“Frankie? No. No, I haven’t seen Zeke. I was at work and then I got a call from the police that you were in a car accident and it was really bad—well, it turned out it wasn’t bad, okay? You’re fine, and you’ll be fine—and I drove straight here to the hospital, and I’ve been with you ever since.”

“Okay . . . well, Zeke is going back to Memphis. He’s leaving Coalfield.” I started to cry.

“Sweetie, oh god. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry because I know you really liked him,” she said, patting my head, afraid to hold me because of how much pain I could theoretically be in.

“I miss him already,” I said.

“And, honey, you were upset after he told you?” she asked me. “And you drove home?”

“Yeah . . . and I guess I was driving too fast, or I just wasn’t concentrating on the road, maybe? I don’t really remember, Mom.”

“Well, okay, that’s . . . of course you might not remember. But . . . Frankie? Can you look at me, sweetie?”

“I am looking at you,” I replied.

“You’re kind of looking about six or seven inches to the left of me, but that’s . . . okay, maybe we’ll ask the doctor about that when he comes back to check on you. But I just want to be sure of something. And you can tell me. You can tell me anything.”

“Okay,” I said, knowing that I wouldn’t tell her everything. I would leave so much out.

“You didn’t drive into the tree on purpose? Because you were upset that Zeke was leaving?”

“No!” I replied, because it really wasn’t true. It was more complicated than that, but I wasn’t getting into it. “Mom, no. I just . . . I don’t know. I didn’t try to kill myself, Mom.”

“Oh, sweetie, just hearing you say it makes me feel a little sick,” she told me. “And Zeke seems like a sweet boy, but, god, Frankie, don’t ever kill yourself over a boy. Or anything! There’s nothing worth killing yourself over. Your dad left me and started a whole new family. But I wouldn’t kill myself over that.”

“Mom,” I said, suddenly so tired, “I don’t want to talk about Dad right now.”

“Of course not, sweetie,” she said. She started to choke up, her eyes welling with tears. “I just . . . you are the most beautiful and wonderful and strangest person I have ever met. You are the most amazing person in the world. And you just have to live long enough to make the rest of the world understand that, okay? You have to stay alive.”

“I’ll try, Mom,” I said, and I started crying again.

“In ten years,” she said, “when you’re out of Coalfield and you’re successful and happy, you won’t even remember this summer, sweetie.”