You really think someone killed him?

I pulled the message up on my phone to confirm it was real. Read it again. How could someone have known what I’d said at the funeral unless they were there? But then it occurred to me: freaking Olivia. She must have told somebody at the dance. Right. Couldn’t keep her damn mouth shut. And now, I was sure, the information was already doing the rounds amongst the student body, a pack of ravenous sadists gossiping that good old Whitaker was at it again, and someone thought it’d be funny to mess with me. Ha, ha. Great work, everyone.

But this rumour wasn’t untrue. I had said it. Implied it, anyway. And the scraps of lucidity I had left were telling me I was probably full of shit – but the rest of me was saying that maybe I wasn’t.

The other unexpected thing was June. Weird, glowy, sad-smiling June.

Banal June. Shallow June.

I didn’t care about June. Actually, no: I was sort of pissed off at June. Why did she think she had the right?

I grew angry at the unexpected things. The unfairness of it all. I wasn’t even grieving correctly, still unable to feel anything after he’d settled in for the Big Sleep, and all these unforeseen spines jutting from the angst weren’t even supposed to be there. Only grief. That’s all there should have been, locked round me like an iron maiden. Straightforward. Instead, the universe had opted for horse dismemberment, the horses Angst and Murder and Weird Girls all tearing me limb from limb – and I wished they’d just get it over with.

Frostbite was becoming a genuine possibility, so I left, and navigated along brick-paved side streets to the cul-de-sac. The act of stepping through the front door felt like willingly condemning myself to hell. Satan, I’m home.

Mom was awake, shuffling papers at the kitchen table; the scratching made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. She grinned when she saw me, wide and careless. ‘Were you out?’

I thought the fact that I’d entered from outside implied I had been out, but I nodded anyway.

Mom looked down at the papers, then looked back to me, startled, like she’d been reminded of her own consciousness. ‘Are you hungry? I can make you a sandwich, or …’ She stopped, chewed her thumb, presumably because Dad had enjoyed a sandwich or two in his time. I wasn’t entirely sure. But I couldn’t stand the thought of staying in this situation.

‘I’m OK.’ I took the stairs to my room two at a time, aware of a new sensation: a terrible, dizzy lurching in my stomach. I savoured it for a moment – feeling! It was back! – but after five seconds of nausea, numbness didn’t sound half bad.