Page 109 of Goodbye Days

“Oh my g— Can you seriously not see how that was different? I didn’t get together with Eli after my previous boyfriend had just died.”

I’m crumbling; splintering. “What? What is so wrong with me?”

“There’s nothing wrong with you.”

I suddenly feel ridiculous in my new clothes. Like Jesmyn saw right through my costume. “Is it that I’m not as brilliant as Dearly? Or Eli?”

“Your brilliance is not the problem. Not at all. I read the story you gave me.”

“And of course you didn’t say a word about it.”

“I don’t sit around telling people how brilliant they are. I show them. I showed you by the respect I’ve given you, which you don’t seem to have for me.”

“You had no problem telling Dearly how brilliant he is.”

“Well, he and I don’t eat lunch together every day.”

“Not by your choice.”

“Are you seriously jealous of one of my favorite musicians?”

I sit there with my mouth agape, trying to figure out how to answer no when the answer is yes. “No,” I say. This is going terribly. But I can’t stop. Some malevolent voice is telling me to burn my life down. “Eli wasn’t that great.” The words sear my lips as they leave. What are you doing?

Jesmyn looks at me as if I’ve slapped her. “Listen to yourself.” She raises her index finger. “One week ago we were having a goodbye day for him. One week.” Her voice is unsteady and swollen with tears.

We stare ahead and say nothing. Jesmyn shakes her head. She wipes at her eyes.

“Eli would have wanted us to be together if he wasn’t around anymore.” I say it to myself, hoping she won’t hear and make me repeat it.

She spins to face me, eyes ablaze. She points in my face with a shaking finger. “I am not a stamp collection that someone leaves in a will, got it? I am not a piece of property to be passed down.”

Watch it burn. Watch it burn. “I didn’t mean to—”

But she’s already got the door open. She whirls to face me. “Do I need to tell you not to text me, call me, or talk to me?” She gets out and slams the door so hard, I’m surprised the window doesn’t shatter.

She makes it a few steps toward her house before she spins around and returns. She opens the door. A surge of illogical, unfounded hope passes through me. Look, she’ll say, we’re both really emotional right now. Let’s forget all of this ever happened and keep being friends.

She leans in the open door. “Another thing. You might’ve had a chance. Had. Maybe. But now?” With another window-rattling door slam, she’s gone.

I sit catatonic for several moments. It’s the same stupor as when I found out what had happened to Sauce Crew. In which I wonder if I’m imagining what happened, because it’s too horrendous to be real.

As Jesmyn’s front door stays closed and dark, the pain begins to flood in like in movies where a submarine is sinking. A little jet of water. Then another; bigger. And another. They’re becoming thicker. Unfixable. Until finally, the sea rushes in, hungry and black, to claim everyone left alive.

I hate my dead friend Eli.

Even more than that, I hate myself.

I make it home eleven minutes after my midnight curfew, but I don’t particularly care. What are my parents going to do? Ground me from hanging out with friends?

I go into their bedroom and give them the I-haven’t-been-drinking-or-smoking-pot hugs and then I head for my room. But then I hear raucous laughter from behind Georgia’s door and reconsider. No way am I going to sleep.

I go out and sit on the front steps, resting my elbows on my knees. I have no idea how long I’m out there because I don’t own a watch or—at the present—a phone.

The sound of the front door opening startles me. I look over my shoulder.

“Hey,” Georgia says. “There you are. When did you get home?”

“Little while ago. Where are Maddie and Lana?”