saying is Mine!, over and over again. That’s one of the things I’ve learned, living without speech for so long. No matter what someone actually says, all they’re ever really saying is this: Me! Me! Pay attention to me! I exist! I matter!
“That’s what I always liked about you, Parker,” Alana said. “You know when to shut up. I could really learn something from you. So let’s just sit here and shut up together, yeah? I’d really like that.”
And so we did. Eventually we lay back on the sand, staring up at the sun, wordless, side by side.
STORY #4: ACCEPTANCE
I HAVE NOT, AS OF the typing of this sentence, ended up with Alana. Later that same day, she told me she’d met someone new a couple of weeks earlier. At a chess tournament, if you can believe that.
“He’s just as big a nerd as me,” she said proudly.
So this is not a story of love triumphing over all, or one where the boy gets the girl. In fact, it’s not really a story at all. But you know that already, don’t you?
Whatever decision you make, I’d love to know if this is the longest response to an essay question you’ve ever received. I figured that with my one recommendation, my terrible grades, and my criminal record, I’d have to go above and beyond somehow. So I chose to go exactly 60,209 words above and beyond. The good news is we’re almost done. Bear with me for just a couple more pages.
It’s funny. When I started working on this essay, sitting in front of a computer in the library computer lab while my friends tried to distract me with Call of Duty, I felt a weird sort of disappointment. How could anything in my life ever measure up to what I’d just been through? I mean, meeting Zelda was magic, wasn’t it? And not just your typical “Oh I’m so in love oh my God isn’t it fucking AMAZING?” magic. This was real magic. And now there was just the real left, for the rest of my life probably.
But now that I’ve written it all down, I’ve gotten a little bit of perspective on all the dots, and I’m starting to connect them. I think maybe the closest thing we mortals get to magic is just change. Alana getting a nerdy boyfriend. My mom coming to therapy. Me humming my way into “hi.” And I really do understand why Zelda did what she did. We all spend our lives as the rope in a game of tug-of-war. On one side, you’ve got the weight of the unchangeable past pulling at you, and on the other, you’ve got the unpredictable future. If you’re lucky, you stay balanced right in the middle. But if you’re unlucky (and I think most of us are, some of the time anyway), you end up falling over one way or the other. Zelda had more past pulling at her than anyone, but I think it was the future that finally killed her. A future that stretched out in front of her forever, no matter which way she turned, like the view from the center of the Sahara. No doy mas. Ya basta. Still life. When change loses its magic, then there really isn’t anything left to live for. So that’s my new mantra. Keep changing. I’ve stopped hanging out in hotels. They’re all the same, anyway. I’m trying to spend more time with other human beings. It isn’t always easy. Like Zelda said, people can be so stupid, it’s a wonder they manage to keep breathing. But if I can just get them to shut up, to lie back on a beach with me for five measly minutes, I think I can keep it together.
And I wouldn’t blame you for thinking this whole story has been a bunch of BS—just another fairy tale, like all the others. Maybe I’ve never met someone named Zelda, but I thought a good yarn might distract you from how unqualified I am to attend your illustrious institution. Or maybe I met a girl who was magical in a more traditional, not-actually-magical way, and so I used the power of fiction to transform her into something bigger and more profound. Or maybe I met a girl who claimed to have lived for two hundred and forty-six years, and though I never actually believed her, I went along with it because she was hot.
But you have to allow for the possibility, however tiny, that I really did meet a girl who was born in 1770 in Kassel, Germany, and over the course of a weekend she transformed my life, even though I didn’t manage to transform hers, and I’ve set down the story here because it’s the truth. And if you don’t believe it, well, that’s your own business, because in the end, it doesn’t really matter one way or the other. You don’t have to decide whether the story I’ve told you is true. You only have one decision to make, don’t you?
I’ll be awaiting your reply. Take your time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To Christian, Justin, Lizzy, Chrissy, Katy, Jenica, Chava, and the whole team at Simon & Schuster . . .
To John and everyone at Folio and Greenhouse . . .
To Mom, Seth, Bobby D., Tallie, Casey, Giulio, Sean, and all the friends and family who have put up with me . . .
To the staff of the MacDowell Colony, where this book was finished, then rewritten from scratch . . .
To the many authors I’ve gotten to know over the last year, who have so kindly inducted me into this brave new world . . .
And to the many readers who have reached out and said hello (or just tattooed an asteroid on their wrist) . . .
Thanks for the trouble.