My parents made me go to school the next day, what I considered to be one of their worst parenting mistakes ever. I sobbed all morning, for I couldn�t fathom having to face the student body after what had happened. School was far too cruel, far too exhausting�how could they even think of something so trivial as school? I cried and yelled and refused to leave my room. My parents were supportive at first, trying to comfort me, but they soon lost patience and started yelling. My father hated it when I cried, anyway. According to him, apparently, once a guy turned sixteen he wasn�t allowed to cry unless someone died.

They told me I had to deal with this, that I had to stop dwelling on it�school would take my mind of it. Bad things happen, but life goes on.

Life goes on, Arik.

Regardless, school was a disaster. I hadn�t slept all night, and my eyes perpetually burned. I felt as if my heart had been torn out and replaced with a lead weight; my feet suffered to lift from the ground, and I didn�t have the energy to raise my arms from my side or my chin from my throat.

My mother had to drive me to school, as I�d spent so much of the morning wailing that I�d missed the bus. I�d also missed homeroom, and having to walk into first period with everyone�s eyes on me made my heart race and my face grow hot. Where ya been, Arik? they wanted to know, for I�d been absent yesterday�was it only yesterday? It felt like a thousand days had passed.

I didn�t comprehend any word spoken to me all day. There had been no point in going�nothing was going to take my mind off Roger. Mr. Nachef was showing us a gruesome World War II movie, but it was nothing to the bloody mess I was seeing in my mind. We had to take notes in English, and my pen never moved once. I spent the class staring out the window and wondering what it would feel like to not be told you were loved until you were seven years old.

I could not take my mind off it; it hung heavily over me all day. I could not think of anything else.

I barely breathed during lunch. The seat next to me was empty.

Roger�s been out a lot, lately, said McKellen.

I had to leave the table, feigning a sudden urge for chips, or soda, or some other useless shit.

They didn�t know. Yet.

Did anyone know? �The teachers must have. Right, right, more than one teacher had given me a sympathetic look, now I remembered. I wondered if Mrs. O�Donnell had called the principal. Sorry, my son won�t be in school for a while. Yeah, he tried to kill himself. It was something she would do. She was efficient like that, orderly. And the principal would tell the teachers�individually, or in a memo, or all in a group�or at least Roger�s teachers: heads up, Roger O�Donnell is out of school because he attempted suicide. Keep an eye on his friends.

Yeah. I knew what must be going on. I could see it in my mind. They�d known all along that he had psycho-emotional problems. Always being summoned to the guidance counselor and the nurse�why hadn�t I noticed how unusual that was?

The hallways were hell. Everyone had a friend. Their friends laughed and joked with them. Their arms weren�t covered in glaring red gashes, and they�d never had to stay alive on pills.

Or maybe they did, maybe they had.

Now that I knew that one person could suffer so many horrible things in only eighteen years, I didn�t trust anything in the entire Goddamned world.

Maybe everyone was as fucked up as he was as we were as I was as everyone was.

In Spanish his seat was empty, and I couldn�t tear my eyes from it. It was my only class I would have had with him, and his absence blared loud and menacing as a siren, sharp as lightning through my chest. Se�or was lecturing, but I could only stare at the cracked and graffitied and hideously empty chair.

He sat there, compass in hand, and slowly, deliberately, stabbed the back of his hand with the sharp metal end. His skin was littered with bright red dots.

I felt my eyes burning again. God, how much more of this could I take? Every time I sat in this classroom, would I see him hurting himself, remember how I�d stared, puzzled, never suspecting the battlefield under his shirt? �For some reason, the image of his cut arms and torso stood out more in my mind than anything else. I kept seeing it, over and over and over�

Se�or was rambling on, but I didn�t hear a word�my face was growing hot, my stomach uneasy�I wanted to cry�I was going to, I couldn�t help it�I�d held it in all day, but I needed to cry�but I was trapped in this room, in this building, this hell!

How much more of this could I take?!

No more. No more. I covered my face with my hands and started to weep. Silently, stifling my breathing, choking back my vicious sobs. God forbid anyone notice.

And then, a Hell upon Hell, Se�or�s voice rang out, calling, �Ar�k, the answer to numero cinco, por favor? � Ar�k, are you paying attention? Ar�k?�

The world around me went silent, and against my will I let out a loud sob, hiding my face in my hands, in my mind begging the teacher, the class, the world to go away, go away, please just go away. My heart started racing�friggin� hell, I was bawling my eyes out in the middle of a 11th grade Spanish class�girls voices were cooing, �Arik, what�s wrong?!��and it only made me cry harder and harder.

Se�or�s hands lightly seized my wrists. �Ar�k, come with me.�

He pulled my hands from my face and directed me out of my chair. Concerned and curious faces goggled horridly at me, so I shut my eyes and let Se�or pull me into the hallway. He shut the door behind him.

�I�m sorry,� I sniveled, trying to compose myself but knowing I�d screwed myself over regardless. I couldn�t go back in that classroom.

Se�or�s black eyes and wrinkled brown face looked down at me sadly. �It�s Roger, isn�t it?� he said.

He knew. Wiping my eyes with the back of my palm, I nodded.

Se�or sighed. �I don�t know what to tell you, Ar�k,� he said. �Would you like to talk to the guidance counselor?�

�I don�t care,� I mumbled. �...Okay, yeah.� I didn�t like the guidance counselor, but I didn�t want to go back into that room.

