Before We Go Extinct (24 page)

 

48

Back at the cabin, I opened the e-mails from Daff, one by one.

It took me a while to read through them all, but then I got to the one with the attachment.

I got to the one with the letter from The King.

I got to the thing I never wanted to see but now I couldn't help it. There was nothing I could do to protect myself from it anymore. There was nothing I wanted to do.

I opened it.

I read it.

Finally, I went up to the loft and packed my stuff. I loaded it into the boat and I waited for Dad to be ready to take me in. I'm not good at goodbyes, that's the thing. I'm just not. He was pretty quiet. I mean, there wasn't much to say.

At the airport, when he hugged me, I didn't even flinch. I hugged him back.

“I really liked the book, Dad,” I said. “Maybe you should put a shark in it.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Think I will, kid.”

And that was it. I guess you were probably expecting more, but it was just another chapter that ended differently from how I would have thought.

It just stopped.

Dad waved and got into his stupid purple car, which choked and spluttered but finally started, calling like a mateless whale into the evening light.

I walked into the airport and got ready to go home, the shark's tooth in my pocket, pressing sharply against the summer-tanned flesh of my thigh.

 

49

Dude,

I don't know how to write a suicide note. I Googled it. Which made me even more sure that I wanted to kill myself. Because seriously, you can
Google
suicide notes. You can Google
how to write a suicide note.
What is the point in any one life when any answer you can possibly seek can be found on Google? I found this poem, which is apparently a famous suicide poem. Maybe you should start by reading this poem that I didn't write. I didn't write any poems. So already this guy's life, I guess, was worth more than mine:

Delicate line between heaven and earth …

The calm of the ages,

all the world's worth.

Such minuscule measure,

while we think it so grand …

Just five specks of smallness,

This soft quiet land.

So frail and so fleeting,

in the end you will see

Simple dreams were Horatio's philosophy.

For all the truth,

all creation,

all secrets of yore

Can be told in an instant,

by then they're no more.

Ah, The Unexplainable

All worries unsettled,

heartache unresolved …

All questions unanswered,

with death, shall be solved.

We already teeter,

this sheer cliff so high.

When we fall to corruption,

insecurities die.

To end is to start;

to surrender is to know.

Despair and depression,

together they grow.

Hope shall meet hopeless

when there's nowhere to go.

Is that beautiful? I thought it was when I found it on
Wikipedia,
but now I don't know. Maybe I don't know what beauty is anymore. What is it? Some freaking flower? The way someone looks? Light? I don't remember. I can't find it. There's no beauty here for me, you know? When I hold it up and inspect it, that dumb poem looks kind of thin on the ground, if you know what I mean. Crappy, overworked. But that last bit:
hope shall meet hopeless when there's nowhere to go.
That's the truth.

The only poem I ever liked is that one we rapped for Mr. D. Remember that one? I can't remember the whole thing, but I remember the last part, my part:

we're anything brighter than even the sun

(we're everything greater

than books

might mean)

we're everyanything more than believe

(with a spin

leap

alive we're alive)

we're wonderful one times one

Sharky, we were so fucking bright, like the sun. I don't want you to think …

I don't know. You, me, and Daff. We were everything. But you know what? It would have ended. We would have grown up. Everything was about to change. You and Daff were gonna be You and Daff. And I was gonna just be me.

But that's not the reason. It's one of the reasons.

When people ask you why, you can say: because
reasons.

I was scared all the time. I was so freaking scared. Reasons.

Here's some other stuff that I Googled:

1. How to tell your best friend that you're gay.

2. How to not be your father.

Then I realized, for real, that I'd rather die than do it. Not telling you. I could have told you. I should have. I don't know why I had to. I could have told you that I was in love with you. It would have been easy. So easy. I thought telling my dad was the hardest thing, but it wasn't. He already hated me because I was exactly like him. You get that, right? I was
exactly
like him. I was not going to be that man. No way. No how. But I
was.
It was already too late. All that genetic material of him knitting together to make me, him, me, him, make me into him.

That's who I'm never going to be, buddy. I'm not. I couldn't stop it though. I was already such a jerk. I already hated myself. I wasn't good enough for you, even if you were gay, too, which I know you weren't. And I got that. I was okay with that. You're an amazing guy though. God, I could have loved you. But you would have hated me eventually, because I would have become him. He was bigger than all of us. He was the biggest thing. The every everything. You know?

This letter needs editing but fuck that. I don't have to make it good. It's a suicide note, not a paper that's gonna get me into college, like I couldn't have had my pick of schools anyway, because
Dad.

Death just sounds a lot more interesting to me than reenacting his effing script. You and I both know how it would have gone. I would have slowly become less likable but would have gotten more friends. I would have had more money and less taste. I would have stopped caring about the stuff that matters, stuff that you and Daff care about, like the goddamn rain forest. I already don't care about it. I know on some level that I should, but I don't. I'm already him.

I am him.

My dad is the only person in the world who I ever hated, except for me.

I was always jealous that you had a mom. I think if I had a mom, I wouldn't be like this.

I'm really freaking broken, Sharkboy. I don't think you had any idea. Have any idea. Will ever have any idea.

