More Happy Than Not (12 page)

11

TRADE HANGOUT

I
've been picking up extra shifts at Good Food's because Mom's not feeling well. She's missed work two days in a row already, and it's really going to set us back. Mohad even trusted me to close up last night, and all my friends naturally wanted to lock themselves in and have a party with every beer and cigarette and snack available to us. The last thing this family needs is me getting thrown in jail and sued.

It's my first day off since witnessing the Leteo rally with Thomas, the last time I saw him. I'm meeting him in a bit, but until then I'm chilling with Brendan and Baby Freddy on a staircase. On one of the steps, Brendan is rolling up some weed on top of graph paper and overdue bills.

“I thought your clients do all that themselves.”

“These aren't for my clients,” Brendan says, licking the tip of his freshly rolled-and-folded blunt. “I'm branching out. I'll work some corners and colleges and if I roll it myself they won't realize I'm skimming them twenty percent of what they're paying for.”

“My boss is looking for another dishwasher,” Baby Freddy says. “If you want to stop dealing.”

“Washing dishes is for spics like you and Skinny-Dave. I'm good.”

“Whatever. Can I get a freebie?”

“You can have half off.” Brendan's smart. I've seen Baby Freddy trying to smoke and it would be a waste of the weed he's saving from shorting others.

“Kenneth liked to smoke,” I say.

Brendan looks up. “Fucking shame Kenneth's brother fucked the wrong guy's sister. A guy with a gun.”

Baby Freddy ignores him. “He loved acting like he was Kyle even though Kyle hated that.”

“Maybe that's the real reason Kyle forgot about Kenneth,” Brendan says, lighting up the blunt he just rolled and inhaling deeply. “Great, now you got me smoking someone else's shit.” He tosses all his blunts into a Ziploc bag and sprinkles the remaining weed in. “Let's go get a game going. I feel like running.”

“I'm about to link up with Thomas, actually. I'm down when I get back, though.”

“Okay then,” Brendan says.

We all leave the staircase and a security guard sees us with Brendan's Ziploc bag. He calls us delinquents but carries on. Baby Freddy tells me he'll see me later. Brendan keeps it moving.

I definitely should've left the memories of Kenneth and Kyle dead and buried.

“What should we do?”

“I have this thing I do with Genevieve—”

“If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, that's off the list,” Thomas says, patting my back.

“Hilarious. No, this isn't going to sound great either, but we have Trade Dates.”

“Is that where you hang out with another couple and swap girlfriends or something?”

“No. God, why doesn't anyone get this?” I hate repeating myself almost more than anything in the entire universe, but I tell him what a Trade Date is in the hopes we can do something fun like it, but in a No Homo way. “I was thinking we could go maybe do a Reverse Trade Date—without calling it a Reverse Trade Date or a date at all—where you take me somewhere personal for you and I'll do the same.”

“Sounds cool. We'll skip the rooftop since you've already been there. Let me think about it. You go first.”

We go to Comic Book Asylum. I tried applying for a job before, but they told me I have to wait until I'm done with school because of some bullshit, like labor laws or something, I don't remember. I can't think of a cooler atmosphere to work. “This is the best fucking place ever,” I say as we arrive. “I mean, look at this fucking door. Isn't this the best fucking door you've ever seen?”

“It is the best fucking door I've ever seen,” Thomas says. “You curse a lot.”

“Yeah. My mom used to get really pissed whenever the bus driver told her I was cursing on the school bus with Brendan, but once a year she would host late night spelling bees for me and my brother only using curses. I think it was her way of letting us get it out of our systems.”

Thomas laughs. “Your mom is f-u-c-k-i-n-g awesome.”

He goes straight over to the cape closet and tries on both Superman and Batman capes, quoting lines from each movie. (“KRYPTON HAD ITS CHANCE!” and “SWEAR TO ME!”) He follows me over to the bargain cart, picks up a comic, and says, “I hate how superheroes can be twenty for thirty years so comic book artists never have to create new characters. It's lazy.” Some hard-core comic geeks turn around and glare at him. I'm a little concerned for his life.

“I don't know. At least those cash cows finish their comics. My comic—”

“You have a comic?”

“Not one for sale.”

“Where is it?”

“Not here.”

“Can I read it?”

“It's not done.”

“So what?”

“It's not good.”

“So what? Stretch, I let you use my rooftop for your girl's birthday. You owe me.”

“I thought I was going to help you figure out who you are.”

“Just let me read your comic.”

“Fine. Soon.”

I think about the page where I left off in the comic, with Sun Warden torn between saving his girlfriend or best friend from becoming dragon food. If someone asked me to choose between saving Genevieve or Thomas, I would rather dive headfirst into the mouth of the dragon. I'm about to tell him how I haven't drawn a whole lot since my dad's death, but I look up and see Collin from school—and he sees me too.

I feel a little shitty. I wasn't 100 percent supportive or sympathetic toward him when he told me he got Nicole pregnant. But, well, sex is basic math: condom equals less chance of having a baby, and no condom usually equals baby. And I shouldn't have to feel like a dick because he didn't think to properly wrap his up. Even though I'm a firm believer that everyone in the universe will one day cut the bullshit—as in politely nod at one another instead of wasting their short lives with pointless conversations—I feel obligated to say something.

