Adi Alsaid - North Of Happy

“Look at all this, man,” Felix says, appearing at my side, putting an arm over my shoulder. “I wish I could have seen this for real.”

Go away , I think. Emma and I are having a nice moment here. We’re quiet for long enough that my words have a chance to echo in my head. Tears come to my eyes, and I have to pretend the wind is to blame.

Emma catches on to some extent, and she reaches out and gives me a reassuring forearm touch that lasts only a second but still does what it’s meant to. Then she pulls away, grabs her sweatshirt from out of her bag and slips it on as I compose myself.

Felix stands by, hands in his pockets, his gaze going from me to Emma and then out at the expanse of the island. His shirt wrinkles in the breeze, and I remember how Mom would always say the shirt was one strong gust of wind away from disintegrating. Two red bursts of blood start spreading across his chest, and though I want to look away I force myself to keep my eyes on him. I think for a second that this is it, this is when Felix leaves me. Then Felix looks down at the blood and groans. “Every time,” he says, taking out one of those stain-remover pens and starting to dab furiously and futilely at the still-growing splotches.

Felix doesn’t disappear; I’m still half-here.

CHAPTER 6

SEAWEED SALAD

50 grams rehydrated wakame

1 cucumber, julienned

1 stick surimi, shredded

¼ cup scallions

1 tablespoon mirin

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon sesame oil

1 teaspoon rice vinegar

1 teaspoon wasabi paste

METHOD:

Emma glances down at her phone. She looks indecisive for a moment and then types something. A little sound effect swoosh tells me she just sent a message. “We’re gonna meet up with my friends at the lake, if that’s okay?”

“Sure,” I say. We stand up, brush away the loose strands of dried grass. I hope Felix stays gone, but I hope it a little more gently this time. “That’s so quaintly small-town American, hanging out at the lake. What do you guys do there?”

“The usual. Bonfire, drinks if we can get them, or someone brings weed, or we play charades. Why? What do you do for fun in Mexico City?”

Sit on the couch alone watching cooking shows, have my friends drag me out to parties because they don’t know how else to deal with me. “Umm, I don’t know,” I say. “We have these things called comidas, where everyone from school gathers at a house for tacos and a shit-show amount of drinks. It’s supposed to be a lunch, but it’s really just an afternoon party.”

We fight through the bramble again, start to descend the hill. I still can’t believe how much I can see of the woods. Each branch and leaf is lit up as if it’s beneath a spotlight. This place feels like a fantasy, like any minute now we’ll cross paths with a group of fairies, and Emma will simply wave hello at them, used to the sight. “Parents are just cool with that?” Emma asks.

“Whoever’s hosting usually has parents out of town or something. I haven’t been to one in a while.” I think out loud. “That might just be a thing that’s specific to my school, though. My school is kind of its own world: lots of rich kids, embassy kids, people who move every two years and have lived all over the world. I’m never really sure if my experiences are typically Mexican or not.”

“Sounds like maybe not,” Emma says. “But what the hell do I know?”

We break through into another clearing, with another insane view.

“So, what else do you do?” Emma says. “Like, for fun?”

“I mostly just go to movies, I guess,” I say, with a chuckle wrought mostly from nerves. Then I add, “I like cooking.”

“Really? How come?”

I’ve answered this question in my own head for years now, as if waiting to defend myself from someone’s accusations. Maybe the way Dad treated Felix’s love of travel helped prompt the preparation. “I love food and the joys it brings people. Cooking, to me, is an easy way to provide joy to myself and to others.”

Emma cocks her eyebrow. “Good answer,” she says.

“My brother may have helped me phrase it. He was much better with words than I am.” I duck away from some low-hanging branches. “What about you?” I ask, thankful but not wanting to just keep coming back to my dead brother. “What do you do for fun?”

“I walk with ghosts through the woods,” she says with a smile, and I laugh more than I probably should.

* * *

When we get to the lake, Emma’s friends have started a bonfire. Embers float up into the night sky, and I swear to god they just keep going up and up until they stick to the night sky. There’s about ten people huddled around the pit, most holding beers. I recognize a couple from the restaurant, servers and bussers who have shed their black shirts and now look younger than I would have guessed. The cook with the tattooed sleeves is here too, his perpetual cigarette tucked between two knuckles. Emma calls out a hello as they approach and then introduces me to the group.

Someone asks where I’m from, and the usual onslaught of follow-up questions ensues. The tattooed cook, Matt, brings up one of those questions I’m shocked I’ve been asked more than once in my life: “Did you ride a donkey to school every day?” He laughs, proud of himself, until I say that, sure, all twenty-five million Mexico City residents ride around on donkeys. The city built a second-story highway just to deal with all the donkey traffic. The group laughs, someone calls Matt a dumbass.

Emma and I both accept beers and then take a seat on a blanket. We rest our backs against the cooler, which is heavy with ice and bottles. Emma gets pulled into a conversation pretty quickly, and I want to just sit back and listen to her, watch the embers float and wait for the island to keep doing impossible things. But a girl sitting to my left ropes me into a conversation. Her name’s Brandy and she very quickly tells me that she’s looking forward to leaving to go to college, all the new experiences that await her. I feel like a dick for not really caring about what she’s saying, for just wanting to be alone with Emma again.

“But this place is great,” I say, struggling to engage.

“For a while. You left Mexico, though. So you were probably kind of sick of it, right? But if I went I’d probably be amazed by everything there.” Brandy narrows her eyes, maybe a little drunk, maybe just a little like Felix, able to slip into earnestness without being self-conscious about it. “It’s beautiful here. I know that. But I’m kind of blind to it now. I can’t wait to get out.”

I don’t get the chance to think too long about what she said, because a few of Emma’s other friends join in on the conversation. They’re curious just because I’m not from here.

They want to know about drug lords, whether Mexicans eat burritos or if that’s just Americans, all the differences between here and there, but only weird surface questions that won’t actually tell them anything. In between their questions, or when Emma moves to throw another log on the fire, tosses someone else a beer, I look at her. I look at this strange place I’m in, the strangers around me, how it feels like I’ve been plopped in the middle of all of it. I find myself thinking: What a world .

Someone asks me what brought me to the island, and I feel a tightness in my chest. I look down at the beer in my hand, peel at the label. Matt barks a laugh at my awkwardness until someone smacks him and tells him to shut up again. Sound gets sucked out of the evening, and all of a sudden it’s just me, feeling like a moron in front of some strangers. I’m afraid I’m about to freak out like in the restaurant again.

Emma breaks the silence with a sigh and then stands up, patting me on the shoulder as she does, rescuing me. “Wanna take a walk?”