Looking for Alaska

twenty days after It was Sunday,and the Colonel and Idecided against the cafeteria for dinner,instead walking off campus and acrossHighway 119 to the Sunny KonvenienceKiosk, where we indulged in a well-balanced meal of two oatmeal creampies apiece. Seven hundred calories.Enough energy to sustain a man for half aday. We sat on the curb in front of thestore, and I finished dinner in four bites. \"I'm going to call Jake tomorrow,just so you know. I got his phone numberfrom Takumi.\" \"Fine,\" I said. I heard a bell jangle behind me andturned toward the opening door.

\"Y'all's loitering,\" said the womanwho'd just sold us dinner. \"We're eating,\" the Colonelanswered. The woman shook her head andordered, as if to a dog, \"Git.\" So we walked behind the store andsat by the stinking, fetid Dumpster. \"Enough with the fine's already,Pudge. That's ridiculous. I'm going tocall Jake, and I'm going to write downeverything he says, and then we're goingto sit down together and try and figureout what happened.\" \"No. You're on your own with that. Idon't want to know what happenedbetween her and Jake.\" The Colonel sighed and pulled a

pack of Pudge Fund cigarettes of hisjeans pocket. \"Why not?\" \"Because I don't want to! Do I haveprovide you with an in-depth analysis ofevery decision I make?\" The Colonel lit the cigarette with alighter I'd paid for and took a drag.\"Whatever. It needs to be figured out,and I need your help to do it, becausebetween the two of us we knew herpretty well. So that's that.\" I stood up and stared down at himsitting smugly, and he blew a thin streamof smoke at my face, and I'd had enough.\"I'm tired of following orders, asshole!I'm not going to sit with you and discussthe finer points of her relationship withJake, goddamn it. I can't say it any

clearer: / don't want to know aboutthem. I already know what she told me,and that's all I need to know, and you canbe a condescending prick as long asyou'd like, but I'm not going to sit aroundand chat with you about how goddamnedmuch she loved Jake! Now give me mycigarettes.\" The Colonel threw the packon the ground and was up in a flash, afistful of my sweater in his hand, tryingbut failing to pull me down to his height. \"You don't even care about her!\" heshouted. \"All that matters is you andyour precious fucking fantasy that youand Alaska had this goddamned secretlove affair and she was going to leaveJake for you and you'd live happily everafter. But she kissed a lot of guys, Pudge.

And if she were here, we both know thatshe would still be Jake's girlfriend andthat there'd be nothing but dramabetween the two of you — not love, notsex, just you pining after her and herlike, 'You're cute, Pudge, but I loveJake.' If she loved you so much, why didshe leave you that night? And if you loved her so much, why'dyou help her go? I was drunk. What'syour excuse?\" The Colonel let go of my sweater,and I reached down and picked up thecigarettes. Not screaming, not throughclenched teeth, not with the veins pulsingin my forehead, but calmly. Calmly. Ilooked down at the Colonel and said,\"Fuck you.\"

The vein-pulsing screaming camelater, after I had jogged across Highway119 and through the dorm circle andacross the soccer field and down the dirtroad to the bridge, when I found myselfat the Smoking Hole. I picked up a bluechair and threw it against the concretewall, and the clang of plastic onconcrete echoed beneath the bridge asthe chair fell limply on its side, and thenI lay on my back with my knees hangingover the precipice and screamed. Iscreamed because the Colonel was aself-satisfied, condescending bastard,and I screamed because he was right, forI did want to believe that I'd had a secretlove affair with Alaska. Did she loveme? Would she have left Jake for me?

Or was it just another impulsive Alaskamoment? It was not enough to be the lastguy she kissed. I wanted to be the last one she loved.And I knew I wasn't. I knew it, and Ihated her for it. I hated her for not caringabout me. I hated her for leaving thatnight, and I hated myself, too, not onlybecause I let her go but because if I hadbeen enough for her, she wouldn't haveeven wanted to leave. She would havejust lain with me and talked and cried,and I would have listened and kissed ather tears as they pooled in her eyes. I turned my head and looked at oneof the little blue plastic chairs on itsside. I wondered if there would ever bea day when I didn't think about Alaska,

wondered whether I should hope for atime when she would be a distantmemory — recalled only on theanniversary of her death, or maybe acouple of weeks after, remembering onlyafter having forgotten. I knew that I would know more deadpeople. The bodies pile up. Could therebe a space in my memory for each ofthem, or would I forget a little of Alaskaevery day for the rest of my life? Once, early on in the year, she and Ihad walked down to the Smoking Hole,and she jumped into Culver Creek withher flip-flops still on. She steppedacross the creek, picking her stepscarefully over the mossy rocks, andgrabbed a waterlogged stick from the

creek bank. As I sat on the concrete, myfeet dangling toward the water, sheoverturned rocks with the stick andpointed out the skittering crawfish. \"You boil 'em and then suck theheads out,\" she said excitedly. \"That's where all the good stuff is —the heads.\" She taught me everything I knewabout crawfish and kissing and pinkwine and poetry. She made me different. I lit a cigarette and spit into thecreek. \"You can't just make me differentand then leave,\" I said out loud to her. \"Because I was fine before, Alaska.I was fine with just me and last wordsand school friends, and you can't justmake me different and then die.\" For she

