As it turned out, I didn't go to school on Monday.

It would have been a little hard to leave when I had an inconsolable, sobbing Eren Jaeger curled up in the center of my mattress, who had been there keeping up a steady wail since midnight. All told, I'd gotten about an hour of sleep somewhere between five and six, curled up in one of my gaming chairs in the eerily silent moments after Eren had lamented himself into a brief period of unconsciousness. My alarm went off at half-past-six, woke him up, and the klaxon of his teenage angst started like it had never stopped. In all those hours, he hadn't given an exact description of what had happened, but between the frankly ugly sobs, repeated mantras of "How could she, we promised," and the fact that I'd picked him up at the end of Mikasa's driveway looking like a puppy that someone had abandoned on the street, I didn't have to be Priscilla Romano to figure out the breakup algorithm.

Mom came down around seven to see why I wasn't upstairs wolfing down breakfast yet, and I rose up over the back of my chair, making frantic cutting motions across my neck with my hand and shaking my head emphatically. She looked at Eren. She looked at me. She backed slowly out of the room. I took a moment to be grateful that at least sometimes, she really did know when to leave things alone. Eren kept wailing as I grabbed my phone and texted Thomas, who wasn't so much my friend as a kid I'd played soccer with since toddlerhood, told him I was having a Bad Leg Day and would really appreciate it if he could grab my homework for me. 'Bad Leg Day' was pretty much all it took to get out of commitments, one of the very small set of perks that came with being a cancer-surviving amputee. As it was, my leg did actually ache a little, probably because I'd been on it for almost twenty-four hours and had fallen asleep in a chair, so I reasoned that at least I wasn't a complete liar. I still had a pile of doctor's excuses in my desk big enough to get me through the rest of my high school career, so no issues there. The only problem seemed to be with weeping mess currently leaking snot and tears all over my comforter.

Eren died down to a pitiful sniffle after another half-hour, sitting up in the middle of the mattress and watching me, one swollen and reddened blue eye and one impassive brown one, as I sat in my chair and flipped through passages of The Infinity Vault that I had glazed over the night before. I looked up at him briefly over the top of the book. "It could've been worse, you know."

"How the hell could it have been worse?" he hiccuped, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around his legs.

"She could have gone to dump you and stopped mid-sentence."

Seemingly not having the will to get up and hit me, Eren just glared at me instead. "I want to play Dragon Age."

I sighed and grabbed the case for Dragon Age: Origins off my game shelf, loaded it into my Xbox and handed Eren a controller as the ethereal theme music floated out of my TV speakers. "If I go take a shower, will I come back to you trying to hang yourself from my ceiling fan?"

"I've come close to death enough times that I have no desire to chase after it, Jean," Eren said flatly, scrolling hurriedly through the create-a-character options and starting the first cutscene.

"Fair enough," I shrugged, heading off to the bathroom. My little basement cave had been intended to be what's called a 'mother-in-law suite' for obvious reasons in common suburban vernacular, came with its own bathroom and a sliding glass door next to the TV stand that led out to a patio with a creaky old bench swing that overlooked the carefully-kept order of our back yard. A nice enough setup, one I liked even though Mom had tried to get me to move upstairs after my amputation, fussing about the stairs until I had proved at least a hundred times that I was able to move on them without tumbling to my death. Despite her hounding me about interacting with my family more often the night before, I decided that I probably wouldn't be going upstairs for the rest of the day as I got out of the shower and grabbed a few Advil from the medicine cabinet. For all my bullshit excuses, it really was shaping up to be a Bad Leg Day, the ache increasing until I finally decided to just pull on my jeans and hop back into my room, dropping the prosthetic next to my gaming chair before collapsing down into it and checking on Eren's progress with Dragon Age. "Good call on picking a Dalish Elf. That's a fun playthrough."

"Not like I'll get a chance to do the other ones," he grumbled bitterly, shooting a glance in my direction and eyeing the knot I'd tied where the knee of my jeans should have been to keep the fabric from dragging the ground. "Bad Leg Day?"

"Think I was just on it too much yesterday." Shaking my head dismissively, I grabbed a pencil and my sketchbook off the shelf before flipping it open to a blank page and smoothing a hand over the paper's surface. "Are you feeling any better?"

"No," he said, grip tightening on his controller.

"Okay," I nodded, starting to draw without any real ideas as to what I was drawing.

