More Happy Than Not (33 page)

Genevieve pulls away. “I knew it.” Her bloodshot eyes are wide, searching. “It was in the video we watched before, the one about side effects. You also
. . .
when I spoke to you the day after you woke up, you forgot something I said to you. I thought you zoned out or were trying to hurt me.”

I can't be selfish anymore. “Are you and Thomas happy together?”

“We're nothing right now. Honestly. Just hanging out, but I like it. I think I need something real after everything
. . .
” It stings and burns and kind of kills me too, but I don't take it personally. “I'm sorry this is happening. I'm sure it's not something you're particularly excited to remember.”

“Two of my favorite people being happy? Sure it is.” While it isn't 100 percent genuine, it's not a lie either. Not by any stretch. As long as Thomas is telling the truth about who he is. She would be lucky to have him and he would be damn lucky to have her.

I glance at her crumpled drawings on the floor. “Maybe you're drawing the wrong things. You should try painting what you want your life to look like. It could be a map of your future. I'm sure Thomas would love to help you with that as long as you don't let him get too carried away with it.”

“Or maybe
you
can help me,” Genevieve says, scooting over.

“I can't.” I swallow and choke out the last two words, suddenly remembering my brother is downstairs waiting for me. “You're beautiful.”

“Beautiful enough to turn you straight?” She wipes a tear away and laughs a little. “A girl's gotta try. I love you, Aaron. I don't mean it in a weird way.”

This is probably the last time we'll stare at each other like this. I lean in and kiss her, and it's genuine and happy and all final kisses should be like this.

“Genevieve, no matter what
. . .
”

She rests her forehead on mine.

Without having forgotten I said it before, I keep repeating, “I love you in a non-weird way too. I love you in a non-weird way too. I love you in a non-weird way too
. . .
”

17

THE BOY ON THE ROOFTOP

M
y senior citizen illness keeps getting the best of me.

I'm going to lose my job at Good Food's. If I become a bus driver, I'll forget my route. If I become a teacher, I'll forget my students'
names and lesson plans. If I'm a banker, I'll have no money in my safe after I keep handing over cash. If I'm in the army, I'll forget how to use the gun and get all the wrong people killed.

The only thing I'll be good for is being a failed lab rat.

I doubt I'll be able to concentrate enough to finish my comic, but I've made peace with that. It's okay how some stories leave off without an ending. Life doesn't always deliver the one you would expect.

I'll never be in a relationship again. If I met someone new only to forget him later, it's not fair.

So now there's only one apology left to make.

It takes some convincing, but I do it. I get Eric to back off and let me head over to Thomas's house by myself.

Once Thomas knows about my condition there's no way he'll let me wander the streets alone. I just don't want to rush my time with him.

Now I'm slowly climbing up the fire escape. I'm getting used to these jump-cuts in my life. I don't scramble up the steps with the thrill I had all summer, but with the fear of someone marching to his death. When I reach his window, the curtains are drawn. But I can still see a sliver of Thomas leaning over his table and writing. I bet he's journaling.

I knock on the pane and he jumps.

And then, like Genevieve, he blinks a few times, fast. His eyes fill with tears. I shake my head.

“Meet me on the roof,” I tell him.

He nods.

I head on up and just wait, reminding myself again and again what I'm doing and why I'm here. I check out the streetlamps turning on below, glowing orange as evening kicks in, and then up at the few stars hanging out in the sky. I see him step off the fire escape, and all of a sudden he's sitting on the ledge.

I'm trembling a little bit. This is another forever moment. “So something crazy is happening,” I tell him. I lie down on the ground. The stars don't shift, and I'm very appreciative. “There's been a trauma in the part of my brain where you store your memories. It's only partial right now, but my doctor thinks there's a chance it'll take full effect at some point or another. If I don't remember something you say, I'm sorry.”

Thomas is now down beside me. For a while we don't say anything else. Or maybe we have an entire conversation I don't remember.

What I have is this:

He asks, “Do you think there's a chance you were someone really awful in a past life? Like a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away you were Darth Vader? I feel like you can't catch a break.”

I laugh and quickly repeat it in my head several times.

“Sure feels that way,” I say. “I honestly don't want to live anymore, Thomas. I think it could be freeing to just get up and fly off this rooftop
. . .
”

“If you love me, Stretch, you won't leave me with the memory of you jumping off this roof now, or ever. Okay? If there's one thing I'm begging you to remember from this conversation, it's that promise.”

