Furthermore, she let me come here, and that is no simple thing when you come from where we do, to release your child away to school. So that is the greatest day of my life.”
Tanu shifted the restrain and gulped a couple of times, at that point, gave it to me. I drank, thus did Kiara, and afterward, Ruddy set her head back and flipped around the container, rapidly bringing down the last quarter of the jug.
As she unscrewed the following jug, Rosy grinned at the Colonel. “You won that round. Presently what’s your most exceedingly terrible day?”
“Most noticeably awful day was the point at which my father left. He’s old—he resembles seventy now—and he was old when he wedded my mother, he undermined her. Furthermore, she got him, and she got pissed, so he hit her. And afterward she showed him out, what’s more, h,e left. I was here, and my mother called, and she didn’t disclose to me the entire story with the cheating and everything and the hitting until some other time. She recently said that he was gone and not returning. Furthermore, I haven’t seen him since. All that day, I continued sitting tight for him to call me and clarify it, he won’t ever do. He never called. I at least idea he would bid farewell or something. That was the most noticeably awful day.”
“Poop, you got me beat once more,” I said. “My most noticeably terrible day was in 7th grade when Tommy Hewitt pissed on my workout clothes and afterward the exercise center instructor said I needed to wear my uniform or I’d bomb the class. 7th-grade rec center, isn’t that so? There are more terrible things to fizzle. In any case, it was serious at that point, and I was crying, and attempting to disclose to the instructor what occurred, however, it was so humiliating, and he just hollered and shouted and hollered until I put on these piss-doused shorts and T-shirt.
That was the day I stopped caring what people did. I just never cared anymore,about being a loser or not having friends or any of that. So I guess it was good for me in a way, but that moment
was awful. I mean, imagine me playing volleyball or whatever in pee-soaked gym clothes while Tommy Hewitt tells everyone what he did. That was the worst day.”
Kiara was laughing. “I’m sorry, Aaron.”
“All good,” I said. “Just tell me yours so I can laugh at your pain,” and I smiled, and we laughed together.
“My worst day was probably the same day as my best. Because I left everytheeng. I mean, eet sounds dumb, but my childhood, too, because most twelve-year-olds do not, you know, have to feegure out W-2 forms.”
“What’s a W-2 form?” I asked.
“That’s my point. Eet’s for taxes. So. Same day.”
Kiara had always needed to talk for her parents, I thought, and so maybe she never learned how to talk for herself.
And I wasn’t great at talking for myself either. We had something important in common, then, a personality quirk I didn’t share with Al Rosy aska or anybody else, although almost by definition Kiara and I couldn’t express it to each other. So maybe it was just the way the not-yet-setting sun shone against her lazy dark curls, but at that moment,
I wanted to kiss her, and we did not need to talk in order to kiss, and the puking on her jeans and the months of mutual avoidance melted away.
“Eet’s your turn, Tanu.”
“Worst day of my life,” Tanu said. “June 9, 2000. My grandmother died in Japan. She died in a car accident, and I was supposed to leave to go see her two days later. I was going to spend the whole summer with her and my grandfather, but instead I flew over for her funeral, and the only time I really saw what she looked like, I mean other than in pictures, was at her funeral. She had a Buddhist funeral, and they cremated her, but before they did she was on this, like—well, it’s not really Buddhist. I mean, religion is complicated there, so it’s a little Buddhist and a little Shinto, but y’all don’t care—point being that she was on this, like, funeral pyre or whatever. And that’s the only time I ever saw her, was just before they burned her up. That was the worst day.”
The Colonel lit a cigarette, threw it to me, and lit one of his own. It was eerie, that he could tell when I wanted a cigarette. We were like an old married couple. For a moment, I thought. It’s massively unwise to throw lit cigarettes around a barn full of hay, but then the moment of caution passed, and I just made a sincere effort not to flick ash onto any hay.