Cassidy:Nooooooo.
Sophie:No.
X:No way. Imagine all the dread you’d feel waiting for it to happen. It’d take the fun out of being alive.
Me:Yes, it’s always good to be prepared.
Next isCassidy:Is unconditional love real?
Martin:Of course.
Cassidy:Absolutely not.
Sophie:Yes.
X:Yeah, for sure.
Me:No, and also shouldn’t there be conditions?
ThenSophie:Is there such a thing as happily ever after?
Martin:Yes.
Cassidy:No.
Sophie:Yes.
X:Absolutely yes.
Me:How long is Ever, and when is After? What I’m saying is “no.”
And finally,X:Is there life after death?
Martin:I don’t know.
Cassidy:God, I hope not.
Sophie:No, not according to science.
X:I don’t know, but I hope so.
Me:I don’t know and I don’t want to know.
We play a few more rounds. Martin asks if love can last forever. Cassidy and I are the only ones who say that it can’t. Cassidy is just being her ornery, cynical self.
I, on the other hand, have actual proof that it doesn’t.
Despite our rule about not getting into long-winded discussions about the answers, we do anyway. X can’t believe that I’d want to know where and when I was going to die. “It’d be terrible,” he says. “You’d have a huge existential cloud of doom hovering over your head all the time.”
Everyone gives Cassidy a hard time for saying she hopes there’s no life after death. “Once is enough for me, thank you very much,” she says. Eventually, though, she relents and says it’d be okay if she “ends up where all the cool, fun people are.” It’s not clear to any of us if she thinks that’s heaven or hell or someplace else.
After a while we move on to gossiping about our classmates, which means we gossip about their love lives. I know for certain that the next topic will be our own love lives.
I’m not sure I’m ready to hear how active X’s has been. “I have to pee,” I say, too loud from tipsiness.
“I’ll walk you,” Martin says, as he always does. The bathroom is too far away and too isolated for us to go alone, so we use the buddy system. Martin’s always the buddy.
“I need to go too,” says X.
