A LITTLE LESS LIKE A PIT OF DISPAIR
“My family’s from El Salvador, but that doesn’t mean I watch Dora the Explorer,” Trey says.
Elliot shrugs. “I just figured.”
“White people always ‘just figure,’ and it needs to stop.” Trey smiles. “But really.”
I laugh again. I’ve been laughing all night, which is kind of awesome. I’d gone to the bathroom as soon as I walked into the diner because I wanted to put off an awkward meeting-Mark rerun. I didn’t expect to actually have fun with these guys.
“I agree, Trey,” I say. “That’s why I’ve always tried not to think. It’s safer that way. No drama, no racism, no constant worrying if you’re doing the right thing.”
“Listen to this guy,” Trey says with dramatic hand gestures. “No, wait. Don’t listen to this guy. That’s horrible.”
We share a laugh, but Elliot looks at me like he’s got me figured out. “You actually think that, don’t you?”
I pick up my milkshake. “Is it a problem if I do?”
Trey lets out a breath of air, like my statement is the heaviest thing in the world. “Well, I think so. Yeah, actually. It isn’t going to get you anywhere. That’s for sure.”
I don’t know if it’s the giddiness I feel from a sudden Dez-filled life, or if Pritchett spiked the shakes tonight, but I don’t stop talking. It’s the point of the conversation where I shouldn’t be talking any more.
Talking = thinking.
Relationships = thinking.
Everything I’m doing right now = thinking.
“I guess maybe I used to think that? Well … maybe I still do. I don’t know.”
“Addiction Fighters really got to you, huh?” Trey asks with a victorious smirk.
“Kind of. I guess. I don’t know. A lot is getting to me.”
On a completely different topic: porn.
I can’t stop thinking about it. It feels like my junk has a strange non-physical itch for it.
“This is important, A, but hold on,” Elliot says. “Mr. Cratcher’s calling.”
I point at Elliot’s phone. “Mr. Crotcher calls you? How adorable.”
Trey lets out a manufactured laugh, the laugh people use when they don’t like what you said, but they don’t want to make you feel bad. It reminds me that I really need to stop talking. These guys aren’t going to understand me, and they can’t do anything for me I can’t do myself.
Master speaks truth. I sees it coming, I does. They will hurts you. Gollum!
I’m about to get up and leave when Elliot’s face turns paler than Moby Dick.
“Yeah,” he says, and a few seconds pass before he speaks again. “Yeah, I’m with them. We’ll be over in a minute.”
We hear Mr. Crotcher hang up, but Elliot doesn’t take the phone from his ear. He just sits with a look of terror on his face, staring at the space between our heads.
“Elliot, what’s wrong?” Trey asks.
“It’s Mark,” he says. “He’s dead.”
—
Mark + drugs + too many = Mark’s dead.
Mark’s death + me = questioning everything + only being able to think in formulas.
Mark + addiction = death.
Me + addiction = death.
Mark = death.
Mark = me.
Me = death.
—
Cure for not thinking about porn? Have a friend—or whatever Mark was—die while thinking about it. It’s four in the morning and, instead of staring at the computer, I’m staring at the ceiling. Helpless.
My dad won’t wake me up this morning. He stayed up until three last night waiting for me to come home because I stayed with Elliot and Trey as long as I could. Mark had been in the Knights of Vice for six months. I was/am a mess, and I’d only known him a week. The other two took his death really hard, like uncontrollable sobbing hard.
I think about waking Addy, but she stayed up with my dad and she gets really crabby when she doesn’t sleep. I pick up my phone and scroll down to my newest contact.
I call her. Each unanswered ring makes me very aware that I’m on the uncharted seas of Adam Hawthorne’s emotion.
“Hi, this is Dez. There are 1440 minutes in a day. Pick another one and try again.”
I hang up before I have to leave a message. She’s probably sleeping, and I don’t want to talk to a machine right now. I throw the phone onto the bed, and suddenly everything in me feels like it’s swallowed by the black space of Deception Pass.
The phone rings.
I gasp in relief.
“Hello?”
“To what does my REM sleep owe the pleasure of this call?”
“Mark’s death.”
A beat of silence reigns.
“Shit.”
“The only thing I can think about is that I’m Mark,” I say. “I know that’s weird. He was addicted to drugs. I’m not addicted to drugs, but I’m—I’ve figured out I can’t stop thinking about porn. Watching it. Needing it. Even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could stop. I don’t have control over it.”
“How’d he die? OD’d?”
“Yeah. His vice killed him, but at the same time, I feel like his vice hurt me, too. It’s like … we’re all volcanoes and we wander around engulfing each other in our disaster.”
“We’re all natural disasters,” she says.
“Yeah, or maybe we’re all unnatural disasters hoping to figure out how to be natural.”
“How are the other Knights of Vice?”
“Sucky, but I guess everyone’s sucky.”
“I’m typically not an optimist, but maybe consider some people somewhere in the world are happy? It might make you feel less like a pile of crap. Just a suspicion.”
I rub my eyes and look at the soon-to-spawn portal to hell on my nightstand. It’s 4:45.
“Dez, I have to go.”
“Are you okay? Wait … that’s an incredibly unintelligent question. Are you miserable?”
“Yeah.”
“That means you’re normal.”
I don’t want to hang up. I want to be with Dez Coulter’s voice for the rest of the day.
“I’ll talk to you tonight,” she says, and though I can’t make myself smile, my insides seem a little less like a pit of despair.