Chapter 3 River
RIVER
I don’t know where to look.
If I look straight ahead, I’ll see Franklin’s mother talking about her son with tears in her eyes.
If I look next to her, I’ll see his father, completely somber.
On the dais is the photo of Franklin, smiling brightly.
Around me in the room are other people who are every bit as emotional as his parents.
While my eyes wander and I try not to think about Franklin, I spot his girlfriend Sandra near the front. She’s in a long-sleeved black dress, and her head is bowed.
I wonder how she’d heard about his death. Had she thought Franklin was the one? Did we steal the love of her life away?
Asch and Blaze are somewhere behind me. I don’t know if they even cared about Franklin, but Blaze had driven us all here to the memorial service.
If I’m honest, I don’t know if I could have managed to drive myself safely.
I’ve thought about that night over and over, replaying it in my mind. Each time, he gets through it safely. We have an epi-pen on hand. We get him to the hospital quickly enough.
He never succumbs to the fucking peer pressure to begin with.
But it always comes back to the truth.
Brock and Tate got off lightly from this.
One ruined hand, one ruined life — at least they’re still alive.
Franklin, who was arguably the best of us, isn’t.
His mother finishes speaking, and I look at her just in time to see her eyes on me. I know she hates us, all of Kappa Alpha Omega Sigma, and I can’t say she’s wrong to blame us for what happened.
I’m just grateful she didn’t stop us coming from this memorial service, where I can at least say goodbye.
When Franklin’s mother finishes speaking, Sandra goes up to the front of the room. She clutches a paper tightly in her hands, and her mascara is faintly smeared around her eyes.
“Hi, everybody,” Sandra says in a shaky voice. “I’m not a great speaker. I didn’t know Franklin for that long. I wasn’t sure if I had the right to say anything.” She pauses and inhales loudly.
Franklin’s mother squeezes Sandra’s shoulder.
Sandra wipes her eye, then continues. “Franklin was really sweet. In a world where everybody takes what they want, where they demand everybody bend over backward for them, Franklin was just so… kind. He was so excited to see me every day, and he made me feel so special. Like maybe the world wasn’t dark and rotten.
” She lets out a nervous laugh. “Is that cynical of me? Franklin made me rethink my world view. I’m going to honor him by being more…
more positive. By sharing the kindness that he always shared. ”
Her words make my heart clench.
I wish I could say that having him in my life, however briefly, would motivate me to see the world in a better light or that I would be as kind as he had been.
But the opposite is true.
His death had only reminded me of the fact that the world is harsh and unfair, and that I was willing to do terrible things to avenge what I could. I’d do it again in a heartbeat, too, because I’m not a good person like Franklin had been.
I wonder what he would’ve thought of our revenge.
I doubt he would’ve liked it.
I’d do it again in a heartbeat anyway.
More people go up to say a few words. Franklin’s childhood friends, a cousin, an uncle and an aunt.
So many people cared about him.
When I die, I expect to be dumped in a ditch without anybody’s day being disrupted. There will be no extensive memorial service for me. No one will even think anything of my disappearance.
Except Pandora.
I startle when Blaze heads to the front of the room. Franklin’s mother glares at him, but Franklin’s father motions him forward with a pat on his shoulder.
Blaze clears his throat and looks down at his notes.
“We’ve all heard about Franklin’s kindness.
But I want to talk about his perseverance.
When I first met him, I thought for sure he wasn’t going to last long at Dyschord.
Yet every time I saw him, he was trying hard.
He was studying, he was putting himself out there.
He wasn’t willing to let anything get him down, and when he failed, he just got up and tried again. ”
I let out a small chuckle, remembering the way Franklin had tried to help us fight off those masked attackers. He’d even gone up against the biggest guy, using all the training I’d given him.
Thumbs inside the fists, keep your arms straight.
“Franklin had more courage in him than almost anyone I knew,” Blaze says. “That’s something we should all strive for.”
Even equipped only with a spatula, he’d tried to defend one of his brothers. What excuse do I have not to be brave?
I should get up right now and march to the front, say my own piece on why Franklin was the best friend I’d never had the chance to properly have, but I can’t bring myself to get to my feet.
So much for bravery.
Blaze is the last to speak, and his father steps up to close the ceremony.
All the while, my self-loathing threatens to overwhelm me.
Why couldn’t I get up and say one thing, one single thing, about him?
“You okay?” Asch asks from behind me when everyone gets up and begins to quietly move around the funeral home.
