Epilogue - A New Chapter

He told me I couldn't die.

That he wanted me to hold off on dying, because he would help me find a reason to live and suffer with me.

She told me I couldn't die.

That it would be a waste if all I'd read was Never Been Human

That Crumblings had written many other wonderful stories, and I had to live long enough to read them all.

They both appealed to me, holding on to my hand and arm. I cried.

But I smiled while the tears fell.

Not understanding what I found so sad, so funny, so pitiful, so joyous, my tears simply streamed down my face. I couldn't stop them. My face must have been as slimy as a newborn baby's, or a monkey at the zoo.

My wet hand loosened and the mug Sophia had given me slipped from my fingers and fell away.

I'd kept it where I would always see it so that I wouldn't forget the wrong I'd done to Sophia.

But when I felt it leave my fingers and shatter on the ground, I was relieved.

My heart grew lighter, and I felt like I'd been freed. Maybe that's because I'm heartless.

I am a monster incapable of understanding human emotions, after all,

and maybe I shouldn't have lived.

Maybe I was supposed to end my life that day on the roof. But I reached my hand out and took hold of theirs.

Their faces bright red, the two of them pulled me up in a chorus of grunting.

Partway up, teachers and firemen burst onto the roof and they helped put me back on the right side of the railing.

Later on the teachers and my parents all wanted to know why I'd done something like that. What in the world had happened? Was someone bullying me?

No, I climbed over the railing as a joke and my foot slipped. It was really scary. I thought I was going to die.

I told them things like that while weeping piteously, and they scolded me for causing so much trouble.

Rumors flashed through the school, and I became famous.

There were people who gossiped about me behind my back, people who berated me to my face, and people who gave me sympathetic looks.

There were also some people who were kind to me. And people who treated me exactly as they always had.

And concerned people who asked me, "Are you sure it wasn't a suicide attempt? Is anything bothering you?"

Each person responded differently.

There were kind people and mean people. And people who didn't care.

That's what school and society are like.

And I pretended to be a silly, innocent girl, laughing, "Heh-heh, I couldn't even do that right. How embarrassing."

Apparently it's not so easy for people to change.

I'll probably go on wearing my clown mask, deceiving the world. But now I won't be ashamed of it like before.

I broke up with Henry.

I told him that he must hate the way everyone looked at him when he was with me, and though he said he didn't, he looked away when he said

it.

I think we need some space.

I sounded more cunning than usual when I said that, and he looked

surprised, as if he were seeing me for the first time. He gave a quiet answer. "All right."

I know that Xainah, the basketball team manager, has had her eye on Henry.

Before, Xainah would say mean things to me. So I'm sure she'll make him feel better.

And so the work of writing down everything that's happened isn't painful like it used to be.

Before, I was shining a light on the ugly, despicable truth about myself, and I turned my eyes away from the paper several times.

The stark black letters seemed like an evil curse, and they frightened me badly.

But now as I write, the filthy pus that had built up in my heart is being purged, and I feel purified. Writing calms me, and I feel as if I can glimpse a far distant future for myself.

I know that I will regret not dying that day.

But I will also be grateful to the two upperclassmen from the book club that I didn't die.

Of that I am sure.

Also, if I come across anyone who sees through my act, I intend to stand tall, laugh, and tell them, "You're absolutely right. What tipped you off?"

If I ever meet someone like Sophia, I don't think I'll lie to them.

A week had passed since we'd pulled Janella back up onto the roof. A steady June rain soaked into the trees.

Janella had brought her finished report to us after school. "Here you go. I'm sorry you had to wait so long."

Alice had gone to the library, so I accepted the report in her stead. "Whoa, this is really thick! You're a powerhouse."

"Heh-heh-heh. I ended up writing a lot. Hey, Andy… you know how before, in the storage room, you said that writing doesn't change anything?" Janella looked up at me, her eyes clear and bright. "I used to think so, too. But after I wrote this report, I realized that people actually could be saved by writing. I know it can happen."

"Yeah, you're right."

The stories Mia wrote always warmed me and made me feel purified. Mia had seemed happy, too, as she told her stories and wrote them down on loose sheets of paper that she kept in a binder.

I didn't believe that all of it could have been a lie.

So maybe it was possible to be healed or redeemed by writing, like Janella said.

"That reminds me. Did you used to be a girl, Andy?" "What?! I-I never—"

"Up on the roof you shouted down to me that people used to call you a mysterious young beauty. Did you have some gender identity disorder, or were you a hermaphrodite or something? Or is it that you're gay?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! I mean, I—that is, well—"

"And Alice said she ate a library book. What was that about, I wonder?" "Uhhhhh, th-th-that was… I mean, we were grasping at straws! Just forget

about it!"

Seeing me so flustered that my face glowed red, a knowing look came over Janella's face and she smiled.

Maybe she was showing me her true self.

"All right. Everyone has things they'd rather keep hidden. I'll just lock that away in my heart."

"Thanks."

