Paranoid Park (16 page)

“It’s not a wuss board. It’s better than your lame board.”

We picked up Paul Auster. We drove downtown. I worried they might change their mind and want to go to Paranoid Park. But they didn’t. They wanted to check out the new stairs and rails at the convention center.

The new rails were popular that day. All the local skaters had heard about them, and a lot of the best guys had shown up to try them out.

I couldn’t ride rails. Neither could any of us, really. Jared tried and just about killed himself. I mostly hung out and messed around on a three-set on the other end of the plaza, but after I crashed a couple times I laid off that, too.

Paul Auster and I ended up sitting together, drinking Red Bulls and watching this Prep kid do tricks on the sidewalk. He was this dorky kid, but he was nailing kick-flips, manuals, shuv-its, everything. He was a natural talent; he didn’t try to do things, he just did them. There was no thinking.

I drank my Red Bull and reflected on that. Before the security guard, almost everything I did was natural. I woke up, I went to school, I hung out with my friends. I never thought about what I was doing, or why. Now I was always thinking. I never just
did
stuff. I was always checking myself, watching what I said and did. Which made every day like going to work. It was like my whole life had become a really hard job.

But what exactly caused that? And how did you fix it? Could you go back to being innocent and carefree once you’d done something like what I did?

I didn’t know. And there was no one to ask.

That night my mom came home. My aunt Sally packed her stuff to go. They were both pretty stressed. My mom especially. She took some sleeping pills and went to bed.

Henry and I watched TV until eleven and then he went to bed. I watched the news. I always watched the news. I knew everything going on in the whole state. But there was nothing about Paranoid Park.

Later, I went to the garage. I wanted to see what camping stuff my dad had taken. The little camp stove was gone, of course. But the bigger stove was still there. The cooler was still there. I tried to find the emergency crank-up radio my mom gave Dad as a Christmas gift, but he must have taken it.

I looked through the other cabinets. The sleeping bags were still there-the older ones, anyway. I found a little cot that folded up and fit into a carrying bag. I pulled it out and tried to remember how to set it up. The instructions were gone, but once I unfolded it, I figured it out.

I thought about if I had to run. Like if the cops began to figure things out, could I get away? Where would I go?

I could probably make it to Canada. If I left in the morning. I could pretend I was going to school, take my mom’s car, and be in Vancouver, B.C., by nightfall.

Then what? Live in a stolen car? How long would that last? Maybe I could go to Mexico. That was farther. Two days’ drive, maybe three. I could say I was staying over at Jared’s. That would give me a day. And if I drove all night, I could probably make it. But what would I do in Mexico? What would I do anywhere?

I folded up the cot. I dug around some more. I found a little survival kit that had a compass and aspirin and some waterproof matches. I found a little bottle of antidote for rattlesnake bites. I wondered what that did to you.

Maybe I could take some of my mom’s sleeping pills. If I tried to kill myself, would they go easy on me? Could I say I was insane or suicidal or whatever?

I dug deeper in one of the standing cabinets. I found some snowshoes that my dad bought. A couple years before, he decided he was “into” snow camping. He never actually went, but he bought all the crap. Most of it was useless, but the snowshoes were kinda cool.

I found some fishing stuff, some old reels, some old tackle boxes. I opened a coffee can and found a tangle of hooks and bobbers and other stuff. When I was a little kid, I used to dream of going into the mountains and living off the land. I guess a lot of kids think that. Hunting for food, using a bow and arrow, living in a tree house or in a cave ... But that’s not what it would be like if I bailed. It wouldn’t be a Disney movie. Running away would be a slow, dirty, gruesome existence. Hiding out, sleeping in the car—what would I do for money? I could get dishwashing jobs. Maybe I could meet a girl somewhere, a Canadian girl. I could live behind her house and we could get married and change our names and .... I don’t know what ... grow vegetables, listen to Bright Eyes, hang out in hammocks....

It was a nice dream. There were a lot of nice dreams. But could I do it? Maybe it was better to just go to jail, just do my time and not cut ties. Better to have my dumb parents know where I was than be out in the Canadian wilderness somewhere, alone, eating dirt, slowly going insane....

That was the thing about secrets, they drove you insane. They really did. They isolated you. They separated you from your tribe. They destroyed you eventually. Unless you were strong. Unless you were very, very strong.

