Page 273 - A Little Life: A Novel

remember anything.
“JB,” said Jude, coming close to him, “we’re going to get you out of this.
Come with us. We’re going to get you help.”

“Okay,” he said, still crying. “Okay, okay.” He kept his blanket wrapped
around him, he was so cold, but he allowed Malcolm to lead him to the
sofa, and when Willem came over with a sweater, he held his arms up
obediently, the way he had when he was a child and his mother had dressed
him. “Where’s Jackson?” he asked Willem.
“Jackson’s not going to bother you,” he heard Jude say, somewhere
above him. “Don’t worry, JB.”

“Willem,” he said, “when did you stop being my friend?”
“I’ve never stopped being your friend, JB,” Willem said, and sat down
next to him. “You know I love you.”
He leaned against the sofa and closed his eyes; he could hear Jude and
Malcolm talking to each other, quietly, and then Malcolm walking toward
the other end of the apartment, where his bedroom was, and the plank of

wood being lifted and then dropped back into place, and the flush of the
toilet.
“We’re ready,” he heard Jude say, and he stood, and Willem stood with
him, and Malcolm came over to him and put his arm across his back and
they shuffled as a group toward the door, where he was gripped by a terror:
if he went outside, he knew he would see Jackson, appearing as suddenly as
he had that day in the café.

“I can’t go,” he said, stopping. “I don’t want to go, don’t make me go.”
“JB,” Willem began, and something about Willem’s voice, about his very
presence, made him in that moment irrationally furious, and he shook
Malcolm’s arm off of him and turned to face them, energy flooding his
body. “You don’t get a say in what I do, Willem,” he said. “You’re never
here and you’ve never supported me and you never called me, and you

don’t get to come in making fun of me—poor, stupid, fucked-up JB, I’m
Willem the Hero, I’m coming in to save the day—just because you want to,
okay? So leave me the fuck alone.”
“JB, I know you’re upset,” Willem said, “but no one’s making fun of
you, least of all me,” but before he’d begun speaking, JB had seen Willem
look over, quickly, and, it seemed, conspiratorially, at Jude, and for some
reason this had made him even more livid. What had happened to the days

when they all understood one another, when he and Willem had gone out