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Overview
Karmen is about to start her last year of high school, but it’s only been six weeks since her brother, Julian, died by suicide. How is she supposed to focus on school when huge questions loom: Why is Julian gone? How could she have missed seeing his pain? Could she have helped him?
When a blowup at school gets Karmen sent home for a few weeks, life gets more complicated: things between her parents are tenser than ever, her best friend’s acting like a stranger, and her search to understand why Julian died keeps coming up empty.
New friend Pru both baffles and comforts Karmen, and there might finally be something happening with her crush, Isaiah, but does she have time for either, or are they just more distractions? Will she ever understand Julian’s struggle and tragedy? If not, can she love—and live—again?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781665903974 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers |
| Publication date: | 04/30/2024 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Sales rank: | 796,767 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
| Age Range: | 14 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One CHAPTER ONE
My brother’s room is a time capsule. The bed is made, smoothed down perfectly. The top of the nightstand is bare. The curtains are half-open, half-closed, making some type of daytime purgatory. Everything is exactly as he left it six weeks ago, before police-car lights strobed catastrophe through our life. I grip Julian’s slim reporter’s notebook in my left hand. White cover, hard cardboard backing, spiral-bound at the narrow top edge. The first third of the pages are covered in my brother’s careful, upright cursive—notes for stories he wrote, the name of a song, a phone number. They stop abruptly. That’s where I took over. Where I wrote those three questions the night Julian died. The questions I haven’t been able to look at since then, and don’t need to—they’re burned into my mind harder than they’re scrawled onto the page. Questions that follow me everywhere, demanding I find answers. Isn’t that why I’m here, in his room? To find out why he isn’t?
I pull open the nightstand’s top drawer. His phone—police already looked through that, said there was nothing on there of interest, gave it back. The charging cord is curled around itself like a snake eating its own tail. Other stuff that doesn’t mean much now: the passport he’ll never use, his driver’s license and student ID. I push it shut and ease open the bottom drawer.
Unfolded papers almost pop out. A bumper sticker shaped like a marijuana leaf, an empty windowed envelope, a cologne sample, the tip of one of his skateboarding magazines. I glance over my shoulder. What am I doing? Julian’s not gonna come in and find me here. If he could, it’d be worth the epic fight we’d get into over me going through his stuff.
I hear my mother sigh from all the way downstairs, deep and sad for seven a.m. I don’t have much time. I flip through the papers. One catches my eye: it has the Commonwealth University letterhead. I grab that. Dear Julian Wallace, We regret to inform you that you have been placed on academic probation....
“Karmen?” My mother’s tired voice drags its way up from the kitchen. I never knew, before, that a person could stay in bed almost all day and still seem so exhausted. Correction: I never knew she could.
“Hey—you ready?” Daddy calls from the bottom of the stairs. I dart out, snatch Julian’s backpack from just inside my room, cram the letter into the notebook, and then shove it into the bag. Something soft catches on my finger—unfinished knitting. Why’d I even pack that? I haven’t felt like knitting since... I cram down the pumpkin-orange yarn almost as hard as I push away the memory. My room glows, guilty with sunlight that pours through opened curtains and spills into the hallway. If I look back down the corridor, I’ll see nothing but dark. Shadows. Just like when my brother was still alive. My heart races like I’ve run down the road and back, full speed. I wipe my damp hands on my skirt and close the backpack. As I let go of the zipper pull, my hand brushes against the embroidery on the front. The tiny silhouetted skateboarder is frozen mid-leap, knees bent, feet on the board like magic, arms outstretched. He’s soaring.
“Karmen, time to go!” My father’s annoyed now. I pick up the bag and run down the stairs. He’s waiting. The day’s waiting. And it all feels heavier than I want it to.
“... think it’s good for her?” Mummy’s words float up to me. I take two steps lightly and listen.
“I don’t see the sense in just laying around the house.” Dad’s voice is louder.
“You gonna make a dig at me?” Her voice raises now too. “You don’t see I’m up?”
“I’m not talking about you. I’m saying she’s been through a lot, and it might be good for her to get in some type of good routine.”
I swallow and go down the stairs, letting my feet fall heavier so they hear me. So they stop.
