Amelia put the book down. Reading Edi’s books made her feel so grim. It’s why she had such trouble reading Edi’s stuff when she was in college. All death and tragedy and seven-foot-tall talking mushrooms. To Amelia, it all felt like such a disconnected tapestry. How do you learn about death, think about death, by evaluating it in the context of books where there are Gods, magic, and resurrections? What was she trying to express?

Amelia thought herself into a headache. She sat at the kitchen island and propped up her forehead with her hand. She heard Harper shuffling down the stairs from the bedroom. It was about two o’clock in the afternoon and this was the first Amelia had seen of her today.

It had been about two weeks since Harper dropped out of school. Things had not gone well. She had spent the majority of her time on her laptop watching TV series or internet videos. She stayed up all night and slept all throughout the day. Amelia frowned. Rose used to stop by to check in every single day, but after Harper dropped out the visits became rarer and rarer. Not that Harper seemed to notice. She just sulked.

It was a dreary house before she got here, Amelia told herself as Harper came shlubbing down the stairs in sweatpants and an inside-out hoodie.

“Hey, kiddo,” Amelia said.

“Hi,” Harper responded.

“Coffee?”

“It’s two o’clock.”

“It’s morning for your ass,” Amelia said.

Amelia took the tone of a person who feels like they should say something about someone but does it in a fake jokey way in order to not upset them.

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Harper said.

“Why?”

“Did you tell anyone I’m staying here?”

“No. Only one that knows is your mom. I haven’t told anybody. Have you?”

“No. I deleted everything. All the social media. My mom deactivated my phone and gave me that burner, everything. It’s fucking awful. I feel so empty. I know that’s like, simple and lame to say, but every impulse in my brain is like, ‘check my phone, check my accounts, talk to people.’ But now, oh, I can’t, everyone hates me and wishes I was dead and blames me for him dying.”

“I’m sorry, honey, I know it sucks,” Amelia said.

“I snuck onto it. I took your iPad and I logged into Facebook. Someone spread a rumor that I’m pregnant from him and his cousin posted that if that’s true he was going to give me an abortion with a shotgun and it got thirty-three likes.”

“Jesus fucking Christ. Oh, my God. I need to call the police,” Amelia said.