The doctor answers, soft and solemn.
“Six to ten months.”
A familiar wetness crawls down Michael’s cheeks, leaving behind a reddish itch. He reaches up to scratch his face, though it’s hard to tell whether he’s trying to sate this itch or trying to pull his skin apart from the seams. The cheek-wet, slimy sound of his swallowing fills the stale air.. He doesn’t know what to say—he doesn’t say anything. Eventually, though, he speaks, trying to conjure an adult voice but only letting out a boyish whimper.
“What about graduation,” he asks.
She refuses to answer, but closes her eyes, purses her lips, and shakes her head in disappointment. He figures it wasn’t a very good question. I could have asked about prom, or about experimental surgeries, or about Mom, or about—
“Would you like to tell your parents, or should we do so?”
“Uh, my mother’s in the waiting room. If you could…”
“And your father?”
He licks his too-dry lips and holds in his tongue to stop himself from responding. The doctor eventually disappears through the doorway, leaving Michael alone all over again. He stares at the neon-yellow sun painted on the wall, a makeshift sun whose lack of brightness is only made more apparent by the rows of buzzing LEDs on the ceiling. Next to it are clouds, naturally, and a sickly pale sky painted so thinly that the bumps in the drywall can be seen through it. In the time it takes for the doctor to return, mother in tow, he has already given each of the animals painted on the wall a name and an elaborate backstory and has already laughed at his own childishness, concluding that the whole thing was stupid in the first place.
His mother’s hug is much warmer than the hospital blanket’s. He lets his body sink into hers and relaxes for what, he realizes, might be the last time in his life.
“Oh! You should make like, a bucket list or something,” Valerie says between mouthfuls of microwaved pizza.
Michael nods in agreement. He had told her about his diagnosis earlier that same lunch break, but wasn’t really sure whether she’d grasped the gravity of it—although, to be fair, he could say the same about himself. He had glossed over the details on purpose, in part because he couldn’t quite understand them himself, the doctor’s rigid language circling around his head and failing to settle. He didn’t know if he’d be at school for much longer, if he’d even be at home for much longer. He knew it was his heart and not his brain that was the issue; that at least he’d be all there when he died. Some comfort. He was relieved that she didn’t pry into it, instead apologizing and giving short condolences before sitting down at their usual table like nothing had changed. He takes out his math notebook and starts writing on the very last page. It feels like the first time in forever he’s thought about what he wants. Valerie watches him write, smiling warmly, moving to his side of the table and laying her head on his shoulder, muttering reassuring words. She comes up with a few suggestions, too; going to a concert, seeing the stars, leaving the country …
“We can’t afford that.”
“Seeing the stars?”
“What? No. Leaving the country.”
“Well, I wasn’t saying you should go to an all-inclusive resort or anything, just—”
Valerie mercifully cuts her sentence short and lets him continue to write. “Sorry.” By the time the bell rings, the bucket list has far exceeded its original page, growing into the cardboard backing as well as the preceding pages. Most of it consists of Valerie’s suggestions. Her ideas—her plans, rather—seem much more reasonable than his own. He’s reluctant to get up and make her move her head out of the way, and so she gets up first, extending her arm as if he needs help leaving his seat. Maybe he does.
They part ways as they enter the hallway, but Michael can’t focus in class: instead, he’s turning his notebook over and staring at the back of it, doodling next to the items in his list, erasing some, adding others. The teacher calls on him a few times but eventually relents. He’s curried enough favor with him to have an off day every once in a while. The bell rings once more, this time indicating the end of the day.
With his hood up, Michael can almost pass for a college freshman (or at least he thinks so, which is the important part). He confidently waltzes into the lecture hall, following the ant-trail of students as it splits off into the wide double doors of the auditorium-styled classrooms. The one he picks claims to host a sophomore-level mathematics course, unhelpfully subtitled “Advanced Multivariable & Vector Calculus.” He settles into one of the unoccupied seats, which are all in all much more comfortable than those at his high school, although he finds no space for the computer or notebook that a real student would have brought. His backpack sits nearly-empty in front of his legs, more a footrest than anything. The professor, a balding, thinning caricature of a man, doesn’t notice the intruder, and begins his lesson as normal. The shrill crackles of his chalk on the blackboard quickly become the only noise in the room.
