Ro attended yet another funeral three days later. She was honestly getting sick of them.
Jesse’s death wasn’t all over the news, his funeral and wake weren’t plastered in the papers. He was a no-body to the media- but he’d been somebody to a lot of people.
Ro slid into the pew, intimidated by all of the people she didn’t know. She nervously played with her hair and was horrified when a few strands came loose into her hand. Very funny Jesse, I won’t look as good as you bald. She thought as she decided to turn her horror into a wry joke between her and her friend.
Ro had come alone, having been dropped off by Mico. They were on good terms, and happy. Ro finally had what she wanted, and that was to be Mico’s fiancé. She didn’t care that it was illegal and she didn’t care that their baby might not have made it through the night of the incident, but she did care that they had made it.
As she sat in that pew and contemplated her own life waiting for the service to begin, Ro knew that everybody else was doing the same: that’s what death did. Death had the power to make every human being reevaluate their own life, take stock in what they’ve been given, and pray for those who didn’t have the glorious chance that they have.
That’s what Ro did. She asked Jesse to look out for her, knowing that somewhere out there, Ben and Jesse were making friends. They were cracking jokes about all of the dumb things she did, and how dumb she was for falling in love with Mico.
Ro rested a hand on her stomach, which felt a little upset from the burnt breakfast Mico had attempted to make her. It didn’t help that the eggs Sam and Danielle had tried to learn how to cook had been underdone.
She didn’t want to get up and go to the bathroom so she took a sharp intake of breath and decided to plow through the feeling.
The organ in Jesse’s church played a sad song as the priest proceeded up the aisle. Though it had been quiet before the service had started, it was dead silent as the opening notes played. All eyes were on Jesse’s blue coffin.
In the hospital Tony had mentioned after his passing the Jesse refused to have a black coffin; he wanted a blue one, because that was his favorite color. It made Ro smile a little bit through her tears.
She felt as if over the past two weeks she’d cried constantly through every event in her life. Ever since her night with Mico, she’d gone through even more stress than before, because of their “break-up”, the party, the incident, and Jesse’s death. It seemed she was always crying.
Some of it Rosalina chalked up to her own immaturity. She realized she was fifteen years-old, and still considered a kid. In a month she’d be turning sixteen, and the age gap between Mico and herself wouldn’t be so big. Two weeks after that, of course, it would grow again. She comforted herself with the wry fact that age was just a number.
Tony turned to look at her, giving her a sad and small smile. She didn’t have to be up in that row next to them or even know anybody else in the congregation: she had earned a place in Jesse’s life. She stood proudly, tears streaming down her face throughout the entire service.
This time she couldn’t say the priest didn’t know Jesse, because she didn’t know if that was true or not. She couldn’t say that she knew cute little things that Jesse liked to do. All that Rosalina knew about Jesse was what she’d learned in the hospital. She knew him through the end, not from the very beginning.
She wished she would have met him earlier, but maybe he would have meant something different if that was the case. Ro had increasing faith in the fact that everything happened the way that it did for a reason. She was supposed to know Jesse at the end: they both had needed each other.