“Morning, Karmen.” Mummy switches to false cheer. “Ready to conquer grade twelve?”
“Morning.” The air is still prickly from my parents’ words. Mummy attempts a smile that comes out all wrong—gritted teeth and grimacing. She’s in the blue bathrobe, of course, with the dingy sleeve edges and the broken belt loop.
I extract a granola bar from the box on the counter.
Uncomfortable silence. So much for us running late.
Daddy leans forward and drops a kiss on my cheek. “Last year of high school. You ready to knock ’em...” He falters a moment. “Knock ’em out?”
I force a smile back to distract from what he almost said. Dead. “Not really.”
“She’s not a fighter—right, Karmen?” Mummy pulls me in for a hug. She tries, but her arms are still limp. I should hug her back, but I don’t, and I hate myself for being grateful when she pulls back. “You’re our maker of soft things. Right?”
I can’t stop myself from flinching away as she tries to pat my cheek. “I guess.” I follow Daddy to the foyer. Mummy trails behind.
“Sure you wanna do this?” she asks as she leans against the wall. I glance at the calendar just beside her. It’s still stuck on July. If I flip it forward into this month, I’ll see the party hat Julian sketched on the day of his birthday, right there in the middle of September. I look away.
“School’s starting, so...” I have no justification for going to school beyond that, and the fact that Daddy stands by the open door expectantly.
“A sense of normalcy will be good for you.” Daddy jingles his keys. “It’ll be good for all of us.”
“You can let her speak,” Mummy says. Her voice is low, but I hear the taut rubber band in her tone. Daddy says nothing, just breathes out extra sharp. I look away from him, and my eyes go right where I didn’t want to look—Julian’s white-and-blue sneakers on the shoe rack by the door, the left one facing straight in on the shelf, the right one leaning a little to the side, its toe resting against its sibling.
“Can we just go?” My voice cracks. I clear my throat and shove my shoes on. “I’ll be in the car.”
I climb into the front seat, leave the door open so I can get some air. I lean back. This is normal. This is what people do. Dress for school, ride in the car. Tote a bag full of books around all day. If I just turn my head, I’ll see Julian slouched in the back, legs stretched out so his blue-and-white sneakers stick up on the center console, in protest for losing the prime spot to his little sis. If I just look back, I can fix everything. Karmen. Hey. Come on, Sis. Turn your head.
I turn my face to the window, close my eyes.
After Daddy pulls off, I head for the entrance, but when I get there, I can’t seem to go inside. Five girls from my grade bustle past, chatting, giggling. Do they know? Everyone knows, probably. Will I be answering questions all day? How was your summer? Your family take any trips? Is it true your brother died? The girls are gone, didn’t even look my way. I don’t know which is better—for everyone to pretend they don’t know, or for them to wear their knowing like a sickly mask, those sad for you smiles, the sympathetic head tilts. For them to expect me to wear grief too.
“Hey, Karmen!”
I turn around to see Layla grinning at me, a new green messenger bag strapped over her chest. She stands close, and the hairs on her arm brush up against mine like tiny, gentle hooks. “Last year in bondage,” she says to me. “Ready?”
“Yeah.” I follow my best friend’s lead, walk in time to her steps.
“You all right?”
I’m not, and she knows it. “I’m okay.”
“I was supposed to get here earlier, but Isaiah was hogging the shower. Like an extra ten minutes preening and gelling is gonna make a difference.”
“Mmm.” Layla’s familiar yammering pulls me along. Right now, it’s just what I need.
“By the time he got out it was after seven, and I barely had time to shower and get dressed.”
“Julian used to do that. Take forever tweezing his eyebrows or something.”
“Yeah, I... yeah.” Layla’s words peter out like an abandoned path. We pass the music hall in silence and head along the walkway that loops around the high school classrooms. A couple boys walk past us, and we’re stuck behind a gaggle of seventh graders, backpacks almost bigger than they are. They cluster like grapes packed too tight for the bunch, seeking safety in each other. Someone just behind us calls out a hail; in a classroom, laughter booms. Everything seems magnified.
Layla slips her arm into mine and leads the way down the stairs to the math block. As soon as we turn, it’s quieter. Shadows cool me as we take the steps.