Michael abandons his original posture, leaning forward with his elbows planted firmly on his thighs and his head resting on his fists so that he can see better. The strokes of mathematical jargon on the blackboard are like an abstract painting, sharply demarcating the geography of the infinite black canvas, revealing universal truths that Michael feels too stupid to understand. The professor dances with the chalk in his hand, the blackboard a backdrop and the diagrams he draws little more than a record of his movement.
The student next to him sighs, and Michael is awake again; suddenly the professor’s words are louder than the sliding chalk and the nonsensical talk of identity matrices and anticommutative cross products quickly becomes an aggressive jumble that his mind must somehow untangle. He knows this is a hopeless effort—that not only does he not understand college-level calculus, but that he never will. I don’t have the time to. The professor’s dance eventually concludes, leaving behind a blackboard full of symbols somewhere between Greek letters and numbers, arrows pointing to nowhere, traces of a path that can’t be followed. The students leave, then the professor, but Michael, almost invisible in his chair, sits still in awe. He takes out his phone, the only useful thing he brought, and takes a zoomed-out picture of the blackboard before making his exit.
It had been surprisingly difficult for Michael to convince his mother to repurpose the money in his college fund—they both had the same thought (well, what else would we spend it on?) but couldn’t bring themselves to say it out loud. What Michael’s mother charitably referred to as a college fund was in fact nothing more than a few hundred dollars scrunched together from extra waitstaff and reception shifts, money shaved off the top of the tip jar, dollar bills and coins picked up from tourist-poisoned walkways. When she finally takes the money out of her safe, it doesn’t seem much emptier than before.
The pair walk into Maison du Mer, whose pungent, fishy smell and cacophonic chaos remind Michael of home. The leatherbound menus list expensive wines behind a family crest and a Michelin star, presumably placed there to justify the prices. Michael’s mother doesn’t look at them, though; instead, she looks upon her son, now much taller than her, so much taller than she ever realized, so close to adulthood, to leaving the house. And yet.
He still has the puffy cheeks and bright chocolate eyes that he did when he was born. She’s only sixteen years older than she was then, but the young woman in her pictures looks like a stranger, one whose refined wardrobe and candid beauty she can’t help but be jealous of. Her always-tired eyes struggle to focus on the menu, so Michael reads off the items in the gentle voice with which he’s learned to address his mother. Bruschetta (or, as he points out, bruschette, since there’s multiple of them) topped with fish pâté and caviar … fried baby squid … ahi tuna tartare … sea bream sashimi with passionfruit purée … oysters rockefeller … king prawn ceviche … gambas al ajillo … “it all seems good,” she says, “just pick whatever you want, honey,” house-cured gravlax … snowcrab paella … white wine bouillabaise … “well, I want you to like it too, Mom,” … seared ahi tuna steaks … soft-shell crab curry … whole live Maine lobster, market price … “there we are.”
The tuxedo-clad waiter takes their order, not without mentioning the cavalcade of wines they could add on to it. They couldn’t care less.
“You don’t have to be sad now, y’know. I’m not leaving yet.” His mother’s trembling hand lays on his. He knows it wasn’t the right thing to say, but there was nothing else he could say. “I just want to enjoy my time here as much as I can, yeah?” She nods through her tears, gripping his hand harder. For once, Michael doesn’t mind the mark her acrylic nails might leave on his skin. He lets her hold onto him and gives her the most luminous smile he can. The candle between them flickers as the waiter nears the table.
“I love you, Mom.”
The firetruck-red lobster shell hides soft, perfectly pink meat. They use their lobster forks to pick at the carcass, although their technique leaves much to be desired.
“It just tastes like shrimp,” says Michael’s mother.
He chuckles. “Yeah, kinda. It’s … flakier?”
Her complaints about the taste don’t stop her from eating more than her half of the animal. Still hungry, Michael orders steamed mussels in cream sauce, to which his mother adds a side of French fries. He seems to scoff at the idea of having fries at such a fancy restaurant, so she clarifies;
“Moules frites. It’s a thing in Belgium.”
The reassurance that this meal is properly Belgian satisfies Michael. They share the mussels too, followed by a plateful of king salmon and roe on plain crackers, a backwards meal. The restaurant’s wide, mosaic-edged windows make the sunset even more beautiful, and as the lobster-red sun sinks into the horizon, Michael and his mother finish their meal. Following two shots of espresso, the waiter places the check on the table. While she’s looking out the window, he can’t help but sneak a glance at the check, even though he was taught otherwise—the $460 charge, still not signed for, mocks him.
