“Hey! Amanda!”
She stops and turns around, her eyes dark and ready for another loud, public fight.
“Merry Christmas!” I smile as wide as I can without looking too fake. I can’t help but laugh a little, she looks so ready to fight.
“Fuck you, Crissy,” Amanda snarls and turns around. I don’t bother following her. There doesn’t seem much point.
I should probably be insulted, but she uses “fuck off” as such an interchangeable insult-slas-term of endearment she doesn’t sound half as badass as she’s trying to be. She just sounds like a broken record, a non-creative, one-insult kind of girl. I actually feel like the bigger person. I know something I could have used against her, but I didn’t say anything. She is the one who can’t move on. I walk out to meet my mom with a clear conscience. I’m ready for my trip. It’s time.
To: William Davis
Message: It’s almost time! I don’t think I’d be more excited if I were seeing you in person. I’m a little scared too, though. How do I do this? You were always the confident one, didn’t need anybody. I guess that was always your biggest flaw,too. You were too proud to go to people when you needed help. You just had to go out and cope with everything on your own. But maybe that’s better than me. I just shut up and hope my problems go away. Never take risks, never do anything the “good” kid wouldn’t do (except be with you).
We’re both so screwed up and we’ve made such a huge mess of our lives in different ways. I guess I want to set things straight for both of us. You’ll always be such a huge part of me, so maybe if I figure things out it’ll be like you getting a second chance. Do you think it works like that? I hope it does. I really miss you, and you deserve a second chance at life even more than I do. At least you’d do something with it. I guess I’ll have to take a few risks and make a legacy for both of us now. So, I guess I’ll set off tomorrow for both of us then. You and me, kid, out to take over the world! What do you say? You all in, Will?
“Do not think.”
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my brief time as an adolescent, it’s that the most important part of any road trip is the music. I’m not going for your classic mix tape songs though. I need something different because this trip is something different. Being around William always made me want to explore. If I told that to most people they’d assume he wanted to drag me down and get me addicted too, but that was never the case. William was probably the reason I never even thought about trying anything. He would always talk about the future, about the man he was going to be once he got out of ‘“That Place”’, all the things he wanted to do now that he was clean, and how happy he was I could do all those things without the wait. It made me feel like I had all these opportunities to take advantage of. The problem was William could see all those possibilities and I couldn’t. I guess when you’re in a position to have something it’s a lot harder to see than when you know you can’t have it. But I want this to be the start of me taking advantage of those possibilities, if not for myself than for the boy who would never get to try. This is a risk I can take, and after this things will get easier. At least I hope they will.
While thinking about all these opportunities I decide on a foundation for my mix tape. I find a website that lists off all the seven stages of grief and their subcategories. After doing some more research I manage to make a list. I will have a nine-hour trip, both ways (give or take an hour or two). The point of the mix tape is to have two very different mindsets there and back. The way up I will have nine emotions to work with, one for every hour, with music, and a Chinese restaurant I’d found along the way to accompany it. The way back home will be the two final stages, with a blank playlist to be filled out as the trip progresses (although the stages are more important than the songs). This is my plan. I can do this. I will not talk myself out it no matter how much I’m starting to second-guess myself.
I grab the two duffel bags I packed the night before and head out to the front door. My parents have been giving me plenty of space, but I can tell they’re worried. Every time I walk out of my room, one of them appears to make sure I’m not leaving without saying goodbye.
“I’m leaving now!” I call out to the empty hallway as I close my bedroom door. I wasn’t all that nervous before(comma) but now that I’m actually going I’m in shock. My stomach is flipping around and around. I’m grateful I told myself there wasn’t time for breakfast. An unsettled empty stomach is easier to travel on than a full one.
“Did you pack plenty of warm clothes? Scarves and gloves and hats and layers? Don’t forget to dress in layers!”
