Twisting back around to meet Jase’s wide eyes, I watched him bolt out of his seat and run into the mass of people. My insides flipped as I stared after him.
Through the crush of bodies, I saw Slate Marshall, standing, hovering over a lump of someone on the floor. Everything in my head went dead silent when I saw the shaggy, jet-black hair that lay against the floor through the tangle of shuffling feet.
“Joey!” The scream ripped through my lungs and tore through my throat, but all I could hear was the deafening throb of my pulse in my ears. Lunging out of the booth, I struggled to get through the thick mass of bodies that surrounded my friend. Heads blocked me, all people I knew from school, with terrified expressions on their faces. A burning surge of adrenaline shot through my entire body, and everything—but me—seemed to move in slow motion. Movements stretched out awkwardly. Hands tried to grab me. The voices were garbled and sluggish. Everything seemed blurred and stilled, only my quickening pulse pounded faster in my ears, accelerating into a painful rhythm.
Joey’s body lay limp on the disgusting bar floor; under his beautiful, soft hair seeped a thick puddle of dark red blood, spreading and stretching out sickeningly fast across the lacquered shine of the wooden floor. Red tears streamed down his swollen, battered cheeks. The streaks made him look as if he was beaten so hard that he was crying blood. Jase’s arms grabbed onto me tightly, as if he were a human tourniquet, halting my blood, my life, my happiness from pouring out all over the bloodied floor to mix in with Joey’s. If I’d had the energy, I would have stopped him. Let me melt into the piss and beer stained ground along with my best friend; let the three of us melt into everything and nothing all at once. Together.
The crowd shifted. The screams got louder, and Jase’s hands let go of me.
Time sped fast in blurs of motion around me as I dropped to my knees. “JOEY! Come on, Joey! Get up!” I pulled at him, trying to grab his hands, but they were too slick and slippery with blood. I tried to crawl closer to him, but thick, rough hands were yanking me backward. Violently, my face was grabbed and twisted to look into the putrid, smiling face of Slate. I convulsed and gagged on hot vomit, realizing his dirty hands, the ones that just brutally beat my best friend, were now on me. And they were covered in Joey’s blood. My body gave out, but I didn’t fall far.
Yanking me off the ground by my chin, Slate forcefully pulled me against his chest and slurred through a puff of bitter whiskey breath. “I hope he fucking dies. Then, I’m coming after you. I’m gonna fuck you so hard you’re gonna split in half, bitch.”
Jase’s arms savagely yanked Slate off of me and I fell back to the floor, grabbing onto Joey and wishing with all my might that he’d be okay. I heard the sirens in the background, but the sound of Jase’s fists viciously hitting Slate’s skin was the only thing I listened to.
The next thing I can vividly remember was being in the hospital, listening to the sounds of Mrs. Graley sobbing as the stoic faces of the doctors apologized for not being able to save the life of her sixteen-year-old son.
Slate Marshall had beaten my best friend to death.
After coming up behind him and hitting him in the side of the head with a glass bottle, Joey fell to the ground. While he was out cold, Slate Marshall kicked my best friend in the face and head until everything that made him Joey was gone, slipping out like red satin across the floor.
I stared quietly into the stark whiteness of the hospital walls, completely empty inside. A low buzz swam in my head. A small, yet growing pain curled out in waves from my chest.
Then, it hit me.
It hit me like two big pieces of shit in the face. Joey was never coming out of the doors I watched them roll his body through. He was never going to graduate from high school. Never going to get married and have a family.
He was never going to get past sixteen.
And it hurt, it hurt like the kind of pain that you don’t truly feel at first, and then when you do get over the shock, it's the absolute worst kind of pain, the kind that literally takes your breath away.
I folded in on myself, wrapping my arms around my stomach, trying to hold in the explosion of pain that was threatening to shred me to pieces.
