Thomas and Niko Ch. 01

Hi everyone, just dusting out the cobwebs a little and trying a new kind of informal voice in this story. Let me know if you would like to see this one continue.

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The thing nobody told me about turning eighteen is that everything stays the same. There are, of course, a few things you can do when you're eighteen that you couldn't before, but unless some life-altering event coincides with your birthday, you're going to feel about the same as you did.

This is probably a double-edged sword for most people, as it is for me. Of course there are a number of things about the way my life is going that I don't like, but there are just as many things keeping me happy. Thomas Chu is a good example of the latter.

Thomas Chu is my best friend. He turned eighteen a month before I did. He bought a pack of cigarettes with sixteen dollars and the law on his side. We stood at the edge of the school grounds where it was allowed and smoked four of them (Thomas had two and one-third cigarettes and I had one and two-thirds). I wondered about whether it was illegal for me to smoke them, since I was still seventeen. Thomas said you only have to be eighteen to buy them. You can smoke them at any age you want. That sounded like utter bullshit to me and I wanted to look it up on my phone, but my favorite teacher Ms. Nolan told my English class a few days earlier that she missed the days when we couldn't look everything up every minute of our goddamned lives. She said those days were more tranquil. That got me thinking a lot for some reason. So I had been trying not to use my phone as much for looking things up.

Thomas turned to me just as I slipped it back into my pocket. The breeze caught his straight black hair and sent it kind of twirling in a way that made me hold my breath for half of a second.

"That's right, put it back," he said in his hoarse voice. His voice is kind of gravelly because he is always using it up. Thomas likes to yell like a maniac no matter what game he's playing. Last fall it was football. You should see him—we used to play on the same team and his voice would just be going full-force the entire time, no matter what the hell was happening out there. I didn't make the cut for football once we got into high school and decided track and field was good enough. I go out for it in fall and spring.

"Nobody can see us here," I complained. "Everybody left already."

"What difference does it make?"

"I want to be seen smoking a cigarette," I said. That is the kind of thought I would normally keep to myself, not say out loud. But with Thomas, I'm more open about the stuff I'm thinking. Not everything, but some things.

I learned about vanity recently and now I believe I am a vain person. Vain people like to be seen smoking cigarettes. I'm trying not to be too hard on myself about it, though, because I suspect that a majority of people around me are also vain. In this dumb school, even if only five people saw us smoking at the edge of the parking lot, word would get around about it, and then we would be the two boys who smoke on school grounds. Who the hell cares what side of the chain fence we were on? And then I would get asked in the hall, "Do you smoke? I heard you and Chu smoked on school grounds." And I would say, "Not as a habit," and just fucking walk away. I don't think I need to tell you what kind of a badass fucking statement that would make. The payoff for curating your public image in this school is both immediate and wonderful.

Anyway, now I'm the one. Thomas asks if I want a ride to go buy cigarettes after school and I tell him it would be a waste since he still has about twelve left in his pack.

"Oh yeah," he says. "I don't know where I put them, though."

"They're in your glovebox."

"Oh yeah," he says.

Thomas drives his dad's old Lexus, which sounds pretty nice until you see it. It's from 1990, a year that was covered in the third-to-last chapter of our US history textbook. That's right, there have been two entire chapters' of worth of US history since that bag of bones rolled off the line. I guess it must have been pretty nice back in the day, though. Nowadays the V8 engine sounds like a jet mixed with a meat grinder when he gets on it.

People always make fun of Thomas and me for spending so much time together. There are plenty of rumors that we're into each other, which isn't true. It doesn't get to me much, but it bothers Thomas quite a bit. I've told him before that he should just ignore it. I've told him that making a big thing about it will only fuel the fire. He understands the concept, but he just can't seem to get himself under control.

"It fucking annoys me so much," he'll say. One time, he said the following: "If I were a fag, fine, I think I could accept it about myself. But I'm not."

We were in his messy bedroom, just lying on his bed looking up at the ceiling fan.

I pulled him aside as much as any small person can of a large person (we're not that different in size, but he is taller and more jacked than I am). I made him look me in the eyes. "I don't know where that word came from," I said, "but you can't go off saying it. It's not a good word."

"I'm only saying it to you," was his reply, as if that made it better somehow.

"Well I don't want to hear it."

He got really quiet for a while after that. I think I confused him a little.