“It’s not my first winter, Mom.” I roll my eyes, a pretty standard response for an almost eighteen-year-old , I think. Pretty soon I’ll be out of the eye rolling-acceptable age bracket and I’d like to use it while I still can.
“But it’s going to be cold there. Probably colder than you’re expecting, and you need to be prepared. You can catch all sorts of things if you get too cold, and you’re never good about bundling up. I think you should –“
“Mother.” I cut her off before it’s too late to stop her. “Now is not the time for a lecture. I’ll make sure to call every time I stop, I’ll keep my cell in reach, and I won’t drive to the frozen tundra of Siberia without asking you to send thicker socks first.”
“Socks! I almost forgot to ask you about winter socks. Glad you reminded me.” She runs off, presumably to the part of the house where all the secret winter socks are kept, and I turn to my dad.
“Just remind her I’ll be fine. She doesn’t have anything to worry about.”
“I know, but we are parents.” Standard dad one-liner . It might not be worthy of a fortune cookie, but it is the kind of thing that makes you feel safer when you hear it. “Oh, I have this for you.” He pulls something out of his wallet. “It’s a gas card. Should be enough on here to get you there and back. Think of it as an early Christmas present.”
“Thanks, Dad. ” I give him a hug and start to feel my nervousness turn into fear. It’s safe at home. No matter what goes on in the rest of the world I’m lucky enough to be able to come home to a place that feels safe. It doesn’t make sense why I’m trying so hard to leave. Walking out the front door on my own seems a lot scarier than it did this morning.
“I brought you some warm socks. Did you pack enough warm socks? What kind of socks are you wearing now?”
I take the balled-up socks and stuff them in my duffel. I’m too nervous to try and argue. I just have to get on the road before I lose my nerve. I pick up my duffels and make my way out to my car. It’s not as cold as I expected from December weather, but it has to be colder in Minnesota, or at least that’s what people keep telling me. I’ve never really traveled before, haven’t gone much of anywhere at all. I just go to school and go to work and things generally stay the same. This trip will be the farthest I’ve ever been from home and I’ll be doing it all on my own. I get in the car and program my GPS, keeping a written copy of directions next to me, just in case. I wave out the window to my parents. I have to look tough. I have to make them think I really am capable of doing this on my own. I make it to the highway and turn on my Ipod.
“Life is unexpected, go with it.”
Hour 1: Shock. As in “he can’t possibly be gone.” Now, I know all the crap counselors and psychologists tell you about the stages of grief, and how not everyone goes through them all, and they all happen in their own time, but I don’t care. These months after William died have been hard. I don’t know what to do or where to start or how I’m supposed to feel. This list is my checklist, the things people are generally supposed to feel. I’m using them like Goldilocks, I guess, trying each one until I find the thing that feels just right.
Shock is an easy one to start with. I tell myself, “I can’t believe he’s gone” and I can’t believe he’s gone. I couldn’t believe he was gone when I saw him at the wake. I couldn’t believe all the make-up they put on him to make him seem less de
ad. The real shock was that he didn’t come back to do something about it. William was not the kind of guy to go anywhere near make-up, let alone let people actually use it on him. Seeing him there, covered in foundation to keep his skin from living up to the “deathly pallor” he was supposed to have... Well if he didn’t have any unfinished business before, I thought for sure he’d stick around to haunt that undertaker.
That was another thing that was a little shocking, how easily I could find myself joking about his death like he was still alive and sitting right next to me. I didn’t do it to be mean. Most of the time I didn’t even realize I was doing it until after it happened. It was just how we were together. One of us would do something stupid and never be allowed to live it down. We kept each other humble. We also kept each other sharp. We never agreed about anything, we were always fighting and pushing the buttons we knew would get a reaction. No matter how hard I pushed, he always pushed back. I loved him for that. I think it’s what I miss the most.
I can’t believe he’s gone.
I can’t believe we’ll never get in another fight.
I can’t believe I’ll never have someone to disagree with like that.
I can’t believe he won’t make me rise to another challenge.
