Like any other Tuesday, on any other week, on any month, on any year, the sun rose and everyone started out there day. For most people it's like any other day, but for the friends and family of Jessica Song, John Fillmore, and Fiona Gibson, this is the day we say our goodbyes.
Dressed in a new black suit, I walk through the church doors. It doesn't take a degree in rocket science to figure out a rough guesstimate on how uncomfortable I feel. I don't know anyone here, and I'm here for the girl who two-thirds of these people probably hate right now. After all, murder gets people mad at you. Alexander taught me that.
That's about all I learned from dear old dad.
I certainly never learned any people skills. Are you even supposed to make small talk at funerals? I'm sure I would know if I had any people skills.
The line to see the dead bodies seems longer than a line for a ride at Cedar Point. That, mixed with my lack of people skills and funeral etiquette, gives a lot of time to question my decision to come. Sure, I was one of Fiona's friends from the nut house, but that was it. I didn't even keep a simple promise.
The pine box is getting closer, before I know it I'll be face to face with Fiona. I close my eyes as I step towards her coffin.
I take a deep breath as I look at the hollowed out body that used to contain my friend, Fiona. She's not there anymore. She's killed herself, and, this time, it snuck. She had been legally dead before, but that was only for minutes. Now she's gone forever. Looking around and seeing all the people that cared about her and the two other kids, I'm forced to wonder if this is what my funeral would have been like if I ever succeeded. But I don't want to think about that ever again.
Looking at Fiona, I have to bite my bottom lip to keep my smile from arising. It's funny, in death she looks more alive than the first time we meant.
***
"Hey cutie pie, did you try to die?"
I freeze. Someone is talking to me which is bad enough, but said person just called me cutie pie too which makes me want to crawl out of my skin, and she had said something about the attempt to top it off.
I don't like this girl.
"It's okay if you did." She sits next to me with her tray.
She's lying to me, it's not okay. I made everyone upset all because of my stupid, selfish tendencies. What did I think would happen to my mom when Galvin found out her worthless kid stained his bathroom tiles with blood using his favorite knife? She's covered in bruises, homeless and I'm in here. I don't even want to imagine Olive's face when she found out what I tried to do.
"I did too."
I look up at here. She's thin, too thin. I can see her collar bones popping out like a black cat in the snow. Add to the mandatory white uniform, she looks like a ghost of a ghost, or she would if it wasn't for the black hair lying straight down to the middle of her chest. Take away the visible bones and she's what Peter, Olive's friend, would call hot. I don't understand it.
I look away and stare at the table. I have a tray too, but I pushed it aside. I don't eat.
"Hey?" She bends down so she can look at me.
I glance up with wide eyes. People normally give up if they aren't getting paid to talk to me.
"Is this your first time?"
Still in shock that someone is willingly talking to me, I nod slowly.
She nods, "Will it be your only?"
I give her a soft shrug. Who knows what the future holds? I could fail again.
She gives me a sad smile. "You remind me of someone." She tilts her head at me.
I look up at her. I open my month, but before I can speak I see another patient tripping with their tray in hand. The shamming of his fruit cup echoes throughout the semi-quiet room. His soup is taking over the once clean floor. Three of the workers make their way over to him.
"That's our queue."
I look around, confused.
"Come on, Bambi." She gets up.
"Bambi?" I guess it's better than cutie pie, actually, I know it is.
She looks back at me with a smile. "That's who you remind me of."
***
"Does that make you my mom?" I ask the dead body that used to house Fiona's soul. "And the hunter, Fi those roles aren't supposed to be played by the same person..." Tears are coming.
Don't cry, Brent. Don't. There is too much sadness in this room. I don't need to add to it.
You wouldn't be adding to it if it was a secret expression of emotion. It could be with simple line on your wrist, thigh, or anywhere really. If you were feeling poetic, you could even drive into a lake like Fi.
No. No. No.NO!
Get it together Brent; don't think like that ever again. I don't want to be that piece of shit ever again. I want to be the normal, senior guy with a 3.4 gpa, a loving family, amazing boyfriend, that never does that again. I don't want to be that guy, I hate that guy. But that guy is me, so there's probably a problem with that too.
