“But nothing more.”
“I don’t know.”
As much as it must’ve hurt, I owed Calvin the truth. The laughter I’d mined from him earlier had disappeared. I leaned against the railing next to him. So close we were nearly touching.
“Listen, Calvin. I like spending time with you. But I can’t tell you what’s going to happen next. You might learn something about me you don’t like, or school will end and we’ll go to different colleges and never see each other again, or the universe may collapse and swallow both our lives. I just don’t know.”
Calvin turned and looked out over the park. “The guy—the teacher—I thought he loved me.”
“People are assholes.”
“You’re not an asshole, Ozzie.”
“Neither are you, Cal.”
201,833 AU
DR. DIXIE MCCRANEY LOOKED LIKE SHE’D spent the morning making out with Pennywise the clown. She nursed a thirty-ounce iced coffee like it was a baby bottle, and she was literally the first therapist I’d seen who sat behind a desk. I sat on the other side in an uncomfortable modern pleather chair.
She was reading my file—she’d been reading my file for the last five minutes. Nodding occasionally, her lips moving silently. She finally set it down and said, “You sure have plowed through a lot of doctors, Oswald Pinkerton.” Then she had the nerve to smile like she’d made a hilarious joke.
“What can I say? I’m indecisive.”
“How about you start by telling me a little about why you’re here?”
Why didn’t they ever know? I thought the whole point of seeing a therapist was to get answers, not waste my time providing them with obvious ones.
“Let’s see,” I said. “My boyfriend vanished, and I’m the only one who remembers him; I tried to run away to find him, and the plane I was on crashed only minutes after a cop pulled me off of it; the universe is shrinking; and I gave a blowjob to a guy who cuts himself, had a fling with a teacher, and who I may like but can’t date because I’m definitely still in love with my ‘imaginary’ boyfriend.” I snapped my fingers. “Also, my parents are getting divorced and my idiotic older brother joined the army and will probably shoot himself in the foot.”
Dr. McCraney’s mouth formed an O. “Heavens!” she said. “Your life is heaps more interesting than mine. All I’ve got is a cat with six toes.”
“Fascinating.”
“But I think we should set those issues aside for the time being.”
“We should?”
McCraney nodded. She slurped her iced coffee. She actually slurped it. The sound made me want to stab her with her straw. “I want you to tell me about the future, Oswald.”
“I’m psycho, not psychic.”
“Oh, Oswald,” she said. “You’re a comedian, aren’t you?”
“No.”
Dr. McCraney bulldozed ahead. “What does the future look like for Oswald Pinkerton—great name, by the way. Do you have any plans for college? Anything you’re passionate about? Tell me where you see yourself in ten years.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if I’m going to college. I don’t know what I want to do with the rest of my life. I’m not even sure the universe is going to survive long enough for me to graduate.” I clenched my fists. I couldn’t stop fidgeting. “The only thing I know for certain is that I need to find Tommy.”
“Your boyfriend?”
Dr. McCraney was the first doctor to refer to Tommy as my boyfriend and not my imaginary boyfriend.
“My future was Tommy. My future is Tommy.”
“I see,” McCraney said. “And you’re worried any choice you make regarding your future now necessarily excludes him.”
“Yes!” I said. Hallelujah. Finally! A doctor who understood. “Tommy was my everything. All my friends are leaving: Lua’s going on tour, Dustin’s heading to the University of Florida, even Calvin will probably get out of Cloud Lake, but I don’t know what to do without Tommy. If I stay in Cloud Lake, I might be wasting my life. But leaving means admitting I may never see him again.”
“Except he isn’t real, Oswald,” McCraney said. “It’s obvious you’re scared of the future, and this boy you’ve conjured is a convenient cover you’re using to avoid making a choice.”
I’d been wrong. Dr. Dixie McCraney didn’t understand at all.
I didn’t even finish our session. I stood and walked out the door.
386,097 KM
NOTHING EVER HAPPENS THE WAY we expect it ought to.
I pulled into Lua’s driveway to pick him up for a show at a/s/l and honked. He ran out the front door, guitar case slung over his shoulder, wearing leather pants and something that looked like a straitjacket. After he tossed his gear into the back, he climbed into the passenger seat and held up his arms. Rust-colored buckles dangled from the sleeves.
“You like it?” he asked. “Dinah helped me make it.”
I didn’t answer. He could have gone on and on about anything and everything, and I wouldn’t have said a word because of the two envelopes sitting in my lap. Two envelopes that held my future.
Lua snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Ozzie? Are you listening?”
I picked up the envelopes and shoved them at Lua, who immediately quit talking.
“You have to open them,” I said. Letters from UC Boulder and New College had both been waiting for me when I got home from school. Not my parents, not the realtor or some unknown family feigning interest in buying our house. Just those two letters. I’d taken them to my room, sat on my bed, and stared at them. But after my rejection from Amherst, I hadn’t been able to open them alone, so I’d brought them to Lua.
Lua took the envelopes. “Which one first?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“You’re gonna get in,” he said.
Maybe I would have believed him before, but the first rejection had proved nothing was certain.
“Just do it,” I said through clenched teeth.
Lua tore open the first letter, unfolded it, read it, and set it on his lap. Then he repeated the process with the second. All while I sat there fighting the urge to puke.
“Oh, Ozzie,” he said. “I’m so sorry . . .”
My gut twisted. I ground my teeth together so hard I thought they would shatter.
Then he said, “. . . you’re gonna be stuck in school for another four years. You got in!”
“What?”
“You’re going to college!”
“Which one?”
“Both, Ozzie. You got into both.”
Lua burst out of the car, ran around to my side, and pulled me out. He squeezed me and we jumped up and down in the middle of his driveway.
“I got in?” I said.
“You got in!”
Ms. Novak must’ve heard us shouting, because she came running out of the house in a robe with her hair in curlers asking what happened, and Lua said, “Ozzie’s going to college!” And Dinah screamed and jumped up and down with us, our hands joined like the points of a star.
Lua hugged me and whispered into my ear, “I’m so proud of you, Oswald Pinkerton. I always knew you were too big for Cloud Lake.”
? ? ?
“I got into college!” I said to Bella Donna as she drew a fat black X on the top of my hand.