“Don’t call me Space Boy.”
Diego threw his arm around my shoulders and Audrey’s, too, drawing us to him. His skin was warm and sweaty, but I didn’t pull away. “No deal. You’re our space boy, Space Boy.”
The way Audrey looked at me—as if we could somehow fill the canyon that had grown between us with laughter and meet again in the middle—made me want to hug her and tell her how much I’d missed her, but I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
“Fine,” I said after a moment, “let’s ride the goddamn Ferris wheel.”
CTRL-ALT-DELETE
CURRENT DATE IS FRI, 29-01-2016
CURRENT TIME IS 11:11:51.78
THE COSMOS SIMULATION COMPUTING ENGINE MDR
VERSION 4.2 ? COPYRIGHT COSMOS INTERNATIONAL COMPUTING ENGINES
? COPYRIGHT MDR INC, 2010, 2013
C> DEL C:\SIMULATIONS\PLANETS\EARTHV3.SIML
C> ARE YOU SURE? Y/N
C> y
14 November 2015
Life isn’t fair. That’s what we tell kids when they’re young and learn that there are no rules, or rather that there are but only suckers play by them. We don’t reassure them or give them tools to help them cope with the reality of life; we simply pat them on the back and send them on their way, burdened with the knowledge that nothing they do will ever really matter. It can’t if life’s not fair.
If life were fair, the smartest among us would be the wealthiest and most popular. If life were fair, teachers would make millions, and scientists would be rock stars. If life were fair, we’d all gather around the TV to hear about the latest discovery coming out of CERN rather than to find out which Kardashian is pregnant. If life were fair, Jesse Franklin wouldn’t have killed himself.
Life is not fair. And if life’s not fair, then what’s the point? Why bother with the rules? Why bother with life at all? Maybe that’s the conclusion Jesse came to. Maybe he woke up one morning and decided he simply didn’t want to play a game against people who refused to obey the rules.
? ? ?
I lay in bed all day Saturday, thinking about Jesse. Sometimes thinking about him made my body too heavy to move. The fragments of Jesse left behind were dense in my pockets and weighted me down, pulling me toward the center. I thought about Jesse and I listened to the sounds of my brother making a mess in the kitchen, and of my mother arguing with Nana, trying to get her ready to go visit my great-uncle Bob, who lives in a VA home in Miami. The sounds eventually quieted, and I knew I was alone. I still didn’t move, not until the shadows grew longer across my bedroom and the bright morning light began to dim.
With great effort, I rose from bed and sat at my desk. Waited for my computer to fire up. I wanted to see Jesse, so I pulled up his SnowFlake page. The Internet is a strange place for the dead. All those digital pieces of you become frozen. You will never again post selfies with friends from the movie theater or while waiting for a concert to begin. Your friends will never tag you in another photo at a drunken party. You’ll never update your page with your thoughts about how shitty South Florida drivers are or about how the lonely asshole in front of you at Target just bought twenty frozen dinners, an economy-size bag of cat food, and the box set of Bones; is using twenty coupons; and is paying in quarters. The Internet version of you becomes enshrined so that pathetic people like me can visit occasionally and try to pretend you’re not really gone. That some small part of you lingers.
I’ve spent so much time on Jesse’s SnowFlake page that I’ve practically memorized it. There’s Jenny Leech’s wall of text about how Jesse touched her life in ways he didn’t even know, despite the extent of their relationship being the one class they shared in tenth grade. Coach VanBuren’s picture of Jesse running a 440 against Dwyer High—Jesse lost that race, but from the picture you couldn’t be faulted for believing that he was about to sail to victory. A hundred variations on, I’ll miss you, dude, from people who probably stopped missing him before he was in the ground. Audrey’s last post was a picture she’d taken on the sly of me and Jesse kissing by her pool. We’d spent the day turning lobster red, drinking iced tea, and laughing. I don’t even remember what was so funny; I only remember thinking I’d suffocate before I stopped laughing.