I was worried that everyone would bang down the door and force me to explain myself. But that’s the thing with death. The whisper of its descent travels fast and wide, and people must’ve known I’d become a corpse because nobody even came to view the body. Well, except relentless Liz, who stopped by once a week to drop off a CD mix of whatever new music she was loving, which she cheerfully stacked on top of the untouched CD she’d left the week before.

My parents seemed baffled by my return. But then, bafflement was pretty typical where I was concerned.

My dad had been a logger, and then when that industry went belly-up he’d gotten a job on the line at an electronics plant. My mom worked for the university catering department. They were one another’s second marriages, their first marital forays both disastrous and childless and never discussed; I only found out about them from an aunt and uncle when I was ten. They had me when they were older, and I’d apparently come as a surprise. And my mom liked to say that everything that I’d done — from my mere existence to becoming a musician, to falling in love with a girl like Mia, to going to college, to having the band become so popular, to dropping out of college, to dropping out of the band — was a surprise, too. They accepted my return home with no questions. Mom brought me little trays of food and coffee to my room, like I was a prisoner.

For three months, I lay in my childhood bed, wishing myself as comatose as Mia had been. That had to be easier than this. My sense of shame finally roused me. I was nineteen years old, a college dropout, living in my parents’ house, unemployed, a layabout, a cliche.

My parents had been cool about the whole thing, but the reek of my pathetic was starting to make me sick.

Finally, right after the New Year, I asked my father if there were any jobs at the plant.