mine, and it seemed to pull him out of his head. I pressed, hoping for a smile if not a laugh, “What, no sex joke? No, ‘But I have a lot of uses for you, wink, wink’?”
He stared at me for a moment and added coolly, “I never say ‘wink wink.’ ”
“Maybe not, but you’re not even going to make a snide remark? You’re slipping.”
He gave an exaggerated wink and said suggestively, “I could use a little slipping.”
I clasped my hands in a mock prayer of thanks. “And he’s back.”
I didn’t feel much like kidding around, to tell the truth, but I knew Hamlet needed it. I found everything Claudius and Gertrude had said to him distasteful and disturbing. What was their rush? They had obviously moved on, but most of us hadn’t, and certainly not Hamlet. It had been merely two months since the king had died, and they wanted life to return to normal. For Hamlet, there would never be a “normal” again, and the fact that Gertrude, especially, didn’t see it was shocking. I hoped he would go back to school, and fast. In truth, I was not sure how many more of those conversations he could take, nor could I imagine the consequences if his mother and uncle (for I would never call him Hamlet’s father, or even stepfather) did not let up. With dread I wondered if the “bad thing” Hamlet had spoken of might involve them.
When we got back to my apartment, my father came out of his office. “Why are you back? Didn’t your mother want you home?”
Hamlet kept walking, so I explained, “They had a fight. Can he just stay a little while, Dad?”
My father chewed his lip and watched Hamlet’s slumped figure pass down the hallway to my room. Reluctantly, he nodded and said he’d be working from home for a while and that Hamlet had to leave before dinner.
When I got to my room, Hamlet was sitting at the foot of my bed with my sketch pad in his hands. He didn’t even look up, so I sat at my desk and started doing homework. After I finished analyzing a poem, I tossed the textbook aside and slid onto the floor next to him.
He was scrawling “To Be” and “Not to Be” over and over.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“That is the question.”
I studied the scribbled page and tried to figure out what he meant.
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, his voice distant. “Is it better to suffer through life, to deal with all the crap thrown at you, or to fight against your problems by ending your life? To die is to sleep. That’s all. And by sleeping, we escape everything that tortures us. That’s the dream, then, isn’t it? The perfection of nothingness.”
A chill ran through me. It sounded like he was talking about suicide. Was he just thinking aloud, or was he formulating a plan? If I came at it headlong, I thought he might freeze up, so I tried to follow his logic and keep him talking. I suggested, “When you sleep, it’s not nothingness. You dream.”
He opened his eyes and looked at me. “There’s the catch, huh? When you die, who knows what dreams might come? What’s in the afterlife—if there is one? That’s the scary part. That’s what keeps us living out our long, painful lives. Who would put up with the heartache and the injustice of life when one could just get a knife and end it… except for the fear of what comes next? Fear of something worse makes us too scared to do anything.”
My own fear bubbled over. “To do what, Hamlet? What are you thinking of doing?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.” When he didn’t answer, I started to get up. “I’m going to get my dad.”
“Don’t,” he begged, grabbing my arm and pulling me down again. When I stiffened under his grip, he let go and leaned back. “I was just talking, Phee,” he said, pushing a smile into the corners of his lips. But his eyes were dead. He took the page, ripped it out of my sketch pad, crumpled it, and tossed it aside.
It rolled under my bed, but I didn’t get it. Instead I took his face in my hands and pleaded with him, “Please, Hamlet, tell me what you’re thinking of doing. I can’t lose you, too. I can’t.”
He rose, and my hands fell pointlessly into my lap. “You won’t, Phee. Everything’s gonna be fine. You’ll see.”