The next day, I call Jessie after I wake up“Hey.”

I grip the phone in my hand with firm pressure. “Look, I know it’s early, but can you come over? It’s important.”

I managed to sleep through the night fine, but when I woke up my chest felt tight as soon as I remembered what my father had done the day before.

“Yes. I can come right over. Is your dad okay?” She sounds fully alert now.

I grip the phone tighter if that’s even possible. “No, Jessie. He isn’t.”

“Be right there.”

“No, wait!” I yell, before she can hang up. I give her directions to the hotel, and we both hang up.

Laying my phone on the bed I get dressed. Mom left not long ago to meet up with the cleaning crew to let them in the house. She also wanted to talk with Mrs. Jenkins, most likely for someone to talk to about my dad. If I could express my emotions better, I would have tried to comfort Mom more this morning. Mom let me stay in our hotel room because I told her I wanted to talk to Jessie. It took a while to convince her, but she finally agreed. I want to be there for my mom, but it’s uncomfortable right now to be around her. I feel like if I express how I feel she will just feel worse.

The only person I want to see today is Jessie. I snack on a blueberry muffin that Mom brought me back from one of the vending machines that she found down in the lobby. While I didn’t feel like eating yesterday, today my stomach needs it. Right when I’m on my last bite, there’s a knock at the door. “Who is it?” Mom told me before she left to not let anyone in, unless it was Jessie, and to make sure I asked at the door before answering it.

“It’s me!” As soon as I hear Jessie’s voice, I unlock the door and wave her inside.

“What’s going on here? Why are you at a hotel? Where are your parents? Are you running away?” Her brown eyes roam back and forth across the room, and her blonde hair is swinging all over the place.

My eyebrows shoot up. “What? No! Where would I even be running to without a job and money?”

Jessie throws her hands up in the air. “I don’t know. There are way younger kids than us that run away all the time.”

“Well, I’m not. It’s…it’s my dad. He died yesterday.” My lip starts to quiver, and my body starts to shake.

Jessie stares at me with her mouth wide open. “What do you mean died? He got released yesterday, right? I know you told me it was terminal, but there’s no way it could have happened this soon. Could it?”

There’s no way to sugarcoat it. “He couldn’t take it anymore, Jessie. He shot himself.” I feel strange saying it, and I still can’t quite grasp it.

“Oh, my God! Why? Why would he do that? Why would he?” Swinging a hand to cover her mouth, the tears flow from her face to her shirt and onto the hotel carpet.

“I think he couldn’t take that he had cancer, and he didn’t want to watch himself deteriorate anymore. He saw my grandpa go through hospice. Even though they are there to help, you’re watching yourself break apart into smaller pieces, day by day. You see yourself waiting to die until you become nothing. There was no note or anything that he left us.” I sob. Mom explained to me this morning why she thought that he had shot himself, and the words hospice and cancer triggered it. She isn’t even mad that he did it, she’s more upset that he was going to die anyway.

“Do you want to come over to my house, or I can drive us somewhere?” Jessie sits on the bed with her lips drawn down, continuously swiping at the edges of her brown eyes.

I locate my phone on the wooden nightstand. “Let me call my Mom to let her know.”

Mom answers her phone right away, sounding so sad. “Sweetheart, are you all right?”

She felt guilty that she didn’t put away the gun, but she had no idea. Dad used to be positive about everything. Yes, he had looked tired lately and not himself, but he never complained or anything, until he had to go to the hospital a few days ago.

The gun was a small revolver that wasn’t even loaded, and it wasn’t directly beside the bed. Dad had to get up and walk to the dresser across from the bed to pull it out of a drawer. He could barely walk when he got home, so I don’t even know how he made it to the dresser without me hearing him. He must have used the bed as leverage to hold him up. Mom can’t blame herself, though, she did everything she could have done for Dad by taking care of him.

“I’m the same. Mom, is it all right if I go to Jessie’s house? She’s here at the hotel already.” I take the stiff, hotel pillow and set it in my lap, rubbing my fingers across the edges.

