The End of FUN (15 page)

“What's that mean?” I asked.

“
Well, Arnold
,” she said in a teacherly voice, “it's an appropriation of the stereotype of my people, the Basques. My sister gave it to me as a joke. I wear it for good luck.”

“Basques? Like from Spain? I thought you were Irish.”

“
Half
-Irish. My mom is Irish, my papa is Basque.”

“I heard a joke about Basques once.”

“Did it involve sex with a farm animal?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“When my papa was a teenager he actually
did
work with sheep,” said Katie. “Way out in a cabin in the mountains—but he was doing construction by the time I was born. Now he's retired in Spain. He's coming to America this summer to tell me to get a real job like my sister.”

“What's your sister do?”

“Maite? She's a real estate agent in Lake Tahoe. You should see the house she just moved into—it's so obnoxious! But of course
she
was always the chosen one….” Katie ran her hands over her face. “God, I want a cigarette.”

We went out to the balcony and she lit one up, and I lit up a smókz
™
, too, and that calmed me down a little, but when she saw me smoking my invisible (to her) cigarette, she burst out laughing.

“What?”

“I don't know. It's just funny. Like you're pretending.”

“I'm not.”

But I kind of was. But how could I tell her the truth? It seemed a little too late to do a name change.

I exhaled, and my smoke digitized into a hive of BeeWear
®
Bee Bonuses and Homie
™
popped up.

“Yay.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” she said.

“It's just a thing I have to do for FUN
®
.”

“Ah.” Katie took another drag and tamped out her cigarette on the underside of the railing. “There. All done. See? I'm cutting back.”

I put out my smókz
™
, too, and followed her back inside, thinking about how to tell her the truth about everything, how I was actually Aaron O'Faolain, age almost 18, which if you think about it isn't that far from 19—or 21 or 22, for that matter. And as I was working myself up, something funny happened. Back in the living room Katie suddenly spun around to face me, and it was like looking in a mirror—I mean, she was wearing this look on her face like she had something to tell
me
.

“Arnold—” she began.

“Yeah?”

And I knew in that moment that nothing mattered, because she was going to tell me her feelings now, how she liked me, too, how she'd been hiding it all along, and she was going to pull me close and smooch me. I envisioned locking lips like they do at the end of a movie, falling together onto the couch in a tangle of limbs and clothing. I envisioned what might happen after that, but then I pulled back on that vision because no need to get ahead of myself.

But I was already pretty far ahead.

I stumbled into a hug with her like Frankenstein with my arms all outstretched, and as I grew closer her eyes widened, and at the last second the message got through to my brain:

Abort mission! Subject is creeped out!

So what happened was, instead of her falling into my arms and locking lips, I sort of wrapped her in this awkward hug. And we just hugged for a moment, and she sort of patted my shoulder, and I patted hers, and smelled the flowery perfume of her hair, and then we drew back and looked at each other.

Words! Use your words, dude!

“Arnold,” she said at last. “It's just…right now my life is…”

“Complicated,” I finished for her.

And the next thing I knew I was standing at her door, saying good-bye, and a voice in my head was like,
Tell her, dude! Tell her who you are!

And another voice was like,
No, you idiot! Don't screw it up any more than you already have!

And a third voice was like,

So that was a failure, but my night wasn't over yet. When I got home, Dad was in the living room, crouched in front of the record player, fiddling with something.

“I could've
sworn
this thing had a needle….” He twisted his head around to look at the space where the needle used to be. “You know anything about this, or am I just going crazy?”

“Who can say?”

Dad looked up at me. His eyes were all narrow. “I have another question.”

“Can we talk later? I'm in kind of a bad mood.”

“Nah,” he said. “I think we should talk now—don't you think, Evie?”

I hadn't noticed her. She'd been standing all statuelike by the kitchen. I noticed her now. Arms folded, glaring at me.

“Evie? What are you doing here?”

“What do you think?” she said.

“Look, if you guys are wondering why I didn't go back to Sacramento, I just wanted to see the play and maybe—”

“That's not what we're wondering, Aaron. We're wondering about this letter from your school.”

