True Letters from a Fictional Life by Kenneth Logan

Author:Kenneth Logan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-04-04T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

It crossed my mind in the morning to play sick, to take a day at home to figure out how to deal with everything. I wouldn’t have had to do anything desperate, like when I held a thermometer to a lightbulb in sixth grade. “James, you have a 112-degree fever,” my mother had sighed. “We’ll bury you out back.” This time I could’ve honestly said I felt too ill and tired to concentrate—my eyes burned from lack of sleep, and I felt wired and exhausted all at the same time—but I wanted to act as if everything were normal. And if I got the chance, I wanted to beg Theresa again to keep her mouth shut.

I got a lift to school with my dad that morning to avoid having to drive in with Derek. A kid in a white parka with the hood pulled up walked into the building just ahead of me. Aaron’s shrine greets students who enter through that door. It’s the first thing you see. The boy in front of me stopped short and his bag fell from his hands.

“OMG,” I heard him gasp. It wasn’t clear whether he was impressed or horrified. He took his hood off just as I passed, but I’d already recognized the voice. Aaron Foster.

“Hey!” I slapped his arm. “You’re back from the dead!”

“James, who did this?” he hissed. “This is so incredibly embarrassing. Where did they find that photo of me?” He pointed to one that showed him laughing with his eyes half closed and his mouth wide open. “Did they call my dentist or what?”

“Aaron!” a girl squealed from down the hall. Others picked up her shrill cry. I backed away as four girls hugged him and cooed and stroked his head.

“Um, are you responsible for this?” Aaron asked, twirling a finger at the photos and flowers, candles and quotes.

“We didn’t want anyone to forget about you or what happened,” one of them explained.

“That’s so incredibly nice of you,” Aaron gushed. “And I’m going to take it all down now because I’m back”—he knelt and began tearing photos off the poster board—“and it is time we all just move on.” He handed them each a plastic daisy. “These are gorgeous. And who found this quote?” It was written in white ink on black paper:

I will not leave South Africa, nor will I surrender.

Only through hardship, sacrifice, and militant action can freedom be won.

The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom

until the end of my days.

—Nelson Mandela

No one knew who’d found the quote or put it on the poster. “Well, it doesn’t really matter,” sighed Aaron. “I’m just overwhelmed. Thank you.”

Aaron got a lot of attention during first period—we had English first thing and Breyer made a big deal of him—but by second period it was as if he’d never been gone. The same people who had ignored him before the incident ignored him once again, but that afternoon he stopped me in the hall.

“James, I’ll bring back your sweater.

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