More Happy Than Not

I’m wheeling my new bike outside as a building super works on final repairs of the lobby door I was thrown through.

I’m only allowed into the second court, where my mom and brother can check in on me from our window. It’s a compromise so I can have some alone time. The orange-and-green playground, the black mat where we all used to wrestle, the picnic benches where we drank quarter juices, the monkey bars we used for pull-ups, the old friends who watch me from the other side of the courtyard . . . this will forever be the place where I grew up.

Today I’m teaching myself to ride a bike so it doesn’t feel like the end.

I don’t need my father or Collin or Thomas to do this.

I adjust the seat before relaxing into it. I grip the handlebars. I rest one foot on the pedal and keep kicking off with the other, sort of like I’m a stallion about to race, until both feet are on the pedals.

And then I’m sailing forward with an amateur’s balance and some wind in my ears. I get the rhythm down until I’m faced with a wall and sharply turn.

I try steadying myself but I drop and the bike slams into my knee.

It hurts, but not any more than that one time Baby Freddy threw a doorstopper block at my shoulder for losing his softball, or when I was skating downhill and crashed into a garbage can.

Brendan, Skinny-Dave, Nolan, and Fat-Dave are still staring at me from the same spot where we used to play card games and drank our first beers in brown paper bags. Brendan is the only one who gets up and steps forward like he’s going to come and help me, but I hold up my hand and he stops.

Our friendship is over.

I stand, get back on the bike, ride for a bit, and fall again.

Stand. Ride. Fall.

Stand.

Ride.

I’m riding, riding, riding. I ride past Good Food’s where I can never work again. I ride in circles, really having a handle on this thing that my father should’ve taught me if only he were more of a dad, until the worst thing happens:

How am I on a bike?

REMEMBER THAT TIME

I play Remember That Time a lot.

I’ve become this happiness scavenger who picks away at the ugliness of the world, because if there’s happiness tucked away in my tragedies, I’ll find it no matter what. If the blind can find joy in music, and the deaf can discover it with colors, I will do my best to always find the sun in the darkness because my life isn’t one sad ending—it’s a series of endless happy beginnings.

I’ve lost count of how many sketchbooks I have. Sometimes my drawings are unfinished because I’ll forget what memory I’m recalling, but I don’t get discouraged and stop, not always at least. I wear the pencils thin, the markers dry, and I keep drawing. I keep trying to remember the next thing in case it’s the last chance I have.

Remember that time Brendan taught me how to make a fist?

Remember that time we were all wrestling, and me and Brendan went up against Kenneth and Kyle in a tag-team match where we pinned the twins down in less than five minutes?

Remember that time my mom did what I begged of her, even though it broke her? And how she saved me from repeating my first mistake?

Remember that time Eric had my back in a way I would’ve never bet on?

Remember that time Collin chose me and I chose him?

Remember that time I met Thomas, a guy who desperately wants to walk into a Discovery Factory to figure out who he’s going to be?

And remember how before Thomas and Collin unlocked something in me, there was Genevieve, the artist who started up this game with me and loved me in a way that wasn’t fair to her?

I definitely do and always will.

It’s storming outside right now. I stare out the window. I can’t tell you if it rained yesterday or even what day it is. It always feels like I’m waking up, minute after minute, like I’m in my own little time zone. But as I trace my smiling scar—unable to do so without remembering the time Thomas poked two eyes onto my wrist with dirt—I still have hope in what Evangeline and Leteo hope for, too.

And while I wait, happiness exists where I can get it. In these notebooks, where worlds of memories greet me, almost like a childhood friend who moved away for years and finally came back home.