Looking for Alaska

After class, as Takumi picked through his fries at Mclnedible, eating only the crunchiest, I felt the total loss of her, still reeling from the idea that she was not only gone from this world but from 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 of cheeseburger. I'd gotten a plastic stock car with my Happy Meal, and it sat overturned on the table. I spun the wheels.

'I miss her,'Takumi said, pushing away his tray, uninterested in the remaining soggy fries.

'Yeah. I do, too. I'm sorry, Takumi,' and I meant it in the largest possible way. I was sorry we ended up like this, spinning wheels at a McDonald's. Sorry the person who had brought us together now lay dead between us. I was sorry I let her die. Sorry I haven't talked to you because you couldn't know the truth about the Colonel and me, and I hated being around you and having to pretend that my grief is this uncomplicated thing — pretending that she died and I miss her instead of that she died because of me.

'Me too. You're not dating Lara anymore, are you?'

'I don't think so.'

'Okay. She was kind of wondering.'

I had been ignoring her, but by then she had begun to ignore me back, so I figured it was over, but maybe not.

'Well,' I told Takumi, 'I just can't — I don't know, man. That's pretty complicated.'

'Sure. She'll understand. Sure. All good.'

'Okay.'

'Listen, Pudge. I — ah, I don't know. It sucks, huh?'

'Yeah.'

twenty-seven days after

Six days later four Sundays after the last Sunday, the Colonel and I were trying to shoot each other with paintball guns while turning 900s in a half pipe. 'We need booze. And we need to borrow the Eagle's Breathalyzer.'

'Borrow it? Do you know where it is?'

'Yeah. He's never made you take one?'

'Urn. No. He thinks I'm a nerd.'

'You are a nerd, Pudge. But you're not gonna let a detail like that keep you from drinking.' Actually, I hadn't drunk since that night, and didn't feel particularly inclined to ever take it up ever again.

Then I nearly elbowed the Colonel in the face, swinging my arms wildly as if contorting my body in the right ways mattered as much as pressing the right buttons at the right moments — the same video-game-playing delusion that had always gripped Alaska. But the Colonel was so focused on the game he didn't even notice. 'Do you have a plan for how, exactly, we're going to steal the Breathalyzer from inside the Eagle's house?'

The Colonel looked over at me and said, 'Do you suck at this game?' and then, without turning back to the screen, shot my skater in the balls with a blue paint blast. 'But first, we gotta get some liquor, because the ambrosia's sour and my booze connection is—' 'POOF.Gone,' I finished.

When I opened his door, Takumi was sitting at his desk, boxy headphones surrounding his entire head, bouncing his head to the beat. He seemed oblivious to us. 'Hey,' I said. Nothing. 'Takumi!' Nothing. 'TAKUMI!' He turned around and pulled off his headphones. I closed the door behind me and said, 'You got any alcohol?'

'Why?' he asked.

'Uh, because we want to get drunk?' the Colonel answered.

'Great. I'll join you.'

'Takumi,' the Colonel said. 'This is — we need to do this alone.'

'No. I've had enough of that shit.' Takumi stood up, walked into his bathroom, and came out with a Gatorade bottle filled with clear liquid. 'I keep it in the medicine cabinet,' Takumi said. 'On account of how it's medicine.'

He pocketed the bottle and then walked out of the room, leaving the door open behind him. A moment later, he peeked his head back in and, brilliantly mimicking the Colonel's bossy bass voice, said, 'Christ, you comin' or what?'

'Takumi,' the Colonel said. 'Okay. Look, what we're doing is a little dangerous, and I don't want you caught up in it. Honestly. But, listen, we'll tell you everything starting tomorrow.'

'I'm tired of all this secret shit. She was my friend, too.'

'Tomorrow. Honestly.'

He pulled the bottle out of his pocket and tossed it to me.

'Tomorrow,' he said.

'I don't really want him to know,' I said as we walked back to the room, the Gatorade bottle stuffed in the pocket of my sweatshirt.

'He'll hate us.'

'Yeah, well, he'll hate us more if we keep pretending he doesn't exist,' the Colonel answered.

Fifteen minutes later, I stood at the Eagle's doorstep.

He opened the door with a spatula in hand, smiled, and said, 'Miles, come in. I was just making an egg sandwich.

Want one?'

'No thanks,' I said, following the Eagle into his kitchen.

My job was to keep him out of his living room for thirty seconds so the Colonel could get the Breathalyzer undetected. I coughed loudly to let the Colonel know the coast was clear. The Eagle picked up his egg sandwich and took a bite. 'To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?' he asked.

'I just wanted to tell you that the Colonel — I mean, Chip Martin — he's my roommate, you know, he's having a tough time in Latin.'

'Well, he's not attending the class, from what I understand, which can make it very difficult to learn the language.' He walked toward me. I coughed again, and backpedaled, the Eagle and I tangoing our way toward his living room.

'Right, well, he's up all night every night thinking about Alaska,' I said, standing up straight and tall, trying to block the Eagle's view of the living room with my none-too-wide shoulders. 'They were very close, you know.'

'I know that—' he said, and in the living room, the Colonel's sneakers squeaked against the hardwood floor. The Eagle looked at me quizzically and sidestepped me. I quickly said, 'Is that burner on?' and pointed toward the frying pan.

The Eagle wheeled around, looked at the clearly not-on burner, then dashed into the living room.

Empty. He turned back to me. 'Are you up to something, Miles?'

'No, sir. Honestly. I just wanted to talk about Chip.'

He arched his eyebrows, skeptical. 'Well, I understand that this is a devastating loss for Alaska's close friends.

It's just awful. There's no comfort to this grief, is there?'

'No sir.'

'I'm sympathetic to Chip's troubles. But school is important. Alaska would have wanted, I'm sure, for Chip's studies to continue unimpeded.'

I'm sure,I thought. I thanked the Eagle, and he promised me an egg sandwich at some point in the future, which made me nervous that he would just show up at our room one afternoon with an egg sandwich in hand to