I should’ve guessed. In the second month of the year, he was here with you. In the second-to-last month of the year, he’s here with me. I will never wrap my head around how a single moment can keep throwing our lives around. I feel like a rock being skipped through the ocean—pain, relief, pain again, relief again, eventually destined to sink.
“Did Theo do his troll impression when you guys went through the tunnels here?” I ask.
“Not here in New York, but he did back home. We have these tunnels that start at the side, go beneath the street, and take you up to the beach,” Jackson says.
If I remember right, the troll impressions started because of your mother. She’d pick you and Wade up from elementary school—before I was in the picture—and when it was nice out, she’d walk you both through the park and tell you stories about the trolls that live on the bridges and in the tunnels in the park, threatening to eat children that ran away from home. I’m really surprised you weren’t more of a fantasy-genre fan, considering your mom’s imagination.
“I can take you down the path Theo would’ve taken you,” I say. “But I won’t do the voices. I suck at the voices.”
“I’d like that,” Jackson says. “I know Theo really wanted me to ‘meet’ the New York trolls, but we had to meet up with my friends one night and we never got around to it.”
I don’t like that he bummed you out, that he disappointed you. I don’t like that you saw such a future with him that you were okay with that disappointment, that there would be more time for you two. I don’t like that he trusted this future with you, either. I don’t like how threatened he still makes me feel. I don’t like how unfair I am to him. I don’t like that I’m likely bumming you out with my jealousy. I don’t like that I’m disappointing you with my nonsense.
I shake all of this off. There’s no point getting upset with you for sharing your childhood with Jackson.
I walk into the park and Jackson follows. It’s a good chance to get some air, and for me to clear it. “I’m sorry I ditched the other day. I thought being in Theo’s room again would feel like being in a museum, but I couldn’t get it out of my head that he’s dead.”
“More mausoleum than museum, right?”
“Exactly.”
I’m weirdly self-conscious about the mounds of dirty snow and scattered trash. It must seem ugly to someone who lives in the land of beaches and perpetual sun, of seagulls and dolphins. It’s like a guest has showed up to my home uninvited, without giving me a chance to clean my room. I’ve felt this way before, even without Jackson by my side. In January and February, right before you and Jackson came here, I thought I was suffering from seasonal affective disorder like the rest of New York. Maybe I was a little—it was find-a-way-to-put-two-coats-on brutal weather here—but mostly it was knowing you were happy and undisturbed in a sunny place, in a different time zone, likely throwing back a smoothie, with someone who wasn’t me.
“I want to keep it real with you, Jackson,” I tell that someone now. I hope he believes the unbelievable thing I have to say, because it’s one hundred percent true. “I don’t hate you. I thought I did, seriously. But I only hated your relationship with Theo. I didn’t think you were going to be someone he actually brought back to New York to meet his family and friends.” I consider stopping at one of these benches, even though they’re wet from melted snow, but if Jackson doesn’t sit beside me I’ll be forced to face him during this confession. “I hate that you also have history with Theo. And I hate that you were building a future with him.”
I can’t tell you the last time I’ve been this honest.
You’re my favorite human ever, but I really, really can’t tell you, Theo.
Jackson stops walking. “You know I don’t hate you either, right?”
I stop too, but I don’t face him. I look everywhere but at him, counting: eight bars on the sewer grate; six piles of dead, crusty leaves that make the shape of a frown; two lit lampposts (I make a mental note to myself to find a second broken lamppost to account for the broken one up ahead); two adults approaching . . . and I’m guessing they aren’t in the midst of the impossible situation Jackson and I are now miraculously confronting—maybe even embracing.
“You wanted Theo to stop talking to me.” I don’t mean it as an accusation. This is a legit conversation, guy to guy, broken heart to broken heart. It doesn’t do me any good to make everything a showdown; it doesn’t make me a winner.
“Well, I hated your history with Theo, too,” Jackson confesses. “I hated how often your relationship with him made me question if we would actually survive. You know, I wasn’t actually supposed to come with him to New York in February. My mom’s birthday was the day before, and we always spend it together. Breakfast at her favorite diner, then a movie, then back to the diner for lunch, then another movie, then back to the diner for dinner, then another movie, then back to the diner for milkshakes, and finally a movie at home.”
I almost interrupt to tell him how much I appreciate his mother’s symmetry—four movies, four trips to the diner—but shut up and let him go on. I never once got the impression he wasn’t always a part of your visit home.
“But I blew her off because I knew Theo would be here and that he would see you.” Jackson lowers his head. Now I look at him. “It’s the whole out of sight, out of mind business. I swore if I didn’t take that trip with him, it was a sure bet Theo would call me and tell me you two were getting back together.”
I’m ready to turn away when he catches my eye.
“I thought maybe next year Theo would be able to join me and my mom for the celebration.” He shrugs, which I know he doesn’t mean as a dismissal. He’s doing that thing I’ve done before where I try to shrink my own feelings, try to make my problems sound smaller to others because sometimes people just don’t get it. But I do, and he should know that.
The first troll tunnel is just ahead. We continue standing there.
We don’t hate each other. We shouldn’t hate each other’s histories, either.
