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Weston frowned. I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed in me or sad for me.
Maybe a mixture of both.
“You should’ve taken today off,” he told me.
“You said I couldn’t get the letter unless I attended my classes. So I’m here.”
“You’re here, but you’re not.”
I’m here, but I’m not.
He shifted in his chair. “Do you want to talk about her today? Maybe that will—”
“No.” I cut in. There were a million things I wanted to do that day. I wanted to get high. I wanted to get drunk. I wanted to do anything possible to make me forget that today was a year since the worst day of my life. I wanted to feel less and disappear more. I wanted the hurting to stop and for me to feel like there was some chance that one day I’d be okay. I wanted to breathe again. I wished so damn much that I could breathe. But I couldn’t. I chose not to, at least. It felt selfish of me to breathe when Mom couldn’t do so any longer.
Grief was a complex creature. One day, you were sad, and the next day filled you with rage. On rare occasions, you’d be both. So aggressively angry, so depressingly sad.
“You should’ve known I would’ve been fine if you took today off,” Weston mentioned. “Today, of all days, would’ve been okay.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you should’ve mentioned that before you held that letter over my head.”
“Milo.”
“What?”
His mouth parted as the bell rang for the first period of the day. No more words came out of him, so I reached down and grabbed my backpack from beside my chair. “Can’t be late to class, Principal Gallo,” I muttered as I pushed myself up from the chair.
He called after me, but I didn’t turn back to face him. I didn’t feel like talking anymore. I didn’t feel like staring into the eyes that looked like hers.
I headed into the busy hallways, moving through my quicksand, and went straight to Tom’s locker.
He looked my way. “Who hit you with a bus?”
“I need pills,” I said, cutting straight to the point. I didn’t do small talk, and I was still feeling a bit too much for the day that was approaching. I knew I’d feel worse as the hours crept closer to three in the afternoon, the time when Mom took her final breath. I needed not to be functioning at that point. I needed to stretch out my high as long as I could.
“Well, good morning to you, too, sunshine,” he mocked.
“Seriously, Tom. What do you have?”
“You start your period today or something? Snappy, snappy.”
I stayed quiet.
He arched an eyebrow and grew a bit somber. “Shit morning?”
“Something like that.”
For a split second, his eyes found a dash of pity for me. He quickly shook it away because he knew I wouldn’t appreciate that. He reached into his backpack, pulled out a mint tin, opened it, and grabbed a pill for me. “This should make you feel…well…good. You’ll feel good.”
Perfect. “Give me a few more.”
“Dude, I don’t know if—”
“I’ll pay you.”
“You know it’s not about the money.”
“Tom. Please,” I choked out. I wasn’t one to beg for anything in life, but at that moment, I felt the need to.
That must’ve tripped him up. Without question, he handed me a few more pills. He then placed a hand against my shoulder. “Hey, man. I know we don’t do that heart-to-heart stuff, but if you ever need to talk—”
“I don’t.” I tossed one pill into my mouth and slid the others into my pocket to space out throughout the day.
“Noted.” He pulled his hand back and shut his locker. “With that said, have a nice trip.”
See you next fall.
Good.
I felt good.
Great even. Shit, I felt great.
The quicksand of my movements had transitioned over the past few hours, and now I was floating through the hallways. Everything was heightened, all of my senses. My fingers stretched out, and I stared at the space between them. I could feel it. I could feel the air.
Holy shit, I was gone.
“Are you all right?” a voice said, breaking my stare away from my fingers. I turned to find Starlet standing in front of me with concerned eyes.
Wow.
She had beautiful eyes.
“You have beautiful eyes,” I told her.
She glanced around the hallways and took a step away from me. “Never say that again, Milo,” she warned, her voice low. “The bell rang. You should be in class.”
I laughed.
Because things were funny. Everything was funny—Starlet, school, life, death.
She didn’t see the humor in it, though. Maybe I was meant to show her the comedy in life.
I’d reached into my pocket and pulled out a pill. I held it in her direction. “Here, take this. It will make you laugh, Teach.”
“Oh my gosh,” she whisper-shouted, stepping toward me. “Are those drugs?”
“Well, it’s not a spearmint.”