Screams tore from my lungs so loudly that they burned at my throat. I was sobbing so violently I couldn’t catch my breath. I screamed for his mother, dropping to her feet as she held her head in her hands, sobbing into her palms. “Donate his heart please; don’t stuff him in a wooden box. Please. Please. Please keep him alive. Don't put him in the ground. Let someone else feel the warmth of his heartbeat. Let others know Joey and how amazing he was. Don’t put all the pieces of him in the dirt. Please don’t. Please keep him alive.”
My fists started pounding against the walls, and the vilest words came out of my mouth. How could Slate Marshall’s wish come true? Why would God do that? Slate said he hoped Joey would die. What about my wish, God? Why didn’t my wish for Joey to live come true? Why was Slate better than Joey? Why would you do this to his mother? The mother who loved and cared about her kid is the one who loses him? My father wouldn’t even know I was gone. My mother would have been too drugged up to notice, and how about Jase’s parents? God, you took the wrong kid, you should’ve taken me.
Not Joey. Not my Joey.
For days after, all I could see in front of my eyes was my best friend dying. The scene didn’t stop rewinding itself in my head, rewinding and replaying the last things he said to us, the shatter of glass we heard, and the cold lifeless look in his eyes when I finally reached him.
If I closed my eyes, it only got worse.
During his wake, in the funeral home, crowds of kids from our school sat sobbing and wailing into their hands or each other’s shoulders. Students from our school, who had never spoken to Joey, or worse, teased him along with people like Slate Marshall, hugged each other like they had lost their best friend, as if this tragedy somehow actually affected them. Whispers of their stories and memories of him filled the funeral room, making it twist repulsively with the decaying smell of flowers that had me running into the bathroom stall to heave up stomach bile. Their fictional memories of a boy they bullied or turned their backs on when the damage was being done by someone else. The boy everybody teased. Now they were all crying because he was gone.
Soon they were going to put him in the ground, I thought. My stomach coiled and rolled, and I heaved more. Six feet under the dirt with the worms and bugs and darkness. Joey was going to decay. Rot. Get eaten by bugs. Picked on nibble-by-nibble, like when he was alive. I was choking myself with tears, gagging at the disgusting thoughts and images that flooded my mind.
Having to view my best friend in a rectangular box, surrounded by white satin material, like a damn display doll, was one of the worst things I was ever forced to do. His usually tanned skin looked strangely porous and chalky, and it looked like someone had given him a freaking haircut. My fingers itched to touch his body, to poke him, caress him, kiss his cheek, and breathe life into him again. I was so stunned by the thoughts that I barely registered Jase clasping his hand in mine and lacing our fingers together.
“Who the hell is that kid?” Jase whispered, peering into the coffin alongside me. “What the Hell were these people thinking? That doesn’t look like Joey at all. Did…did someone give him a haircut?”
“I think he’s got lipstick on, too,” I whispered back and tucked my head into his chest. “Do you think it hurt?” I asked, choking on a sob.
“Do I think what hurt?” Jase asked, giving my hand a squeeze.
“When he got hit. When he fell. When he hit his head. When he got kicked. When he died. I don’t know what. I just want to know if he hurt.”
“No, Charlie. I think it happened too quickly, and he was really drinking…so I don’t think he felt anything,” Jase whispered.
“I…I can’t do this, Jase. I don’t feel so good,” I stuttered, wanting nothing more than to climb in that damn wooden box with him and snuggle into his chest, and
have us take on the afterlife together.
“Come on,” Jase murmured, pulling me into his arms. Standing in front of that casket with the body of a kid that didn’t look like our best friend, with a line of people behind us ready to pay their respects, we sobbed the loudest.
At the gravesite, I tried to think about anything, anything else - dirt bikes, homework, books, so I wouldn’t see the coffin being put into the ground. Or see the people sobbing and crying around me. So I wouldn’t have to see my best friend being buried. But all I could think was that he’s gone—like the light from a room when you flick the switch. Immediate. And final.
There was no going back and fixing this. I wished it was me instead as I watched the ground swallow the shiny wooden coffin that held the body of the best sixteen-year-old kid that ever walked the earth.
