Page 13 of Goodbye Days

“…Second, I don’t have the training to deal with this stuff. Dude, this is serious. Therapists are the real deal.”

“Mmmmm.” I lean my head on the window and stare out.

“Remember when I hit that rough patch senior year? After Austin and I broke up?”

“You seemed depressed.”

“I was. And I was having eating issues. I went to see a therapist named Dr. Mendez, and he was way cool and helpful.”

“You never mentioned that.”

“I didn’t want to advertise it.”

“I don’t want him to tell me I’m crazy.”

“So you’d rather be crazy. Look, he won’t tell you that. Plus they won’t even let you be a writer if you’ve never needed to be in therapy.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“I’m here for you, Carver, but you need to see Dr. Mendez.”

“I said I’d think about it.”

I don’t say anything more on the short drive home. Instead, I reflect on frailty. Mine. Life’s.

I want to live unburdened again.

My parents look wan and battered when Georgia and I pull up to the airport. I guess it makes for a nice symmetry with my hollow, vacant-eyed appearance. The muscles of my face feel like they forgot how to form a smile. But I try anyway as I get out and make as if to help my parents load their suitcases in the car, mumbling, “Hey, Mom and Dad.” My dad catches my wrist and pulls me to him. So hard it would seem rough if I didn’t know better. He hugs me like I’ve just been pulled from rubble.

“If we had lost you. If we ever lost you,” he whispers in a hoarse, tear-clogged voice.

That he can talk at all means he’s doing better than my mom, who hugs me from behind—they’ve got me in a sandwich—sobbing. I can feel both of their tears, warm on my face and dribbling down my neck. And if I’m being honest, a good amount of those tears are my own.

“Missed you,” I say.

We hug like that until an airport police car pulls up behind our car and tells us over his PA that we need to move.

I sit between my mom and dad in the backseat while Georgia chauffeurs us. Except for my mom asking me how I’m doing, and my responding, “Not great,” we don’t speak on the ride home. Instead, my mom pulls my head down to her shoulder and strokes my hair.

Where are you guys? Text me back.

I awake with a wild gasp, my pulse galloping. My sheets are drenched with sweat, my face tight with the salt of dream tears. I used to love crying in dreams for some reason—the release of it, maybe, crying in that savage way that you won’t let yourself do when you’re conscious. Waking up with your eyes wet like puddles after a midnight thunderstorm. That was when I wasn’t crying for anything in particular.

I guess guilt doesn’t sleep. It only eats.

I sit at my desk, staring at a blank document on my laptop screen. I’m supposed to be working on my college admission essay, something I’ve procrastinated about all summer, until exactly one week after the last of my three best friends’ funerals. Maybe not the most solid idea.

I wish I had to work today. I was employed part-time, shelving books at a huge used-book/CD/DVD/record/video-game/all-sorts-of-other-stuff warehouse near my house called McKay’s. I’ve worked there the last few summers, but I usually quit a couple of weeks before school starts. I regret doing that this year.

It’s not that I love shelving books as much I love simply being surrounded by them. I need the not-interacting-with-anyone-ness of it. I need mindless repetition. I need the vanilla-dry-leaves-tobacco-air-conditioner-mold scent of it in my nose. Even though it reminds me of the Accident. That’s where I was when it happened. That’s why I wasn’t in the car.

I start to text Jesmyn. We’ve been casually texting for the last week. She probably won’t respond. She mentioned that she’s teaching piano and practicing all day. I’d love to watch her play sometime.

My mom interrupts me midtext. “Carver,” she calls. “Come here. Hurry. Judge Edwards is on TV.”

A spasm of adrenaline seizes my chest. My bowels become a swirling vortex. This can’t possibly be good. I jump up, banging my knee, and run in on trembling legs. My mom, dad, and Georgia are gathered around the television, standing.

Judge Edwards looks stern, wearing an expensive-looking gray pinstripe suit that fits him like he grew it and a blood-red tie. He’s speaking into a reporter’s microphone. “…And so, to send a message to the community and to young people about the perils of texting friends while driving, I would call upon the office of the district attorney to open an investigation into this matter and weigh criminal charges.”