i<3the environment. (sorry if it gets a lil preachy in here). thanks for reading!!!

8. Eric Wilson (The Boy Who Wore Boat Shoes)

I get to Paige's when I'm supposed to: half an hour before Book Club is set to begin. It's a Friday afternoon, which means that Ari has been working since 10 AM. She's still on the clock for another half hour. But her boss never shows up and when she does she never minds if Ari has visitors—consumer traffic is good, so I've heard. I usually try to pop in at least once during the day, but sometimes I can't because of a lunch rush or a particularly slow customer who just wants to sip coffee for three hours ("You're not done until the customer is completely satisfied." –my manager's motto).

When I walk into Paige's, I hear a familiar voice coming from the back of the store, prattling on about the sun. From what I gather in a span of fifteen seconds, Natalie is upset because a designer is doing a tropical shoot and wants Natalie and all of the other models to be crisply tan. While Natalie would be up for seeking a natural tan through napping on the beach for day, the shoot is tomorrow. Which means that the designer wants her to get a spray tan or to get into a tanning bed, ASAP. Natalie, of course, doesn't want to do that because she's an advocate for natural skin—it would go against what she preaches. She wants Ari's sage guidance.

My dear girlfriend says, "If it's against your beliefs, then don't do the shoot."

"But I already signed a contract!" Natalie counters.

"Your lawyers can't get you out of it?"

"Like, maybe. But even then. I'd feel bad because I've worked with this designer before and we've never had an issue. We have a good relationship. And if I don't do the shoot, then I get one step closer to being blackballed from the fashion world. Or worse: DIVA-ed."

"'DIVA-ed?'"

"Yeah, like, if you complain too much about stupid things, then you're DIVA-ed. So when designers need high-profile models and they call their designer friends for references, if you do something stupid like refuse to get a fake tan because of your morals, then the designer can tell all of their designer friends that you're a diva."

"Get the fake tan," I advise, emerging from the maze of mass-murdered trees. I set down a bag of doughnuts on Ari's desk and Natalie immediately grabs one. "They have completely organic solutions that are toxin-free and that won't damage your skin. Or—better yet—why not just ask the makeup team to airbrush you darker than normal?"

After she finishes chewing a bite of her doughnut, Natalie says, "Ari, if you weren't the one I'm pining after and if Mason spontaneously combusted, then I'd be all over you, Eric, for that type of thinking!"

I crouch down to Ari's seated form and peck her cheek. "It's a gift," I shrug. "Where's Mason? Does he want a doughnut?"

As soon as the D-word has exited my mouth I realize my mistake. Natalie's eyes bulge and then Mason suddenly appears, coming from another section of shelves filled with repurposed tree corpses. Natalie shoots up from on top of Ari's desk and blocks Mason like she's a linebacker, ready to pounce.

"No," Natalie says firmly. "Mason, no!"

"But, Nat!" whines the pop star. "Would one doughnut kill me?"

"Yeah, actually, it would!"

"C'mon! I don't remember the last time I had a doughnut!"

"That's the point—you're not supposed to eat them! Do you know how many calories are in one of these things?"

"Uh, no, and I bet you don't know either!" Mason's eyes flick down and then come right back up to Natalie's face. "You bitch!"

"EXCUSE YOU!" Natalie shouts.

"You were eating one! You have a shoot tomorrow, Nat! I'm not even working for another day and a half! I have time to work off a doughnut. But you... Geez, Nat, just wait 'til I call Arturo and tell him about this! Forget the tan—you're in so much shit, Nattie!"

Mason begins tapping on his phone, actively pursuing the threat until Natalie finally relents—despite her better judgment—and gives the bitten doughnut over to Mason. "One bite," she says. "Just one. And we'll both run ten miles tonight. No carbs for a week! And no one finds out about this, deal?"

Mason verifies the transaction by taking a bite, just as Natalie had, into the doughnut. Natalie immediately snatches the pastry once Mason removes it from his mouth, and then she hands it over to Ari so that neither of them can have it. Ari eats the doughnut without the pressure of the apocalypse weighing on her shoulders.

