Chapter Forty One
FORTY-ONE
It was the second worst day of your life.
The first is obvious. But, even now, when you think about it, you can’t help reminding yourself that at least you got to have a worst day.
At least you got to sit there feeling terrible in an ill-fitting suit your dad ordered from Costco.
You got the gift of feeling nauseous and sweaty as you sat in the hard pew in a church that neither Sean nor anyone else in your family had ever attended.
Sean did not get another day. Instead, he was being spoken about by a reverend who never knew him.
You could barely hear the religious man’s words because in your head, all you could think was that it should be you in that box.
That’s the thought that was on repeat. It should be me.
It should be me. It should be me. You were the expendable one.
The one who never quite figured out how to thrive.
The sound of these thoughts drowned out the quiet gasps of your mom crying and the baby across the aisle cooing and stuffing the corner of a hymnal in her mouth.
It even drowned out the loud scratch of the microphone when it brushed the reverend’s collar and snapped all the mourners to attention.
It was not a bad service, from what you caught of it.
The religious people who ran it must have at least gotten the hint that you were a clan of agnostics verging on atheists.
They didn’t speak much about heaven or hell or other things you’d heard at your Catholic grandmother’s funeral five years ago.
They had done their research about the deceased, and when the reverend told stories he’d been fed about Sean’s lively personality, they sounded heartfelt.
But somehow this made things worse. It would have been easier to wallow if the eulogy had been incompetent, too holy, or sanctimonious. Instead, it was well done, but you still knew that barely anyone in the room understood the real Sean, much less the complicated circumstances of his death.
The exception, of course, was the girl at the back of the room, sitting next to her Serbian grandmother.
You tried not to look back there too much, but you couldn’t help it, and whenever you did, she was staring straight ahead like she had blinders on.
Your parents couldn’t stop crying. On top of everything else, they had been fielding calls from reporters all week, people who were trying to sensationalize Sean’s death and make it part of an exposé about the dangers of illegal bike races.
Your dad had been angrier than you’d ever seen him yesterday, screaming into the phone at some poor fact-checker from the local paper.
But now that he was in the room with everyone else, he just looked defeated.
Your mom had thrown herself into every detail of the funeral, all the while wearing the same face she did after a night shift at the hospital: determined and resigned at the same time.
Neither one of them asked you how you knew about the bike race or whether Sean had told you.
They knew about his risk-taking past, and even though they were completely gutted by his death, they also had this look about them like maybe they’d known this was a possibility.
You only spoke to Diana once at the funeral.
In the middle of a diving coach’s speech about Sean’s team spirit, you left to go to the bathroom.
You couldn’t listen to a man who knew nothing about anything talk about Sean’s leadership in the locker room and how devastated he was when Sean had to quit.
It was all too much, so you whispered to your parents that you needed water and ducked out into the hallway, where you could breathe.
In the hall, you could sigh and swear to yourself as much as you wanted.
And when you went into the bathroom, just to run some cold water over your hands, you let yourself release some childish sounds of anguish.
A long whimper that wasn’t quite a cry and that echoed around the cavernous church bathroom.
You sat down on the tile floor and listened to the buzzing fluorescent lights.
Then you stood back up and walked out to the hall to find Diana waiting for you.
Her hair was cut short and dyed blond, but it was still curly, and escaping the confines of some bobby pins.
If you didn’t know any better, you’d think she cut it herself with some kitchen shears.
She looked older, and the black dress she’d borrowed from her baba only added to the effect.
Despite being just a year older than you, she’d always seemed more mature, like she’d had twice as many life experiences, which was probably true.
“I think we should leave,” she said to you in the hallway.
You were the only two people there, and you could hear the echoing murmur of the diving coach still nattering on inside.
“I don’t know…,” you started.
“We don’t have to talk or anything,” she said. “We can just drive.”
At that, you acquiesced and pulled out the keys to the Corolla.
“You can drive this time,” you said, and tossed them to her.
Leaving the church felt right the second you did it, abandoning the sad brick building and just getting on the freeway, where the weekend traffic was sparse and lazy.
Midafternoon light came in through the dirty windshield, refracted and faded.
Diana drove outside the bounds of the city, and then kept on going past the first-ring suburbs.
You realized you had actually never seen her drive a car before, but she seemed perfectly natural behind the wheel.
She turned the radio on and found a jazz station on the A.M. dial that was playing something from decades ago.
A man improvising on a saxophone from a time before your parents were kids.
