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Authors: Andrew Smith

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BOOK: 100 Sideways Miles
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The depression can be pretty bad sometimes too. I was particularly sad that night after Julia Bishop walked in and found me lying on my living room floor.

But I never tell anyone about feeling this way, because I am so good at just being fine.

Most times when I'd feel mopey after coming back from a seizure, I would find myself trying to remember my mother, thinking about how that dead horse fell one hundred sideways miles to land—
thud!
—directly on top of us.

I generally considered how nice it would be if I could simply stop myself from hurtling through space so fast, if only for a few seconds at a time.

If I could have done such a thing, that horse would have been halfway to Sacramento by the time it landed.

Was I sorry for what happened? Sure I was, but that was billions of miles away from here. And if there is one thing I am certain of, it is this: When we think about all those miles in back of us, it's easy to feel regret—sometimes because of things we didn't do, sometimes for the things we did.

Or we feel regret because of what happened to us, since we're all so goddamned innocent and undeserving.

And when we think about the miles ahead, we worry about something that probably isn't ever going to happen anyway.

Imagine that.

Worry and regret are both useless weights that provide no drag. They never did anything to slow down the planet for one goddamned second.

My atoms have been around for fourteen billion years. I know beyond any doubt they have seen far worse things than a dead horse falling out of the sky.

It doesn't mean I don't cry about it once in a while.

That's okay, right?

• • •

I didn't bring any clean clothes into the bathroom to put on.

My wet swim trunks hung across the top of the shower door. I was terrified to step into the openness of the house, and I wanted to sleep.

So I sat on the toilet, wrapped in a towel. My head ached, and I was terribly sad.

I put my face in my hands. My wet hair hung down,
drip-drip-drip
ping onto my lap.

Hair grows about half an inch per month, the same amount of time it takes us to fly fifty million miles through space.

I'll admit this: I think about ways to kill myself.

Do I need to be specific?

Everybody thinks about it, right?

I am not afraid to contemplate such things, but I am afraid of what suicide would do to my dad, to Cade, or Mom and Nadia.

They are the anchors that keep me from knackering my fourteen-billion-year-old atoms back out into the universe where they came from, where they belong.

Dad would be so mad at me if he ever found out what happened.

I don't know how long I sat there with my face in my hands—maybe ten thousand miles—until I finally gave up on the idea of hiding away in my bathroom forever.

Not very much hair grew.

I got up, wiped my face, and came out, wrapped in a towel.

I called down from the top of the stairs, “Are you still here?”

Then Julia Bishop appeared below.

She was looking at me.

“I thought you knew my name. It's Julia,” she said.

“I know that.”

“I wasn't sure if you needed help or anything,” Julia said.

“I'm really sorry for how I acted, um, Julia.” I felt myself turning red, backing away from the upstairs railing, unable to stop looking at her, wishing she wouldn't look at
me
. I shook my head apologetically. “I'm not very nice. I'm sorry.”

“It's okay, Finn. Really. I . . . um. I cleaned up your floor.”

I was horrified.

“Why?”

But before Julia Bishop could answer me, the front door swung open and Cade Hernandez, awkwardly carrying two Flat Face Pizza boxes in one hand, jangling car keys and a paper sack containing what I clearly saw to be at least two twelve-packs of beer in the other, came into the house.

Monica Fassbinder was right behind him, hanging on to his elbow.

Cade and Monica looked up at me as I stood at the top of the stairs, naked except for a damp bath towel wrapped around my hips. Then Cade glanced at Julia Bishop before he looked back at me one more time.

He was chewing tobacco. I could see it growing like desert tumbleweeds below the teeth that showed in Cade's astonished grin.

Cade Hernandez nearly dropped his pizza boxes and sack of beer.

He was very drunk.

Twenty miles.

Monica Fassbinder said, “Oh. Ha ha! Oops, Finn.”

Twenty miles.

And Cade said, “Holy fucking shit, Finn! You better have used a condom!”

Ridiculous.

• • •

I could have died on the spot.

What else could possibly have gone wrong?

I threw my hands up in defeat and said, “Cade Hernandez, Monica Fassbinder: Meet Julia Bishop, my new neighbor. Julia: This is Cade, my best friend. He's staying here for the next five days, trying to kill me with embarrassment while my parents are in New York, and this is his . . . um . . . girlfriend, Monica. Why don't you all chat amongst yourselves while I go and change into something that isn't quite so
fucking naked 
?”

And with that, I backed away from the railing and shut myself inside my bedroom.

Slam!

• • •

I did not get dressed.

Inside my room, in the dark, my towel and I climbed up onto my bed, and I lay there with a pillow over my face.

