We Are the Ants (17 page)

“All right, partners!” shouted the lanky-haired, metal-­band reject at the center of the Gravitron. “Let's get this thing a-movin' and a-shakin'. Yee-haw!”

“I bet he drinks heavily to smother the shame of what his life has become, and dies of liver failure by forty-three,” I said. Diego laughed, and I wanted to preserve the sound in a jar for the days when laughter was scarce.

“Yeah, right,” Audrey shot back. “Two funnel cakes says that's you in ten years!”

“In ten years, we'll all be gone.”

Audrey gave me a perplexed look, but Diego shouted, “Fuck that! I'm gonna live forever!” as the ride fired up and the room lurched into motion. Diego howled—earning us glares from the preppy parents who probably presumed we were drunk—and the wave of bad music continued to assault our ears as Creed blurred into Nickelback.

The trucker-hat-wearing scarecrow at the controls continued yee-hawing like anyone cared. We were swept up in the spin and in the smell of metal and vomit and bleach. I was swept up in Diego Vega. In the way he sounded like he honestly believed he'd never die despite my telling him the whole world was on borrowed time; in the way he looked at me like I was someone other than Space Boy, a way that was impossible and endless. Diego looked at me and saw
me
. No one had seen me since Jesse.

The ride spun faster, so fast that gravity squatted on my chest and pushed the air from my lungs, and then faster still. Jesse fought the centrifugal force and flipped onto my panel, straddling me, his curly blond hair hanging in my face, his body pressed against mine. Audrey glared at us, disgusted, and the conductor yelled for Jesse to return to his slab. Jesse ignored him. Rules didn't apply to Jesse Franklin, and I loved him for it.

We were whirling around so fast that Jesse couldn't hold his head up any longer and buried his face in my neck, his chapped lips grazing my skin. He was insane, and I told him so as I wrapped my arms around him so tightly that nothing would ever tear us apart.

I nipped at Jesse's ear and ran my hands up the back of his shirt. His skin was sticky with sweat. He smelled like the ocean.

“Never stop,” whispered Jesse.

“I don't plan to,” I promised, and meant it.

The ride slowed, and our bodies began to separate, but that only made me hold Jesse closer. He kissed me so hard that I cut my lip on his teeth.

Jesse and I disappeared into a world where we two alone existed.

“Honestly,” said Audrey as the ride slowed to a stop, “can you stop dry humping my best friend?”

But we pretended we didn't hear her, and I wrapped my arms around Jesse's neck, and he kissed me like the world had fallen out from under our feet. We were two bodies floating in space, brighter than stars.

  •  •  •  

When the ride ended, Diego left me and Audrey hanging out by the Tilt-A-Whirl while he hunted for a toilet. I didn't say much, and neither did Audrey. I was pretty sure we were both thinking about Jesse. Audrey picked at the peeling paint on the side of the ride and kept repeating that she was having
so much fun
. After the hundredth time, I craned my neck to look for Diego.

“How long have you guys been together?” Audrey asked.

I was standing on my tiptoes, looking over the crowd, and her question didn't register right away, so I said, “Yeah, sure.” Then, “What?”

Audrey had this way of making you feel like the dumbest person in the room. She didn't do it on purpose, but when she looked at you, you knew her brain worked on a level many times greater than yours. “I'm glad you're not with Marcus anymore. If he doesn't roofie someone before graduation, I'll be shocked.”

“Diego and I aren't together. He's straight.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

Audrey furrowed her brow like she was staring at a math problem that had been marked wrong when she was certain it was correct. The calculations didn't make sense, and Audrey hated for things to not make sense. “The way you were looking at him on the Gravitron . . .”

“I was thinking about Jesse.”

“Oh. But you like Diego, right?”

I wanted to tell Audrey how conflicted I felt. How I sometimes thought about Diego while jerking off; how, when I tried to recall memories of Jesse, Diego appeared in them instead. Jesse was dead, he'd committed suicide, but I still felt like I was betraying him for liking a guy who wasn't even capable of liking me back. Audrey was maybe the one person who could have understood, and I wanted to tell her, but I didn't. “Drop it, okay?”

“Fine. What do
you
want talk about?”

I spotted Diego walking toward us, but he stopped in front of the bumper cars, and I couldn't see why. “I don't know, Audrey.”

“Come on. Don't be like that.” Everything about her was pleading with me to let it all go. Her eyes and her lips and the way her shoulders slumped.

“We did fine not talking at all for the last year,” I ­mumbled.

“Maybe you were fine, but I needed you.”

Diego had clearly run into someone, but I couldn't see who it was. “I was here. I'm not the one who left.” I just needed that stupid kid with his stupid balloon to get out of the way so I could see who Diego was talking to.

“I was hurting too, you know.”

Standing in the middle of the fair was not where I wanted to have this argument. I didn't want to have it at all, but Audrey was maddeningly persistent. “Yeah, you were hurting so bad you took a three-month vacation to Switzerland. That must have been horrible for you.”

“Henry—”

A passing family obscured Diego, so I turned my full attention to Audrey. The festering wound split open anew, spewing a geyser of pus. “You didn't even say good-bye, Audrey. I showed up at your house, and your dad told me you'd gone to stay with family in Switzerland. I thought you'd come back after winter break, but you were gone for three months.” People turned to stare at us, but I couldn't stop draining the abscess. “Jesse killed himself, and you were the only person I could talk to about it. I needed you, but you didn't answer my e-mails, my calls, nothing. My boyfriend, your best friend, committed suicide, and you abandoned me. You both abandoned me.”

