The Tragic Age (27 page)

I occasionally get recognized but not too often. For some reason, the port-wine hemangioma on my right cheek has faded. It's hardly noticeable anymore. Or maybe it's just that
I
don't notice it. Usually if someone figures out who I am and what I did, they'll ask a few questions and I'll answer as best and honestly as I can and then we'll all forget about it and move on.

I sleep well. When I sleep my dreams don't bother me.

Last night I had a dream about Gretchen.

I'm sitting on a bench. When I look up Gretchen is walking across the campus quadrangle. She's carrying a backpack. She's with friends. She's a student here. When I stand up, she sees me and stops. She turns to her friends and tells them to go on without her. They do. And then she's running toward me and I'm moving toward her and there's joy in her face as she opens her arms to embrace me. But then like a projector chewing film, the dream blurred and I woke up.

I would take that dream and be sad the next day anytime.

I think about Twom a lot. I think of him being so nice to the heavy girl, Ophelia. I think about me turning in essays for him. I think of him raising his hand in class because at last he
knew the answer
. I think of him opening the car door that night for Gretchen and me.
Little Red!
I think about him flying, flying, flying away. It's what he wanted more than anything and maybe that's exactly what he did in the end.

I think about Ephraim sometimes. Babbling about his video games. Talking about Superman. Living in his virtual world. Maybe he's living there now. If he is, the avatar he's created looks just like Twom.

Sometimes I even think about Deliza.

“Got your skateboard, Billy?”

The last time I saw her was in a courtroom. My defense had worked so well that Deliza's father's expensive lawyers and psychologists had used it too. She was crying tears of happiness. She was wearing a nun's habit.

No, not really.

She was beautiful, poised, and perfectly dressed. Her dark hair had new streaks of bright blond. But as she turned for the door, her eyes looked right through me. None of this was happening, and if it was, she couldn't have cared less.

I go running every day in the park. I do a minimum of eight miles. I run easily. My stride is long and steady and my breath turns to steam in the cool air.

Oxygen changes things.

Sometimes I stop and stare at the tops of the buildings that surround the park. They look like kings and queens and bishops and knights on a chessboard. I don't have to tell you who the pawns are.

This is what I wish.

I wish I could tell my fellow Night Visitors that I've learned something. I wish I could tell them that there's no hiding from life. No running from life. That no matter how tragic it appears to be, you can't live in fear of life. That other than by dying, there's no escaping life. No matter how many skies have fallen, once you decide you want to live, well …
amor fati
.

Love your fate.

Anything less is just not an option.

 

Acknowledgments

Serendipity is defined as fortuitous happenstance. I mention this because there are so many people who have seemed to arrive serendipitously—meaning just when I needed them—in my writing life. I'm talking about directors and actors, producers and agents, teachers and fellow writers and, most of all, friends. Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to recognize and thank all of you personally one day. In the meantime, the playwright in me would like to acknowledge the early encouragement and support of Lynne Meadow and Jack O'Brien, the screenwriter in me would like to thank the inimitable Jeremy Zimmer, and the fledgling novelist in me would like to say thank you to the amazing Linda Chester as well as to Sara Goodman and all the wonderful people at St. Martin's Press.

 

About the Author

STEPHEN METCALFE wrote the screenplays for
Jacknife
(starring Robert De Niro and Ed Harris) and
Cousins
(starring Ted Danson and Isabella Rossellini). He also wrote production drafts for
Pretty Woman, Arachnophobia,
and
Mr. Holland's Opus
, among others. His stage plays have been produced in New York and at theaters throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan. He is an associate artist at The Old Globe Theatre in San Diego and has been an adjunct professor in dramatic writing at the University of California at San Diego, the University of San Diego, and San Diego State University. Visit him online at
www.stephenmetcalfe.net
.

 

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

 

THE TRAGIC AGE.
Copyright © 2015 by Stephen Metcalfe. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

 

www.stmartins.com

 

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Metcalfe, Stephen

    The tragic age / Stephen Metcalfe.—1st Ed.

            p. cm.

    ISBN 978-1-250-05441-8 (hardcover)

    ISBN 978-1-4668-5735-3 (e-book)

  1.  Teenage boys—Fiction.   2.  Friendship—Fiction.   I.  Title.

    PS3563.E833T73 2015

    813'.54—dc23

2014034641

 

e-ISBN 9781466857353

 

First Edition: March 2015