The rest of the morning passed with Eren playing the game much more silently than I'd ever seen him play a video game in his life, not a single shout at the screen in the heat of battle or growl of rage when a plot twist came up. I ended up doodling several scenes from The Infinity Vault, looking up to check on him occasionally. Noon came and went, and I ended up calling for takeout to avoid the inevitable confrontation with my mother that would have happened if I'd ask her to provide us with food while we played hooky to let Eren convalesce through his breakup. I was halfway through a sketch of Priscilla sitting in her Atlanta hospital room curled around her notebook when Eren started crying into his mu shu pork, and I realized at the worst possible moment that I was trapped with an emotionally volatile teenage boy, and therefore cut off from my other obligations. Sighing, I picked up my phone.

Marco picked up after two rings. "Hey, what's up?"

"I unfortunately can't make our coffee appointment," I said.

"What happened?" he asked, sounding apprehensive. I held the phone away from me so the speaker could pick up one of Eren's particularly anguished wails before bringing it back to my ear in time to hear Marco make a vaguely confused noise. "Jean, what… who is that?"

"That was Eren," I sighed, rubbing a hand across my face, before waving it in front of Eren's line of sight. He jumped, his bad depth perception not letting him know whether I was close enough to hit him or not. "Hey. Eren, focus. Look at me. Will Support Group Marco make this better or worse?"

"I don't fucking care, man," he sniffed, batting my hand away.

"Would you be okay with maybe coming over and using some of those 'coping with loss' techniques they no doubt teach you in Support Group?" I asked exhaustedly, leaning back in my chair. "Where are you right now?"

"Um… at the coffee shop, actually. My class let out early." I glanced over at my clock. Half past two. "I was just going to sit here and read Fight Club until you got out of school, but -"

I cut him off with a snort, waving my hand dismissively, almost like I'd forgotten that he couldn't see me. "I didn't even go to school today. It's easy to get to my house from where you are. Take a left at the red light by the school, keep driving down Sina Street until you get to the gas station, hang a right, and you'll see the sign for my development."

"Okay, but-"

"Oh, and Marco? Hurry. I don't know how much longer I can hold down the fort."

I hung up the phone before he could reply, raking a hand through my hair and listening to Eren blubber for a few more minutes before leaning over with a groan to roll up my jeans and put my leg back on. I didn't care if the human fountain curled up in my other gaming chair saw me looking like an invalid, but for whatever reason, Marco was a different story, worth the dull ache that crept up to the juncture of my hip when I settled my weight on the prosthetic. I decided to talk to mom about maybe getting a new liner.

Marco showed up about ten minutes later, trundling his oxygen tank down the steps after him with one hand while the other held precariously onto a drink carrier with three coffees and the fourth opening filled with a variety of creamers and sugar. By that point, Eren had sunk back into his previous state of numbness, thumbs twitching on the game controller but otherwise immobile as he hunched forward in the chair. Marco stood there looking at the two of us for a second as he caught his breath, setting the drinks down on top of my game shelf and perching on the edge of my bed. "Hey, your mom let me in."

"You look nice," I said, suddenly acutely aware of my messy hair and how there were almost definitely bags under my eyes. Marco had on a gray cardigan and a green v-neck, jeans that were in much better shape than mine, a line of freckles almost perfectly underscoring the plastic tubing that angled down across his cheekbones.

"Thank you," he grinned, and I swore the room actually got a little brighter before he grabbed two of the coffees and walked over to where Eren was sitting, folding himself up on the floor beside him. Not in front to be confrontational, but just at a slight angle. Easygoing. Approachable. In that moment, I was inexplicably terrified of Marco Bodt. Anyone who knew how to play into a person's psychology that well was dangerous. If he had half a mind to do it, he would have been capable of having someone like a puppet on a string. I looked pointedly away as he turned his attention to Eren, tone bright and conversational. "How's it going, Eren? I thought you were supposed to be over at your girlfriend's."

At that, Eren let out something that was almost a roar, launching out of his chair and throwing the controller in his hands down so hard that it bounced off the carpet and landed in Marco's lap. Marco blinked. "Touchy subject?"

"She said she couldn't wait until after the surgery," Eren practically spat, beginning to pace across the floor between the chairs and the television. "Said it had been weighing on her for a long time. Fuck that! She didn't want dumping a blind guy to be on her conscience!"

My mouth gaped open slightly. A whole night of me sitting with him, of listening to him cry and rage and play video games, and he'd opened up like a rolodex of teenage tragedy for Marco in less than a minute. I considered running upstairs and making myself a tinfoil hat. He had to be some variety of psychic. Instead, I got up slowly and went over to grab my coffee, dumping more sugar in than was probably healthy. "You're implying that the harpy actually has a conscience. That's your first mistake."

