The Antagonist Read Online Free PDF Page B

skinny cryptic four-eyes, and most of all You — lying disappointment you have been, it turns out, all along.

4
    06/01/09, 1:12 a.m.
    SURPRISE! RANK HERE .
    Adam, this has begun — there’s no way around it. That’s what I’ve been realizing this past week. I gave up writing to you and I felt this incredible relief — no doubt you did too. In fact that was the only thing that tainted my relief — knowing you were probably relieved as well. But fuck it, it was over! It had been started, but now it was stopped, and so was over. Cooler heads prevailed and all that. I’d just go back to doing what I’ve been doing all along — working and coaching and going to the gym — and you would go back to whatever it is you do — vampiring the good and the real out of people’s lives — and we’d forget about each other as we’d already done and should’ve kept right on doing.
    So let’s take another run at this, shall we? I’ve been reading over what I sent you so far trying to figure out why in God’s name I can’t just settle into a nice, neat, chronological version of the story of my life. I keep going off on these pointless tangents. It seemed like such a simple idea at first — all I had to do was sit down and write it out. But it’s actually a lot harder than you would think.
    Now that I’ve read everything over, however, the problem has become clear. It appears I’d rather talk about pretty much anything other than working for Gord at the Icy Dream. But if I don’t the rest of the story can’t happen. Which is precisely the hurdle, come to think of it.
    The interesting thing about this whole process is that I find myself realizing what I think about everything at the exact moment I’m typing it out. Then I sit back and read it over and go: Huh .
    Is that how it works for you? This never really occurred to me before. I have to admit I kind of imagined you sitting around rubbing your hands together and cackling to yourself as you plotted out your miserable theft, not just typing away and suddenly looking down and going, Oh hey, check that out. I just completely screwed over a guy I used to be buddies with.
    And I’ve also just realized that even though my outrage resulting from the above has led me to launch myself at you across the ether hollering Hey nice story you thieving bastard but guess what, I have the real story right here — so get comfortable, chump! That is, even though I was completely gung-ho when I initiated this little back and forth between us, there is a big part of me that keeps trying to bow out.
    But I am going to do this, Adam. Neither of us is getting out of it. Every time I think fuck this and fuck you — and I think it with approximately every other sentence — I imagine your relief at never having to open another email from me and it propels me right back here in front of my ancient computer, constantly hitting the wrong keys and having to go back and start again in all my enthusiastic umbrage.
    Gord used to go over the counter. That was the crux of the matter. I had two jobs at Icy Dream — well, three, if you counted working the till and manoeuvring the soft-serve into two perfect undulating bulges balanced in the cone — three bulges if the customer ordered a large. That was something I eventually got very good at, executing perfectly undulating soft-serve — I felt like a sculptor at times. So I did that, I even took a bit of pride in it, but I was mostly at Icy Dream, according to Gord, to “bust punks’ skulls.” So I busted punks’ skulls, but I also had a third job, a private job that I had not been assigned but ended up inevitably assigning to myself.
    And that was to keep Gord from going over the counter.
    The problem, which my father could not have foreseen when the Celestial Fast-Food Overseer descended from the heavens and demanded he choose between ID and JJ’s, was the existence of punks. Punks abounded in our town, as they do all towns, big and small,