This was creating troubling links in my head. I knew it was.

But it worked too well to stop. Think about June. Flip my mind overtop of itself, push everything else out until she’s all that’s left. June laughing at a joke I’d made, or June speaking, or June existing. This didn’t serve, exactly, to balance me on the tightrope; it disintegrated the tightrope. It made it so the tightrope had never existed at all. There was no gravity. I could float there, comfortable, and never worry about the fall ever again.

Whatever helps.

What’s the point of living if –

June.

We’re all going to die and the universe is indifferent and –

June. Her hands on me and her face close to mine but what does it matter if she, if Dad –

June. June smiling in the driver’s seat. Dad decomposing in the driver’s seat –

June. Heaven is June in the driver’s seat. Hell is June in the driver’s seat. There is only June in the driver’s seat.

And at night, my consciousness would slip away, repeating that smooth, delicious mantra in my head.

There is only June in the driver’s seat.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

The next text came during a phone call with June two weeks from Christmas break. Calls had become a regular occurrence; they’d begun when I’d left a notebook in her car and she’d called to tell me, and then just kept talking. I can neither confirm nor deny that I’d left the notebook there on purpose.

I had on her speaker while I played Bloodborne on the Xbox and she narrated an episode of Robot Wars to me; apparently, it was a good one.

‘Dude, Whitaker, you need to turn off Birthblood and get an eye of this absolute walloping.’

That was when my phone buzzed.

Seriously?

Did this have to happen now?

‘Uh, June?’ I said, making sure I didn’t stammer. ‘I gotta go.’

June didn’t say anything at first; I thought I heard someone else talking just out of earshot. ‘Oh, that’s OK. I have to go too.’

‘OK. Talk to you later.’

I hung up and tried to swipe the text away, but realized I should wait to see if there’d be anything else, any follow-up, or if this was all they had for me – and when it seemed like it was, I resolved to tell Mom.

This was no coincidence, now. She’d have to understand.

Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, the skin under her eyes bruised and thin, her hair clipped away from her face in a heap; in the three months since he died she’d gotten three different haircuts and still never wore it down.

I caught a glimpse of the papers she’d been reading; they had the same familiar headers: bank, hospital, insurance …

‘I wanna show you something,’ I said. ‘Well, I, I need to tell you something, but I need you not to freak out.’