HOW THEY FELL

THIRD

WHEN I WAS SEVEN, my brother tried to explain to me what the hedonic treadmill was.

(No, it was not an exercise machine from hell used to torment damned souls—thanks for asking.)

He had just started debate that year and had taken a tendency to use me as an audience to practice reciting his cases. And at that time, I was happy for any excuse to get away from being chained to a table and forced to read Spanish texts while enduring a hawk-faced tutor peering over my shoulder, so good-naturedly, I sat on his bed and listened as he paced and preached about a wild variety of social issues.

See, Dante Alaric Montrose was the type of person that could get you to sell out your own mother for a Slim Jim.

He just had something about him that I can't explain, a certain brand of charisma, that made you want to buy into whatever he was selling—whether it be social justice or some philosophical mumbo jumbo.

And as a chubby little kid with low self-esteem issues, God knows I listened to him with a special kind of reverence usually reserved for priests, or superheroes.

"So the idea is you have a set level of happiness, okay?" Sixteen year-old Dante told seven year-old me. "And then, throughout your life, you get a girlfriend, or a promotion at work, or" —he paused for a minute, considering the fact that, you know, he was talking to a seven year-old who didn't really care about money or girls— " . . . your favorite show comes on TV."

I nodded. Now, we were speaking the same language.

"So you get happier for a while, like you're on cloud nine, but then, eventually, the show ends and that high fades and you return back to Earth, or, your baseline of happiness—wow, it's actually a lot like pot, now that I think about it . . . "

"What's pot?"

"Oh shit! Sorry, I wasn't suppose to say that—don't tell mom I said that."

"Why? Is it a curse word?"

"No! It's a . . . plant. It's just a plant. Anyways, back to what I was saying, so the hedonic treadmill makes the point that the 'pursuit of happiness'—the idea that we should always chase after what we think can make us happier—is actually unattainable—"

"That's depressing."

"Because your entire life, your happiness is at a set level. Sometimes you'll deviate from that baseline, but in the end, all the new, exciting novelties you encounter will eventually wear off and . . . Does that make sense?" Dante paused, looking at me.

Let me be honest with you, I kind of stopped paying attention. "No, not really."

Dante blew out a breath. "Okay then, let's move on."

• • •

So I don't know what's making me trudge up memories of that asshole from ten years ago, but I suspect it has something to do with Stacy Greenfield flirting with Claude Santos less than ten feet away from me.

Currently, there's about ten of us seated my dorm—the usual preferred setting for the bimonthly meetings of COAT.

Standing for Coalition of Advocating Teens (can you tell we came up with the acronym before the name?), COAT is a group dedicated to, well, activism on campus. Since its founding, we've won higher-quality toilet paper for the bathrooms and new vending machines with energy drinks, so you can tell we're taken pretty seriously.

Anyways, Camille's addressing the group but whatever she's saying is lost on me as I watch Stacy Greenfield's hand slip into Claude's dark hair, and then she's giggling and he's smiling up at her, too, and hedonic treadmill, hedonic treadmill, hedonic treadmill. All new novelties will eventually wear off. Hedonic treadmill, hedonic—