How to Lose Everything Read online

  “I don't actually know all the details. It was a few years ago. I was still in grade school. I heard my mom talking with our neighbor, Mrs. Dullinger, and she said that one of the sisters in the house on Flower Street had died and that the other sister was crazy. That wasn't a surprise. Everyone in our neighborhood knew that she was bonkers. Maybe it was a head injury from World War II or something, who knows. But she was definitely pretty crazy. She thought people were out to get her.”

  “Out to get her? Do you know who she thought was following her?”

  Daniel kept talking as if he hadn't heard me. “I was about seven or eight when I first noticed her. She acted weirdly around dogs. She was scared of them. She would cross to the other side of the street when she saw someone walking their dog. Sometimes she would start swearing at the dogs, just going off on them. Obviously people in this neighborhood didn't really like that, since pretty much everyone has a dog. She would curse them out, scream at them, wave her cane at them. People started talking about her and telling their kids to stay away from her. My mom told me that Mrs. Stetlow was sick and that she really needed help. But my mom was probably the only one who felt sympathetic toward her. Most of our neighbors just bitched about her. And honestly, I thought she was creepy. I was scared of her. She was ugly, and her wrinkled little face sort of fell down around her mouth because she didn't have any teeth. Her hair was a mess. She was always wearing dirty aprons. And she always stank of sweat and rotten food.”

  I swallowed and inhaled on my cigarette. After a short pause, Daniel continued.

  “Later on, Mrs. Stetlow started going off on people and swearing at them just like she did to the dogs. If she ran into anyone, she would whisper and hiss, like she was talking to a ghost or something. She thought the neighbors were following her and that everyone was out to get her. She wasn't completely wrong, either. Hardly anyone liked her. No one ever saw her sister, who must have been pretty sick. She never left the house. I think she officially died of cancer, but that wasn't the whole story, which we didn't find out about until later, once they'd taken Mrs. Stetlow away. Apparently, she was so crazy she believed that the neighbors were poisoning their food and making her sister sick. So she stopped feeding her sister. When they came to get her body, it looked like a shriveled-up mummy. I didn't see it, but that's what people said. Maybe they exaggerated, I don't know. But it's true that Mrs. Stetlow kept her sister's body in the house for over two months before anyone realized she was dead. Their next-door neighbor, Mrs. Schneider, finally called the police. She'd been smelling what she thought was their compost pile, but after a while, she realized that something wasn't right. When the police came, Mrs. Stetlow flipped her shit. She threatened them with a knife, ran around screaming. She tried to barricade the doors. The cops had to break the door down, wrestle the knife from her, and take her away. She got put in the psych ward. My mom said that should have happened much sooner. She said that Mrs. Stetlow was clearly clinically paranoid. If people had done something sooner, maybe it wouldn't have turned out so badly.”

  I stared at Daniel like I was in a trance. “Is she dead?”

  “No idea. Maybe. Maybe she's still in the psych ward. That would explain why the house is still empty. Who knows. Maybe the person who inherited it lives in Brazil or somewhere like that. Me and some friends went in a couple of times, although we didn't find any money. At first it was fun and exciting, but whatever. Honestly, I was too creeped out to keep going.”

  “What is with the basement? There's no floor. There's just gravel everywhere. Sam was sure there was a buried body down there.”

  “I thought it was weird, too. I asked my dad about it once, you know, hypothetically speaking. He's a real estate agent, and he said gravel basements are not that unusual. In the olden days they used to just leave the foundation like that to save money. A layer of gravel gets the job done.”

  “What about the unfinished first floor?”

  “I don't know about that. Maybe they wanted to renovate it and rent it out, but who knows. You'd have to ask Mrs. Schneider. She knew them better than anyone else. I think she still looks after the place. And you know the weird thing?”

  “She has a dog.”

  “Yep. It's funny because if Mrs. Stetlow knew there was a dog on her property, she would go postal.”

