My Beautiful Failure Read Online Free PDF Page A

the cafeteria with murals of fruits and vegetables, Godzilla-like bananas and gargantuan heads of romaine, but the caf didn’t serve many of those things. What they did dish up was some form of ground beef, every day.
    “All right, then. If you don’t want them.” Andy peeled back the foil wrapper.
    “Hey!” I jumped up and knocked Andy’s arm.
    “You’re not gonna share?” he asked.
    “I’ll share. I just want to be the one to open it.”
    “That’s mature,” Mitchell said, toasting me with a bottle of chocolate milk.
    Maybe I had no sense of humor. But I had volunteered. I went to the training and I studied the handbook. And now I wasn’t entitled to all fourteen pieces of candy?
    “Thank you, R,” Mitchell said, taking a pineapple Life Saver. He nudged Andy with his elbow. “Can you stop that?”
    Andy was licking his index finger to pick up the shredsof cheese that had fallen off his burrito. “I think I’d get sick of helping people,” he said. “I’d be, like, can’t you help yourselves?”
    “I don’t get this whole offing-yourself business,” Mitchell said after belching soundlessly. “I’m planning to hang on for as long as possible. I think it’s entirely likely that during our lifetime the technology will be developed that will allow us to live forever. Maybe in the next ten, twenty years. Why miss out on that just because—what, you lost your money in the stock market or something?”
    I tilted my head and stared at Mitchell. People who’ve never suffered have a young-seeming stupidity that makes them all alike. Mitchell didn’t know how little it took to start someone on the path Dad walked last winter. In fact, although Dad’s doctor offered some theories, we were never entirely sure why Dad became depressed. I confided in Gordy about Dad all along because I knew Gordy had also suffered. Gordy was one of the few people my age who could understand me. People who’ve suffered can think alike, even if their sufferings are different.
    “Those people will be sorry,” Andy said. “May I have my dessert now?”
    “Sure,” I said, because Andy had so little going for him.
    “Don’t pick through them, Andy,” Mitchell said. “Just take the first one in the roll.”
    “I don’t entirely get it either,” Gordy added. He had finished his sandwich and was balling up the foil. He brought his lunch every day, and it was better than what the cafeteria served. He didn’t stint on the flourishes andextras. Today it had been turkey on a bulkie roll with stuffing and cranberry sauce. “Not that I’m the happiest person in the world. I just put a lot of faith in getting out of bed every morning.”
    “If you ask me, a lot of suicidal people are only being dramatic,” said Mitchell. He nodded toward the corner of the cafeteria where Heidi Destino was sitting. She swallowed a whole bottle of aspirin after Rick Byers dumped her for Melissa Foley, and then Heidi called everybody in town saying that she was going to die and Rick was the only one who could save her. He rushed to her house and drove her to the emergency room—carried her through the automatic door in his arms, someone said—and sat beside her, crying, while her stomach was pumped. Then they got back together, and Melissa Foley, though cuter, became the odd man out, because Heidi almost acted as though she had a weird power over Rick. Now Rick looked upset all the time, and I heard he had started praying a lot and had even gone back to church. And Melissa, she just looked baffled, as if to say, How do you compete with that?
    “Was your old school as drama infested as this?” I asked Gordy.
    “Not really.” He took a blackberry Life Saver. “At my old school all anyone cared about was getting into the right college. I think the suicide attempts came later.”
    “Okay, Dr. Billy,” Mitchell said, adjusting his suspenders, as he always did after lunch. “I can’t wait until you’re a real psychiatrist and pulling