All This Life

Here’s the thing he didn’t tell the doctor or his dad or anyone, didn’t utter one syllable of this because he knows that no old person will understand: He didn’t do anything wrong. This is what people do. This is how the world works. This is why we’re smarter now: We share everything with everyone, have access to each sight and sound. We are informed and connected!

If they stop living in the past, they’d plug into this broadcasting consciousness, synapses firing all over the globe. The world is round like a brain, and we are all cells in it, firing all the time.

His dad doesn’t get it and thinks that Jake is behaving badly, but he’s totally missing the point, which is that good and bad don’t matter.

All that matters is content. New content. More content.

Those are the nutrients that keep the great brain going.

Content is Jake’s purpose.

It is everybody’s purpose.

And each single frame uploaded is a public service.

He’s doing what he’s supposed to do, what his generation understands as their responsibility. The time is 9:54, and the woman’s appointment is basically half over and Jake’s day is basically ruined and behind that closed office door are two men talking about nothing, agreeing with each other, so sure that they know what’s right and wrong and just and important, making decisions about Jake that he’s not even being consulted about, and under these circumstances he can’t stomach another second sitting here.

He puts his iPhone in his pocket and launches himself in the direction of the Purell dispenser and forms a fist and uses it as a tomahawk, bringing the edge of it down and breaking the whole dispenser from the wall and whoever thinks that hiring a cleaning lady who’s too lazy to wipe one bead of hanging meringue gets what’s coming to them.

An emoji of the boy’s face would be someone plugging a power cord into his ear and the cheeks going a crazed red and bringing his battery to a full charge.

The woman looks up from her tablet but doesn’t say a word. She’s wearing a quaint yellow dress that reminds Jake of old movies, and for a moment he’s bummed if he’s scared her. That’s not what this is about.

“Sorry for the disturbance,” Jake says to her.

He sprints out of the waiting room, down the hall, the stairs, exits the door.

He’s outside, still going full speed, composing his second live-tweet in his head, which he’ll post once he can safely stop running: I am on my own.

11

Noah911 stands before an empty suitcase, staring into its maw, scared of it like the thing is a pagan god, demanding worship, sacrifice, and in a way that’s exactly what it’s doing, telling Noah911 to go against every instinct of self-preservation he has and fill the suitcase with his belongings, board a plane, attend Tracey’s funeral back home. He’s not sure he can bear witness as his sister is eulogized, remembered, and ultimately put to rest.

Because one thing he damn well knows won’t be put down is every congregant’s judgment, holding Noah911 responsible for her too-early demise. They know it’s his fault, as he does, and the funeral would be a grueling torture chamber in which he’s slowly eviscerated.

He is in his room, the black suitcase splayed on the bed, totally empty; the clock reads 9 PM and his red-eye departs in a few hours. Noah911 knows what’s expected of him, after the belligerent phone call with his father.

It had been three days since Tracey’s death and Noah911 finally got the gumption this morning to tell their parents, now only his parents. Pronouns, he is realizing, are going to be tricky from now on.

He called them even though that was the last thing he wanted to do. Seems like a series of unwanted tasks blossom before him: the call, the trip home, the funeral, the indictments, the life transpiring without Tracey.

It didn’t take their father five seconds to turn his shock and sadness at the news into high-voltage rage, saying to Noah911, “What did you know about this band?”

Noah911 could hear his mom crying in the background.

“Not much, Dad.”

“Why are you only telling us now?”

“The band didn’t seem like anything.”

“What’s going on out there?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Your sister is dead!”