“Give me a second.” I sit in the alcove halfway up. Mom was right. I’m not ready for this.
“Should I run back and see if your dad’s still there?” Layla’s face is so close, it feels like she’s about to swallow me. I can see the fuzz that covers her face, feel her breath.
“No.” My voice feels far, like my cotton-stuffed ears are ten feet away. “No.” Did I already say that? How can this place feel too... everything?
“Stay here.” Unless she’s got a portal to anywhere but here, whatever she’s planning is too much.
“I’m fine!” My voice booms. I cover my face with my hands. My palms are hot and dry. I close my eyes, count to five. When I take my hands away, at least the sounds around me seem turned down a few notches. A little closer to normal. And my best friend isn’t right in my face.
“You wanna go to Ms. Dorsett’s office? Or the nurse’s station?”
I shake my head. “Can you just... sit?”
She lowers herself onto the step beside me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her brows furrowed, figuring hard. “You could skip today. Everyone would get it.”
“Mummy and Daddy had it out over me coming. She thinks it’s too soon, and he said let me go if I’m ready.”
“Are you, though?”
Her gaze bores into me. Her eyebrows are still knotted up like a botched stocking stitch, and there’s something in her eyes I can’t bear. I force a smile and hope it looks sincere.
“Yup.” I stand up and smooth out the back of my skirt. “Let’s go.”
Layla mirrors my smile. A shadow of worry lingers on her face, a slight rumple between her brows.
“So your dad’s pushing you to be here?”
“No, it’s just...” I sigh. The bell for homeroom trills and saves me from trying to explain the impossible.
Layla scrabbles around in her bag as we head for our class. “I snuck in my phone, just in case.”
“I said I’m fine!” Layla flinches like I’ve hit her. “Sorry, I just—”
“It’s okay.” Layla’s voice shakes a little. An ache begins in my belly, small and hard as a bud. It’s not okay. We both know it.
“I just wanna—”
“I get it.” Layla smiles bright as we step into the room. “Maybe we should sit somewhere new.”
I follow her to the back of the class, but I wish she’d just gone to our old spot by the window. Wish she’d let me get my words out. I slide into the seat beside hers and drop my bag on the floor. We’ve known each other since grade seven, been inseparable since then. You better get it together, ’fore you mess things up with your bestie. My brother’s voice sounds in my head, clear as if he’s right behind me. I turn, but it’s just Robbie coming in. I turn back with a smile, though.
“I just wanna feel normal.” I say it softly. Layla reaches over and squeezes my wrist. It’s so easy for her to let go, to move on. I reach down to my bag, and my smile fades away as I catch sight of the little boarding dude, his embroidered dreads caught mid-flail like a spider flying on an invisible thread. Normal, I think, as I unzip the bag. My fingers graze the notebook’s silver spirals. I reach past it and slide out my water, take a sip as kids settle all around me. Layla’s chatting to one of the boys ahead of us.
“Good morning!” Mr. Douglas’ voice hushes the low chatter. “Welcome back for your last year, grade twelves.” There’s a pause where he should ask how everyone’s summer was. “So,” he starts, instead, “before we get into our usual greetings, I think we’d all like to extend our condolences to...” He looks around.
I try to slide down an inch or two. This can’t be happening. Normal, normal—I will it.
Mr. Douglas’ eyes land on me. “Karmen.”
I look away. My stupid eyes start the first watery swell, ’cause they know what’s happening too.
“Karmen, we as a class want to extend our condolences to you and your family on the, uh, the tragic loss of your brother this summer.”
The classroom is growing, like I’m Alice in Wonderland, proportions all off. His words seem echoey, and I can feel everyone’s eyes on me. They know. They all know. Who told them? Do they know how he died?
I want to grab my bag and bolt. This was a mistake. This was the hugest mistake.
“Class, let’s come together to support Karmen in this difficult time. I believe a few of you have some words of comfort and sympathy to share?”
I keep my eyes fixed on the top of my desk. I need to run out of here. The door feels so far away; maybe my legs won’t work. Someone near the front of the class is saying something: So sorry, I just can’t imagine... Her voice is breaking like it’s her tragedy, like her brother is dead instead of mine. I just want this over—all of it.
