Card two - five bucks left on the table
Card three - a half-eaten tangerine
Alex tapped the stack of index cards against the surface of his desk, keeping the edges together in a neat pile. He was sure that the speech was ready, but he needed to make sure that the note cards had everything he needed to remind him of what to say next. It wasn’t often that he had to give a speech - not since high school, when he had to give some of the book reports his AP English teacher loved so much - and he wanted to make sure he didn’t screw anything up.
Corinne poked her head into the room and grinned when she saw the cards. “Are you still working your way through that stack of blue cards you got in school?” she teased. “I swear, that was the largest box of cards I’d ever seen. How many more of them do you have?”
Alex grinned as he tucked the cards into his suit coat pocket and stood. “Oh, probably still another hundred or so,” he replied, walking out the door and giving her cheek a kiss as he passed her. “It’s what happens when your mom goes to Costco for your school supplies.”
Corinne shook her head and followed him down the hall, brushing a strand of her curly red hair back behind her ear. “Never do something when you can overdo it, right?” She sighed happily as they entered the living room where several more people around their age were milling about.
Everyone was dressed in somber colors, though some of them were better quality than others. It had been a few years since they’d all gone on their merry way after graduation, and their paths had diverged a bit.
“Hey, don’t forget to pitch in for the wine and beer!” Peter called from the back of the room, and the tide of people moved toward the coffee table nearest to him. Alex grabbed his wallet and pulled a five out, dropping it on the table next to the other bills. He didn’t plan on drinking much, if anything, but he didn’t want to be seen as stingy. After all, he’d been one of the lucky ones after school.
Corinne squeezed his hand one more time, then stepped back and allowed herself to be swallowed in a hug from Olivia. Olivia freed one hand to give Alex a wave, which he returned before heading back out of the living room and into the kitchen. Suddenly, the room seemed a little too full, a little too loud, a little too much.
In the kitchen, he found their host, Maritza, leaning against the kitchen counter with a book in her hand. “Sorry to interrupt you,” he said softly, trying not to startle her. He’d known her for a long time, and he knew that she did not take kindly to being pulled out of a story suddenly.
She lifted her head and grinned at him. “I was wondering how long it would take before you made your way in here,” she replied, slipping a receipt into her book to mark her place and putting it on the counter. “Come here, you. How are you doing? Want something to eat?” She’d always been the “mom friend” of their group, and Alex felt his throat close for a second. She gave him a hug and let him hide his head on her shoulder, not saying anything as they stood in place for a few minutes until he could pull himself together. When he pulled back, his eyes felt a little gritty, but he hadn’t left any tear stains on her dress, so he felt accomplished there. “Sorry about that.”
Maritza swatted him on the shoulder. “Never mind that, when was the last time you ate?” She didn’t wait for him to answer before reaching into a fruit bowl next to her book on the counter and pulling out a tangerine. “Here. You need to get something into your system before we go.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, happy to have something to do with his hands as he began to peel the fruit. To be fair, he didn’t remember the last time he’d eaten anything that hadn’t come out of a vending machine - the last two days had been a blur. The call, the frantic drive back home, the hospital…
“You going to be OK?” Maritza asked, more concern coming through than usual. “You don’t have to go, you know. Everyone would understand.”
“I want to go,” Alex said mechanically, putting a wedge of fruit in his mouth. It tasted like sawdust, but at least it was fresh sawdust. He swallowed and continued. “I promised him I’d be there. You were there when we promised, you remember.”
“We were sixteen when we promised that,” she reminded him gently. “It’s been ten years since then, and I think everyone would understand-“
“I’d want him to be there for me,” Alex interrupted, turning his focus to the tangerine so he didn’t have to see the pity in her eyes. “And I can’t expect him to have been there for me if I’m not willing to be there for him.” He popped another wedge into his mouth, chewing without thought.
