How to Lose Everything Read online

  For Sam and all the others

  First published in 2013 by Zest Books

  35 Stillman Street, Suite 121, San Francisco, CA 94107

  www.zestbooks.net

  Created and produced by Zest Books, San Francisco, CA

  © 2013 by Philipp Mattheis

  Translation © 2013 by Kathryn Malczyk

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval systems—without the written permission of the publisher.

  Teen Nonfiction / Biography & Autobiography / General

  Library of Congress control number: 2012943315

  ISBN: 978-1-936976-40-9

  Cover design: Tanya Napier

  Interior design: Maija Tollefson

  Manufactured in the U.S.A.

  DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  4500413876

  Every effort has been made to ensure that the information presented is accurate. The publisher disclaims any liability for injuries, losses, untoward results, or any other damages that may result from the use of the information in this book.

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  A NOTE TO THE READER

  This book is based on a true story, but it is not a true-to-life account of events. When I was fifteen years old, in 1994, my friends and I really did discover a large amount of cash in an abandoned house outside of Munich, near where we all lived. It was a thrilling discovery, of course, but the temptations, euphoria, and paranoia that our discovery engendered also made it, in retrospect, a very difficult year.

  Over the course of that spring and summer we indulged our fantasies (such as they were at the time) and attempted to overcome our fears. But this story is also about our more general struggle to figure out who we wanted to be, how we wanted to get there, and how far afield we were willing to stray in the meantime. My friends and I didn't have much of a past, and we didn't have any idea of what the future held in store, but we had money. For that spring and summer, the presence of money in our lives made it seem like the future had dropped into our laps. This is a story about that strange period in between events.

  For American readers, there are a few things that I should probably clarify. The drinking age in Germany for unaccompanied minors was sixteen at the time, and even though we weren't all sixteen, the overall reaction to teenagers with beer and wine tended to be pretty lax. (Hence our ability to spend many of our days drinking and smoking down by the half-pipe.) Also, our summer vacations didn't begin until August, which is why there are still references to school days well into July.

  In an effort to make this story more economical, I have consolidated the various small suburban neighborhoods and towns where my friends and I lived into a single fictional place: “Meining.” Similarly, I have changed all of the names here—including my own—and blended certain characteristics in order to maintain a sense of distance and privacy for everyone involved. Dialogues and details have been augmented in cases where my memory was insufficient, and the fates of some of the characters have been altered for poetic reasons. Some minor characters have been added. But in terms of the overall plot and the main events (and transgressions) detailed here, they all really happened. I hope you enjoy my story.

  —Philipp Mattheis

  I remember the time I found a battered old-time picayune in the road, when I was a boy, and realized that its value was vastly enhanced to me because I had not earned it. I remember the time, ten years later, in Keokuk, that I found a fifty-dollar bill in the street, and that the value of that bill also was vastly enhanced to me by the reflection that I had not earned it. I remember the time in San Francisco, after a further interval of eight years, when I had been out of work and out of money for three months, that I found a ten-cent piece in the crossing at the junction of Commercial and Montgomery Streets, and realized that that dime gave me more joy, because unearned, than a hundred earned dimes could have given me. In my time I have acquired several hundred thousand dollars, but inasmuch as I earned them they have possessed nothing more than their face value to me and so the details and dates of their capture are dim in my memory and in many cases have passed from my memory altogether. On the contrary, how eternally and blazingly vivid in my recollection are those three unearned finds which I have mentioned!

  —Mark Twain, Autobiography

  When I saw Sam again, he looked like a penguin.

  It was the beginning of April, and it was drizzling. He came up to me and said my name, not quite sure of himself. I was standing there with my friend Will and Will's friend, whom I didn't know. They seemed annoyed by this pudgy, stammering little man.

  The whole episode was embarrassing for me—not just running into him, but the way it happened, too: in passing, in the dark, after a long day at work. He shifted from one foot to the other and stuttered, just like before. He said he was on the way to his parents' house and that he was living in Munich now. I said that I was living nearby. Both of us knew better than to think this unexpected reunion would change anything. Will and his friend stayed silent.

  There were no regrets; no one was to blame. We were each responsible for ourselves, and any responsibility we should have had for each other was excused by how young we were. It's as simple as that.

  Of course, I still could have visited him afterward. I mean, Schulz was dead, and Eric was gone. But once my life was finally back to normal, I wanted to leave all of that behind me. I had no idea that Sam would stay inside for so long. At the beginning, I thought he would be released in a week or so. And later—it was almost funny—I didn't even know which institution he was in. And if I had known, what would I have said to him? “Hey Sam, great to see you. How's it going?” Yeah, right.

  When I close my eyes, I can still see Sam lying in the sun on the concrete of the half-pipe. He's wearing his beige baggy pants and beige jacket, grinning at Schulz with a slightly idiotic look. He can't manage the simplest skateboard tricks because he never practices, and it makes him so angry that he always winds up hurling his skateboard into the bushes afterward. I see him sitting in the bathtub saying crazy things. I see the four of us hugging, laughing, shouting, throwing handfuls of money into the air. I see some of the best months of my life flashing by.

