Page 15 of Goodbye Days

Leave it to Georgia to say exactly what I’m thinking. Well, all but the massive bullshit part. I wonder if I don’t deserve to atone with my freedom. If someone or something isn’t finally coming to collect some great debt I’ve incurred. Which would make this whole situation not massive bullshit at all, but normal-sized, small, or even nonexistent bullshit.

My head spins. “I’ll be in my room.” I need to brood.

My mom, dressed in her physical therapist’s scrubs, hugs me and kisses me on the cheek. “You’re not alone in this. We’re standing by you.”

“Carver, you want to go see a movie or something to take your mind off stuff?” Dad asks.

“It won’t help. Thanks, though.”

“I’ll be in the den, then, working on my syllabus,” Dad says. “If you change your mind.”

“Emma’s dad is a lawyer,” Georgia says. “I’m going to call her.”

I go to my room and sit on my bed. I text Jesmyn. Are you free? I need someone to talk to. While I definitely believe that spelling and grammar count, even in text messages, I’m not normally so formal. But it somehow felt weird to be any less so. Also, I’m already wishing I didn’t end that sentence with a preposition. Also, what if I offended her by saying “someone to talk to,” as if any warm body will do? Shit. Also, did it sound needy to say “I need someone to talk to”? I mean, of course it did. By definition it did.

No response. Not surprising.

I pace. That doesn’t help.

I pray in my heart. But as I said, I’m only a casual believer, so while it helps me a little to have covered that base, it doesn’t help a lot.

I drop and start doing pushups. I haven’t done a pushup since junior high PE class. My arms burn. I manage ten before I have to rest. Then I start in on some more. I don’t understand why I’m doing this. But it’s helping a little.

“Carver?” Georgia’s voice from the doorway startles me midpushup. I wish I’d closed my door all the way.

I jump up and clap the dust off my hands. “Hey.”

“I talked to Emma and she’s going to talk to her dad.”

“Cool.”

“What were you doing?”

“Pushups.”

“Why?”

Sometimes you learn things the moment they come out of your mouth, like the information was hiding there, safe from your brain. “In…case I go to jail, I want to be able to protect myself.”

Georgia shakes her head and her eyes fill with tears, but she says nothing. My heart is thudding. She hugs me. “I have to work in a little bit. Otherwise I’d hang with you all day.”

“At least I didn’t have another panic attack, right? I’m going to Percy Warner.”

Percy Warner Park is about a ten-minute walk from my house and encompasses acres of forest and miles of trails. Sometimes, the only way I have of dealing with stuff is to be around things more ancient than me and my sadness; things that will forget me.

Maybe when I get home, Jesmyn will have texted me.

They’re all doubled over on Eli’s couch, their controllers at their sides, laughing over my latest, especially ignominious demise.

“Did you see where his body fell?” Blake says, wiping tears.

“Look, shitlords, my parents won’t let me have a game console. And I have a life, so I don’t sit around practicing video games twenty-four/seven. So I suck. Whatever,” I say.

But my explanation only invites louder guffaws.

“Blade’s spinning in circles, shooting, and throwing grenades wildly until someone comes up behind him and clocks him with the butt of their rifle,” Mars says.

“Imagine if he were really in the army,” Eli says.