“Geez, Sanders, are you prepping for the apocalypse?” Patrick says. He peers into the enormous sack of groceries I’ve brought.
“What? You said bring snacks.”
“I meant, like, a pack of Oreos or something.”
“He’s an overachiever,” Matt says. “We’re lucky he’s wasting his time with a bunch of losers like us.”
“The Cheetos might be stale,” I say by way of self-defense.
“This is an extraordinary feast,” Simon declares, taking it upon himself to test the Cheetos. He proclaims them “still good.”
Meanwhile, Janna sits on the edge of her bed, trying and failing to choke back tears.
“So much for not talking about it,” I say.
“Oh, we’re not going to talk about it,” Patrick says. “That’s the whole point.”
And we don’t.
Simon scrolls through music on Janna’s laptop, tossing new songs onto the playlist that’s running in the background. Celia brushes Janna’s hair while Matt and Patrick argue about the row of stuffed animals on her bookshelf, trying to guess their names.
Janna’s tears are magnetic. I can’t stop watching her cry. It’s never-ending. Tears are supposed to be this finite thing that comes and goes. How much water can there be in one person’s body?
She’s not even wiping them away, just letting them fall onto her shirt. Her shoulders shake and she grips the edge of the mattress, all but choking on sadness. It’s magnificent.
That kind of release is something I crave, but it feels so far out of reach. I guess Janna’s had a couple years of practice.
An echo in the core of me does cry. Years?
And suddenly I don’t understand. How she looks is how I feel, or how I would feel if the terrible things inside of me were allowed to come out, which they’re not. But this is fresh grief, and it’s been years for Janna.
Years?
Like Matt said the other night, I’m still sitting here trying to get through each fucking moment without a total collapse. But suddenly I see a path rolling out ahead of me, a steep, breath-stealing staircase with no way to turn back and no end in sight.
“Death fucking sucks,” I blurt out.