This is what I learned the day my best friend was buried:
There are sad songs that no one should ever have to listen to.
Goodbyes that no one should ever say.
Mothers should never lose children.
Forever is too long of a time. A part of you dies when you lose someone you love. Life is messy, it's never fair, and it's never pretty. And I will always ask God why, why, why, why?
And I'll never get an answer.
I'll never forget the exact way he looked and the sound of his laugh, and I will cry for him until the day I die.
There will forever be something missing in my heart, and I'd never be fully here without him.
Life was so different after, but only for Jase and me. Everything went back to normal at school; just a small area on the front lawn of the campus was set up with candles, letters, and flowers to remember him by. I didn’t understand any of it, and I certainly didn’t understand why the world just went on without Joey in it. To me, the earth had lost its sun.
Remember I told you about my BOOM? That was my first one. It wrecked me. My next BOOM, it completely destroyed me.
∞
My chucks crunched over the gravel and grass as I made my way through the cemetery, until I found the only thing left of my dearest friend—his cold, white, head stone. “I miss you so much, old friend. So much it hurts to breathe sometimes. Wish you were here. 'Cause I really need a friend, and I can’t face Jase again. God, Joey. I want to so bad, so, so bad. But you know, don’t you? You know why I can’t ever look into his eyes again.”
Tracing his name with my fingers and pressing my lips against the chalky cool stone, tears spilled from my eyes. “As soon as I’m done here, I’ll find my way to you. Both of us will.”
I'll find my way
To you.
As soon as
I'm done here.
I'll shed a tear each day
Until then.
Chapter 9
Charlie
For weeks after Joey’s death I stayed in my bedroom, alone. Nightmares of Joey haunted my nights; images of him drinking a red solo cup that heaved with wiggling white maggots, while bloody red tears streaked his face. It was worse if I slept in the tree house. Besides, I couldn’t stay in the tree house for more than a minute without busting out in tears or trashing the place in anger.
Slate Marshall was arrested on charges of manslaughter. That word, every time I heard it, made me gag. Manslaughter. Slaughter. That’s got to be one of the most violent words in all the history of words. And, it happened to my best friend.
Jase was brought in for questioning and then his father hid him somewhere away for the entire summer, away from the whole situation, and away from me. I didn’t get to see or hear from him for three months. So, I mourned for both my friends.
I only visited Mrs. Graley a few times; it was too hard for me to keep going. When you walked into her house, Joey’s scent was all around you, and my heart would ache in real physical pain. His sneakers were still kicked off and laying in the corner of the living room. The book he was reading lay open on the coffee table next to a bag of half-eaten potato chips, as if he could walk in at any minute and continue on with the life that was so harshly stolen from him.
I ended up just staying in my bedroom; dealing with the hurt and the pain all by myself, by drawing thousands of pictures of Joey and devouring handfuls of candy bars for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
And then, early in the morning of the first day of senior year, my doorbell rang, and I nearly fainted dead away when I opened it to find Jase standing on my front porch.
“Hey,” was all he whispered, and my tears rained down.
He awkwardly pulled me inside and sat me down on one of the couches in my living room; I could barely see his beautiful face through my tears. But, I couldn’t stop crying; and in my mind, I prayed to a God I was so angry with, to just let me drown in my own tears.
“I have something for you,” he said, tucking my hair behind my ear.
I looked down, wiping my tears away to see him holding a small black box in his hand. His long fingers opened it to a short, thick, silver chain with a heart shaped locket that dangled from its center.
“It’s for me?” I asked, hiccupping on a sob.
“Yes,” he said, eyes blazing into mine. “It’s a bracelet. You have to open it and read the inscription.”
I leaned forward and softly placed my fingers on the heart and read it. The words, “Here’s To Falling,” were engraved into its front and “In Love” on the back. Unclasping it, my breath faltered as a picture of perfect, goofy-smiling Joey stared back at me.
I looked up at him through aching, teary eyes, and tried my best for a smile. “I love it, Jase. Thank you.”