  “You knew about it the whole time! Why didn't you say anything? You could have tipped me off. I would have told you everything. Eric, Sam, and . . .”—I was about to say Schulz—“I . . . we would've brought you with us. We . . .”

  “Dunno.” He gave a shrug. “You didn't ask. Anyway, I wasn't paying that much attention.”

  He gave another shrug.

  We were silent for a while. Daniel started a new round in his game. I kept blowing smoke into the thick, silent air of the room. The white noise of the game made me feel calm and kind of spaced out. Finally Daniel stood up, shuffled in his hugely oversized jeans toward the balcony door, and opened it. We sat on the stone floor of the tiny balcony with our bodies squeezed between the wall of the house and the wooden rails. Daniel rolled a joint.

  “Eric wouldn't say anything, would he?” I asked. “Don't you think he'll keep quiet?”

  “He'd have to be stupid to say anything to the cops about it. Anyway,” he paused, lit the joint, inhaled deeply, and blew a long, thick cloud of smoke out of his lungs, “in the end it all just sounds like a crazy story.”

  “Daniel,” I said, looking at him. He cleared his throat and handed me the joint. “Schulz is dead.”

  “Damn,” he answered, and after a few seconds of silence, “Shit.”

  Through the train window I could see cows grazing. Occasionally a picture-perfect farmhouse would appear and then disappear as the train went past. Only the mountains kept getting bigger the closer I got to them. I was sitting in the smoking section. Across from me was a middle-aged man with a coarse, beer-bloated face. He wore a red-and-white-checkered shirt and would have looked comical if it weren't for the severely angry way the corners of his mouth turned down. I was smoking a cigarette.

  The smoke helped cover up the smell of the car: sharp, biting, all-concealing cigarette smoke. I could hold onto that and ward off the self-satisfied body odor of grown-ups, like some sour combination of salami sandwiches and fabric softener. Smoke smelled the same everywhere, and nothing could withstand it. So I sat on the red-brown pleather bench, watched the landscape fly by, letting myself be hypnotized by it, and smoked. My thoughts oscillated in time to the rumbling of the wheels on the tracks.

  Today was Schulz's funeral. I didn't want to go. Maybe that was cowardly, but I couldn't wrap my brain around the event. I didn't want to see Lena, watch her cry, or hear her say again, “He was the only one I really loved.” I wouldn't be able to deal with some stupid sermon. I didn't want to see Schulz's parents and his little sister. Maybe they wouldn't say anything to me directly, but they would give me looks that said, “We know you had something to do with his death.” I wanted to be left in peace.

  I had nothing to do with his death. I would have stopped him from getting in the car if I'd been there. But I wasn't there. I'd slept with his girlfriend, that's all. No one dies from that. And Sam? Sam, I thought, would get out soon. Then everything would go back to how it was before—well, almost. Schulz wasn't coming back. But Sam and Eric. We'd all be back on the skate ramp behind the train tracks soon.

  I lit another cigarette. Every pretty picture flying past outside was only concealing the darkness lurking behind it. Boredom and desperation were in every street and around every corner, behind every face and in every body. We had only wanted to escape boredom. We had wanted to see things happen. I mean, we weren't even adults.

  I'd gone back to the woods and, in the fresh air, dug up the plastic bag. Like a treasure hunter I'd taken seven steps to the right from the duck blind and begun digging at the big tree root. When I found the bag, I took out the letters and burned them in a metal lunch box, which I'd brought along for
just that purpose. I took the money and put it in my pocket. My parents were away on vacation; they wouldn't be back for another week. I planned to go to the train station and take a train somewhere: Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, maybe the sea. Anywhere, really, as long as it was away from here.

  My plan fell apart before it even began. Waiting in line at the ticket counter at the Munich train station, I realized I probably couldn't rent a hotel room in another city without my parents' signature. I also remembered that I didn't speak Italian or Dutch, and I only knew a few phrases in French. I thought about how school would be starting again soon. I wanted to go. I mean, I actually wanted to go back to school. And so I went to the counter and named the one city that came into my head, since we'd gone there last year on a class trip and it had actually been really cool. I said, “Nuremberg.”