I feel like a jerk, because had I not brought the doughnuts, this all could've been avoided.

Natalie Perry and Mason Grey are two of the most intense people I have ever met. Despite Mason's seemingly apathetic douchebag vibe and Natalie's valley girl charm, they are constantly on. They never know when a paparazzo is lurking in the background, which means that they constantly have to look hyper-presentable, lest TMZ acquires a picture of supermodel Natalie Perry in sweatpants. In order to look hyper-presentable, they spend half of their day living according their personal trainers and nutritionists. They rarely eat anything that isn't pre-approved by their teams, as to prevent bloating and weight gain.

Natalie and Mason make money through looking good. If they constantly ate doughnuts, their value would decrease as their muffin tops increased. My bringing sugar into their immediate realms of existence is equivalent to someone bringing drugs to my room in rehab. It's all too tempting.

Mason is not allowed to eat non-natural sugar. Plain and simple. Every once and a while he'll be able to eat certain fruits, but more often than not he lives on pure protein and green smoothies. I consider myself a fairly healthy person when it comes to taking care of my body. I work out religiously and I eat the right foods. But in comparison to Mason, I might as well be shoveling in Twinkies and Ho-Hos. Mason's lifestyle in regards to health is so strict; I don't know how he does it.

For me, every once in while I'll eat a doughnut or a cookie, because I know that it won't kill me. But Mason's not allowed to eat sugar. He has entire team of people making sure that he doesn't do something detrimental like eat a piece of cake, which is kind of crazy. Because when you restrict someone so much—especially someone like Mason—then they're bound to explode. From what Natalie's told Ari and me, Mason explodes through binging.

Either, Mason binge drinks, because he's absolutely NOT supposed to drink alcohol (but there are other reasons for that, aside from the calories), or he'll do something stupid like eat an entire apple pie or box of cannolis. The latter is probably worse, because drinking you can take care of. But eating so much sugar in one sitting is actually really dangerous for someone like Mason. His body isn't used to sugar at all, so when he overloads it, it's just a mess. The guy might be a jerk, but I have to respect his forced commitment to health.

Once Mason and Natalie have resolved their little row, they come to the grief stage of cheating on their diets. Natalie looks like she's considering throwing up and Mason looks like he wants to go run a marathon. The guilt is palpable.

"So," I say, trying to divert from the unruly mess I've made, "it's really nice out."

Natalie just looks at me and shakes her head.

"Dude, are you sure you live in Cali? Like, have you seen our summer?" Mason scoffs. It's the most he's said directly to me in a month.

"Yeah, I've seen California summer, but I'm just saying on its own—not compared anything else—it's really nice out. The sun is out. It's not too hot. Not too muggy. There's even a breeze. It's nice out."

"It's nice out," Ari concurs with a slight smile.

Natalie relents and admits that, yes, it is nice out. This then leads her out of the dangerous world of calorie-induced panic attacks and into a brighter place. She starts talking about the beach. All four of us have a say on this matter. Ari likes watching the waves, Mason likes tanning on his boat, and Natalie just loves everything about it. In theory, I love the beach, but I can't think about how much I love the beach because I'm reminded of the melting glaciers and poles that are causing rising sea levels. While we may have steered away from calories, I am now having a minor anxiety attack about the perpetuity of humanity.

I think about carbon dioxide and how much the US—alone—emits a year. It's a crippling amount. It's a lethal amount.

Then I think about the trees and how cyclical the whole process is. We cut them down, which is good because they absorb heat and sunlight. But they also take in carbon and produce oxygen. We need the oxygen. But we can't afford any more heat on the planet. We can't win.

I think about all the countries that are still developing and can't stop just because some rich countries decided that climate change suddenly matters. We can't demand that they stop using coal and oil. We can stop using coal and oil. But we don't want to, yet we want them to. It's awful. It's unfair. We should just use solar and wind power. But it's ugly and spacious and expensive.

We are going to kill our planet. We are going to kill ourselves.

