No More Dead Kids Read online

  . . . . .

  The next day, I saw him standing in the front of the cafeteria holding his tray rather dismayed, looking for an unoccupied table to sit at. I waved him down. I asked him where his friends were, “Um, Brooke, Jamie, Carl, um…Pastrami? Those are your friends, right?”

  He laughed, “Ruben, and yeah, they are. It’s a good group.”

  Clique, I thought.

  He continued, “It’s Brooke, Carl, Beatrice, Jamie, and Reuben, he’s probably my closest friend out of all of them, and well, probably my closest friend out of anyone. That’s like the main group, but there are other people that are kind of around too.”

  “Sounds pretty sitcom-y.”

  He kept on continuing, speaking in vague allusions to things I had no idea about, but speaking as if I did, “I don’t know, I really like Brooke, but I’m almost sure she’s going out with Carl, and that really just breaks my heart, I don’t get it. I wish Jamie didn’t hate me so much, I mean, I know that could’ve been something if I hadn’t been so stupid. Reuben’s really the only stable thing in my life right now. And you.”

  “What do you mean, what did you do with Jamie?”

  “I told her I liked her last year, and it’s been weird, and I think she hates me ever since.”

  Shit. I hate drama, or at least I really hate high school drama, it’s meaningless. It’s made up conflict and insecurity created in order to feel self-important, to feel like you’re the main character in your own story.

  “I don’t even know if I’m really friends with them anymore or if I just hang out with them because then they always go do stuff on their own. I always find out they’ve done something after they do it, I see a story on Snapchat of them all hanging out, or hear them talking about doing things I wasn’t a part of. It just sucks, it fucking sucks man. Thinking about it, and while I was writing that story, I now kind of realize that it’s Brooke’s group, it’s her story, she’s like the main character of our group of friends. It sucks not to feel important like that.”

  Now, I always listen to people, and I try to help, sometimes listening is all the help some people need, but I just don’t know why people always do the whole emotional dump on me. I decided to console though, “I know that sucks, but it’s okay, stuff like this always passes, and things always turn out in the end.” I, myself, was looking forward to college so much, I’d only have to stick out another year and a half here and at home and then I’d be free.

  “Except it sucks at my house too,” he continued to continue. Shit. “Sometimes I don’t even think my parents care about me at all, they’re never home, and if anything is ever wrong, they just throw money at it. Like into all my mom’s prescriptions. And sometimes it just seems like I’m the only one that’ll take care of my little sister, she’s eight.”

  “Well—” I was becoming slightly uncomfortable.

  “You know what my dad said the other night, one of the first night’s he’d been home in a week, he was ‘disappointed,’ he fucking said that when I told him about writing and working hard in Mr. Darcy’s class.”

  “I’m really sorry man, that, that um, that really does suck,” I said. Now I felt like this was my problem too, but I just really didn’t want to get involved. I’ve gotten involved before, and it only ends badly. I don’t know though. I know what he means, I know how it feels, high school can just suck. I just don’t know though, I don’t know if I hate myself enough to say I want to stop him from becoming like me.

  CHAPTER 6.

  Father Of Mine

  WE SEEMED TO BE going through a rough patch at home. Another few days of my mother’s wallowing and my father’s anger at her wallowing passed, and this cycle just continued to spiral downward. It usually went a day of arguing then a day of wallowing, a day of shouting then a day of silence, day after day for as long as it needed to go on.

  I came home one night exhausted after PR-ing on a 6K at practice, and my parents were in their separate rooms as I anticipated a night of wallowing following last night’s shouting. I was wrong. It wasn’t long before I heard my mother’s footsteps across the living room, my guess was that she was going to either ask for an apology or try to re-explain her point in the argument, things were never over for her, she never let things be. But, then again, with the way she’d been treated, how could things just be over and forgotten? Especially without apology. The shouting started up rather quickly, then I heard my name shouted across the house.

  “Alexander! Alexander come here!” my mother yelled.

  I wondered if they got an email from school, I hadn’t done anything bad that I remember, I didn’t think I should be in trouble; nevertheless, I was frightened for myself as I entered the room.

  “Are you hearing this?” my mom whined, exasperated, “Did you hear what he said to me?” I can’t help but say I was a little relieved that it had nothing to do with me.

  I was deciding internally whether to just leave and not get involved, not get between them or to get involved and attempt to resolve it.

  “Please, just stop, okay?” I asked, doing my best impression of a level-headed counselor.

  “Of course you bring our son into this to defend you. You’re always playing the victim you fucking—”

  “Hey!” I interjected sternly, I wanted to put an end to it more than anything else.

  “Did you hear what he just called me, Alexander?” she was starting to cry as she spoke.

  “I’m sick of all this martyr bullshit, I’m the only one who works for shit around here, and I’m the only one who doesn’t fucking complain about fucking everything not being perfect!”

  “Oh goddamnit,” I muttered, “Just go,” I told my mom, “just go, both of you, just stop.”

