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This

All of it Me and Tyler Being here at the school The fact that they’d named the field I’d once played on after me In memoriumlike I was dead

And I had been dead in a way For five long years everyone hadhad changed

And noas back A corpse with a second chance

I slipped out from beneath his arm, from where I suddenly felt trapped, cornered by his presence "I have to go," I insisted, pulling outthe time "I need you to takefor ot back, all written on ether so precisely they formed a perfect neon-rainbow fan I assuh therateful she’d decided to take phone ive out my new cell number It wasn’t even nine o’clock when Tyler dropped me off, but my mom and her new faht, so I had the house to myself

In the kitchen there was a plate covered with plastic wrap Through the filhetti with Granduilt for not being there for dinner, but the very idea of sitting through aere an actual fah, maybe if I made more of an effort to talk tothe calendar off the wall, I carried it, along with the plate of spaghetti, to the table I looked at the tiainst the time on the microwave It bothered me that the teren’t exactly in sync--they were a ht up to the ti to the calendar

I flipped to May and put er on today’s date, and the moment I did, the panic in my chest subsided I knehy It had beco tabs on the time The constant reassurance that I hadn’t lost another day Or another hour orat the exact right speed it should

I didn’t reheat the spaghetti because I’d always liked it better cold anyway I peeled back the plastic wrap and thrustI hadn’t eaten anything since I’d stolen a handful of popcorn fro trip I twirled the fork, mesathering it into a bulging wad, and then I lifted the entire ed it intoat the zoo and that I ht as well lift the plate up to ; I did lovemy teeth down on the first bite of the soft pasta, I closed ue But I knew iht with it Maybe it was the recipe Maybe my mo wrong with the ingredients she’d used Regardless of the reason, it definitely wasn’t the sa it down I tried the randmother’s recipe had been handed down from her mother and then passed to my mom, and would eventually be passed down to me My dad used to say I’d cut hetti Theelse since I’d returned They wereoff

I continued eating, but less enthusiastically, and halfway through arbage disposal It was the first tihetti, and I couldn’t help wondering if it was h I couldn’t for the life ofthe calendar beneath my arm, I went back to es ain--the three from Cat

Cat, and not Austin

Cat, who’d called at 4:15, 4:53, and again at 6:36 Her cell nuo, was also written down on each note, as if it wasn’t peres and tossed thes my mom had left piled in ht back with her frole--none of which I’d bothered looking through yet

The fourthht but that he would definitely be here first thing in theto takeout Maybe without my mom around I could talk to hi up the whole light thing or his whacked-out theories about UFOs

Maybe he’d go back to being ain

When my phone buzzed, it scared the crap out of ital clock that I’d set so it was synchronized precisely with my phone, which I assumed was set to so, but I’d been trying to, or at least pretending I was trying to, as I’d stretched out and stared at the ceiling, waiting for that drowsy-floaty feeling of sleep to claim me If only I could shut off my mind for a few seconds