this is not going to be a feel-good novel

“Does that count for nothing?” he says, trying so hard to understand why I’d tried to kill myself.

I bite my lip, teeth digging into stitches, then: “It’s everything.  School. Family. The world we’ve made, the race we’re in. It’s all futile. It doesn’t matter and I ran out of reasons to pretend it did.”

“You wanted to get the business of dying over with,” he says. “And now?”

“Now ….” I pause, Sam coming to mind, “now I think the world is too layered and complicated to be that simple, for death to be that easy.”

“The world has never been fair; what makes us think we’d get oblivion after we die?” Emma says behind me.

I jump, turning, and she hands me coffee without a word. I take it, not meeting her gaze, fearing the fire that burns behind her eyes would be full of scorn and judgement.

“You could have told me.”

“And said what? There are limits to how often I can explain something I can’t explain. I tried to kill myself. Saying why, giving reasons, never fits. People keep wanting it to make sense.”

“It’s easy; you were afraid,” she says with a certainty common to tv talk show hosts, the authority of Saints Oprah and Jerry Springer in her voice.