Someone who might stay through the chaos to see me carted off to jail. I looked past the reporters’ faces searching for someoneįamiliar in the background, someone who might have a reason to frame me for murder. No mention of how he’d been asphyxiated with his own shoelace, or the mysterious number left in stickers on his arm. The police hadn’t released many details to the press, only that an unidentified minor was found dead during a school field trip, and police were investigating the possibility of foul play. News stations had footage from the Air and Space Museum on a loop, each showing different angles of the front of the building, rows of yellow buses, and flashing police lights. I poked the remote through a gap in the blanket where it was pulled up to my ears, flipping between channels with the sound muted so it wouldn’t wake my mother. I was still in my pj’s, buried under a faded afghan that smelled like mildew and cigarette smoke.

I spent Sunday morning with the shades drawn tight, sagging into our creaky dirt-brown sofa. But he’d turned away, and wouldn’t look back.Įven as he said “I think you should leave.” Had always counted on him swinging back to me, his true north. “Can you understand? Will you please just look at me?” He flinched, a movement so small I might have missed it if I hadn’t been looking so closely at his eyes, waiting for them to blink. And it’s not fair to either of us to try.” I can’t make myself love you more than I do. My voice trembled, but I needed him to hear this even though I wished he didn’t have to. He lay back down, eyes glued to the ceiling. ” I took a breath, and forced myself to speak the truth I’d never had the guts to tell him.

“Jeremy,” I began, unsure how to say what needed to be said. To fix what I couldn’t stop breaking over and over. You wouldn’t be caught dead at a dance with me.” “But I thought you just said you wouldn’t be caught dead. “You’re going?” He sat up, looking confused. “Fine, but if you snap any pictures of me, I might have to kill you.”

Nearly found by elle cosimano