  Now here he was again, standing in front of me. He looked like the Michelin Man, with his now-massive body stuffed into a puffy down jacket. But he still had the same buzz cut and the same habit of poking his tongue into his chipmunk cheeks. (Maybe for the same reason, too, because he had a toothache. One time, he didn't go to the dentist for four years; the office wouldn't let him make an appointment because he hadn't shown up for the last five.) Stayed stuck, I thought. He's stayed stuck. Years ago, a window opened, and Sam let everything in, both happiness and unhappiness. When it closed a few months later, Sam needed to come to terms with all the baggage. He couldn't do it, and the window stayed shut.

  I dug up everything I'd ever learned about the art of small talk, cycled through all the questions you're supposed to ask someone you haven't seen in a long time. I asked where he lived and what he was doing. He asked me if I'd finally gotten my high school diploma. Like back then, it took him three tries to get the word out: “d-d-diploma.” I said yes; I had a part-time job now. Sam said he wanted to go back for his diploma, too. I thought that couldn't possibly be true because Sam had never been very bright. Not stupid or anything, but also not capable of gettin
g through trigonometry or writing an essay on Shakespeare with a passing grade. Sam had never been that type.

  Will and his friend still said nothing, just smoked their cigarettes and looked alternately from Sam to me, then back at each other. Will's friend had just arrived from Berlin. Will had gone to pick him up from the train station, and I'd happened to run into them. We exchanged a few words, and I'd bummed a cigarette off Will. Then Sam appeared—just appeared after five years. Now all four of us stood together, connected for the length of one cigarette, which was almost finished.

  It was Sam who relieved the tension. “I have to g-go now. Bye, Jonathan.”

  We shook hands, but not like before. Back then we had our own handshake: We used to slide our hands back against each other, then lock our fingers around the other's, and then we'd pull back with a snap. Everyone did it like that back then. Today we just shook hands, like everyone else in the world shakes hands. We clasped, squeezed briefly, and let go. The streetcar arrived and Sam got in.

  I didn't ask him for his phone number. Maybe—and I'm ashamed of this now—maybe because I was embarrassed. I didn't want Will and his friend to know the kind of people I used to be friends with. On the other hand, Sam didn't ask for my number either. It would have been an empty gesture anyway because neither of us would have ever called the other.

  We didn't have anything more to say; we lived in separate worlds now. I had a job helping people with mental disabilities, and Sam, well, Sam probably still saw someone like me.

  There's nothing left that connects us—except this story.

  After chain-smoking two cigarettes, Sam hopped onto his skateboard. He gave three strong pushes with his left foot and rolled up toward the knee-high concrete block, which had a metal rail on top. But instead of jerking his board sideways into the air just before hitting the block and then sliding lengthwise down the rail, Sam turned his board too soon. He stumbled and fell, his knee coming down hard on the rail. He stood up and cursed before flinging his skateboard against the half-pipe, where it ricocheted back toward him and then lay still.

  The obscenities that spewed from his lips had a comedic effect, due to Sam's stutter. It was always worse when he was agitated. In general, his stutter wasn't bad enough to ruin his life. He didn't really get teased, and his speech had gotten better after elementary school. In first grade, when he was the new kid in class, no one understood him, so he said absolutely nothing for a whole year. He was as good as silent for all of second and third grade, too. Eventually he'd had some sort of speech therapy, and then things started to improve. Now he only stumbled over the beginnings of words. It wasn't so bad that people made fun of him or anything, but now and then people would smirk a little. Of course, Sam always managed to notice it, and every so often it would pile up and overwhelm him: He was the only one who went to remedial classes instead of honors, he didn't have a girlfriend like Schulz did, and his parents didn't give him enough money to buy stuff like Stussy hoodies. “I'm n-n-not s-s-stupid, you know,” he would say. Then he would stop talking. Just like in elementary school: He would become mute.

  Now Sam shouted: “F-f-fucking s-skateboard!”

  Schulz, who'd been observing Sam the whole time, just laughed. When Schulz laughed it sounded like sheet metal clattering on asphalt. As his laughter rattled on, Schulz kept tucking strands of black hair behind his ears. Sam's face turned beet red, and for a minute I thought he was going to give us the silent treatment for the rest of the day. But instead he lit his third cigarette and said to Schulz, “Shut up. You c-c-can't do it either.”

  “I don't want to do it.” His laughter resolved itself into a gleeful grin. “I never did.”

  Sam looked at me, but I quickly turned away. I didn't want to get involved. Their constant bickering bugged me.

  “Yeah, you just lie in bed all day and screw Lena, and when she's not there, you jerk off. Awesome l-l-life, S-Schulz.”

  Schulz didn't know how to respond. Sam meant it as an insult, but Schulz clearly didn't see anything insulting about it. Plus it was pretty much true. Schulz spent most of his free time in bed—either alone or with his girlfriend. We were all jealous of him. He was the only one who'd ever had a real girlfriend. And not only was she cute, but she was also pretty funny—which was unusual for the girls we knew.