“Okay, but in exchange you have to promise to never die. I can't stand the pain of someone telling me every day that you're dead. You need to always be alive and happy, okay?”

He laughs through his tears. “You got it, Stretch. Immortality. No problem.”

“And happy too,” I say.

He props his knees up and cracks his knuckles. “Okay. I need to come clean about something. I suspected you liked me after you came out with Side A. You understand me in a way a lot of other people don't. If I'm being one hundred percent honest, I think our friendship even confused me a little, but I'm also one hundred percent sure that I'm still straight because I would've been chasing after you if I wasn't.”

I try to say something, but I can't.

“We can't ever be together,” he finished. “But I always want to know you, even if we're in the same room and you're just saying hi to me over and over again, I'll be perfectly happy. I'll always want to be sitting across from you.”

So now in this moment I have this fantasy: Thomas is straight—which I now believe is either very real or who he needs to be right now—but he goes to Leteo and convinces them to give him a procedure so he can forget he's straight. Once he's gay, he finds me just like he said he would and we build a life of happy memories together.

But like with everyone else, I know better. I can picture Thomas and Genevieve making each other happy. Genevieve will glow whenever he leans in to her to whisper a joke that isn't my business. He'll sweep her off her feet, as if they're newlyweds, and carry her into a world I can never share with either of them.

“What would Thomas Reyes do if he were in my situation?” I ask.

Thomas sits up. “I would do my damn best to be more happy than not. You've already experienced so much bullshit so you can always look back on how things could be worse. That's my two cents.”

I may never get to see the person Thomas grows up to be. If he becomes a director or wrestler or deejay or set designer or gay or straight, I may be too lost in the past for it ever to click.

“I don't want to forget, Thomas.”

“I don't want you to either. Just remember that I love the hell out of you, okay?”

I repeat it over and over because there are so many memories crowding my head that don't need to be there. “I don't want to forget, Thomas.”

It shocks me when he starts straight-up sobbing, but it's even more shocking when he holds my hand. But there is the happiness he promised, too. He loves me without being in love with me and that's all I can ask of him. I don't even need to hear him say it to believe it.

“No homo, Stretch.”

“I know.” I smile, and squeeze his hand back. “Hell of a happy ending, right?”

PART FOUR: MORE HAPPY THAN NOT

THE DAY
WE START OVER

T
he Leteo Institute, or more specifically, Evangeline, is able to get me short-listed for a reparative procedure they've been developing in Sweden.

In exchange, I'm going to help them out with some of the safer experimental science. The hope is to find a cure for amnesia one day. It may never happen in my lifetime, but maybe someone will figure it out eventually and I'll have played a part in that. Funny how I once turned to Leteo to forget and now I'm counting on them to help me—and maybe millions of others—remember.

My mom considered moving us all upstate to get away from the sucker-punching memories, but we're done running. Instead, we're painting the walls white and starting over. I'm helping Mom with the bedroom. I know it's hard. My father was the one who chose gray.

I ask her what color she'll paint her new room.

“I think I'll leave it white. It's pure and reminds me of a rabbit I used to have. It's nice to reflect, sometimes.”

THE DAY I LOOK AHEAD

E
ric and I take a break from painting our living room green with a round of Avengers vs. Street Fighters. He chooses Wolverine, of course. I choose Black Widow because I'm tired of going easy on him.

He sucks his teeth when I win.

There is no judging. There are no jokes made.

He challenges me to another round.

I remember enough to remember that this is the first time we've really had fun in a long time, like we did when my father wasn't around.

THE DAY I MOVE ON

D
uring the cleaning, I find a bunch of my old composition notebooks. I leaf through the childhood drawings, not caring about how I didn't have a good eye for color or how careless I was with my shading. I just laugh over and over at the memories there. I haven't thought about that funny villain I invented, Mr. Overlord King, in years. He and Sun Warden will likely live in harmony in my character's afterlife world. Either that or they'll fight to the death over and over again.

But the whole thing sparks me to chronicle my life—all the good stuff, at least—in pictures. And I'll start off every illustration with a header that reads, “Remember That Time
. . .
”

THE DAY I FORGET

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.

I'm more happy than not.

Don't forget me.