I got my laptop out from under the bed and fired it up and went onto his wall page, where already the condolences were flooding in. Themost recent one said:I love you, bro. See you on the other side.… Written by someone I’d never heard of. In fact, almost all the wall posts, which arrived nearly as fast as I could read them, were writtenby people I’d never met and whom he’d never spoken about, people who were extolling his various virtues now that he was dead, eventhough I knew for a fact they hadn’t seen him in months and had made no effort to visit him. I wondered if my wall would look like this if Idied, or if I’d been out of school and life long enough to escape widespread materialization. I kept reading.I miss you already, bro.I love you, Augustus. God bless and keep you.You’ll live forever in our hearts, big man.(That particularly galled me, because it implied the immortality of those left behind: You will live forever in my memory, because I will liveforever! I AM YOUR GOD NOW, DEAD BOY! I OWN YOU! Thinking you won’t die is yet another side effect of dying.)You were always such a great friend I’m sorry I didn’t see more of you after you left school, bro. I bet you’re already playing ball in heaven.



