With david levithan dutton books

dumb butt dumb butt dumb 
butt dumb butt
, and at the table Gus’s parents were now holding hands, which made me feel
better. 

---

“Isaac told me Gus was writing something, something for
me,” I said. The kids were still
singing their dumb-butt song. 
“We can check his computer,” his mom said.
“He wasn’t on it much the last few weeks,” I said.
“That’s true. I’m not even sure we brought it upstairs. Is it still in the basement, Mark?”
“No idea.”
“Well,” I said, “can I
. . 
.” I nodded toward the basement door.
“We’re not ready,” his dad said. “But of course, yes, Hazel. Of course you can.”
I walked downstairs, past his unmade bed, past the gaming chairs beneath the TV. His 
computer was still on. I tapped the mouse to wake it up and then searched for his most recently 
edited files. Nothing in the last month. The most recent thing was a response paper to Toni 
Morrison’s
The Bluest Eye
. 
Maybe he’d written something by hand. I walked over to his
bookshelves, looking for a 
journal or a notebook. Nothing. I flipped through his copy of 
An Imperial Affliction
. He hadn’t
left a single mark in it. 
I walked to his bedside table next. 
Infinite Mayhem
, the ninth sequel to 
The Price of 
Dawn
, lay atop the ta
ble next to his reading lamp, the corner of page 138 turned down. He’d
never made it to the end of the book. “Spoiler alert: Mayhem survives,” I said out loud to him,
just in case he could hear me. 
And then I crawled into his unmade bed, wrapping myself in his comforter like a cocoon, 
surrounding myself with his smell. I took out my cannula so I could smell better, breathing him 
in and breathing him out, the scent fading even as I lay there, my chest burning until I couldn’t
distinguish among the pains. 
I sat up in the bed after a while and reinserted my cannula and breathed for a while before 
going up the stairs. I just shook my head no in response to his parents’ expectant looks. The
kids raced past me. One of Gus’s sisters—
I could not tell them apart
—
said
, “Mom, do you
want me to take them to the park or something?”
“No, no, they’re fine.”
“Is there anywhere he might have put a notebook? Like by his hospital bed or
something?” The bed was already gone, reclaimed by hospice.
“Hazel,” his dad said, “you were there every day with us. You—
he wasn’t alone much,
sweetie. He wouldn’t have had time to write anything. I know you want
. . . I want that, too. 

---

But the messages he leaves for us now are coming from above, Hazel.” He point
ed toward the 
ceiling, as if Gus were hovering just above the house. Maybe he was. I don’t know. I didn’t
feel his presence, though. 
“Yeah,” I said. I promised to visit them again in a few days.
I never quite caught his scent again.