The End of FUN (39 page)

“But look here, Sam,” said Dad. “What about some mouse that's getting into your kitchen and pissing in your butter dish? Would you shoot one of those?”

“Mice DO that?” said Sam. “Now, hold on. Why would a mouse pee in a butter dish?”

“Look,” said Dad. “
Butter dish
is just one of an endless number of options. You have to realize that once you're asleep, a mouse—or
mice
, which is more likely the case—has six to eight hours of free rein in your house. Think about THAT.”

“We keep our butter in the fridge,” said Sam.

“Oh, goody,” said Evie. “Here comes the food.”

“Huevos rancheros?” said the waiter.

“That was me,” said Isaac.

“And the beef tacos?”

“Over here,” said Dad.

Homie
™
popped up between us.

What was the point? She didn't want to talk. It made sense to me. After dinner the waiters and waitresses brought out the big sombrero birthday hat and stuck it on Katie's head, and we all sang the birthday song. We sang it in Spanish and then in English, and no one sang it louder than Shiloh, or at least that's how it felt, and all the while smiling at me with that look on her face.

Katie closed her eyes, made a wish, and blew out the candle. Everyone clapped and cheered.

Later that night I ended up in Katie's hotel room, the one adjoining her dad's room, just the two of us sitting on her bed. (YAY! for the Best Choice Inn
®
, with business-friendly suites far superior to anything I ever experienced at the King Cowboy.) It was time to give Katie her present. I took the little box out of my pocket.

“Got you something else. Happy birthday.”

“Aw, you shouldn't have.” She looked at the box in my hands. “I wonder what it could be…a Crock-Pot?…A pony…?”

But before I gave it to her, I had to say something.

“Hey, Katie,” I said quietly.

“Or perhaps a single delicious cigarette, just waiting to be—”

“Katie, I need to know something.”

“Yeah?”

“Is this a thing?”

“A thing?”

“You and me…is this a thing or not?”

“Oh, Aaron,” she said. “Do we have to—”

“Well, yeah. Because your dad, for one…he seemed to think we were a thing…and I thought that if
he
thought we were a thing then maybe it was because you
told
him we were, and if you told him, then—”

“Look.” She shifted uncomfortably. “I probably shouldn't have let him get so excited about you and me, but you
are
my friend, and it just made it easier if you were twenty-one and—everything else he just assumed. That's just how he is. He goes bananas about everything.”

“So we're not a thing. This isn't serious.”

Katie sighed. “Can we please just not get into this conversation again? How about we just have fun? I was having such a nice time before you started in on all the questions….So what's in the box? Don't keep me guessing.”

And the way she talked, like I was just annoying her with my feelings, I guess it kind of pissed me off.

“Well, about us being a thing or not—there's another reason I wanted to know.”

And Katie was like, “Yeah?”

And I was like, “Because when you were out of town, I started hanging out with this girl.”

Katie blinked. “Oh?”

And it's funny how a person's expression can change so fast.

“Well, that's probably good, then.” Her voice was real casual—but not really casual. There was like this wobble to it. “Who is it? A friend from high school?” She picked a plastic cup off the table and started unwrapping it.

“No, someone else.”

“Oh.”

“It was Shiloh.”

“From dinner tonight?” She was standing now. “
That
Shiloh?!”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“So the whole time at dinner…that's why she kept looking at you that way…Oh my God, Aaron!”

“Are you upset? I'm sorry. It didn't mean anything.”

Katie spun around. “
What
didn't mean anything? What did you two do?”

“Um…”

“You know what? Don't tell me. I don't care.” She wiped her hands over her face. “Great. This is wonderful. She's more your age anyway. I'm—I'm happy for you.” She was glaring at me, eyes big and shining.

“Well, but I don't like her. I like
you
.”

“Ha. Right. Like that speech you gave me before I left for Tahoe. About looking into my heart and everything.”

“I was telling you the truth. And I'm telling you it now. It didn't mean anything between me and Shiloh.”

“Oh my God, that's not even the point!”

OK, so what
was
the point? It was strange, because she was still just glaring at me, but there were these tears running down her face. Like angry tears. She wiped them away.