“Anyone else? Yes, Tasha,” Mr. Douglas is saying. It’s going on—this torture is gonna last forever.
Before I can think of a way out of this mess, the classroom door bursts open.
“Ooooh!” someone whispers.
“Think she crazy?”
Layla sucks air in through her teeth, quick and sharp, all in an instant, and I look up. Head full of long, tiny braids; skirt rolled. Long legs flash mid-thigh. Blouse knotted into a crop top.
“She new?” someone whispers.
“Uh... and you a-are?” Mr. Douglas stutters.
“Pru Davis.” The girl slumps into a chair.
“Right, right. Welcome. Class, please welcome our newest student, Pru.” Mr. Douglas fights to regain composure. “Pru, please refer to your student handbook for details on the, uh, school dress code.”
The classroom’s air bristles.
“Probably rolled it and smoked it before she came in here,” Layla mutters under her breath. I can just about feel porcupine quills rearing up on Layla’s arm beside me. I lean away and sneak another look over at Pru. The most outrageous anyone’s ever been before is wearing a slightly brownish-tinged shoe instead of regulation black, or a boy slinking in after lunch with his shirt still untucked from playing ball. She sighs, then languidly hauls her blouse down, then leans back in the seat.
“So, uh...” Mr. Douglas turns back to his desk. While he fumbles, I reach into my bag and slip out my math book, then wedge the tiny notebook in between its pages. I flip open the first page that Julian used. Other settlements. Alternative histories. Other athletes. I trace the words with my fingertips.
“Hey, you in my seat.”
I glance up to see Robbie towering over the desk.
“Sit someplace else.”
“I always sat here last year.” He dumps his backpack onto the desk—on top of the notebook. I hear paper crumple and shove his bag away. It thuds onto the floor along with my textbook. The page—Julian’s page—half tears away at the top. Robbie grabs his bag off the floor. “What wrong with you?” he barks at me. “You crazy?”
His words hit me like a slap, but before the sting’s even sunk in, the new girl is on her feet and in Robbie’s face.
“Watch your mouth.” Pru’s chin is lifted, her face just a few inches from him, like he insulted her, not me. Robbie takes a step back, brow crumpled in confusion.
“Where you come from? Ain nobody say nothing to you.”
“You don’t call people crazy. If you say it again—”
“Robert, Pru, enough! Both of y’all sit down, or you both start grade twelve in the office. Understand?” Mr. Douglas’ voice is loud, but somehow it still feels far away. I try to smooth out the page. I close the book softly, but my heart pounds loud.
“Mr. Douglas, you ain see what Karmen do? She push my bag, and then this one in my face like she ain got no sense—”
Pru raises a hand. Her middle finger sticks up like a flag.
“Pru, enough. Go to the counselor’s office. Robbie, keep going and you’ll be at the principal.”
Pru grabs her bag and swishes out of the classroom without a look back.
“That’s an entrance,” Layla says under her breath. Her voice sounds like she’s just seen someone squeeze out a turd on their desk. I can’t look over at my best friend. I can feel the charge in the classroom’s air—if I touch the desk, the chair’s leg, anything, electricity might jolt right through me. Layla elbows me. “This year’s gonna be interesting.” I can feel her looking over. I don’t answer.
The girl in front of me passes my textbook to me. I stare at the front cover, feel my fingers clench into a fist. I wish I had tape, something to fix what’s been broken.
“Let Karmen get away with anything. Just because—”
I don’t even let him finish the sentence. The textbook’s in my hand, then Frisbeeing across the room before I can even think about what I’m doing. It lands with a thud.
“See? See?” I hear Robbie say. My heart is pounding in my ears. I snatch up Julian’s backpack and dash for the door. Feet thudding, heart pounding, bag thumping, passing full classrooms, teachers calling names. I glimpse a head turning toward me.
Slow down, girl, ’fore you get everyone out here on ya case.