Of course, I don't say any of that when it comes to my natural turn in discussion about the beach. I just say that I don't like the seagulls but that walking on sand is one of my favorite things.

Then Olivia and Luke show up. I'm pretty sure that Luke is already buzzed. But it's a low-key buzzed, so only the observant notice. Luke's good at handling his liquor. I think that he only drinks enough to take the edge off. (And so that he doesn't kill Olivia). Natalie and I have talked about it before. For some reason everyone else either doesn't notice Luke coming in drunk or high or they just choose to ignore it. But as a former addict/drug connoisseur, I can tell when Luke's baked. He showed up to the first two meetings sober, and then he just went for it. He never shows up a wreck—just mellow enough.

A lot of my friends at school smoke weed. One or two like popping pills, and for a while my friend Mikey was really into LSD. But they never do straight-up heroin (opioid pills, maybe) or cocaine. Never crack—it's whack. But they smoke weed. Damn, do they smoke weed.

The plus side to befriending a bunch of hippies is that they're into the environment and actively care about saving the planet. The downside is that, because they're hippies, they immensely enjoy toking. I'm friends with them because they're good people, and because when they're not stoned we have a lot in common.

When I first started hanging out with my friends, I thought that maybe their stoner habits would be a major issue. My therapist was ready to shit a brick when I told him about the people I met and Ari was also beyond worried. But I just kind of had this gut feeling that they weren't bad people. They just happened to be marijuana enthusiasts. And while I learned my lesson through quite a while in rehabilitation, they're still learning. My issue was moderation. Most of my friends are social smokers. They have problems, but not quite addictions.

I'm never around when they smoke. I'm just there when we're geeking out about sustainability and how to save the polar bears. We go surfing together sometimes. Along with Ari—who was always a free spirit—my friends were the ones who peer pressured me to put away my douche-y preppiness. I'm not the boy who wears boat shoes anymore. Now, I'm just another guy who wears Birkenstocks and hands out flyers for environmental summits. I don't have dreadlocks, though, which I see as a victory over the Left. And I still have my all-American good looks, which don't exactly go away just because you decide that saving the world is slightly more important than vanity.

My official ranking of the top six things I currently care about:

1. Ari Remon

2. Saving the planet

3. Sobriety

4. My family

5. My face

6. My body

A few years ago, weed at would've been at the top of the list, followed by football. I can't even imagine what I would've put as the remaining four. In high school, it was all about getting high and playing ball. Nothing else mattered. Well, that's not true. Senior year, Elizabeth Turner would've been on my Top 6 List. I really liked her. She was cute, spunky, and just so cookie-cutter on the outside. What I didn't know (what no one knew) was that she was the opposite of cookie-cutter. She was a nationally ranked basketball player, recruited by UConn practically the first time she touched a basketball. Liz isn't on my list anymore. She hasn't been on it for a very long time. She is, however, in book club, through some twisted turns of Fate.

It's the craziest thing that Liz ended up in the same book club that Ari founded. It's just insane. Ari invited Emily (who isn't here yet—as per usual), and Emily invited Liz, because they're living in the same dorm building this summer. That is just the wackiest thing in the world. When I saw Liz, I thought I was going to faint. Not because she's the most gorgeous girl in the world (she may be cute, but between Ari and Natalie, Liz doesn't even hold a candle in the beauty department), but because I thought that I had put my past behind me once and for all. But then in walks Liz Turner, along with my old buddy, Dylan Collins.

Dylan and I were best friends growing up. Then we weren't friends. Then I dated Liz. Then Dylan dated Liz. Then I saw them during a vacation. Then I thought that I'd never see them again. Then they walked into book club.

They keep walking into book club, like right now. Just so casual. Like it's no big deal. Liz is very casual—she's really comfortable with who she is. She doesn't wear much makeup and she dresses like she's a basketball player—nothing overdone, always shorts or sweats. Dylan isn't as casual. He just doesn't want to be here. He's not a reader.

