Chapter 8
Is Harvey afraid to fall in love?
It isn’t the same after that.
Not at all.
I’m not a fan of sci-fi. I only saw Star Wars because Sunny wanted to.
It wasn’t bad. But I know they sometimes get into parallel dimensions or whatever.
That’s what this feels like—like the shed was some kind of time transporter.
Nothing looks or feels the same now. Even Canyon, Timber, and Jack seem different.
I don’t know how to act or what to say. We look at each other with something like respect. I don’t know how to handle it yet.
It’s like someone moved a mountain, and there it is—what you were looking for all along. I can’t stop thinking about what he said.
All I wanted was you.
He was probably delirious from the heat.
After the bonfire, back in our cabin, I look up from my magazine at Austin on his bed, reading a script. He takes a pen, pulls the cap off with his mouth, and holds it in his teeth as he scribbles something on the paper.
I lied to him earlier. When Tamar did her Tarot card spread, she said I could keep the question I had for the cards silent, and I did.
It had nothing to do with getting laid. She laid them out, and I got anxious looking at those medieval-looking figures and the words.
The names. What the fuck is a Hierophant?
I asked if someone loved me.
It didn’t have to be romantic. Aren’t parents supposed to tell their kids they love them? If my mom ever said it, I don’t remember. And Pete would rather I didn’t exist at all. As for Peach and Tamar, I’m not their son, so why would they say such a thing to me?
I just wanted to know.
As Tamar started to “interpret” the cards, it became clear I wasn’t going to get an answer.
Nothing she said had anything to do with my question.
It was all bullshit. If Austin asked the same thing, he’d get an answer, and it would be a resounding yes.
Lots of people love him. They always have.
His folks especially. Maybe his biological parents didn’t, but the ones he has now do.
Why go through the trouble of adoption if they didn’t love the kid?
I’ve seen photographs over the years. They’re always hugging him, even after he grew a foot and a half taller than them.
All I wanted was you.
I get up from my bed and sit at the end of his. He glances up, pulling the pen cap from his mouth. A flush appears on his cheeks.
I nod at the script. “Whatcha got there, Hollywood?”
He reluctantly shows it to me.
I look it over. It’s some cop show called The Precinct, and based on Austin’s notes, he’s playing a guy named Todd. It all looks very dramatic. Interesting too. I would watch this show, I think, even though I hate cops now.
I hand it back to him. “Looks cool.”
“Thanks,” he mutters, smoothing out the pages like I wrinkled them.
“You want some help?”
He gives me a look. “What?”
“I could read that Sergeant Pepper guy’s lines for you so you can read yours.”
“It’s Sergeant Baily. And no thanks.” His face softens a little. “I just like to go over it in my head first, you know?”
I nod.
He sits up a little straighter and puts the pen down. “It’s going to be an hour long, the show.” He scratches the back of his head. “A lot more to memorize and rehearse.”
I turn the script around and flip the pages. “You’ve done it before, though.”
“Not like this. I’m not playing a kid or a teenager or whatever. And I don’t have to be cute or funny.” He sighs and looks down. “I’ve been kind of worried I can’t pull it off.”
“You shouldn’t be,” I say without thinking.
He looks at me carefully, and I return his gaze. Neither one of us knows how to be now. We’ve been cruel to each other for so long that sitting here talking like normal people—like friends?—seems fake. I don’t even trust myself.
“I mean, you’re an actor and that’s what you do, right?” I say. “Pretend to be other people?”
“I guess.” He shrugs. “I wouldn’t say it’s pretend.”
“What is it then?”
He narrows his eyes, but he says, “It’s more like putting on a mask and becoming someone else. If you’re pretending, you know you can go back to being yourself. But becoming someone else means you forget about yourself for a while.” He looks away from me. “And wonder if you’ll find it again.”
My gaze drifts to the leather band on his wrist. When I acted, I thought it was easy.
Say a few lines, hit your mark. But that’s the difference between him and me.
I mistook something complex for easy and treated it as such.
I don’t have his talent. Not in the least. From what I’ve seen of this script, this show is going to be popular.
He’ll be back on magazine covers. He might even win an Emmy.
Suddenly, he feels incredibly distant even though we’re only a few feet apart.
