In Chapter 29 of A Thousand Ways to Say I’m Sorry, Jojo watches as Matthew and Ezra write this statement together for Andy in preparation for the trial. The actual statement never appears in the novel—until now.
This piece exists in the margins because some truths are too raw to tell the first time. Ezra needed Matthew’s help to write this. Jojo needed to watch them do it. And maybe you need to read it to understand what the novel is really asking: not just what happened that night, but how we live with what happened after.
Be warned: this piece contains the central event of the novel. If you prefer to experience the story without knowing the details of Jojo’s death, save this for after you’ve read the book.
I HADN’T HEARD from Jojo in months. OK, maybe that’s not the truth. He couldn’t find me. I made sure of it.
The first thing you need to understand: Jojo was going somewhere. Good student. Good family. Well, Gran was his family. And she’s good. Tough, but good.
And he had Molly. Used to be we were like the Three Musketeers. Then Molly got pretty, and Jojo was a goner. But they never made me feel like a third wheel. We were just a tricycle, and Jojo was the front wheel, for sure. He kept us going in the right direction.
The second thing you need to understand: I was going somewhere, too. But not a good place. Once I turned eighteen, I didn’t give a shit about anything—dropped out of school, dropped out of life. Finding drugs was easy. And then I was a goner.
Molly knew where to find me. Came to Travis’s trailer where I was shacked up and wanted to talk about Jojo. She was worried about him. But I didn’t care. OK, maybe that’s not the truth. I cared, but what could I do to help him? I was fucked up and didn’t know how to help myself.
She let me have it. Told me I was wasting my life. Wasting the best friendship I’d ever had. Told me I was going to wind up dead. Seemed like an easy way out, honestly.
Then Jojo showed up out of the blue. I don’t know how he got there. I could hear a car peel away outside, but I didn’t look to see who it was.
Jojo was electric. Talking a million miles a minute. About Gran. About college. About Molly. He’d broken up with her. For her own good, he said. He was in trouble. Weren’t we all?
He wanted something to bring him down. Said the usual tricks weren’t working. I didn’t know what that meant. I was smoking a joint, but Jojo’s lungs couldn’t take it. He was always wheezing in spring time. And winter. And fall.
So I gave him a pill. Told him it would do the trick. His eyes were wide like full moons. And he took it. Swallowed it down dry. Travis was out getting beer, and the water in the trailer had been cut off for a week. Then he laid on that nasty floor and waited for it to kick in.
I was already flying kind of high. Jojo kept talking, and I kept listening. About his fight with Gran. About his Ma. But then he slowed down.
And I had to pee.
I was only gone for a few minutes. At least that’s what I think. When you’re that fucked up, time kind of stretches. And then things get real sharp. I might have been outside with my fly open, my manhood hanging out in the spring night, for two minutes—or twenty. Then I remembered Jojo. I went back inside.
He was so still. He might have been asleep.
“Yo yo, Jojo!” I said.
But he didn’t answer.
“Yo yo, Jojo?”
His eyes were open. Drool leaking out of the corner of his mouth.
I shook him.
I slapped him.
I begged him.
I pounded on his chest.
Then Travis came home. Freaked out. Slapped Jojo some more.
I called 911.
But I already knew. As sure as I was breathing.
Jojo was gone.
And so was I.
