The first dark thought occurred to me the week I found out my father was dead. I was re-watching The Silence of the Lambs, his favorite movie, when I suddenly realized how stupid it is that the good guys in movies are always trying to stop people from dying. The way I figured it, as far as every other living thing is concerned, it would be best if humans died, as this would stop us from polluting the environment and imprisoning, slaughtering, and scarfing down other animals.
I could see now that serial killers were the real heroes. It was actually pretty obvious. The only reason no one else could see it was because everyone blindly assumes that humans are the pinnacle of existence, even though there’s really no evidence for that.
At the time, I thought I had simply made one of my trademark random, witty observations; I didn’t even label it as a “dark thought.” But as time went on, such thoughts became more frequent, more vivid, and more disturbing. Before long, I began imagining killing people myself, perhaps by ramming dynamite into their ears and exploding them, like Wile E. Coyote might do if he ever caught a break.
Usually, these thoughts would be brought on when I would think about my dad. Maybe this sounds weird, but I'd miss him so much that it would make me angry and want to hurt people. I wasn’t sure if this was a normal coping mechanism or if it was something I should have been seeing a psychiatrist about.
Although these dark thoughts always revolved around the death of humans in some way and were often violent, I never hurt anyone in real life, nor could I name anyone who I’d want to kill if given the chance—the people with the dynamite in their ears were random, imaginary people, not anyone I actually knew. In other words, I didn’t hate specific people but rather hated humanity as a general concept.
There were certain things about people I couldn’t stand, like how people think needing a cup of coffee in the morning is a personality trait. Some of them even wear T-shirts to advertise it. There’s something very human about that: Instead of putting in the effort to overcome an addiction, they decide they’re proud of it because they think it makes them quirky or something. I know it’s not worth hating people for that kind of thing, but I did anyway.
I did my best to contain my darkness. I felt that if people knew what I was really thinking, it would draw attention to me, which I generally didn’t enjoy. It was easy to picture people walking past me, pointing at me, and whispering things like “Watch out for that guy. He’ll try to drop an anvil off a cliff onto you if you’re not careful.” And that was the last thing I needed.
However, I couldn’t always contain my dark thoughts, and they would sometimes emerge in various ways, but in ways where I could pass them off as “creative juices.” For example, on the day this story begins, I started an essay for English class like this:
I’m convinced life is a cruel joke being played by whatever malevolent force created us. The only rational thing to do is to end everything. But our instincts will never allow us to be rational. For some reason that I’ll never understand, people actually want to engage in this hellish illusion that we call life. In this essay, I will argue that our instinct to survive is our greatest flaw, as death is surely sweeter than life.
The assignment had been to describe the most interesting thing I had done over summer vacation, but I had gotten off track somewhere along the way (right at the beginning, it would seem).
Mrs. Conkerbuckle didn’t like the sound of my essay and asked to speak with me after school. She wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to harm myself. Also, I had started a sentence with “but,” and she didn’t like that. She didn’t like it at all.
Based on my “powerful essay,” as she called it in a vain attempt to make me feel better about it, she suspected I was still adjusting to losing my father the year prior. And she was right. I was very troubled by his death. I didn’t even know how he died, and that kind of thing will mess a boy up good.
Since I had stayed late after school to reassure Mrs. Conkerbuckle that I was fine—which I wasn’t—I was alone as I walked home through my neighborhood of average houses owned by average people with average jobs who had magically found happiness in life despite its complete lack of meaning. I pitied these imbeciles for their ignorance, but I envied them even more.
Owing to my envy, I felt the urge to walk up to one of these houses and punch it. But then I got distracted by a green butterfly. I’d never seen a green butterfly before, and I followed it with my eyes as it fluttered alongside me. I wondered how nice it must be to float around as you please, completely unaware of how broken the world is.
I imagined this butterfly was on its way to meet a blind date at a tiny coffee shop hidden in some nearby bush where no one would ever think to look. I liked pretending animals had their own little lives that they kept secret from us humans. I liked pretending they could talk and that they mocked us behind our backs for how seriously we took ourselves.
Of course, I didn’t actually believe such things were true. Well, perhaps I did at one time, but I had been alive for almost fourteen years by now, and the ability to believe things has a way of fading over time.
As I walked, minding my own business, Jason and Cody rode up beside me on their bikes.
“What’s up, butt-licker?” Jason said. That’s what these two had called me since preschool when they noticed I liked to lick peaches before eating them. I liked how the fuzz, especially in the crevice, felt on my tongue. And I still do.
I tried not to take their name-calling personally, reminding myself that they called everyone mean names—Mrs. Conkerbuckle was Mrs. Cockerfuckle, for instance.
