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Andy laughs, and it's forced, and it grates, and I have to close my eyes against it. My God, how could I be so stupid? I should've kept my mouth shut.

“See, I knew I shouldn't have trusted you,” Andy goes on. “I knew I shouldn't trust anyone anymore. I never should
have picked up the phone in the first place.
God
, I'm so fucking stupid!”

His echo of my own thoughts snaps me back. “Andy, come on, I'm sor—”

“No!” he barks. “This is exactly what I've been trying to tell you all night. People are all the same. They just dump on you, over and over and over again. Even when they see what it's doing to you, they keep it up. And I've had it.
That's
why I'm up here tonight, all right? So maybe me losing the love of my life isn't a big deal in your world, fine. Maybe in the vast cosmic ocean of life, it's not even a heartbeat. But it was the
end
, Tori. Is that penetrating your tiny wee skull even one millimeter? This camel's breaking his own back before the last straw does.”

“Andy—”

“I mean, who are you to sit there and judge what I'm going through? Huh? What's so god-awful in your life that gives you the right to tell me mine doesn't suck? Let's go. I call. Play your cards.”

My eyes lose focus. It's not from lack of sleep, although that's becoming an issue. This is that stare-into-middle-space thing, that little ministroke you get sometimes, even when you can hear and sense everything that's going on around you.

On reflex, I clear my throat.

“Nothing,” I say, and my voice is way, way too steady. “Nothing much. I only killed a guy, so . . . you win, I guess.”

Kevin Cooper
wrote on your timeline.

October 21.

did you see my car this morning? do you know who did it?

Like · Comment · Share

Tori Hershberger
What are you talking about?

Kevin Cooper
Seriously Tori do you know??? bcause I am going to kick their fucking asses!!!

Tori Hershberger
Take it easy. It was just a joke.

Kevin Cooper
HAHAHA. fag queerbag, assfucker, yeh soooo funny and its not coming off either. they ruined my fucking car!! my mom had to see it tori.

Tori Hershberger
I'm sure it'll come off. They were just messing around.

Kevin Cooper
why are you being like this? that's not fair tori. I need this like I need a thumb up my ass.

 Marly DeSoto likes this.

Tori Hershberger
Marlycat! Why would you like that?!

Marly DeSoto
I was giving him a thumb.

 You and six others like this.

Albert Jiminez
BAM!

Dakota Lorey
BAM!

Lucas Mulcahy
BAM BAM!

Kevin Cooper
Fuck you all. thanks, tori. way to go CHAMP.

Tori Hershberger
Look, it was just a joke, I promise. They didn't mean anything. I'll clean up your car, I swear.

Kevin Cooper
So you knew they were going to do it

Tori Hershberger
No! Just stop for a minute, okay? I'll take care of it.

“Wait, what?” Andy says after a long pause.

Noah shuts his eyes.

“Listen, I'm gonna need coffee, PFQ,” I say, rubbing my face and standing up.

Noah says, “Tori . . .”

“I'm not kidding,” I say. “Andy, I'm still here, I'm still talking to you, or listening, or whatever, but it's—”

I look at my alarm clock. Feel my shoulders drop.

“—almost three in the morning,” I say. “If I don't get some caffeine in me, things are going to get ugly. Know what I'm saying?”

“Um—okay,” Andy says quietly.

“Good. Now, I have to go into my kitchen to make the coffee. Noah will be happy to keep you busy, right, Noah?”

“Um. Sure. Yeah,” Noah says.

“Super,” I say. “Be back in a minute.”

I open my door and walk quietly down the hall, grateful it's carpeted. Mom and Dad's bedroom is dark. Dim light peeps out from under Jack's door, but I don't hear anything in his room.

There's a hanging light fixture over the breakfast bar that separates the living room from the kitchen. Mom's very big on “open space.” It's plenty of light to see by. I open the percolator and find Jack's grounds virtually dry in the filter, so I plug the machine back in and it burbles to life. Everything's going great until my elbow smacks into the key ring hanging against the wall and knocks Jack's keys to the tile floor with a clatter the size of our school marching band.

I sit on one of the tall breakfast bar stools and use both hands to rub my eyes, then my head.
So
tired. And yet I somehow instinctively know when I go back into my room, Andy will be wide awake. Perky, even. Which is strange, if you think about it. Shouldn't he be exhausted too? Unless he's getting some kind of weird energy jolt from all this. Maybe his adrenaline is pumping. If it is, that can only be because he's really still thinking about driving that Sentra right into oblivion.

Just like Kevin.

Oblivion.

They almost rhyme.

Shouldn't have closed my eyes and thought of Kevin. I can still see the messages, just as clear as when the DA displayed them on a projector during the hearing that proved,
apparently, that we deserve to be charged with everything in the law books except first-degree murder. I'm sure Allison Summers would've loved for that to have happened.

When is this going to end? Or maybe when isn't as important as
how
. . . .

Conversation started October 29.

Tori Hershberger
Are you okay? I heard about the fight. Did you really get kicked out?

Kevin Cooper
No I got ISS. Probably out of pity. I didn't exactly kick his ass.

Tori Hershberger
What did Lucas do to you?