Se�or lightly put his arm on my shoulder, a gesture I never would have suspected from a man so usually emotionally reserved and distant. Slowly, he led me down the hallway to the senior high counselor�s office. We had to walk past the office, the brain of the school, to get there, and as usual it was bustling with teachers and students who goggled as I walked past. I guess it�s not every day you see a member of the Varsity soccer team bawling. Se�or greeted the counselor, Ms. Janet, and briefly explained my situation. Yes, he started crying in class because he�s slightly upset that his best friend�s mortally depressed.

�I hope you feel better soon,� Se�or said before leaving to return to class. �I am sorry for your loss.� It made me shiver to hear him refer to it as a �loss� already. Roger wasn�t dead yet.

Ms. Janet took my hand and led me into her office, closing the door behind her. She was actually a nun, but this being one of those damn politically correct public schools, the administration had us refer to her as Ms. Instead of Sister. She was old, overly touchy-feely, obnoxious, and no one liked her very much, nice lady though she was.

�So, Arik, dear, I understand you�re very upset...?� Her voice was whiny and irritating.

No shit, Sherlock, I thought.

She put on a tragic face. �Yes, the faculty was very shocked and saddened when we were informed about poor Roger this morning. It�s very sad, indeed, very tragic. I understand that you were very good friends with him. I realize that this must be very hard for you.�

Maybe going back to Spanish would be better than this.

Ms. Janet�s face got more tragic with each silent moment that followed.

�Arik, I understand what a shock this must be to you. I recommend you talk about it with your friends, it may help if you all��

�I don�t have any friends,� I interrupted, finally losing it. �The only friend I have hates himself and his life so much that he took a fucking butcher knife to his arms and bled all over the fucking house and then he tried to kill me with it because that�s probably what his mother used to do to him all the fucking time.�

Ms. Janet stared at me for a long time.

�I think perhaps you should go home,� she said at last.

My mother came and picked me up. She didn�t say much on the ride home, for I didn�t respond to the little she did say. I didn�t have the heart to say I told you so.

�Mrs. O�Donnell is coming over later,� she told me as we got out of the car. I groaned extensively.

�Why does she have to keep coming over here?� I asked resentfully. I really did not want to see her again. Already, my mind had connected her presence with copious bad news.

�Arik, don�t,� my mother chided softly, looking hard at me. �She recently lost her husband, and now she�s lost her only son. Would you deny her her friends as well? You know she doesn�t have any family around here. The poor woman, I�d have her come talk to us every day for a year if it would ease her pain at all.

�It may help you, too,� Mum continued as we went into the house. �To talk about it, you know?�

�Nothing is going to help.�

I went to escape to my room, but Mum put a hand on my arm and stopped me.

�You can�t let this ruin your life, Arik,� she said.

As she had the day before, Mrs. O�Donnell came to our house straight from the hospital. I got the sense she liked to delay going home. I couldn�t blame her.

I�d thought she looked horrid yesterday, but I was stunned by how much worse she looked now. Her face was grayer, her eyes duller and more bloodshot, the rings beneath them blacker. Never before, not even in Roger, had I seen a person�s internal suffering so evident in their outward appearance.

I took her coat and hung it up, and my mother led Mrs. O�Donnell into the kitchen again.

�How is he?� I asked, after the two mothers had a brief exchange about how cold it was outside and how it was going to snow.

Mrs. O�Donnell sighed, but by now it seemed that her grief had surpassed the point where it was hard to talk about it, and instead she spoke frankly and stonily. �He�s not good. The doctors have to keep him unconscious as much as possible, because every time he wakes up he throws violent fits and tries to hurt himself and all the nurses and doctors. They have him on 24 hour surveillance because they don�t dare leave him unguarded.�

Ugh. That sounded familiar.

�C-can I see him? Is there any way I could talk to him?� I�d managed to calm him before. And I desperately wanted to see him. Every day that passed with this unbearable distance between us made me feel more and more like he was slipping away from me; I was losing him more and more.

�No, Arik, you can�t see him. They aren�t letting anyone near him�they often don�t even let me go in. He�s not there: he doesn�t recognize anyone, not even me. All he does now is scream incoherently�you can�t speak to him. Even when he uses words, all he says is nonsense anyway�he hallucinates.�

I covered my eyes with my palm, head spinning, feeling sick again. I wished she would leave. I didn�t want to hear anymore about this�I�d preferred my ignorance. I needed some good news.

�When do they think he can come home? Because they can cure this, right? Some meds or something?�

Her eyes looked as glazed and deadened as ones they�d shown on corpses in the World War II movie we�d watched in History that day. There was no life in her anymore.

�Roger isn�t coming home, Arik.�

Hell.

�He�s lost his mind. There�s no use denying it or giving it any other name�he�s gone insane.�

�No,� I gasped, hands shaking, �no, he can�t be�he can�t be!�

�Arik�� my mother cut in.

�He�s not crazy!�

Mrs. O�Donnell stared blearily at the tabletop, ignoring my outbursts. She continued.

�He�s going to be institutionalized. I�ve spent a great deal of time talking to several doctors about this. There�s nothing more that can be done for him at the hospital. There�s nothing else they can do, and he�s too dangerous to stay there. He needs professional psychiatric help.�

I gawked, jumping indignantly to my feet. �You�re sending him to an ASYLUM?!� I screamed.

�I have no other choice,� Mrs. O�Donnell replied blandly.

�B-but how could you do that?! It�s Roger, Goddammit, it�s Roger! HE IS NOT A FUCKING LUNATIC!�

�ARIK, STOP IT!� my mother yelled suddenly, rising to her feet. �If you can�t handle this, then please leave the room.�

I stared at her, breathing hard, feeling tears returning. Mrs. O�Donnell�s numb gaze had not changed. She had barely blinked at my outburst.

I left the room.

Chapter Thirty-one...