Brynn was too numb to respond.

Dead. Mike, the young man she'd tried so hard to reach, was dead. There would be no more tomorrows. No dreams for Mike. No future.

The letter. Mike had written her a letter. A suicide note. No. No, please, please no. Had he written it to her as a desperate cry for help? Dear God, please no. She hadn't collected her messages in two days.

Her hands shook so badly that Brynn was barely able to retrieve the long white envelope from inside her bag. She ripped it open and pulled out a single sheet.

Miss Cassidy,

By the time you read this, I'll be dead. I'm not going to go into the reasons why I'm doing this because that wouldn't solve anything. For me death is the only solution. This is what I want. Life is simply too fucking painful.

I imagine you're wondering why I'm writing you.

There's someone I care about, and she's going to take this hard. I don't know anyone who can help Suzie through this, except maybe you.

Suzie's the best thing that ever happened to me, and I love her. She tried to help me, but she couldn't. No one could.

My dad killed himself when I was a kid. I used to get upset about it, but now I understand why he did it. Dying is easier than living.

Unable to continue because her eyes had blurred with tears, Brynn paused long enough to search for a tissue, then returned to Mike's letter.

You don't owe me any favors, but I know you like Suzie.

Talk to her for me, would you? Tell her I'm sorry. Tell her ... Shit, you'll know what to say. It isn't her fault. It's no one's fault. Not Suzie's. Not yours. Not mine. It's better this way for everyone.

I know I don't have any right to lay this on you, but there's no one else I trust. If you would, I'd appreciate it if you said something to my mother, too. You're good with words and you'll know what to tell her.

Since this is the last thing I'll ever write, there's something I'd like to know. I wish I could have traded places with Anne Frank. She wanted to live, when all I could think about was dying. You're a good teacher, Miss Cassidy. You made me care.

Mike

Doug Keast returned with a paper cup filled with water. Brynn thanked him with a brisk nod as she folded the letter and placed it back inside the envelope.

"Are you sure you're all right?" he asked.

Brynn nodded. She wanted nothing more to do with Doug Keast and was grateful when the first bell rang.

"Brynn," her fellow teacher pressed, "do you want me to call someone? You don't look so good."

"I'll be fine." But she wouldn't be. It would be a long while before she would feel right again. Brynn couldn't keep from thinking that she should have known something was wrong. She should have been able to reach Mike. Should have realized the depth of his despair.

And Suzie. Poor Suzie. Brynn was certain the teenager had never told Mike she was pregnant. Suzie had loved him and tried to protect him. Mike had loved her enough to ask Brynn to help her through her grief. Brynn didn't know what she could possibly say that would comfort Suzie and Mike's mother.

By some miracle, she made it through the morning, teaching by rote. Not everyone had heard about Mike's death, but then only a handful of her morning students knew him.

At lunchtime, still numb, still in shock, Brynn returned to the office to ask about Suzie Chang. As she suspected, Suzie was absent. She wrote down Suzie's home address, tucked it inside her pocket, and returned to her classroom.

Her heart ached. Her body ached, and she wondered if she would emotionally survive this day. The burden of explaining and comforting seemed beyond her.

When it was time for her afternoon class, Brynn sat at her desk. One by one, her students paraded single file past her. Mike's desk in the center of the room sat empty. Brynn found she couldn't look at it without experiencing a tremendous sense of loss.

Everyone appeared to be watching her, waiting for her to say something. Brynn walked to the front of the room. The silence was deafening.

"By now I'm sure you've all heard about Mike," she said, and was shocked at how thin her voice had become. She struggled with her composure. "Talking about it might do us all some good. Perhaps you can help me understand why Mike would take his own life?"

"It's stupid," Pearl Washington said.

"But Mike wasn't stupid," Brynn insisted. "When I could get him to express his feelings, I found his essays to be full of insight." She realized as she spoke how dark his writing was, how bleakly he saw the world. Then and now. Guilt swamped her senses. She should have seen it coming, should have realized how much pain he was in.

"He should have told someone," Emilio suggested.

"Who?" Brynn asked. "Told them what?"

"We weren't exactly his friends," Yolanda reminded everyone sadly.

"He didn't want no friends," Denzil insisted.

"Okay, so he wasn't Mr. Personality, but he wasn't so bad, you know."

"Are you sorry he's dead?" Brynn asked.

A chorus of regrets chimed back, and Brynn knew that the class was suffering just as she was. Mike had asked her to talk to Suzie, to help Suzie. What he hadn't realized was that they were all going to need help dealing with his death.

"He never let on, you know?" someone complained.

"I don't think he knew how to share his pain," Brynn suggested.

Yolanda started to cry. "It makes me mad."

"What does?" Brynn questioned, struggling not to weep herself.

"That he didn't give any of us a chance to tell him goodbye. When Modesto was shot it was bad, but this is worse because I feel like there was something I should have done, something I should have said. Maybe if I'd been friendlier, it would have helped."

"I don't think any of us had a clue how much emotional pain Mike was in," Brynn told them solemnly. "Death was obviously something Mike had been entertaining for a long time. It was wrong, and now each one of us is left with recriminations."

Brynn paused at the sharp pain in her chest. "I can't blame Mike, but I wish I'd known how much he was hurting. I might have been able to help him. Like Yolanda said, we never got a chance to say good-bye."

"I want to get in his face and make him listen to reason," one of the girls shouted. "He's hurt so many people."

"He was in pain himself."

"I wish I could talk to him."

"You can," Brynn whispered.