I walk up to Collin. He smells of a cheap drugstore-brand cologne.

“Hey. How's your summer been? We miss you around the courtyard, dude.” It's a bit of a lie since he always thought manhunt was child's play. He's not wrong, but he never fully beasted at it like we do. He preferred sports, mainly basketball.

Collin's eyes are red. Not stoned, but very similar to how I look whenever I'm beyond exhausted and frustrated or bottling in an insane amount of anger. I can't blame him since I hear he's working two jobs to pay for a baby he likely didn't want and definitely isn't ready for. The last thing I should've done is reminded him how much fun he's missing out on. He's holding Issue #6 of
The Dark Alternates
, that series I never got into—I get my magic fix from Scorpius Hawthorne.

He doesn't say anything so I ask, “How you liking that series?”

“Please leave me alone,” Collin says without looking at me. “Seriously. Back off.” Before I can apologize, he flings the comic onto the floor and run-walks out.

I turn around. Thomas is wearing the Superman cape again. “Did you see that?”

“Nope. Don't tell me I missed someone shooting webs out of their hands.”

“No, and Spider-Man fires webs from his wrists, not his hands,” I correct. (It's a very crucial distinction.) “I used to go to school with this asshole and he just blew me off.”

“What's his story?”

“He had sex without a condom and is now expecting a kid. The end.”

“He's probably stressed.” Thomas browses for a little bit longer, knocks on the fireplace. “Pretty cool place you picked.”

“Thanks. I'm ready to bounce whenever you pick a place.”

“I decided. I hope you're game for a run,” he says while walking toward the door.

“Thomas?”

“Yeah?”

“Can the store maybe have its cape back?”

We're at his high
school's track field.

The gate is wide open and apparently it's available to the public all summer. There are six people running the track right now; two are listening to music, and the others are forced to hear the 2 and 5 trains as they speed past. Because it's a high school field, it doubles for other sports, like soccer and football. There's a nice breeze here, and it's exactly the kind of place to come to when life is suffocating.

“Are you on the track team?”

“I tried out but wasn't fast enough,” Thomas says. “But I bet I'm faster than you.”

“Yeah right. I've seen you run during manhunt.”

“There's a difference between racing and being chased.”

“Not for me. I'm always ahead.”

“Loser has to buy winner ice cream.”

We make up our own start and finish lines and crouch like we're pros. “I'm thinking pistachio,” I say. “FYI.”

Three.

Two.

One.

GO!

Thomas takes the lead, putting all his speed into these first few seconds, whereas I know to be fast but to also pace myself. After about ten seconds, he's already winding down. He may be a month or two away from a six-pack, but I've been running relay races with Brendan since the better part of my childhood. My feet pound against the pressurized rubber, and the sneakers are way too tight on me, but I run, run, run until I pass him and I don't stop until I leap over the discarded water bottle we marked as the finish line. Thomas doesn't even finish; he just collapses onto the grass.

I jump up and down until my rib cage hurts. “I dusted you!”

“You cheated,” Thomas pants, catching his breath. “You have a height advantage. Longer legs.”

“Wow. That's going into the Bullshit Hall of Fame.” I fall face-first next to him, and the grass stains the knees of my jeans. “Maybe don't choose a place next time where you'll get your ass handed to you. Why here anyway?”

“I'm used to quitting things—”

“Really?” I punch him in the shoulder.

He punches me back. “Yeah, really. But this place rejected me from becoming someone and that was a first.”

“Way to make me feel guilty for proving how slow you are.”

“Not at all. It's not like my heart is in running or anything like that, but at least I learned that you can't always choose who you're going to be. Sometimes you're fast enough to run track. Sometimes you're not.” He tucks his hands behind his head, still catching his breath. “Anyway, it's a pretty chill place to just remember and think, you know?”

I do now.

We don't go and get ice cream. We wait for our rib cages to stop killing us, counting overhead trains go by, and then we race up and down the bleachers before flopping onto the grass again.

When I get back
to the block, my friends are sitting on a brown picnic table, their bikes surrounding them. When we were younger we would play Shark here. The game starts with one person (the shark) trying to drag you off the table (the raft) by
your ankles. Once you're off, you become a shark too. Sometimes when there were too many sharks, some players would hop on their bikes and just circle the survivors in a menacing way.

“Hey. You guys game for manhunt?” I'm pretty drained from running around before, but if I can find a decent hiding spot it won't matter.

“I think we're going to ride bikes instead,” Nolan says.

“We played manhunt already,” Deon says.

“And smoked too,” Skinny-Dave says, laughing.

“I'll go upstairs and get my rollerblades,” I say, and I turn to run upstairs when Nolan stops me.

“Bikes only, dude.”

I look over at Brendan. I don't know why I expected him to defend me but that was stupid. He's obviously still pissed I brought up Kenneth and Kyle. He obviously told the guys. “It's cool. I'll go home and read
Scorpius Hawthorne
or
. . .
”

They don't wait for me to finish. They mount their bikes and pedal away from me.