They sit down and join in on a conversation. I take a few deep breaths, just like my therapist told me to. I close my eyes and imagine my calm place: a world before the humans destroyed it, gazing out at the neither rising nor falling sea, breathing in unpolluted air. Ari is by my side. We're there. I can breathe. I breathe.

I open my eyes and it's all okay. I can face the past. It's not scary. I will be okay.

Then Emily and Oliver arrive—with their foreign tea. It's pretty good tea, but I'm one of the only people who drinks it, aside from Oliver and Emily themselves.

Ari goes to Stanford, for some reason Stanford let me in too (because of the football thing, mostly) (but I have since transferred to UC Santa Cruz, so I am no longer at Stanford), and Olivia goes to Harvard. But every time Oliver and Emily walk into the room, all our supposed intellect shrivels up. The three of us combined are nothing in comparison to Emily and Oliver. Emily isn't even at an Ivy, but she just exudes a certain understated smartness. Oliver, on the other hand, goes to Brown. He is the embodiment of every pretentious, brilliant white boy who went to Brown before him. They are the youngest people in the room, but their individual IQs are probably more than double everyone in book club's combined. They never run out of insightful comments.

Since Emily and Oliver are here, we can finally start.

We begin by talking about the obvious: Ida's A-bomb. She told Mikkel that she was pregnant, which was why she went away. But she couldn't stay away, because she missed her friends too much. Also, she craved their support structure. On top of Ida actually admitting to someone other than Soren that she's pregnant, she also told Soren that the baby wasn't his. Instead of reacting with relief or unconditional support, Soren gets mad at Ida. He's in love with Freja and they're together, yet he's upset that Ida slept with someone other than he, even though they were just a drunken one-night stand. It's absurd.

After I express my agitation with Soren, I can't really focus on the discussion. I'm too busy thinking about Denmark. Ari and I visited during winter break this past year. It's a gorgeous country, and there are so many bikes. The standard of living is different than it is here. Everyone seems happier and healthier. Also, the air is cleaner. The book we're reading takes place in Denmark, and a Danish author wrote it. It's interesting how much turmoil occurs within the plot, even though I can't imagine a stich of drama bleeding into a country so pure.

I think about Denmark for the next hour. I hear what everyone else is saying, but I don't process it. When book club is over, I say my proper parting greetings and am only slightly peeved to find that Ari and Natalie have arranged for the four of us to go to dinner together immediately after. (Dinner with Natalie and Mason is a whole production: it involves both Mason and Natalie having to send pictures of the menu to their nutritionists, who tells them what they can eat. Then their nutritionists send the options to their trainers, who decide if they need more protein or carbs or veggies. They usually modify everything they ask for. And if that isn't enough, someone always notices them. Which means pictures and autographs and "I thought it was you, but I wasn't sure!" Fame is cool—it's just a lot). The only consolation to dinner with Mat (that's their couple name: Mason + Nat = Mat) is that Natalie is great most of the time and I'll be with Ari. As long as I'm with Ari, I'm fine.

This summer, we weren't sure what we were going to do. I proposed traveling to South America, but Ari isn't a fan of rain forests. So she got out a map, closed her eyes, and then stuck her finger on a place. That was how we ended up, here, in a college ghost town, renting an apartment that is usually inhabited by college kids during the year. Getting jobs was easy, because all the college kids had gone home, so businesses were frantically grasping at anyone with a high school diploma or GED. So far, the summer has been breezy.

But I could anywhere with Ari Remon, and it'd be breezy.

I am whole-heartedly in love with that girl. I cannot imagine being with anyone else. She stood by me when I transferred from Stanford to UC Santa Cruz, and through my trips to rehab and everything in between. She is the most supportive girlfriend I could ever ask for, and as a plus she cares about the planet (my #2).

I don't know what I would do without Ari Remon in my life. I know that she wants to become a psychologist, which will take a few years, but I'll stick by her, because Ari is the world. I love her...even if she does like reading semi-pretentious Danish books. (For the record, I like reading books, too—I just prefer e-books, because they aren't direct perpetuators of deforestation).