I listen to Julian’s voice, drop down to a walk. I’m near the library—a little farther and I’ll be at the counselor’s office. Her email flashes into my mind. I know we’ve got time scheduled together for two thirty, Karmen, but come see me any time you want to talk. Or not talk. Or just take a break. I slow even more outside the lounge. Couldn’t I even get through the first twenty minutes of the day?
I push the door open. Pru is there, clothes restored to uniform code—blouse tucked in, skirt hem below the knee. Her loafers and socks lounge below the low table, and one foot is cocked up on the edge, a bottle of nail polish beside her bare toes. The contents shimmer silver-white, like crushed stars. Pru shakes the polish twice, unscrews it, eases the tiny brush out. She strokes a layer onto her left big toe. She doesn’t look up at me. “Your summer sucked.”
“How would you know?” I snap as I slump into the farthest chair from her. Even someone brand-new, even someone whose only reason for being here seems to be to get noticed, knows what happened to Julian. She ain fake, Karm, Julian would say. At least she’s real. I don’t know if Julian’s right, but, as I lean back, my head starts to clear just a bit. I’m mad at Robbie, not her. And it’s true. Sucked doesn’t come close.
“We aren’t supposed to wear nail polish.”
“Or extensions.” Her braids are up in a messy bun, a few tendrils loose at the edges, snaking over her face and down her back. She dips the brush again and wipes it on the bottle’s mouth. “Next year we can vote, though.” Pru lifts the brush, holds it out toward me.
It’s stone-silent outside the lounge. The whole school’s in their classrooms now, except me, Pru, and whoever’s on the other side of that soundproof door with Ms. Dorsett, having what must be another first-day-of-the-school-year breakdown.
“Why’d you do that? Get up in Robbie’s face?”
“Robbie’s an ass.” Pru announces this like she’s reporting the weather, like she wasn’t ready to fight a boy she’d never met on her first day at a new school. Her hand is still extended, waiting, sure.
What you think ga happen? You get sent to the office?
I can’t argue with Julian’s voice. I can feel him, too, beside me. See his eyes meeting mine in a shared smirk at the way Pru’s holding out nail polish like she’s offering me a joint. I drop my bag and slide into the chair opposite her, then lift the brush from her fingers. She’s wearing French tips. Not even subtle ones. There’s a tiny stud embedded in the middle of each one. Like she figured she’d start September guns blazing, manicured middle fingers to the sky.
Pru lifts her other foot onto the table and grips the edge with her toes. She half smiles. I stroke a vertical line down the middle of my thumbnail, then even it out on each side.
“So, what, you just like trouble?” I ask, to break up the silence.
She shrugs. “I don’t like that word.”
“Robbie’s an ass.” I move to my pinkie nail. Painted, it looks like a tiny, precious shell, like some unexpected treasure. The office door opens and I scramble to hide the brush, and my hand. It’s just another kid, who looks at Ms. Dorsett’s closed door, then retreats.
“Shoulda done your toes.” She holds her hand out and I pass the brush back. She screws it back onto the bottle.
“You still waiting to talk to Ms. D?” I ask.
“For, like, a minute. Supposed to journal a list of ten of my best internal attributes.”
“Looks like you got far.”
She laughs outright this time, short and loud. It comes out Ha! “How is it?” she asks.
“What?”
“Being back after what happened with your brother.”
“You weren’t even here last year. Who told you?”
Pru shrugs, holds my gaze until I drop it. “Nassau small. People knew Julian. I—”
A sound behind Ms. Dorsett’s door cuts Pru’s words short. She crams her bare feet into her shoes, slings her bag over her arm, then reaches on top of a bookshelf. My breath catches in my throat as I see what she brings down.
A skateboard.
She darts outside, and through the closing door I hear that sound I know almost as well as Julian’s voice—the clack of wheels hitting the ground, whoosh-swish of a board gliding away. I stumble after Pru in time to see her skateboard down the empty hallway. She glances back a second before she swoops around a corner, out of sight. I stand there, motionless as a tree. What was she about to say? Something tells me she’s more than just a stickler for respectful words. Nassau is small, and almost no one here skateboards. I keep staring down the empty hallway, questions circling me like birds looking to land. Wondering if she holds the key to the questions I carry. Wishing, more than anything else, it was my brother who’d just skated away.
