But, of course, there’s a new joke now.

A hilarious joke.

Oh, you would love it.

You see, the joke is . . . well, the joke is on me, apparently.

Because the joke is that everything is put back, just so, not a dust bunny out of place.

Everything is just as I left it before going for my nighttime constitutional.

I take a deep breath in, trying to slow myself down to ponder this latest insult. Exhale.

Okay.

Okay.

This is the way it’s going to be then?

If everything around me seems crazy—is it me who is actually cracking up?

I’m not in good health, brain-wise.

I get that.

I got that, long before I stepped foot in this godforsaken place.

But this is a different level. A level even my exceptional imagination is incapable of conjuring.

No, this isn’t me.

This is the thing. The one I’ve felt—so strongly—at least twice now.

“You don’t scare me,” I tell it.

(It’s a lie, of course. But this is exactly the kind of lie that gets you through. A survival lie.)

I taught myself how to lie to myself just like this, last April.

If you learn to do it once, you can use it over and over again.

Down below, the sound of a truck making its way up the winding road to the house breaks the silence.

I know who it is.

Of course, who it is.

And I tell myself a new lie:

It’s fine.

I grip the hammer.

Everything will be fine.

Chapter 43

That night, back home in April, with the rain pouring down like cats and dogs and the kids on the dance floor as if it were the end of the world. But a happy, crazy end of the world. A glamorous apocalypse!

By this point in the night everyone was starting to saunter off, some to random places where they would pass out—some just seeming to kind of evaporate into thin air.

Whatever happened to them, Zander and I find ourselves the last of a tiny group of stragglers.

“We should probably go,” he says.

I remember a strange look, then, as if this was the most absurd idea in the world.

“Zander? Helloooo? We definitely cannot go. How would we even get home?”

The friend, the one throwing the party, stumbled over, patting Zander on the back.

“Dude. You guys can stay. There’s tons of room and my folks won’t be back until Monday.”

Zander sways a little. “Yeah, okay. Sure.”

“Cool, dude. No problem!” The friend weaved off to whatever place his bedroom got to be in that sprawling place.

Then I remember Zander turning to me. “We should go.”

“Wait, that’s the opposite of what you just said. Besides, it’s still totally raining and neither one of us can drive right now so—”

He teetered a bit then, as if to emphasize my point.

It doesn’t matter, none of it. It doesn’t matter to me that Zander is shit-faced because they spiked the punch and he is weaving around and the room is spinning. All that matters is that he is my everything.