Kevin Cooper
I took a fist on the left cheek and a foot in the ribs. I'm okay.

Tori Hershberger
No, I mean, what did he ever do *to* you? Why did you pick a fight with him?

Kevin Cooper
I DIDN'T!! he just wouldnt shut up. I tried to ignore him and Mr. Black was late to class and he just kept pushing Tori. so I lost it I blew up and I decked him and tried to throw a desk at him. I did not pick a fight with him

Tori Hershberger
Okay. Sorry.

Kevin Cooper
Rachel broke up with me.

Tori Hershberger
What happened?

Kevin Cooper
I cheated on her. Basically.

Tori Hershberger
Cooper! You scallywag! With who?

Kevin Cooper
Different school, doesn't matter. She'll be happier this way anyway.

Tori Hershberger
Wow. That was like a record. Two years or something, right?

Kevin Cooper
Yeah.

Kevin Cooper
Thanks for listening Tori. This would have been a lot easier to text. do you still even have my number?

Kevin Cooper
Hello? Hershy? You there?

“WHUH?!”

I bolt upright and swing my arms in a wide arc before sliding off the stool and ending up on my ass on the kitchen tile.

Oh shit, I fell asleep.

Oh shit, Andy.

Oh shit.

I stumble to my room, “Andy?” I say to Noah, who is sitting on my bed, back against the wall, ankles crossed. My phone is still face-up on the mattress.

“Uh-huh,” Andy says over the phone. “Thought I lost you for a while there. Get your coffee?”

I blink, blink again, blink some more.

“What did you . . . ?” I say to Noah.

“Nothing,” Noah says. “I told him about the Tokugawa Dynasty.”

“It was fascinating,” Andy deadpans.

“I'll bet,” I say. I rub my eyes, which burn. “Lemme grab my coffee. Sorry.”

I double back to the kitchen. The coffee's done. I look at the clock, shaped like a cow, hanging over the kitchen door. Mom insists it's “quirky.” It's close to four a.m.

I pour a healthy splash of Coffee-mate into a mug before filling it the rest of the way with coffee. Then I head back to my room, closing the door behind me.

“Sorry it took so long,” I say.

“No problem,” Andy says. “You're a good friend.”

I give Noah a suspicious look. “What makes you say that?”

“You came back, didn't you?” Andy says. “You didn't leave me hanging.”

You know how in movies there's a smash cut that lasts just a frame or two of some weird flashback? I get one of those. Of Kevin.

 . . . didn't leave me hanging . . .

I shake my head and slurp a quick gulp of coffee, and don't say anything in response. I sit at my desk, which is empty now except for a couple of books and papers. I should probably clean up the dust pattern left behind by my laptop. Someday.

Mom and Dad took the computer away the day I got arrested. Until that afternoon, I think they thought the same thing I did: that it would all blow over. Feeling the cold steel of handcuffs slapped around my wrists gave things a certain,
shall we say, clarity. The prosecutor meant business. And he meant it
hard
. That was the night I scrolled through the newspaper comments online. Not a good day.

“You want me to remind you where we were?” Andy says.

I take another sip of coffee, and realize it is surprisingly perfectly made. I always misjudge how much creamer to use, but not this time. The coffee is like liquid fire from the gods. I literally sigh after the first swallow, like in a commercial.

“No,” I say. “I remember. I just can't tell you.”

“What? Why?”

“My lawyer said not to talk about it.”

“Lawyer,” Andy goes. “Holy crap. You're not kidding around. Are you?”

“Hey, I promised I'd stop asking you that, now you promise me, okay?”

“So you really did kill someone?”

“No!”

I grit my teeth and pause, waiting to see if Mom and Dad's door opens. I don't hear anything. Noah crosses his arms.

“No,” I repeat, quietly. “He . . . killed himself. I didn't have anything to do with it. None of us did. But the district attorney says we did, so now we're gearing up for a big court fight.”

“You mean a trial.”

“Yes, a trial, all right?”

“You're on trial for murder.”

Andy is really good at stating questions as facts. It's becoming an irritant.

“Basically,” I say. It's not the kind of statement
or
question that gets easier to hear or speak over time.

“So this guy committed suicide?” Andy asks.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I guess that explains our initial awkwardness,” Andy says quietly. Then, in a normal voice, he says, “How'd he do it?”

“Hung himself,” I say, as the coffee begins congealing in my throat. “With a belt or scarf or something.”

“Hanged.”

“Yeah.”

“No, I mean, the word is ‘hanged.' When it refers to a person, it's always ‘hanged,' not ‘hung.' It's grammatically correct, although I truly do not know why.”

My eyelids freeze in place, wide open. “Are you seriously giving me a grammar lesson right now?”

“Just saying,” Andy goes. And for whatever reason, probably because I'm so damn tired, I hear-feel that weird cell-phone-on-a-wooden-table
reeee
in my head again.

“So what was his name?” Andy asks.

I take a drink of my coffee. Mr. Halpern specifically said not to do this. Talk, I mean, not drink coffee.

“Kevin Cooper,” I say.

“That's been on the news,” Andy says slowly.

“Yeah.”