LITMIR.BIZ

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with M&M’s. I’d only eaten that one french fry and catastrophic bite of hot dog, so I was starving.

      Mr. Beaumont must have seen me notice them. He sat down in one of the chairs and said, “Take as many as you want. Need some water?”

      I sat in the chair across from him, stuffed a handful of M&M’s in my mouth, and shook my head. This had the added benefit of saving me from having to say anything right away, since I didn’t really see the point of me being here.

      “I wanted to reach out to you, see how you’re doing,” he said. “You know, we’re all devastated by what happened, as I’m sure you are. It might make you feel better to talk about it.”

      Not a chance. “I don’t see how,” I said.

      “I’m sure it must seem that way right now. But can we just try? Maybe it’ll help, maybe it won’t, but either way, we’ll know.”

      I shrugged. Obviously he wasn’t going to let me out of here until I said something.

      “I understand you two were very close,” Mr. Beaumont said.

      “That’s one way of putting it,” I said.

      “What’s another way?”

      I shrugged. How was I supposed to describe my relationship with Hayden? He was my best friend. My only friend. And I’d thought it might be time for that to change, and he hadn’t, and now he was gone. I wasn’t about to sit here for however long he made me stay and get into that.

      “Can you describe your friendship to me at all?” he asked gently.

      What did he expect me to say? That we were both socially awkward misfits? That we’d saved each other from loneliness for a really long time, and now that was over? “We were friends. What else am I supposed to say?” My knee was bouncing up and down, almost as if I had no control over it. I really didn’t want to be here.

      “Was he your only friend?”

      Now my knee was even more out of control. I willed it to stop shaking before Mr. Beaumont noticed. “I guess.”

      “And you were his? Only friend?” His voice was getting quieter and quieter, as if he knew the questions would be hard to hear, no matter at what volume. But despite him trying to soften me up, I could feel myself getting angry, blood heating up my face. He must have seen it, too, because he didn’t wait for me to say anything. “Look, I know it’s going to be hard to talk about Hayden. I’ll give you some things to read for later on, when you feel like it.” He gave me a manila envelope. I didn’t bother opening it, just stuck it in my backpack. “I understand you’re probably sad and confused, and probably angry, too. I want you to know it’s okay to feel anything you’re feeling right now.”

      Great, now I had permission. I was about to say something snarky, but that was still an invitation to talk, and I didn’t want to talk. Not to Mr. Beaumont, not to anyone.

      Mr. Beaumont must have been some kind of mind reader, though. “I see that you’re not eager to talk to me about this, and that’s fine. I want to be a resource for you, but only if you want me to be. I do think it would help you to talk to someone, though, so maybe we could talk about who that might be?”

      He knew how to find the soft spots. I couldn’t really talk to Mom; she was so busy at work with all those extra shifts, and no matter what I said she’d worry, and she was worried enough already. Rachel wouldn’t be any help, and though Astrid had the potential to be a new friend, I didn’t want to think about her as a confidante, not like this. There wasn’t really anyone else. I looked down at the floor. Mr. Beaumont had put a big Persian rug over the gray industrial carpeting. He was trying pretty hard. “There’s no one else,” I said finally.

      “Well, if that’s the case, I hope you’ll at least consider me as an option,” he said. “Maybe we can talk a little less about Hayden and a little bit more about you, for now? I can stop trying to guess how you’re feeling if you just tell me.”

      “I’ll try,” I said. But it was hard to narrow it down. There was the anger/guilt/missing cycle, with a whole bunch of other emotions thrown in there, which was kind of hard to describe. “It’s a big jumble, I guess. It doesn’t seem real. I keep thinking he’ll be here soon, and he won’t.” My knee was starting to bounce again, so I hooked my foot around the leg of the chair to make it stop.

      Mr. Beaumont nodded. “I lost a friend when I was very young. And I remember thinking the same thing—I kept waiting for him in places I expected him to be, or getting extra cookies at lunch because I’d always pick some up for him. But it does get easier, with time.”

      If he was just going to trot out the clichés, talking to him would be useless. “Yeah, I’ve heard people say that.”

      He leaned forward and I could feel him looking at me, though I focused my eyes on the prints he’d hung up on the wall. All abstract stuff, but in soothing colors. The whole office was kind of cheesy. “People are going to say a lot of things. And some of it will be helpful, and some of it will be annoying, and lots of it will get on your nerves. But they’re saying it because people said those things to them, or because they found it helpful when they lost someone. They mean well.”

      Sure they did. “Is that supposed to make it better?” I looked him right in the eyes then and hoped he couldn’t see what I was thinking.

      He met my gaze and somehow I felt like he knew, and that it didn’t bother him. “Not yet,” he said. “Someday.”

      I knew he was trying to help, but he was dead-on about the whole getting-on-my-nerves thing. “Is that all?” I started to stand up.

      He held up a hand. “Can I have just a couple of minutes more? I was hoping maybe you could tell me whether Hayden confided in you about how he was feeling. Did you have a sense that he was thinking about doing this?”

      Way to jump right into it. I sat back down. What was I supposed to say? We talked about it all the time, but I never thought he was serious. I never was. “Any kid who’s been picked on as much as Hayden has thought about it,” I said.

      “So he did talk to you?”

      Talked about it? It was a running joke with us. We’d spent hours playing with Hayden’s iPhone, trying to get Siri, the virtual personal assistant, to recommend a suicide hotline. “I’m depressed, Siri,” Hayden would say.

       I don’t understand, Hayden.

      “I need help, Siri.”

       I don’t understand, Hayden.

      “I’m lonely. I don’t have any friends.”

       I’m really tired of these arbitrary categories, Hayden.

      “Siri, are you mad at me?”

       No comment, Hayden.

      We’d kept asking questions until we couldn’t talk because we were laughing so hard. Eventually we figured out we just needed to be more direct. “Siri, I want to jump off a bridge … which one is the tallest?”

      But not for a second did I think he meant it. I never had. I knew things were bad—I couldn’t put that party out of my mind, no matter how hard I tried—but I had no idea he’d take it to this extreme. I figured he’d lock himself in his room for the weekend and ignore me, like he did sometimes when he was upset, or when I’d been a jerk, or both. I’d text him jokes and invite him to Gchat, but I wouldn’t hear from him until later in the week, maybe, and then only in Mage Warfare. He’d use his archmage powers to take down some really big creatures and I’d know that he’d gotten his revenge.

      Only on some level I must have known that this time was different. After all, I’d gone to his house the next morning instead of following our normal routine.

      “Sam?”

      “Sorry,” I said, shaking my head.

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