More Happy Than Not

It’s been nonstop raining the past couple of days, which sucks for a lot of reasons. Genevieve has been using it as an excuse for why she can’t hang with me, even if I know it’s because she wants more time away from me. I can’t play any card games with Thomas on his rooftop, or go on any job-hunting adventures with him. And I can’t stay outside and lose myself in a game of manhunt or Skelzies or anything without risking pneumonia. If there’s anything worse than being stuck in the smallest home ever with thoughts I shouldn’t be left alone with, it’s being stuck while coughing all over my brother’s stuff, who will in turn get sick, and then cough all over my stuff . . . and will get me sick again in a cruel, cruel cycle of screwing each other over until we’re both so immune we could eat candy off the floor of Washington Hospital’s ER.

But Mom has tasked me with post office duty today.

My little cousin’s birthday is tomorrow, and she needs me to overnight a gift to Albany. The umbrella I leave with gets its ass kicked by the wind within two minutes, and while paying twenty dollars for an umbrella has always seemed excessive to me, having to buy a new five-dollar umbrella every single time it rains just seems like shitty math on my behalf.

I walk the block to the post office, my bad mood growing heavier like a backpack of big-ass bricks I’m calling “THE WAR INSIDE ME.” The heaviest bricks are “GENEVIEVE HATES ME” and “I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THOMAS” and “I STILL MISS DAD.”

The last brick weighs the most right now. This is the first time I’ve come near his old workplace since we lost him. When I was a kid I’d pretend I was a security guard outside the bedroom door, and only Mom would entertain my high-five fee if she wanted to enter, whereas Eric would storm past me.

The package is getting wet, and I’m risking pneumonia, so I rush inside before I can change my mind and walk the twelve blocks to the second-nearest post office. The line isn’t too bad. No one here recognizes me as the kid of the security guard who killed himself, so that’s a plus. The clerk hands me my receipt and on my way out, I spot Evangeline sitting down on the wooden bench by the envelopes and stationery, writing a postcard.

“Evangeline, hey,” I say.

She looks up. “Hey, kiddo. What brings you here?”

“Mailing some plush giraffe to my little cousin for her birthday. Who you writing to?”

“I broke some hearts back in London and promised to keep in touch. Didn’t give them my email either. It’s better this way.” Evangeline shows me all of the ten postcards she’s sending out. She signs her name and writes today’s date on a Yankee Stadium postcard. “Phillip was a sweet one, but his brother was falling for me too. I couldn’t come between family.”

“So the brother isn’t getting a postcard?”

“No, I’ve already shipped him a letter asking him to stop writing me.” Evangeline makes room for me on the bench and shuffles all her postcards as she tells me, “Anyway, thought I would hang around here and get these sent out before the siren song of unread books back home captures me. How are you doing?”

“I’m really wet.”

“Another reason I’m hiding out here.”

I’m not sure why I feel the sudden urge to confess to my former babysitter, but maybe it’s because she’s both a stranger and someone I trust. “I’m really missing my dad pretty hard this week. I just don’t know why the hell he would leave us, you know.” I breathe in and out, in and out, in and out, trying to push the anger back down, but instead it beats me and I spit out, “It’s affecting my relationship with Genevieve, who thinks she’s losing me and . . . I don’t know.”

“Is she losing you?”

“I think I’m kind of, sort of, definitely losing myself right now.”

“In what way, kiddo?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just growing up.”

“You mean you’re done playing with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toys?”

“They were action figures, Evangeline.” I feel a little better talking to someone outside the universe of my problems. But I don’t know if I want to fill her in on how someone who doesn’t have much direction is seriously disorienting me. “I should probably get home and see if Genevieve is in the mood to answer my calls. Or go fucking punch myself if she isn’t.”

“Language,” Evangeline says.

“The babysitter never died in you, did it?”

“Afraid not, kiddo.”

She mails out her postcards and walks me back home under her large yellow umbrella. I don’t even change into dry clothes before jumping onto my bed and calling Genevieve. I’m not really sure I even know what I would say, but it still sucks when she doesn’t answer.

3

SIDE A

If I could afford a Leteo procedure, I’d give Genevieve the money so she could forget me, but since that’s never going to happen, I’m outside trying to sketch what our future will look like if we stick together. The page is still blank. It’s been a week since Thomas’s birthday, and despite another awkward phone call last night, I’m still pretty sure Genevieve doesn’t believe I love her anymore.

I put down my notebook when I see Me-Crazy coming through the gates, his head craned back and fingers pinching his bloody nose. Brendan, Skinny-Dave, and Baby Freddy are all behind him. I rush over. “What happened?”

“Nosebleed,” Me-Crazy says, laughing.