Page 76 of Only Mostly Devastated

He hung up on me. Then the front door swung open, and Will emerged from the house and started down the driveway. I got out of the car in a daze and stood by it, hugging myself until Will reached me.

I think he knew as soon as he saw my face.“Ollie,”he breathed, holding out his arms. I launched myself into them like this wasn’t weird, and we hadn’t spent the last few weeks pretending each other didn’t exist. As soon as I felt his hands on my back I burst into sobs. “Oh, Ollie, no. I’m so sorry.”

He led me, crying and coughing and shaking, straight through to his room without even bringing me past his parents to say hi. Mom and Dad would’ve disowned me if they’d known I’d been so rude, but at that moment I honestly couldn’t have cared less. He left me there fora minute or two while he went down and explained to his parents, then he came back upstairs and sat with me in silence.

When I finally calmed down enough to speak, Will and I had been sitting on his bed for about fifteen minutes. He hadn’t tried to push me into talking, at any point. He’d just sat, his shoulder pressing against mine, with his hands in his lap.

“I just don’t know what to do,” I said. “What do youdowhen this happens? My parents are acting like everything’s fine, and they wanted to go get dinner, and Mom put on homemovies—”

“Movies?”

“Moviesof Aunt Linda! Isn’t that the most fucked-up thing you’ve ever heard?”

Will clasped his hands together soberly. “That’s pretty ridiculous.”

“It just doesn’t feel real, Will. Everything is really distant, and blurry, and it’s like I’m dreaming but I don’t think I am. Am I? I’m definitely not dreaming, right?”

“You’re definitely not dreaming,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s fine. But also, it’s not okay, because she’sdead, and that’s real. That’s real life. It’s real life from now on, too. For every day, from now until forever, she’s still going to be dead when I wake up every morning. How do I do this? I don’t know what to do.”

I was crying again now, and Will put his arm around me to pull me into him. Not in a romantic way, just comforting. The way I’d really wanted my parents to comfort me.

“What do Ido?” I asked again. Like Will somehow had a magical solution to all of this.

“Whatever you need to,” he said quietly.

I rested my head on his shoulder. I hadn’t realized howheavy it felt until then. My jaw was aching, too. From crying? Had I been gritting my teeth? I used to do that a lot when I was younger, until I’d chipped a tooth and the dentist made me sleep with a mouth guard. “It was just out of nowhere, you know? I mean, it wasn’ttotallyunexpected, but I thought we’d have more warning. I thought she’d start looking really, really sick, and we’d know it was coming. I can’t even remember the last conversation we had. I think it was about spoiled milk.”

I sobbed all the way through the last sentence, so hard I could barely stammer the words out.

“It’s not fair,” Will said.

“No,it’snotfair.”

“No.”

And in the weirdest way, even though I felt like I was being buried alive by grief, it was the tiniest bit more bearable now. Just having Will back me up, and agree with me, and not try to make me look at the bright side, or remember the nice times, made me feel less like I was alone in this. Even though Will barely knew Aunt Linda, I felt like he was right there with me in the darkness. Waiting with me for as long as I needed to be there.

Eventually, I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and sat up. “I’m sorry. I just came over here out of nowhere, and you probably have a ton of homework, and you haven’t even had dinner—”

“It’s—”

“I should’ve at least texted, or—”

“Ollie.”He grabbed my hand, and I looked down at it, startled. “It’s fine. I’m glad you came. You can stay as long as you want.”

I nodded, and gently took my hand away. “Thank you. I should get home, though.”

He walked me through to the living room, where his parents were watchingInception.They’d reached the scene where everyone was banging around upside down in the corridor, but they paused it when they noticed us.

“Hi, Ollie,” Mrs. Tavares said. “Will told me about your aunt. I’m so sorry to hear. Please let us know if there’s anything we can do.”

Mr. Tavares nodded and gave me a tight smile. “It’s good to see you again, Ollie. I thought after Thanksgiving we might start seeing your face around here more often.”

I had a sudden flashback to Mr. Tavares practically walking in on Will and me. I forced a fake laugh.

“Oh, and Will,” he said mildly. “I know tonight was a bit of a special situation, but please remember our rule about not closing bedroom doors.”

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