"Shut the fuck up, Jean!" he raged, rounding on me briefly before going back to his pacing, hands in tight fists at his sides. "And you know what she had the audacity to tell me?! That she couldn't handle it! We've been together for a year, I'm days from going blind, and she can't handle it?!"

I leaned against the wall, popped a Marlboro Red between my lips, and watched the show, Marco stammering for comforting words while Eren's pacing became an angry spiral that eventually led to him snatching a pillow off my bed and absolutely whaling on the floor with it. I was used to these sorts of outbursts, but Marco looked vaguely terrified, sipping uncertainly at his coffee as I walked over and sat down next to him, legs stretched out in front of me since I didn't feel like messing with positioning all the metal and plastic. "So, I've come to the conclusion that Levi Rivaille is an unethical prick."

"Yeah?" he said, looking away from the tornado that Eren had become and tilting his head. "What makes you say that?"

"He violated the trust of his readers." I grabbed for my sketchbook again, starting to fill in the finer lines of the drawing, the gaunt hollowness of Priscilla's cheeks, the margins on the paper in her notebook. "I mean, I get that Priscilla died, fine, whatever. But the story wasn't finished. Authors have a duty to their audience to see things through. Mr. Rivaille had an obligation to finish the story even if it ended without Priscilla, and he didn't do that. He didn't even provide an epilogue to clear up those burning questions. Was the cure real? Did Priscilla figure out the algorithm correctly? Was the fiancé working with the government the whole time? We have a right to know these things, regardless of whether or not the narrator made it through the story."

"I've tried to find out, believe me," Marco shrugged, pulling his knees up to his chest and watching Eren exhaust himself of his rage until he slumped back into his gaming chair and picked up the controller again. "I've been sending him letters care of his publisher ever since I read the book, but he never answers. He hasn't even published anything in four years. After The Infinity Vault came out, he just packed up, moved to Paris, and completely dropped off the face of the Earth."

"Probably running away because he couldn't deal with the backlash," I observed mildly.

"Couldn't deal with it!" Eren screeched suddenly, making both of us jump as he vaulted out of his chair and went back to using my pillow as a bludgeoning tool against the wall.

"Eren. Dude. Dude," I muttered in my best attempt at consolation, handing my coffee and sketchbook to Marco and scrambling to my feet, snatching the pillow out of his hand on one of his backswings. "That's a Sealy Posturepedic pillow, bromigo. Don't fuck with my specially formulated side sleeper neck support. Besides, there's no satisfaction in hitting stuff with a pillow. You need to break something."

Hands groping and empty, still blinded by rage, Eren turned in a tight circle before reaching up onto the the top shelf and grabbing one of my larger soccer trophies, holding it over his head like a heterochromiac King Kong clutching a golden, paralyzed Ann Darrow.

"Do it!" I shouted.

Eren hurled the trophy down so hard that the little plastic soccer player snapped off the top and went cartwheeling through the air, missing Marco's head by about three inches. Letting out a growl that was equal parts satisfaction and frustration, he then proceeded to stomp on what was left of the trophy until the column splintered and split away from the marble base, reduced to so many shimmering shards of plastic.

"But your trophies-" Marco started, his hand half-raised.

"Are accolades for a sport I never loved and memories of a life I no longer have, and are put to much better use as an outlet for my best friend's very righteous anger than as dust collectors on a shelf that always needs room for more books and video games," I cut him off, pulling down a state championship trophy from my summer league and handing it to Eren with a wide, half-deranged grin. "Go on, another one! Smash them all! Let it all out, man!"

Eren tore through the trophies like a man possessed, grinding figurines into so many severed golden limbs beneath his sneakers, demolishing towers of black polyethylene overlaid with shiny contact paper, tearing down every single tournament and goal that I ever accomplished with two good legs. By the time he got to the last couple of trophies, he'd started up that slow wail again. By the time he stomped the last intact piece into the carpet, his whole body was heaving with sobs, swaying uncertainly enough that I took a step forward to steady him. The pain rocketing up my leg was bad enough to pull a low groan out of my chest as he collapsed against my shoulder in a quivering mess, but I gritted my teeth and told myself that this was what true friends did, let their buddies smash their childhoods to smithereens in the name of lost love and regaining some sense of control in a world that was slipping through their fingers, held them while they lamented all the things they'd never have again.

"It's not fair," he hiccupped, tears dampening the fabric of my t-shirt as his hands balled up in the fabric. "It still hurts, it still fucking hurts."

