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“—ONONONONONO—”

“Good night, Ollie. Good night Crista.”

Dylan’s screams faded as he was carried unceremoniously out of the room.

“Good,” Crista said without looking up. “He was hurting my ears.”

I sat back down on the couch, my own ears ringing. “Sounds like he’s missing your mom.”

“Yeah.”

“How are you doing? Are you feeling okay?”

She looked up now. It was clear from her face that she was irritated with me. She cocked her head. “Ollie, I can’t hear the movie.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

So we watched it in silence. We were both handling it pretty well, until the part where the kid sings the gut-wrenching song to his abuela about remembering people who have passed. Then I lost it.

At least I had the good sense to excuse myself from the room, though, so, specifically, I lost it in the hallway. I pressed my back against the wall and sank to the floor, crying as quietly as I could. I didn’t want to be here in this house knowing Aunt Linda would never be in it again. It washerhouse. We came here when we visitedher.It’d beenherhouse my whole life. This wasn’t right. None of it was right.

Someone sat down beside me. Mom. I hadn’t even heard her come in.

“Hi, my gorgeous man,” she said. “Not doing so well?”

I sniffed and shrugged without meeting her eye.

“It’s hard being here, huh?” she asked. I nodded, and my chin started shaking as I tried to hold the sobs in. “It’ll get easier. That’s the beautiful thing about the universe. It puts you through trials, but it never gives you anything you can’t handle. We grow from these things.”

I let my head hit the wall and rolled it around so I could meet her eyes. “Mom. This didn’t happen to teach us all a lesson and help us to grow.”

She darkened. “Ollie, that’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“This isn’t beautiful. It’s ugly, and pointless. That’s thething, Mom. Therewasno point. She’s dead, and there’s nothing fair about it. She had one life, and it’s done, and that’s it for her, and that’s it for us. It didn’t make anythingbetterthat she died. How can you still believe there’s meaning to all of this? What, what you think something out there in the universe looked down from the clouds and found our family and said, ‘Hmm, you know what? Fuck this family in particular.’ Crista and Dylan don’t get a mom anymore, and Uncle Roy lost the person he loves, and she doesn’t get to ever be old, and there isno. Reason. For. It.It was just a waste. The end. Sorry if I’m not happy about it.”

She stared at me, and something in my stomach tumbled. “You think I’mhappyabout this?” she asked in disbelief. “She was my sister. She was my baby sister.”

All my steam ran out at once, and I wilted against the wall. “Mom…”

She went to speak, then she shook her head, got to her feet with a frustrated grunt, and walked away from me.

I made it through the first day back at school okay. Or, at least, I made it through the morning. No breakdowns, no freak-outs, no terrified contemplations of my own mortality.

The girls were appropriately gentle with me when I came back. Even Lara didn’t have any sassy digs. Just lots of questions about how I’d been, and a fair bit of concern. I’d been ignoring the majority of their texts all week. Ditto for the one condolence text each sent by Hayley and Ryan. Conversation just seemed to take up so much energy. Energy I didn’t have.

At lunch I went to the music room instead of the cafeteria. Juliette had seemed disappointed when I rushed pasther to grab a slice of pizza to go, but what could you do? Even though I’d made it through, the effort of beingokayandengagedall morning had been more exhausting than I’d realized. I’d thought I was okay to come back to school, but that didn’t mean I could dive straight back in with no adjustments. A little alone time wouldn’t be amiss.

When I grabbed the bass guitar, though, I realized I didn’t feel like playing. I just wanted silence. So instead, I flopped onto the floor with my back against the wall, pulled the bass guitar into my lap, and drummed my fingers on the body.

It was nice to be somewhere quiet. I loved the girls, but I just wasn’t close enough with them to be sad. Sure, I could be a downer for a day or two, but what if it took longer than a day or two? What if I was down for weeks, or months? What if I was never chirpy again? What if I needed to glare, and snap, and be lost in my thoughts? What if I just needed to cry?

Alone in here, I could be any of that. I could feel every negative, terrible, aching feeling at once, and I didn’t have to be self-conscious about it or try to put on a mask so someone else didn’t feel dragged down.

But now that I had the freedom to cry, I couldn’t make myself.

Someone had put a new poster on the wall to join the other inspirational quotes.MUSIC COURSES THROUGH OUR VEINS, FROM THE SMALLEST ANT TO THE LARGEST WHALE,it proclaimed in enormous, scarlet comic sans font. In the background was what I assumed to be a Photoshopped image of an ant about to be stepped on by an elephant’s foot. Either the dimensions were all off, though, or it was some kind of mutant superhero ant, because it was almost the size of one of the elephant’s toenails.

Literally, what the hell did that quote even mean, though? And why was it paired with an image of an ant about to die?