I just can’t believe it.
I start to cry, but it’s not so bad I can’t see the road. I just miss him. I keep thinking about all these conversations we had and I’m trying to remember them happily. It’s what you’re supposed to do. When someone dies, you hold onto their memory and think of them fondly. I’m great at the holding-on part, but every time I think about us together and happy I feel sad. Those things will never happen again. I will never hear his voice again. I will never hear him try to defend some outlandish political opinion again. I will never hear him say “you’re wrong” and then start to laugh again. How is that possible? He can’t be gone.
The GPS chirps that it’s time to pull off the highway at the next exit. It’s time for the second part of my road trip to begin. If anyone asks, I fully intend to tell them I’m just traveling along the highway trying to find the best Chinese food. It’s a road-food-trip, and that really is a part of it. I like Chinese food and I have to eat something. That’s not the whole reason --obviously -- but I’ve found people (especially total strangers) look at you funny if you tell them you think the universe is trying to talk to you through a fortune cookie. They tend to look at you even funnier when you go on to say the universe has stopped talking to you and you’re trying to find that one fortune cookie willing to tell you why. I feel a little crazy for doing it, but hey, some people talk to God, some people chase fortune cookies. Who are we to say what’s crazy or not?
The place I chose is called “China Gardens”, fairly common if you’re familiar with Chinese restaurants. I always make sure the place has a drive-thru before I go by myself. If they have one, it means they’re a pretty laid-back place. If they don’t, you run the risk of going to a “gourmet” Chinese restaurant. I’m not saying those are bad places to go, but they usually cost more than I’d like to spend and they aren’t too crazy about people my age eating alone. China Gardens doesn’t disappoint (even though I think the name is grammatically incorrect, which is a little disappointing). It’s sandwiched in a strip mall between a generic dollar store and a “for lease” sign. It doesn’t look very crowded either, although it is still early for any kind of lunch crowd. The bell above the door chimes as I walk in and the place looks a little sad. There’s an empty buffet set up against the wall and leather booths lining the opposite side. The floor is covered by a plush red carpet that seems like an odd choice for this kind of place. There are no dragons or Buddhas, not even an origami crane or zodiac animal figurine. It looks like, well, nothing. There’s no character anywhere. It’s the kind of building that makes you feel sad.
“How can we help you today?” The woman behind the counter is very American: blonde hair and blue eyes with not a drop of Chinese anywhere. I realize American-Chinese food isn’t really a representation of actual Chinese food, but at least when it’s cooked by a Chinese-American it seems more authentic. This place just isn’t trying.
“Umm, yeah.” I’m surprised to find that her lack of broken-English is making it hard to order. The Chinese place I go to when I’m home is run by an immigrant family and you can always hear them shouting in Mandarin to each other when you walk in. I don’t understand a word but it’s comforting anyway. “I’ll have a hot-n’-sour soup with a fortune cookie.”
“That’s it?” She eyes me suspiciously. I’m not sure what she thinks I’m up to, unless someone’s just come in and stolen all their charm and she thinks I’m back for the food. I’d believe that.
“Yeah, that’s it. It’s cold outside.” I think I added that to defend my ordering soup, but blonde-counter-lady just glares at me.
“We don’t have fortune cookies.”
“You’re kidding me.” What kind of a place serves Chinese food without having fortune cookies? Ridiculous.
“People kept throwing them away.”
“So?” The fun is in the opening, not in the eating.
“So…” Now she’s pissed. Oops. “That means we’re giving away a product that’s being thrown away unopened and then filling up a landfill somewhere. We try to be as green as possible. If more people stopped getting things they didn’t want, our world would be a better place.”
“Seriously? No one opened their fortune cookies? I don’t believe that. And if they weren’t opened, couldn’t you recycle them? I hear recycling and the green movement are almost one in the same.” I smile and she glares at me. I’m not sure why I’m giving her such a hard time, or why I’m being so outspoken. I guess knowing you’ll never see someone again makes it easier.