It makes me want to reach out, grab him, keep him here, make him stay.
“Well, Hollywood,” I say. “Maybe Santa will bring you a compass for Christmas this year.”
I’m surprised to see him smile.
“If you’re a good boy,” I add.
His cheeks get rosy. “I haven’t been. You know that.”
“Guess it’s a lump of coal for you.”
“Guess so.”
“And me too.”
He nods slowly as though he’s going to add to that, but instead he says, “I need to get back to this. They say if you read stuff right before you sleep, you memorize it better.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“I don’t know. Scientists.”
It’s odd for us to sit on his bed, this close together, and not try to kill each other.
I bet he’s thinking the same thing. His nose looks better.
Soon it will look like I never punched him at all.
I can’t imagine why anyone would want to abandon him anywhere.
He’s been an insufferable dick, but not enough to deserve that.
I get up from his bed to go back to mine. I grab a towel and head toward the bathroom, then I stop and turn around. “I’m not better than you at anything.”
He looks up from the script at me.
“Just so you know.”
I go inside and shut the door before he can reply.
I break blades of grass while Jack smokes.
I peek at him and he moves his gaze from the river to me. “Something on your mind today, Harvey?”
“I told you not to expect anything.”
“I don’t. It just looked like you had something particular on your mind. That’s all.”
I shrug, and he returns his gaze to the river, taking another drag off this clove cigarette.
I’d ask him for one, but they remind me of Peach.
She’d smoke them outside by the pool. She’d put Seth down for a nap and go out there.
I’d see her when I went into the kitchen for something.
Seth would wake up crying, and even though the door was open, she’d act like she couldn’t hear him.
“Why are some people better than others?” I mutter, ripping apart another blade of grass.
“Pardon?” Jack asks.
“I don’t mean, like, why do people steal and murder. I mean with little things. Lying or doing what you’re supposed to. Some people are just better than others, it seems like. They’re just meant to be that way.”
Jack is quiet for a moment. “I don’t know if I’d say some people are better than others. Everyone has their strengths and their weaknesses.”
“I don’t believe that,” I say, looking out at the river, watching a few small ripples. “Some people are just meant to have a great life. They don’t have any weaknesses, and whatever ones they do have don’t matter.”
Jack puts out his cigarette. “What is a weakness that doesn’t matter?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s not that it doesn’t matter.
Maybe it’s just that it’s overshadowed by the good things, so it seems like it doesn’t.
” I pause for a few moments to allow Jack to ask me to elaborate, but he doesn’t.
So I keep talking. “Sometimes I think I’m going to die, and nobody will have anything good to say about me.
I never do anything good. I’ll just be remembered as the kid of an asshole rock star.
And that’ll be it. It’s over.” Jack watches me intently.
“So there you go. Congratulations, you shrunk me. Happy now?”
Jack chuckles. “I don’t do this to make myself happy.”
“But it’s something that you do. Or at least try to do. Everybody here, really. Be so selfless and help idiots like me.”
“You’re not an idiot, Harvey.”
“Here we go.”
“It’s true. You just said something that no idiot would ever say.”
“About what?”
Jack studies me, then turns his gaze to the river. “Did you know that every year you live through, you’re passing the day of your death?”
I blink at him. “What?”
“There’s no way for you to know, of course, when it will be. But like you live through the day of your birth each year, you live through the day of your death. You live through the day, the month, the season, the hour. And you don’t even know.”
“That’s… pretty morbid.”
“So, for example”—he crosses one leg over the other—“if I was going to die in September. Well, I’ve lived through fifty-four Septembers so far.
Maybe it’s going to be on the 4th of September, in the afternoon.
A nice, sunny day. I’ve lived through lots of those days never knowing it could be the last one. ”
“That’s because it’s depressing. Why would anybody want to think about that?”
“It can be. But I’ve had the privilege of living through fifty-four, almost fifty-five, September fourths. I don’t remember all of them. I could tell you what I was probably doing on that day ten years ago. Twenty years ago. But not exactly.”
Ten years ago, I was almost eleven, likely in school on September fourth, ignoring the teachers. I don’t remember any details. I can’t even recall last September. I’ve wasted a lot of time doing a whole lot of nothing.