I give a jerky shake of my head, but I don’t dare speak.
“You want to leave?” he asks.
I shake my head again, turning to face him properly. “No,” I rasp. “I want…”
I want to say something to his family, something I couldn’t say in front of everyone, but I know the words won’t come then either. Still, the last thing I want to do is come for this part and immediately bail.
As soon as I leave, it really will be over.
I don’t know if I can get myself to say anything to Franklin’s parents, but I knew Sandra.
I remember the other frat brothers calling her fat behind her back, or right within Franklin’s earshot.
Franklin hadn’t even slept with her, I realize. They’d been taking things slow. He’d gotten ribbed for that.
I squeeze my eyes shut to stave off the tears, then I walk over to Sandra.
She nods when she sees me. “Hi, River,” she says softly.
“Hi,” I answer. I swallow, willing the words—any words—to form. “I’m… I’m sorry.”
Sandra gives me a broken smile. “Yeah. Me too. Franklin deserved more than what happened.” She lets out a sobbing laugh. “Shit. I’m trying to stay positive. But it’s so unfair. I didn’t even think accidents like that happened.”
“I didn’t think so either,” I tell her quietly.
If I had, I’d have tried harder to keep him from taking the fucking vape from Brock and Tate. I hadn’t thought there was a real risk at all.
“We tried,” I say, suddenly desperate for her to believe me. “We got him to the ER as fast as we could. I’m so sorry, Sandra. I’m so sorry it wasn’t enough.”
“It’s not your fault,” Sandra says, her voice shaky. “He wouldn’t want you to blame yourself, River.” She lets out another brittle laugh. “He’d probably beat himself up over having done something so… so… so fucking dumb. Shit.”
I can’t even say it wasn’t dumb, but he’d been drinking.
We all had. People do dumb shit all the time when they’re drunk.
“He would have,” I say. “And I’d have been there to tell him to cut that bullshit.
” I pause, then say quietly, “Hey. If you need anything, let me know, all right? I know we don’t really know each other, but Franklin would’ve wanted you to have someone to reach out to. ”
Sandra nods. “Yeah. Thanks, River.”
I can’t think of anything else to say to her, so I awkwardly walk away. I spot Blaze and Asch talking to Franklin’s father. I know he was a member of Kappa Alpha too, and that Franklin only joined the fraternity because of him.
I don’t want to look at any of them.
I go outside. Maybe some fresh air will help me dry my eyes.
I wish I could call somebody, but who would I even talk to? My mom has never bothered to comfort me, and my father would make things worse. They hadn’t understood why I’d been sad when Rachel died, either.
At first, I’d only been friends with Rachel because of Pandora, but over time, we’d started to realize that we had a lot in common.
She didn’t talk about why she didn’t want to be at home, and I didn’t talk about my bruises.
The two of us were always happy to be swept up in the whirlwind that was Pandora Pavone, even though sometimes…
Sometimes, it had been difficult.
Sometimes, Rachel had told me things she made me swear never to tell Pandora.
I don’t know if anything would’ve changed if I had.
Would she be alive right now? Or would there still have been a casket with all her severed parts in it?
I sit down on the steps leading into the building and rub my eyes.
It’s bad enough I’m mourning Franklin. I really don’t need to be thinking about Rachel, too.
I pull out my phone, and I find myself looking at the text conversation with the frat. Even though they’ve mostly moved on from talking about Pandora, a quick scroll up shows me several of the pictures they’ve been sharing with each other. I can’t place exactly how I feel about them.
She’d deserved it. She’d deserved all of it.
But somehow, the rage I’d felt at learning that she’d kept my finger hasn’t lingered nearly long enough, and I find myself feeling guilty in a way that doesn’t even make sense.
I tense when I hear footsteps approach on the gravel path, and I quickly close out of the chat.
“Hey,” a familiar feminine voice says. “You okay, River?”
I look up slowly, from familiar combat boots to toned legs, a black knee-length skirt, a black blouse, then to Pandora’s face. She’s wearing the usual thick eyeliner. Several wisps of hair escape her ponytail and frame her face. I spot her usual snake earrings dangling from her lobes.
She looks good.
She’s both the only and last person I want to see right now. Anger threatens to boil up within me because she shouldn’t be here. She didn’t know Franklin. She didn’t deserve to know Franklin.
Maybe I can focus on that, even if I can’t get myself to be angry over the finger anymore.