“So do you just want the soup? Or you can add an almond cookie for two dollars.”
“Now I know you’re kidding. You’re honestly telling me people wouldn’t bother to crack open a fortune cookie but they eat a prepackaged almond cookie? Have you ever met anyone, anywhere, who likes almond cookies?” I’m laughing now. It’s possible I’ve gone insane, and equally possible I’ve entered some strange other dimension where fortune cookies don’t exist (though in this scenario I am probably also insane).
“Ma’am,” Cashier Lady sighs, “I like almond cookies. Now, can you just tell me your final order?”
“Nope.” I shake my head, still laughing. The universe has to be trying to tell me something through the lack of fortune cookies. Maybe this is all just a dream, or I’m hallucinating in an empty building and none of this is real. “I can’t eat soup without a fortune cookie. No fortune cookie, no sale.”
“So you’re telling me you don’t want anything?”
“Sounds like it.”
“Goodbye then, ma’am.”
I walk back out the door, still chuckling to myself. No fortune cookies. That was unexpected. Maybe the whole building was really some kind of front. I would respect it a little more if that was the case. I’m disappointed about not getting anything to eat. My stomach’s settled down just enough to let me know it’s hungry, and my next stop isn’t for another hour. I just hope wherever I wind up next is a little more traditional. It should be illegal to have a Chinese restaurant without fortune cookies on the premise. They should at least have that posted on their website. It’s like entrapment, luring me into a place with the promise of fortune cookies and then taking them away, questions still unanswered. I start up my car as my stomach growls. Time to move on.
“The truth may be subjective.”
My new emotion for the next hour of the drive is “denial”. I’m not sure how I’m going to stretch this out for an hour, it seems pretty self-explanatory. I don’t want William to be dead, but there’s not much I can do about it. I saw him in a coffin and then I saw the coffin lowered into the ground. Sure, it’d be nice to think he could pull a “saved by the bell” buried alive move, but I know his mom had an autopsy done. If he were j
ust paralyzed by a venomous snake or had fallen into some bizarre coma, there was no way he was alive after that autopsy. No “Fall of the House of Usher” ending for me, although I do feel like the world is collapsing at my feet.
I’m not really sure what I should be denying in my hour of denial. William is dead. I don’t want to believe it, but I don’t have a choice. I can’t not believe it. Plenty of people have made me painfully aware of the fact.
Denial might be one of those stages you can only really feel pre-funeral. It’s that feeling in your heart that responds to “he’s dead” with “no, really, where’s he hiding?” I did think that at first. I’d just come back from a day working with Mel and found a bunch of missed calls waiting for me on my cell phone. I never got that many calls, and even if I did they’d be from numbers I already programmed into my contacts. All those numbers didn’t look familiar, and not familiar meant not good. I was already feeling strange about what happened the night before, and the fact I had all these strange numbers on my phone, no voicemails, and no messages from William wasn’t a reassuring sign. If I hadn’t known that night, I knew for sure before I got in my car to drive home.
I kept telling myself he couldn’t be dead. He’d gotten arrested -- sure. He relapsed and was in the hospital -- fairly likely, not great, but at least he’d get help. He did something stupid and ended up in the hospital, but it wasn’t drug-related-- best case scenario. I drove home without even thinking to return any calls. It was the summer, it was sunny, I was happy. People’s boyfriends didn’t die on happy-sunny-summer days. That’s not how things were supposed to work. He wasn’t dead. Something else must have happened. I remember briefly thinking he might have wanted to fly back to Minnesota, to ‘“That Place”’, and there’d been a terrorist attack like on 9/11. I was actually comforted by that thought. If it was true, at least there was a chance he could still be alive somewhere. There were survivors of the 9/11 crashes, I think, though maybe not the planes. I was too young to really pay attention to the details back then, but miracles happen. Maybe the plane had just crashed. That wasn’t that bad either.
Chasing William Page 7