Free Absolute Brightness by James Lecesne

about to explode. In either case and despite my worst fears, I ventured down the stairs.
    â€œHello?” I croaked.
    The sound, as it turned out, was Leonard; he sat huddled in a corner of his “room,” his knees drawn up to his chest, his arms tightly wrapped around himself. He was sobbing. Hard. I knocked on the side of one of the boxes to announce myself, and he looked up at me. His eyes were red rimmed and brimming with tears; his face looked hot and swollen. The shape of his mouth perfectly imitated that cheesy mask of tragedy that hung on the wall outside Ms. Deitmueller’s Drama Club, except that in Leonard’s case, a thin string of dribble was dangling from the gaping hole. As soon as he saw me, he sprang up from his position on the floor and threw himself facedown on his bed. It was a dramatic move, but one I recognized from my own dramatic childhood; it was the kind of move designed to signal that there was really no hope to be found in this cruel and heartless world, and the only solace was being able to block out everything in sight. He buried his head in a pillow, and even though his sobs were momentarily muffled, it was clear he wasn’t going to stop any time soon.
    â€œLeonard…?”
    â€œGo away.”
    â€œWhat’s the matter?
    â€œ Go. A. Way. ”
    I stood there letting my presence convey what my words couldn’t. I wanted him to know that he wasn’t alone, and whatever it was that was causing him such grief (I suspected it was the Deirdre Debacle), it couldn’t be that bad, not really, and even if it was that bad, the whole thing would probably blow over soon enough and be completely forgotten.
    â€œWell,” I finally said, “ something must be the matter.”
    He popped up, swung around, and stared at me with real hatred.
    â€œWell, let’s see,” he began, infusing his voice with venom and mock curiosity. “Could it be maybe that my father never did much for me except be a jerk? Or wait, maybe it’s that my mother’s dead and I’m now forced to live in a stupid cellar surrounded by crappy cardboard boxes and people who secretly hate my guts?”
    He fell back onto the bed and started up a whole new jag of crying. I wanted to say something, something like, “Hey, no one hates you here,” but it was such an obvious lie that I couldn’t utter a single word of it.
    â€œYou don’t know how hard it is,” he mumbled into the pillow. “You can’t even imagine.” And then he let out a loud, mournful wail that made me actually take a step back in horror. I so wished he were a backed-up washing machine. Anything but this.
    â€œIf you’re crying about Deirdre’s hair…,” I began.
    There was more wailing, followed by a noisy intake of breath. By this point, he had worked himself into a pitch of hysterical proportions. I knew the signs; I’d exhibited them myself often enough during my adolescence and childhood. Once you got going with a performance like that, there was no stopping until exhaustion set in. I decided to sit on the edge of the bed and wait it out with him. Seemed like the least I could do.
    Finally I managed to offer this: “I thought you liked it here?”
    â€œI doooooooooo !” he howled. He lifted his head to wipe his nose on the pillowcase. Gross. “It’s not…” Another gasp for breath. “It’s not…” For a moment I thought he was saying it’s snot. “It’s not”—he motioned all around him with a gesture that was theatrical to the extreme—“ here that’s the problem. It’s here !” And to make his point, he began pounding his head with his two clenched fists. “It’s my brain, my mind. It’s me! ”
    Poor kid. It was hard not to feel sorry for him. He’d been through so much and he wasn’t even fifteen. But then, when he started to literally