Stealing The Show (Such Sweet Sorrow Trilogy, Book One)

7

BY THE TIME I get to Eeyore, Jubilee is there waiting on me. She's sitting on the hood of my ratty-ass car. Walking up to that would be most guy's fantasy. It's mine, but she's waiting there to be my friend, I know. 

"That. Was. Awesome," she says. 

"Shut up," I say. I throw my bag into the backseat. 

"No, it was. It totally was. Your voice up there. There's just this...presence." 

Now, I might be wrong, but I've never quite heard her voice do like that before. There is a new layer there. This is a new music. I keep listening. 

Jubilee says, "Blevins let us all go right when you left. He said he'd let people know the roles tomorrow, but it was clear who'd be shouldering most of the load." She shoves me on my shoulder. "He meant you." 

I just open Eeyore's door and get in. She looks at me through the dirty windshield and mouths What? As she gets down and walks around to the passenger door, I have a second where I wonder if, right now, I'm as confusing to her as she usually is to me. She gets in. 

"Sorry. But I'm not doing the play."  

I'm right. I'm being extremely confusing. The look on her face makes me cringe. I wish I could be normal and just tell her what I mean. I wish I could reach over and pull her to me and kiss her.  

We hear tires squealing and Shoe's little pickup comes over about two inches away from Eeyore. "Dude! I had no idea that play was about dead people! Sorry! Can't talk--I'm so late for work they're gonna fry my hand in grease and then fire me. But you were awesome awesome awesome!" he shouts as he peels out of the parking lot and heads to his shift at Wendy's.  

"Oh, holy shit," Jubilee says. She's just realized. "Oh, Lewis. I'm so sorry. That sucks." 

I guess this is another thing to chalk up to Shoe's impeccable timing. I shrug for Jubilee. She rubs my arm and I die a little.  

"Tell me about the letter from Paps," she says. "I can't believe he did that. He was so awesome, Lew." 

"Yeah," I say. "Awesome. He wants me to spread his fucking ashes." 

"Spread his ashes?" 

"In San Fran-fucking-cisco." 

"In San Francisco?" 

I almost say 'I'm in love with you,' just to see if she'll repeat that, too. But of course I don't. 

"Anyway," I say, "I don't know if I'm gonna. I just don't know if I can do that." 

Jubilee backs up against the door with her back and wipes around in the air like she's erasing the chalkboard. "Wait-wait-wait-wait-wait. Your grandfather. Paps. Writes you a letter. From the grave. Asking you to spread his ashes. In San Francisco. And you don't know if you're going to do it? Are you even fucking alive?" 

I don't know what to say. All I keep thinking is that I wish I was sitting in the backseat watching this happen instead of sitting in the conversation. 

After a long and overdramatic sigh, I just barf out what's been eating at me all day. 

I say, "There should be a grave, I guess. That's what I always thought, some place to go visit Paps, some grass to cut and stuff. But since he's in ashes, we could keep him in one of those urns and I could talk to him. He'd like that, staying around to keep an eye on us and crack jokes. It's a stupid thing to put in a will. I don't really want to do it. I can't do it. I guess I just want to keep him and not spread his ashes in some strange place."  

She pivots ninety degrees in Eeyore's seat so she's facing right at the dirty windshield, like she can't bear to look at me.  

Jubilee says, "This is what I was talking about, Lewis. Don't you realize? He's sending you on a fucking adventure. That is where memories come from. You will forget that boring funeral. You will forget lots of the hours you spent writing that book with him. You will forget lots of him. If you put his ashes in an urn and set it on a shelf, you will even forget that it's him in there."