“Uh, okay.” Okay? Okay? What the hell are you doing, Ryden?
Oh, who am I kidding? I know exactly what I’m doing. Joni’s the only person I know who doesn’t know about Meg or Hope or any of it. Being back at soccer today proved that I can be the old me again, the Ryden Brooks who everyone loved, who could do whatever he wanted with zero consequences. And it felt really, really good. I think if I play this right, I can have two lives—the shitty one and the good one. And they don’t have to mix.
“Awesome,” Joni says. “What do you want to do?”
I shrug. “Whatever.”
“Do you want to go with me to get a tattoo?”
I stare at her. She’s looking back at me, all “what?” like she just said the most boring thing in the world. “Uh…I don’t really want a tattoo,” I say.
Joni rolls her eyes. “I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about me. It hurts like a bitch, and I could use a handholding buddy.”
I consciously ignore the handholding part of that statement. “How do you know it hurts so bad? Do you already have a tattoo?”
She rocks back on her heels, her hands in her pockets. “Yup.”
“Where?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” She grins mischievously and then says, “Okay, cool, so we’ll figure out the details later. See ya.” And then she’s gone, the break room door swinging behind her.
? ? ?
That night, I write my letter to UCLA. If Meg were here, she’d watch over my shoulder for a few minutes as I struggled to get the words out on the screen. I used to read a lot, before I stopped having time, but writing has always been hard for me. How am I supposed to know what to say? Eventually Meg would gently put her hands on my shoulders and lean down and whisper in my ear, “Want some help?” She wouldn’t say it condescendingly—she’d just want to know if I needed her help. I’d say yes, and she would sit on my lap and start typing, and in twenty seconds flat, she’d have the perfect letter written, no typos or misspelled words, and she wouldn’t even have to use spell check. She never told me what she wanted to do after college, but I bet she’d have been an author. Or maybe a journalist. She did tell me she’d always dreamed of going to Dartmouth but that her plans changed after she got her diagnosis. That was why she’d gotten all sad that day outside the cafeteria when I told her about UCLA for the first time.
I read over the letter about a hundred times to make sure all the commas are in the right place and I don’t sound like a complete dolt.
Stats, athletic background, academic background, game film, YouTube link, Coach’s contact info, game schedule. Long-ass paragraph of desperate pleading.
I go outside to put it in the mailbox. It’s a really quiet night. There are no cars going by, and the people across the street are on vacation, so for once, their dog isn’t barking his head off. Even my own house is quiet. Mom’s hanging out on the couch with Hope, the two of them watching The Bachelor.
I sink down to the curb and sit next to the mailbox, leaning back on my hands, staring up at the stars. I still don’t quite get how each one of those stars is actually a sun, burning up its own part of the universe. It seems incomprehensible that something that big, that complex, that infinite, is out there, while we’re here on this stupid planet watching reality shows and waiting in line for the new iPhone and buying all the chia seeds in Whole Foods because some article told us it was trendy, thinking we’re tough shit, like any of it means anything. But we’re miniscule. We mean nothing. And even in our own world, we don’t stick around that long. Not long enough to matter. You’re born—more likely than not an unintended by-product of your parents wanting to get laid—you do some stuff, and then you die. You get sick, you get hit by a train, you get old and fall apart. It all ends the same way. And that’s it. Then your kids get horny, have a kid, and the cycle starts again.
What the hell is the point of any of it?
I brought Meg’s journal with me. The light from the streetlamp casts the book in a muted golden color. I read a few entries. Meg writes about her family dinners, how her father has been drinking a lot more wine lately, shopping online with Mabel since she’s not strong enough to go to the mall, watching the clock and counting the minutes until school gets out and I can visit her.
Her words break my heart into as many fragments as there are stars in the sky. But none of the entries have the same stomach-twisting effect as that baby-naming one.
I lie back on the narrow strip of grass between the street and the sidewalk and focus on one particularly bright star.
My voice is a whisper in the darkness. “I miss you.”
Chapter 9