Breakaway (31 page)

“I loved him too,” Jordie said, leveling a look of challenge on me. “You can blame yourself for being a shitty friend, Jaz. But you can't blame yourself for what he did. Chick wouldn't want that. He wouldn't want you to hate yourself because of something he did. If he knew how you were taking it, how we all felt, he never would have done what he did. The only thing we did wrong was not telling him how much we cared about him while he was here.”

My gut ached and I realized suddenly I had to piss. I found it annoying, this need to go to the bathroom, such a trivial reminder of what it meant to be human and alive. It felt wrong somehow. To feel hungry or tired or like I had to take a piss when Chick would never feel those things again. But at the same time it was a reminder that life was going to keep going, even if after losing Sylvia or Chick it seemed like the whole world should just stop spinning. I knew that what Jordie was saying was right. That it wasn't my fault and Chick wouldn't want me to feel that it was.

“C'mon,” Mario said after a minute, then stood and offered a hand to help me to my feet. “Let's head to the bar and see if Chris will feed us. We'll swing by the apartment first so you can change out of that suit,” Mario said to me. “You look like an idiot.”

“
C
á
llate,
motherfucker,” I said, but without much conviction.

In a few months high school would be behind us, like a bad dream that I would conjure occasionally when I let myself think about it, but otherwise meaningless. Mario insulting Jordie's mom, telling me I looked like an idiot, was the closest thing to an apology any of us would offer. Maybe it was enough.