with a nine-inch-long scar from the base of his throat to his mid-torso, and he's convinced it's ruined the tattoo of his family crest.
“I’m glad you came here today,” he says, whispering into my neck. “It doesn’t make any sense, I know, but…I liked Leon. Until he started killing people.”
“I know. I did too.”
“I heard the nurses saying his father checked himself into the psych ward.”
“Yeah. There’s a for sale sign up at the end of their driveway. Dad says they’re probably going to have to pull it down though. Apparently, the fact that a mass murderer used to live there is gonna affect the house’s resale potential.”
“Fuck. How did any of this even happen?” Alex shakes his head sadly. “No one fucking saw how broken he was. I sure as hell didn’t when I hung out with him. I had no clue.”
“I don’t know. Leon was Kacey’s puppet. When she shut me out, he did, too. I never blamed him for it. Not really. But I wasn't close to him for nearly a year. I wish I'd noticed the change in him. I would have tried to help…”
“And now Kacey’s been sent to Seattle under a cloud of shame, Leon’s gone, and eighteen other people are dead.”
“Don’t forget that you nearly died,” I remind him.
He pulls a bored face, like that part’s not important. “And they’re reopening Raleigh in a week. Savage bastards. You’d think they’d give us all a little more time to recover.”
“We’ll all have to re-take our senior year if they did, and I, for one, would prefer to get it over with and move the hell on.”
“Oh? And where does that leave me, Argento? You, so quick to try and leave town and all…”
“I don’t care all that much about leaving Raleigh anymore. Just high school. But it would be nice to go to college somewhere less cold? And I was kind of hoping you might…”
Alex firmly shakes his head. “I can’t. I can’t go to college. Monty will never let me live it down if he ever finds out I can read and write properly.”
“You are coming to college!” I say. “You’re coming with me, wherever I end up going, and you’re going to love it. You have to promise.”
He observes me with a pensive, serious look in his eyes. He's far too pale after everything that he's been through, but he already looks so much better than he did. “All right, Silver Parisi. If that's what you want, then fine. I’ll go to college with you. I’ll follow you to the ends of the fucking earth if it'll make you happy. But there is something we need to do first.”
“And? What’s that?”
“We have to actually graduate first.”
Epilogue
SILVER
There are days in your life that are more than a series of hours strung together. Days that start off the same as any other. You eat breakfast. You struggle to find your keys. You’re mad at your mom, or your dad, or your brother, or your friend. You couldn’t find the shirt you wanted to wear, and it feels like the world is ending. And then something happens. Something so terrible and so catastrophic that suddenly the fact that you were running late doesn’t matter anymore. A literal or metaphorical bomb goes off, and all of the tiny little annoyances that were driving you crazy are thrown into stark relief, revealing them for what they are: unimportant. So inconsequential that you’re humbled by the size of the universe and how little control you have over absolutely anything in your life.
I have already lived through two such days in the past twelve months. The ground has been pulled out from underneath me, I’ve been blindsided, and the context of the world around me has altered so dramatically that I’ve looked around and not recognized what was once familiar. But, the thing about these nightmare days, the thing that continues to surprise and confound me, is that a series of days will follow right after them, when things slowly but surely seem to return to normal, and life? It just goes on regardless.
I sit on the bleachers inside Raleigh High’s gym, surrounded by three hundred other students, and I’m awed by the way that people are already somehow finding it in them to laugh. Yes, there are tears. Yes, there are hugs, and there are empty seats, but I also see the hope in people’s eyes, and I hear their words of encouragement and comfort. I feel a