I didn’t go to school the next day.

I got out of bed and went through the motions of getting ready, but once my parents left for work I crawled back under the covers. It felt like I’d been plunged into a vat of molasses. My movements were slow and sluggish. I watched a lot of daytime TV surrounded by cats.

The school left an automated message informing my parents that I’d been absent, but I deleted it before either of them got home.

Rachel texted. U ok?

Koula texted, too. Bitch, what up?

Bad flu, I typed.

Not a peep from Jacob.

But I heard from Shirley Esterhasz. She’d found me on Facebook and sent me a private message.

So Jacob Cohen’s making cat videos. How nice for him that his life is moving on, while my son’s life is over. Is this who you want for your friend? Think about it.

Part of me couldn’t blame her. I knew grief could make you do crazy things. Mean things.

But still. I deleted her message. I changed my privacy settings. And I blocked Shirley Esterhasz.

I also Googled Randle McMurphy and Ben Willard. Jack Nicholson played Randle McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Martin Sheen played Captain Ben Willard in Apocalypse Now.

Of course.

For the first time in months I searched for articles for my scrapbook and printed them.

Mexican Man Suffers Death by Cow

Forty-five-year-old Carlos Rodriguez was killed when a cow fell through his roof and landed on him. The cow had been lifted from a neighboring field when a tornado ripped through the region on Saturday night…

Woman Watering Plants Plummets to Her Death

Sixty-six-year-old Bessie Higgins kept beautiful window boxes at her seventh-story apartment in Manhattan. “Everyone in the neighborhood loved looking at them,” said a woman who lived across the street. But on Sunday, Bessie leaned out a little too far to do some pruning, and…

The whole time, my mind kept running in circles with the same questions.

Why had I ever let my guard down?

Why had I been so gullible?

Why had I let myself believe that Jacob was genuinely interested in me?

Why had I believed he was an authentic human being?

Optimism had snuck up behind me and bitten me right in the ass.