The silence stretched between them before he heard Maritza sigh. “Fair enough. Do you think he’ll even know we’re there?” He heard a tremble in her voice that he hadn’t expected, and he looked at her sharply. Her face, always calm, looked on the verge of crumpling into tears, and Alex realized he’d forgotten - again - that he wasn’t the only one in pain.
Brandon, Alex, Maritza, and Corinne had been inseparable from the first day of middle school onwards, connecting in a way that had always felt completely natural. Hormones had done their damage through high school, but they’d come out of it mostly unscathed after a few disastrous attempts at dating each other. On Brandon’s sixteenth birthday (the latest in their group, which had labeled him eternally as “the baby,”), their conversation had somehow turned to funerals, and how each of them wanted to be remembered.
Alex didn’t remember the details for everyone else - he vaguely remembered Corinne wanting some kind of dance number in the middle of her service - but Brandon had taken the conversation very seriously. When it came to his turn, he just said that he wanted to attend his own funeral, and he wanted them all to be there for it. Alex, surprised by the sincerity of his friend’s answer, had said “Of course! I’ll even give the eulogy.”
“Promise?” Brandon had asked, turning burning green eyes to him. Alex could still see him hunched over, rocking to himself as he asked each of his best friends if they would attend his funeral with him. They had all promised, of course, and the next day everyone acted like nothing had changed.
It didn’t take long for Brandon to start missing school, and when he did show up, he was exhausted, losing weight and pale as a ghost. It still took months before they could get him to tell them what was going on. He’d gotten some kind of autoimmune disorder that was causing him to be in pain constantly, and the rounds of treatments that the doctors were putting him through were causing more problems than they fixed.
Time rolled on, and Brandon managed to graduate with the rest of them, though he hadn’t been well enough to walk across the stage with them at graduation. He still appeared at their graduation party, though, and seemed to have a blast. Alex made a point of spending time with him that summer, knowing he was going to be leaving the state for college and that Brandon wouldn’t be able to visit him the way they’d originally planned.
Once Alex moved away, he didn’t keep in touch as well as he should have. He reached out, but he wasn’t there, so he didn’t see what was going on. Corinne and Maritza did their part to keep him informed, but they had their own lives, too, even if they were staying in the same city they’d all gone to high school in. Brandon had a good stretch for a while at one point, and had managed a trip out to visit Alex and see the sights. Alex tried to make sure to plan for plenty of time to just relax and not overtax Brandon, but he still seemed completely drained at the end of every day. Still, Corinne had told Alex that Brandon said it was the best trip he’d ever been on when he got back.
Alex got a job in his college town after he graduated, and was moving towards getting a master’s. He still visited home on occasion, and visited Brandon every time he came to town, but it was happening less and less frequently. Then Maritza called to tell him Brandon had taken “a turn” and was in the hospital, and was asking for Alex specifically. The way she said it… Alex barely stopped to grab some clothes before he got in the car and drove straight to the hospital.
He got there while Brandon was still lucid, and was able to tell his friend that yes, he remembered their promise. “Better get the gang all together, then,” Brandon wheezed. “Doc says it’s about that time, and I’ll be damned if I’m missing my own party.” They both laughed a little, and Brandon closed his eyes and went to sleep.
He was in a coma now, and the doctors did say that it wouldn’t be long for him. They weren’t giving Alex (or any of the other friends) any more details about what was causing his death, just that it was imminent. Alex tried to swallow around the last bit of tangerine in his mouth, and felt himself choking as he remembered the look on Brandon’s mom’s face as they discussed what they wanted to do. She was a religious woman, but she had found his will among his papers and knew that what Alex proposed was what Brandon wanted, so she gave her blessing.
Alex put the rest of the tangerine on the counter and reached out to Maritza. “Come on, Mar,” he said, giving her another hug. “Let’s get out of here and give Brandon a proper send-off. I wrote a hell of eulogy for him, and I’d hate for him not to hear it.” She sniffled a bit, then pulled away from him and smiled. Hand in hand, they went back into the living room, and with everyone else, started making their way to the hospital chapel. It was going to be an interesting night.
Comments
Post a Comment