“Go ahead, baby. I have a lot of things to situate, and I need to plan the funeral. If you want me to pick you up, I can come right away,” she sniffs. I know as soon as she gets off the phone with me she’s going to have a breakdown with Mrs. Jenkins. My emotions clench in a tight ball inside my chest; I just show my emotions differently than Mom.

“Okay, Mom. Is there anything I can do to help?” Even if she needs me to just sit with her, I will.

“No, not right now. I have to call and make arrangements in a little while. That’s it. The clean-up crew already started on the house. They have to cut out a large chunk of the carpet, and I have to throw away the sheets. They’ll be finished today, and I thought we could return here next week. Unless you need longer? I want to take a little time away to absorb everything.”

“No, Mom, that’s fine.” I need the space away from home as much as she does.

I don’t have a problem with going back to the house, but I already know that I won’t be able to set foot in the art room for a long time. That’s the place where Dad and I spent most of our time together. Mom would come in there, too, and watch us in there for hours. She didn’t get bored watching, even though she didn’t join in.

“I love you, sweetheart,” she chokes back another sob.

“Love you, Mom.” I hang up the phone first, setting it down beside me and wiping a tear that has made it midway down my cheek.

I turn to Jessie, who is watching me with a serious expression. “Are you ready? I ask.

“I’m ready if you are.” She reaches over and rubs my shoulder. Jessie is the one person that I always feel comfortable around. I nod my head, and we walk out of the room.

Jessie speeds to her house, but that’s normal for her. Both of her parents are home when we walk inside her cozy house. Jessie’s twin brothers aren’t in the living room, so that means they are probably in their room playing a video game.  

Jessie’s mom, Sefina, knows something is wrong by the look on my face. She’s from Samoa, and her dark, short hair frames her heart-shaped face. Jessie got her beautiful, skin color from her, but her blonde hair from her dad. Sefina hurries over to me, and I tell her everything that happened yesterday.

She wraps her arms around me. More hugging, but with Sefina, it doesn’t bother me as much. “You can stay as long as you need to with us, May. That wouldn’t be a problem at all.”

 “Thank you, but we’ll be going back to the house in a week, and Mom already paid for the hotel anyway. Plus, I want to stay with my mom and not leave her by herself because I know she wouldn’t want to stay at anyone’s house.” Mom loves Sefina, but the house would be crowded with us here. I think I would also be more comfortable with fewer people.

My mind is buzzing all over the place. Dad worked from home and did graphic design stuff from there. I heard Mom this morning when she was on the phone with Mrs. Jenkins. She’s a little worried about not having Dad’s income anymore. She said that the house got paid off a few years back. I already knew this because my parents got the house right before I was born and did a fifteen-year loan instead of the traditional thirty-year loan. I remember the day specifically when it was paid off because Mom ran out and got us pizza to celebrate. She let me pick as many toppings as I wanted, not the usual one topping.

Heading into Jessie’s room, I turn around to face her. “Jessie, I know it’s soon to ask this, but are you guys going to be hiring at your work anytime soon?”

She nods her head. “Yeah, we’re always hiring. People seem to come and go, and others have been there a while. Are you sure you don’t want to hold off on it?”

I don’t. I’m thinking ahead. I sit in the office chair at her desk. “No. I want to be there to help pay for my stuff, so Mom doesn’t have to worry about more than she already has to.”

Jessie cocks her head to the side and runs a finger across her chin. “If you want to, you can apply online and put the start date for when you feel you’ll be ready. I’ll talk to Violet. I’m sure she won’t let me down.” Walking to the laptop, she opens it to turn it on.

I lean my head against the back of the chair. “Thanks for helping me.”

“That’s what friends are for.” She types in the web page, pulling up the application form. Then I lean forward and begin to fill it out.

Jessie has been my best friend since first grade, and I hated her at first. That was probably the first and only time I actually hated someone.

The first day of class, I had on the most awesome troll shirt I had ever seen. I was so proud of it—it felt like it was a trophy. We were standing in the line for recess, and Jessie turned around, looked at my shirt and grabbed it in her tiny fist. The hair on the troll shirt was made of foamy material, so when Jessie fisted it, her nails left little tiny moon-like indentions.

