Before We Go Extinct (10 page)

How my heart would race and stutter. He was like the opposite of a hero. He was soft in every wrong way. How much I hated him.

He gets up off the floor, pours cereal, slops milk in that spills over the side of the bowl. Takes a bite, crunching loudly. I make for the door. With a full mouth, Dad yells,
“Stop.”
He runs into the kitchen and grabs a roll of paper towel, tears one off, and starts drawing frantically, like my life depends on it. The dogs thud down around me, like they know this will take forever so they may as well nap. I tap the screen of my phone, even though there are only two bars of signal and nothing is coming through.

“Signal here is kinda spotty,” says Dad. “It's better down the beach a bit.”

I type,
Tell Daisy, wazzzuuuuuuuuuppppp.

Send.

I close my eyes, feeling my message being carried into the cold marble box where The King's remains are probably liquefying.

I swallow hard.

Gag. Cough.

Recover.

I am okay, I tell myself. I am fine.

Daisy was The King's toy poodle. He carried her around in a purse for a few months. “It's a murse,” he'd say, offended. “Not a freaking purse.”

“Yeah,” I'd say. “That's really manly, dude. A poodle in a purse.”

He'd raise his fist as if he was about to belt me, then he'd laugh.
“Murse,”
he'd say.

We taught Daisy to play dead when someone said wazzup. We taught her to sit by saying roll over. We thought it was funny. It was probably pretty stupid, now that I think of it. A lot of things are a lot funnier at the time than when you look back on them, I guess.

Then one day he stopped bringing Daisy everywhere. “She's at home,” he said. “She has diarrhea.”

Turns out his dad kicked her so hard he punctured her liver with her own rib bone and she had to be put down.

Dad finishes his sketch and presents it with a flourish. It's a map to the best beach, which is dumb because I can see the beach out the window. This is an island. It is basically
all
beach. Anyway, mostly I really need to use the outhouse.

The cabin is perched on a point, the pebbly bay on one side and a sweep of sandstone beach carved by wind and water down the other. There is ocean all around. Behind us, back up in the forest, is the skeleton of the hotel that—according to Dad—will likely never be completed. He mumbles something about legal issues and cost of electricity and transportation. I've got to be honest, I'm not really listening.

There are no other cabins this far down the island. There are about a dozen of them about a mile up the coast. Dad says the people from there don't come down our end very often. He gets power from solar panels and Internet from the more populated island across the narrow pass where the tide runs so hard it makes whirlpools that I can see from here, through the not-too-clean glass of the sliding door to the deck.

I scrunch up his map and shove it into the back pocket of my shorts, like I'll ever look at it again.

“Watch for cougars,” he says. “Not kidding. Haven't seen any this year, but they're probably around. The dogs can get aggressive, so I kinda worry. Don't get one of my dogs killed, you know what I mean? Not that they would. Or you would. Or—” He sighs. “Anyway, I have work to do. And you're practically grown up! Not that a cougar cares. You know what to do, right? If you see a cougar?”

I blink. I don't have a clue, but I'm not going to tell him that. For one thing, that would involve talking. He grins. “Right,” he says. “No cougars in Brooklyn. At least, not feline ones. Ha ha. So … be big. Wave your arms. Big and loud. Not that the big cats want to eat you. Not really. They're scared of people. Besides, they'd rather eat a deer, I'm sure.”

I nod once, fast. Big, loud, got it.

Like even a cougar would make me talk.

Not.

Dad's wrong about cougars in New York. There is one. Or was one. Daff and I went on this field trip to the Bronx Zoo last term for Science/Life class. I don't know where The King was. He was probably away: the Bahamas, Europe, or maybe only the Hamptons, where he liked to lie by the pool and read the classics. He said it was better than school, a more intelligent use of time. And he was probably right: the zoo was terrible to the point of being the most depressing place in the world. All these concrete enclosures and sad animals looking around and thinking, WTF?
This
is not my beautiful life.

I wondered if they dreamed of savannas where they had never been, if sometimes they woke with a start to the sound of a snake slithering through their imaginary territory. If they thought about the kills they'd never make, the places where they'd never run.

