Prologue

You’d like to hear a story, wouldn't you? About something so real it seems unreal. Those are the only stories worth telling. But would you know a good story if you read one? How could you have known until it had already been on its way. Like a blessing disguised as a nightmare. Would you know a good story if it had tapped you on the shoulder and introduced you to itself? Perhaps taken you for a wild ride in a fancy car and then afterwards, introduced you to its family during a special, evening dinner? Maybe you’d know a good story from a friend. Someone who stood behind it, supporting it, loving it until you realized you had to know it too. Or its just a story that you have to get to know, like a blind date that upon initial acquaintance, you find you have nothing in common, but still do your best to get through the evening, only to find out that you had initially, been wrong.

In all honesty, I don’t know what a good story is. I can speculate, however, that a good story lies within the tumultuous highs and the inescapable, drowning lows that between your labored breaths and chapped fingers from pages that are musty and dry, you look up and realize that you’re not there at all. I can’t promise a story like that. I can’t promise that at the end you’ll put down your book and think to yourself that you had been taken for a ride by something you didn’t expect, from someone you didn’t quite care for, who recommended it to you, and were all the much better for it. No, I can’t promise a good story, but I can promise one worth listening to.

Chapter 1

Picture an empty space, full of empty things, doing empty actions, trying to find meaning in empty words. That's where I live. That's where I figure we all live. In this world devoid of so much that we have to make everything ourselves. “Find happiness” everyone advises “its out there, waiting for you”. But is it really? I suppose it could be if they say so after all. I could just walk outside and down the street, staring down at the rough, unforgiving ground until I magically found one million dollars. That's how the world works after all, just find happiness. Or maybe I’ll find it when I’m walking to class, and I slip on a perfectly placed banana peel, and drop all that I was carrying, just to be helped up by the man of my dreams. I’ll find happiness alright, I’ll find it when I ace every class I take until one day, I’m sitting in an office with a breath taking view and my back to it, as I’m furiously typing away for the sake of the happiness I found.

In case you haven’t realized by now, finding happiness is bullshit. We are makers and just like all things in life, happiness is one of those things that are made. Happiness is made from something raw and initially, unpleasant to the eye. It then undergoes changes. Soft hands that lovingly brush away all the impurities, then a tougher hand, to carve out the the chunks that don’t belong to this particular happiness. Lastly, a meticulous hand comes in, molding the remainder and polishing it off until this man made lump of happiness can be sold like every other piece of happiness as well. This is just the cycle that we all participate in. The making and selling of happiness until the hands that made them suddenly don’t do their jobs as well. The soft hand brushes away too much, the tough one shatters it, and the meticulous one cradles the pieces, wondering if it could've done something to stop the painful creation of happiness that had ruined a life in the process.

These are the things I wonder as I walk to class. I think about finding happiness and how difficult it must be for those without money, love, or a career in relation to me, a spoiled little rich college girl with enough money, romance, and prospects to score me a fulfilling life, that to the onlooking eye, would appear as happiness.

My phone buzzed with a simple question: ‘you down tonight?’. I stared at the simple question, my finger tips hovering over the answer but my racing mind couldn’t give in quite so easily.

I had been approached about a week ago after a heated debate about climate change that left me arguing that humanity wasn’t worth saving if we were only here to be lazy, pernicious slobs. While the instructor and the rest of class were not pleased with my enraged outburst of an argument, someone who had been bin the room by chance, had heard my spiel and confronted me after class with a strange, yet enticing offer.

“Its a club, but a little bit more than a club,” he paused “ a family if you will. We go out and do things.” He stared at me intently, with eyes hoping I’d understand from what little information he gave me.

“What kinds of things?” I asked skeptically as I toyed with the hem on my blouse.

“Things that you ordinarily wouldn’t do. Perhaps, things you shouldn’t be doing. Just come, meet everyone for a night, you don't have to decide anything right now. Just come.” He said, leaving his words to hang in the air and light my imagination on fire, as he handed me a card and then walked off. ‘The Club’ it read, and a phone number underneath that.

My finger tips were responding before I had even made up my mind.

‘Where and when?’

The response was immediate, as if the person on the other end knew what I was going to say and had already typed out a response.

‘The west side. There's a market there with a fountain with no water. Meet there at 8 and wear yellow.’

My stomach churned out of fear as I anxiously glanced at the time. Three more hours until I had to be there, plenty of time to get home, finish some homework and head over. I put away my phone, my sweaty hands almost letting it slip to the ground as the anxious butterflies flew in swirls in stomach. Happiness is made I reminded myself as I got in my car. However, I didn’t know that I wasn’t making happiness.