But, as usual, they were persistent in their attempt to rile me up. As they rode next to me, they talked amongst themselves, proposing various reasons why my dad had killed himself (even though he hadn’t). They did a little back-and-forth routine, with Jason saying something like, “I heard he killed himself because he was ashamed of how ugly and stupid of a son he had,” and Cody saying, “I heard it was because his wife was bangin’ every other guy in town because he couldn’t satisfy her with his chode.”
On it went for minutes, and by the end of it, my new nickname was Chode Jr., which I wasn’t thrilled about. I could handle it, though. What I couldn’t handle was their derogatory remarks toward my dad.
“Don’t talk about him that way,” I said sternly. “He was a great man.”
“Yeah! Great at being a pussy!” Cody said, and oh, how they laughed.
I shouted at them to shut up. Then I slid my backpack off my shoulders and slung it at Cody’s face with all my might. However, its contents comprised only my TIGER Price Is Right handheld game, which I had brought to school to keep me company at recess and lunch. It did just the wrong amount of damage: too much for Cody to laugh it off but not enough to scare these guys away.
They got off their bikes, threw me to the ground, and pummeled me. Right in the head, too, with some of their punches, all the while telling me I was a pussy, just like my dad.
Suddenly, an enraged voice ordered them to leave me alone. There was a thwack and a thump, followed by Jason saying, “What the fuck!? You crazy fuckin’ bitch!” Then the angry voice told Cody and Jason that they “ain’t seen nothin’ yet” in such a menacing tone that I was a little scared, even though I was the one being saved.
My attackers scrambled onto their bicycles and sped away. Probably off to steal some bandanas and put them in their back pockets, as was the style at the time.
I rolled onto my back and looked up at my savior, a big, brutish girl wearing ripped jeans and a black hoodie that said ‘Austin 3:16’ on it. She glowered at Jason and Cody, seething.
Now maybe you’ve closed this book after reading that last bit. Maybe you don’t like the idea of a male protagonist being saved by a girl, but that’s what happened. If you don’t like it, then you’re too old-fashioned for my taste, and I don’t want you reading my book anyway.
Besides, I find that girls often make for better heroes than boys, as they tend to care more about the people they’re saving. A girl will often look at a problem and think, If I don’t step in and do something, I bet people will be sad, whereas a boy might see the same problem and think, If I save the day here, I might make page one of the newspaper, and then women will want to have sex with me. So it’s kind of a more selfish motive, even though both people would technically be heroes.
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The instant this girl saw my face, her expression changed from ferocity to shock. This worried me because that could mean I had been beaten up pretty bad. Maybe even beyond recognition like you hear happens to people sometimes, even though pretty much everyone can still tell it’s them.
I waited for her to say something, but she just kept staring at me all wide-eyededly. I was pretty sure the etiquette in these situations called for the savior to start the conversation, usually by asking the victim if they’re okay. But it didn’t seem like she was going to do this, so I asked her if she was okay.
She chuckled and confirmed that she was fine as she offered me her hand and helped me up. I thought she was going to smell bad based on how hefty and greasy she was, but she smelled surprisingly of coconuts.
I should point out now that her scent won’t come into play anywhere else in this story, so you don’t have to remember that. I’ve mentioned it only because, as I was preparing to write this book, I learned that readers like being told what things smell like. So, there you go—I hope you enjoyed pretending to smell coconuts for a second, there. I know I did as I wrote it.
Even more surprising than the coconut scent was the fact that, for some reason (probably because she had just saved my ass), my distaste for humans didn’t apply to this girl. “I’m Emerson,” I said.
“Mag.” She was still studying my face. She was bewildered by it.
“Oh, God, how bad is it?” I asked. “Have I been disfigured?”
“No, it’s just... It’s just a few bruises,” she said, sounding nothing like the brute who had shouted at Jason and Cody a minute ago. Her voice was soft and warm, the kind of voice you can only get from a girl hero.
She extended her hand as if intending to touch my cheek, but then she changed her mind. “I think you’ll survive.”
“Yeah, and luckily, my face can’t get much uglier than the way God made it,” I said, kind of joking but also kind of meaning it.
This got another chuckle and a big smile from Mag. She told me I was weird, but she meant it as a compliment.
As we walked together, I learned that Mag was in Grade 11, which made her two years older than me. Her family had moved here during the summer, and our houses were on the same street. We were both only children.
Also, we were both into video games. However, whereas Mag played a lot of Halo, I much preferred the classics from the NES and Super Nintendo libraries. Mag was familiar with most of my favorite games from when she was younger, and both of our favorite game of all time was Chrono Trigger.
I also learned that Mag took kickboxing classes down at the Y, and she offered to teach me some things so I could defend myself better in the future. She spent quite some time showing me how to throw a proper punch, which it turns out has way more to do with your legs than I would have ever imagined.