I was relieved. I didn't mind so much about my secret, but it would be a circus if anyone found out about Alice. TV cameras and paranormal researchers would flock to her.

"Andy, do you mind if I keep the love letters you wrote?" "Huh? You still have them?"

Janella gave me her old beaming smile. "Yeah. I put them in a pretty cookie box, where they'll be safe."

Whoa, that's a little embarrassing. But I owed her (I guess?) for promising to keep our secrets, so it wasn't such a big deal.

"As long as you promise not to show them to anybody." "Heh-heh. They'll be my treasures."

Janella asked me to say hello to Alice for her, and said that she would come visit us again, then she left.

I sat down on a folding chair and started reading Janella's report.

The sound of rustling paper mingled with the subdued patter of the rain falling.

It sounded to me like the gentle, pleasant rhythm of listening to a lullaby in my mother's lap.

Eventually the rain lifted, and the setting sun filled the room with golden light.

I wondered how much time had passed.

I'd been so absorbed in Janella's report that when I felt something like a cat's tail tickling the back of my neck, I grabbed at it instinctively.

Huh?

It wasn't a cat. It was one of Alice's braids.

I turned my head and saw that Alice must have returned from the library at some point, because she had pulled a folding chair up and sat down directly behind me. She was leaning forward, reading the report over my shoulder.

Oh my God!

Alice was staring intently at the report, playing with her lip with one of her fingers, looking utterly focused. She hadn't even noticed that I'd grabbed hold of one of her braids.

On the contrary, she leaned even farther forward, to the point that her cheek was practically brushing against mine. Her drooping eyelashes and the downy hair on her face glowed golden. Just a little bit closer and I could have turned my head and kissed her—that's how dangerously close she was.

"A-A-A-A-A-lice!"

"Can you turn to the next page, Andy?" Amazing.

Alice simply whispered into my ear, not the least bit flustered and never

taking her eyes off the report. "Uh, but…"

"Hurry…"

She was totally absorbed in it. Once she got like this, nothing could break her out of it.

A book girl's ears were closed to the world. "O-okay."

I gave up and flipped to the next page of the report.

I could feel Alice's breath, which smelled of violets, and the warmth of her body, and the soft hair of her braid tickling my throat as we read Janella's report in the tiny room dappled by the deepening evening.

We finished reading about the time the soft golden light in the room had deepened to the red of evening.

Alice let out a small sigh.

Then finally she noticed my bright-red face and the prickly tension in my nerves, and she jerked away.

"Uh—ack! I'm sorry!"

Since she'd thrown herself back so suddenly, her chair lurched and tipped over backward with a huge THUD.

"Oh man—"

"Owwwuh. I… I landed on my butt," Alice whined tearfully. She'd hit the ground flat on her backside, revealing most of her thighs.

"Are you okay?" "My butt hurts."

Alice sat back up, straightening the hem of her skirt.

When our eyes met, she flushed with embarrassment, then quickly smiled at me with kind eyes.

"But I'm glad that little Ella seems to be happier."

A smile spread over my lips as well. "Yeah, me, too." I grabbed Alice's hand and pulled her to her feet.

I offered Janella's report to her deferentially. "Your meal, mademoiselle." Lit by the last rays of sunlight, Alice sat with her knees together and legs tilted slightly to one side, her manners much better than usual as she accepted

the report.

"Thank you."

She grinned and paged through the report, starting over again from the beginning.

Each time she finished a page, she tore it out and began nibbling demurely at its corner.

"Bleh," she murmured, a somewhat forlorn expression coloring her face. But she chewed methodically, taking her time before swallowing. "It's really bitter…"

The report probably had very little of the sweetness or tenderness that Alice had been expecting.

She continued to eat away at the bitter, bitter report philosophically, though I was sure there couldn't be much of it that was palatable.

Alice's pale skin, her school uniform, and her long braids were all caught in the bewitching, yet somehow forlorn colors of the setting sun.

On the roof, Alice had told Janella that the sun that sinks below the horizon would re-emerge in a new day.

No matter how awful or painful something may be, a new and different day would surely come.

And perhaps in repeating this process, people changed as they moved toward a new day.

The pain you never thought could heal might eventually fade.

I hoped that somewhere Mia was smiling, though she had leaped to her death that day.

Even if I could never see her again, she was somewhere under this mellow evening sky.

All things pass away.

I opened my packet of paper and wrote.

Over the faint crinkling of paper as she ate the report, Alice asked, "What are you writing?"

"I'm not telling."

"Andy… you should write a novel sometime. You'll let me read it if you write one, won't you?"

Alice said it so suddenly that my heart jumped. When I looked up at her, she was smiling placidly.

There was no reason to suspect Alice knew the reason behind my blush. So it was probably just another of her ramblings.

Alice went back to her meal. I continued scratching words onto the

paper.

I didn't know if the day would ever come that I could write another novel, or if the day would come that I wanted to.

But today I would write something sweet for Alice, to be her dessert after she finished Janella's bitter report.