The morning’s classes pass in a blur. Ms. Dorsett’s words ring in my ears: Take it slowly. Step away when you need to. At lunch I head to the cafeteria to meet Layla. The room teems with jostling, hungry bodies, and I strain to pick out her short brown ’fro and blue headband. Finally I spot her on the side by the water fountain with Joelle and Danika. I squeeze through kids toward them.
“... he would do that,” Joelle says as I come up behind them.
Danika sucks her teeth. “What’s with the new girl, too? Who comes to school dressed like that?”
At least they’re not talking about me, I think. I’m about to step forward when Layla says, “That’s why they emailed everyone, obviously. So nobody would say something stupid.”
“I think it’s sad they gotta tell people how to act. I mean, her brother died.” It’s true, but Joelle says it so casually, it makes my breakfast threaten to rise.
“Not just died.” Danika leans in close. “Like, died in the worst way.”
I hear the clatter of my lunch tray as it hits the floor, but it feels far away. Something cold runs down my shin. Layla spins around, and as our eyes meet, I see something in them I never thought I’d see. Guilt. Like she was gossiping about me. Joelle and Danika slink away.
“You okay?” Layla’s voice sounds like hers. It sounds like she cares. But I can’t look her in the eye right now. Her words are still sinking in. Someone—Mr. Douglas, I guess—sent our whole class an email about Julian? And she didn’t even tell me? I stoop down and pick up my empty tray, but my hands are shaking. I don’t want to shake. I don’t want people whispering about me, hiding from me. I want last year’s life. I want someone else’s life.
I straighten up. “I’m gonna go sit.”
“It wasn’t like it sounded—we were talking about—”
“I heard what y’all were talking about. What happened this morning, and about how Julian died—”
“In here so crowded.” Layla tries to take my arm, but I step away. “Let’s go sit under the tree.”
“Died by suicide.”
“Someplace over there.” She heads for a free table by the windows. I follow her, but my feet feel numb. I sit opposite Layla. There’s clinking and chatter around us. Everyone else is going on with lunch, with life. I stare at my friend. She fiddles with the side of her tray, looks over her shoulder again. What’s she looking for?
“What was in the email?” I ask. Layla’s eyes are on her neatly sliced sandwich. My mind flashes back to Pru—disheveled misfit. I look down at my painted nail, smudged and sparkly. It doesn’t fit in at this table either.
“Mr. Douglas emailed everyone to explain that—to say what happened with Julian. I mean, he didn’t give details, he just said he had passed—”
“Passed? Passed what? His driving test? Passed the bar?”
Layla flinches at my words. I can’t stop, though.
“Passed by the graveyard and dropped off a résumé? Passed on life? I can’t stand that stupid term. He died. Say died.”
Layla’s head is low. “Sorry.”
Everything in me—blood, veins, bones—is shaking. “You couldn’t tell me?”
“I just thought—it was supposed to be something nice. Mr. Douglas just emailed everyone—”
“Everyone except me.”
“—and said that your brother had—he had died, and that we should acknowledge it at the start of the first day. Just to, like, show you we care.”
I can hear Layla chewing on the inside of her cheek. This day’s turning into a nightmare. Everyone—everyone—knew this was going to happen except me. Did Ms. Dorsett know too? It’s like no one gets me. No one gets that I just want to slide into class, open my book. Be like everyone else around me. Be someone whose brother isn’t gone.
Layla slides half her sandwich over to me. “I never meant to hurt you, Karmen. I don’t know what to do. I think people just want you to know we care. That’s all.”
Her mouth is in a sad frown, and she’s looking at me like a mistreated puppy. I’m even less hungry than I was before, but I pick up her peace offering and take a bite. Tuna with bits of pickle chopped up in it. I suppress my grimace and swallow it down.
“Thanks,” I say.
She nods, her easy smile already starting to return. “You comin by me after school?”
“I dunno.”
“Come on. We can go to youth group together.”
Layla’s brother flashes into my mind. I haven’t talked to Isaiah since—no. I push the night away. Layla keeps chattering on, but I can’t follow her words. Instead I force my mind in a different direction—a direction that matters. Back to the letter. Julian’s letter from the university. Back to the answers I’m looking for. Back to the why of him walking out one night and never coming back.
