The Annoying Sleepwalker novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Worth It

The Dean would not tell me what Larkfield had decided.

"The man wants to say it to your face," she said. "Saturday, at your show. He asked for a seat at the back."

So I spent two days not knowing.

The "Worth It" show opened in the third-floor lounge on Saturday at six.

Casper had hung the prints himself, on a rope line he'd strung from the windows.

There were nine large photographs, and each one showed a ruined thing on my empty desk under a hard white light.

A watch with a green face, its glass starred.

A guitar with a split neck.

A tablet set, the pen snapped in two.

Beside each print hung a small white card.

On each card there was one sentence, in plain black type, with the owner's name.

*"I'd just buy another." Colson McKim.*

*"It's only a thing. Let it go." The RA.*

*"Anyone can buy a new one." The girl from 3C.*

More than a hundred people came.

They stood in the lounge in their good clothes, in a hush, reading.

The RA stood by her own card with her arms crossed, and she did not look away from it once.

The girl from 3C walked up beside her and stood there too.

"I asked if you wanted yours taken down," I told them. "You said no."

"I want people to read it," the RA said. "Every word. I want them to know what it cost when I said that."

"It cost me my guitar," Colson said, behind her.

He had come up with a manila envelope.

He had shaved, and his hair was no longer gelled.

"Here," he said, and held it out to her. "Thirty-four hundred dollars. That's the guitar. I sold my skis and my speaker and my snowboards."

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