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.

I think about it constantly.

It’s maybe the greatest mystery of my life.

Perhaps he has really hairy arms, I’ve often thought. Or prison tattoos. Or a birthmark. Or he was obscenely burned in a fire. Or maybe someone spilled acid on him during a high school science experiment. Or he was once a heroin addict and his wrists are therefore scarred with a gazillion needle-track marks. Maybe he has a blood-circulation disorder that keeps him perpetually cold.

But I suspect the truth is more serious than that—like maybe he tried to kill himself once and there are razor-blade scars.

Maybe.

It’s hard for me to believe that Herr Silverman once attempted suicide, because he’s so together now; he’s really the most admirable adult I know.

Sometimes I actually hope that he did once feel empty and hopeless and helpless enough to slash his wrists to the bone, because if he felt that horrible and survived to be such a fantastic grown-up, then maybe there’s hope for me. [4] I Googled “How long does it take to die when you slit your wrists?” There are all sorts of people asking this question on the Internet and most of them say they are researching the topic for their high school health class. Most of the posted answers accuse the asker of lying and urge him (her?) to seek professional help. There are straight-up answers from people who claim to be doctors and others who have actually slit their wrists with razor blades and survived. They all say this is a very painful way to die (or not die)—that it’s not peaceful, not at all the death-in-a-warm-bath-go-to-sleep type of deal in which movies make you believe. The blood can clot, which keeps you alive and in excruciating pain. But then I found posts about how to slit your wrists the “right way,” so you will actually die, and that depressed me, because people actually post stuff like that, and, even though I wanted to know the answer, so I could weigh my options, that info maybe shouldn’t be on the Internet. I’m not going to list the right way to slit your wrists or explain it to you, because I don’t want any additional blood on my hands. But really—why do some people post the correct ways to commit suicide on the Internet? Do they want weird, sad people like me to go away permanently? Do they think it’s a good idea for some people to off themselves? How can you tell when you are one of those people who should slash his wrists the right way with a razor blade? Is there an answer for that too? I Googled but nothing concrete came up. Just ways to complete the mission. Not justification.

Whenever I have some free time I wonder about what Herr Silverman might be hiding, and I try to unlock his mystery in my mind, creating all sorts of suicide-inducing scenarios, inventing his past.

Some days I have his parents beat him with clothes hangers and starve him.

Other days his classmates throw him to the ground and kick him until he’s wet with blood, at which point they take turns pissing on his head.

Sometimes he suffers from unrequited love and cries every single night alone in his closet clutching a pillow to his chest.

Other times he’s abducted by a sadistic psychopath who waterboards him nightly—Guantánamo Bay-style—and deprives him of drinking water during the day while he is forced to sit in a Clockwork Orange -type room full of strobe lights, Beethoven symphonies, and horrific images projected on a huge screen.

I don’t think anyone else has noticed Herr Silverman’s constantly clothed forearms, or if they have, no one has said anything about it in class. I haven’t overheard anything in the hallways.

I wonder if I’m really the only one who’s noticed, and if so, what does that say about me?