The Tragedy of Being Happy by William Alton

Author:William Alton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Published: 2018-09-02T13:50:27+00:00

The hall is empty except for Jules and she sits down at the end. Her room’s close to the door we use for school and courtyard privileges. She pays us no attention. Something up in one of the ceiling corners holds her eye. Pudge and I sit with our backs to the wall outside my door.

“That girl needs a sandwich,” Pudge says.

Jules is talking now. To the air. She points at the door. She throws her hands up and shakes her head.

“I wonder what she sees,” I say.

“Does it matter?” Pudge asks.

I think of all the different kinds of crazy in the world. The cutting and the starving. All the voices and weird shit people see. All the little cruelties we turn on each other.

“We fight, you know,” I say. Pudge leans in and puts her head on my shoulder. It’s awkward and slightly painful. The floor beneath us and the wall behind us are unforgiving. “We fight. We try to fit in.” Jules puts her face in her hands. After a moment, she gets up and goes to her room. “I mean, what if we never get out of here? What if this is it? We could all be dead right now…maybe this isn’t real…maybe this is all there is, and the only way out…like Curtis.”

Pudge reaches up and cups my chin. “Sweetie. Stop.”

So, I stop. But the panic doesn’t. My heart still rattles in my ribs. My hands still shake. My gut’s a ball of wire. The Oxy-numb fades. I clench my teeth and look at the ceiling. Still, tears run hot over my face. I’m becoming a character. I’m the Sad Boy. The Quiet Boy. The Boy Who Cries in Public. It’s embarrassing and maddening. I want to be so much more but I don’t know how. Much of my life, I spend too much time trying to be something I’m not. Something people like. Failing over and over. I’m the Odd Boy. The Troubled Boy.

“Sweetie,” Pudge says, “don’t cry.” She strokes my hair. Calluses catch a little on the thin strands. They unroll the long curls. I try to swallow a couple of times but my throat’s broken.

“The hardest part,” I say. “The hardest part is…I don’t know what I want. Sometimes, I think maybe I want this or I want that…then I get it. I get what I think I want—I get Bug. I want him and I get him and for a minute it’s nice, really nice, and then it breaks. Bug’s not what I want. Every time it happens, I get something and it changes. I change. I become something I’m not, something I don’t want to be. There’s no dignity. There’s no glory. This fight…no matter what I do, there’s no way out. We can’t win. I think that’s what Curtis figured out. I think he figured out that even if we get out of here, if C-Ward goes away, we have to fight for every day. I think he figured out there’s only one way out.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.