I could easily have started to cry; I was acting like such a baby.

But I just wanted everything to disappear, to drift away into namelessness again, and then stay that way for another fourteen billion years.

And I did not intend to go back downstairs either. I lay there imagining all the terrible things Cade Hernandez might be saying or doing to ensure the complete ruination of any chance I might ever have at finding a normal, decent friend who also happened to be a beautiful girl.

What was I thinking?

Eventually—who knew how many miles it was—the door opened and the light flicked on.

“Leave me the fuck alone,” I said.

“You okay, Finn?”

“I got a headache.”

“Dude.”

“What?”

“That girl.”

“What did she say?”

“She didn't say nothing, Finn.”

“Sure she didn't.”

I felt Cade lean against the top bunk, beside my knees. Even with my pillow pressed over my face, I could smell the booze on him, the atoms from what he'd been getting drunk on wheezing out into the universe with each breath Cade Hernandez exhaled.

“You . . . uh . . . did that thing, didn't you?”

Cade Hernandez knew I blanked out.

“Yes. I did my fucking thing, Cade.”

“Um. Your dad made me promise I would call him if it happened. What time is it in New York?”

“Here plus three,” I said.

Cade answered, “You and your fucking math.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, fuck you, too, Win-Win. And as long as you're going to call my dad, just pass the phone over to me, because he made
me
promise I'd call him if you ever got drunk.”

“Fuck that. I ain't calling, Finn. I wouldn't do that.”

“Sorry.”

“Dude.”

“What?”

“That girl.”

“I know.”

WILLIAM MULHOLLAND'S SELF-TAUGHT MISTAKE

Cade Hernandez could talk me into doing just about anything.

He said, “Dude. Come downstairs with us and have some fun. But put some clothes on first. I can see your balls.”

I made him stay in my room with me while I got dressed. There was no way I'd go downstairs by myself and make some kind of pathetic entrance like a freak in a sideshow.

Step right up! Come see the epileptic boy!

So I climbed down from bed and pulled on some shorts and a tank top. I slipped my bare feet into a new pair of tennis shoes Dad had given me the week before, and I followed Cade Hernandez out of my room to face my audience.

My dog waited for me in the hallway.

When she saw me, Laika curled up into a little ball and watched me with guilty dog eyes.

“You're so dumb,” I said. But she squirmed happily when I bent down so I could scratch behind her ears.

Laika had wild and sudden emotional swings.

That's my dog.

• • •

When we got downstairs, Cade announced, “He fell asleep. I had to wake him up.”

The girls sat on the living room couch. Monica drank a beer and pretended to be checking something important on her cell phone.

Monica Fassbinder had a permanently distracted look in her eyes, like nothing could possibly happen fast enough for that girl. I wondered if she would have been pleased at forty miles per second.

And I also wondered if she got text messages in German. I planned to ask her about it one day.

One of the pizza boxes lay with its lid folded back on our coffee table.

Maybe it was my own personal hang-up, but I felt like both girls were waiting to see if I would flip out or something.

“I'm okay,” I said.

I sat down on the floor across from Julia. I couldn't help but scan the living room to see if it was true that she'd actually cleaned up after me. She caught me looking for it too.

The floor was completely dry and spotless.

Why would anyone do something like that?

I wasn't even nice to her at all.

I pursed my lips straight and nodded at her. I would have said thank you, but it was too embarrassing.

Cade Hernandez opened his can of chewing tobacco and pushed a fresh wad of the stuff down behind his lower lip. Here
was a kid who could actually chew tobacco
and
drink beer at the same time.

That was complex modern multitasking for a high school athlete.

Julia and I ate pizza. Cade offered Julia a beer, but she told him no.

He started to pass one in my direction, but I raised my hand and shook my head. I couldn't drink a beer after blanking out. It would kill me.

Cade and I had gotten drunk together in the past.

It was fun. Cade had taught me how to do it. The first time we'd gotten drunk together, we were fourteen years old. I passed out at Cade's house and we missed school the next morning. Dad grounded me and took away my cell phone for two weeks, but he never found out I'd been drinking. I told him Cade and I had been playing video games.

Imagine that.

Cade spit into an empty can and said, “We're going to a party at Blake Grunwald's house. His parents are in Vegas.”

I looked at Cade in disbelief.

“Blake invited us to his house?”

“Well, he said we could come as long as we brought girls and beer. We might be out of beer by the time we get there, but at least we have some girls. Blake and his friends . . . you know—they're total losers. The place is like a fucking locker room—all guys. All ballplayers. Well, there's some girls, but they're ugly enough to be guys. But lots of booze, Finn.”

BOOK: 100 Sideways Miles
5.19Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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