Some Place Better Than Here

Chapter 32: My Back Pages

32
My Back Pages

I made it to California in three days. As the wise men say: sleep is for the weak.

Mom nearly had a heart attack when she opened the front door and saw me standing on the other side. She went from shocked to worried, and asked me why and how I was there, as I had not answered a single one of her many, many phone calls while on my drive. I collapsed into her and started bawling. She cried because I was crying, and then we went inside and sat on the couch, and I cried some more. Once I could catch a breath, I told her everything.

Mom broke down into a sobbing mess, and together, we were dragged back into the undertow of tears I thought California's shores would surface us from. Exhaustion flooded me and I cried until I blacked out.

I woke up some hours later; it was dark out. When I looked at the clock, it read 11:23PM. I collapsed into the couch and fell back asleep.

When I woke up again, it was light out. My head still felt groggy, so I forced myself back into more sleep.

When I woke up the third time, it was late in the morning and Mom was at the kitchen table making phone calls. Max's funeral was to be held on Saturday. Today was Friday.

For a second, I tried to comprehend the reality. But I was unable to. I was in a silent asylum of my own. I couldn't think or feel anything. There was just a hollow beating somewhere in my chest. Something that reminded me that I was alive, and somehow this must be real because everybody was playing along. Somehow—this became my life.

Mom and I took a red-eye back to New Jersey late that night. I pressed my forehead against the cold window of the airplane and temporarily enjoyed the child-like amusement of watching the world shrink into a play-set as the plane took off.

Not long after, we were above the clouds. The moon shone an otherworldly light onto the sea of rolling white mountains. I tried to think of all the poetry to describe the moonlight's glow—but all I could think about was how this was where I wanted to be for the rest of my life. Above the clouds in the otherworldly moonlight. I could lie down on the bed of clouds, sleep, and float away forever.

Max's funeral was painfully barren. No one except a few teachers and the principal from our high school, and some kids I didn't recognize, attended the service. For a second, I thought I would see Mary, but she wasn't there. Fucking Stephen Belanger didn't even show.

For obvious reasons, the casket was closed. Just beneath the sanded oak of the coffin lay the lifeless and pale, and now horribly disfigured, face of my best friend. Touching the surface of the casket discharged a twisted guilt from my heart. I felt like I sinned for trying to bridge the worlds of the living and the dead.

You are alive. They—or better yet in this case—Max, is the dead. The dead cannot feel your touch, Max cannot feel my touch, so do not mock the dead by touching Max's tomb like he'll be able to feel me apologize. But I dispelled my own feelings and placed my whole hand on the casket and let the acidic agony burn through me all over again.

I deserved to feel this. I could have charged up those steps and forcefully grabbed the gun. How could have I just sat there as he downed those drugs? I could have kept an eye on him that night.

"Hey, Max, man! Listen to me! Seriously, dude! Calm down. Okay? You're my brother, man. I've got your back. Stay with me, at my house, tonight."

But I never said anything like that.

I tried to think of some sort of eulogy. But the what if's and should have's ate away at my conscience like termites in my soul. I didn't deserve to speak at his funeral like I had been a good friend.