She was patient with me and was soon satisfied enough to suggest, “Okay, now punch me in the stomach as hard as you can.”
I asked her why. I thought that was a pretty good question.
“Because,” she said, “if you can’t knock the wind out of me if I stand here and let you, what chance do you have if those two jabronis come after you again?”
“I‘ll just ignore them.”
“That doesn’t always work. You can’t always ignore bullies.”
“Yes you can. You can always ignore everything.”
“Are you sure? Because it didn’t look like you did a great job of that a minute ago. And what if some sick freak tries to kidnap you in the middle of the night and murder you? Are you just going to ignore that?”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing.
“Right,” Mag said. “You need to be able to take care of yourself. There won’t always be someone around to protect you.”
That reminded me of a promise my dad had made. He had sworn he’d always be there to protect me, no matter what (mostly from my mom). Mag’s words made his absence resound like a gong in my chest. I still needed him, and I suddenly felt very unsafe without him.
Mag, noticing that I had been suddenly overtaken by gloom, asked me what was wrong. I wasn’t typically one to open up to people about my feelings, but my gut told me I could trust Mag. So, I told her of my dad’s mysterious death.
“So, you really have no idea how he died?” she asked when I was finished.
“No. After the fight with my mom, he left to blow off some steam but never came back. And then a few days later, we got a call from the police. He had been found in his car in the ocean off the coast of British Columbia. The police ruled his death a suicide. But I think they only did that because it meant less investigating and paperwork for them. Or maybe they assumed he lost the will to live upon entering Canada. Either way, they’re wrong. There’s no way he would commit suicide. He wouldn’t abandon me like that.”
Mag was incredibly sympathetic. She said she couldn’t imagine anything worse than losing someone you love and not knowing how or why.
After a short time, she resumed her campaign for me to punch her in the stomach. I kept refusing.
“What’s this really about?” I finally asked her. “Do you like pain or something?”
“I wouldn’t say I like pain,” she said, “but I like that physical pain makes sense and goes away when it’s supposed to. Plus, it can distract you from other kinds of pain. My counselor thinks that’s why I like getting into fights, but I’m pretty sure I fight because it’s fun. Either way, everyone thinks I do it too much. I’ve actually been expelled from a bunch of schools because of it. Every time I start a new school, my moms beg me not to get into any fights, but every school’s just got those kids who deserve to get hurt, you know?”
As she spoke, I could see the reality of the current situation dawn on her. “Oh, shit! They’re going to be pissed if they find out I punched another kid already!”
I could definitely see that. ‘Come on!’ is something I imagined they might say. I didn’t want that for Mag, so I assured her I wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened. If my mom asked where I had gotten the bruises on my face, I would say she gave them to me when she was drunk last night. And if there were any follow-up questions, I would run away.
We didn’t say anything for a minute after that, but I could tell Mag was disappointed in herself, so I brought up a new topic. “What’s Mag short for?”
“Nothing,” she said flatly.
“Really? Why did your moms name you just Mag?”
“I dunno. My birth mom suggested it.”
“Still, how come just Mag?”
“I don’t know.”
My brain told me to change the subject. Mag clearly did not want to discuss her name. However, something that wasn’t my brain told me her name was short for something, and I was determined to find out what it was. “I’ve heard of people called Maggie,” I said. “Is that what Mag’s short for? Maggie? Is it Maggie?”
“No. And Maggie is already a short name, you idiot. Why would someone name me a short name and then shorten it even more?”
“Well, what about Margaret? Is Mag short for Margaret?”
“No.”
“Magnus?”
“That’s a boy’s name.”
“Oh, yeah... Wait. I’ve got it! Magnolia. It’s short for Magnolia, isn’t it?”
She stopped, grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, and lifted me like I was weightless, her eyes filled with rage. “I’ll make YOU short for Magnolia if you don’t drop it. Understand?”
I most certainly did not understand what her threat meant, but I was terrified, so I nodded.
Instantly, Mag’s demeanor softened, and she lowered me gently. “I’m sorry,” she said, returning to her warm hero voice. “I have a short fuse, in case you haven’t noticed. It’s something I’m working on.”
The remainder of our walk was silent. When we reached Mag’s house, she invited me over, but I declined. I didn’t want to be on the wrong end of another one of her mood swings. Also, the beating I had taken and my conversations with Mag and Mrs. Conkerbuckle about my dad had worn me out, and I wanted to be alone.
Mag said okay and that I was welcome to come hang out anytime I wanted, and then off she went.
Something’s clearly troubling that girl, I thought. The anger, the fights, the insatiable urge to be punched in the stomach—they all pointed to a deeply disturbed soul. I liked that about her. Maybe I’d finally met someone I could get along with.