“Just come.” Layla’s chirp breaks into my thoughts. She stands up. “I gotta get some water. You want anything?”
I shake my head. She slips off through the crowd, and I sit there with my lunch. I push it aside and reach down into Julian’s backpack. As I pull the letter out, my heart speeds up like I’ve broken into a jog. I unfold the paper and read fast.
Dear Julian Wallace,
This letter is to inform you that you have been placed on academic probation. Your GPA in the fall semester was at 1.90, and it fell to 1.75 this past semester. As you know, students with two consecutive semesters below 2.00 must be placed on academic probation.
In order to continue at Commonwealth University, we require you to retake those courses in which you obtained a D or F.
Commonwealth University is committed to your success. We encourage all students on academic probation to meet with both their academic advisor and Campus Wellness to plan a return to campus life at a pace that supports their individual needs and success.
Please directly contact your advisor, who will meet with you.
Sincerely,
Dr. Jackson Fox
Dean of Social Sciences
Even after I read it twice, the words don’t make sense to me. Julian got straight As through high school. He had a scholarship. How could he have gotten kicked out of school? Is this why he ended his life? Do my parents know?
I push the letter away; Layla will be back soon. I can’t make sense of the words I’ve just read right now. I feel the bench across from me shake before I see that Layla’s sat down.
“What you think about clubs this year? I was thinking we could sign up for the paper and Arts Club, and Earth Club, and—”
“Sure, yeah.” I sling Julian’s bag over my shoulder. “I’ll do whatever. I gotta go pee.”
“See you after lunch,” she calls after me. I can hear the forlorn in my best friend’s voice but I have to keep going—through the cafeteria, out into the sun, just going going. Moving might be the only way to get through this day. To get to where I can understand what I just read. To understand how I got here—without Julian.
The end of the day can’t come fast enough. When I see our car, I make a beeline for it like it’s lined with million-dollar bills.
“Don’t forget, youth group tonight!” Layla hollers after me.
Pulling the car door open almost feels like stepping into our front door—it’s a little piece of home. I plunk down in the seat and lean back into the headrest. Daddy reaches over and puts his hand on mine.
“You made it through.”
I look over at him. He seems the same as always—steady eyes, even, calm. It could be September of any year. How is that possible? He starts up the car and I close my eyes as we head home.
When I open our front door, Julian’s sneakers still sit there, waiting patiently.
Bare bulb’s glare, sideways lamp casts light over the closet door, bed thrown into strange dark. Tangle of prints, trampled map, flag pins strewn everywhere. My hands shake as I reach for the light, switch it off. I instantly regret it as police lights strobe our driveway blue-red, blue-red.
I squeeze my eyes shut as I let the backpack drop from my shoulder. When I open them, though, everything is still there, where I left it. Everything except him. I step out of my lace-ups without untying them. The house feels stagnant.
“Hey?” I call, not particularly loud.
“Karmen.” My mother’s voice floats out through her open office door. “I’m in here.” Mummy sits on the pale blue sofa she favors during counseling sessions. She’s still in the same bathrobe. There’s a plate of half-eaten salad beside her on the couch.
“Mummy?” She never has food in there. There’s a purple notebook beside her too. A bloom of black ink spreads over the center of the page. She’s not written anything. How long has she been sitting here?
“How was school?”
I swallow down the words I want to say. “Fine.” I notice the open patient file on her lap, near the notebook. She folds it closed and drops it onto the floor beside the sofa.
“You wanna talk about your day?”
Ink stains her thumb tip, too. I can’t bring myself to ask her if she knew about Mr. Douglas emailing everyone else in the class. “Nothing much happened. It was okay.”
She nods, looking through me.
The ink’s smeared on her robe. How long has this been going on? How long did she stay, holding the pen that couldn’t capture words she couldn’t write anyway? “What happened to your paper?”
She looks down then, makes a small, startled noise. She fumbles for the pen cap, finds it in the groove between the sofa cushions, snaps it into place. “Come talk to me.”
The awfulness in homeroom rushes back to me. I want to know if she knew, if she gave Mr. Douglas the okay. But she can’t even remember where pens go. How to write. “I just wanna lie down.”