I wish Fiona never had to deal with those thoughts. She once admitted in group that she heard that kind of thing most of the time, or she would get happy for no reason when she wasn't on her drugs. In private she told me when she was on the drugs she thought nothing and that killed her too.
Realizing I'm taking too much time to say my goodbyes, I wipe my face and turn away. Looking up, I see who can only be Devin. Fiona's talked about him so much, I feel like I know him. I walk over.
The two boys and a girl that are around him stop talking when I near him. "Are you-" I stop myself. What am a doing? I don't know him and his isn't the day to make a new acquaintance. "Never mind," I shake my head with a mumble.
Devin nods without saying a word, but his face speaks for him. He's in pain. One of the boys and girl put a hand on his back to comfort him, the other guys looks at me with hate.
"Sorry." I walk away. What was I thinking? He's Olive the day of AJ's funeral.
***
AJ looks like daddy. He's in a suit. But daddy isn't laying in a box like AJ is. Daddy's also moving, AJ isn't. I don't understand why though. He's normally yelling at me by now.
I reach into the box/bed AJ is in and touch his cheek. He doesn't feel real. Megan is standing next to me, but I think she's crying. "Meg-Meg Are you-"
"Don't call me that!" She snaps at me.
"But Meg-Meg..."
"STOP!" She throws her fist in the air.
"What do I call you?" Her name is Meg-Meg. It's been Meg-Meg forever.
She takes a deep breath. "Olivia."
"Okay Olivia, are you crying?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"My big brother is dead."
I look at AJ. "Oh."
***
That's the day Olive started going by Olivia and then, when she was twelve, she dropped the ia and took on the e.
Alexander wasn't happy about having to buy me a new suit then or now, but I don't care. Granted, I normally don't care, but today is different. Today isn't right.
Too add to this messed up day, a preacher walks onto the stage part of the church. Fiona and her two friends pictures are blown up poster sized on the displayed on what looks like what a painter would put a canvas on so they could paint.
I catch myself staring at her picture. She has blond-almost white hair with pink strips in it and her lip is pierced, and she hasn't worn that in a while. My best guess is it's her school picture from one of the years she was a senior. She had to retake senior year due to her mental health, she missed too many days, but she graduated last year. She was out of school. She could have ran away and started a new life. She could have, should have, lived a long and happy life.
Maybe she just needed a different prescription.
My friend might be dead because of a shitty prescription.
"We're here today to honor," The preacher starts and I peel my eyes away from Fiona. "And remember the lives of John Fillmore, Jessica Song and Fiona Gibson, three teens that returned home sooner than we all hoped. Friends and family have a few words they'd like to share."
I never feel right when it comes to religion, neither did Fiona. Add that to the list of why this is all wrong. Although, I wish I could focus on his words. I rather hear about this 'god' than think about my dead, but no matter what Fi enters my mind.
The fake smile she gave me whenever I appeared, after she read me the riot act for coming back in the first place.
"Our first speaker is Walter Song, Jessica Song's father." The preacher starts.
The room is silence as the grieving father in a brown suit makes his way to the stage area of the church. Walter coughs to clear the sadness from his voice before he begins. "Not all of you know I counsel teenagers. More of you don't know for a short time I was Fiona Gibson's counselor." He looks up and blinks, "But I deferred her to someone else because they were better than me and I wanted her to succeed," He blinks tears away, "In life."
"I've known Johnny since he was two," His last word gets consumed by sadness. "Even though he was older than my Jessie, he was over all the time. My late wife used to say he was the son I always wanted." Tears are in his eyes, "Now Johnny's dad was killed in action and, ah, he'd call me dad sometimes, by accident because I wasn't his dad, his dad was an honorable man who I hope is taking good care of him right now because I know, I know that boy is terrified."
"Johnny's mom, Carol" Walter Song points at a crying woman, "Has been like my daughters' aunt, and sometimes even a mother because our two families were one. Johnny and Jessie wanted to set us up, wanted us to be a real family. I always laughed, because we were a family, and now both my kids are gone."
