Мэтью Квик: Forgive me, Leonard Peacock

The following professionals read drafts of this novel and provided valuable insights: Alicia Bessette (novelist); Liz Jensen (novelist); Doug Stewart (agent); Alvina Ling (editor); Bethany Strout (editor’s assistant); Barbara Bakowski (senior production editor); Dr. Len Altamura (doctor of social work, licensed clinical social worker); Jill A. Boccia (licensed clinical social worker); Valerie Peña (licensed clinical social worker); Dr. Narsimha R. Pinninti (chief medical officer, Twin Oaks, and professor of psychiatry, UMDNJ-SOM); Meryl E. Udell, PsyD (clinical psychologist); Debra Nolan-Stevenson (licensed professional counselor); and Geetha Kumar, MD (associate professor of psychiatry, vice chair, Department of Psychiatry, UMDNJ-SOM; child/adolescent psychiatrist).

The core idea for this book was greatly nurtured by the many coffee talks I had with Evan Roskos. To my inner circle—and you know who you are—thanks for saving me a million times.

The P-38 WWII Nazi handgun looks comical lying on the breakfast table next to a bowl of oatmeal. It’s like some weird steampunk utensil anachronism. But if you look very closely just above the handle you can see the tiny stamped swastika and the eagle perched on top, which is real as hell.

I take a photo of my place setting with my iPhone, thinking it could be both evidence and modern art.

Then I laugh my ass off looking at it on the miniscreen, because modern art is such bullshit.

I mean, a bowl of oatmeal and a P-38 set next to it like a spoon—that arrangement photographed can be modern art, right?

Bullshit.

But funny too.

I’ve seen worse on display at real art museums, like an all-white canvas with a single red pinstripe through it.

I once told Herr [1] Herr Silverman is my Holocaust Class teacher, but he is primarily the German teacher at my high school, which is why we call him Herr and not Mr. Silverman about that red-line painting, saying I could easily do it myself, and he said in this super-confident voice, “But you didn’t.”

I have to admit it was a cool, artsy retort because it was true.

Shut me the hell up.

So here I am making modern art before I die.

Maybe they’ll hang my iPhone in the Philadelphia Museum of Art with the oatmeal Nazi gun pic displayed.

They can call it Breakfast of a Teenage Killer or something ridiculous and shocking like that.

The art and news worlds will love it, I bet.

They’ll make my modern artwork instantly famous.

Especially after I actually kill Asher Beal and off myself. [2] On Livestrong.com I read that “every 100 minutes another teenager will commit suicide.” And I don’t believe it’s true at all, because why don’t you ever hear about all of these suicides on the news or whatever? Do they all happen in secret or in other countries? Suicide can’t be that common, can it? And if it is . . . here I am thinking I’m being daring and original with my own plans. Ha! Here’s more damning evidence, regarding my uniqueness. According to Wikipedia—admittedly not the most reliable and in this case it’s totally outdated—“In the United States, firearms remain the most common method of suicide, accounting for 53.7 percent of all suicides committed during 2003.” Wikipedia also says, “Over one million people die by suicide every year.” So according to Wikipedia, suicide takes care of one million fucked-up people every time our planet circles the sun. I wonder what Charles Darwin would have to say about that fun little fact. Natural selection? Nature’s way of protecting the stronger and more necessary? Is my mind simply an agent of nature? Am I about to make Uncle Charlie Darwin proud?

Art value always goes up once the artist’s associated with fucked-up things such as cutting off his own ear like Van Gogh, or marrying his teenage cousin like Poe, or having his minions murder a celebrity like Manson, or shooting his postsuicide ashes out of a huge cannon like Hunter S. Thompson, or being dressed up as a little girl by his mother like Hemingway, or wearing a dress made of raw meat like Lady Gaga, or having unspeakable things done to him so he kills a classmate and puts a bullet in his own head like I will do later today.

My murder-suicide will make Breakfast of a Teenage Killer[3] Breakfast of a Teenage Killer is a sick double entendre, as I am a killer who is a teenager, and —since my target is a teenager whom I must kill—I am also a killer of teenagers! a priceless masterpiece because people want artists to be unlike them in every way. If you are boring, nice, and normal—like I used to be—you will definitely fail your high school art class and be a subpar artist for life.

Worthless to the masses.

Forgotten.

Everyone knows that.

Everyone .

So the key is doing something that sets you apart forever in the minds of regular people.

Something that matters.

I wrap up the birthday presents in this pink wrapping paper I find in the hall closet.

I wasn’t planning on wrapping the presents, but I feel like maybe I should attempt to make the day feel more official, more festive.

I’m not afraid of people thinking I’m gay, because I really don’t care what anyone thinks at this point, and so I don’t mind the pink paper, although I would have preferred a different color. Maybe black would have been more appropriate given what’s about to transpire.

It makes me feel really little-kid-on-Christmas-morning good to wrap up the gifts.

Feels right somehow.

I make sure the safety is on and then put the loaded P-38 in an old cedar cigar box I kept to remember my dad, because he used to enjoy smoking illegal Cuban cigars. I stuff a bunch of old socks in to keep my “heater” from clanking around inside and maybe blasting a bullet into my ass. Then I wrap the box in pink paper too, so that no one will suspect I have a gun in school.

Even if—for whatever reason—my principal starts randomly searching backpacks today, I can say it’s a present for a friend.

The pink wrapping paper will throw them off, camouflage the danger, and only a real asshole would make me open up someone else’s perfectly wrapped gift.

No one has ever searched my backpack at school, but I don’t want to take any chances.

Maybe the P-38 will be a present for me when I unwrap it and shoot Asher Beal.

That’ll probably be the only present I receive today.

In addition to the P-38, there are four gifts, one for each of my friends.

I want to say good-bye to them properly.

I want to give them each something to remember me by. To let them know I really cared about them and I’m sorry I couldn’t be more than I was—that I couldn’t stick around—and that what’s going to happen today isn’t their fault.

I don’t want them to stress over what I’m about to do or feel depressed afterward.

My Holocaust class teacher, Herr Silverman, never rolls up his sleeves like the other male teachers at my high school, who all arrive each morning with their freshly ironed shirts rolled to the elbow. Nor does Herr Silverman ever wear the faculty polo shirt on Fridays. Even in the warmer months he keeps his arms covered, and I’ve been wondering why for a long time now.