I found Jennifer in the parking lot after school a couple days later. She was wearing her cheerleader uniform. She stood with Elizabeth and those guys by Elizabeth’s car.

Jennifer had told me earlier that she was going with Elizabeth Gould that weekend to the Goulds’ beach house with some other girls. She wanted me to be jealous about their “girls’ party weekend” or whatever, but I wasn’t.

I walked over to them. I had my skateboard under my arm. None of them looked very happy to see me. I was not being a good boyfriend to Jennifer. I had not turned out to be the fun-loving skater boy they thought I would be.

“Hey,” I said to Jennifer. “Can I talk to you a second?”

She gave me a harsh look, for her friends’ benefit. But she came. She seemed a little curious about what I wanted.

“I can’t go out with you anymore,” I told her.

“What?!” she said. She was totally shocked. She thought I had come to complain about her going to the beach. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t think it’s working out,” I said.

“What? Are you serious? Who have you been talking to?”

“No one.”

“Oh my God!” She looked at me, her mouth open. She was so surprised she couldn’t think of what to say.

“You can’t break up with me,” she finally blurted. “We just started going out!”

“I know. I’m sorry. But I don’t think it’s working out.”

“Why did you wait until now?” she said. “Were you waiting until you had sex with me?”

“No. I just ...”

“You were! You waited until you had sex with me! You used me!”

“No, I didn’t.”

She hit me. A slapping blow to my upper arm. I stepped away from her.

“I just don’t feel like it’s—” I repeated.

“I can’t believe you!” she shrieked, louder now, so her friends would hear. “You think you can just dump me? Now that we’ve had sex? You can’t do that.”

I stood there, watching her. The whole world was a dream, I realized. Nothing was real. Everyone was acting in a bad soap opera. The whole world was one big FOX TV show.

“Jennifer?” asked one of the other cheerleaders. “Are you okay?”

Jennifer ran to her friends. “He just broke up with me!” She burst into tears. She ran to Elizabeth, who put her arms around her.

All the girls stared at me with hatred in their eyes. It was a big drama that had to be acted out. But deep down, nobody really cared. The other girls didn’t care about Jennifer. Jennifer didn’t care about me. I didn’t care about anything.

Everyone was so full of crap.

The next day, the news went around school: I had used Jennifer for sex and dumped her. I didn’t try to defend myself. There was no point.

I found Christian and those guys skating behind the cafeteria after school and they asked me about it. What was my plan? Did I like someone else? Why had I given up free sex?

“She was hot,” said Paul. “I hope you have some sort of backup.”

“She was too social,” I said. “Everything was a little drama for her and her friends.”

Paul thought I was crazy. Christian didn’t care either way. Only Jared understood. He never liked her that much but had encouraged me anyway, under the principle that getting laid was always better than not getting laid.

Later, I took the bus home. Skating down my street, I saw a strange car parked at the curb outside my house. It was a navy-blue American car, with thick black tires. I skated right up to it and saw—too late-that it was Detective Brady. He sat in the driver’s seat, writing something.

“Hey there,” he said when he saw me.

“Oh, hi,” I answered.

“Hey, I was wondering. I got an hour. I wanted to drive downtown and just sort of ... poke around. Check out the kids. Wanna come?”

“Uh. I probably shouldn’t.... I have homework.”

“We’ll keep it short. A half hour.”

“But my mom—”

“Your mom’s not home. And she won’t care. You’re helping with police business.”

“I really-”

“Come on, get in.”

I didn’t seem to have a choice. I got in.

“How’s school?” Brady asked me, after we’d driven in silence for a few minutes.

“Okay,” I answered. I didn’t like being in his car. It was too personal. And it was kinda trashed. There were papers and folders everywhere, and McDonald’s bags and old Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cups down by my feet.

“High school,” said Brady, smiling to himself. “It didn’t seem like much at the time. But you think back-the parties, the girls, the football games....”

I stared out the window. “I actually just broke up with my girlfriend,” I said.

“Oh, yeah? What happened?”

“Nothing. I just broke it off.”

“How come?”

“Just not into it.”

“Any particular reason?”

I shrugged. “It didn’t seem right. I didn’t really like her. She didn’t really like me.”

“Yeah, well. You can’t fool people. Sooner or later the truth comes out.”