  “One-way or round-trip?”

  I hesitated a minute and wished I'd thought ahead a little bit, but there was a line behind me. I said, “Round-trip, please.”

  It was early evening when the train arrived at the Nuremberg station. A flurry of activity followed: Suitcases were taken down from the luggage racks, old ladies groaned as they climbed down the steps to the platform, people hobbled and pushed their way down the narrow walkways. I didn't have any luggage. I stuffed my hands into my pockets, pulled the front of my cap down, and sauntered through the train station. I got a hot chocolate at a cafe and people-watched, studying strangers, their faces, and imagining what their stories might be. I watched one young man as he walked past me. His face had a few wrinkles, and he carried a heavy backpack on his shoulders, which made him hunch over slightly as he walked. His face was tan, like he was coming from somewhere in the south. I wanted to ask him where he was coming from, where he'd been staying and for how long, what he experienced there, and what he was going to do next. But I didn't have the guts.

  I went to a McDonald's in the station and had a burger, fries, and a Coke. A few yards away I noticed a newspaper stand and thought I'd try reading a magazine or newspaper. I bought a copy of National Geographic with a picture of the Mayan pyramids on the cover. They reminded me of Eric and his UFO theories. I grinned, but after reading a few pages, I got bored. It wasn't just the magazine—I was bored with everything. I was alone, and I didn't know what to do with myself. I left the train station and sauntered with my hands in my pockets through the streets of Nuremberg. But I made sure not to wander too far from the station; I didn't want to get lost.

  Half a block from the station was a hotel. I slowed down in front of the building and paced back and forth a few times to get my courage up. The front door was glass with a bright, shiny, brass handle. It was heavy; it took some effort to open it. The lobby floor was covered in a plush, apricot-colored carpet, and a man stood behind the dark wood reception desk. He was wearing a black suit with a white shirt.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  I cleared my throat and asked, “How much for a room here?”

  “That depends on which one you'd like. We offer a range of options.”

  He stooped slightly to talk to me, the way you would talk to a child.

  “May I ask you, sir, how old you are?”

  I raised my head and, out of the dark shadow that my cap cast over my face, looked him straight in the eyes.

  “No.”

  I left the hotel and walked back to the train station. As I was about to go in, a large bundle lying a few yards to the right of the entrance caught my eye. It was a homeless man, his body shrouded in a green parka and his face turned to the wall. I couldn't see anything except the gray-black stubble on his face. He was sleeping.

  I reached into my pocket, pulled out all the money I had left, thirty-eight hundred marks, and put it into the pocket of his parka. Then I went home.

  If you liked How to Lose Everything: A Mostly True Story, you might also like Dear Teen Me: Authors Write Letters to Their Teen Selves by E. Kristin Anderson and Miranda Kenneally.

  Growing pains are an essential part of teenage life, for better and for worse. Some “mistakes” turn into positive, life-changing experiences, and some apparent triumphs seem, in retrospect, like low points. Some first kisses leave you feeling on top of the world, and others can make you want to hide under a rock. In Dear Teen Me, your favorite YA authors—including Lauren Oliver, Ellen Hopkins, Tom Angleberger, and Carrie Jones—revisit critical moments from their young lives and offer advice and guidance to their teenage selves. So pick a page, and find out….

  Who had a really bad first kiss?

  Who found her true love at 18?

  Who wishes she’d had more fun in high school instead of studying so hard?

  And who skipped prom to go to a Grateful Dead concert, only to wind up stranded and alone?

  The letters cover a wide range of topics, including physical abuse, body issues, bullying, friendship, love, and enough insecurities to fill an auditorium. Some authors focus on a hilarious mistake or one especially big day, others offer words of hope for desperate times, and a few graphic novelists even turn their stories into visual art. So whether you’re a theater kid, a band geek, a bad boy, a good girl, a loner, a stoner, a nerd, or a jock, you’ll find friends—and a lot of familiar faces—in Dear Teen Me.

