Page 38 of Goodbye Days

“Are you okay?” Jesmyn asks.

I take a few deep breaths and nod. Latecomers hustle past, casting me looks of concern. Jesmyn directs them away with her eyes.

I was already sweating in the air-conditioned cool of NAA. Outside is a steam bath. My forehead drips. My shirt sticks to my back like a leaf to a rainy window. We reach Jesmyn’s truck after what seems like a mile.

She lowers the tailgate with a rusty clunk. “Here, sit.”

I nod quickly, showering the ground with droplets of sweat. I sit with my head bowed, as if praying. Thank you, O Lord, for this gift I have received: to have an utter shit fit of a panic attack in front of everyone on the first day of school, including the twin of my best buddy who—whom—I killed, the twin who now hates me, and my new (and only) friend, Jesmyn, who happened to be her twin’s girlfriend. Give me this day my daily humiliation. Amen.

Jesmyn rummages in the cab. She comes up with a scratchy gray blanket that smells like hay. She folds it in the bed of the pickup to form a makeshift cot. She rolls up my blazer as a makeshift pillow.

“Lie down.” She taps the blanket.

I squint against the brightness as I lie on my back. “I’m sorry for getting your blanket all sweaty,” I croak.

“I like you enough, I don’t even care if you make my stargazing blanket all gross,” she says. “Bend your legs. Good.” She slams shut the tailgate. Now I’m hidden from view.

Her head appears over the side of the pickup bed, in my field of vision, her face dark against the shimmering sky. She touches my cheek with a cool, soft hand. “What should I—”

“Go. I’ll be okay. I’ll call Georgia or figure something out.”

“It’s the first day and I’m late.”

“It’s cool.”

“You have my number. Text me if you need me. I’ll be sly and check my phone.”

“Would you try to keep Nurse Angie from coming out here? Say I went home already.”

“I got this.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. All right, I better go.”

“I must seem completely nuts.”

“You don’t at all. We’ll talk.” She touches my cheek again and then she’s gone. I hear the quick clip-clopping of her running toward the school.

I reach for my phone to call Georgia but decide I’d rather lie here for a few minutes and gather my shit. Not that I plan to try sitting through a full day of classes. I’m too drained. I’m too— Oh, man, the embarrassment. That’s starting to sink in now. My cheeks burn. Like wearing snowshoes to spread your body weight and keep yourself from sinking in snow, losses of dignity are best dispersed across several people to keep you from sinking. Now I’m alone.

My head throbs. I rub the tender, swelling lump growing on it. My eyes fill with tears. One slides warm down my cheek and falls with a soft pat on Jesmyn’s stargazing blanket. Or rather: Jesmyn and Eli’s stargazing (and what else?) blanket. I guess that makes two things I’ve taken from you today, Eli. Your Dearly ticket and your spot on the stargazing blanket. But if it’s any consolation, wherever you are, I’ve paid quite a price today in dignity for both. And I’m sure Adair will make sure I pay even more, if Judge Edwards doesn’t get to me first.

I gaze up into the luminous blue, framed in the metal walls of Jesmyn’s pickup bed. Here we all now lie, all four members of Sauce Crew, in boxes. I’m the only one not in complete darkness. I’m counting Eli even though he was cremated. He’s in an urn. Which is sort of a box. It’s dark inside anyway.

I wonder if there was any moment, as they died, when they were able to look heavenward, as I’m doing now, through the torn-off roof of Mars’s car. I was “assured” they died instantly. As though that would soothe me.

I wish it would rain. Torrents. So hard it would cleanse me of worry and trouble; so hard it would lift the stain of death from me and carry it to the rivers and out to sea.

Blake peers over the side of the pickup bed. “Hey, shitlord,” he says softly.

“Hey,” I say. Eli’s and Mars’s grinning faces appear next to Blake’s.

“That wasn’t bad,” Mars says. “Not Blake level. But not bad.”

“I’m the only thing that’s Blake level,” Blake says. “But yeah, decent.”

“Thanks,” I say. “Maybe if it’d been intentional, it would’ve been even funnier.”