West Africa, then it’s bullshit. Period. If all of humanity can’t use the same formula for this thing called happiness, it’s a big fat North American lie.
I get that I’m an asshole for calling bullshit on happiness. I live in paradise. But I’m not happy. I have everything, but I feel confused, and empty. I don’t wanna find happiness so much as I wanna find purpose. And love. I’ve been thinking—being a prisoner in a sweltering shed really makes you think—about how I can help the world when I grow up. Like, how I can be an activist, a volunteer, an influential blogger or lobbyist or something. Purpose. I get that. But happy? Aunt Lill says happy is like a rush of propofol—that drug they put you out with before surgery. It’s just so much anesthetic.
Joy, though? I believe in joy, and not because that word is in the Bible. It’s because joy is fleeting and real, and comes without a recipe. That orgasmic feeling of celebration and communion with something outside yourself? I’ve felt that. Never because of my fab clothes, or my big house, or anything material. Once upon a time, when I believed in God, I felt joy when I sang that song about how much Jesus loved me. And that other one about letting my light shine. I’ve felt joy with Shelley, because even at half-mast my mother’s still boss. With Sherman, when he used to be Sherman. And I’ve felt joy with Fee. And the Hive.
Not a lot of joy in this shitty fucking shed right now.
It’s sooo hot in here. Caliente. People say that’s how our state got its name. Caliente Fornia—hot oven.
Come on, Javier. Come back already.
Fee moved to sit against the wall across from me. Says she’s hot, and that I reek. It is. I do. She says she’s not pissed at me, but she obviously is. She says she doesn’t blame me for any of this, but she does. I mean, it is my fault we’re here.
She’s just sitting there, rubbing her poor tummy, staring into space, prolly hoping whatever embarrassing or incriminating thing that was in her purse melted in the blast and all this angst is for nothing. Damn. In this moment, I feel like I don’t know her at all. Just sitting here looking at her and—
Oh. Fuck. There’s a freaking lizard in the shed! Just saw him slink under the suitcases in the corner. Little green alligator lizard about the size of my palm, with a very long tail that I can see poking out from where he’s hiding, less than a foot from Fee’s bare leg. Fee is petrified of lizards. Like, how many times a day does she screech because there’s a little blue skink on the path at school, or a harmless gecko resting on the Pebble Tec under the chaise by one of our pools. Even if we’re in the car, she screams if she sees a freaking salamander in one of the flowering bushes in the medians. I love lizards. I think they are my spirit animal. In fact, if not for Fee, I’d see this little guy as some kind of good omen. If Fee sees it, she will scream.
Too late.
Oh. Fuck.
Just heard the trailer door creak open.
So, people, this happened. Fee saw the lizard and screamed like I knew she would. I’m looking at her going like, NOOOOooo.
Then we hear the neighbor’s trailer door screech open, and boots pounding down the metal stairs, and I look out the shed window and there’s the mean freaking drunk standing in the gravel beside his truck, stock-still, one arm in the air, one crooked finger pointing straight at the shed. My girls and I used to play Freeze Frame. He looked like that. Like scared that if he moves a muscle he’ll get tagged out. I whisper to Fee, “Holy shit, the guy from last night is out there.” We’re dead. There’s no place to hide in this freaking shed.
The wind is gusting hard. A big, spiky tumbleweed rolls toward the dude and stops at his feet, but he doesn’t look down. Doesn’t move at all, just stands there, still pointing, his eyes on the shed. There are no copters or drones overhead, at least none that I can see, and I’m just thinking, the fuck?
Fee comes to look out the window with me, careful, so he doesn’t spot us. We can see that he’s not as large as he’d seemed in the