Taped to the wall next to the office is an enlarged photo of Jason. It’s his yearbook picture from last year. And whoever blew it up didn’t do a very good job. It looks kind of grainy and uneven. But it’s obviously Jason. And this confuses me. Why is his picture up there? Maybe he’s student of the month, although they don’t usually go to this much trouble.

  I look beneath the photo to read the computer-generated sign: “In Loving Memory of Jason Harding. We’ll Miss You!” Beneath that is a long sheet of white butcher paper that goes all around the office wall. It has what appears to be graffiti all over it, but on closer inspection, I can see that kids have written their names along with notes to Jason. But it just doesn’t make any sense.

  I look at Eva. “This isn’t for real, is it?” I ask so quietly that I can hardly even hear myself.

  She nods. “I’m sorry, Morgan.”

  “No.” I shake my head and look away. “No, no . . . it can’t be . . .”

  She puts her hand on my shoulder and I look back up at his photo again. I look into that face that I’ve known all these years. I look into the eyes that could always see right through me. And I realize as if for the first time that something is really wrong. The grainy photo becomes soft and blurry as my eyes fill with tears and the ache in my chest feels lethal.

  And then suddenly, as if I’ve just been stabbed by the blade of reality, it all becomes painfully clear to me. Jason must really be dead. As impossible as this is to wrap my mind around, I think maybe this horrible thing has really happened.

  With legs that are beginning to shake uncontrollably, I turn back to Eva. “It’s really true?” I ask.

  This time she just nods.

  And that’s when my legs just totally give way and I collapse like a broken doll. I crumple into this pitiful little heap of misery right next to the office door, where I hear phones ringing and voices talking as if nothing whatsoever is wrong. I crouch beneath Jason’s grainy photo and burrow my head into my knees and sob.

  “Jason, come back,” I plead and beg. “Please, Jason, come back. Come back.” I say these words over and over, thinking that maybe, if I say them enough or if I wish for it hard enough, just maybe I can undo this awful thing that has stolen my friend away from me. But it’s not working because my world is quickly turning black. Pitch black.

  three

  I DON’T REMEMBER COMING INTO THE HEALTH ROOM, BUT I CAN SEE THAT’S where I am now. I wonder how I know this since I’ve never actually been in here before. Maybe it’s the smell, a combination of dusty vinyl upholstery and disinfectant soap.

  “Feeling better?” asks Mrs. Lender, the office lady. She must be about the same age as my mom, but she actually dresses in what seems like the appropriate apparel for a middle-aged woman. Okay, maybe the teacher sweater with red apples on the front is a bit much. She is offering me a paper cup, which I assume must be full of water.

  I nod and take the cup, then just look at it, wondering what I am supposed to do with it.

  “Drink it,” she tells me.

  So I do. Then I hand the cup back and just wait.

  “Eva said that you just heard about Jason,” she says sadly.

  “Is it really true?” I ask with the slightest twinge of hope, like maybe I’ve just been hallucinating.

  “Yes. Unfortunately it is. We have a grief counselor on campus today. He’s with another student right now, but you could—”

  “I don’t want to,” I say quickly, standing up on what feel like spaghetti legs. “I just—I just want to go home.” I look at her with hot tears running down my cheeks again. “Please, can’t I just—just go home?”

  “Is there someone there you can talk to?” she asks. “To help you process your loss?”

  “Sure,” I lie. I vaguely wonder what she means by those words. How on earth does anyone process something like this?

  “Okay, I’ll go see what I can do.” She hands me a Kleenex box. “Why don’t you sit back down and wait here.”

  I soak several Kleenexes before she comes back. It’s like the tears won’t stop coming now. And my head is throbbing like a crowd is pounding from the inside with a hundred mini jackhammers.

  “You can go home, Morgan. Do you need to use the office phone to call for a ride?”

  “No,” I manage to say as I stand and pat my backpack. “I’ve got my cell.” Another lie. I am still one of the few kids on the planet without a cell phone.