  “So this is my fault? He calls me a bitch, and it’s my fault? Why are you on his side?”

  ‘Mom, did I say anything to even remotely suggest that I was taking a side, you fucking-’ I thought and instead said, “Not at all mom, I just want this to stop for tonight, okay? Both of you. Please. Okay?”

  They were both just wrong. My mother was wrong in her reactions and my father in his actions. Sometimes I wondered if things might be better if they just split, but they stayed together, and fought, for me. And I took that burden, and I buried it deep inside, and to cope I sometimes cut, sometimes slept, sometimes ate too much or too little. I was an adolescent sin-eater to my wire mother.

  . . . . .

  I was ‘just tired’ the next day at school, I knew how bad that night would be. After class, Mr. Darcy asked what had been going on, saying I looked particularly tired.

  I told him I could use some coffee and motioned to the thermos he had on his desk.

  “Uh, I don’t think I’m allowed to share anything with students, I’m sorry,” he told me with a bit of apprehension.

  “That’s alright, and yeah, I’m just- I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately, I mean...” I thought, fuck it, why not, “honestly, I’ve been better.”

  “What’s been the matter, Alexander?”

  “I’ve just been going through a lot of... shit at home, and things have been pretty bad recently. I honestly don’t know if my parents are going to stay together.”

  “I’m truly sorry to hear that, Alex.”

  “Yeah…” I sat down on a desk, feet up on the attached chair, facing him. He leaned against the bookshelf by the door.

  “So, what’s been going on?”

  I sighed, “Home’s just not been much of a home lately; my parents have been fighting a lot. And, and I know that’s normal, for a family to fight, but it’s just been really bad lately.”

  “Well, it doesn’t have to be norma
l for you to put up with that.”

  “Thanks, it’s just, it’s…”

  “It’s hard sometimes, I understand, but this isn’t a burden you have to bear all by yourself, and I hope you know that.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m here for you.”

  “Thank you, I mean that,” and I did.

  “Hey, I have to ask, do you feel safe or comfortable being at home right now?”

  “It’s unpleasant, but it’s not unsafe. And I always have my room to escape to.”

  “Well, it shouldn’t even have to be unpleasant, but that’s life, and you’re stronger and a better person for it,” he hesitated, “And, Alex, if you ever don’t feel comfortable, or safe, or you just don’t feel like dealing with that one night, you’re always welcome at my house. My wife and I would be happy to have you, and I’m sure my daughter wouldn’t mind having someone her own age at the dinner table again.”

  “That’s really kind of you, thank you,” I imagined how uncomfortable a dinner like that might be, I liked being around adults but I never like it when people put themselves out for me, and I’m sure I’d feel like some sort of refugee or charity case at their table. But I thanked him again, I knew it came from a good place. It was nice knowing someone cared and had my back in something like this.

  “See you in class tomorrow,” I said and got up.

  He interjected, “Oh, and Alex…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I saw you talking with Kenneth, keep an eye on him for me would ya? I worry about him sometimes, he sure is an interesting one.”

  “He sure is. Will do, Mr. Darcy.”

  “Alright. Take care, kiddo.”

  All I do is seek the approval of the father figures in my life.

  CHAPTER 7.

  Everlong

  “THERE ARE JUST so many people who just exist,” Ken said after a pause, “just look at all those people out there,” Ken pointed out the window. We were sitting in his favorite nook in the library after school as he waited for his mom to pick him up and as I waited for the time I could leave for practice. I’d been hanging with him a lot more after school recently, and usually here, and it’s a nice spot; he said he liked it because it has the best view of the entrance, our gated school’s only entrance and exit to the main campus, and that he likes to watch all the people coming in the morning and leaving after school, ‘like ants after a flood,’ he said. He’s a good kid but I worry sometimes, and I do want to be able to be a friend to him. I asked him what he meant by what he’d said.

  He explained, “I just want to be something more. There are so many people out there who are just filler, and I can’t be that. I want to be someone. When I look out the window here, or when I’m in the car, or anywhere else, and I see all these other cars and all these other buildings and all these other people I just wonder; I know that they are out there, but I will never know them. I just don’t know. There are just so many people who just exist, you know?”

  “Huh, you know I think about that a lot too, I think it’s called ‘sonder.’ I don’t know if people are filler though. It’s like, everyone has a story, and everyone is the main character of their own story, they have fears, and hopes and dreams and aspirations. But, y’know, you’ll never come close to knowing them all, and that is what makes me sad,” now I knew what I’d write about for Friday.

  “But some people just don’t become anything. Sometimes when I’m just sitting around I- I wish for bad things to happen, you know, so I could be a hero, so I could be someone, and be recognized. I don’t want to just be another person,” Ken sighed.

  Sonder: the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.

  What Ken had said got me thinking. Yeah, we are all different, and it’s so very easy to just discount everyone but the people you personally know as filler, or as extras, but they too truly are just as complex, conflicted, and important as you are. Aren’t they?