His lips were pinched in a small, straight smile, and months of sadness clouded his eyes. Releasing the clasp, he placed the bracelet on my wrist and fastened it. I’ve only taken it off once since that day to move it to wear on my ankle, so it wouldn’t dangle itself against my clients when I tattooed them. I haven’t taken it off since.
Jase looked so different that morning; older, more of a man. It was hard to look away from him. It was hard not to cling to him; yet it was awkward to be together after so long with the last time we spent together being when we buried our friend.
In complete silence, he drove us to school in his new truck, which was an old, beat up, white Bronco that he bought with his own money right after his summer stint in some Juvenile detention center that sounded a lot like a military camp.
For that twenty-minute ride, I knew we were both trying desperately to block out the sickening images that terrorized us each night we were away from each other. We made it to the school entrance without speaking a word about the things that haunted us.
Finally breaking the awkward silence, he pressed his lips to my forehead and said, “I’m here now, Charlie. Everything is going to be okay, I promise. I’ve missed you so much.” I didn’t even remember walking through the metal detectors or seeing any other students. All I could remember was the feel of his warm hand in mine as he led me through the doors and into my homeroom class.
By third period AP Literature, I was feeling the severe effects of all the tears from that morning and laid my head against the cool, smooth wood of my table and promptly passed out. I woke up with a start when someone jabbed me in the ribs with a hard finger and kissed me on the cheek.
Jase smiled and walked to the seat across from mine, where some surfer-looking kid sat drumming his pencils against a stack of books on his lap. “Your ass is in my seat. Get it off before I kick it into the next classroom.”
Without saying a word, the kid leapt off his seat and sat himself down clear across the room. Damn. Jase Delaney got more badass while he was gone. For the first time in months, I think a real smile touched my lips.
Trying to focus my attention on our teacher, Mr. Falls, I sneaked a glance at Jase and caught him staring at me. It made my belly do all sorts of funny stuff, like riding on a roller coaster. And I couldn’t wait until he kissed me again.
While we were supposed to be playing a cheesy icebreaking game
of ‘get to know each other’ with our tablemates, Jase nudged me under the table with his foot. “Bonfire tonight. You’re coming with me.”
“Alrightly there, Captain Caveman,” I laughed. It was the first time in three months I had laughed; it felt foreign and wrong and disrespectful to Joey.
“Grrr,” he growled low. “Me like cavewoman.”
I felt my face blaze up on fire. Holy crap, we were supposed to be talking about our favorite colors, foods, and music with the people at our table, and all that was happening was the kids were gawking at Jase and me while we were laughing with each other. Jase was back, and he was making my sorrow go away. Tears stung at my eyes.
“Ugh. Caveman missed his cavewoman,” he chuckled.
His? I was Jase’s?
I was Jase’s.
We laughed so loudly that Mr. Falls came stalking over to our table, “What’s all the noise over here?”
“Um. Nothing sir. We were just doing the icebreaking exercises you asked of us,” Jase answered, smiling brightly.
“Really?” he sneered, pushing his thick-framed glasses up the oily, thin, bridge of his nose. “Well, do tell me what you’ve found out about a few of your tablemates.”
Jase leaned his elbows on the table and his smile got wider. “Sure, no problem. This here is Margo,” he said, nodding towards some girl I didn't know. She was dressed head to toe in pink and had a giant New Kids on the Block pin that hung from her collar. “She loves the color pink, gets a kick out of boy bands, and loves a good romance story,” His face turned to me and he gave me a little wink. “And, directly across from me is Charlotte, but she would rather be called ‘Charlie.’ Her favorite band is Avenged Sevenfold. She thinks their music is awesome, and she secretly has a crush on the lead singer.” Then Jase points to the boy sitting next to him, “We were just about to get to this big guy over here. I believe I remember from last year, his name is Jonathan. Oh, and me? I’m Jase Delaney,” he stood up to shake the teacher’s hand, the rest of the class snickering low at his clowning around. “My favorite color is green, and I’m desperately in love with my BFF…”