More Happy Than Not

“I was like that once. I denied it, but then I met you over there by that fence and it flipped around everything I ever thought about myself. I didn’t want to be unhappy so I stopped dating someone I can’t actually love. I get it if you need more time.”

“I can’t live up to this fantasy playing out in your head,” Thomas shoots back.

Without thinking about it, I hug him and hold on to him even though he’s not hugging me back. “I can’t promise I’ll wait.”

I don’t think the pain will vanish the way Evangeline thinks it will. I’m sure waiting for unfulfilled expectations will only make weeks feel like months, months feel like decades, and decades feel like my end of days. If there’s no happiness waiting for me there, then I lived a life without laughs and smiles and that’s not living at all.

I turn my back on him.

I move back into the complex and walk across the third court when two big hands grab my shoulders. I half expect it to be Thomas spinning me around to lead me somewhere private, but instead I find myself falling forward and rolling into a pillar by my building. Fear chokes me. I doubt it’s those bastards from the Joey Rosa Projects because I had nothing to do with Me-Crazy beating their boys down.

This attack is personal. These are my friends. I pick myself up. It’s Me-Crazy, backed by Brendan, Skinny-Dave, and Nolan—too many to outrun.

“Fight back, faggot,” Me-Crazy challenges, rolling his eyes back until they’re just white. He’s going to start pounding on his head any moment now and I’ll be laid out.

“What the fuck is your problem?” I ask him.

“Me-Crazy saw you hugging your boyfriend,” Me-Crazy says.

Nolan chimes in, “Why you playing with other dudes? You had a bomb-ass girlfriend, and Bren told us you stopped hitting that.”

“It’s for your own good,” Brendan says, too ashamed to look me in the eye like the man he wants me to be and thinks he is. He cracks his knuckles and rocks back and forth, and I almost laugh at how ridiculous he looks.

I get in his face, so close that I could kiss him and really piss them all off. “Come on, guys. Try and beat it out of me.”

The rules of the street aren’t clear, but I’ve known people—Brendan, actually—who walked away from a serious beat-down from our rival high school because he kicked one guy’s ass and earned everyone’s respect. Maybe if I fuck up Brendan, or Skinny-Dave who looks too high for his own good, that’ll get them to back off.

Brendan shoves me. I recover. I shove him back and slam into him with the hardest head-butt I can swing without knocking myself out. Brendan, somewhat dazed, fakes right and swings a hard uppercut into my chin with his left. I kick him in his knee, hard like he taught me, and he collapses so I knee him in the nose. Then Skinny-Dave comes at me with a sucker punch, but it’s Me-Crazy who actually tackles me down to the ground and I know I’ve lost. I can’t move out from under his grip. Now it’s all pain. Resisting gets harder and everything becomes dimmer and blurrier with each punch to my face and each blow to my chest. Me-Crazy is roaring while he strangles me, and Skinny-Dave and Nolan stomp me out.

I shout and twist and cry and guard my face with the one arm I manage to get free. Me-Crazy gets off of me and I think it’s over. I’m so dizzy. The ground I’m crumbled on is spinning around, first one way and then another. I don’t even bother trying to crawl away. I feel like I’m falling . . .

No, someone is picking me up. I confused up with down. But the terrifying sensation of Crazy Train Mode is insanely familiar. He runs with me over his shoulder, and I hear Brendan yelling at him to stop, that he’s taking it too far, but Me-Crazy keeps running. I don’t know where we’re going until we crash through the glass door of my building and I’m sprawled across the lobby floor.

There’s an explosion in the back of my head, a delayed reaction. Blood fills my mouth. This is what death feels like, I think. I scream like someone is turning a hundred knives inside of me, spitting up blood as I do. And I’m not crying because of the attack. I’m crying because there’s new noise in my head, and it builds from a couple faded echoes into an uproar of jumbled voices—all the memories I once forgot have been unwound.

PART ZERO: UNHAPPINESS

HERE TODAY,

GONE TOMORROW

(AGE NINE)

It’s way past my bedtime but I can’t sleep because of a really real nightmare—myself.

There’s been enough crying in my family lately but I can’t control myself. Mom tries to calm me down in the kitchen with cranberry juice. It’s stupid, but I cry harder because I’m jealous of Brendan and how his house is better with better juice and better video games because his parents have more money than we do.

Mom hugs me to her shoulder as I sit on the kitchen counter. “Baby, you can tell me anything. I love you as you are.”

I don’t want to tell anyone, but I’m scared something will happen to me if I don’t.

“Baby, my son, you are safe. Nothing bad will ever happen to you, I promise.”

“I think I’m . . .” I take a deep breath. “I can’t say it. I’m too scared.”

Eric pops up from around our old and busted stereo system and shouts, “You’re gay! No one cares!”

“NO! NO! I’m scared I’m going to become crazy like Uncle Connor and eat too many pills and die.” I punch this plastic bin where we keep packets of salt, pepper, and ketchup Mom pockets from restaurants and everything spills onto the floor. “You’re an asshole!”