had embodied the Great Perhaps — shehad proved to me that it was worth it toleave behind my minor life for grandermaybes, and now she was gone and withher my faith in perhaps. I could calleverything the Colonel said and did\"fine.\" I could try to pretend that I didn'tcare anymore, but it could never be trueagain. You can't just make yourselfmatter and then die, Alaska, becausenow I am irretrievably different, and I'msorry I let you go, yes, but you made thechoice. You left me Perhapsless, stuck inyour goddamned labyrinth. And now Idon't even know if you chose the straightand fast way out, if you left me like thison purpose. And so I never knew you,did I? I can't remember, because I never

knew. And as I stood up to walk home andmake my peace with the Colonel, I triedto imagine her in that chair, but I couldnot remember whether she crossed herlegs. I could still see her smiling at mewith half of Mona Lisa's smirk, but Icouldn't picture her hands well enough tosee her holding a cigarette. I needed, Idecided, to really know her, because Ineeded more to remember. Before Icould begin the shameful process offorgetting the how and the why of herliving and dying, I needed to learn it:How. Why. When. Where. What. At Room 43, after quickly offeredand accepted apologies, the Colonel

said, \"We've made a tactical decision topush back calling Jake. We're going topursue some other avenues first.\" twenty-one days after As Dr. Hyde shuffled into class thenext morning, Takumi sat down next tome and wrote a note on the edge of hisnotebook. Lunch at Mclnedible, it read. I scribbled Okay on my ownnotebook and then turned to a blank pageas Dr. Hyde started talking about Sufism,the mystical sect of Islam. I'd onlyscanned through the reading — I'd beenstudying only enough not to fail— but inmy scanning, I'd come across great lastwords. This poor Sufi dressed in rags

walked into a jewelry store owned by arich merchant and asked him, \"Do youknow how you're going to die?\" Themerchant answered, \"No. No one knowshow they're going to die.\" And the Sufisaid, \"I do.\" \"How?\" asked the merchant. And the Sufi lay down, crossed hisarms, said, \"Like this,\" and died,whereupon the merchant promptly gaveup his store to live a life of poverty inpursuit of the kind of spiritual wealth thedead Sufi had acquired. But Dr. Hyde was telling a differentstory, one that I'd skipped. \"Karl Marxfamously called religion 'the opiate ofthe masses.' Buddhism, particularly as itis popularly practiced, promises

improvement through karma. Islam andChristianity promise eternal paradise tothe faithful. And that is a powerfulopiate, certainly, the hope of a better lifeto come. But there's a Sufi story thatchallenges the notion that people believeonly because they need an opiate. Rabe'aal-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint ofSufism, was seen running through thestreets of her hometown, Basra, carryinga torch in one hand and a bucket of waterin the other. When someone asked herwhat she was doing, she answered, 'I amgoing to take this bucket of water andpour it on the flames of hell, and then Iam going to use this torch to burn downthe gates of paradise so that people willnot love God for want of heaven or fear

of hell, but because He is God.'\" Awoman so strong she burns heaven anddrenches hell. Alaska would have likedthis Rabe'a woman, I wrote in mynotebook. But even so, the afterlifemattered to me. Heaven and hell andreincarnation. As much as I wanted toknow how Alaska had died, I wanted toknow where she was now, if anywhere. Iliked to imagine her looking down on us,still aware of us, but it seemed like afantasy, and I never really felt it — justas the Colonel had said at the funeralthat she wasn't there, wasn't anywhere. Icouldn't honestly imagine her as anythingbut dead, her body rotting in VineStation, the rest of her just a ghost aliveonly in our remembering. Like Rabe'a, I

didn't think people should believe inGod because of heaven and hell. But Ididn't feel a need to run around with atorch. You can't burn down a made-upplace. After class, as Takumi pickedthrough his fries at Mclnedible, eatingonly the crunchiest, I felt the total loss ofher, still reeling from the idea that shewas not only gone from this world butfrom all of them. \"How have you been?\" I asked. \"Uh,\" he said, a mouth full of fries,\"nan good. You?\" \"Not good.\" I took a bite ofcheeseburger. I'd gotten a plastic stockcar with my Happy Meal, and it satoverturned on the table. I spun the

wheels. \"I miss her,\"Takumi said, pushingaway his tray, uninterested in theremaining soggy fries. \"Yeah. I do, too. I'm sorry, Takumi,\"and I meant it in the largest possibleway. I was sorry we ended up like this,spinning wheels at a McDonald's. Sorrythe person who had brought us togethernow lay dead between us. I was sorry Ilet her die. Sorry I haven't talked to youbecause you couldn't know the truthabout the Colonel and me, and I hatedbeing around you and having topretend that my grief is thisuncomplicated thing — pretending thatshe died and I miss her instead of thatshe died because of me.

\"Me too. You're not dating Laraanymore, are you?\" \"I don't think so.\" \"Okay. She was kind of wondering.\" I had been ignoring her, but by thenshe had begun to ignore me back, so Ifigured it was over, but maybe not. \"Well,\" I told Takumi, \"I just can't— I don't know, man. That's prettycomplicated.\" \"Sure. She'll understand. Sure. Allgood.\" \"Okay.\" \"Listen, Pudge. I — ah, I don't know.It sucks, huh?\" \"Yeah.\"

twenty-seven days after Six days later four Sundays after thelast Sunday, the Colonel and I weretrying to shoot each other with paintballguns while turning 900s in a half pipe.\"We need booze. And we need toborrow the Eagle's Breathalyzer.\" \"Borrow it? Do you know where itis?\" \"Yeah. He's never made you takeone?\" \"Urn. No. He thinks I'm a nerd.\" \"You are a nerd, Pudge. But you'renot gonna let a detail like that keep youfrom drinking.\" Actually, I hadn't drunksince that night, and didn't feelparticularly inclined to ever take it up