The week before he died, there had been a weird energy around school. Fights were breaking out. Everyone was still disagreeing on the number. Felix felt certain there had been nine broken up and noted in the register, but as many as fifteen that the teachers didn’t know about. All the adults shrugged it off as boys, even art-school boys, just getting wild sometimes. It didn’t feel like that to Felix. There was a mean humidity in the hallways and in the parking lot and on the gym floor.

Felix said, “I had a good friend, Amir, who believed in all sorts of woo shit. Amir was the only teenage boy I knew reading tarot cards, he wore an evil eye all the time looped around his wrist. He went to cemeteries and recorded audio, listening for the sound of ghosts. Amir said all this, the unrest, the unhappiness, it was because of a ghost or a curse. If it was a curse, his grandma could come and do a ritual sometime. A ghost, one seeping out anger, well, that was worse. It reminds me of what you told me about your dorm room.”

Ayanna moved a little closer to him, both for the heat and to let herself feel a little thrilled by the way they were touching, the way he was confiding in her. There were still packs of people walking around, moving from party to party. They stopped to gawk at a group of people dressed as sexy Mushroom Kingdom. The girl dressed as Waluigi was truly beautiful, over six feet tall, clomping in her large black boots, playing with the large fake mustache she had pasted to her face. They both agreed it made them uncomfortable, and for a little while, because Ayanna was a little buzzed, their conversation digressed into a consideration of what made a good Halloween costume. When they agreed to disagree about a formula of pleasing yourself, potential sexiness or discomfort, and whether punning was fun or obnoxious, they returned to Felix’s story.