

It's obvious he doesn't want to see the French movie again because who in the hell would want to see a French movie twice? “Let's go see
The Final Chase
. I can always see it again when she gets back.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. If it sucks, she's on her own.”

We go inside and there are plenty of seats available. “Preference?”

“The back row but don't ask why,” I say.

“Why?”

“I have this pretty irrational fear of having my throat sliced inside a movie theater, so I figure that can't happen if no one sits behind me.”

Thomas stops chewing on his popcorn. His eyes are grilling me on whether I'm being serious or not before he busts out laughing so hard he almost chokes. I sit down in the back row, and he collapses into the seat next to mine as his laugh winds down.

I flip him off. “Don't act like you've never been freaked out by something ridiculous.”

“No, I definitely have. I used to bother my mother when I was a kid, maybe nine or ten, to let me watch horror movies, especially slasher flicks.”

“Probably not the best thing to say to someone afraid of having his throat sliced.”

“Shut up. So my mother finally gave in one evening and let me watch
Scream
. I was scared shitless and was up until five in the morning. Ma always encouraged me to count sheep when I couldn't sleep but it only made things worse. I was counting sheep that night and every time they hopped over the fence
. . .
” Dramatic pause. “The
Scream
guy would stab each of them and they would fall down, bloody and dead.”

I laugh so loudly other people shush me, even though previews haven't started yet, and it's hard to stop. “You are so disturbed! How long did this go on for?”

“Never stopped.” Thomas screeches and mimes someone getting stabbed. The previews come on and we shut up.

There's a rom-com,
Next Stop: Love
, which is about a train conductor crushing on this new attendant; a typical horror movie where creepy little girls appear after someone turns a corner; a miniseries called
Don't You Forget About Me
about a husband trying to convince his wife not to forget him with a Leteo procedure; and, finally, a comedy about four postgrad guys on a cruise ship that doesn't look funny at all.

“Those all looked terrible,” I say.

Thomas leans over and says, “I will slice your throat if you talk during the movie.”

This movie is total
bullshit.

It's supposed to be funny and the only thing I'm laughing at is how the studio managed to disguise an uncomfortably dark movie as a summer comedy.

It's about a guy named Chase who strikes up a conversation with some cute girl on the train about where she's going. She tells him, “Somewhere good.” He digs deeper but she doesn't respond. She leaves her phone on the train, and Chase chases (sigh) after her to return it, but it's too late, so he goes through her phone and discovers a bucket list of things she wants to do before ending her life.

By this point, Thomas has fallen asleep. I should probably do the same thing, but I hope it gets better
. . .
and it never does. Near the end, Chase pieces together she's going to kill herself at the pier and when he finally gets there he's greeted by the blinding red-and-blue siren lights of police cars. He smashes the phone.

I want to smash something, too.

My recap to Thomas when he wakes up: “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.”

He stretches and yawns. “Your throat looks fine, though,” he says.

I sort of, kind
of, definitely like summer in my neighborhood: girls chalking hopscotch; guys playing card games under whatever shade they can find; friends blasting their stereos; shooting shit on the stoops. And while my apartment is small, it's moments like these that make those walls feel bigger than they are.

I point to the red hospital across the street. “My mother works over there and manages to be twenty minutes late every morning.” Down the block is the post office. “And my father used to be a security guard there.” Maybe all that time alone with his thoughts was where he went wrong.

The fire hydrant on the corner has been wrenched open. The screaming kids remind me of all the times we filled up buckets and spilled water all over the playground, throwing ourselves down the wet slides since we couldn't afford to go to an actual water park.

“I don't know what my dad does,” Thomas replies. “The last time I saw him was on my ninth birthday. I was watching him from my window go to his car to get my Buzz Lightyear, but instead he got in and drove away.”

I don't know when we stopped walking or who stopped first, but we're both still.

“Asshole.”

“Let's not go taking dark turns, okay?” Thomas eyes the sprinkler and mischievously raises his huge eyebrows before pulling off his shirt, his arms flexing. He's got some God of War–like abs coming in and all I have is serious rib cage. “Come on.”

“I don't want to get my phone wet.”

“Just fold it inside your shirt. No one's going to steal it.”

“You do know we aren't in Queens, right?”

Thomas tucks his phone inside his shirt and leaves it against a mailbox. “Your loss, dude.” He runs with an athlete's sprint and bounces back and forth through the sprinklers, the sun glinting off his belt buckle. Sure, some people are looking at him like he's insane, but he doesn't seem to care.

I don't know what possesses me, what chokes out all my insecurities and allows me to pull my shirt off, but it's freeing. Thomas gives me two thumbs-up. I don't feel like a scrawny kid right now.

I pull my phone out—but before I can roll it inside my shirt, it buzzes. Genevieve is calling. I freeze.

