The Loser's Guide to Life and Love by A. E. Cannon Page B

chocolate candy with rum and cherry centers at Christmas.
    Dancing.
    Flirting.
    Writing love poems.
    Kissing boys I choose to kiss.
    Shouting to the whole world that I don’t care what it thinks of me.
    Changing my hair.
    Disturbing the universe.
    Eating a peach.
    â€œDo I dare to eat a peach?” In the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” that’s the question asked by an old man who knows life is passing him by. (BTW, if you haven’t read this poem yet, you will. Trust me. It’s the kind of poem that makes English teachers salivate, just like Pavlov’s dogs.)
    I, however, hated the poem. Loathed it. Despised it. Especially the ending, where J. Alfred Prufrock says, “I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.”
    On nights like these, when the breezes blow lonely through the trees, I know just how he feels.
    Do you know what I want most? More than straight A’s and soccer goals?
    I. Want. To. Stop. Being. Afraid.

FROM THE LAB BOOK OF QUENTIN ANDREWS O’ROURKE
    Swish!
    Perfect release. Perfect arc. Perfect drop. Perfect shot through the hoop every single time. Sweet!
    He doesn’t make a big deal about it, but I know my father can’t understand why a person (me, for example) would choose to play a team sport (basketball, for example) alone. Naturally he wouldn’t understand something like that, because he is the quintessential team player. Football, basketball, and baseball in high school. Football in college. Pickup games of basketball now.
    My father can golf like a dream, but he’s indifferent to the game. Too much of an individual sport. Besides, golfers don’t rough each other up while they’re playing.They don’t throw each other to the ground and get grass stains all over their polo shirts, then cheerfully help each other up and slap each other on the behind after the round is over.
    What my father doesn’t understand is that if you’re really good at something (like making baskets) and you don’t have other people around to complicate things, you can achieve a sort of perfection. The game stays simple and clean and elegant when you’re not playing with someone else.
    Swish!
    And it’s another perfect, boring shot!
    I snap up the ball on the bounce, dribble, and spin around. The wind blows, and suddenly I am distracted, even startled by the unexpected sight of dragonflies, dipping in the moonlight.
    I go up for another shot and…miss!
    I didn’t just miss. I bricked.
    As I chase after the wildly bouncing ball, I wonder with the back of my brain where all those dragonflies have come from. And suddenly I have an epiphany. Right there in the middle of the driveway. Right there in the middle of a summer night. I stop dead in my tracks and just let the basketball roll down the driveway and out into the street as something important becomes perfectly clear to me.
    I now understand why I have been dissatisfied, and Ialso realize what it is that I really want.
    I want people coming at me, trying to put me off my shot.
    I want to make a shot in spite of it.
    I want heat.
    I want dust.
    I, Quentin Andrews O’Rourke, want complications.

THE EMAIL ELLIE WANTED TO SEND
    SUBJECT: What I want…
    To J.
    Mary’s boyfriend, Rick, taught me how to say the words in Portuguese.
    Eu quero. “I want.”
    The words look so bold, so naked, so daring and demanding somehow when you say them straight up like that.
    Eu quero.
    But there they are, dancing through my head as I sit on Mary’s balcony in the dark. I came outside hours ago to watch the moon climbover the mountains and wonder if this hurt in my heart will ever go away, when suddenly a single dragonfly appeared. It hovered on glassy wings in front of my face and it was like I could read its mind.
    Where are the others? I want the others.
    I was so startled, I yelped. Still, the dragonfly hovered so close