He worries too much about the whole thing. Both of us have girlfriends. Mine's name is Lexie and she's in all AP classes. She and I hang out a lot after school and the best part is she gets along well with Thomas's girl, whose name is Madison. They've become pretty good friends since we all started hanging out together. This is exactly what I was telling you about—how I have a lot of good things going in my life.

But it doesn't stop me from constantly devising plans to get out of this dumb town. Thomas and I used to talk about what city we would run off to if we could. Seattle or Portland are the default edgy answers if you're from the area. Everybody who believes themselves to be edgy wants to go to one or the other, even though few people have made actual plans. Many will stay in state and go to the university up north, and many more will stick around town.

Two types of people will stay here: the people who are too afraid to leave, and the die-hards. Madison is a die-hard. She'll say, "Boise actually has a lot going on. Everyone's talking about it these days. Even Seattle Times posted this story about how it's growing up as a city and..." She'll go on for ten minutes like this if you don't change the subject. Lexie and I always share a look when she talks like this.

Madison will stay here, for sure. I'm actually worried Thomas will stay because of her. He has a football scholarship to U-Dub all lined up, if he wants it. There's money on the table if he stays here, too, and I think it's more. I don't know what he'll do. Every time I think about him staying here, I start getting really, really sad all of a sudden. I'm not sure why, except that we spent so much time back in the day talking about getting out.

That's the thing. I am getting out, and Portland and Seattle weren't good enough for me. I'm headed north. Vancouver. I'm just that edgy. The university up there called my name and I have the grades for it. You should see me. I'm so fucking smart.

Anyway, Thomas and I leave the school around four to smoke. When I say "leave" I mean that we stand with our legs pressing into that knee-high chain fence at the edge of the parking lot. Not a lot of students smoke these days, so it makes for a significant episode, and this time more people are around to see. Lexie is going home to be with her grandma who is in town visiting from Salt Lake. She's not ready for me to meet her grandma, and I am relieved about that. She drives down the row of cars toward us. Her windows are down. When she sees me and Thomas smoking she hits the brakes and her dumb old car sort of lurches forward.

"Jesus, Niko, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

The car behind her honks.

I pretend I don't know her and she gives me her we'll-talk-later eyes. She speeds out of the parking lot.

"Niko, my boy, today you're a man," Thomas says, giving me a big slap on the back. He's about two inches taller than me, at an even six feet. Lately he's been showing me the particulars of his workout routine in his dad's garage. His arms are a good thirty percent larger than mine. I want my body to look like his. This is due to my vanity. I'm sure his body looks the way it does in no small part because he is as vain as I am.

"I don't feel any different," I say.

There aren't any clouds in the sky. It's getting hot. It's your typical late-spring day around here. I'd say more, but there's nothing remarkable about this place. The school looks like a cluster of gray boxes.

We each have two this time. A Junior called Garrett Landon comes over and smokes one. Then we close the carton and put it back into Thomas's glove box, and put the matter to rest for a while. We ditch Garrett and Thomas drives me to his dad's place. It's a three bedroom duplex off of Cole Road with a shared backyard. Thomas's little brother Alfred is on the couch playing Switch, and Thomas tells him to leave.

"Why do I have to leave?"

"Fuck you, that's why. We want to play."

"You're such a little bitch," says Alfred as he walks out of the room. I like Alfred. He's in the ninth grade and doesn't take shit from anyone, not even his older brother. His voice recently got low and he's already almost as tall as Thomas. But he's way skinnier. They barely even look related when they stand next to each other. They have this kind of back and forth where they say all kinds of mean, filthy things to each other but there's no malice behind the words. It's kind of a beautiful thing to watch. I hardly ever see them fight for real.

Their mom died about four years ago from cancer. She was kind of a second parent to me in a way, since my mom can't seem to get her shit together most of the time, and my dad is not in the picture, so goes the phrase. I cried about it a lot when she first died. Thomas hardly showed any emotion at the time. I tried to hug him and get close to him for comfort but he would just push me away. Then about three months down the road, he started crying all the time out of nowhere, and got super honest about everything he was feeling. I think that was an important time for him in his life. He kind of grew up out of it and became something more than he was before. I don't really know how to describe it. Every year we light candles for her.

We play Mario Kart for a while and I beat him handily. When we're done, Thomas is kind enough to yell to his brother that the TV's free again. Thomas says we should go to his room because he has something he wants to talk to me about. I can feel my heart beating.