Michael grabs his mother’s arm and points his head toward the door before taking off in a full sprint. She follows behind him, surprisingly quick in her startled, adrenaline-dazed state.
“Are you fucking crazy?”
Michael only pants in response.
“Get back here! Hey!”
He can’t tell whether it’s his mother or the restaurant staff that’s screaming at him. All he can do is hope she’s still following him and that they aren’t. He reaches the parking lot across the street, exhausted, but feeling like he could keep running forever. The cold evening wind barely registers as it grazes his exposed face and arms. “Mom?” He sees her right at the edge of his field of vision, small but growing ever closer, panting even more loudly than he is. Before she can say anything, he gets into the driver’s seat and turns the car on. The old engine screeches to life.
“Michael–”
“You can do something else with that money now.”
“That was … so irresponsible … you’re … Christ, you’re grounded …”
“I know.”
“That …”
Through the rear view mirror, Michael sees his mother desperately trying not to smile.
“What a rush, huh?”
As Michael turns towards General Adams St., he checks his phone for what might be the twentieth time this drive. The address is correct—a third-floor apartment in the building right in front of where Michael parked. Lowell Jackson seems likely enough a name, and besides, the man in the photo looks too much like him to not be his father. Michael climbs up the rackety metal staircase, heated by a heavy sun, not really thinking about what he wants to say or do. He figures he’ll get to that eventually, and is still figuring it out by the time he knocks on the door. After a short while, a tall man wearing vintage jeans and a sweat-stained band shirt opens the door, a furrowed brow and a confused look adorning his all-too-unfamiliar face.
“I’m Michael Feng. Your son.” The man’s expression shifts instantly.
“Oh my god! Mikey! Come on in!” he says as he moves in for an asphyxiating hug. The name reaches Michael’s ears and oozes out like a pus. “You’ve grown so much since I last saw you,” says the man as he prepares a pot of coffee. Michael shuffles uncomfortably; the couch on which he sits is somewhere he’s never been, as is, in fact, the whole apartment, but a dreadful sense of déjà vu clouds his senses, and he can’t help but breathe heavily enough for the man to notice, although he doesn’t seem to be bothered by it.
“So, how’s your mom?”
Michael takes a long sip of his coffee before answering. “Uh, good. You know. Starting a new job, dealing with me … she seems to be handling it well.”
“Nice, nice, that’s good to hear. And you?”
“Um. I’m okay.”
A long silence follows as the pair finish their coffee—Lowell moves to refill Michael’s (or rather his) mug, but he refuses. Lowell’s expression shifts again, just as suddenly as before, this time into a pondering seriousness. Michael finally puts the face to the name on the infrequent child support checks he’d grab from the mailman and hand to his mother.
“Look. If you’re here for money, I don’t have any. I’m—I’m between jobs. If you need me to do somethin’ for you, I can almost guarantee I won’t be able to do it. I don’t know if you want me to apologize or somethin’.”
“I just wanted to come by and—”
Lowell interjects. “I wasn’t ready to raise a kid.”
And you think she was?
“Besides, we weren’t that close, and we both wanted to lead our own lives. It looks to me like she’s done a good job, at least … I can’t say I don’t have any regrets, but I hope you understand where I’m coming from. If not now, then someday.”
It takes a long time for Michael to speak again. “No, really, I don’t want anything. I just wanted to say hello. Promise.” Lowell relaxes once again, his shoulders slumping as he sits down on the couch, motioning to wrap an arm around his son before deciding not to. The previous silence returns, maybe a tad lighter than before. Michael eventually asks for more coffee, and his father smirks as he refills the mug. Almost instinctively, Michael lets out a stifled laugh, less at the situation itself and more at the fact that he’s sitting on a stranger’s couch asking for coffee he doesn’t even like. Lowell sits back down and attempts further conversation.
“You wanna play 2K or somethin’?”
Michael nods.
Lowell’s Chicago Bulls annihilate Michael’s Miami Heat. It’s not unexpected—Michael barely knows the controls, nor does he particularly care for basketball. Lowell celebrates each dunk by punching Michael’s shoulder. “Come on, Mikey! Try a little harder!” When his son does manage to score, Lowell puts on a face of exaggerated dejection. Again, Michael can’t help but laugh. The pair play against each other a few times, the result the same in each. Lowell sticks to the Bulls, while Michael switches teams every game, tweaking the formations and starting players every time. The sky starts to darken, and by their fifth game Michael shuts down again. Lowell quickly picks up on it. “You gotta go home?”
