Away We Go - Emil Ostrovski Page 0,11

each other for a week.

It began with the stars.

Her: You’ve never seen the Big Dipper?

Me: I don’t really get the name.

Her: The name?

Me: What the hell. Is a dipper. Do you mean spoon? The big spoon in the sky?

Her: Why are you so mad?

Me: Because—waste of a night, Alice. And now you want to talk about imaginary silverware in the sky.

Her: You need people, Noah. You need hope and friends and something to do other than drink and whatever else I saw you doing the other night, and I’m sorry if spending an evening with a friend and a bunch of people who want to make the most of the time that they have was so dreadful—

Me: You don’t actually believe that shit? (I couldn’t resist.)

Her: And what if I did believe that, as you say, shit? Would it be so terribly bad, Noah? To have some hope? And some friends? And something to do other than drink? It’s like Director Bajwa said on convocation day—you wouldn’t know, seeing as you weren’t there—

Me: Ha. Ouch.

Her: —we have a purpose, here.

Me: I get it, you want me to seize the day, grab life by the horns. But the Big Dipper is just a bunch of burning gas and you know what, Alice? Grabbing the bull by the horns is actually a really bad idea, unless you’re a professional bull wrangler. And even then, given the mortality rate of professional bull wrangling, I would suggest looking into other career options. I hear floristry is booming.

Her: You’re being impossible.

Her: Who knows how many more months we have, Noah? How many more months I have? So if we care about someone, or think we could learn to care—

Me: We’ve known each other for, like, a week, Alice.

Her: I know. I’m—I’m sorry. I’m just scared. I didn’t mean to—I don’t want to pressure you. It’s just that we don’t have, who knows how much time we have. . . .

I should’ve told her that time wasn’t the issue. Our week might as well have been a year. But I’d lost my parents, I’d lost Alex, and I needed an anchor. I needed someone to need me, to lend me weight, I needed a reason not to simply disappear, Great Cliché or no.

Me: I’m going for a run.

The faster I ran, the more I ached, the easier it was to pretend that I was a physical thing, that I had weight and solidity, a body, and that this body had somewhere to run away to, that it was worth running at all.

Westing News

Transcript of Director Bajwa’s Convocation Address at Westing Academy

(cont. from page 1)

Every day, we face renewed criticism of our cause. We here at Westing try to shield our students from these realities because we want to give you a semblance of normalcy. But these well-meaning intentions should not contribute to a warped understanding of the world in which you reside. To paraphrase Representative Gilbert from California, quoted this morning in the New York Times: Why waste millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars educating a handful of kids who’ll never work and never pay taxes?

We are here because we believe the value of an education is not based on utility to society. Westing is an experiment founded on the notion that the value of an education is in its ability to elevate and liberate the soul. We seek to transform the recovery process, fostering partnerships with AwayWeGo to facilitate connections and interpersonal learning while at Westing, and a local, stringently vetted tertiary clinic to ensure the best possible hospice experience post-Westing.

There are many who want to bury this, bury all of you as quickly and efficiently as possible. Many who would send you to glorified internment camps, prisons, because there are too many of you, because it is too expensive to provide for you, or so they say. We are the voice that says no, for there are Michelangelos here. There are Sapphos here. But we need your cooperation. You must work. You must produce. And you must stay within these walls. You must contribute to the success of the Westing experiment, so that someday, all youths in recovery will have the quality of life you now enjoy. ◼

HOW TO IDENTIFY A HIGH-CALIBER HUMAN BEING

I spent the rest of September alternating between raging drunkenness and hangovers so severe the mere thought of movement prompted waves of nausea. To be sober was to miss Alex, to act was to miss Alex. It was so easy to