  I wrote this and turned it in on Friday, The Substitute.

  There was no ring on his pudgy fingers as he waved the green-dot laser pointer at the powerpoint slides he had prepared the night before, with calculated yet awkward and unsure gestures. His thick Chinese accent made my attention wane as I fell into seeing the stereotypes that I was used to; he would be just another, unfeeling, antisocial, awkward, and incomprehensible substitute teacher. The shades of annoyance and even disgust began to well deep inside of me as I thought about him and reached for my phone so I could disappear. But then I thought about him more.

  He has a Ph.D. in Statistics from Wharton at Penn, I could never do that. He must be smart, I’m not. Does this make me jealous of him? No, as I quickly retreat into the comfortable notion that I probably could’ve gotten laid last night if I really wanted to, that I have friends, people like me, I have it easy, I have it all and I will forever. Does this make me feel good? No, as I start to feel a tinge of sadness creep into my mind. He doesn’t.

  What if he had a girl at Penn that he truly felt he loved, but he just couldn’t talk to her, and he just longed and brooded. He’s thirty years old, and he could be alone, he could have always been alone. Some things may come easy to him, as I struggle in that class. Other things that I have taken for granted for so long he may’ve never been able to have. Maybe I’m completely wrong, though. But one thing is true, behind that accent is a man, a person, he has feelings, hopes, dreams, aspirations, loves, joys, and sorrows. He’s not the robotic mathematician, the foreigner that it’d be so easy to forget him as. He fidgets with his glasses and rubs his nose as he thanks us and dismisses us, and we part to our separate lives.

  So, am I the only one I know waging my wars behind my face and above my throat? No. And I know I should talk to the outcast Ken. Even though there are so many people out there, if you can help even one, then you’ve made a difference. In that moment, I knew it was my responsibility of sorts to look out for Ken, because I could. I remembered a story my grandpa told me as a kid about two men walking on the beach. In the story, it was the morning after a huge storm, and so when these two guys got to the beach, they saw that hundreds and hundreds of fish had washed up onto shore. The fish were just flopping around on the sand, gasping for water, drowning in the air.

  One man said to the other, “We need to do something.”

  To which the other man replied, “There are so many fish, how can we possibly do anything to help?”

  The first man then bent down and picked up a fish, walked to the water, and put it in. As it swam away, he said, “Well, I helped that one.”

  I wonder if that was from the Bible. Actually, I wonder if there was even a storm at all, maybe Jesus was just practicing his multiplication, and he ended up with way too many fish. But anyway, Mr. Darcy was right, if I can help Ken, then I should help Ken; that oh so millennial fish, Ken.

  . . . . .

  Ken said he wanted to ‘be someone.’ “I want to be someone. I want to matter. I don’t want to be just another person.” But that’s the big lie, isn’t it? We all want to be someone or do something, but we really don’t want to do anything about it, do we? It’s the same lie that’s been shoved down our throats since we were kids. In every hero story nowadays, it doesn’t involve someone trying to become something, practicing, auditioning, training, or writing in, it’s just some kid, your average kid (where the audience can insert themselves), that gets picked by powers bigger than them to be someone special and do something special. Like we all have this dream that a CIA recruiter, or Morpheus, or Hagrid or Qui-Gon Jinn will give us a call one day out of the blue and tell us that they’ve been watching us and we’re special. Like in the original Star Wars, Luke had to work to become something, he had to take a
true hero’s journey complete with trials and obstacles; in the prequels, Anakin was just told he was this special kid, and that’s it, he’s in. We all want to be something, but we don’t want to do any work to get there anymore, we just want other people to recognize us on the outside for being as great as we secretly think we are on the inside; therefore validating us, our lives, and everything we’ve done, even our own sloth, inaction, or laziness. It’s the ultimate self-aggrandizing fantasy, and we buy into it from childhood to adulthood because the people that make money off of stories know that that’s exactly what we want to hear. We all want someone else to do the work for us and tell us we’re the best thing ever by doing exactly what we always do. We don’t want to work for achievement, we want our lives as they are to be validated by an outside source, because if it’s not then maybe we see the truth that no matter what we think deep down, no matter how great we see ourselves, all we’ll ever amount to is being just another person, and that terrifies us more than anything else. More than death, we’re terrified that our life didn’t matter. And we’re too afraid to do anything about it because we’re too afraid to fail. We’ve become so afraid of failure, and what that failure might mean about us, that we’re too afraid to even try. In reality, though, the true heroes are not the result of fate or fantastical circumstance, but instead, they are simply the result of choice and action; and anyone is capable of that.

  I just get sick of everyone thinking they can be Harry Potter.

  CHAPTER 8.

  Parents

  WHEN I TOLD HIM, Dan agreed with Mr. Darcy that Kenneth is most definitely an interesting one, but he did not agree however that it was any job of mine to care in the least.