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isn’t even the right word. I needed to stand there, precisely in that place, follow in her footsteps.
    So up and up I rose, higher and higher. That’s an old song, “Your love,” blah, blah, blah, “has lifted me … HIGHER!”
    And your cruelty, blah, blah, blah, brought me … crashing to the earth.
    I stayed up there for a long time. Stood right at the edge too. Felt the breeze on my back, swayed a little, but I was never going to take that step.
    I’m not like some people.
    I have to think a long time before I do anything. So that’s all I did up there. Think and blink, think and blink.

 
    THE WATER TOWER AGAIN
    Not so easy shaking the memory of yesterday.
    No matter how hard I try, I can’t imagine ever taking a step like that.

 
    SORRY
    It feels cold
    in here,
    doing my fifteen minutes
    in solitary,
    staring
    at these bare white walls
    like pages …
    I forgot what I wanted to say.

 
    ONE TRUTH
    The truth?
    Morgan and I were alone together 14 times. Exactly that. I’ve counted. I find myself revisiting those times at odd, unexpected moments. Waiting for sleep, eyes closed to the dark that surrounds me. Those are the visits I conjure myself, like Aladdin rubbing the lamp. What slays me is when I’ll have sudden visions of her while mixing chemicals in science lab, or on the bus, groggy, staring at the window, listening to some random comic’s podcast.
    Like, for instance: I was eating a bowl of cereal after school. I’m shoveling it into my face, brainlessly watching television. And suddenly I imagine her sitting across the table from me. The table floats away. Our knees nearly touch. I don’t know what makes me do it, or why, but I cup my two hands up to her face and she leans into them, sinks into my warm hands.
    We don’t speak. Though it feels to me—and this sounds so weird I can barely write it now—like she is purring. Somewhere deep in the cave of her chest, a satisfied animal rumble. It is as if I am a healer, and I gave her a momentary rest from all life’s hurts and pains and betrayals. It was a spiritual thing, almost. I could feel her smooth skin on the tips of my fingers, in the hollow of my palms. The delicate cheekbones of her face. The weight of her head pressing into me. Her eyes are closed and relaxed. She is at peace.
    I don’t know if that ever happened. Did we even do that once?
    Or did I just make it up now? All I know is, either way, it was real.
    It feels real.
    And that’s all that matters.

 
    THE BEAST
    I didn’t realize that I liked her. Or as Morgan might describe it, that I like-liked her. Not for a long time, anyway. I mean, she was okay. Not nearly as awful as everybody made her out to be. I didn’t get that at all. Obviously there was something bad between Athena and Morgan, something nobody seemed to understand. How do you dissect a person’s hate? Were we supposed to pull it apart, piece by piece, try to uncover the core of the problem? Nobody really thought about it much. We had our own homework to do.
    A fierce hatred radiated off Athena like steam. I heard a phrase the other day, my mother was talking about an incident at the bank, and she said, “I was so angry I couldn’t see straight.” And I got it instantly. Full-on furious emotion, it’s all you can see. That was Athena with Morgan. I don’t think she saw Morgan as a real human being anymore. I can understand this now, months later, long after it is too late. To Athena, and I guess to the rest of us, Morgan became a thing, an object moving through the halls of our school, occupying our seats, breathing our air.
    Over time, that became true for most of us. We failed to see the person. She became this … beast. That’s when the nickname started, I’m not even sure who came up with it. We called her “The Beast” or sometimes TFB or TUFB: “The Ugly Fat