“What’s next?” he asks.
Ryan knows he needs to extricate himself from what just happened, needs to step outside of it and return to the day that he and Avery were having. But the rage he’s feeling is volcanic. If Avery weren’t here, he’d be going back there with a golf club of his own. He’d wait until they weren’t looking, and then he’d beat the hell out of them. Or at least that’s what he wants to tell himself. These scenarios are much clearer when they’re not actually happening.
“Ryan?”
Ryan hasn’t heard Avery’s question, and doesn’t realize that Avery needs to know where they’re going. He looks at his watch and realizes he told Alicia they’d drop by in about fifteen minutes.
“Make a left,” he says.
Avery wants to ask more, but settles into patience instead. Let it out, he wants to tell Ryan. Say what you need to say.
But Ryan’s not there yet. He can’t say it out loud. And he can’t let it go.
Cooper goes to McDonald’s to get something to eat and realizes he doesn’t have that much money left. This should bother him, but it doesn’t. He barely even notices it.
Instead he sits at a corner table and eats his Quarter Pounder. People talk and laugh and push around him, but he stares off into a space that isn’t there, his thoughts as anonymous as his surroundings. He finishes the burger in six minutes, then sits around for another thirty. Playing things out in his mind. Talking to himself because there is no one else to talk to.
Death is hard, and facing death is painful. But even more painful is the feeling that no one cares. To not have a friend in the world. Some of us died surrounded by loved ones. Some of us had loved ones who couldn’t make it in time, who were too far away or just off getting some sleep. But there are also those of us who can tell you what it’s like to have no one who you love, no one who loves you. It is very hard to stay alive just for your own sake. It is very hard to stare into day after day after day without another familiar face staring back. It turns your heart into a purposeless muscle.
The fewer connections you have to the world, the easier it is to leave.
We need to turn back to Harry and Craig. We need to see them standing there. The day is getting warmer, and as a result, their bodies seem to give off more heat. We watch Craig’s hand press against Harry’s back, and we remember the miraculous feel of skin. Such a thing to miss. Touching his chest and feeling the heartbeat beneath. Touching his back and feeling his spine. Breath against our necks. The chill of pulling away. The furnace of wrapping together.
Twenty-seven hours and five minutes is a long time to kiss. So is twenty-seven hours and six minutes. Harry and Craig are conscious of everything going on around them. The sea of faces keeps altering itself, updating itself. The music runs from song to song. Mykal has become the self-designated cheerleader—if the supporters grow too quiet, he gives them a rise. After football practice ended, there was an additional buzz of dissent—not all the players, but some. But these dissenters soon grew bored. There’s not much to watch when it’s two boys kissing. You have to be devoted to stay.
Tariq’s consciousness is warping under sleeplessness. He starts muttering Walt Whitman to keep himself going, to keep his thoughts in sequence. Smita hears him and starts to do it, too. When Mykal hears this, he turns it into a cheer.
We two boys together clinging!
One the other never leaving!
Power enjoying!
Elbows stretching!
Fingers clutching!
Arm’d and fearless!
Eating!
Drinking!
Sleeping!
Loving!
Harry and Craig hold on to each other. Each of them, in his own thoughts, in his own way, wonders, How long can you hold on to a body?
We want to tell them, A long time. They are young. They don’t understand. It is natural for another body to become as yours as your own. It is natural to have that connection, that familiarity. We are ever-regenerating beings, but we always keep the same approximation, and in this way we can be known. And held.
Hold on to his body, we want to tell each of them. And then, Hold on to your own.
Harry coughs. Craig takes it. He doesn’t even flinch.
Neil sits next to Peter as Peter plays video games. Peter plays video games, but is mostly aware of sitting next to Neil.
Peter doesn’t know what to say, so he leans. Only a few inches, but now their shoulders are touching. Now they are in some simple way together.
Avery is happy to meet Ryan’s friends, but also a little at sea. It’s not that Ryan doesn’t introduce them, but once he does, it’s like he’s checked out of the conversation. His mind is still back in the mini-golf place. He is still stewing in his own helpless anger.
Ryan’s best friend, Alicia, senses something is off. Avery wants to tell her, It wasn’t me. I swear it wasn’t me. But she must sense this, too, because she is extra welcoming to Avery, trying to tell him funny Ryan-growing-up stories to make him feel less isolated. In fact, of the four friends that are sitting around the table in the coffeehouse, only one of them—Dez—seems to be studying Avery a little too hard, trying to figure out what’s under Avery’s shirt.
Finally, Ryan tells them what happened—not every detail, but the general gist of it. Avery is relieved, figuring that this will allow Ryan to release it, get over it. Certainly, everyone’s sympathetic, muttering an almost endless list of synonyms for the word asshole to describe Skylar and the other guys.
But it’s not enough for Ryan to turn it into a story. At the end he says, “I really should have done something. Smashed up his car. Called the police to report them trespassing. Something. I mean, I guess it’s not too late.”
“What do you mean, ‘it’s not too late’?” Alicia asks, in a way that Avery doesn’t feel he can.
“I mean, it’s not like I don’t know where he lives.”
Alicia nods. But then she says, “Ryan, I get that you’re mad. But I think you need to take it down a notch.”
“Easy for you to say. You weren’t there. Right?” With this, he looks at Avery.
Avery doesn’t know exactly what he’s being asked. The question appears to be whether or not Alicia was there, and they all know the answer to that. Ryan wants something more from him.
“I think you guys are much better company,” Avery says, winning points from everyone but Ryan.
We see how unsatisfied Ryan is with this. With Avery. With Alicia. With all of them for not sharing his rage. We know this feeling well. There were times we were subsumed within our rage—it didn’t feel like something we created, but something that was outside of us, all around us, closing in. After so many years of denying our rage, denying our anger, it was powerful to acknowledge it, to allow it to fuel us, to harness the rage into outrage, taking the thing that felt outside of us and then shooting it back out from the inside.
Part of the use of anger is this acknowledgment, this harnessing. But the other part—the part that was sometimes hardest for us, especially in our pain—is the matter of aim. That is, sometimes the power of anger is so intense that you will shoot it everywhere. Even when, in truth, you should only ever shoot your anger at the people you are truly angry at, the people who truly deserve your rage. Ryan, so fixated on his hatred of Skylar, doesn’t even realize that he’s letting the hatred spill over, scattershot.
Alicia asks Avery about his pink hair and how long he’s had it, then asks more questions about life in Marigold. Really, what she wants is for Avery to go to the restroom or outside to make a phone call, so she can get Ryan alone and tell him to remember what this day was supposed to be about, to remember how excited he was when he asked her to gather people to meet this boy who’d fallen into his life. But Avery doesn’t leave the table, and Ryan goes unwarned by his best friend.