Do you want to be there to see how I turn out?

You haven't gone to class in almost a month now. Winter break is over. You were supposed to go back. You didn't.

Your history professor's email sits unreplied-to in your inbox. "Horatio," the email says, "you haven't come to class in almost a month. Winter break is over, Horatio. Do you know that?"

You're not sure that you do.

You'd like to reply and say, "I'm sorry, sir, I'll come right in tomorrow if you'll please give me a second chance." Or, "I'm sorry, sir, I've had a lot on my plate but I'll get back to work soon." Or, "I'm sorry, sir, it's just that I've gone to more funerals this year than I'd ever been to in my life before, and one of them was for my best friend, Hamlet, you remember him, remember the class where you showed us a documentary on what scholars actually know about Troy, and I thought it was boring but Hamlet liked it, he always liked documentaries, do you remember that?" Or, "I'm sorry, sir, but I can't care about history until I know what to do with my future."

You want to fail your finals. You've never failed anything important, before you didn't save him. Now you think it would be fine if you never went to class again and filled the online gradebook with the letter F and had to go to summer classes and skipped your summer classes and did your freshman year of college over and over again forever, because stagnation is fine if it means you don't have to move on.

You delete the email. You find, in your cavernous inbox, that a Google doc has been shared with you, titled "Psychology Group Project: Should We Follow the Classic Model of Five Stages of Grief?" Your assignment is denial.

On your slide, you type out, "Denial," right at the top of the page, and then you stop. Hot tears slide down your chin and hit the rim of a wine glass, drained. You never cry, except you do, now.

You delete the slide. Your group will have to manage without denial. They will have to live with their eyes wide open to the horrors of the world.