I can't tell my friends about any of it. I've been so careful to make sure no one knows the truth. I'm not really sure why. Maybe it's because any time I'm at school or with them it means too much to me. I don't want to ruin it by seeing the pity in their eyes.

I don't want them to feel pain. 

I don't want anyone to feel the pain I feel every single day. 

An ocean of pain. Too many dry beans. An overflowing, drowning something, too much to bear...

I want to die.

The first passage I read. The only passage I remember word for word. I whisper it over and over to myself... Too many dry beans... Too much to bear... I want to die... This is all I have left. The first and the last of the Book-Boy's pain. Even my note to him is gone... tucked away inside the book.

I'm still outside when Mom comes back. The book is gone, destroyed by now, I guess. I'm limp, still exactly where I fell, all my energy drained away. She half picks, half pulls me up and helps me back into the house. She makes me soup, heating it up on the stove, but I can't eat, so she makes me drink some water then puts me to bed. I don't say a word the whole time. She silently looks over the papers taped all over my wall then takes them down one by one. I don't even try to stop her. What's the point? I have no source material to match it with. There's no finding the Book-Boy, no saving him, now. All is lost, and I with it. After staring at my now blank, too-bright, yellow walls for some time I drift off into a fitful sleep.

I dream of my Dad. It's a vivid, oh too real dream. I see him right there ahead of me and the ocean, grey and ominous, crashes behind him. We are running through the surf together. I can feel the water on my bare feet and the grit of sand beneath my toes.

"Look at the water, Harlow! Isn't it lovely?" I hear him say.

His voice is too distant, his face too indistinct. I feel a pang of fear: the fear of losing what's already lost. I look down at the waves lapping at our feet. Pages and pages of notepaper float on the water's surface. The pained words of the Book Boy and hundreds, thousands of others, all in pain, all at sea, all adrift. I try to pick them up, but they're soaked through, the letters smudge and the paper melts away in my hands. I look up into my Dad's face, in tears. Pleading for him to help me make sense of them all.

"I can't save them Dad, I can't!"

And in my dream, he reaches out and takes me in his arms. He holds me as I've always wanted him to, as I've always needed him to... But he feels just like paper.

"You're dead." I whisper and awake instantly to the cold light of morning filtering through the open shades of my yellow room.

My mom is sitting in my desk chair, watching me with this far-off, wistful expression. As I open my eyes and raise my head it's like a shadow falls over her features and that softness is replaced by something else... 

False bravery? 

Forced brightness? 

I don't know, all I know is that she's leading up to say something that I don't think I'm going to want to hear.

"I made pancakes." She stands up, absent-mindedly putting down the old plush rabbit named Rollie that I used to adore when I was five.

I blink at her. I guess she's building up to the big reveal. She heads downstairs and I just sit in bed, wondering what she's going to say to me. Probably a long lecture about how ridiculous I've been behaving. I can't stop replaying what I said to her in my head... You did nothing to help Dad when he needed you...

I never knew that was how I felt about it until I heard myself say it. It was probably the worst thing I could've said and it's definitely the worst thing I've ever said to my mom. But maybe it doesn't matter after all? Maybe when you zoom out far enough from things none of it really matters. Not me, not my Dad or Book-Boy, or any of it.

"Harlow!" Mom calls up from the bottom of the stairs. "They're gonna be ice-cold if you don't hurry up!"

Still in my loose pink pyjama shorts and ancient Hard Rock café T-shirt I roll out of bed towards the smells of pancakes and fresh coffee.

"You didn't have to go to so much effort." I mumble, sitting in front of a plate stacked high with syrupy pancakes and a tall glass of orange juice.

"You had kind of a rough day yesterday. You need to regain your strength a bit." She replies softly. Pouring only a cup of coffee for herself and sitting opposite me.

She doesn't say anything else, but I know she's right. I'm feeling faint and my head is pounding. Slowly but surely, I make my way through breakfast and come out the other side actually feeling better. I set down my knife and fork and look up at Mom.

"What did you want to say to me?" I ask, cautiously.

"Maybe it can wait a bit longer. I don't want you getting upset again."

She's far too used to waiting for the 'right time' to break things to my Dad. I think it comes from being a nurse. She would always make sure he'd eaten a proper meal before giving him bad news. She did that the last time he was committed to the psychiatric unit too, except it was lunchtime and she made turkey burgers and salad. The medical staff turned up early though and he got so worked up he threw up everything on the drive over. I guess that's what she's thinking about too as she watches me from over the rim of her coffee mug.

"I'm not upset." I say, and I mean it.

"Well, this might make you upset."

"What is it?" I'm so tired of secrets and tip toeing around people, that it's enough to make me sick on its own.

