The Rest of Us Just Live Here

Content Warning: The source text includes mentions of suicidal ideation, detailed depictions of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and references to alcohol addiction, disordered eating, and anti-LGBTQ+ bias.

In the moments before Henna and Mikey kiss for the first time, Henna tells Mikey: “Here’s this future we’re looking at. And it’s not far away like the future normally is. It’s here, now. Like any second” (123). This articulation of the changing proximity of “the future” encapsulates what all of the teenagers in this book feel: that their high school years are a kind of holding pattern in which they can mature as they prepare for this oncoming future. For Mikey, this holding pattern in a comfortable space because it doesn’t require change—so long as he stays in the limbo of high school, he doesn’t have to risk losing his friendship with Henna by expressing his feelings for her, and he doesn’t have to face the reality that life after high school will meaning moving away from the emotional support Jared and Mel provide.

The rapidly approaching future is also intimidating for Mikey because the internal lives of the adults in his life remain largely inaccessible to him. As Mikey ruminates on why none of the adults in town seem to believe in the supernatural, he wonders “What happens to you when you get older? Do you just forget everything from before you turned eighteen? Do you make yourself forget?” (29). This line of questioning suggests that Mikey perceives a fundamental disconnect between the way he and his friends understand the world and the way adults do. Mikey spends much of the novel trying to make sense of his parents’ decision-making processes: He wonders why his mother prioritizes her career over her children and why his father chooses to put off rehab for his alcohol addiction when he knows it’s his best option. The fact that Mikey can’t answer these questions creates concern about what kind of adult he’ll be if he can’t understand the inner workings of the world of adults.

By the novel’s end, many of the plot points that have caused Mikey stress—such as where his mother’s political campaign will go, or whether his friendship with Jared will survive their inevitable separation—remain entirely unresolved. This lack of resolution, though, doesn’t frighten Mikey the way it did at the start of the novel. He wonders what might happen in the future, asking “What will this summer be like? Too fast, probably. Too many nights at Grillers, but also nights together, all of us. Like we are now” (315-16). Mikey learns to cope with the uncertainty of the future by accepting the unchangeable fact of that uncertainty and instead embracing everything the present has to offer. The final scene isn’t one of action or forward momentum: It simply describes Mikey and his friends sitting and watching the school burn down. This closing scene emphasizes Mikey’s movement toward learning to enjoy the moment he’s in rather than worrying about what will follow.