More Happy Than Not

Some doctors and technicians are running around and setting up monitors; others are typing away on computers and doing analytical stuff with blueprints of my brain. Dr. Castle has stayed by my side the entire time. She fills up a glass of water from a small basin, drops two blue pills in, and hands it to me.

I stare at the pills, but don’t drink yet. “Do you think I’ll be okay, Doc?”

“Absolutely painless, kiddo,” she says.

“And my dreams will be altered too, right?” Some dreams are unwanted flashbacks; others are nightmares, like the one last night where Collin put me on a bike, even though I wasn’t ready, and pushed me down the steepest hill, laughing at me as he walked away.

“To avoid our work being unwound, yes,” Dr. Castle says. “This wouldn’t be an issue if we could simply erase memories without consequence, but memory manipulation is far less of a risk. When we put you under, you won’t even have to relive the memories—that would be cruel. It’ll feel like a long, long sleep.”

“Sounds a lot like dying.”

“Think of us less as reapers and more like genies.”

“And I won’t suspect anything when you come around?”

“We’ll manipulate your memories so you believe I’m an old babysitter. The few people who know about your procedure will be clued in to this,” she explains. But I know this already; it’s been drilled into me and repeated a dozen different ways in the forms I’ve read and videos I’ve seen. The Leteo employees disguise themselves with permission all the time so they can check in on post-procedure patients without raising suspicion.

I won’t have anything to remember Collin by. No memories, no treasures. I threw away his bad drawings, gag gifts, and an X-Men sweater he gave me. I burned funny notes over the stove as if I could forget what they said once they were ashes piling up in the pot.

Dr. Castle fluffs my pillow. I wonder if she cares for all her patients like this. “May I ask you something, Aaron? Completely off the books?”

“Sure.”

She averts her eyes and whatever she’s about to ask, it’s clear she’s reconsidering. “I hope I’m not out of line. From the moment your case was brought to my attention, I understood the struggles you must’ve been going through. But I can’t help but be curious . . . Would you still carry on with this procedure if your sexuality weren’t an issue? Would you want to change being gay?”

Lucky for me, I’ve thought about this even before my father went and killed himself. “It’s not a matter of what I want. I need to do this.”

A technician approaches. “Ready when you and the patient are, Dr. Castle.”

I down the entire glass of water and hand it back to her. “Battle.”

One doctor fits a mask around me while a technician turns some dials on the monitor. The sleeping gas hits. It is fresh and crisp and tastes like fiery metal in the back of my throat. It’s so hard to stay awake. Evangeline isn’t tugging at her sleeve, but I know she’s nervous too. My eyes are shutting and I remember something. I pull off the mask, take a deep breath, and say, “Before I forget, thank you.”

The mask falls back on my face.

The doctors count down from ten and my eyes shut at eight. Next time I wake up, I’ll just be an ordinary straight guy in his bed.

PART THREE: LESS HAPPY THAN BEFORE

1

THIS TIME AROUND

I’m just as surprised as anyone else to be alive.

Pain rocks my bones in a way I didn’t think was possible. Looking back to when I cried over falling on my knees on my ninth birthday seems stupid now, completely laughable. That time I was jumped on the train for liking Collin is a pinch in the cheek compared to this last assault, this hate crime. It’s not even the heartache from Thomas that

’s shredding me apart.

Every mistake I’ve made, every wrong I’ve repeated, every unhealed heartache: I feel it all and more as the weight of my old world crushes me. If you looked inside me, I bet you’d find two different hearts beating for two different people, like the sun and moon up at the same time, a terrible eclipse I’m the only witness to.

My worlds collided and I can’t get up.

Undergoing the procedure was like a blackout. Leteo dealt the cards on how I woke up. Some of my memories were altered, little disguises forced onto them to trick me. Others were beaten over the head with shovels, buried alive and out of my reach. But Leteo fucked up. Somewhere in the uncharted territories of my mind, they failed to scrub something clean and I became the person I forgot.

The goal was for me to forget I’m gay. Easier said than done since there isn’t exactly an off switch like my father thought there was. To beat nature, Leteo fostered the shortly lived straight me by targeting and burying memories connected to my sexuality: my relationship with Collin, my dad’s cruelty, my childhood crush on Brendan, etc. If I could simply believe I was straight, I would be straight. Life would be easy. But Leteo didn’t have the power we both hoped they did.

My eyes are too heavy to open.