2. Tariq liked books. I liked books. No one else in our school liked books. So.
3. Tariq felt guilty. Movies and books are forever saying how criminals feel compelled to confess, how thieves and murderers who got away scot-free are nevertheless hounded by their consciences into doing penance, often in ways that lead to their capture. So even if Tariq didn’t explicitly say to himself, I did something terrible to Maya, maybe I can set my karma straight by being buddies with her poor, ugly, misshapen brother, maybe he felt some impulse pushing him in my direction, telling him to take pity on me, trying to feel better about the hurt he put on her.
4. Tariq was the helpless victim of the expert manipulation skills that my super-sharpened senses gave me.
5. Tariq was an even bigger sociopath monster than I thought he was, and having destroyed my sister by getting her to drop her guard he had turned his sights on me.
6. None of the above.
7. Several of the above, in a gruesome messy complex combination not even Tariq truly understood.
So I smiled and said, “No weekend plans,” and paused for just a second, and said, “Why?”
“Thinking of heading down to the city to see a punk show,” he said, and I could hear in the tone of his voice and the echo of the wind that he was sitting in his truck, alone. “Wanna come?”
“Absolutely,” I said without pausing, without thinking, without wondering whether Mom would give me permission, because nothing else mattered but this opportunity to be alone with my enemy. I grinned gleefully.
Poor little lonely Tariq, the lamb leading himself to my slaughter.
I remembered how his eyes lit up when he had a beer in his hand. No more so than most high school jocks, I imagined, but still, it was a weakness. Something I could exploit. I sniffed around the whole house until I found a bottle of scotch—so well hidden it made me stop and think—
I had never seen my mother drink a drop of alcohol.
I wondered why—and put the bottle in my book bag.
RULE #16
Life is suffering. Embrace it, endure it, and you will be stronger than everyone around you. Because everyone else struggles against the suffering, and you have learned to float on its current.
DAY: 13
TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 800
These rules aren’t mine, mostly. I stole lots of them. Others I adapted, amended, updated.
Several rules ago, I said I thought I might be a Buddhist, but I don’t think I really know what that means. There is a lot of stuff on the internet about Buddhism, but it’s hard to make sense of. It’s not so much a religion as it is a philosophy or a way of life. It’s about not being materialistic. It’s about finding inner peace and enlightenment. So nothing like any of the really good stories I loved in the Old Testament. The kind where there’s fire and plague and smiting of the wicked.
And while I know that in Buddhism there are Four Noble Truths, I really only cared about the First one:
Life is suffering.
That, right there, was enough to make me a Buddhist. Or make me want to be one. Because that much I already knew was true.
It was especially true that Saturday, sitting, waiting, walking around the house, wondering when Tariq would pull up. Listening for the sound of his truck tires crunching on the dirt drive.
Because I’d made up my mind. On this trip, I’d start to question him. Nothing direct. Not at first. Just enough to feel him out, smell whether he had anything to offer on the subject of Bastien and Ott and Maya.
I opened my bedroom window and stuck my head out and shut my eyes so I could simply hear. Let my mind drift with the wind, focused on the sound of every passing vehicle, noticed for the first time how every single one had its own unique rhythm, a sound that belonged solely to it, made up of a million diverse pieces—engines, pistons, brakes, shocks, parts made of metal and plastic and rubber, none of which I knew the name of.
By then I had listened a couple dozen times to a CD Tariq had made for me. Punk rock was scary, its noise and its anger, but it was fascinating, too, the way horror movies had mesmerized me when I was a child, and for the same reason: because I believed that if I could survive the experience, I’d emerge stronger. These songs were raw rage, naked emotion, howls that combined the shriek of frightened infants with the bellowing of angry adults. They scared me, but they also made sense.
Rage, I understood.
I felt rage, even if I also feared it.
I couldn’t have told you what any of the songs were about. Incomprehensible lyrics with the occasional stray scrap that made sense, lines about love and rejection and The Man and long-defeated municipal legislative agendas—tough terse band names intended to intimidate, with words like Dead, Chain, Sex, Clash, Toxic.
Five tracks in, I felt close to crying. It was like I had never really heard a song before. Never really listened. Was it the power my hunger gave me, or was this what songs felt like to everyone? I shut my eyes, and I was there, inside the singer’s head, inside the echoing snare drum. I felt what they felt even without understanding a single word.
Music was magic. It could make you feel someone else’s emotions.
These were the songs Maya used to listen to. The ones she guarded so jealously, relishing her job as Older Sibling, enforcing Mom’s rules about no movies or music with cursing in it. Listening to them now, I felt like I could feel her. Like we were connected. And it made me so happy.
I heard the music before I felt the truck, a windborne squall of churning chords, and I shut my eyes and felt it swell inside me as he came closer.
“Hey, Matt.”
“Hey,” I said, getting in. “Thanks for taking me along. What’s the occasion?”
He smiled. “I figured your multiple assassination deserves celebrating. You are now a legend.”
“Legend?” I said, and fought a war within myself over whether to believe him.
“Yup. Everybody is talking about it. It was pretty impressive to start with, but by the time the rumor mill got through with it, you had broken every window in the gym and caused concussions and forced the physical education department to ban dodgeball from Hudson High forever.”
“Wow,” I said, and then wondered whether I could trust my own memory of what happened. After all, given my abilities . . . “But for real—were any of those guys seriously injured?”
“Nah. Only their pride.”
I was surprisingly relieved. “They’re probably pretty mad at me,” I said.
“Actually, they’re impressed. Nobody thought you had it in you.”
Again the pleasure rush. I could see the peril in that feeling. I could see why bullies bullied.
“Anyway,” Tariq said. “You excited about our road trip?”
“I am,” I said. “I’ve never been to New York City before.”