I can’t shake away all of those feelings. Not immediately, at least. I doubt Jackson can either, especially here in Central Park, where I’m acting as a guide on a tour you should be leading. Our situation is like some rigged card game, and the hand the universe laid out for us is made entirely of jesters; we’re some cosmic joke. But maybe we don’t have to fold so easily. Maybe we can keep playing the game and make kings of ourselves, in spite of it all.
I step to Jackson, look him in his strained eyes, one still redder than the other because of that popped vessel. I hug the hell out of him. I hug him for him, because he knows firsthand how love and heartbreak can turn someone crazy and suspicious. I hug him for you, so you’ll be proud of me for doing the right thing instead of turning my back on him like I did the other night. I hug him for myself because his brutal honesty is somehow saving me from feeling worthless and defeated. I hug him for all of us because we’re no longer forces battling against one another.
“We’re finally doing something right,” I say, taking a step away from him.
“Too bad we couldn’t be this mature when he was alive,” Jackson says. “Maybe we would’ve gotten there eventually.”
I nod. “I hate that we complicated his life the way we did . . . and I hate that maybe it would’ve gotten to a point where Theo would’ve felt forced to say goodbye to me or you—or even both of us since we couldn’t get along.”
It’s one of many reasons I’m sorry, Theo.
“Yeah.” That’s all Jackson can say.
I pat him on the shoulder and turn away, inviting him to follow me. The stories I’ll tell him about you are good for him to hear and good for me to talk about. It’s okay that he’s not as forthcoming tonight. I sort of like being in the pilot’s seat, flying us through the skies I know. I think Jackson and I risk crashing if he’s in total control.
??
?This is a better send-off than I was betting on,” Jackson says on our way out, through the very exit where you and I once took turns pissing, late at night, keeping watch for each other. “I didn’t even think I’d get to see you again. I wanted the chance to say sorry for trying to cut Theo out of your life.”
I know I have plenty to apologize for too, but something deeper is clawing at me. “Do you have to leave tomorrow?”
You heard that right, Theo: I, Griffin No-Middle-Name Jennings, have asked my former nemesis, Jackson Wright, if he can stay in New York.
“I can’t impose on Theo’s family anymore. They need their space,” Jackson says.
“Stay with us,” I counter. “It’s not like you have school to worry about.”
“I’m not sure your father would be cool with that,” Jackson says.
“He will be. I’m sorry he was a dick to you. He was just being overly loyal to me.” Unlike my mom, who wasn’t being loyal enough. But she’s in the right. I know that.
“My flight is already booked, though,” Jackson says.
“Your father works for the airline. Don’t you get free flights?”
“Well . . . yeah.”
“Look, if you want to go back home, I’m not stopping you. But if you want an escape, I’m giving you a chance.”
“No, it’s not that I don’t want to stay, but—”
“I’m so ready to shoot down this next excuse.”
“I have a question, not an excuse.”
“You want to know why I want you to stay, right?”
“Exactly.”
“You’re the only person who gets what I’m going through, what we’re going through. Theo’s family is grieving harder than us, no contest. But we lost him too, and I feel like people are surprised that I haven’t just moved on already. I don’t know if that’s the same for you. I don’t really care about those people anyway. I have zero intention to forget about Theo, ever. If some genie popped up and was like, ‘Hey, you want to use one of your wishes to forget Theo ever existed and cure your heartbreak?’ I would probably make two wishes and then kick the genie in his nuts for saying something that stupid.”
“You really wouldn’t use your third wish?” Jackson asks.
I shake my head. Unless I was guaranteed another go at the genie so I could have a total of six wishes, I wouldn’t ever use my third wish, even if it left me in the company of that asshole genie forever. “My point is, you get me and I get you,” I tell him. “I think we can help each other through this, and, even better than that, I think we can legit help each other heal. You game?”
He smiles, but he looks shaky in the cold lamplight. “I would have to be an idiot to reject healing. You’re right that going back home would really suck right now. It’d be so lonely, and I’d see Theo everywhere.” He pauses. “Are you sure about this?”
I see you everywhere now, too. I’m hoping talking to Jackson about you might help lessen the pain, though. It’ll definitely help with the loneliness.
“I’m sure.”
We’re closer to my house, so Jackson and I head straight there with a plan to get his stuff tomorrow when I get back from school. As we approach my building, I quietly say, “I’m sorry for everything, too.”
Monday, November 27th, 2016
Jackson can’t sleep either. It’s been almost a week since your funeral, so it’s probably fair to stop blaming his sleeplessness on West Coast time. No one can sleep because you’re keeping us awake: me, Jackson, your mom, your dad, your sister, Wade probably. It’s 6 a.m. and even though I should do my damn best to at least get a power nap in since I have to get ready for school in an hour, Jackson and I chill by the closed window and watch a plane sail across the dark skies.
“It’s been two weeks,” I say. Two weeks since you’ve been gone.
“I know,” Jackson says. He moves away from the window and settles into the air mattress.
I keep watching the plane. Jackson should be at the airport now, getting ready for his 8 a.m. flight back home, back in time as he gains three more hours in his life. But instead he’s here for me to talk to, and, unlike you, Jackson can talk back.
