Grief in the Fourth Dimension by Jennifer Yu

Author:Jennifer Yu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amulet Books
Published: 2024-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

CAROLINE

27 | how can there possibly be more than two hundred error codes?

Kenny shuts the door hard, and the sound echoes around the room’s high, vaulted ceiling, which feels like it’s closing in on me despite being at least twenty feet above the floor. It’s like I’m in the car again, boxed in on all sides, the police lights painting the insides of my eyelids in primary colors, the sirens growing louder and then slipping away. It’s like I never escaped the car at all, like I’ve been trapped in it this whole time. I’m hyperventilating again, breathless with claustrophobia, but this time Kenny’s not here to count me through my breaths.

And I don’t know what stings more—the fact that Kenny hid the truth from me through weeks and weeks of being my only company, my video game partner and confidant, my superhero teammate and shoulder to cry on, my actual friend; or the fact that he did it in the first place. That he made a choice to take his own life, just months before I had mine stolen from me.

I went into cardiac arrest, Kenny had said, his voice flat, like it was nothing, like dying was nothing, like I didn’t go out in a hurricane of terror and pain and flashing lights—

I AM SORRY, CAROLINE, the room says. The note lands in my lap, startling me out of my thoughts, saving me, probably, from another total meltdown. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE YOUR FRIENDS?

Yes, I think. The answer to that question will always be yes.

The television screen lights up, and it’s not just my friends—it’s Kenny’s friends, too: Dom and Cooper and Iris and Jianyu all at Wisteria Park, which is buzzing with the energy of incipient spring. Flower buds and small leaves stud the tree branches; dewdrops glisten on the blades of fresh grass; the air is filled with birdsong—the high, staccato chirps of robins and the sweet trilling of red-winged blackbirds. And then there’s the smell, which surfaces in my memory so abruptly and with such vividness that I may as well have just lit a candle: snowdrops and irises, perennials unearthed from beneath the winter snow, their fragrance floating over the sharp, clean scent of the still-cold air.

Everyone is sitting together on one of Cooper’s picnic blankets. They’re eating sandwiches.

“. . . and Jianyu makes four,” Dom is saying. “Hey, I think we have enough people to start an official WHS club now. What do you think, Cooper? Do you think we could convince the student council to give us funding?”

“We could if Caroline were here,” Cooper says, glumly. “Admin loved her.”

Jianyu looks a little uncomfortable, actually—like it might be his first time hanging out with the group. I’m surprised he’s there at all, given what happened the last time we saw him with Iris. But Kenny did say that their friendship had always been tumultuous; perhaps they’ve made up—again.

Iris, on the other hand, looks totally at ease: She’s sitting next to Dom, leaning back on her elbows with one shoulder pressed against his.

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