Return.
To.
Blank.
Nanette tries not to picture the mess that Alex’s body must have made, and so in her movie, he shatters into a million tiny pieces like a crystal vase and she pretends to clean him up with a dustpan and broom before she throws all the fragments into the sky, where they will become stars once again. It’s childlike poetry that she runs through her mind, but it helps.
June calls it a coping mechanism and insists that Nanette is in no way, shape, or form responsible for Alex’s death. Nanette insists that she had a premonition—she knew after reading Alex’s “Spider-Man” poem that he was going to die this way.
“That’s not a premonition. That’s identifying dangerous behavior—like saying someone who drives drunk every night is likely to get into a fatal car crash. Or someone who wrestles alligators for a living might eventually be killed by one. It wasn’t the climb that was most dangerous, but Alex’s entire way of looking at life. If it wasn’t punching the fathers of middle school kids or climbing brick walls without safety precautions, it would have been something else.”
Nanette says she should have told someone about the climbing.
“You told me,” June says.
“But you didn’t do anything to save Alex.”
“Alex wasn’t my responsibility. And he wasn’t yours, either. He was going to do what he was going to do regardless of what anyone said or did. They had him locked up in a reform school. He had been given second chances. People were paying attention to him. He wanted it this way. It’s unfortunate, but it’s true.”
Nanette wonders if it can be that easy. Everyone says it wasn’t his or her fault, says they are sorry for the loss, and then moves on with life.
The strangest part is that Nanette doesn’t really miss Alex, because he has sort of become a concept. He hasn’t been in her life for the past few months. She spent only a couple of months with him to begin with. She’s probably spent more hours with Wrigley the fictional character than she did with the late Alex Redmer.
High school students die all over the country—hell, all over the world—every day, and the world keeps spinning.
What does it matter? What do any of us matter? Nanette thinks. What is the point?
She very much wants to quit—to sit alone on a log or rock Unproductive Ted–style or float forever in a lake like Wrigley.
Nanette reads The Bubblegum Reaper over and over again—like it’s a religious text that can provide answers and meaning—but she learns nothing new.
Oliver and Booker express shock and sadness when they hear about Alex’s fate. According to his mother, Oliver cries for days. Booker refuses to show Nanette the letters that Alex wrote to him, saying, “They simply were not addressed to you, Nanette.” She says they must be filled with clues as to why the tragedy happened, but Booker insists that “there are no good answers for such tragedies and you’ll drive yourself mad if you try to find what isn’t there.” Nanette petitions Sandra for support, but she agrees with Booker. “It’s all very sad,” is the only thing Sandra says with which Nanette can agree. And then suddenly Oliver, Booker, and Sandra seem to be just memories in Nanette’s life—characters in a book she no longer wants to read—and so she stops returning their calls, texts, and e-mails. What can they say or do to change what happened and the way Nanette feels about it?
Absolutely nothing.
One day, when Nanette is driving around in her Jeep, Booker calls her cell phone. Nanette sees a lake, and so she pulls up to the water’s edge and throws her iPhone in as it is still ringing.
27
How Do You Turn Tragedy into Something Positive?
A month or so after receiving the news of Alex’s death, Nanette finds herself at the police station asking to speak with Officer Damon. The woman behind the glass, Cheryl, asks what the matter is, and so Nanette says, “Remember the boy you had locked up here several months ago? Alex Redmer?”
She frowns and says, “We lock people up here all the time, and you expect me to remember someone from—”
“He’s dead.”
Cheryl’s demeanor changes instantly. She leans toward the glass, her lips part, and her face loosens a little. “I’m so sorry to hear that, sweetheart.”
Nanette doesn’t like being called sweetheart.
“Nanette would like to speak with Officer Damon.”
“Who is Nanette?”
She points to herself.
Cheryl makes a strange face and then says, “Officer Damon is on patrol right now.”
“Can you call him?”
“Well, I suppose I could, but . . .”
“Nanette needs to speak with him about the black ribbon on his thumb. Tell him that’s what this is about. It’s extremely important.”
She looks at Nanette for a few seconds before she disappears into the next room.
When she returns, Cheryl says, “He’s on his way. You can wait for him in the parking lot if you want.”
Nanette waits in the parking lot because she can tell that Cheryl does not want her to wait in the police station.
When Officer Damon arrives in his cruiser, he exits, removes his mirrored sunglasses, and says, “I’m so sorry to hear about Alex. What happened?”
Nanette tells him what she knows.
Officer Damon maintains eye contact while she speaks, and then when she finishes the story, he shakes his head and says, “A shame. A real shame. I’m so sorry.”
“So what does Nanette do next?”
He looks at her for a beat and says, “What do you mean?”