Hello? Chris? Are you there? It’s been a while. I want you to know I understand. I’ve been listening to all the music you loved, and I want you to know, I get it.
There just aren’t enough sad songs.
I gaze at the light drifting through my window, catching on the dust dancing through the air. It’s kind of beautiful. Can you see it? Are you here?
The neighborhood kids are skateboarding up and down the street. They’re laughing. A skateboard crashes.
Mom knocks softly on my bedroom door. “Can I come in?”
She carries in a tray with French toast, sliced strawberries, fresh whipped cream. She’s cut the toast into little bites. Maybe she thinks I’m going to choke to death. (That’s a joke. Ha-ha.)
Every day, she’s been making my favorite meals and in the back of my mind, two questions have arisen: How is she cooking in that kitchen? And who is buying the food? I haven’t asked.
She squints at me, worried. I think she gets it. Maybe you have to go through it to know. Now I get it too.
It’s a heavy black cloud that feels like it will never go away. Did that happen to you? Is that why you got more desperate? Did you think I could push it away for you? Only I couldn’t, no matter what I did.
I finish half of the plate while she watches. “Thanks,” I say. “I’m full.”
“You’re looking better today,” she says. “You think you can get up?”
“I don’t know.”
“I have something I’d like to show you.”
I close my eyes in answer and she leaves. I drift off to sleep. Weird thing is I’ve been sleeping a ton. It’s the only way to forget.
Steph yanks the quilt off my body. “Get up!” she says. “It’s ten in the morning. You can’t lie in bed every day.”
I open my eyes. She looks good. Her hair is done, long and wavy down her back like she’s just curled it. She’s wearing a navy-blue dress suit for her new assistant manager job at the Steakhouse, like a real grown-up.
“I’m not just lying in bed.” I’m counting pieces of dust in the air. I’m counting breaths. I’m counting the number of times I blink in a minute.
She bends down and speaks into my face. Her breath smells of coffee.
“Please, Jessie, you have to see something.” Her hair falls across my face, smells of her lavender shampoo. Meanwhile, I smell of two weeks of BO.
I’m not ready to leave this room.
Steph tugs at my arm. Her hand pinches my skin like the snakebites we used to do on each other when we were kids, twisting the skin until the other person yelled uncle.
“Ow.” I pull my arm back. “Stop it.”
I plunk my head back down, but then, she yanks on my pillow. I grab at it because if she sees the X-Acto knife, she’ll flip out.
It’s too late. It clatters to the floor. She jumps back, bends down, slowly, and picks it up.
“What is this?” She waves it in front of my face, holding its thick steel handle, like she’s going to slide the blade out and slit my neck herself.
I don’t answer.
“Why do you have a knife under your pillow?” she asks.
“It’s not a knife,” I say, finally.
“Are you thinking of hurting yourself?”
“No.” I look away. The important thing is I didn’t do it. I decided to wait a day. And then I waited another day. And another. It just makes me feel better to have it so close. It’s weirdly comforting.
Steph looks sick. Her eyelashes, coated with thick mascara, flutter shut like butterfly wings. “I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you,” she says. “You’re all I have.”
“You have Pete.”
“It’s not the same.”
I look away.
“He’s dead, Jessie,” she says, softly. “It doesn’t mean you are.”
“I know that,” I whisper.
She walks over to our dream collage. “What about this?” she says, clapping her hand flat on the wall. The sound startles me. “Do you still want to do these things?”
Before you, I never thought of dreams. You taught me to want more. To be more. “I don’t know,” I murmur. “Maybe.”
“Then get up.” Her voice shakes, like she’s honestly scared for me. She marches across my room, opens my dresser, and tosses my cutoffs and black T-shirt next to me. “Put these on. You stink.”
Her cell buzzes and she looks down at it. “Better hurry up,” she says. “I’m warning you.”
She lifts her chin up at me, like when we were kids and she jumped off the high diving board and she was daring me to do it too. That’s how we’ve always been. One of us steps ahead and pulls the other forward.
I swing my feet over the bed and sit up.