"My Jessie was eighteen years old," He's crying now. "She wanted to help people. At eighteen she didn't know how, but whenever I asked her why I was paying for college she said that each person she was going to help was worth eight million times what I was paying in tuition." He looks up to try and stop the tears, "My girl is gone. My boy is gone and a girl I knew was driving the car." He covers his face with shaking hands. "I want my kids back."
I'm not big on touching and I want to give him a hug.
He moves his hands from his face motions like he's trying not to make a fist and punch, "I want God to tell me why a sweet girl like Fiona suffered."
"I wantta go back in time and tell them not to go out." He drops his hands and seems defeated. "I want my family back." He starts crying with no attempt to hide it.
The preacher helps Walter Song off the stage and other people speak, but now of them measure up to Walter Song's speech. His grief lets me understand why Olive wrote that letter months ago. What I don't understand why I have said letter in my pocket.
The people stop talking and people stand as people carry the pine boxes through the church. As they go the wave of people slowly exits the church. But somehow, out of all the possibilities and people cramped in that room, I get ran into by someone I never thought I'd see after Fiona died.
"Sor-Brent." Tommy's month hangs in disbelief. Did he not think I would come?
"Tommy." I nod as a blink a few hundred times, I don't want to cry.
"I, ah..." I've never seen Tommy at a loss of words, but I guess the death of a friend can do that to even the best confidence fakers.
"Yeah..." We've turned into those people who stand in the middle of where everyone else needs to walk.
"Listen, umm..." Tommy looks around, I think he wants to cry too.
"It's okay; we won't have to pretend to be friends." How did those words just come out of my month?
Tommy looks even more shocked now than he was to see me in the first place. "No, listen, Brent, I-" Some guy disrupts Tommy's balance as he's talking. "Umm...do you need a ride to the cemetery?"
I wasn't going to go. Where we life the nearest cemeteries that aren't all fixed or sold out of plots are hours away. But for some reason I nod.
Tommy nods really fast, "Come 'on." He starts walking and I follow after which gets read of the traffic jam we created.
The funeral party stretches so far I can't even see the car the departed are laying in even on turns. The line seems to long even for three people. But the line splits soon. John Fillmore and Jessica Song are being buried side by side in commentary three roads over from where Fiona will spend the rest of eternity.
"I'm sorry we didn't get together, Brent." Tommy says after nearly two hours, when he turns to follow one of the funeral home cars instead of two. I call see the car now. Only about seven of the eighty are going this way.
"I'm sorry Fiona's dead." What is with my tough today? It's not running things by my brain first.
"Me too." He swallows spite.
"Do you mind if I smoke?"
Tommy seems taken back by the question, "Go ahead."
I crack the window and light a smoke. I have a whole pack with me. I smoke three in a row. As I flick the fourth cigarette away, the smell of fresh daisies fills my nose. I hate daisies.
Tommy follows the few cars thought a gate that's decorated in flowers. I can't believe I'm here.
I never wanted to come here in the first place. I never, ever wanted to come back to this place.
We park and follow, Devin, his and Fiona's parents, the few friends that were with him and a few older people, my guess is relatives.
I stare at her pine box as a preacher talks. I don't listen to a thing he says, it's just a formality anyways.
"Shit, Brent, " Tommy whispers while looking at his phone. "We have to go."
"I'll call someone to come get me." I can't leave yet. Fi's not even in the ground yet.
"You sure?"
"Yeah," I'm never going to see him again. "Go."
"Okay then," He slides his phone into his pocket, "I'll call you." He starts to walk away.
Tommy stops, "You know, kid," He takes a breath. "She really was great."
She was. There's something wrong with that. On Sunday I welcomed a new life into the world and today I see one off. Fiona shouldn't be dead. She should be in her first year of college deciding on a major, making new friends, and being around for her brother. But she's not, she's about to be buried and I'm standing here watching our friend walk away from her grave.
A few flowers are laid on her coffin. I don't understand why, they'll lay her in a hole and the flowers will become pointless. Only minutes after Tommy leaves, her relatives do to. The preacher is done. The hole is dug and now people are leaving. Maybe I should be too.
I turn, I'll walk someplace where no one can see me and call someone to come get me. I raise the phone to my ear.
"Are you Bambi?"
I drop the phone.