“Even though you’re trouble,” Carol says, her voice going a little sobby. “You don’t need to be sorry for what I bet you said you were sorry for.” I’d forgotten I’d told her about the apology lists. “It wasn’t your fault Aza died. You know that, right?”
I look at her from inside my alligator suit. No, I do not know that.
My mom presses her hand to the center of my chest and goes quickly to her chair.
When I first realized that Aza wasn’t going to live as long as me, I told Aza all the classic things people tell people who are dying. I said, “I could get hit by a bus tomorrow,” etcetera etcetera.
Aza was like: “True, except how often, seriously, Jason, do people get hit by buses and die?” Then she cruelly handed me stats. Not that often, as it turns out.
Aza’s mom throws her arms around my alligator self, and I walk Aza’s parents to their seats. Both of them lean hard on me.
The grave they’re going to put Aza in is really small.
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When it’s my turn to talk, I take off the alligator head, and recite a little chunk of pi. Then I say, as fast as possible: “So, you may or may not know that people keep finding more digits of that number. I wanted to give Aza all the digits. I tried that, the first time we met. I found out later that she knew more digits than I did. I was trying to give her something that wouldn’t ever end.”
People look at me. There is a collective adult sympathy noise that makes me want to puke.
“That’s it,” I say. “That’s all. I’m fine. No, don’t worry.”
People make the faces of a comfort army. In my head, I’m frantically pi.
Aza’s family does their thing.
Aza’s Mom: “She was sick, but would I have traded her for someone who wasn’t? If it meant I’d lose the person she was? No.”
Aza’s Dad: <shakes head, can’t talk>
Aza’s Mom: hugs him and passes him a piece of colored paper. I can’t see the I Love You list she’s given him, but he looks at her for a second, his face saying she just saved him.
Eli: “Last year someone gave me a valentine and Aza claimed she hated it. I liked it. She did too, but she kept pretending she didn’t. I’m going to give it to her now.”
Eli gets some confetti out, and we throw it into the air. It’s heart-shaped. It glitters as it falls.
I think: why did I never give Aza a valentine? I did not know she liked confetti. I did not know she liked hearts. She would’ve made fun of me. She would’ve told me I was sappy. But maybe I—
Looping.
I get the balloons. There are a couple hundred of them. It’s like we’re at a Party Palace, and we’re all five years old. Except it’s a Party Palace where some of us are dead.
Everyone attaches notes to the strings. Eve objected to these, because questionable materials. I had to go in several directions and find biodegradable. I feel momentarily like I’m getting it right.
It’s raining hard now. Some of the balloons pop the moment we let go, but others get up into the sky the way they should. That’s what always sucks about balloons. In your hand they’re big, but once you let them loose, they’re instantly tiny.
Mine’s a huge green one, because it has to carry a long letter, inside of its own waterproof tube. I wanted it to get as close to outer space as possible. Therefore, it’s a reinforced weather balloon, spray-painted to evade Eve.
And then—
Thunder.
Lightning.
People are fleeing to their cars as quickly as they can without being disrespectful.
Where am I supposed to go, exactly? Aza’s in a little box in the ground.
The grave is too small for me to get into it, scrunch my knees up to my chest, and let them cover me up. But how can there be a rest of my life?
Trees are leaning over. A branch cracks off and hits the ground not very far away, and my moms are trying, not subtly, to get me to come with them.
I look up, and I let my balloon go. As I do, I see something gleam—
a flash of white sail billowing, and a bright spot of light, something blazing out of the darkening clouds. I see something, ropes, the pointed prow of a—
An object falls down out of the clouds, and I hear Aza’s voice. I swear I do.
I hear Aza screaming my name.
“Aza Ray,” says someone, way, WAY too loudly. “Aza Ray, wake up.”
I put my head under the covers. Absolutely not. There will be no waking up for me, because it is clearly five a.m., and this can only be cruel night phlebotomy. I have a spinny, achy head, leftover from whatever got me here, and yes, I remember some of it, and yes, some of it was bad, but it’s been bad before, but here I still apparently am, so it can’t have been that bad.
I’ve been sleeping like the dead. That’s a joke I’m allowed to make. Whatever drug they’ve got me on, it’s working. If they ask me, I can say pain scale zero, which has never happened before, not in my entire history of hospitals.
The voice gets sharper. This nurse has no sense of nice. Her voice is both way too loud and way too high-pitched. I yank the covers higher over my face.
“AZA RAY QUEL. It’s time to wake up now!”
Something sharp pokes me. My bed shakes.
I reluctantly open my eyes and I’m looking at—
An owl.
A HUMAN-SIZE OWL, a, what? WHAT? A WORLD-CLASS HALLUCINATION.
The owl stretches long yellow fingers and runs one over my forehead. It clacks its beak at me.