He grins. “Excellent! Olivia Wilde. Oh, man.”
“No, not the sequel. I mean the original. From 1982.”
I might as well have told him I’m playing a recording of an old kinescope from the turn of the last century. His jaw drops. “Are you kidding me? That’s pre-CGI.”
“Exactly. Everything you see, someone actually did. A human being was there and was filmed. How cool is that?”
With a groan, he throws his hands up in the air, surrendering to my hopelessness. “I can’t believe I’m gonna waste two hours of my life on something that barely even qualifies as a movie. It’s more like a slideshow with motion in it.”
“You’ve never seen it.”
“I bet I’m right.”
Waggling the Blu-ray case in the air, I grin at him. “It’s not two hours. It’s only ninety-six minutes.”
“Oh, well, that’s all right then. I can’t believe I’m gonna let you put that diseased shit in my player. It’s gonna infect it with the digital equivalent of herpes.”
While we wait for the un-fast-forward-able commercials to finish, Evan asks, “What are you going to do while I’m gone this summer?”
“Oh, didn’t you know? When you’re out of Brookdale, the whole town packs up and goes into storage.”
“Stop it.”
“No, seriously. Everything just shuts down and we all go into our charging closets to receive software upgrades so that we’re ready when you come back.”
“You’re such a smart-ass.” He lazily triggers the remote when the menu comes up, and groans with mock horror. “Jesus, even the Disney logo looks ancient!”
I throw a pillow at him.
By morning, we’re reduced to monosyllables, grunting, eyes lidded, stomachs churning and gurgling with unholy concoctions conjured from the deepest recesses of our minds and Evan’s fridge. We’ve watched nearly sixteen hours of movies, half of them from the last two years, the other half dating most recently from 1995. The sun has risen, and we’re bleary-eyed and incoherent even in the confines of our own skulls.
By tradition, we have to stay awake until eight o’clock, when Evan’s family has its big Sunday breakfast, imported from the 1950s and updated for modern times, Mr. Danforth at the head of the table with an iPad instead of a newspaper, Richard Jr. snarkily tossing mals mots from his side of the table.
Mrs. Danforth wouldn’t risk her coiffure or her silk or her chemically enhanced complexion or her reputation by essaying something as prosaic as cooking, so the Danforths have a cook named Angus who comes in on weekends and for special occasions to use the million-dollar kitchen.
We eat and then it’s time for me to go, my head buzzing and muzzy and all out of sorts. As I pass over the front-door threshold, it lands on me that I won’t see Evan again this summer, and I suddenly feel like a small child whose mother was right there a minute ago but has now disappeared. I want to hug him, to cling to him, and I’m not sure why; I manage, instead, to give him a grin and a clap on the shoulder. I tell him to have fun learning how to rule the world, and he tells me he will.
In the car with Mom, it hits me anew: a summer without Evan.
I know what that means. What it will mean, this change in the status quo. During the school year, I always had school to distract me. Over the summers, I always had Evan.
Now, for the first time in a long time, I’ll be alone with myself and with the voice from far back in my brain.
I thought I might be sad, leaving Evan this last time, knowing I’ll never see him again. But instead, I’m happy. Happy that I’m leaving him with good memories. At least I accomplished that much.
And now I don’t know quite what to expect.
Or maybe I do. And that’s both the problem and the solution.
A little more than a week into summer vacation, I’ve managed to keep myself together. It’s not time. Not yet. Still waiting for the Yes to come at night, waiting patiently. I have nothing but time. I have the rest of my life, literally.
I get some e-mails from Evan. I keep up with his Instagram and Tumblr. That helps.
It’s not that I’m trying to forestall things, but I’m not not trying either. I’m exercising control. There are no rules. Nothing to say I can’t try to enjoy one last week, one last month. There are books to read and movies to watch and things still worth experiencing, for now.
A job is not one of those things. I’m not going to spend my last days on earth at work. I’ve convinced my mother that I deserve at least a small break, a caesura, if you will, between the end of school and the beginning of my “productive endeavor,” whatever that will be. She’s backed off for a little while, but I know that won’t last.
I can’t tell Mom. Can’t tell her that her insistence on my productivity doesn’t matter. That her insistence that I think about my future doesn’t matter. None of that matters.
I won’t be around in the future. The decision has already been made. I won’t be around. Whether it’s now or in a week or in a few months.
It’s going to happen. Soon.
I’m almost relieved.
One of my more annoying but—in perspective—mellow failings as a son is that I never, ever think to get the mail. It just never occurs to me because mail is mostly bills (for Mom), catalogs (for Mom), and junk mail (for Mom or “Resident”). Mail doesn’t ping my radar.
So even though I’ve been home all day with nothing to do, it still falls to Mom to trek down to the end of the driveway when she gets home and fish the mail out of the box.
Today she comes in shuffling the deck of mail. I feel my usual momentary pang of guilt for not getting the mail earlier. And she looks up at me quizzically and asks, “Do you know someone named ‘Fahim’?”
It takes a moment to break through. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
The envelope is small. Thank-you card sized. My name is printed in such neat, regimented letters that for a moment I think it’s a font, but I can feel the slight, irregular indentations from the pen.
“Are you going to fondle it or are you going to open it?” Mom asks.
I tear it open. Inside is a top-fold card with an American flag waving over script that reads, JOIN US ON THE FOURTH…
Inside, a list of what-when-where-who, with handwritten answers:
WHAT: FOURTH OF JULY COOKOUT
WHEN: FOURTH OF JULY, OF COURSE! :) STARTING AT ONE P.M.
WHERE: 149 FOX TAIL DRIVE
WHO: THE FAHIM FAMILY
And a postscript: WHY—JUST OUR WAY OF SAYING HELLO TO OUR NEW NEIGHBORS!
And then another postscript, this one in a different ink and in a different handwriting: Whatever you do, don’t ride your bike here. I want you to make it in one piece. —Aneesa
That night, I look up my name online. Sebastian means nothing more exotic or interesting than “from the town of Sebaste.” My name is pointless.
I look up Aneesa, too, and I can’t help it—I smile. It’s nice.
So, yes, I’ll go to the party. I’ll see her again. Because…
Well, I guess just because I want to.