Page 17 of Goodbye Days

“Exactly. So this morning, my mom calls me in; they’re watching the news. And there’s Mars’s dad on TV and he’s saying he wants the DA to investigate the accident maybe for criminal charges.” My voice starts trembling at the end. I’ve cried in front of Jesmyn before, but no need to make it our new thing.

“Wait, what?! Criminal charges? What did you even do? You didn’t shoot them. That’s crazy.”

One more person who holds me blameless. And an important person at that—my only friend left in the world. My racing blood slows. The tremor departs from my hands and voice.

“I don’t know what’ll happen,” I say. “We’re going to talk to a lawyer, in case.”

“If you need me for anything, I can testify or whatever. I’ll be like Objection.”

I giggle. “Pretty sure only the lawyer can say that.”

“No way. I want in on the objection action.”

“So yeah. There’s my cool life. What did you work on today?”

She sighs. “A Chopin nocturne that I’m considering for my Juilliard audition. But maybe not anymore. I might switch to Debussy. Or I might do something totally different.”

“Oh, I mean, how you not gonna do Debussy if you can do Debussy? Come on.”

She giggles. “Shut up.”

“Who’s your favorite composer?”

“Oh, please. Why don’t you ask me which is my favorite finger.”

“Which is your favorite finger?”

“Hmmmmm. Middle, actually. Right hand middle.”

“See? Favorite composer.”

“No. That was a bad analogy. Who’s your favorite writer? See?”

“Cormac McCarthy. Easy.”

“Crowmac McWhothy?”

“Oh, come on.”

“Shermac McCathy?”

“Dude. Stop.” I can’t believe she’s managing to cheer me up after the day I’ve had.

“ ‘Cormac’ is an alien’s name.”

She would have made a great honorary member of Sauce Crew. “ ‘Jesmyn’ is an alien’s name.”

“No, seriously. Doesn’t ‘Cormac’ sound like a Martian name?”

“Okay, it does kinda. Which works because he’s from Planet Awesome. Have you seriously never heard of him?”

“Nope.”

“Well, we gotta fix that. Where do you stand on cannibalism?”

“I would say…opposed? Generally opposed?”

“How about reading about cannibalism?”