"I know," I nodded, looking at Marco intently over his shoulder. "That's the way it is. 'Pain is an energy, and energy cannot be created or destroyed, only molded into different forms.' That's from The Infinity Vault. Unethical prick though he may be, Levi Rivaille's got some pretty deep shit in that book. You should read it sometime."

"I'll hit you up once I've learned fucking Braille," Eren laughed tearfully.

By the time Eren's mom came to pick him up, he was still on shaky ground emotionally, but calm enough to be let out among the general populace. Marco and I spent the next hour after he left throwing trophy confetti into my bathroom trash can, making small talk about books and school.

"I can't believe your mom didn't come down here when Eren want all Hulk Smash on your trophies," he said eventually, shaking his head and collapsing into one of the gaming chairs, letting out thin puffs of air.

"She knew you were down here and trusted you to control the situation," I replied, tossing the head of the last poor dead plastic soccer player (I'd decided to name him Ned Stark) into the trash can before sitting in the chair beside him, a crooked grin tugging at my lips. "She likes you. You're pretty high on the esteem ladder of boys I've brought home."

Marco laughed lightly at that, a breathless tenor hum that seemed to set something in the air between us on a precipice. "Yeah, I noticed that you're pretty comfortable about being out to your parents."

"You know, terminal illness makes it really easy to come out," I shrugged, flicking through my empty text messages and kicking my real leg up on my bottom shelf. "Turns out my parents don't care who I'm fucking as long as I'm alive to do it. Why do you mention it; is sailing not as smooth back home for you?"

"Dude," he snorted, eyes flicking upwards. "Belgian hippie parents, remember? My folks have believed in free love for ages. It's all good here."

"Good to know." Stretching out my arms, I got up from the chair with a sigh, looking towards the door that led upstairs. "Speaking of which, I believe I was given an invitation to dinner at your place tonight?"

"So you were." Another one of those smiles stretched across his face, making him seem like some sort of self-contained sun. He had a dimple on his right cheek that was far more endearing than it should have been. I began to regret not making that tinfoil hat. Marco was still a little short of breath as he got up, moving slower than usual towards the staircase. "I'm just going to warn you, my family's a little… different?"

"Marco, need I remind you that we just spent the last hour cleaning up the fallout of my best friend destroying my possessions with my full blessing? Nothing fazes me anymore."

He still looked nervous the entire trip to his house, but all I got out of that nervousness was that he had a habit of biting his lip when he was apprehensive about something. Cute.

His house was still the same big, American Dreamy, distinctly-not-hippie domicile that I remembered from a few days before, a long driveway that led up to a two-car garage where Marco parked his Mom's minivan next to a blue Prius before directing me through a side door. Inside, the place looked like a fucking hookah bar, the living room that the garage door opened to outfitted with huge floor pillows instead of Ikea furniture like what should have been in a house like that. The distinct smell of patchouli clung heavily to the air, and I found myself wondering how Marco's fragile lungs could handle it given the fact that it made me feel a little wheezy, but my train of thought was cut off by the same pretty middle-aged woman I'd seen parked outside of Support Group walking in through an archway that led to the kitchen, bare feet, tank top and a gauzy tie-dyed cotton skirt that fell to her ankles, bangles jingling around thin wrists and wild black curls that brushed her freckled shoulders. The only difference appearance-wise between Marco and his mother was that her eyes were very blue. They both shared the same slender build and inherently kind faces, even had the same light-up smile, I found out as she grinned at the two of us and waved us into the kitchen. "Hi, hi! Oh, you must be Jean, it's so nice to meet you, honey, come on, sit down, dinner's almost done."

Beside me, Marco groaned faintly. I just grinned. So my mom wasn't the only one who did the whole obsessive hospitality thing. "Thanks for having me over, Mrs. Bodt."

"Oh please, It's Karma," she waved a hand through the air, bangles jingling in her wake. I raised an eyebrow, turning my head and wondering how my companion had gotten off comparatively lucky with Marco for a name. I'd met my share of Rainbows and Serenitys in my life. Maybe the Bodts weren't pushy hippies.

As it turned out, Marco's dad was a little more suited for the American Dreamy house and the typical upper-middle-class-parent archetype, still wearing a dress shirt and tie from what I assumed was work even though he was also barefoot, sitting on one of the jewel-toned pillows looped around a low table that I guessed was their normal eating surface.