“Hey!” I answer.

“Hi. I somehow miss your dumb-idiot face already. Fly out here so we can build a house in the woods and start a family,” she says.

“I miss you more but not as much as I hate camping.”

“It wouldn't count as camping if we spent our lives here.”

“Truth.” I picture her smiling despite the distance and it makes me happy, no, happier. I want to beg her to come home, but I want her to stay focused on her art and not worry about me. “Have you started painting yet or is there some lame orientation?”

“The lame orientation was yesterday. We're taking a quick break before doing some still life on trees and
. . .
”

I nearly drop my phone when I see Thomas doing push-ups from inside the sprinklers, showing off for these girls across the street. I put the phone back to my ear when I hear Genevieve calling my name. “Sorry. Thomas is making a dick of himself.” He doesn't care like I would've
.
”

“You boys playing more Suicide?”

“Nah, it's just me and Thomas.” I feel too exposed with my shirt off. “I think I'm heading home in a little bit, though. Pretty tired. You think you'll be free to call me tonight? I want to hear all about the five hundred paintings you'll finish today without me around to bother you.”

“Yup. Call you tonight, babe.” She hangs up before I can say bye or tell her I love her.

Now I feel like shit for getting distracted, but she'll call later. I'll explain how I really needed something fun to do, which is sort of her fault since she left me here, but if she hadn't left, it would've been my fault, so I guess I can't really go blaming her. Hopefully she'll send me a punch across the country and all will be okay. I tuck my phone inside my shirt and kick my sneakers off, leaving everything on the ground. I charge toward the sprinklers in jeans and socks and jump through the jets of water. I'm laughing when I land on the other side.

“Woo-hoo!” Thomas whistles. “About time.”

I shiver from the cold. “Okay, uh, I miss my clothes.”

“Be free for sixty seconds, Stretch.” Thomas grabs on to my shoulders like he's prepping me for the last game of the season—what game that is, I don't know. “Forget about everything. Forget about your father. Even forget about your girlfriend. Pretend like you're the only one around.” He lets go after coaching me and sits down on the ground. The water continues to wash over him.

I sit down across from him and get soaked. “I'm the only one,” I quietly tell myself, shedding my worries as if they could sink down the sewage drains. I squeeze my eyes shut and count up, feeling lighter as each second passes, more myself. “Fifty-eight, fifty-nine
. . .
” I don't want to let go of the last second. “Sixty.”

I open my eyes to a group of kids playing tag around us.

“It's going to be impossible to get out of these jeans,” I say. I can barely hear myself with the water crashing into my ears and the splashing and the children. Thomas stands and offers to help me up.

I clasp his forearm.

He shouts, “No homo!”

We're both laughing as we go back to our abandoned belongings. Thomas dries his chest off with his shirt, soaking it up. “I don't know if it's because of that nap, but I feel great! I haven't had that much fun since
. . .
nothing comes to mind.”

“Good to hear. I mean, sucks for you, but glad to know I'm not wasting your time.” I start putting my shirt on but poke my head through the wrong hole and get lost. I wrestle with myself until I feel Thomas's hands steadying me.

“Stop! Stop!” Thomas is cracking up. There aren't enough No Homos to excuse us from the fact that he's dressing me right now. After some wrangling around, I'm sorted and find myself facing him. “I can't take you anywhere. You're making an ass of yourself.”

I look across the street. The girls who were checking out Thomas are laughing at me. I would've probably been really pissed if I didn't have Genevieve. Then I see Brendan and Me-Crazy chilling not too far off, smoking the cigarettes Me-Crazy steals from his father. They're looking at me like they don't even recognize me. I nod my head to say hey, but they must be too high from smoking some of Brendan's weed earlier.

“You doing anything tonight?” Thomas asks. “Besides sleeping
, which you can do at my house.” He smiles. “Okay, that sounded wrong. No homo.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Since I feel like
The Final Chase
may or may not have slightly disappointed you—”

“It one hundred percent did,” I interrupt.

“I thought we could watch
Jaws
on my rooftop.”

“I'm down.”

I've always felt the worst time to be treated like a kid is during the summer. Sure, most of the parents around here give us
10:00
p.m.
curfews, but we normally stay out until midnight, sometimes even 1:00 or 2:00
a.m.
This is not about rebelling or seeing how far we can push the adults before they come outside with a belt. (Fat-Dave has it bad like that.) It's just that we're exposed to more grown-up shit versus those in the safer
boroughs and white-picket-fence neighborhoods. But when I call my mom to tell her I'm going to go stay over at Thomas's, she talks to me as if I'm five years old. She needs to meet Thomas to make sure he's not a drug dealer or some devil on my shoulder who might talk me off a roof.