Adam Silvera - More Happy Than Not

“Dr. Slattery drove me crazier.”

“Dr. Slattery wouldn’t shut up about his own problems!”

And on and on.

Genevieve is taking much better care of me than that clown did. My mom finally let me out from under her watch, and Eric’s watch, too — both of them missing a lot of work as I stayed home from school. They let me out to celebrate my one-year anniversary with Genevieve.

She must’ve thought we’d run around the city having fun to keep my mind off of things, but instead I’m stretched out on her couch crying with my head on her lap because of all the pain I can’t reach. Pain someone else can remove.

“I don’t see how a Leteo procedure would really help you,” Genevieve says. “When my mother died, it was brutal, and—”

She doesn’t understand. She didn’t have to find whatever was left of her mother’s body on the plane’s crash site like I had to find my father dead in the bathtub. “I would forget finding him. That’s gotta be fucked up enough for Leteo to scrub out.”

“Yeah…” Genevieve says, crying too. “It’s gotta be.”

The TV’s volume is raised high so Genevieve’s dad can’t hear me cry. I’m not embarrassed, but I think it makes him uncomfortable. A commercial for this new movie, The Final Chase, comes on and it’s like a punch in the gut when I think about all the new movies I won’t see with Collin, all the comics we won’t read together, and how he’s basically acting like I never happened.

He’s undoing himself and I need to do the same.

After an hour with Dr. Slattery, where I cried and cried out of frustration, I decide I want to spend some time outside — even if it means my mom has to sit out here with me. There’s a moving truck parked in front of Building 135. When I go to check out the new neighbor, I see Kyle wheeling a shopping cart of boxes into the back of the truck. I still half expect to find Kenneth right behind him, minding his own business.

One of the boxes falls out of the shopping cart. I pick it up and hand it over to Kyle, who won’t look me in the eyes. “Going somewhere?”

Kyle nods and drops the box into the truck.

“Where?”

“Doesn’t matter. Just can’t be here anymore.”

Brendan, Baby Freddy, Nolan, and Fat-Dave all come over. Brendan nods at me while everyone else looks at my bandaged wrist. He looks into the truck, sits down on the ramp, and asks, “What’s up, guys?”

“Kyle’s moving,” I say, throwing him under the bus because I’d really like an afternoon off from talking about my problems. “He won’t tell me where.”

“Because where I’m fucking going doesn’t fucking matter! I can’t go to Good Food’s anymore without Mohad calling me Kenneth. I can’t play Skelzies with you guys without making tops for Kenneth he’ll never use. I can’t even look at you, Aaron, because you get to live after trying to throw away your life and meanwhile Kenneth is nothing but bones by this point.”

Kyle’s parents come out of the lobby, and he snatches a box from his mother and throws it over Brendan’s head into the truck; we hear something shatter. “Just forget about me.” He heads back into the building and we all go into the third court before he comes back out.

Baby Freddy says, “That was awkward.”

Brendan shrugs. He turns to me and says, “You good?”

I nod, though really I feel like shit.

“That Collin kid coming to check on you?”

“No. And I don’t want him to,” I say, and we all drop it. Brendan even pats me on the back. We hang out for a bit like I never stopped being part of the crew, but then my mom calls me over and I run over ready to argue for more time to stay out.

“Dr. Slattery called,” Mom says, still clutching the phone in her hand.

“Is he giving us all the money back you’ve wasted on him?”

“He knows someone at Leteo.” Her eyes are closed, like she can’t face me. “He’s spoken with this woman, Dr. Castle or someone, and he’d like to refer us to her to discuss possibilities.”

Holy shit.

I look back at my friends. I know how to make everything right so they’ll never hate me again. I think about how I won’t have to think about Collin anymore.

“I want to do it.”

It only took one session with Dr. Evangeline Castle for me to admit the root of my problems: my liking guys. She still made me sit through some sessions before approving me for the procedure, but the day is finally here. Mom can’t come with me because she’s missed too much work after everything and her boss’s sympathy could only go so far. Someone has to pay for our apartment and this procedure, after all, but at least I’ll have Genevieve with me.

“You’re going to be okay, my son.”

She once promised me that nothing bad would ever happen, and then I grew up and everything went wrong, but I believe her this time because the worst thing that can happen is that nothing will happen at all. “I know.”

“Aaron, you understand I’m signing off on this procedure for you, right? It’s not because I want to change you or think you need changing. I believe this will be a fresh start for all of us. I really want my son back, the boy who didn’t hurt my heart by using Genevieve and didn’t try to leave me.” She keeps hugging me, and what she says stings. Luckily I won’t ever have to remember being a complete disappointment to her and my father.

I trace the smiling scar and I feel like mirroring it. I’m insanely happy.

I qualify for the memory-relief procedure. The operation is scary-sounding and pretty extreme — it is experimental brain work, after all — and the doctors are cautious about administering it to those under the age of twenty-one. But I’m a danger to myself so they’re letting me shake the old ways and days out of my head.

The waiting room is crowded like usual, the complete opposite of the hospital where I saw Dr. Slattery. People aren’t exactly lining up outside for hours to meet with him. But at least the guy got us a pretty big discount with his referral. Silver lining.

Genevieve won’t stop shaking her leg. She can’t keep her hands still. It’s partly why I wanted to do this solo, but she and my mom wouldn’t take no for answer. I consider reading something from the table littered with mental health magazines and booklets and forms, but I know all I need to know already.

They turn away potential clients who only want a procedure to forget spoilers of Game of Thrones or someone who broke their heart. But this isn’t that movie. Leteo helps people who hurt themselves because of harmful memories — you won’t die from heartbreak but you’ll die from, well, killing yourself.

Like this elderly Hispanic guy who won’t stop reciting the winning lottery numbers he lost to; he’ll likely get sent home without a chance to forget.

I recognize some of the patients from the group therapy sessions they forced me to attend, just to see if time was enough to resolve my problems.

Fun fact: sitting through those sessions only made me want to hurt myself even more.

A middle-aged woman banshee-wails from her seat, rocks back and forth, and punches the walls. An orderly rushes to her aid and tries calming her down. I know who she is, not her name or anything, but she’s constantly reliving the memory of her five-year-old daughter chasing a bird into a busy street, and yeah, it’s pretty fill-in-the-blank from there.

I try to keep my eyes low and ignore her screams, but I can’t help but look up when another orderly approaches with a straitjacket. They carry her away through the same door I’m about to walk through. I wonder how much of her life she’ll have to forget to live without a straitjacket — and maybe a muzzle if she doesn’t keep it down.