Page 124 of Goodbye Days

I’m finished being broken.

No more stories die here today.

Fear drains from me like I’m bleeding it out. I stand quickly and wait out the head rush. I collect up The Judge and some of the other drawings. I collect my stories of Mars Edwards. And I go downstairs on wavering legs, gravity tugging my intestines toward my feet.

Judge Edwards sits among his leather-bound volumes, typing furiously on his laptop. He hasn’t even loosened his tie since church.

His eyes remain fixed to the screen as I stand in the doorway. “Are you finished?”

“There’s something I think you should see, Your Honor.”

He spins to me in his chair. “I asked are you finished?”

I hold out the sheaf of papers, The Judge on top. “Sir, Mars did these, and I think you should look at them before I throw them away. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

He stands and towers over me. His face is a raw, white-hot mask of molten rage. “Thurgood. His name is Thurgood. That is the name on his gravestone. And how dare you speak to me of regret.” He spits the words like venom sucked from a snakebite.

My breath abandons me. I am afraid and I want to turn and run. But I don’t. You have nothing left to lose. Tell him a story. “He hated being called Thurgood. He wanted to be called Mars. We called him Mars. He called himself Mars. And he did this graphic novel. I think it’s inspired by you. Please, sir, let me tell you—”

“Shut up. Shut your reckless, murdering mouth.” His saliva sprays cold on my face. He draws long, jagged breaths through his nose.

“Sir, I need to tell you—”

He stabs his finger toward the front door, so hard his sleeve makes a snap. “Get out. Now, before I decide to sue you and your parents for every penny you have.”

“No.” I lift my eyes defiantly to his. “I can’t yet, Your Honor.”

“You are officially now trespassing on my property. Leave, or I will remove you by force as I am legally entitled to do.”

“Not until you hear what I have to say.”

He takes a quick step forward and grabs my upper arm—the one holding the papers. They go flying. He spins me around so fast, I almost trip over my feet in my sudden dizziness. Only his bruising grip keeps me upright. He half lifts, half pushes me toward the entryway.

“Sir, please. Please. Let me make this a real goodbye day. Let me tell you about the Mars you didn’t know.”

“Out.”

“I can tell you about him; I can tell you the parts of him you didn’t know. He—” My words dissolve into a yelp of pain. He’s pulverizing my upper arm.

Judge Edwards reaches out with his other hand, yanks open the front door, and pushes me against the glass outer door. He’s flinging me around so precisely, he manages to make the side of my body hit the door latch to open the outer door without shattering the glass. Then he pushes with the explosive force of a piston.

I fly down the two steps, catch the side of my shoe, tumble to the cement, and skid on my side. I scrape the top of my left ear. I somehow manage not to hit any of the places I injured during my fall earlier. I lie there long enough to see Judge Edwards pull the outer door shut with a rattle and then slam the front door so hard it makes the outer door pop open again.

I rise torturously. I’m bleeding from a few more places. It’s soaking my pants. I’ve worn this suit through three funerals and one of the worst physical, mental, and emotional experiences of my life. I should burn it. Assuming I ever get my jacket back, that is.

I limp to my car without a backward glance, the dead and beautiful leaves—some as golden as the midday November sun shimmering through the trees—breaking underfoot.

My mom and dad are at a movie when I arrive home. I’m relieved. The last thing I needed was for them to see me walk in wearing torn and bloodied suit pants and a dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves. I didn’t have a good story for how that would have happened on a Sewanee campus visit. I peel off the stained pants and stuff them in the garbage can, covering them with more garbage. I wash and bandage my new scrapes.

Then I fall on my bed and sleep dreamlessly for almost three hours. When I rouse myself, my parents are home. They ask me how my visit to Sewanee went when I go to the kitchen for a snack.

Great, I say. Looks like a cool place. It’s not that I don’t want to tell them what I’ve been through. It’s that I wouldn’t know how to begin.

I spend the next two hours doing not much of anything. I have a version of a depressed, anxious Sunday-night feeling. Only it’s a thousand times worse than normal. As if every day of my life from here on out is going to be a Monday. I keep replaying the events of the day in my mind on a loop. Wishing I’d said and done a million things differently.

Maybe every attempt I make to lead a happy life again is doomed to fail.

I’m sitting at my desk, trying to read one of the books on my massive to-read list, when a couple of headlights attached to a sleek, shiny black car illuminate the street in front of my house. It parks right out front. My parents didn’t mention visitors.