The Wish From Heaven | ✓

chapter 9 : one question a day

"Cedar, don't you think the sky looks really beautiful in the evening?" July asks.

Just last night, he was praising the night sky, and now he is favouring the evening one. I feel like I am thinking about the sky a lot these days.

"Because it's very colourful?" I ask.

"Yep."

"Hmm. I guess so. It does give a bit of an ominous vibe, though."

He slightly laughs, and mutters, "Ah, I have heard that before."

"Really?"

"Mhm. Anyways, I'm sure Dawn is smiling, seeing you make a new friend."

"I'm sure Dawn is crying, seeing what a friend I made. Besides, he is not even my friend. Kinda."

It's lunch break, and hence the blissful thirty minutes for which I get to be away from Edgar Kinda Conway's ridiculousness. Today, we didn't go to the literature club room. Instead, we come to the rooftop in July's request. The rooftop is supposed to be out of bounds for all students, but many sneak in here anyway. At least, those who know of the broken lock. Thankfully, it is empty right now.

I am sitting on the floor, my back against the railing. July is standing, his arms on the railing. Today, even after July's endless nagging and throwing of Biological facts, I didn't buy lunch. I don't have the appetite at all.

"It's funny how one thing leads to other," July says. "If you hadn't rejected Alex, Edgar wouldn't bully you, and you would have never talked to Edgar and he would never become your friend. It's one chain of events leading to the other."

"He is not my friend," I correct him.

He ignores it. "Coincidences are surely weird."

"I don't know, it doesn't feel like a coincidence. Especially how all of this happened when you arrived." I look up at him. "Did you do something?" I ask suspiciously.

"Did I?" He wiggles his eyebrows at me, and I frown. Then he asks, "Remember what Edgar said about the Rain Castleton guy? About his suicide note."

"Oh, yeah."

"Made me very curious. Wonder what's written there. Shall we check the newspaper after going home?"

"No," I reply. "I'm done with suicide notes."

After a moment's silence, July says, "Me too."

I glance at him sideways, but his eyes are somewhere far away. I think about Dawn's small note, which had contained my name. I remember how at the funeral, people were talking about how he gave me more priority than his own parents. They made it sound like it was entirely my fault, like I had told Dawn to kill himself and put my name in his note. I didn't care about what they thought. I cared about whether Dawn's family thought the same. Maybe that was one of the reasons why I still can't face them.

"July?"

"Hmm?"

"When you talked with Dawn," I start, then pause to take a deep breath, "did he say anything about why he . . . k-k-killed himself?" Just getting that word out is so hard.

"No." The reply comes immediately. "He said nothing about it. I'm sorry, Cedar."

Several times, I have tried figuring out why. He never showed any signs of depression or frustration, but towards the end, he had become a little withdrawn from me. He stopped coming over at night to sleep, saying that he should learn to sleep by himself. I couldn't have imagined that in fact, he wanted me to learn to sleep by myself.