Cover

Dedication

To all those no longer with us, who are still with us

Epigraph

I hope the leaving is joyful—and I hope never to return.

—Frida Kahlo

Facts

In 1785, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier discovers that matter can neither be created nor destroyed.

Fifty-five years later, German physician Julius Robert Mayer concludes the same is true of energy.

Sixty more years later, Albert Einstein gives us E=mc2.

Which means mass and energy are exchangeable, and therefore, the total amount of mass and energy in the Universe is constant.

There will always be the same amount of energy and matter.

I say this because if matter doesn’t die, if energy can’t die, then no one really dies.

Five years.

Five thousand.

Five billion.

You will still be here.

So, before they close their eyes for the last time, when they promise you—

I’ll always be with you, I’m everywhere you are.

They will.

They are.

101

When tragedy strikes—and no, I don’t mean the barbarism of watching someone pour milk before cereal, or laboring to make that last square of toilet paper, the one superglued to the cardboard, be enough.

I mean, actual tragedy.

Like, when no one wants to tell you your parents are dead.

Like, when your stupid brain can’t decide which outfit—if the dress, the suit you chose, is what they’d want to wear forever.

Like, when your best friend really needs you, but you’re gone, baby, gone.

See, actual tragedy monsters your heart.

Actual tragedy saws you in half.

Before and After.

Like cheesy weight-loss commercials where on one side you’re chubby, bald, bad posture, bacne—and then you swallow a magic capsule and voilà!, you’re eighteen-pack abs, more hair than five woolly mammoths, and astonishingly clear skin.

Look, they’re saying, this is you then, but this is you now.

That’s tragedy: a hard pill you swallow that changes everything.

And one day, you look in the mirror, and a stranger is there where you used to be.

You’ll interrogate yourself endlessly.

If only you’d done this slower, that faster.

Now you know the true cost of a split second.

You never stop paying.

This is what no one tells you—

100

—the worst day of your life begins like any other.

The sun shows up before you want.

You left the fan on all night, your throat’s scratchy, nose itchy.

You claw sleep from your eyes.

Press your feet into carpet, curl your toes.

The kitchen tile’s freezing.

It’s June in Ohio so it’s eighty degrees, or thirty-five inches of rain, or snowflakes.

You rifle through cabinets, the pantry. Pillage two Pop-Tarts, eat them raw.

You dash back upstairs, bang on the bathroom door, yell at your sister for hogging the hot water.