  At the beginning of the school year, Lena's English teacher had met with her to do some kind of personality questionnaire. It was his way of getting to know the students. One of the questions was “If you could be any animal, what would you be?” “A koala bear,” Lena said. Because her last name began with A, she was the first student, and afterward, she convinced the rest of the class to say “koala bear,” too. When all thirty students apparently shared the same dream of being koala bears, the teacher's whole exercise fell apart. I thought that was pretty damn funny.

  But Lena was against smoking pot. Or at least she was against Schulz smoking pot. She didn't actually care if the rest of us did it, but Schulz was her boyfriend, and so she had some degree of control over him. Schulz and Lena had been going out for three months, and they'd started having sex about four weeks ago. We knew all about it, since Schulz fed us a steady stream of information about which position they'd used, where they did it (in bed, in the woods, and in the bathtub), and how often. We were sure that Schulz was exaggerating, but even if only 10 percent of his stories were true, he was still a sex machine compared to us.

  “You gotta practice more,” said Schulz. “The skaters in Munich are out there every day for two, three hours. If you only practice a trick once a week, obviously you won't be able to do it.”

  “I wanna get out of these suburbs,” Sam said, without stuttering. He sat down on the concrete and pulled a soda out of his backpack. He drank some, offered it to Schulz without saying anything, and looked in the other direction, where the train tracks led toward the city. A peace offering. Schulz took the drink and grinned to himself.

  “Sure, move away. Just wait till you're eighteen and then you can go to the housing authority and get your name on a waiting list. Yeah, that'll be awesome, when you're living off food stamps in the projects.”

  “D-d-definitely b-b-better,” said Sam, not noticing that Schulz was being sarcastic.

  I was staring at the railroad tracks. I kept silent. I didn't want to get involved. Because in a way, both of them were right. There are always two sides to everything (which is incredibly frustrating, because that means that everything is always debatable, or relative, or at least not clear cut). The suburbs with their wide streets, front lawns, identical houses, and the zombies living inside of them, it was all too much. In the movies, something interesting always happens, whether it's an action movie like Terminator or just a normal drama. But the suburbs are the opposite of the movies. And because of that, sometimes a good movie feels more like life than reality does . . . if that makes any sense. Anyway, there was nothing going on in our lives. Yet Schulz had a point, since all he really meant was that everything would be better and easier to deal with if Sam and I had girlfriends, too.

  It was about a ten-minute walk from the half-pipe to the train station, and in between you had to cross a sort of meadow—although the term “meadow” might be generous, since it was full of rocks. It was just as accurate to call it a quarry that had some grass. Anyway, all the way from the half-pipe we could see the train coming. We didn't know what time it was exactly, but sometime in the afternoon the train came and spat Eric out. I was nearsighted, but I recognized him from far away because of the way he walked. A month ago he'd been kicked out of school for selling pot to another student in the parking lot. Since then he'd assumed the look of a true rebel. His steps were broad and strong, and he had a certain gravity even when he was walking fast. I didn't know how he did it, exactly, but his walk made him seem really cool.

  When he saw Schulz, Sam, and me, he smiled and sped up across the meadow. His eyes narrowed, and he looked at us with the same disparaging gaze that he cast at everythin
g—at teachers, adults, and the suburban gloom. He'd declared war on all of it.

  Sam jumped up.

  “Sam!” Eric said, and they clasped hands. Eric always said the name of the person as he greeted them. When he shook hands with Schulz, he said “Schulz,” and when he shook hands with me, he said “Jonathan.” I thought that this habit was sort of ridiculous, but I have to admit that it worked: When Eric said your name, you felt important—even if only for a moment. It even worked on me, even though I knew it was a trick.

  Eric sat on the ground and opened his duffel bag. Ever since he'd been expelled, he'd also been kicked out of his house (he'd kept throwing parties without asking permission or even saying anything, and he let the guests use his parents' houseplants as ashtrays), so now he always carried some clothes along with him. He took turns sleeping at different friends' houses. He didn't go to school, and he didn't live at home—he had become the freest person we knew. On the one hand, he could do whatever he wanted; on the other, there was nobody around to support him anymore.

  “Dude, do you have anything to smoke?” Sam asked him.

  Instead of answering, Eric dug a cantaloupe-sized glass bong out of his duffel.

  “You do, I know it. I know you've got some. Come on, say it: You have some.”

  “Don't be obnoxious,” said Schulz. “Let him sit down first. He's got some, okay?”

  “F-fuck you, Schulzie. I know he was at Zafko's place. Eric, you were at Zafko's and bought some, right?”

  Eric placed the bong on the ground and filled it with water from a plastic bottle. He grinned, looking each of us in the eyes for a few seconds. Then he said quietly but with authority, “Yeah, I got some hash.”

  “Yesssss!” shouted Sam, tousling Eric's hair.

  Eric unfolded a piece of paper on the ground. Then he took a cigarette and went over it once quickly with the tip of his tongue, so that there was a damp strip. He took apart the cigarette lengthwise along the strip and crumbled the tobacco onto the piece of paper. Our eyes followed each of his movements. He pulled a foil-wrapped clump from his pocket.