My dad pulls up right in front of your building. I let Jackson know I’ll see him after school. He’s tired as hell. I’m no monster; I considered letting him stay over while I’m out, but all our stuff is there, yours and mine. I don’t think Jackson is going to rob me; the only thing he’s ever stolen from me is you, and you were fair game. But I don’t want Jackson touching my things or your things when I’m awake, figuring out the history without me there to inform it.
It’s dead silent in the car after we drop Jackson off. If Dad doesn’t say anything to me by the second red light, I’ll listen to music instead. The second red light comes in no time, and I’m putting on my headphones to listen to Lily Allen’s cover of “Somewhere Only We Know,” when Dad catches my eyes in the rearview mirror. He speaks up. “How well do you know Jackson?”
I’m not sure what to make of my dad’s strange tone. “I know Theo trusted him,” I say, letting the headphones dangle. “I do, too.”
“How old is he?”
“He’s eighteen.” Until Thursday, at least, when he turns nineteen.
You’ll never be nineteen. You’re stuck.
Then the floodgates open, and Dad lets me have it: I was wrong to encourage Jackson to skip his flight; I was wrong to invite Jackson to camp out in my room, especially without talking to him and Mom first; I was wrong to be at the park late last night, especially when fewer police are patrolling this season (I have no idea where that fact comes from, but whatever); I was wrong, and am wrong, to act so irrationally.
“I know you miss Theo, but—”
I put on my headphones and blast my song really loud.
Zombies have been on the brain today, so to speak. (Not the zombie pirates who will rule us one day, sadly.)
I’ve taken many zombie forms throughout high school. There were the brain-dead days when I’d been up very late cramming for a midterm. The same was true after all-night video game sessions or phone calls with you. I would zombie-creep through the halls, unable to pass any tests or even come up with a good lie as to why I didn’t do my homework, whereas you remained at the top of your game. Then there’s the kind of zombie I’ve become now: the one who has lost everything—his brain, his heart, his light, his direction. He wanders the world, bumping into this, tripping over that, but keeps going and going. That is life after death.
Today I’m the zombie standing in front of your old locker, as if it’s some underground bunker where I’ll find you alive.
But I know better.
You’re dead, and I’m the worst kind of alive.
I get home before Jackson’s cab arrives. I can’t kick him out every day I go to school, but I can’t exactly hide you when he’s in my room, either. I look around in a daze. I can box up the things that are really personal and exclusive to me, like the letters you would write me every month on our we-finally-got-together anniversary. Or the drawing you gave me on the one-month anniversary of the first time we had sex. The generosity you endowed both of us with is too damn funny not to frame, but too damn crude to share. There are a lot of little things that I would never share with anyone, especially not Jackson. Maybe back at a time when I wanted to make him feel jealous, but not now. There’s some history he doesn’t need shoved in his face.
Luckily the apartment is empty. I pack up everything I can find in a single box and seal it shut with duct tape. Not to be extra distrustful, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave it in my bedroom closet, where I’ve invited Jackson to help himself if he needs stuff like new sheets, so I take it out to the hallway closet. My eyes fall on a shoebox: things I took out of my room a couple of days after you died. Those items still have no business being in my space, so I drop the new box on top of it
and close the closet door.
Jackson sends me a text; he is pulling up any second. I get downstairs in time to see him exiting the cab with a single gym bag. I was expecting him to have a rolling suitcase, but I forget he’s a kid like me, who was only supposed to be here for a few days.
As we go upstairs, Jackson tells me how your parents were weird when he told them he decided to stay with me. I don’t know if they’re suspicious of me, which wouldn’t make sense. They’re completely unaware that the most dangerous thing about me is my capability to lie, and that didn’t start until the end of our relationship. But I’m cutting back on the lies—trust me. Being brutally honest is a freedom I never expected. Maybe your parents were weird because of how unlikely a . . . I don’t know what word to use here because pairing sounds too romantic and friendship sounds too strong. You would know the word. Whatever Jackson and I are, it’s unlikely. But at the end of the day, however concerned your parents may be, they did not invite Jackson to continue staying with them, so here he is.
“What did your parents say?” I ask.
“My dad is okay with getting me another ticket when I’m ready to go home. My mom isn’t a fan of me ditching school for the rest of the semester, but she trusts I know what’s best for me,” Jackson says, dropping his gym bag by my desk.
I let out a grim laugh. “I wonder what that’s like. I got hit with a lecture on my way to school.” I go through my clothes, sorting extra button-ups, T-shirts, jeans, and boxers I don’t mind Jackson borrowing.
“Yeah, Gregor didn’t seem thrilled I was spending time here.”
“No, it’s more that he’s annoyed I did this behind his back. Whatever.” I hand him the clothes, more than he will likely wear, enough that if I cleared a drawer for him, I could fill it. I throw myself onto my bed and toss him my TV remote. “My nap during algebra got interrupted, so I’m going to shut my eyes for a bit. Feel free to watch whatever you want or read or sleep or whatever. You’re almost nineteen, you’ll figure it out.”