  “Okay, then.” She makes a sad little smile. “Take it easy and maybe you’ll feel more like yourself by Monday.”

  “Yeah,” I say as I head for the door. I don’t even thank her. I just want to get out as quickly as possible and hopefully without seeing any of my friends. I hurry out of the office and straight for the front door, then take off down the sidewalk in the direction of our neighborhood, walking as fast as I can.

  I am about four blocks from school, and nearly halfway home, when I remember that I rode my bike to school today. Even so, there is no way I’m going back for it now. I keep heading toward my house in a dazed state of numbness. All I can think about is Jason. And I keep asking myself why. Why? Why?

  By the time I reach my street, I begin to wonder if this whole thing is really true or not. What if someone got their facts wrong? Like maybe Jason tried to kill himself, but he’s still alive? Or what if it was really someone else, someone who’s been mistaken for Jason? Couldn’t that happen? I think I saw something like that on a TV movie once.

  Because really, why would Jason Harding, the coolest guy I know, do himself in? Really, it’s totally absurd. Then it occurs to me that maybe he’s cooked this whole thing up just to get some weird kind of attention or to make people think.

  By the time I reach my front porch steps, I feel certain this is exactly what has happened. Of course, it makes perfect sense. Jason has pulled a really sick joke on everyone—including me!

  I fish in my bag for my house key and imagine myself calling Jason and yelling at him for giving me such a freaking scare. But then after I yell at him, I’ll tell him that I’m actually very thankful he’s alive, and then I’ll invite him over here to hang with me today. Hey, we can have the whole place to ourselves and even make a mess if we want to. Maybe we’ll order a pizza—pepperoni and olive, just how he likes it—and then we’ll find some good pay-per-views and run up my mom’s cable bill. Yeah.

  But when I go inside, I drop my backpack on the living room floor, kick off my flip-flops, and head straight for my bed. And that’s where I crash, crying myself into a fitful sleep where reality and fantasy become so intertwined that by the time I wake up I am not sure about anything. Except that it’s nearly four o’clock in the afternoon and I don’t know how I could’ve slept so long.

  My head is hot and stuffy and I feel incredibly thirsty, like I’ve been out in the desert for days. As I go to the kitchen for a glass of water, I try to remember why I’m at home instead of at school, which has already gotten out by now.

  Jason. It hits me as I turn on the tap. Jason is dead. But even as those words go through my head, I still don’t believe them. It’s got to be a hoax or a mistake or just a really bad dream. Because I know—I just know—that Jason Harding cannot possibly be dead. It’s just so wrong.

  I watch as the glass fills up, then I drink a few sips of water, but it tastes like metal and suddenly I don’t know why I thought I was so thirsty in the first place. I pour the water down the sink and stand there for a long time, just staring down the drain as I wonder what I should do next. It’s like I can’t even think.

  Then I hear a shuffling sound outside the front door, and for some reason I feel certain that it must be Jason. He’s come by to straighten this freaky mess up. He’s going to tell me that this whole thing is just a moronic misunderstanding, a case of mistaken identity. I run to the door and open it wide. But no one is there. I look out to the street, ready to call out to him, to tell him to come back. But all I see is our paperboy, Kenny Green, pedaling down the street with a bag of newspapers hanging over his shoulder.

  That’s when I notice the afternoon paper lying on the porch at my feet. I sigh as I stoop to pick it up, disappointed that it wasn’t Jason at my door. But even before my hand touches the newspaper, I see the photograph—bold black and white, right on the front page.

  I pick it up and stare at one of Jason’s senior pictures (he got them back only a couple of weeks ago). But even as I look at it, I tell myself that this isn’t for real. I try to convince myself that this is all just part of his elaborate hoax and that I shouldn’t be taken in by it. I should know better. Then I go inside.

  I close the door and take the newspaper into the living room, where I sit down on the couch and force my eyes to read the headline above his photo. It shouldn’t take long for me to see right through this thing. But the headline is not encouraging.