“Can you just go, please?”

“But Katie—”

When I was a kid I was told that lying is a sin, but I never paid much attention to it, because as far as the Catholics are concerned, pretty much everything is a sin. But now I understood it from a different angle. The real danger of lying is that once you fall into the habit of telling lies—even if they're just little ones, even lies of omission—what happens is you get out of practice at telling the truth. And there will come a day when you want—or more like
need
—to say something true, and you won't be able to pull it off, you'll be so out of practice.

I told her again I was sorry—and while it was true, it wasn't the kind of truth I needed. I needed to tell her about how I felt, how I
really
felt—about her and about everything. How I was rotten inside, how I had a hole in there, and how even though I had fun with Shiloh, it wasn't the same kind of fun I'd had with her. And how “fun” wasn't even the word for it. But I couldn't get there, I couldn't find the words, I couldn't get to the point.

“Katie—”

She wouldn't look at me anymore. She was looking everywhere else but at me. “Leave. Just go, OK?
Please
.”

Someone was knocking on the adjoining door, and a voice was saying, “Katie? Hello, are you OK?”

And the whole thing was broken, and it was time for me to go.

Later, back at my grandpa's, I realized I was still holding the little box. Katie's birthday present. I'd never given it to her.

I took off the top and took out the ring and tossed it in the brush. I'd really screwed up this time. Just a classic fail. Like a monkey hanging from a tree branch. He sees an apple and grabs for it. Then—
ooh, look!
—he sees another apple and grabs for it, too. And then because he isn't holding on to the branch anymore, he comes crashing down on his ass, and the apples find out about each other over a birthday dinner and tell him to get lost. It's the oldest story in the book.

Then came the part that sucked. And suck it did. Suck it did, hard. Harder than a watermelon lollipop, harder than a mentholated throat lozenge, harder than a Dyson WindClonic
™
vacuum on
HIGH
(YAY!).

To begin with, Shiloh and Katie wouldn't return my messages or answer my calls. I drove into town, but when I got to my sister and Sam's place, I learned that Shiloh had returned to Reno. She'd started summer classes at UNR. As for Katie, first I tried the hotel she'd been staying at, but someone else was in her room. This old couple from Wyoming. I drove to her apartment. There was a sign tacked to the door:
WARNING NOT APPROVED FOR OCCUPANCY
. I peeked in her window. Empty.

I messaged her again.

Later that day she messaged me back. Five words.

I needed a distraction from the way I was starting to feel, so I tried digging for a while, but it was a bust. Below the layer of silverware I found a layer of cans of food—old ones with the labels peeling off.
Corned beef hash. Pinto beans
.
Tropical fruit salad.
That kind of thing. I stacked them in a pyramid by the tree and tripped over them and tweaked my bad ankle again—and after that I gave up on digging and holed up indoors instead.

I became a pirate.

Just because you're in
FAIL
doesn't mean there aren't other ways to get what you want. Over the course of the next week I must've pirated a hundred different games and interfaces. I got my hands on a copy of
A Boy & His Robot
, the original version—but it was immediately annoying. I'm talking even Level 1: Escape from Paperless World. When I was 10 it was no big thing to memorize a 20-screen buzzsaw pattern. But now? It just seemed pointless.

I pirated GoldenGoose
™
, where this goose sits on your head and every half hour lays a bonus egg. I pirated PooGrabber
™
, where you grab Poo for FUN
®
. I pirated PrimalTravel
®
, where there's this monkey on your back and it won't shut up about last-minute deals on flights to the Midwest. I pirated the AccelRator
™
, which is supposed to make time seem like it's passing really fast by blanking out frames in your vision—but all it does is give you a headache.

I pirated the Animals of Wonder & Light
®
, the entire menagerie—the Buffaloon
™
, the Camelroo
™
, and the Owligator
™
. The Apecock
™
, Bearboon
™
, and Hawkalope
™
. The Mighty Amphibious Shaarkvark
™
. They followed me around the house, crying out for love and food. You were supposed to feed them. Evie called to check in and see how I was. I told her I was fine.