Thomas Marshall © 2019 by Thomas Marshall All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal. The author grants the final approval for this literary material. First printing This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. No More Dead Kids is printed in Palatino Linotype Author Photo Credit: Megan Keely Smith (Courtesy of Aidan Blant) For Mom & Dad. Because of Dr. Bridget Besinger and Richard Fliegel. Contents PART ONE: Millennial Fish CHAPTER 1. - New Americana 7 CHAPTER 2. - Soul To Squeeze 15 CHAPTER 3. - You Are Going To Hate This 20 CHAPTER 4. - The Kids Aren’t Alright 29 CHAPTER 5. - Why Generation 35 CHAPTER 6. - Father Of Mine 48 CHAPTER 7. - Everlong 53 CHAPTER 8. - Parents 59 CHAPTER 9. - A Proper Polish Welcome 67 CHAPTER 10. - Going To Pasalacqua 73 CHAPTER 11. - Modern Jesus 78 CHAPTER 12. - Mr. Fish 84 CHAPTER 13. - Do I Wanna Know? 94 CHAPTER 14. - First Date 103 CHAPTER 15. - 400 Lux 108 CHAPTER 16. - Shake Me Down 115 CHAPTER 17. - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea 119 CHAPTER 18. - Sappy 124 CHAPTER 19. - Just Impolite 129 CHAPTER 20. - Talk Show Host 132 CHAPTER 21. - Disarm 140 CHAPTER 22. - Kitchen Sink/Migraine 146 CHAPTER 23. - A Martyr For My Love For You 149 CHAPTER 24. - Butterfly 156 CHAPTER 25. - Lay, Lady, Lay 164 CHAPTER 26. - Story Of My Life 166 PART Two: American Road This is a story of The West. 172 Acknowledgments About the Author For more Information PART ONE: Millennial Fish CHAPTER 1. New Americana I REMEMBER WHEN I used to think people our age were adults. I remember when I used to look up to my father. Now I’m taller than him. When I was at the start of my junior year of high school, I really had no idea how much would change over the course of the next two years. I could never have imagined how Ken, Lila, the road trip, or any of it would change my life, but I’ll get to that and all that Holden Caulfield kind of crap about my younger and more vulnerable years later. In short, I am a millennial. More specifically, I’m a 90’s kid. I am a member of the New Lost Generation, Generation Apathy, Generation Why; the kids that were around for Web 1.0 but were raised on 2. The generation that saw the technology around them grow faster than they did, born in a period of Unraveling and growing up in a time of Crisis. The last group of human beings to remember 9/11 as an event in their lives rather than a history lesson. The sons and daughters of the Baby- Boomers who stayed together for the kids. We are not just the outsiders or the inbetweeners, we are the lost. Thomas Marshall 7 But that’s just Juvenoia at work. Sometimes I do think I’m an adult, sometimes I think I’m the only adult in the room, especially at home. And other times, like times when I pass by the Starbucks that used to be a Blockbuster Video, I want nothing more than to go back. I want to grow up, I desperately want to grow up, I just don’t want to grow old. It’s just that, right now, I’m stuck somewhere in between the two. But again, I really don’t want to be whiney about growing up or finding myself or anything because everybody does that. This is the purgatory of adolescence. I got my junior year class schedule about a month before classes actually started the first week of September, and by the time that came around, I was excited to be back at school. I spent the last night of that summer, a warm but temperate Sunday, with Dan just sitting on the hood of my car, parked by the cliffs eating California burritos and watching the last halcyon sun of summer set into the ocean. “Think there’ll be a green flash?” I asked, making conversation out of what was a nice silence. “I dunno,” he answered with a shrug, “what classes are you in again?” “Creative writing, A-PUSH, Honors pre—” 8 No More Dead Kids “We don’t have any together this year, right?” “No, and I told you that you should’ve taken Mr. Darcy’s with me.” “I didn’t think Darcy was that great freshmen year, and I don’t want to be in a class with a bunch of weird freshmen, especially creative writing,” Dan said, crumpling up the tin foil and yellow paper with the last tortilla bite of his burrito and throwing it away. I didn’t bother to get him to save the leftovers for me (my favorite part of the burrito), and I didn’t bother to tell him that it was the English class that sucked two years ago and not Mr. Darcy. “Whatever, I like him. What classes are you taking, again?” He’d explain, and I’d take note, thinking of the times we’d be able to see each other during the day; mainly before school, during lunch, during the break after Mr. Darcy’s class, and in the hour I had after school before practice started. He’d then ask, and I’d explain to him how much I liked Mr. Darcy, how even last year when I wasn’t in his class he’d still be cool to have coffee during break, and we’d chat. I’d tell Dan how I was skeptical but excited to take Mr. Darcy’s new class instead of an arts elective; Dan played classical guitar, or at least he took the class. A flock of gulls passed overhead. “Hey Alex,” “Yeah?” I answered. Thomas Marshall 9 “How many times do you think you’ve seen the same bird twice?” Dan asked in a faux-philosophical tone. “Shut the fuck up, man,” and we laughed. The sun passed behind the horizon. I always loved watching the sun set from the cliffs; you could look out onto that vast ocean and see the gentle curve of the earth across the horizon and watch as blue night crept its way across the big sky behind the setting sun and the pinpoint stars materialized behind the blue and into the black. There wasn’t a green flash, but we didn’t mind. I was seriously starting to doubt the phenomenon even existed. The sun set, as it always does, and night fell, as it always did, and I drove Dan back to his house where we played Zombies on Call of Duty for an hour then I went home, driving on The 5 with the top down and the radio blaring just for the hell of it before returning home. I laid in bed, listening to music through headphones and not to the drone of the reality TV that my mother watched late into the night in the other room. And then it was the morning. Cereal, coffee, the brushing of teeth, packing and leaving, and then I was at school. I went to the library and went through my planner until some people I knew but hadn’t seen all summer showed up. The kind of friends, you know, good friends but not close ones. The friends you do stuff with and have fun with, but never more than that. Not the people that you just know, but also not the ones that 10 No More Dead Kids you know a lot about. Or even really desire to, for that matter. I like it like that. In the half-hour before school started, we caught up on each other’s summers, on movies we saw, new music we listened to, trips some people took, internships others had, and then the bell rang and the day started. Junior year, and all the shit that comes with it. I already had the next few months of SAT prep, college searching, and general school doing scheduled, but actually being in the year, it was just like any other. The day at school was more of the same, “Yes, Alexander Kaoruac, present. Yes, like the writer. No, not related. Actually, it’s Japanese. My dad’s dad, I’m only a quarter. And, yeah, it’s spelled differently.” For some reason this seemed to disappoint the AP Lit teacher, I couldn’t tell if we were already off to a bad start. I liked it when teachers liked me, and that’s why I was happy to find myself in creative writing with Mr. Spencer Darcy after lunch. As I entered the classroom a little early, his sophomore daughter, Delilah, was leaving, carrying an old hardcover of Renata Adler’s Speedboat, and an even older copy of The House of Mirth, she smiled at me as she passed and I sat down, waiting for class to start. Even Darcy’s class went through the typical circle jerk introduction around the room, with ‘two truths and a lie,’ a social skill I never quite seemed to master. Thomas Marshall 11 “Alex, I’m a junior, um, I’m an only child, I row, a lot, and I’ve never been outside the country.” “I’m going to guess you’ve probably gone to Asia to visit your family?” a freshman looking boy asked.