53

I SIT AT THE KITCHEN counter staring at the to-do list that I wrote. The next thing on the list is something I don’t want to do, but I don’t think we have a choice.

Way across town in the fading light, the sun is setting on Prince Richard’s Maze and on an old, rotted-out stump that everyone calls The Grandfather Tree. Wrapped into a ball inside that tree’s guts is a wad of clothing covered in blood.

It’s not my blood. The blood doesn’t belong to Marcy or Myers. The syrupy red paint doesn’t even belong to Anders, but it’s still blood.

That ball of clothing can’t be there. That ball of clothing can’t be anywhere where people can find it. Not now. Not ever.

“We have to get rid of Anders’ clothes,” I say.

“Why?” asks Myers.

“Because we don’t have a good answer for why they’re covered in blood,” I tell him without looking at Anders.

Marcy has pulled some boxes of cereal out of one of the cabinets in the kitchen, plopped a gallon of milk on the counter, and littered the granite island with bowls and spoons.

I don’t eat cereal anymore. Cereal is part of an ever-increasing number of evils that I’ve decided will never again enter my body.

Cereal is a carbohydrate.

Carbohydrates turn into sugar.

Sugar turns into fat.

Fat can never happen again.

Anders slumps over a bowl that’s bigger than the rest of ours. It’s more for mixing food than eating food. He has one arm curled around it while he’s shoveling corn flakes into his mouth with the other. I don’t even think he’s chewing. A steady stream of milk is dripping down his chin and falling back into the bowl, only for him to scoop it up again.

We all watch him for the better part of a minute, until he takes the remains of the bowl, soggy broken flakes and all, tilts his head back, and drinks the rest of it as though he’s totally alone in the world, wearing nothing but dirty underwear and anticipating that he’s going to be able to let out a long, low belch in private.

The thing is, Anders isn’t that gross. He’s nothing like how he is acting today. He’s never seemed so lost in all the years that I have known him.

He drops the bowl back onto the counter, wipes his mouth with the heel of his hand, and thankfully doesn’t belch.

“I’ll do it,” he says. “I’ll get rid of them.”

“No,” says Marcy.

“Not up to you,” he says.

“It’s not up to you, either,” she tells him. “Don’t you get it? We’re all in this together, whatever ‘this’ is. So we’re all going to see it through.”

Anders stiffens. It’s a new look for him. Anders Stephenson trying to hold in a powder keg of anger is something that none of us are used to seeing. After a moment, his shoulders drop and he lets a quiet sigh slip from his lips.

“Fine,” he whispers.

“Good,” says Marcy.

I clutch my to-do list in my left hand and stare down at the bandage I have on the triangle. The fact that I’ve been able to blot out the pain emanating from the burn is almost surreal. It’s been there all day, a persistent stinging without end, but I’ve stubbornly refused to acknowledge its presence.

Whatever I’m doing must be obvious. Myers says, “Still hurt?”

I look up and my friends are all staring at me—beautiful Marcy, angry Anders, and Myers in a ridiculously oversized shirt. I catch all their eyes and hold them in mine as the light outside turns a deep burnt orange that is only reserved for this time of year in New England, and without realizing it, I start to cry.

Marcy’s face scrunches up, but it’s not because she’s going to cry, too. It’s because I know she finally, finally feels the totality of my pain. Not only the pain in my arm, or the weirdness of the drugs. She feels everything.

Myers buttons his lips. No snarky comments spill out of his mouth. No sarcasm.

Anders is there, too. I see a glimpse of the protector that I’ve always known. He’s always been there for me, for all of us, and he’s still there. Right now his pain is as big as any of ours, but he’s still the old Anders deep inside. I know he is.

So my tears fall, getting harder and faster, spilling out of my eyes so freely that I can’t do anything but let them fill up imaginary buckets at my feet that will be swiftly taken away by walking broomsticks, only for more buckets to be filled and more broomsticks to take them away.

This time, however, no magical wizard is going to suddenly appear and make everything better with some sort of lame morality lesson.

What’s left is only me and my friends, the decisions we make, and the lies that we tell ourselves and others out of sheer self-preservation.

I cry, and I cry, and I cry. Suddenly, Marcy is there, right in front of me, pulling me to her in a tender embrace. Myers is there too, his floppy sleeves curling around the two of us as best as he can.

Finally Anders gets up, comes to stand in front of our mass of tears, limbs, and emotions, and engulfs all of us in his lanky basketball arms. He squeezes, in probably the most real and profound way that he has ever hugged anyone, ever.

“We’ll get through this,” the old Anders whispers, his mouth pushed into Marcy’s hair and his arms grasping onto all of us in an embrace that none of us want to ever end. “That’s what we’ll do. We’ll get through this. Together.”