She looks down at the school shoes dangling from my fingers, then back up at me. Lifts the plate of wilted greens. A tiny fly alights, then settles again. “You want something to eat?”
I shake my head. I should take the plate and throw that old food away, but I don’t even have the energy. I glance back at the foyer. We’ve always left shoes on the rack by the door. It feels wrong to put mine down by Julian’s now.
I trudge upstairs and collapse on my bed. I close my eyes, but snippets of the day whirl through my mind like dry leaves. Academic probation. Died in the worst way. Your summer sucked. Nassau small. People knew Julian. Get away with anything. Just because.
I take a breath, like Ms. Rhonda suggested at counseling last week. Let it out. The thoughts are a little further away, but what comes rushing in is a memory of Julian. Julian, sitting on his bed, nose buried in a textbook. I’m holding my half-written history essay out to him. It comes easy for him.
“Hey. You want do this for me?”
“Stop playin. Go do your work.”
I plunk down by the foot of the bed and heave a sigh. “At least read it for me.”
He looks up. “It’s due when?”
“Tomorrow.”
He rolls his eyes and snatches the pages out of my hand and reads aloud.
“?‘There’s been a mysterious disappearance of one of the artifacts from the Pompey Museum. Write a report from your professional point of view about what has taken place. Choose one of the following jobs: police investigator, museum curator, reporter covering the occurrence, thief, security guard, café owner across the street.’” Julian looks up. “And you chose...”
“Reporter.”
“Think that was a wise choice?”
“What you mean?”
He shakes his head and carries on silently. I flop down onto the bed while I wait. “Okay,” he says at last. “Couple things. First, you should write this over from a different point of view.”
“Why?”
“You’re not a journalist. You don’t think the right way. You don’t have enough detail. For one, you have to think of the five Ws: who, what, when, where, why. And how.”
“How’s not a W, and that’s six.”
“You want argue, or you want an A?”
I sigh. “Go ahead.”
“You say, ‘It was a grim day in downtown Nassau today when a valuable piece went missing without explanation.’ A reporter would start off answering as many of those Ws as possible, straight off. ‘Police and staff at the Pompey Museum are baffled after the priceless mill vanished inexplicably from the site on Bay Street sometime yesterday.’”
I roll over. “Aggggghh. I already spent an hour on this stupid thing.” I look over at Julian. “I’ll pay you thirty to write it for me.”
He throws the pages at me. “Lazy. Go do the work yourself.”
“You think I should pick a different point of view?”
“Why’d you pick reporter?”
I gather up the pages. Why do you think? I want to ask. But it never pays for your big brother to think he has too much sway. “Not everyone’s like you. Not everyone knows what they wanna be from the time they’re ten.” I wait for him to toss a jab my way, tell me that if I focused more, I’d know what I want to do. I get up to go.
He picks up his book again. “Just remember: who, what, when, where, why. That’s how to cover the most important info. Every time.”
I open my eyes and reach for the backpack, take Julian’s notebook. With trembling fingers, I flip past the pages of Julian’s handwriting, past the one Robbie tore. I stop at the questions. Think of it as an assignment, I tell myself. Get answers like Julian would.
Except I’m not Julian. He’s always been older, smarter, better than me. I look at my bedroom wall, at the calendar hanging there. This one’s turned to September. There it is, in the middle of the month—Julian’s birthday. What if I could find answers by then? Understanding him. That would be a gift.
I grit my teeth and start to add to the list of questions.
Who would know how Julian really was those last months?
What did he do when he was on probation?
When did he start feeling like it was too much?
Where did he go?
Why did he end his life?
My fingers shake so much, I drop the pen. One last question swirls around in my mind, but I don’t want to write it down. I grab my pillow and scream into it as hard as I can. It muffles the roar, the worst question of them all. Muffles it but can’t silence it. I scream till I’m hoarse, but the question doesn’t go away. I drop the pillow, pick up the pen again. I make myself write it down, but as I do, I feel so hollow. I’m his sister. I shouldn’t have to ask these questions. I should know. I should have known, and he should be here, alive, getting a real gift.
How could I have missed this?