The Leftovers

victim’s parents took a measured view of his death: We mourn the loss of our beloved son. But the truth is, Jason had become a fanatic. Before he vanished from our lives, he spoke frequently of his wish to die as a martyr. It appears that wish has been granted.
    So that was where they were: a brutal, execution-style murder, no witnesses, no one clamoring for justice—not the victim’s family, not the G.R., and not the good people of Mapleton. Just a dead kid in the park, one more sign that the world had lost its mind.
    *   *   *
    DAISY’S DINER was one of those retro places with lots of stainless steel and maroon Naugahyde. It had been lovingly renovated about twenty years ago and was now getting old all over again—the banquettes patched with duct tape, the coffee mugs chipped, the once-dazzling checkerboard floor dull and scuffed.
    Bing Crosby’s version of “The Little Drummer Boy” was playing on the sound system. Rubbing a clear spot into the fogged-up window, Kevin gazed with satisfaction on the holiday scene outside—oversized snowflakes and candy canes suspended from wire stretched across Main Street, real evergreen wreaths on the lampposts, the business district bustling with cars and pedestrians.
    “It’s looking good this year,” he said. “All we need’s a little snow.”
    Jill grunted noncommittally as she bit into her veggie burger. He felt a little guilty about letting her skip class to eat lunch with him, but they needed to talk, and it was hard to do that at home, with Aimee always hovering around. Besides, at this point in the semester, the damage was already done.
    The conference with the guidance counselor had not gone well, to put it mildly. In some vague way, Kevin had known that Jill’s grades were slipping, but he’d misjudged the gravity of the situation. A former straight-A student with stellar SAT scores, his daughter was failing Math and Chemistry and might eke out Cs at best in A.P. English and World History—two of her best subjects—if she aced her finals and handed in a number of overdue assignments before Christmas break, eventualities that were seeming more remote by the day.
    “I’m at a loss,” the counselor told him. She was an earnest young woman with long, straight hair and rimless octagonal glasses. “It’s a complete academic meltdown.”
    Jill had just sat there, poker-faced, her expression wavering between polite boredom and mild amusement, as if they were talking about someone else, a girl she barely knew. Kevin came in for some pretty harsh criticism himself. Ms. Margolis couldn’t understand his blasé attitude, the fact that he hadn’t spoken to any of Jill’s teachers or responded to the many e-mails informing him of his daughter’s unsatisfactory progress.
    “What e-mails?” he said. “I didn’t get any e-mails.”
    It turned out that the messages were still going to Laurie’s account, so he’d never actually seen them, but the mix-up just proved the counselor’s larger point, which was that Jill wasn’t getting enough supervision and support at home. Kevin didn’t argue with that; he knew he’d dropped the ball. Ever since Tom had started kindergarten, Laurie had been the parent in charge of education. She supervised the homework, signed the report cards and permission slips, and met the new teachers on back-to-school night. All Kevin had to do for all those years was try to look interested when she told him what was going on; he obviously hadn’t come to terms with the fact that all this responsibility now belonged to him.
    “I realize there’s been some … upheaval at home,” Ms. Margolis said. “Clearly, Jill’s having some adjustment issues.”
    She concluded the meeting by scrawling a big X through the college wish list that she and Jill had drawn up at the beginning of the school year. Williams, Wesleyan, Bryn Mawr—they were all out of the question now. It was late in the process, but what they needed to do in the upcoming weeks was shift their focus to less selective institutions, schools that might be a little more forgiving of a semester’s worth of terrible grades from an otherwise excellent student. It was unfortunate, she said, but that was where they found themselves, so they might as well face reality.
    I’ll play my drum for him, pa rum pum pum pum …
    “So what do you think?” Kevin asked, eyeing his daughter across the narrow Formica table.
    “About what?” She stared right back, her face