"It's a nice thing, a lovely thing actually. If you choose to see it that way."

"Mom..."

She screws up her face with concern. "I'm sending you to your grandparents. Just for a bit. I think you need time to heal and being here... It's not good for you at the moment."

"What?" I wasn't expecting her to say that at all.

"I've talked to the school already. There's only a couple of days left of classes anyway and considering all you've been through this term they were more than willing to let you take those off.

I do feel sick. 

Is this how my Dad felt? 

Like he was being sent away for being defective? 

Like he was being exiled?

"You can't make me go..."

"I don't want to make you do anything, sweetheart. I just want you to get away for a while. Clear your head. You need to be away from death, from all of this..."

"But don't you think it will be so much worse there? I'll have to sleep in his room with all his stuff from when he was a kid! They have his photos up everywhere; the whole house is like a Marcus Riley memorial!" I'm trying to keep my composure, but my words are starting to crash into each other in a rush to get out.

"No honey... Not your Dad's parents. Mine."

"Florida?!" I'm standing up now. "You're sending me all the way to Florida?! You're sending me to Florida to get away from death?" I laugh as if she's told a clever joke that I don't quite understand.

"Harlow, it isn't a punishment. You can be in the sunshine, see the sights, go to Disney World, the beach..."

"But what about my friends?" I ask, trying not to sound like a petulant child.

"They'll still be here when you get back."

I swallow hard. I'm not thinking about Vanessa or Alex. I'm thinking about Book-Boy: will he still be here when I get back?

But there's nothing I can do: it's all been worked out already. I don't even have the energy to fight it. Mom will take me to the airport tomorrow and I'll be in Florida for the entirety of the summer. She'll join me for a weeks' vacation in July but apart from that I won't see her or anyone other than my grandparents until I get back. 

There's no argument. 

Nothing else to say. 

My mom has a shower and goes to work, so I guess that's that. Excused from school I have nothing else to do, except pack. Dully I head upstairs and pull out everything I own, throwing it out onto the bed, Vanessa-style. I think about that old episode of the Simpsons where they're going on holiday and Lisa just takes an empty suitcase and says goodbye to her old self just like that. 

If only it were that easy.

I'm folding and rolling things into bundles unenthusiastically when I hear the doorbell. I frown. Not keen on showing off my pyjamas to the mail man or whoever it is. I go over to my window and peer outside. Alex's car is parked by the curb. I groan. Do I have to do this now? He rings the doorbell again. I sigh and slump downstairs, opening the front door a crack, concealing myself behind it.

"I don't want to see you, Alex. You might as well leave."

I go to close the door, but he jams his hand in the crack. "Wait! Harlow! Ouch!"

The hand withdraws and I can hear him taking a series of short, little breaths to deal with the pain.

"I'm sorry..." I say quietly. 

But still I don't want to see him. I really, really don't.

"Can we just talk for a minute?" He sounds agitated.

"I don't think there's anything to say... Anyway, shouldn't you be in school?"

"I ditched."

"Why?" I breathe. 

He never misses class.

"When you didn't show this morning, I was worried about you." He says this as if it were obvious.

"What about your scholarship?"

"Screw it. Please, Harlow, just let me in."

I shake my head, though he can't see it. "No..."

"Fine then. I'll stay here until you hear me out." There's a hard, unrelenting quality to his voice.

I can hear the creaking of the porch outside. I open the door a little more and sneak a glance. He's sitting with his back up against the pale-yellow wall outside. Slowly I sit down too. 

We'd be back to back if there wasn't a wall between us.

"Harlow are you still there?" He calls out softly.

"Yeah."

"I wasn't trying to betray you. You know that, right?"

"Hmmmm..." I reply in a noncommittal sound that could mean either yes or no.

"The last thing I want is for you to hate me... You don't hate me, do you?"

I pause for a long time. 

"I don't hate you..."

"Everything's messed up..."

"Yeah..."

We are silent for a long time.

"I'm going away." My words sound cold, unfeeling.

"What? When?" His voice is clearer as if his head has spun round in surprise.

"Tomorrow."

"For how long?"

"All summer."

"Harlow..." His voice is louder, a strained whisper right up against the door frame. "I know you're mad at me right now. But you have to let me in. I have to see you before you go..."

I stand up hesitating, my hand on the door. 

It would be so easy to swing it open, to look up into his dark eyes and forgive him... 

Gradually and deliberately I push the door closed until the lock clicks into place. On the other side there is silence until I hear feet walk away across the porch and over the sidewalk. Then a car starts and pulls away swiftly. 

Only then do I let out my breath, not knowing that I'd been holding it ever since the last time his hoarse, pained voice had whispered my name...