  STANTON HIGH SENIOR DIES FROM OVERDOSE

  Overdose? Incredulously, I read the word again. Then I continue to read the short article, although it’s hard to follow the words because my hands begin to shake so badly.

  Late last night, 18-year-old Jason Harding, son of City Councilor Gary Harding, was transported to Amherst General Hospital, where he died in the early morning hours. The cause of death is listed as liver failure. Sources say Harding ingested a lethal dose of the commonly used painkiller Tylenol (acetaminophen) on Thursday.

  Jason Harding was a well-liked senior at Stanton High School. An athlete and honor roll student, he was also managing editor of Stanton High’s newspaper and on the yearbook staff. Active in his church youth group and a volunteer coach for SoccerKidz, no one seems to know why this young man would take his life. Harding was . . .

  That’s all I can take. I let the paper slide down to the floor as I collapse back onto the couch and try to absorb what I’ve just read. Okay, it must be true. Jason must really be dead. Because there is no way he could fake something like this. And if he really died of an overdose, there’s no way it could be a case of mistaken identity either. So it must be true. Jason really is dead.

  Thinking of Jason like that, lying in a hospital or a morgue or a funeral home or whatever, just cold and not breathing, is absolutely killing me. It feels like someone has dumped a load of cement on top of me and it’s crushing the life and breath out of me. This is too much pain. How can anyone survive this much pain?

  four

  I’M NOT SURE IF I BLACKED OUT OR WHAT, BUT WHEN I COME TO I FEEL confused and sick. My head is hot and throbbing, but the rest of me feels ice-cold. I shiver. It takes me a minute to remember what is going on, but then I see the newspaper down on the floor with Jason’s smiling photo looking up at me.

  “Oh, Jason,” I say out loud as I pick up the paper and almost reverently place it on the coffee table with his picture facing up, “why did you do this?”

  I stand up and wander into the kitchen now. I’m not hungry, but my stomach is aching like I consumed a bowlful of rusty nails and battery acid, and I wonder if there’s something I can eat that will make it stop hurting. I open the fridge and look inside, but the smell of the food makes me want to hurl. I shut the door and turn away.

  I go into the bathroom now. It’s one that my mom and I share since our house was built in an era when people thought one bathroom was sufficient for the entire family. I open the old-fashioned medicine cabinet thinking I will take a big gulp of that disgusting Pepto-Bismol stuff, but the pink bottle is nearly empty, and even when I turn it upside down and shake it hard, I can get only a few drops on my tongue. I throw it into the wastebasket and look back in the medicine cabinet.

  My head is throbbing like it will never stop. So I reach for the extra-strength Advil that I normally use for cramps, but then I notice a red-and-white bottle of Tylenol sitting right next to it. And then, as if I’m compelled by an outside force, I pick up the bottle of Tylenol instead. I give it a shake and can tell that it’s almost full. Then I open it up and look at those innocent-looking white pills and wonder, Can this stuff really kill you?

  Oh, I’ve heard of kids taking pills before. Like Penny Weitzig, when we were just freshmen. She took a whole bottle of something and then got scared and called 911 and was taken to the ER, where she got her stomach pumped. We all felt sorry for her and everyone was extra nice to her when she came back to school. At least for a couple of days.

  My head feels like it’s going to burst, so I pop two Tylenol pills into my mouth, then lean over the sink and wash them down with some foul-tasting lukewarm water.

  But instead of returning the bottle of Tylenol to the medicine cabinet, I take it back into the living room with me and set it on the coffee table right next to the newspaper. I have no idea why I’m doing this, but there’s this driving force, something that’s compelling me. Maybe it’s Jason.

  But now my stomach is really starting to hurt and I realize that I haven’t eaten anything all day and it’s after four now, so I force myself to drink half a glass of milk. Then I go back into the living room and sit on the couch and stare blankly at the large oak coffee table with the newspaper and Tylenol sitting on it. Then I go and gather several candles from around the house, as well as matches. And I place these on the coffee table too.

