Page 123 of Goodbye Days

“No, sir.”

“Any more questions?”

I shake my head and trudge upstairs. I wish I could show him how completely he’s won. Physically. Mentally. Now he’s trying for emotionally. And I can tell it’s going to work.

I stand outside Mars’s door for a moment, summoning my courage. Then I push in. The odor of unwashed clothes and stale food wallops my nostrils, like this door hasn’t been opened in months. Maybe it hasn’t. It’s a stark contrast to the bloodless order and sterility of the rest of the house. It sounds bad, but it’s not. Mars’s room always kind of smelled this way. It’s him. This was his island—now deserted. There’s a jolt of nostalgia.

Judge Edwards made sure that even in the times he and I were apart today, I would continue to suffer.

I loosen my tie, remove it and my jacket, and lay them on Mars’s rumpled bed. I roll up my sleeves and start with the clothes on the floor.

One of these shirts might have been what he was wearing the day Sauce Crew got its name.

One he might have worn to squirrel rodeo.

One he might have spit bits of his sandwich onto while Blake showed us one of his newest videos.

Before putting them in a black bag, I press each to my face and breathe it in. Clean, joyous sweat mixed with Old Spice deodorant and Tide. I beg the olfactory portion of my brain to remember, to allow me to summon this smell again, because I will never have another chance.

Each fallen piece of clothing reminds me of a fairy-tale puppet from which the life has drained. Soon I have all the clothes off the floor in bags. Then the ones from the bed.

While pulling things from under the bed, I find a bowl of moldy peanut butter. This was Mars’s favorite snack. He mixed peanut butter with maple syrup and dipped bread in it. We died laughing when we found out.

“Dude, that is the sorriest snack I’ve ever heard of,” Eli said between breaths, convulsing with laughter.

“Seriously,” I said, “why don’t you just eat a can of frosting?”

“Least I ain’t eating spaghetti with ketchup and mustard like y’all nasty asses,” Mars said.

Blake looked at me and shrugged. “I told him about the recipe we invented. It was good.”

“Dude, do not tell anyone else about that recipe ever.”

I put the bowl in a white bag.

I clear his comics and graphic novels from his shelves and put them in black bags for charity.

I line the bags up in the hall so I have more room to work.

This is what we leave behind.

And then I start going through the drawers. More clothes. More black bags. The second-to-last drawer is stuffed with half-used art supplies. White bag.

I open the final drawer. It brims with Mars’s drawings. I knew I’d encounter this. I’m surprised I didn’t sooner. And still I’m not ready to see it. If Mars’s clothes were his body, now I’m handling his soul.

I sit with my back against his bed, bury my face in my hands, and cry. I tell Mars again that I’m sorry. I sift through the drawings—page after page and notebook after notebook of character sketches. He practiced constantly. Judge Edwards was right: he loved excellence. He was not a quitter.

I find a drawing of Mars’s brothers and sister.

Drawings of a couple of girls from school.

A drawing of Sauce Crew.

Then something I don’t recognize. It appears to be a unified, cohesive, work-in-progress—a graphic novel of some sort. It’s called The Judge. I leaf through. It’s apparently about an African American judge who takes on the criminal underworld as a sort of superhero in a corrupt, Gotham-esque city.

My mind suddenly flashes to Hiro. But not soaring through the sky on mechanical crane’s wings. Instead, I see him confronting the Nissan CEO with the idea he thinks will save people. I see him pleading his case with his hands filled with papers.

I’m done.