When everyone’s gone, off to the graveyard with the casket, I go back inside the church. It’s cool and dark and feels peaceful now that it’s empty. I think about how many tears have been shed here, how many desperate prayers for people facing death, hopelessness. How do you make sense of it all?
I check for another name in the wood walls or the stained glass, but instead, I see a person sitting in the front pew. I get closer. It’s a boy, around my age, maybe a sophomore. He’s got on those cool red headphones. I wait in the aisle for a minute before inching down his row.
He’s listening to hip-hop, or maybe EDM. I can hear the tinny beats secondhand. I can’t tell if his black hair is super styled or not at all. He turns. His eyes are like green arrows shooting into mine.
“Hey,” I say, though I know he probably can’t hear me.
He pulls one headphone off. His cheekbones are sharp.
“Hey back,” he says, deadpan.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?”
“Did you know Tom?” I ask.
“No, I just go to the funerals of strangers.”
I laugh abruptly, and he gives me a weird look.
“I’m Tegan.” I reach out my hand, shaking his firmly, like my father taught me to.
“Edge.”
I sit next to him. He puts the headphone back on, and we stay like that. Two lone kids in an otherwise empty church. I should leave, but wait for what happens next.
4.
take the chance
He listens to his music, and I listen to my thoughts.
The church is completely silent aside from the muffled beats from his headphones.
Eventually he slides one headphone off again, revealing his ear, which is kind of cute, if ears can be cute.
“Why’d he do it?” I ask.
A thin smile sweeps across Edge’s face, and it strikes me that maybe he’s an imposter, too.
I have this theory that at some point, we all reach a boiling point and become distilled. That’s what I feel like now. Can he see me—like, really see me?
He takes off the other ear so the headphones curl around his neck like a giant red necklace. “Why do you think?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t…I didn’t know him.”
“I didn’t either, really.”
“So you do go to the funerals of strangers. That wasn’t a joke?”
“Jokes are always half-truths. Plus, you’re here, too…”
“Yeah, but I saw a sign.”
He makes a noise and says, “Was this before or after the apocalypse?”
“Shut up. You won’t believe me anyway.”
He pretends to be nonchalant, but his left eyebrow rose a little when I said the word sign.
“Try me,” he says.
A maintenance person with a scruffy beard approaches us, carrying a mop. He tells us we have to leave and that he’s sorry for our loss. Edge grabs his skateboard from underneath the pew, and we both scoot out of the row and down the aisle.
Moving from the dark church into the bright world is like we’re being reborn into the day. Everything is sparkling: the railings, the car windows, the sidewalks. We start walking toward 14th Street. Heat comes off the sidewalk in visible waves.
“I hate when people say ‘sorry for your loss.’ All of the sayings are bad, but that one’s the most generic.”
Edge isn’t talking, but he’s listening, so I continue.
“There’s no right or wrong thing to say to console someone, but it always comes out wrong, because no one gets what it’s like, unless they’ve experienced it themselves. Have you?”
His gets this far-off look for a second, and then he says, “Do goldfish count?”
At first I think he’s serious. Then we both start laughing. Please be single, I think, crossing my fingers behind my back.
“So, I’m guessing your parents didn’t name you Edge.”
“No. It’s Edgar, but people have been calling me Edge since middle school.”
“Are you gonna be a senior?”
“Junior. Eastern. You?”
“Senior. Dunbar.”
We take a second to acknowledge the unspoken understanding that based on location, my school is slightly better than his, and that I’m also a grade higher.
“So who died?” he asks. We’re stopped on a corner, waiting for the light to turn. It’s the same corner where Tom Elliot stood, days ago. I glance at a man standing next to me and shudder. He’s ghostly pale, with a long face and empty eyes. He’s carrying a Bible. The walk sign lights up, and everyone starts to move.
“My father.”
As we continue, the pale guy lags behind. He sways, unstable on his feet, as if he might collapse from the heat. I try not to notice he’s following us, but his presence is strong. A ghost man.
“Wow. I won’t say sorry for your loss…”
“But you just did.”
“I know.”
I shrug. I glance behind me once more, and the ghost man is nowhere to be seen. “Did you know Tom, really?”
Edge looks up at the sky, then squints straight ahead into the distance, like the answer is out there, but not in focus. He wipes a drop of sweat from his temple.
“Enough,” he says. “What about you? If you don’t go to random funerals, what were you doing there? What was the sign?”
We turn right at the end of the crosswalk on 14th, where a cluster of twentysomethings has gathered on the sidewalk outside of Pearl Dive, drinking happy-hour beers. We have to maneuver around three bulldogs, drooling and droopy, miserable in this heat, who are tied up, waiting for their owners.
“You’re not going to laugh at me?”
“Only if it’s funny.”
“It’s not, actually. I saw his name.”
“What?”