“Mm.”
“A’ight. At least tell your mom I said hi, yeah?”
“Okay.” He doesn’t plan to—he doesn’t want to see his mother’s face contort into that horrible wince that appeared every time he asked about his father, doesn’t want to feel the sickening sensation of unopened letters swiped from his hands. He remembers the hardened grip that she’d use whenever she felt threatened, a grip that now seems much like Lowell’s, one that probably wouldn’t hurt at all now, considering how much he’s grown.
Michael leaves soon after, initiating the same choking hug he’d received earlier. “Come again!” says his father. He doesn’t respond.
Michael drives the direction opposite home. The Highlander needs to stop for gas before it can make it out of the city—the hour-and-a-half drive through downtown, the suburbs, and the surrounding towns is tough on the old car. He puts on the new SVBLIME mixtape—Origami—and steers the car thoughtlessly through the crowded asphalt, humming along. “I ain’t ever let a hoe get the better of me, never let a hoe get the better of me, uh, never let a hoe get the better of—” Unconsciously, unwillingly, his mind turns to Valerie, even though the main benefit of driving without her in the car is getting to listen to music he actually likes. The passenger seat looms with a now obvious emptiness.
As the large suburban homes start to vanish, Michael remembers what Robin said about the new mixtape. That it was solid, maybe a little bloated. Certainly not as good as his debut album (but then again, what was), but still worth checking out, to which Michael agreed. The old-school jazz sampling is as consistent as ever, and the few standout songs linger in his head as the drive gets longer and longer. The sunset comes and goes through the window, but Michael doesn’t pay it any mind: sunsets happen everywhere, and he has hundreds left to see. The landscape simplifies into stretches of grass surrounding dirt-and-gravel roads, loud and tough on the old beast’s tires. Michael eventually stops as he spots a lonely tree, lazily watching over the blades of tall grass dyed a dark blue by the moonlight, the only remains of a previous forest beyond a few stumps that could very well serve as makeshift benches. The car billows to a halt, and Michael steps out into the cold, barren night. He lies down, head supported by one of those stumps. He looks at the stars.
The sky is startingly, unbelievably clear. The stars look like a billion dots drawn on a giant, cosmic chalkboard. Michael squints, trying to see the constellations, but there aren’t any. All there are —sans clouds, sans anything larger than the yellowed moon—are individual stars dancing around the mess of sky. The stump on which he lies shields him from the wind, and the lonely tree seems to house only the quietest of birds and bugs. He can finally hear the fabled cosmic background noise: the swooshing of the stars, the creaking of the slowly-moving moon, the chirping of the spaceships up above. The sky’s curvature looks like a girl’s smile, nothing like the cloudy concrete ceilings that hang above the city every night. He’s never seen anything like this: the photos of a clear night sky, the constellation map he’d hung up in his room as a kid, the planetarium’s nightly simulations, were all much brighter, much more organized than the pure blackness of this sky. The stars he’d seen before appeared like nothing more than oversized lamps masquerading as celestial lights—the moon always cloaked by clouds or the skyline stood out proudly, its cratered surface looking just as rugged as he’d always thought it should. When he blinks, the stars are still there; when a few hours pass and his phone lights up with his mother’s messages, the moon is still there; when he finally gets back home, well into the morning hours, the pillows on his bed feel like the stumps of long-gone trees.
“Oh my God. How do people even do this?”
Disoriented, he opens and closes his eyes until the scene around him starts to make some sense. His pillows are propped up against the headboard, and he’s sitting on the edge of the bed. There is a girl next to him.
“Hey, you okay?”
“Um, yeah. I just have to go to the bathroom.”
The girl in question is who he would previously have described as “my good friend, Valerie Hasenkamp. We met in middle school and stayed friends since. We were both bullied for wearing glasses, but I switched to contacts and she didn’t. She got me into sci-fi novels. She’s my best friend.” Now, though, she’s just a girl occupying a remarkably small space in his bed, seemingly shrinking into its corners and vanishing between the sheets and pillows as he walks away.