Sobbing, I ran to the teacher, and Mrs. Anderson had no idea what was going on. I explained to her what had happened, and she looked at me like I had lost my mind, telling me to get back in line. Sulkily, I walked to the back of the line and thought the rest of the day about how my shirt was ruined, even though the indentions gradually faded throughout the day. I was still mad at the little blonde-haired girl.

A week passed by, and when we were outside at recess, I was climbing on top of this piece of cave-like equipment that I loved so much. There were three girls from my class underneath. They were hidden and talking about ponies; one of them was Jessie. She looked up at me and told me to go away, that I wasn’t wanted there with them. I think she was still mad that I told the teacher on her.

When Mrs. Anderson blew her whistle to signal that recess was over, the little girls ran out from the cave. Jessie stood up too soon, bumped her head, and started crying. The two other girls looked at her and ran off. I wanted to run off, too, but I didn’t.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Noooo,” she wailed. And that’s when our friendship began.

She started following me around in class, and then I would follow her around. We would get in trouble all the time for talking and had to be separated on the opposite sides of the classroom constantly.

After I finish filling out the application, Sefina makes us chicken alfredo for lunch. Any other day I would scarf this stuff down, but I can barely eat. I force myself to finish the noodles but scoot the chicken to the side of the plate.

I stay until around five, and then Jessie drops me off at the hotel. “Call me if you need anything, okay?” A crease is set so deep between her eyebrows that I don’t know if it will go away.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be bugging you over text tonight,” I say. I’ll need the distraction being cooped up in that tiny hotel room.

Telling Jessie bye, I walk inside the hotel and back to the room.

Mom is in the room looking frustrated and attempting to read a book in bed, when I walk through the door.

“What are you reading?” I ask softly and sit on the other twin bed.

She shows me the front of the book, and it says something about inspiration. “You know, I don’t know what this book is even trying to say. Mrs. Jenkins gave it to me to read to help with things. Maybe it’s because I’m not a big reader, but I feel like the writer makes up loads of crap in this book. Most of these writers, have they ever been through anything in real life?”

I look at the terrible picture on the cover of a person flying through a finish line. “Maybe? Is that book about running a marathon?”

“No. The cover picture doesn’t even make sense!” She tosses the book on the ground, and I let out a small smile despite everything.

“Anyway, I got it all situated and signed the paperwork for the body to be released to the funeral home. The funeral is going to be in two days.” She sighs.

“All right.” It’s the only thing that I can think to say. I wish I could rewind every minuscule detail to not early yesterday, but when all this started happening with Dad. I would try with all my power to get him to go to the doctor, harder than I tried before. Both of his parents died from cancer, and maybe that affected him more than I thought it did.

“I’m lost. This whole situation is beyond me, so I don’t know if you need someone to talk to?” She moves to sit next to me on my bed. The bed dips down, and she leans in close to me.

“Like a counselor?” The thought scares me to talk to someone about my feelings in such detail.

“Yes, sweetheart. You’re almost seventeen, and you know your brain better than I do. You’ve always acted more grown up than you are. If you need me or someone to talk to, I need to know. I’m sure I’ll need someone to get me through this.” She rubs her hand across one of her eyes.

I clasp my hands together in my lap. “No. I think that if it would have happened out of nowhere, and I didn’t understand the reason, I would. I mean, his death was spontaneous, and as much as I wish that he wouldn’t have shot himself, I get now why he did it. He couldn’t handle the situation.” If I truly felt I needed a counselor, I would let Mom know.

Mom nods her head. “I’m going to keep my eye on you, May. If I notice anything change, you’re going, but you’re going to have to at least talk to me about how you feel. And if you need someone more than talking to me, I want you to be honest with me, okay? Even if it’s a year from now, you let me know, understand?” She gives me a long hug before going back to sit on her bed.

I get up and move to sit beside her because I think she needs me more than I need her at this moment. She orders room service, and after we eat dinner, we sit together on the bed and watch TV as a distraction. When Mom falls asleep, I put my phone on silent and text Jessie for a while, until I drift off.