I got over my cold—or pneumonia—but my appearance wasn’t the best. I was very skinny, and two shadows—each the shape of a half-moon—settled beneath my eyes, never to fade away.
I had a recurring dream: we were traveling along the highway, and the salesmen’s Renaults were flashing their headlights in different combinations. My task was to discover what they meant. Two blinks: Continue? Just one blink: Caution? Three blinks: Stop? As hard as I thought and as much as I jotted down ideas on my notepad, I didn’t manage to decipher them. I woke from the dream distressed and had trouble getting back to sleep.
I returned to school and kept accompanying D, who, out of consideration for the fact that I still bore signs of convalescence, decided I wouldn’t be doing double shifts anymore. S, guilty as he was, accepted this dissolution of our partnership without protest.
When D told me, I didn’t feel sadness, only emptiness. Emptiness in the shape of an envelope full of cash.
Was everything that happened next D’s fault? Something inside me still refuses to answer that question.
I prefer to blame E.