  Then I go into my bedroom and search out everything that has anything to do with Jason, and I bring these items out to the living room and neatly arrange them on the coffee table with the rest of what is becoming a little shrine. There’s the CD Jason gave me for my last birthday, the worn baseball mitt he gave me when he outgrew it, several photos of him that I’ve taken over the years, starting from when I first got interested in photography in middle school up to the ones I took just a couple of weeks ago—even an old yellow T-shirt of his that had shrunk and I’d scavenged. It says “SoccerKidz” on the pocket.

  Then I light the candles and sit down on the couch and just stare at my strange creation. The candles grow blurry as my eyes once again fill with tears. And I keep asking myself, Why, why, why?

  For the first time today, I consider praying. Prayer used to get me through some pretty tough times. But the truth is, I haven’t been praying at all during the past month. I’ve quit reading my Bible and going to youth group too. At first I told myself that I was just “taking a break.” But honestly, I was mad at God. It seemed to me that no matter how hard I tried, my life never seemed to get much better. And then this whole thing with Mom and Bradley just kept getting more and more out of control. And I guess I just decided that God had quit listening to me anyway.

  So now there’s this huge obstacle—I’m not even sure what it is—but it’s like a giant wall between God and me, and even if I wanted to—which I don’t, especially in light of what’s happened today—I’m not sure how I’d get over it.

  In fact, that wall seems to be growing bigger and wider by the minute. Maybe it’s actually a mountain. But I think if I were going to say anything to God right now, I could only yell and scream at him and demand to know why he let something like this happen to Jason. But the fact is, I am not talking to God right now. I may never speak to him again.

  Still, I want to talk to someone. I wish my mom were here, and I hate Bradley even more for taking her away right when I need her the most.

  I start pacing in the living room. I feel like a trapped animal, like I want to claw down the walls and tear up the furniture. I think I might go crazy if I stay in this house one minute longer. So I blow out the candles, shove my feet into my flip-flops, and go outside.

  It seems all wrong that the sun is shining and the trees are blossoming and all kinds of spring flowers are in bloom. How dare they look so cheerful and carefree when my whole world is black and hopeless?

  My feet know exactly where they are going, and I let them lead me up Tamarack Street. I know I am heading directly toward his house, and I have no idea why I am doing this, but it’s like I can’t stop myself. The Hardings’ house is only a few blocks from mine, but these two neighborhoods couldn’t be more different. Both are part of the old section of town, where most of the houses are fifty years old and older, but my house is located at the foot of the hill, whereas Jason’s is halfway up and has a nice view of the city and river. And there you have it, the difference between the haves and the have-nots.

  I feel slightly breathless when I reach the place where Pine Street intersects Tamarack. I pause before I turn left and continue walking. All the houses up here are familiar to me since I’ve been coming up here for years. But today I don’t even see them. It’s as if I am walking with my eyes closed.

  I make sure to keep my distance from the Harding house by walking on the other side of the street. I’m not even sure why I do this, but I think it may be to show respect. I don’t want his family to think I’m being weird. Finally I stop and, leaning against the rock retaining wall on the house behind me, I just stare at Jason’s house. I can see his bedroom window from here. The shades are drawn.

  In fact, all the curtains and shades seem to be down in the Harding house. It’s as if the entire house has retreated into itself in mourning. I see Mr. Harding’s Toyota Land Cruiser in the driveway and suspect that Mrs. Harding’s Honda Accord is in the garage. Maybe that’s where Jason’s car is too. Although he usually parks it out on the street. He said he liked how out of place his beat-up ’83 Buick Century looked on their pristine lane, where homeowners are looked down on if they leave their trash cans on the curb too long. His dad, a successful Realtor, as well as a city councilman, was always trying to get Jason to park his “hunk-a-junk,” as he called it, in the garage so the neighbors wouldn’t be offended. Well, I guess they won’t be offended anymore.

  “My dad’s pretty uptight,” Jason told me a couple of weeks ago, and I sensed he was discouraged. “He’s really into appearances.”