  Keep reading to preview a sample of Dear Teen Me: Authors write Letters to Their Teen Selves...

  DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION

  Marke Bieschke

  Dear Teen Me,

  You’ve just turned sixteen, and pretty soon, on a random Saturday night, you’re going to roll your mom’s car out of the garage, start it up down the street, and sneak off to a tiny downtown Detroit nightclub. That night is going to change your life. And no, it’s not because on your way back you make an illegal left-hand turn into the police chief’s personal car and get totally busted for taking the car without permission—although that certainly throws a monkey wrench into your summer plans.

  But that night, with two misfit friends at your side, you discover an underground world where you’re accepted for the fantastic little freak that you are—a world that expresses itself though music, fashion, and dance like you’ve never heard or seen before. It’s full of outrageous and outspoken weirdos who love art and books as much as you do, and who want to hear what you actually think about things. This world is completely opposed to your everyday high school reality, where people beat you up because you dye your hair and listen to bands from England.

  You’ll end up sneaking out again and again, of course. You’ll spend your days fantasizing about the next club night, figuring out what you’re going to wear, what you’re going to say, and how you’re going to dance—not to mention how you’re going to get there. You’ve finally found a place where you belong! (And where you’re not the only one who’s gay.) You treasure every second in this world, and eventually it won’t just be your passion; it will be your career.

  Looking back, however, you realize something else: Taking the car and getting caught were part of a pattern of behavior that was more or less directly tied to your father’s alcoholism. You had no clue what was going on at the time—your mother’s largely successful attempts to hide his disease will implode a year later, when your dad shocks you and your sister by bravely and successfully checking into rehab. He didn’t beat you or anything, and you were always provided for. But he did shut you out in weird ways—ways that made you feel you had to struggle to be heard, and that amplified both your loneliness and your independence.

  You knew something was going on, but what? By taking the car you were crying out for attention in a perfectly teenage way, but you were also escaping an incomprehensible situation, trying to break the silence about something you felt sure was there, but which was never discussed. You were looking for a family that could openly express itself.

  In a way, the whole experience was a good thing. It all turned out okay—great, even. Your father has been alcohol-free for almost twenty-five years now, and the two of you have grown close. When you wer
e struggling with your own chemical dependency issues, his recovery served as a model for your own. When some of the dear friends you met at the club that fateful night started getting sick with AIDS, you recognized the harmful effects of silence and started speaking out. You’ve learned to trust your instincts, and you know that friendship and success are there for you, as long as you have the courage to reach out for them.

  Marke Bieschke, aka Marke B., is a coauthor of Queer: The Ultimate LGBT Guide for Teens (2011). He’s the managing editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian and writes the weekly nightlife column Super Ego. His writing has appeared in the Best American Music Writing series, and he covers dance music for XLR8R magazine. He lives in San Francisco with his husband and goes out clubbing almost every night, although he no longer dyes his hair.

  FIRST KISS…ISH

  Joseph Bruchac

  Dear Teen Me,

  You didn’t believe that what your grandmother kept telling you would ever come true. You couldn’t. But when you hit your growth spurt you really hit it. Suddenly, you were bigger and stronger than all of the guys who used to bully you. You’d been fired after your first day as a caddy because you couldn’t lug a golf bag, but now you’re the right tackle on the football team, and a varsity heavyweight wrestler.

  However, I’m sad to say that despite the growth spurt that transformed you from a bullied brainiac into a major jock, you’re still not about to get the girl anytime soon. Partly, yes, because you lack smoothitude, but also because you’re not willing to settle for just anybody. Your grandmother taught you to respect women as actual human beings (and not to look at them as objects), and you learned that lesson well. Your grandmother was one of the first women to pass the bar in New York, and even though she never worked as an attorney, she definitely knew how to “lay down the law” on your behavior.