Dad put his face in front of mine. “What we're wondering is what you've been doing for the last five months.”

And I was like,
Oh. Shit.

And my dad and Evie were like,
This is going to be fun
.

The time had come. The show was over. The curtain had to fall.

What could I do but give them the truth?

I told them about San Francisco, and how I'd reappropriated the tuition payments (with all intentions of not spending any of it), how I'd lived in a hivehouse, and how I'd started having FUN
®
—and as I listened to myself talk I was actually kind of proud. But then I got to the part about all the money I'd spent on
Tickle, Tickle Boom!
(YAY!) and the part about
FAIL
, and I didn't feel as good anymore, and Evie and Dad were right there with me. I mean, I figured they'd be pissed—and they were—but I hadn't realized just
how
pissed.

Dad did that thing he does where he stomps around the room, working himself into an anger monkey, and Evie screeched at me like a hen, the two of them kept roundhousing me with the same basic point, which was what a deceitful ass I'd been—and it
was
true, I had been a deceitful ass, and I was angry they'd found out, and also feeling guilty as hell, like I was gonna start crying or something, so I excused myself out the front door and took a walk in the snow to calm down. I called my buddy Oso, but he didn't answer. Once again, straight to voice mail. I left him a long message about my situation, and then I headed back home.

Dad and Evie were still there. They were still pissed, too.

Dad was like, “We're just so goddamn happy to have funded your vacation.”

“What do you mean ‘we'?”

“Half that money came from your sister!”

“What?”

“I chipped in after they cut Dad's hours at work,” she said.

“She's been working
extra
hours at the newspaper,” he said. “Working her
butt
off so you could lie around and play video games.”

I stood there kind of stunned. Taking money from my dad, that was one thing—but taking money from Evie, too?

“Look, I'll pay you both back. With, like, interest or whatever.”

My sister just stared and shook her head. “I knew it. I just
knew
something fishy was going on.”

“Sure, you did.”

“Wow. Just wow, Aaron.”

“How about this. How about I go to Grandpa's?”

“What?”

As soon as I said it I knew it was the perfect plan. Anything to get away from Dad and Evie. Being around them suddenly made me feel really crappy. “I'll go to his place. I can stay there while I look for the money to pay you back with. Maybe he hid the money somewhere else. Maybe there's another portrait of Mary.”

“You need to go back to school.”

“Well, I can't. Not to Sacramento, not to Antello High.”

“Then you need to take the GED.”

“Sure, but in the meantime I'll go out to Grandpa's and find the money.”

“Question,” said my dad. “How do you propose to get out there?”

“One of you guys can drive me.”

“No way my Mazda could make it in that snow.”

“What about Evie's CR-V? It's got four-wheel drive. It could make it easy.”

“No,” said Evie. “I'm not driving you out there. You need to take responsibility for your actions.”

“This
is
me taking responsibility. I'm on it. Your car could make it. Tell her it could make it, Dad.”

“That isn't the point,” he said.

“So basically you guys are trapping me here.” I gave it some thought. “Know what? I'll snowshoe.”

My sister laughed. “All the way to Grandpa's? That's ridiculous!”

“Says who? I'll go right now.”

“In the dark? Are you crazy?”

“Look, I made a mess and now I'm trying to make it right.”

I went to my room and returned triumphantly with my grandfather's snowshoes.

“You can't be serious,” said Evie.

“Let him go,” said Dad. “Let him try to walk ten miles in vintage snowshoes.”

I was pretty adamant about getting out of there, but as I was gathering the rest of my supplies, including my broken bag, I realized that maybe they had a point about the whole snowshoe plan.

Ten miles is a pretty long way to snowshoe—especially in the dark, and especially in Grandpa's snowshoes, which were more like clown shoes. I could just see myself tripping over my bag, tumbling down a ravine, breaking my leg, and being eaten alive by coyotes. Dad and Evie would feel so sorry when they heard about that—but not as sorry as I would feel when I was being eaten by the coyotes. I decided to let the snowshoe plan drop. I was going to have to find another way.

The answer came to me later when I was brushing my teeth: What about Katie? She had a truck.