You know when I first met you and I said you were going to be a hero, because you're the underdog? I was lying. Not about the heroism, but about the underdog. You're no underdog, man. You were born to be the hero, all six feet tall and noble and
good
and all that other crap that at first I thought couldn't be for real, but
is.
It
is
real. You are already a hero, you idiot. There is nothing heroic about being rich, it's just something that happens when you don't give one single damn about anyone but yourself. But there's something heroic about you and your stupid sharks and the way you just go ahead and cry in front of everyone in the world because one day you might suffocate when the
plankton runs out.
You are insane, kid. I would have traded places with you in an instant.

Hear me out:

This is your future: you are going to change things. You're going to be the goddamn
Time
magazine Man of the Year one day. You're Harry freakin' Potter, but you have no idea that you are. You think you're just a Muggle. (And yeah, I know you didn't get my thing with that book, but what can I say? It was a good book. A good series of books. You might not get this, but a guy like me is going to wish he was a kid who could go to wizarding school, who is living in the wrong family by mistake, but there's something better out there. That's what I wanted: Hogwarts. Which isn't real. Everything I wanted wasn't real. Do you get it?)

You're a
wizard.

This is my future: I am going to crash and burn. I am going to be tabloid fodder. I am going to act out the same story of rich-kid-gone-wrong that every rich-kid-gone-wrong has acted out before me and I'm so goddamn bored of that story already and I can't do it. I can't do it. Sharky, listen, I'm already blowing congressmen in the bushes. I am already so far down I can't see the surface from down here and I've told you a million times, black guys don't swim.

I can't swim.

I don't even want to swim.

I'm not going to do it. I don't want to do it. I'm sorry but I'm not cut out to do it. Everything is a choice.

I'm choosing.

Now I'm going to steal from someone else's letter. It's not plagiarism. Or it is, but who is going to give one single damn? Is someone going to sue me in the grave? Well, probably. But screw it.

Hopefully, they'll sue my old man.

Hopefully, he'll lose.

Here it is:

If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

That's the truth, JC. That's what I would have written if Virginia Woolf didn't think of it first. You are
good.

This last jump, this final parkour party trick, this is going to be everything. This is going to be the real me. Finally. Out there. At last.

You won't believe me. I know you won't believe me. Not when you see what you'll see and goddamnit, I don't want you to but I'm also as selfish as anything and I do want you to because I don't want to go alone and I love you. I love you. I love you and I always will.

And not in a gay way.

Okay, sort of in a gay way.

What you need to know is that what I'm going to be feeling is free. I'm going to be so freaking happy on that ride. It's going to be the fall of a lifetime.

The ride is the thing.

I'm sorry, Great White Hero. You don't believe me, but it's true.

I'm sick. Sick of all the bullshit. Sick of pretending. Sick of the world. Sick of being broken. I'm taking all the broken things and making them into a parachute, just like Mr. B. taught us.

Except parachutes are for sissies.

I've got to go.

Love,
Marvin (“The King”) Johnston III

 

50

The French word for “the end” is
fin
.

*   *   *

This feels just about as important as anything else as you make your way down the crowded sidewalk toward the iron gates of the Academy of Rich Gods and Goddesses of the World on the first day of your senior year. Your shoes look too new and shiny and they hurt your heels. Your feet would like to reject the shoes. You'd like to drop your backpack and make your way up and over that fence, there, beyond that brownstone to that alley to that garden to maybe a park where you could find a tree and climb it, your back arching against the pain where the branch rests. You'd flip over and back, free-falling for just a second before being jarred back to earth by the way your feet hurt when you land. You'd take off your tie and start to run. Maybe you'd get to the subway, maybe not, maybe the subway would go to a beach. Maybe when you got there, you'd take off your stupid shoes and socks and even your pants and tie and shirt and jacket and then maybe you'd walk into the sea. Maybe you'd swim. Maybe you'd hold your breath and go deep and maybe, just maybe, you'd see something under the water: a girl or a shark or both. And maybe that would change everything forever or for now.

Or maybe you'll keep walking. Maybe when you get to the school, your best friend, Daffodil Blue, of recent
Gawker
fame and “It Girl” status, will be sitting on the front steps, her hair tufted up around her head in her signature 'fro that half the class is sporting. Or maybe she'll have shaved her head, to make a statement. The kind of statement that says,
Yeah? Well, copy
this
if you dare
. Maybe she'll be waiting for you. Maybe you'll say,
Hey
. Maybe she'll say,
Hey yerself, Sharkman.
And maybe you'll walk into the school together, touching but not touching, close enough that you can smell how she smells this year, like lemon soap and cloves and slightly of salty sea air. Maybe she'll say,
Lunch at Mo's
. Maybe you'll agree. Maybe the two of you will invent a complicated gang handshake, right there in the entrance of the school, just because.

Maybe there will be a plaque in the front lobby and a photo of The King. Maybe it will be some kind of memorial. Maybe you'll look at it and your stomach will fall, like you're dropping from a great height and maybe you'll feel something like nausea or panic or maybe you'll try to understand what he meant by joy. Maybe you'll excuse yourself after the bell goes and go into the bathroom where you'll be alone. Maybe after you wash your hands, you'll look up and see yourself in the mirror and there, standing behind you, will be a funny-looking black kid with a cigarette in his hands. Maybe the kid will say, “So, heeeee-ro, what'll it be this year?” Maybe you'll blink and he'll be gone.