The Beginner's Guide to Living by Lia Hills Page A

really bad. Someone like Hitler, for example. The world would’ve been better off if someone had put a bullet to his head.”
    â€œAnybody?”
    â€œWell, yeah, he was so bloody evil.”
    â€œSo it’s all right to take a gun to someone’s head if you believe them to be evil?”
    â€œSure, as long as that person really is bad. Everybody knew what Hitler was up to. How could anyone have not wanted him dead?”
    â€œPlenty of people believed what Hitler was doing was good.”
    At this point you’re wondering what a guy in a toga would know about World War II.
    â€œBut to get back to your argument—so long as many people accept that what someone is doing is bad, it’s okay to kill them? Is that not what we ask soldiers to do? To destroy a perceived evil on our behalf?”
    â€œSo you believe war is a good thing?”
    â€œI’m not saying that. I’m merely trying to get you to think clearly about your own beliefs. Enjoy your lunch.”
    By now, you’re wondering who the bastard works for—whether he’s a market researcher or some pro-war nut—though he’s sown a seed of a thought, Maybe the whole war issue isn’t so clear-cut .
    You look around to see where he’s got to. He’s hassling some Japanese backpacker three steps up and she’s starting to blush. Maybe her English isn’t that good. Maybe where she comes from it’s strange to be harassed by balding men wearing togas while you’re eating your lunch. But that’s what Socrates did. Hung around public squares in Athens interrogating strangers to help them work out what they believed, and how to know themselves truly. Got him into shitloads of trouble, but I like it—a rebel philosopher.
    *   *   *
    I don’t wear a toga. I pretend to look at the electronic announcements skidding across the wall of a nearby building, while I work out who to ask first. From here I can see the pub where the barman with trunks for arms nearly hit me, and now I’m about to hassle some random person I’ve never met. It’s also Friday and I should be at school, but they are cutting me a lot of slack because of Mom. Things have been weird lately, but sometimes you have to go with it. Socrates must have had some nerve. Not sure why I’m doing this; maybe I’ve got rebel blood.
    There’s a girl not much older than me in a short skirt, trying to cross her legs and eat a salad without showing too much. She’s wearing a necklace with a red plastic heart. I sit on the step next to her, not so close she’ll think I’m trying to pick her up.
    â€œExcuse me?” It’s the girl with the red heart, freckles bridging her cheeks.
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œAre you looking for something?” she asks.
    â€œSorry?”
    â€œI thought you might be a tourist.”
    It’s now I notice that she’s pretty. “Oh, no, I was … um, wondering…”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œWell … if life ends with death?”
    â€œOh.”
    She looks down at her crossed legs and I wonder how many times Socrates got punched or made people cry. She’s obviously working out the best way to tell me to get lost. But she says, “My boyfriend died six months ago. Climbing accident. We used to eat lunch on these steps.”
    Shit. “Look, I’m sorry you don’t have to…”
    â€œIt’s okay,” she says, her hand fiddling with her necklace inside her shirt.
    â€œDid he give you that red heart?”
    â€œNo, my grandma did, when I was a kid. She’s dead too.”
    This is not what I expected. I try to think of something consoling, but the only words I can conjure are She’s safe now , thanks to my tragic great-aunts.
    â€œYou know something weird,” she says. “I used to think it was a shame my grandma never got to meet Sam, but now I imagine that they’re