Tears filled Audrey's eyes, and I hated myself for causing them. I hated myself for needing her. I wanted to hate her for leaving, but I didn't, and I hated myself for that too. “You got to see Jesse at his best, but I saw him after he punched a brick wall so hard, he broke his fingers, when he cut his thighs with razor blades, when he put out lit cigarettes on his hands and told you he'd burned himself baking brownies. I was the one who cleaned up his blood and made sure he didn't drink himself to death. Me, Henry. Not you.”

I didn't learn about those things until after the funeral. I spent weeks scouring old texts and pictures, looking for the clues I'd missed. Thinking about the times I suspected something was wrong but didn't push Jesse to talk about it keeps me awake most nights. I failed Jesse. We all failed him. “Why'd you leave, Audrey?”

“I needed space to breathe.”

“So you went skiing?”

Audrey was shaking. I looked for Diego; he was still by the bumper cars. She clenched her fists so tightly, I thought she was going to punch me. “I wasn't in Switzerland, Henry.”

“What?”

“I don't have family in Switzerland.” Audrey bit her bottom lip and said, “My parents checked me in to a psychiatric hospital. I spent eight weeks there and then another month with my grandparents in Jersey.”

I was tempted to believe she was lying to gain my sympathy, but going on an extended vacation after the death of her best friend had never seemed like an Audrey thing to do. I'd accepted it as the truth because she'd given me no reason to think she was lying. But this—that she'd been in a hospital—made sense. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“Jesse and I had a pact. He swore he'd call me if he were thinking about hurting himself. He called me that night, but I didn't answer. He was upset all the time and . . . I needed a night off.” She paused. “I thought it was my fault he'd killed himself, and I didn't tell you because I couldn't bear for you to blame me too.”

“Instead you ran away, and I blamed myself.” The crowd blocking my view finally moved. Diego was talking to a short girl, perky with pink glasses and a blue stripe in her blond hair. I think she attended our school, but I didn't know her name. She covered her mouth with her hand when she laughed and kept touching Diego's arm. Diego hugged the girl and pointed toward me and Audrey. He probably wished he'd come with her and was likely plotting some way to ditch us.

“I needed to leave,” Audrey said. “I was hurting so bad that I wanted to die too. It took me a long time to realize Jesse's suicide wasn't my fault. Don't you know how sorry I am? I don't know what else you want me to do.”

Diego walked toward us; the crowds parted for him. He waved. I returned it robotically.

“I wish I'd killed myself instead of him.” I kicked at the ground, blinking to keep from crying.

“I wish no one had died,” Audrey said. “I wish Jesse were here, singing and telling bad jokes and going on and on about some stupid book he read.”

“But he's not,” I said. “And it's our fault. Yours, mine. It's everyone's fault. Or no one's. Fuck. I don't know.”

When Diego reached us, he stopped a foot away and said, “What's going on?”

Audrey wiped her eyes. “Sometimes I hate him, Henry. Mostly I miss him.”

“Yeah.”

“And I miss you.”

I didn't know what to say. Audrey had been Jesse's friend first, but I missed her too. My feelings for her were buried under scar tissue built up over 103 lonely nights spent wondering what I'd done to drive away everyone I cared about. My father, Jesse, Audrey—they'd all abandoned me. Audrey had her reasons, and I could see that, but it didn't erase the pain. Not entirely. I stood there, my arms hanging limply at my sides, unsure what to do next.

Audrey glanced at her phone. “Maybe we should call it a day.”

Diego furrowed his brow. “But we haven't even gone on the Ferris wheel yet.” His voice was filled with a child's enthusiasm, a desire for life that Jesse's suicide had stolen from me and Audrey both.

The suggestion of a smile played on Audrey's lips. “What do you think, Space Boy?”

“Don't call me Space Boy.”

Diego threw his arm around my shoulders and Audrey's, too, drawing us to him. His skin was warm and sweaty, but I didn't pull away. “No deal. You're our space boy, Space Boy.”

The way Audrey looked at me—as if we could somehow fill the canyon that had grown between us with laughter and meet again in the middle—made me want to hug her and tell her how much I'd missed her, but I wasn't ready for that. Not yet.

“Fine,” I said after a moment, “let's ride the goddamn Ferris wheel.”

CURRENT DATE IS FRI, 29-01-2016

CURRENT TIME IS 11:11:51.78

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C> DEL C:\SIMULATIONS\PLANETS\EARTHV3.SIML

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C> y

Life isn't fair. That's what we tell kids when they're young and learn that there are no rules, or rather that there are but only suckers play by them. We don't reassure them or give them tools to help them cope with the reality of life; we simply pat them on the back and send them on their way, burdened with the knowledge that nothing they do will ever really matter. It can't if life's not fair.

If life were fair, the smartest among us would be the wealthiest and most popular. If life were fair, teachers would make millions, and scientists would be rock stars. If life were fair, we'd all gather around the TV to hear about the latest discovery coming out of CERN rather than to find out which Kardashian is pregnant. If life were fair, Jesse Franklin wouldn't have killed himself.

Life is not fair. And if life's not fair, then what's the point? Why bother with the rules? Why bother with life at all? Maybe that's the conclusion Jesse came to. Maybe he woke up one morning and decided he simply didn't want to play a game against people who refused to obey the rules.

  •  •  •  

I lay in bed all day Saturday, thinking about Jesse. Sometimes thinking about him made my body too heavy to move. The fragments of Jesse left behind were dense in my pockets and weighted me down, pulling me toward the center. I thought about Jesse and I listened to the sounds of my brother making a mess in the kitchen, and of my mother arguing with Nana, trying to get her ready to go visit my great-uncle Bob, who lives in a VA home in Miami. The sounds eventually quieted, and I knew I was alone. I still didn't move, not until the shadows grew longer across my bedroom and the bright morning light began to dim.