The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

think people hate a fat person? Try a fat person who’s trying to get thin. Brought out the motherfucking balrog in niggers. Sweetest girls you’d ever see would say the vilest shit to him on the street, old ladies would jabber, You’re disgusting, disgusting , and even Harold, who’d never shown much in the way of anti-Oscar tendencies, started calling him Jabba the Butt, just because. It was straight-up nuts.
    OK, people suck, but what were his options? O had to do something . Twenty-four/seven at a computer, writing sci-fi mon-sterpieces, darting out to the Student Center every now and then to play video games, talking about girls but never actually touching one—what kind of life was that? For fuck’s sake, we were at Rutgers—Rutgers was just girls everywhere, and there was Oscar, keeping me up at night talking about the Green Lantern. Wondering aloud, If we were orcs, wouldn’t we, at a racial level, imagine ourselves to look like elves?
    Dude had to do something .
    He did, too.
    He quit.
    It was a nutty thing really. Four days a week we were running. I put in five miles myself but with him it was just a little every day. Thought he was doing OK, all things considered. Building, you know? And then right in the middle of one of our jogs. Out on George Street, and I looked back over my shoulder, saw that he had stopped. Sweat running down everywhere. Are you having a heart attack? I am not, he said. Then why ain’t you running? I’ve decided to run no more. Why the fuck not? It’s not going to work, Yunior. It ain’t going to work if you don’t want it to work. I know it’s not going to work. Come on, Oscar, pick up your goddamn feet. But he shook his head. He tried to squeeze my hand and then walked to the Livingston Ave. stop, took the Double E home. The next morning I prodded him with my foot but he didn’t stir.
    I will run again no more, he intoned from under his pillow.
    I guess I shouldn’t have gotten mad. Should have been patient with the herb. But I was pissed . Here I was, going the fuck out of my way to help this fucking idiot out, and he was pissing it back in my face. Took this shit real personal.
    Three days straight I badgered him about the running and he kept saying, I’d rather not, I’d rather not. For his part he tried to smooth it over. Tried to share his movies and his comic books and to keep up the nerdly banter, tried to go back to how it was before I started the Oscar Redemption Program. But I wasn’t having it. Finally dropped the ultimatum. You either run or that’s it.
    I don’t want to do it anymore! I don’t! Voice rising.
    Stubborn. Like his sister.
    Last chance, I said. I was sneakered up and ready to roll, and he was at his desk, pretending not to notice.
    He didn’t move. I put my hands on him.
    Get up!
    And that was when he yelled. You leave me alone!
    Actually shoved me. I don’t think he meant it, but there it was. Both of us astounded. Him trembling, scared sick, me with my fists out, ready to kill. For a second I almost let it go, just a mistake, a mistake, but then I remembered myself.
    I pushed him. With both hands. He flew into the wall. Hard.
    Dumb, dumb, dumb. Two days later Lola calls from Spain, five o’clock in the morning.
    What the fuck is your problem , Yunior?
    Tired of the whole thing. I said, without thinking, Oh, fuck off, Lola.
    Fuck off? The silence of Death. Fuck you , Yunior. Don’t ever speak to me again.
    Say hi to your fiancé for me, I tried to jeer, but she’d already hung up.
    Motherfucker , I screamed, throwing the phone into the closet.
     
    And that was that was that was that. The end of our big experiment. He actually did try to apologize a couple of times, in his Oscar way, but I didn’t reciprocate. Where before I’d been cool with him, now I just iced him out. No more invitations to dinner or a drink. Acted like roommates act when they’re beefing. We were polite and stiff, and where before we would jaw about writing and shit, now I didn’t have nothing to say to him. Went back to my own life, back to being the ill sucio. Had this crazy burst of toto-energy. Was being spiteful, I guess. He went back to eating pizzas by the eight-slice and throwing himself kamikaze-style at the girls.
    The boys, of course, sensed what was up, that I wasn’t protecting the gordo anymore, and swarmed.
    I like to think it wasn’t too bad. The boys didn’t slap him around or nothing, didn’t steal his shit. But I guess it was