It broke my heart, if I'm being honest.

There was a cougar in one of the concrete enclosures, stretched out in the sun like an overgrown house cat. Snoring.

“OMG, he's so cute!” Daff had said. She'd pressed her face up to the bars. “I am the Cougar Whisperer,” she whispered. “Come to me, cougar.”

The cat woke up. He sniffed the air.

“You won't think he's cute when he claws your face off,” I'd said, pulling her back.

“Silly,” she'd said. “Like they'd put a
face-clawing
cougar in the zoo.”

“Daff,”
I'd said. “Seriously? You think that this is a special cougar? One who has signed something saying, ‘I will never claw off someone's face'? For real?”

“No!” She'd laughed. “He wouldn't. I can tell. He has soulful eyes. He has a gentle spirit.”

She put her face back close, whispering like a crazy person. “Kitty, kitty, over there, come and lick my looooooovely hair.”

I remember how he crouched low, staring at her. I remember how quickly he moved. I pulled her away so fast that she staggered a couple of times before finally she fell hard on her knees. She was so pissed. She'd been wearing shorts and her knees were skinned on the pavement, the skin cracked, her red flesh shining through.

“He couldn't have
reached
me,” she'd snapped. “He was too far. He was caged. Idiot. Now I need Band-Aids.”

And she was right. He couldn't have. There were two fences. There was no way.

“Is that how you thank me for saving your face?” I'd said, mock-heroically. “What happened to, ‘You're my heeeeee-ro'?”

She'd smacked me on the arm and taken off running, blood bubbling through the wounds, streaking down her shins.

Of course she was only pretending to be mad. It never lasted.

“… okay?” Dad said.

I blinked. Nodded. Yeah, dude, I thought. I'm just fine.

 

18

Dear Daff,

This is an island.

This is not an island like, say, Coney Island or like any other island I have seen. The forest is crazy thick and deep and unbelievably green and I can't even really describe it, it's like the long exhalation of everything natural in the world, like it's been sucked out of everywhere else and dropped here. Every city and every crummy town and every strip mall dreams of being a place like this. No kidding. I can see the lights of Vancouver and the smog that hangs over that city during the day, but it's too far away to hear it. It's quiet here. And there are no lights, except the solar lights we use after dark in the cabin. No streetlights or shop lights or car headlights or anything. The darkness is absolute. I feel like even my blood runs blacker somehow. You know?

There is nothing here.

No one.

I don't think I've ever been anywhere before where there aren't people and sounds, honking and cars and music and shouting and doors slamming and things crashing and so this is like suspended animation. It's like what I would imagine being in a coma is like or maybe like being dead.

Is it okay to say that?

No, probably not.

Too soon.

It will be too soon forever.

Things that will never be funny again:

1. All the stuff we used to do together.

2. Death.

Anyway, skip over that. Pretend I didn't say that. Hey, I could just hit Delete. And maybe I will.

I could start over like this:

Dear Daff,

The trees are so old, they make you catch your breath. You can feel them growing. You know they are bored because you and your problems are so tiny and they've been here forever already, pulling in the carbon dioxide from generations of lungs, for hundreds of years. They've already seen everything there is to see and there is nothing new about you. Some are so big that you could stand ten people around them in a circle, holding hands, and they wouldn't be able to reach all the way around. They go up to the clouds like steeples and the clouds seem to stick and hang on them, like they are thinking about settling in for a landing.

I've got to be honest, they make me think about God. Or the gods. Or whatever. No? Maybe? Yes?

Probably no.

It is so quiet that I can hear myself breathing. Remember that thing we read about how they put people in a completely sound-free room and most people were clawing to get out within minutes?

Those people would hate it here. They would be splashing out into the sea, swimming for the safety of the city.

