The End of FUN (2 page)

So that part sucked, and I'm going to fast-forward to my junior year of high school, aka last year, which is the year I finally made the decision to get off the pills, which I'm not necessarily recommending (check with a medical professional and all that), but for me I think it was a good decision—and then, on the other hand, quitting the pills is probably what got me expelled.

The problem was that once the fog was gone, all the feelings came back. Anger mostly. It was like,
What the hell happened to the last six years? Who the hell am I anyway? What the hell am I doing wasting my life in this craphole of a town?

And I ended up having this “discussion,” I guess you could call it, with a certain teacher of mine in a public arena, i.e., classroom. His name was Mr. Danielson, and I asked him in so many words to why not self-administer a paper enema using preferably a nearby rolled-up map of North America (he was my geography teacher). That suggestion resulted in a week's suspension, but what got me booted for permanent was later that same month, on the eve of my seventeenth birthday, when I burned down the gymnasium.

I didn't
actually
burn down the gymnasium—though if you read the way they put it in the police report, you'd think I did. But I didn't. What happened was me and my best friend, Oso, were out in the fields trying to smoke some fake weed he'd got me as a birthday present. It was supposed to be real weed, but it was fake. Once we figured that out, we were like,
In our bored pursuit of cheap fun let us now play with incendiaries.
We had two bottle rockets. Mine was a dud, fizzling out like the saddest candle. So Oso—this is the kind of friend he is—he offered me his.

“Make a wish, bro.”

I can't even remember what I wished for, but here's what I do remember: the hiss of the rocket, the silence afterwards, and then a little while after that, Oso tapping me on the shoulder.

“Hey. You see that?”

“See what?”

“The smoke, bro. Where the rocket landed.”

And as we stood there watching, the whole place just went up. I'm serious. One second there was this thin plume of smoke, and the next it was like the whole
field
was on fire. The wind came on all howling from the east and blew the flames toward the school, scorching, yes,
somewhat
the steps of the gymnasium—which are concrete by the way, so totally nonflammable—and, long story short, eventually attracting the attention of some police officers and a couple fire trucks and for some reason an ambulance.

Oh, and I forgot to mention: all this was recorded by three separate security cameras.

My dad was not happy. Neither was my sister, Evie. They were even less happy when they got the letter about me being expelled. I'll skip that moment and just say that after they were done murdering me for a while, they informed me that, aside from my mandatory community service, I could not leave my room until I had selected one of two options:

1. Take and pass the GED test

2. Homelessness

I had some time to think about it and in the end decided to lobby for a third alternative:

3. Go live with Mom in Sactown and finish school there

So I applied to this year-round charter school in Sacramento, YouThrive
®
Academy (YAY!)…and guess what? I got in. I'm not a dummy or anything. After I was accepted, I called my mom. We hadn't talked in months, her preference being a more hands-off parenting approach. I presented my plan like it was some prize, like I'd won a scholarship or something.

“Wonderful!” she said. “I can come visit you at the school.”

“I wouldn't actually live at the school.”

“Where would you live?”

“With you.”

“Me? Oh, you wouldn't want to do that, Aaron. This house is built on a fault line. And don't even get me started on the heat. It's been
unbearable
!”

“I don't mind if it's hot.”

“You say that now, but it's just awful. When that sun hits the south end of the house, you may as well just die.”

“I could bring a fan.”

“Oh, I really don't know, Aaron….How's Evie, by the way? Did you know she got me a subscription to her newspaper? It comes in the mail. Tell her I read her articles every day. It sounds like she's having fun as a reporter.”

“Yeah, she's fine. She's excited for me to go to Sacramento. She and Dad are really excited….”

I let it hang there like that, waiting for her to make an offer, but she never did. She never flat-out said no, either. She just kept dancing around the answer, talking about a bunch of other meaningless stuff until finally I was like, “OK, thanks. I'll talk to you soon, then. Loveyoubye.”

But later, when I saw my dad in the hall, I was like, “Mom said yes.”

And I remember the next Tuesday just before I got on the bus, Evie pulled me aside. She put her face right in front of mine and spoke to me that way she does, all slow and enunciated like I was just learning English.

“Aaron…for the love of God…try to stay out of trouble, OK?”

“You bet.”

But for the love of God what my sister didn't know was I was already
in
trouble for lying to her about going to Mom's. I wasn't going to Mom's. I was going somewhere else. Somewhere far away. I was initiating my plan of thievery and deception. And this—me getting on the bus—this was phase one: Escape from Craphole.

I figured I could make a clean break without anyone knowing anything. Mom never communicated with anyone—it would be forever before anyone had any contact. In the meantime I'd just tell Dad and Evie what they wanted to hear: that I was doing fine in school and hanging with Mom. But what I would
really
be doing—what I
was
doing—was running away to San Francisco with my tuition payment for YouThrive
®
Academy.

Getting the money was phase two, and it was surprisingly easy. I actually accomplished it on the bus ride to San Francisco. I logged in to my student profile on YouThrive
®
's Web site and filed for a cancellation/tuition return. Where it asked for a reason, I wavered between
STUDENT HAS BEEN ACCEPTED AT ANOTHER SCHOOL
and
STUDENT IS DECEASED,
and finally selected
OTHER
. In the part that asked where to send the reimbursement (minus 15% processing fee), I put the routing number to my checking account.

And it worked! The next time I looked, the money was there. This was during the Currency Transition—everyone switching from the dollar to amero—and with all those extra zeros in my account, it felt like I was pretty loaded.

But I wasn't gonna spend it—I'd justified the theft by telling myself that I wouldn't spend it, or not much of it anyway—and whatever I
did
spend I'd make back by panhandling, i.e., phase three of my plan: profit. I'd seen this movie once about some bratty street kids panhandling in San Francisco, and it looked like a cool way to pass the time, but as I stepped out of the BART station on Market Street, I found myself facing a grim reality.

I'd arrived in California just after the first wave of the Avis Mortem, and it was pretty awful. There were dead pigeons all over the sidewalk, plus seagulls and some other birds I couldn't identify. Rotting corpses
everywhere
, everyone in surgical masks, eyes watering from the funky death clouds wafting up from the gutters. It was BAD. And where were all the cool kids? They'd mostly split. Now that currency was digital, the only thing you could panhandle for was food. That hadn't occurred to me earlier.

So now what? I couldn't live on the streets. I needed a place to stay. Maybe I'd just dip a
little
into the money.

But here's the thing: turns out you can't rent a closet
shelf
in San Francisco for under a600,000. I couldn't even cover the first and last month's rent. I looked around for the day and was just about ready to give up—and that's when I learned about hivehouses. Most of the street kids had ended up there—to keep them off the streets. There were a couple openings in a hivehouse on Lombard Street, in the basement of a recommissioned McDonald's, and they said I could have a spot, so I moved in that evening.

I'll say this: pretty much everything you hear about hivehouses is true. There were a hundred of us down there, double-stacked like shipping crates, and aside from my sister's occasional MathOlympics competitions, I'd never witnessed such a dense concentration of assholes. Even with all the disinfectant, the entire place still smelled like french fries, and I was hungry all the time. I mean
ravenous
. We weren't allowed to bring in outside food, but I kept a stash of Zazz
®
bars (YAY!) in my cube, and that's how I got my first warning.

The thing about hivehouses is this: as long as they get their money, they don't care who you are or what you do. The warnings are a joke. They really are. You'd pretty much have to murder a resident to get evicted, and even then…they might just give you a warning.