Mick Harte Was Here

Zoe calls Phoebe regularly in the weeks after the accident. Phoebe doesn’t want to talk about the accident, but finds school gossip mundane and unimportant in light of her brother’s death. Phoebe hears from Zoe about Mick’s classmates’ distress. A grief counselor arrives at the school and encourages the students to chant Mick’s name in commemoration, which, according to Zoe, makes Mick’s peers feel a bit better. Phoebe hangs up on Zoe; she feels that trying to heal from her grief would be disloyal to Mick.

Phoebe goes into Mick’s room and inspects his “treasures,” including carefully preserved autographs from D-list celebrities, fly swatters, and a cigar. Phoebe laughs at a memory of Mick swatting a lady on the head with his flip flop to kill a fly. She senses that Mick is laughing with her and she gets goosebumps.

In the kitchen, Phoebe asks her mother whether she thinks that Mick can hear them. Phoebe’s mother, incapable of discussing Mick, covers her ears and walks out the back door, sitting in a lawn chair facing the other way. Phoebe walks into the backyard and yells at her mother: “THIS ISN’T ONLY ABOUT YOU, MOTHER. I LOVED HIM TOO, YOU KNOW! I MISS HIM TOO!” (42).