I tell myself to stop. Here I am, hanging out with a totally cute boy. I can’t ruin it by telling him what happened. I can only imagine how strange it might sound to him. I change the subject.
“How about this? Tell me one thing about yourself that most people don’t know.”
I had heard that on some TV show, and I feel dumb after asking it.
“Wait. Are we in therapy now?”
We walk by Ted’s Bulletin. In the window is a display of gleaming donuts in long, perfect rows with sugary toppings of every color imaginable. Pink, yellow, pastel blue…
“I’ll get you a donut if you tell me,” I say.
“Okay. But we have to sit. It’s too hot.”
He leads me to a bench in the shade. When he inadvertently touches my arm, it tingles and little shock waves travel up it.
“Okay, we’re sitting.”
The bulldogs lope past us with their owners, tongues swinging. There’s a warm breeze I turn my head into, thankful for how it feels on my face.
“I’m an alien,” Edge says.
“C’mon.”
“Okay, I’m not an alien. But I believe in alien life.”
“And the apocalypse?”
He smiles again, and I resist the urge to move the piece of hair that has fallen in front of his right eye.
“So are you going to tell me or what?”
I think about all the time I had, between when Tom Elliot left his house and when the train came. Twenty minutes? I could have done something to save him.
The ghost man from earlier walks by, and this time he’s not carrying his Bible. He’s looking at his shoes. Black Crocs with socks. When he passes us, he looks back at me, giving a slight nod.
“Ugh, that guy’s creepy.”
“Which guy?” Edge asks.
“The old pale guy who just walked by. He’s like a ghost man.”
Edge looks down the sidewalk in the direction I
pointed, but he shrugs. “Must have missed him.”
I look down the sidewalk, too. It’s empty aside from a few kids playing hopscotch. I decide to take a chance.
“Okay, I’ll tell you, but first I have to get you a donut. Maybe one made by aliens.”
Putting my hand on his knee as leverage, I get up to walk toward the shop.
I get a regular glazed for me, and a butter crunch for him. The guy that sells them to me says, “Cheers,” except he’s not British, so it doesn’t seem convincing.
I go back to the bench, and we both dig in. It feels so good to like food again. For so long everything tasted bland. Food was a burden. Maybe I needed someone like Edge to eat with.
“This is crazy good.”
“Astounding,” Edge says. “How did you know I like butter crunch?”
“A hunch. A butter-crunch hunch.”
He smiles again, and a warm feeling swells in my chest. I haven’t felt this content since my father died. I didn’t think it would be possible to ever feel that again. Even though I’m creeped out by the events of the past few days, not to mention the ghost man, I feel strong. Happy, even.
“I once ate only pistachios for, like, a month.”
“Did you turn green?”
“No, but my fingers were sore from constantly opening them.”
Some nannies walk by us, pushing toddlers in fancy strollers. They’re sweating, but they seem used to it. Another guy in a fishing vest carries a portable fan. We finish our donuts and throw our wrappers into a nearby trash can.
“So. Are you going to tell me about the sign now or do I have to tell you about aliens?”
“You promise you won’t think I’m weird?”
He holds up his left pinkie. “Pinkie promise.”
“What are we, seven?”
We curl our pinkies together anyway. I look at him. His façade is washed away, and I see something pure in his expression, like he is distilled, too.
I tell him everything, right there on 14th Street, on a bench in the shade, with barely a breeze. He listens to every word. When I finish, I ask him what he thinks.
“I believe you,” he says. “One hundred percent. I’m just…”
He gets that far-off look again, and this time he might be fighting off tears. “Do you think there’ll be more signs?”
“Yes.”
Silence. I wonder if he can hear my heart, or if it will burst out of my chest. I close my eyes and feel a wave of fear, doubt, excitement, confusion. When I open them, the hopscotch kids run by, screeching, and I am pulled back into reality. I look at Edge. A piece of his hair has fallen in front of his left eye, and this time, carefully, I reach out and move it.
“You have intense eyes,” I tell him.
“Is that a good thing?”
“I’m not sure yet, but I think so.”
“I’ll take that,” he says.
We sit for a while, people watching, until it gets darker, the temperature finally dropping a little.
“Would it be totally cheesy if we took a selfie?” he asks.
“Yes, but who cares?” This doesn’t sound like me. I never like taking selfies, but I’m so thankful he believes me, Edge could propose cliff diving and I’d consider it.
He holds up his phone, and I move my head toward his. “How about we don’t smile, but try to be our normal selves.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Try.”
We look at the screen for a while, testing out our normal faces. Then he snaps the picture, and we both stare at the result.
Our expressions are not usual selfie expressions. It’s sort of a candid selfie, if that’s possible. We aren’t smiling, but you can see in our eyes that we’re happy.
We stand.
“I’m not going to say it was really nice to meet you…” he says. “So how about, this afternoon felt good. I didn’t worry about stuff for a couple hours.”
“What do you worry about?”
“Stuff. I won’t bore you with the details.”
