Wednesday March 13
25 days left

The only good thing about Kendall cheering at the basketball game is that I have the house to myself, which means I can use the computer. Normally, I can't ever use the computer. Or at least I can't use it without unwanted supervision. Our household has only one computer and it's from the Ice Age. It runs slower than a three-legged dog and its keyboard is sticky from all of the fruit punch Rob has spilled on it. Though Mom thinks Steve is the man of her dreams—wealthy, successful, honest businessman—the truth is Steve works on the line down at the Sparkle toothpaste factory. Sparkle manufacturer of second-rate toothpaste and mouthwash, basically keeps Langston's economy running. Sure, Steve's gig on the line is an honest living and he has so far managed to keep himself out of prison, which is more than you can say for my dad. But it doesn't mean that Steve can afford to buy all of us our own laptops, so we're stuck with this clunker.
But tonight, the clunker is all mine.

I log on to Smooth Passages. It takes about ten minutes to even load the home page; Steve doesn't believe in paying for high-speed internet access, either.

Once I'm finally logged in, I see I have a message from Blurryface:

If you're really serious about this, we should arrange a time and place to meet. But you have to be serious. I don't want a flake.
-Harry

I can't believe someone with the screen name Blurryface is accusing me of being a flake. Looks like his real name is Harry. I'm not sure how much better that is than Blurrface. I resist the urge to make a Julius Caesar joke.

I type back to him:

I'm as serious as a heart attack. No, but seriously, I'm not a flake. Like I said, I'm from Langston. Where should we meet?

I hang around the website a little longer.
According to the boards, Suicide Partners ElmoRains and TBaker14155 took the plunge. I don't know how SovietSummer231 obtained this information, but hopefully Blurryface and I will have the same kind of success. I shiver and swallow the hard lump in my throat. God, this whole thing is so twisted. I stare at the living room ceiling. I wonder if I would have the guts to string myself up. If I could muster the courage, I wouldn't need to deal with this Smooth Passages business.

The clunker makes a sound similar to a doorbell. My shoulders jerk forward and I see Blurryface responded to me. Looks like he's not out at any play-off games either. I open the message:

How about tomorrow night at 5:30? We can meet at the root beer stand off Route 36. Do you know where that is? It should be pretty close to you. I'll wear a brown bandana so you know who I am.
—Harry

I'm a little weirded out that Blurryface aka Harry wants to meet in such a public place. I guess that means he's not a serial killer or rapist or anything. Then again, I'm not sure it'd be so bad if he was a serial killer. At least I'd get it over with quickly. Unless he's one of the types who's into torture. That'd be no good. I don't want a long death; I want an instant one. I'm a coward like that.
I tell him that 5:30 tomorrow at the root beer stand is fine. I get off work at 5:00 tomorrow, so I'll just lie to Mom and tell her I'm working late. It'll be easy. I don't really like Blurryface's choice of venue, but I don't want to start the whole thing off by being difficult. The root beer stand is popular with kids like my sister. It gets really crowded after football and basketball games. Cheerleaders share ice-cream floats and basketball players scarf down chili cheese fries. Vomit.
It goes without saying it's not my scene. Not that anywhere is my scene.

I log off the computer and head back upstairs. I pull my physics book out of my backpack. It's strange, but the closer I get to death, the more I want to learn. I guess I don't want to die a complete dumbass. I open my notebook and scribble down the problems at the end of the chapter that Mr. Scott assigned.
We're starting our unit on the conservation of energy. According to Mr. Scott, energy cannot be created or destroyed—it can only be transferred. Potential energy can turn into kinetic energy and then back into potential energy, but the energy can't ever just go away. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I read over the first practice problem again: "A sky diver has a mass of 65 kg and is standing in a plane that is 600 meters off the ground. What is the diver's potential energy before jumping from the plane?"
My pencil shakes in my hand and I fight the urge to chew on the eraser. The thing is, it's not the sample problem that's bugging me. I know what formula I should use, and my handy calculator can do the math for me.
But the issue is I can't figure out what happens to all that energy when we're gone if it can't be destroyed. My stomach churns at the thought.
I write down my own practice problem: Taylor Swift, 18 years old, is hanging from the ceiling at a height of 7.5 feet. She weighs 115 pounds. How much potential energy does she have? What happens to all that energy when she dies? What does it get turned into?
Does a dead body still have potential energy or does it get transferred into something else? Can potential energy just evaporate into nothingness?
That's the question I don't know the answer to. That's the question that haunts me.