He can’t bear to look down at it, and so his piss splashes everywhere. I’ll clean it later, he thinks, knowing he might not. He washes his hands, and his face, and his face, and his face—no amount of washing seems to make it go away. Was that what everybody’s always raving about? That? He can’t believe it lasted as long as it did, nor can he believe how strangely laborious the whole endeavor was. The carpet of sweat all over his face and body feels weightier than the clothes sprawled on the floor.
Most of all, he can’t believe that Valerie agreed to it, and can’t figure out whether to feel pity or anger. He supposes he’d always found her sorta pretty, in the way that a domesticated canary is pretty. It’s her fault anyway. She didn’t stop me from putting it on the damn list. Her voice asking if he’s doing alright in there feels insultingly girly.
The next day, Valerie smiles at him in the hallway. He normally reads her expression with ease, but today he can’t quite figure out whether she really did enjoy whatever that was or if she’s trying to put on a show for her dying friend. Neither option feels particularly good. He doesn’t want to think about it anymore, but, of course, her naked body is the only image his mind is interested in providing.
He struggles to respond when she tries to make small talk, and she doesn’t push further after the first few times. The next day, he can’t find her at lunch. They don’t share any classes—not anymore—so he can’t know for sure, but he takes the hint. He’s disgusted with himself, and with her for that matter, although he can’t really think of anything either of them did wrong. They struggle to talk to each other the same as before; he winces when Robin and his mother ask about her. Their shared drives home dry up as Valerie’s car is suddenly repaired. He can’t even bring himself to brag about it, even jokingly. Even though that was, in effect, the point.
Michael is completely transfixed by Robin’s new upper lip piercing. Or at least he thinks it’s new. “Dude,” Robin says, “we have to get going before traffic gets bad.” Michael had completely forgotten about the tickets he’d bought weeks ago, about the promise he’d made to go to a concert before he died or got too infirm to do so. He hadn’t shaved in a few days, nor had he properly combed his hair in the morning. With how things were going, it was a miracle that he remembered to shower. Still, they get into the Highlander, Robin’s excitement carrying both their expectations. “You think it’ll just be the new shit?” Michael asks, genuinely wondering. Robin shakes his head. “It’s a post-release tour, sure, but he’ll play the big hits from his whole career.” Michael smiles. He puts on Origami as a refresher or as a distant memory, and the boy in the passenger seat raps alongside him.
The drive is shorter than expected, and they arrive to the venue well before even the opening act begins. Robin grabs Michael’s hand and pushes him to near the front row, close to the band currently setting up and the gigantic, almost cartoony speakers surrounding the stage.
The opening act begins, and Michael immediately cups his hands around his ears. They’re far, far too close to the stage, and though he tries to tell Robin this, he’s much too distracted banging his head and belting out lyrics to notice. An instant dizziness takes over his body as the arena rumbles with the sound of the instruments and thousands of feet leaving and returning to the ground, leaving and returning to the ground. Jump, jump, jump, jump. He finally asks Robin to move further from the stage, and the latter thankfully relents, not without some arguing. He was right that they had paid for their tickets and arrived early for a reason—still, it was simply too much to handle. He was right, also, that Michael should have stopped by CVS and bought earplugs if he was going to be a bitch about it.
Pushing through the crowd proves an extremely difficult feat, and by the time they arrive at a more comfortable position, SVBLIME has already gotten on stage. His custom athletic jacket and signature dyed-blond hair stand out from the chaos of the stage and the arena, even though the surgical-white lights behind him make him almost impossible to see. Michael starts to feel better as some songs he actually knows play; he can jump along with the crowd and, as long as he’s in sync with them, the headache and the buzzing noise goes away, if only momentarily.
It takes a while for him to notice how much worse the sound quality is live than it is in studio recordings. He just figured he didn’t like the opening act’s music, and that’s why it sounded like shit—but between the siren-like pulsing of the lights and the out-of-tune roaring of the crowd, Michael can barely even tell what song is playing, let alone if it’s a song he’s supposed to like. Robin’s unwavering excitement doesn’t do much to clarify—he’s so into the show now that Michael’s high-pitched pleas to go somewhere quieter vanish into the unrelenting crowd. “Yo.”
“What?”
“I gotta take a leak. Where the fuck are the bathrooms?”
By the time they push through enough of the crowd to see the porta potties, the line has grown significantly. Almost halfway through SVBLIME’s set, they consider just holding it in. But the respite from the noise is nice. While Michael waits in line, Robin vanishes into another crowd.
