Mosquitoland

by David Arnold

(Every great character, Iz, be it on page or screen, is multidimensional. The good guys aren’t all good, the bad guys aren’t all bad, and any character wholly one or the other shouldn’t exist at all. Remember this when I describe the antics that follow, for though I am not a villain, I am not immune to villainy.)

Arlene is turning out to be a surprise-a-minute, with her Velcro shoes and phraseology, all pizzazz and très chic, non. I wonder if she’d be so likable if I unloaded on her—just told her everything, even the BREAKING NEWS. I could do it, too. Those bright blue, batty eyes are just begging for

Arlene doesn’t laugh at my joke, which makes me like her even more. Some jokes aren’t meant to be funny.

“I think my dad is a good man who has succumbed to the madness of the world.”

Because I am Mary Iris Malone, and I am not okay.

Most girls my age had long ago stopped telling the truth, and simply started saying what everyone wanted to hear.

Oh-ho, you don’t believe I’m important, eh? Well then, how do you explain these?!?!?!

And do you, Ability, take Vitriol to be your lawfully wedded suffix?

This kind of emptiness can only be filled with heartache and struggle and I-don’t-know-what . . . the enormity of things. The shit-stink of life.

Pain is what matters. Not fast cars or big words or fabulous stories in exotic settings.

“You don’t have to tell me about your letters, Mim. They may be private, and if that’s the case, you tell me to mind my own business. But don’t say I won’t believe you. You’d be surprised what I believe these days.”

thought if I lived long enough, I’d understand things better. But I’m an old woman now, Mim, and I swear, the longer I live, the less things make sense.”

am Mary Iris Malone, and I am empty, cleaned the fuck out. All that’s left is a fierce hunger for flight.

I can’t help but think that before all this happened, I probably would have gotten off in Cleveland in a day or so, and, other than Arlene, not given one thought to these people. But now they’re really part of things, part of my life, written in the History of Me.

Carl lights a cigarette, takes a long draw. God, he looks like a badass smoking in the rain.

Mim the Warrior Princess. Battle survivor with a bloody wound to prove it.

Relationship. That’s exactly what it is. Hey, gurl, I know I almost crushed you to death, but it was a one-time thing, and I swear it’ll never happen again.

they were complete dumps but she didn’t care. They had stories to tell, little pieces of the people who had stayed in them before—what they wore, what they ate, what they believed. Mom said she loved staying in a place where “anything might have happened even if nothing ever did.”

Hanging there with aplomb is a brass L. I twist the letter into the number 7, but it falls again. Too tired to care, I unlock the door with my bottle cap key and breathe in the sweet scent of a moth’s shoe. I wonder—what might have happened in this room?

Sometimes, things are more embarrassing when you’re alone. I guess when no one’s around to hear your stupidity, you’re forced to bear the brunt of it.

There are times when I absolutely, 110 percent, without a doubt, have to laugh at a thing. ’Cause if I don’t, that same thing will make me go stark-raving bananas.

In and of itself, this isn’t noteworthy, but as the kid looks dead-on like a young Frodo Baggins, it is, I believe, the worthiest of all notes. (We shall go through the Mines of Moria! But first, let us replenish our energy with finely sliced deli meats. Eat, drink, be merry! Elves! Ham! Huzzah!)

Because you’ve referenced The Lord of the Rings twice before lunch, or because you’re talking to yourself?

I am Mary Iris Malone, and I am not okay.

don’t think a vivid imagination is all it’s cracked up to be. I’m quite certain you have one, but if not, thank the gods of born-with gifts and move on. However, if you’re cursed as I am with a love of storytelling and adventures in galaxies far, far away, and mythical creatures from fictional lands who are more real to you than actual people with blood and bones—which is to say, people who exist—well, let me be the first to pass on my condolences. Because life is rarely what you imagined it would be. Signing off, Mary Iris Malone, Storytelling Lackey

As I grew up, my tastes changed, but when I think about it, even the music I listen to now has a certain tragic honesty to it. Bon Iver, Elliott Smith, Arcade Fire—artists whose music demands not to be liked but to be believed.

She said even if he were, she would still give him three bucks. She said it wasn’t her job to pick which ones were genuinely starving and which ones were faking it.

have a vision, unclouded by fear.

When you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice.

So I float in silence, watching the final touches of this perfect moonrise, and in a moment of heavenly revelation, it occurs to me that detours are not without purpose. They provide safe passage to a destination, avoiding pitfalls in the process.

sincere soul is damn near impossible to find, and if Walt is my detour, I’ll take it.

“Life is more fictional than fiction.” He did things his way.

“Live your life,” he chuckles, rolling his eyes. But it’s no normal eye roll. It’s an iris-receding, sigh-inducing, shoulder-sagging eye roll. In the history of History, no one has rolled eyes like this, and I suddenly can’t remember the name of any boy I’ve ever known. I’m not sure what that says about me,

“Yes, Mom, but how does the music get from that needle”—I pointed my chubby little finger to the record player—“to my heart.”

Later in life, it would occur to me how strange it was that this obsession of my father’s—that something was wrong with me, serious enough to warrant serious drugs and serious doctors and a life full of serious remedies to avoid serious madness—was driving him mad in his own way. Later in life, it would occur to me that despite his actions, my father really did want what was best for his family.

Later in life, it would occur to me that this was the ultimate dichotomy: for a person to want what’s best but draw from their worst. Dad did just that.

Home is hard. Harder than Reasons. It’s more than a storage unit for your life and its collections. It’s more than an address, or even the house you grew up in.

Sometimes you walk into a room one person, and when you come out the other side, you’re someone else altogether.)

Because even though honesty is hard, you really have to murder people with it if you expect to be a person of any value at all.

“I was lovely once, but he never loved me once.”

I am Mim Malone. I am Mim Alone. I’m alone.

You ever have the feeling you lost something important, only to discover it was never there to begin with?

The Devastatingly True Story of the Handsome Beckett Van Buren.

I still don’t know how to say good-bye to you, I know a certain devastatingly handsome character who would like another shot.

“Maybe it doesn’t have to be, like, a solid good-bye, you know?” He looks at her, wondering how he got to be so lucky. “As opposed to a liquid one?” “Yes, actually. I much prefer liquid good-byes to solid ones.”

Because sometimes a thing’s not a thing until you say it out loud.