He shoves some neon green running shorts and other dirty clothes off the side of his bed and we lie down on it like we always do. Thomas's room has that kind of feeling about it that all of our rooms do now. Lexie and Madison's are the same. I don't know how else to say it other than to say they feel like they're expiring. If they're still children's bedrooms, then they're at the end of the fucking line. Thomas has a Pokemon poster on his wall right next to one of an Anime girl with absurd, barely-covered tits sort of dangling out in front of her. He has ribbons above his dresser from third and fourth grade track meets. There's a small safe on the floor of his closet that I know has a flask of whisky inside it. It's the most ridiculous place in the world.

Anyway, we're lying there like we always do. Thomas says, "I think I wanna go to BSU." This means stay in Boise.

"I know," I say.

"What do you mean you know? I've never told you before."

"I don't know what I mean," I say.

"Well, how do you feel about it?"

"Does it matter?"

Thomas sighs in a really dramatic way. He can be so dramatic sometimes. No one knows that about him but me. "You're my best friend, Niko. Of course it matters."

"What do you want me to say?" I say.

"Just tell me how you feel about me staying here for school."

"You know how I feel."

"No I don't." He's getting super annoyed. I can hear it in his voice. "How the fuck could I know if we've never even talked about it before?"

I'll be completely honest with you. I had no fucking idea Thomas gave one fuck about what I thought of him staying before now. So I think I have every right to be surprised. I also have no idea what to say. So I don't say anything.

He just looks over at me. "You want me to go to U-Dub."

"I want you to do what you want to do."

He stands up really fast and knocks one of his dumbass trophies from the windowsill onto the floor. "You're such a fucking bitch sometimes." My gut reaction is to laugh. You try and watch someone Thomas's size throw a tantrum like a three year old without laughing. I see him flash hot with anger. Then he cools down. I honestly don't know what made him get so mad so fast. Now he's just standing there, breathing in an out, looking down at me.

I think it's my turn to be the rational one. I can turn it on like I'm flicking a switch. "Hey," I say. "It's not like Seattle and Vancouver are that close. I don't think we'd see each other much more if you were up there."

"Then what's the problem?"

"You wanted to get out." I don't move my mouth as I say the words.

"What?"

"I said you wanted to get out."

He takes a minute. He's still just standing there, kind of looming over me. I don't know what the hell he's doing. "Don't you think what me and Madison have is pretty important?"

"Lexie and I are going to do long-distance."

"I don't want to. I can see it working for you guys. But for Lexie and me, it would be a disaster. She already complains that I don't show her enough affection. How the fuck would that even work over long-distance?"

I admit to him that I have no fucking idea.

"How far is Seattle from Vancouver?"

"Two and a half hours," I say. I've looked it up plenty of times.

It actually seems like he's thinking about it. I realize that he hasn't even come close to making up his mind. I know what to do in these situations. Ease the pressure. Ease off. "Hey man," I say. "I care about you enough that I want you to be happy, even if I don't totally get what I want. I'll never know you better than you know yourself. So if you say staying in Boise will make you happier, I believe you."

He's got these kind of sad eyes that he looks at me with. "You're such a bitch," he says. He starts to smile.

We go out into the garage and work out together. By now we've gotten pretty used to spotting each other, and we know all about one another's particular tendencies for bad form and whatnot. What I'm trying to say is, I like the kind of situation where two people are getting more out of doing something together than either of them would have if they were doing it alone. I think it's actually one of the most beautiful things in this world.

They days are getting longer. It's not dark at eight when I go to leave the Chu household. I lean into Alfred's room and say goodbye. He looks up from his desk and gives me kind of an awkward, silent wave. He used to be just a little kid. It's weird how fast people grow up.

We stand out on his front lawn, facing the street. They put some new chip seal on it and dust gets kicked up each time a car goes by. The light from the setting sun floats in the dust. This is one of the first nights of the year that I would call a warm one. I know that in the coming months, there will be many, many more where that came from. Just thinking about it gives me this incredible feeling of weightlessness.

"Happy Birthday, man."

I tell him thanks.

A car passes by so fast that some little rocks from the chip seal get kicked up onto the lawn.

Thomas turns to me and says, "I swear to god, one day, I'll get out of this dumb town forever."