"You asked about how I had good insurance. Dad sells it," Marco explained as I tried to make it look like it wasn't a huge affair for me to sit on the floor, fiddling around with my leg and eventually making it to a relatively normal position after a minute. "I was the death of my parents' freedom. They traded their Volkswagen bus for the minivan, settled down in suburbia, and became closet beatniks."

"We're hardly closeted," his mom said, rolling her eyes in a perfect mirror of a look I'd seen on Marco several times before as she moved around the table setting down plates of tofu stir-fry and bowls of rice. She ruffled Marco's hair as she passed, earning a scowl. "And we wouldn't trade you for all the music festivals and peace rallies in the world, sweetheart. You know that."

As it turns out, tofu wasn't that bad. I was too much of a carnivore to ever entertain the idea of picking up a vegetarian lifestyle, but it was nice for a change. I spent most of the meal discussing books with Marco, who had coincidentally finished Fight Club and wanted to know whether he should start Choke or Invisible Monsters next, although I did end up spending some time talking soccer with his dad, trying not to smirk at the memory of the golden plastic graveyard waiting in my trash can back home. All told, it was pleasant. Marco's parents were nice, I had the chance to get out of my house after spending the day dealing with Eren's psychotic episode, and the more we talked, the more he smiled, feeding into a weird sense of accomplishment that I really had no reason to possess.

I couldn't stay for a movie or evening meditation (what?) unfortunately, as Thomas texted me during dinner to inform me that he'd dropped my homework off at the house. That all needed to be done, on top of me finishing the cleanup of my room so I didn't end up stepping on any errant trophy shards in the future, and it needed to be done soon if I had any hope of getting more than an hour of sleep before I had to go to school the next day.

"Namaste, honey, don't be a stranger!" Karma shouted after us as we headed for the garage, apparently thinking we were out of earshot when she squeaked out an energetic little "I like that one, he's a charming little cutie!" to Marco's dad.

I smirked.

"Don't say anything," Marco grumbled.

I smirked wider.

"Your parents are really cool," I observed as he merged onto the freeway to take me back home.

"I can't tell if you're delusional or just patronizing me," he snorted.

"No, really!" Shaking my head emphatically, I turned and watched the passing streetlights strobe across his face, pretended not to notice the faint pink wash splashed across his cheekbones. "I dig the whole beatnik thing, although I have to say I was disappointed that your alleged Belgian hippie parents don't have accents."

"My great-grandparents were from Belgium. The furthest Mom and Dad have traveled is to Nevada to go to Burning Man every summer."

"I still feel deceived," I laughed as he pulled into my driveway, rifling around in my backpack until I found the copy of The Infinity Vault. "Here, I believe this was the entire reason we met up today."

Marco shook his head. "Keep it. I've got three copies. But I… Dammit, I forgot Lullaby at the house!"

"Guess we'll just have to meet up for you to return it some other time," I shrugged, a crooked grin stretching across my face as I got slowly out of the minivan and stood on the cracked pavement of my driveway looking at him. "So you said that Levi Rivaille never answered any of your letters?"

"No, never. I must have sent him at least twenty."

"I told you, he's an unethical prick."

"An unethical prick who happens to be my favorite author; watch yourself," Marco said airily, rolling the window down after I shut the car door and shifting into reverse. "I'm really sorry about forgetting your book. Call me?"

"Absolutely," I nodded.

I stood at the end of my driveway and watched until his taillights disappeared around the corner before I turned and went back inside, only then realizing that my leg was still aching to the point that my gait was stilted and uneven. Mom fussed as soon as I walked in, demanding to know what was wrong with Eren before pushing into the fluffier topics, if I'd had fun with my friend and how was I feeling and I looked tired, sweetie, I should probably go to bed.

"Eren got dumped, I had a lot of fun, I think my liner's wearing out, and I'll go to bed as soon as I'm done with homework," I answered in quick succession, kissing her on the cheek and wincing my way down to my room. I could and should have started the pile of homework sitting on my bed, but instead, I grabbed for my laptop, waiting for it to warm up and pulling up a search engine.

"People don't just disappear, Landon," Priscilla Romano had said about halfway through The Infinity Vault as she and her fiancé tried to hunt down the man who had formulated the supposedly unbreakable algorithm. "They run, they hide, but there are always breadcrumbs. Humans aren't equations. They're uncertain and fallible and proud, and there will always be something left behind to lead to them."

I hoped that was true as I cracked my knuckles and typed 'Levi Rivaille' into the search bar and hit the Enter key.

Authors had a duty to their readers, and I had brownie points to earn.