“Somehow I’m thinking it wouldn’t be boring.”
“Hey, give me your shoe.”
“What?”
“C’mon, just do it.”
I take off one of my sandals, and he pulls out a marker. He writes his number on the sole and hands it back. “If the number’s still there when you get home, call me; if not, we’ll leave it up to the universe.”
I smile, and he touches my cheek, as if wiping away an invisible tear, then turns in one swift motion, jumping on his skateboard and rolling away. I watch him until he becomes a dot in the distance, then I make my own way home.
Some people give me second looks, since I’m walking with only one shoe on, the other pressed to my heart.
5.
find courage
The first thing I see when I wake up is the sandal on my nightstand, Edge’s phone number written carefully on the bottom. I hold it up and stare at it, memorizing the sequence.
I don’t call right away. I’ve watched enough TV and movies to know that’s what you’re supposed to do—wait. Instead, I call Jenna. She can hear a change in my voice and asks me what’s up. I tell her about Edge, the funeral, and the number on my shoe.
“Wait, what were you doing at a funeral?” she asks.
“That’s a longer story.”
“So you’re going to call him, right?”
“I guess. Not right away.”
“Girl, you need to go get some. A skateboard, though? How old is he, fourteen?”
“Gonna be a junior.”
“Well, maybe you should go to more funerals, because you sound the best I’ve heard you in a long time.”
“I guess. I do feel…I don’t know…different.”
I walk into the bathroom, phone still pressed to my ear, and start the water for a bath. It fogs up the glass tiles that look like bricks.
“I can’t wait for you to come out here to LA. Did I tell you I saw the guy from Dexter in the supermarket? He asked me about the melons! I also saw Heidi Klum at a coffee shop. She, like, doesn’t age.”
“Jenna, please don’t become a name-dropper.”
“Well, who are you seeing in Dupont Circle besides homeless people and wannabe politicians?”
“True.”
I look at the tiles again, and as the last one fogs over, letters appear, as if someone had written in the steam. Again, I blink twice to make sure it’s real and I’m not seeing things. But it’s there: the sailor.
“Jenna, I gotta go.”
“What?”
“I just… I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”
“Okay, make sure—” The rest of what she says is cut off.
I stare at the letters for a moment. What could it mean? I don’t know any sailors, except my father. Eventually, I stop the water and get into the tub. I dunk my head, holding my breath. The sailor, the sailor. As I come up for air, it hits me. One of the randoms! They call him the sailor. I’d heard the story secondhand through the dancing girl, who was telling the one-act-play woman. The sailor claimed to have sailed around the world, but nobody believed him. It was kind of sad. Now he’s going to die? Am I supposed to do something?
I immediately get out, dry myself off, and dial Edge as I stare at myself in the mirror. My face looks changed, but I can’t pinpoint how. Could being only a day older show on my face?
He answers on the second ring. I’m breathing fast, thinking about Tom Elliot, how little time there was between seeing his name and seeing him… I don’t want to see another person die, even if it’s a random. Randoms are people, too. I have to do something.
Edge answers with a quick, low-voiced, “Hey.”
“How’d you know it was me?”
“No one else calls me now that…” He pauses
. “It had to be you.”
“What do you mean, ‘now that’?”
“Nothing. What’s up?”
“I’m kind of freaking out. I saw another name.”
“Ha! I knew it.”
I tell him about the name, and who I think it is. “If there’s a pattern to this, then the sailor is going to die today.”
“And you know where he hangs out?”
“Yes.”
“Ping me the location. I’ll see you there in twenty.”
“Wait, Edge. Are you sure we should do this? Maybe it’s all been a coincidence. Maybe I am losing my mind.”
“You’re not. And if you are, I’m right there with you.”
“Okay.”
I meet Edge at the Georgetown movie theater, which is close to where a lot of the randoms sleep. I haven’t seen the sailor in Dupont for a few days, and this is the other likely place he’d be. It’s underneath a curved highway off-ramp, a section of concrete where fifteen men—and some women—sleep in elaborate cardboard houses. I start to lead Edge over there.
“So, it only said the sailor in your shower?”
“Yes, on the tiles, through the moisture or whatever.”
“And there’s no one in your house that would…”
“It’s my bathroom. No one else uses it.”
Edge makes a noise, and I say, “What?”
“Nothing. I should have guessed you have your own bathroom.”
“It’s no big deal,” I reply, trying to tone it down.
We walk around the giant, curved concrete wall of the underpass, and the first person we see looks exactly like Jesus. We ask him if he’s seen the sailor, and he points toward an alleyway across a patch of dirt and a broken chain-link fence. It’s really just a space between two buildings. There’s no one there, but there are stairs that lead to a rusted basement door that has what looks like bullet holes in it. This is way scarier than watching randoms in the park.
“You realize this is somewhere we could get kidnapped and have, like, our faces boiled off or something?” Edge says.
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