Page 96 - A Little Life: A Novel

icy, of being boring, which he recognized that here might have been
considered the greater misfortune than being whatever it was he was.) In the
background, as if far away, he could hear Malcolm and JB having a fight

about evil.
“I’m just saying, we wouldn’t be having this argument if you’d read
Plato.”
“Yeah, but what Plato?”
“Have you read Plato?”
“I don’t see—”
“Have you?”

“No, but—”
“See! See, see?!” That would be Malcolm, jumping up and down and
pointing at JB, while Willem laughed. On weed, Malcolm grew both sillier
and more pedantic, and the three of them liked getting into silly and
pedantic philosophical arguments with him, the contents of which Malcolm
could never recall in the morning.

Then there was an interlude of Willem and JB talking about something—
he was too sleepy to really listen, just awake enough to distinguish their
voices—and then JB’s voice, ringing through his fug: “Jude!”
“What?” he answered, his eyes still closed.
“I want to ask you a question.”
He could instantly feel something inside him come alert. When high, JB
had the uncanny ability to ask questions or make observations that both

devastated and discomfited. He didn’t think there was any malice behind it,
but it made you wonder what went on in JB’s subconscious. Was this the
real JB, the one who had asked their hallmate, Tricia Park, what it was like
growing up as the ugly twin (poor Tricia had gotten up and run out of the
room), or was it the one who, after JB had witnessed him in the grip of a
terrible episode, one in which he could feel himself falling in and out of

consciousness, the sensation as sickening as tumbling off a roller coaster in
mid-incline, had snuck out that night with his stoner boyfriend and returned
just before daybreak with a bundle of bud-furred magnolia branches, sawn
off illegally from the quadrangle’s trees?
“What?” he asked again, warily.
“Well,” said JB, pausing and taking another inhalation, “we’ve all known
each other a while now—”

“We have?” Willem asked in fake surprise.