It also feels like a place where a cougar might surprise you with a mitt-sized paw to the jugular. The dogs stopped all at once, growling, while I was walking just now. Then they started barking into the shrubbery that grows along the trail. True fact: I was scared to death. But it's not like the cougar would have stood a chance against these guys. Dad has given them awful names: Willy and Sunny and Buddy. Seriously. Don't tell my dad, but I've renamed them: Maximus and Apollo and Zeus. Gods of the Forest. Well, really of the snow, but they seem to like it here fine. Somehow when they aren't inside the cabin, I'm not afraid of them, not even a bit. They fill up this space the way they should.

But you don't like dogs that are too big for purses, right? You know, I just remembered that Daisy was a gift from you. Why did you give Daisy to him? You had to know his dad would hate her. I remember asking you and I remember you said, “It's a special occasion, right?” And he said, “Yeah, it is.” And you said, “Tell him.” And he wouldn't tell. I guess I know that you hooked up with him. I guess that's what it was about. And I'm as stupidly jealous now as I was then, even though I know there was nothing after. Maybe. Or was there? I don't know, Daff. You always left your hand on his arm a little too long after trying to get his attention. Yeah, I'm sure you're hitting Delete now. I would, too. I don't know why and I don't know why and I don't know why this is how I feel, but I do. I feel like you're my person, Daff. That's what I feel. But now you aren't, because you can't be, because it killed him.

Maybe.

If it wasn't an accident, I mean.

If.

If.

If.

What if it wasn't an accident, Daff?

I think it wasn't.

I think it was.

Eff this. I'm hitting Delete.

I'm not hitting Delete.

I don't know what the right thing is to do anymore. I am so lost, Daff. These trees are so tall, reaching up higher than anything and I could climb one to the top. And then what? It would be an accident or it wouldn't.

I don't want to talk about The King.

I can't write to you (even without sending it, which I won't) without him being right here, beside me, giving me that look that's half laughing
with
me and half laughing
at
me and I can't do this. I can't do anything. I'm not in Brooklyn eating a bag of frozen shrimp from downstairs on the front stoop, waiting for you and The King to come and get me, waiting for something to start.

I'm here, I'm nowhere. It's like being someplace that doesn't exist, which is good, because then I don't have to exist either. I don't have to be Sharkboy, the kid whose kinda-famous best friend died when he fell off a building owned by his
über famous dad. I can just
be.
No one even has to know my name.

Not that there is anyone here to ask.

You know, I don't even know what this island is called. I only know that it's an island. One with towering fir trees, crashing surf, and a couple hundred pounds of dog tearing around me in the six-foot-high salal, flushing out a deer who ricochets away over fallen trees and vanishes up a fern-drenched bluff, performing the best freaking parkour I've ever seen.

Forests are messy. I never realized how messy until now.

Kind of like life. You think it's going to be one way, all clearly drawn, and then you get close to it. And it's just a pile of dead branches, leaves still falling down on you, bark that's been half eaten away by rot and animals. Dirt. Tree roots in inconvenient places, bulging like some kind of terrible “condition” through the ground.

If this could be more surreal, I'm not sure how.

I'll talk to you soon. Catch ya on the flip side.

Peace out.

I miss you. I hate you. I love you. I blame you. Etc.

Love,

JC

 

19

I walk in the woods a lot.

My phone makes a warm square on my leg through the thin material of my shorts, heating up while it searches for enough signal to not send the stuff in my drafts folder that I'll never send. The unsendable. The marine air tints everything with a cool chill that takes the heat out of the afternoon. The forest path is narrow and underused. I have to watch my feet so I don't trip on roots or fallen branches. Once, I step off the path altogether to go around a rotting tree and figure out pretty quickly what stinging nettle looks like. My legs burn and the skin tightens and itches all at once. The trail winds along the shoreline. Sandstone beaches pocked with tide pools on my right. Forests dark and heavy on my left, interspersed with sunny meadows that are either mossy or grassy, the grass itself having turned yellow. It's the kind of pretty that makes you take photos and wish you had someone to send them to. The light is freaking golden. Mom would go crazy for this light. She has a thing about light.
Look at it
, she'd say.
Just look at it
. I don't know how many times I've found myself in the kitchen, staring at the way the sunlight pools on the floor and makes a tiny rainbow because of the bevel in the glass, rolling my eyes at her, shrugging, whatever.