When he eventually comes back, he’s holding two solo cups filled with an unknown liquid. Robin waves a fake ID in his friend’s face, almost mockingly. It says he’s 23. “Come on, dude. Let’s go.”
“You only live once, right?”
The pair drown their drinks in one swig. The alcohol makes Michael cough, and he can’t quite tell what was in it, although there was certainly some sort of mixer; it’s nothing like the abhorrent vodka he’s taken from his mother’s cupboard before, certainly not like any wine he’s ever had, nor is it fizzy like a beer. Robin grabs his friend’s shoulders and shakes him. They share an unsure smile.
By the time they’re front of line, Michael feels like he’s about to explode. The moment he enters the porta potty, already nauseous from its smell, he keels over the toilet and starts throwing up. The vomit eventually turns into sporadic coughs, but Michael can’t stop shaking. He tries to piss, but can’t. Not without looking at it, anyway. He exits the porta potty and waits for Robin’s turn, which also seems to take forever; Michael wonders if he’s throwing up too, but when he exits he looks completely fine, his face and hair splashed with beads of cold water.
The whole endeavor takes well over half an hour, and when they return to the arena proper, SVBLIME is already wrapping up his set. Robin seems dejected—he missed his favorite song. Michael, meanwhile, is too dizzy, too dazed to realize, and has to be pulled out of his stupor by his friend’s muggy palm striking his face.
“Wake up, man, we need to get back.” Michael receives the keys to his car.
What? We’re both too drunk for this shit, he thinks, but what he says doesn’t quite match.
“It’s fine. The roads are chill this time of day. And I can jump in if you need me to.”
Robin doesn’t await his friend’s response. “Yes, I know I don’t have a license. We won’t get pulled over, seriously. Trust me.”
Michael struggles to avoid the obvious thought; so what if I drive drunk, I’m dying in a few months. He relents: whether it’s to Robin or to himself, he doesn’t know.
They don’t talk on the way back. Michael can barely focus on driving. Still, when he drops Robin off, they hug each other and assure each other that they had a good time.
Saturday morning comes and goes with Michael still fast asleep. When he eventually wakes up, he does so with his mother hunched over his bed, checking his temperature and placing a tray of breakfast on his nightstand. She speaks in a syrupy, worried-sick voice.
“Did you have fun last night, honey?”
“…Yeah.”
Michael’s head continues to pulse with pain, continues to fail to recall anything from last night. He melts into the bed, feeling both horribly cold and horribly warm, and the food only helps a small amount. He’s never felt so disgusted with himself. Time’s slipping away, he thinks, and here I am, wasting away, feeling sorry for myself, fucking up the only chance I’ll ever have to enjoy a concert. Fucking up one of the only days I have left by lying there like a fucking corpse. What’s the goddamned point, I’ll be bedridden in a few months anyway.
He wonders why he even chose to go to a concert in the first place, but can’t really think of a good reason beyond an injured sense of obligation. He uses what’s left of his strength to grab his math notebook and look over the bucket list again. He crosses off a few things he managed to do, but the rest of the list—still spanning multiple pages— just seems to get longer the more he looks at it.
He feels like throwing up all over again.
He has to knock on the Hasenkamps’ door a few times before anybody answers. Valerie’s father doesn’t seem particularly surprised to see Michael (or by his dilapidated appearance) and invites him in without a second thought. Michael lounges on the couch, trying to feel the comfort of normalcy again, but can’t manage to do so. He sees Valerie leave her room, looking just as disheveled as he is, and her widened, almost fearful expression hits him in a sharp stab of pain around the aorta.
“Val,” he asks, shocked by the rasp and apparent age in his voice. “Could you rip these up for me?”
He hands her the last few pages of his notebook, taken out of it and bunched into a careless ream. “Please.”
“I’m sorry,” he adds after an extended silence.
“I know,” she responds.
He bites his bleeding lip, rustling around his head to find an appropriate response. He wants nothing more than to erase everything, than to return to normal. A familiar wetness stains his face. “It’s okay,” she says. She rips up the pages, just like he asked, and Michael finally feels like he can breathe again. “Can we just … hang out? Like usual?”
“I just—I just wanted to make the most of my life.”
“Well, you wanna head to my room, then?” “… Yeah.”
All illustrations by Carmelo Ledezma Herrera. Thank you.