Diana was true to her word; you didn’t speak as you made it out past the suburban sprawl to the first farms. You saw cows, lowing by the side of fenced-in lots, and goats stomping around in their proprietary way.
There were even a few alpacas, twisting their long furry necks to watch you go by.
You wanted to ask Diana how far she was going to drive, but she’d said no talking, so you didn’t risk it.
You were aware of her, though. She smelled like cigarettes, and she looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks.
A couple of times she blinked, and you worried she wouldn’t get her lids back open.
Eventually, you looked out the window again, and there wasn’t much around at all.
Just some hills, birch trees, and a few clouds.
She seemed relaxed, but then you saw her hands, white-knuckled on the wheel.
You only realized where she was going when you saw the familiar wooden sign for the quarry.
You were coming around a corner on a tight two-lane road, and you caught sight of it along with the gravel parking lot, totally empty on a cool day.
You looked at Diana, but she didn’t look back.
You didn’t know if she had been planning to come here all along or if the car had somehow found its way here like a salmon returning to its natal stream.
She turned off the car. Then she got out and started walking.
You weren’t sure you wanted to follow, but the thought of just sitting alone in a car for the next hour seemed like the only thing worse, so you opened the door and stepped out.
The feeling of the stones against your shoes felt both familiar and strange, and when you looked down at the rocks, you noticed a pink hue mixed in with the cream.
You had read a little bit about the quarry online since your day there with Sean and Diana.
It was a former granite mine from the 1920s.
They used the stone for foundations, streetcar routes, and monuments.
It was hard to imagine it now that the mines were filled with water, but they used to be full of quarriers lifting stones with a giant crane, then using them to build statues of dead heroes.
As you walked the path to the cliffs, you wondered which famous men were immortalized with this stone. What had they done to be remembered forever? And why was everyone else buried out of sight where no one would ever think of them?
“Case. Stop!”
You might have walked right off the cliff if Diana hadn’t held out her hand.
Somehow, while you were thinking about statues, you’d reached the edge.
Oddly enough, your adrenaline didn’t spike; you just stopped and looked down.
You weren’t sure what you were expecting, but there was no one down in the water this time.
No teenagers cracking beers and splashing.
And no Sean in his serene back float. Just an upside-down sky, painted across the clear surface of the water.
The emptiness was unnerving. It was like no one else could come now that Sean was gone, and the thought occurred to you that maybe all the other kids had just been extras in Sean’s movie. Now that the lead wasn’t there anymore, doing flips from improbable heights, the extras weren’t there either.
Diana took something out of her pocket then.
A piece of paper. It wasn’t until you saw the photo of Sean that you recognized it as the funeral program.
Your parents hadn’t chosen a bad picture necessarily, just a safe one.
It was one of his senior photos, the one for the school yearbook where he wore a gray T-shirt under a navy V-neck sweater and looked a little like somebody’s helpful grandson.
There was none of that mischief in his eyes.
No challenge in his smile. And you didn’t have long to look at it before Diana began to fold it.
Her technique was precise. A fold lengthwise.
Then the corners, so they met the center crease.
Then she folded again until diagonal lines shot out from the middle.
Finally, she tucked the whole thing in on itself and brought the wings down.
She offered it to you then, a perfect dart, crisp from the heavy paper stock.
But you couldn’t take it. You could still see his eyes in the fold of the plane, and you didn’t want to touch it.
Diana just shrugged. Then she cocked her arm back and let it go.
She let it fly at a 45-degree angle. And for a moment it just seemed to hang in the air, like it might soar over the entire quarry and light on the top of a birch tree on the distant shore.
But the wind seemed to take it then, and it nose-dived toward the water, speeding toward its target like a missile.
Finally, it made contact with the surface, rippling the sky, and then just floating there, swelling with water.
It wasn’t a stone monument.
But it was something. Temporary evidence he’d been there.
And though you knew it would eventually dissolve, for a moment it felt like he was there with you.
You’re not sure how long you watched it.
But it still hadn’t sunk when you wiped your nose on the sleeve of your uncomfortable blazer and turned away.
Diana pretended not to notice your tears.
She followed you this time, and when you got back to the car, she handed you the keys.
You drove on the way back, and you didn’t feel like music this time so you just listened to the road.
When you got back to the church, you thought this might be the last time you saw Diana.
When it came down to it, you were both a reminder of the other’s pain, and your last moments together had been filled with shame and confusion.
You walked back down the hallway. Everyone was in a meeting room, eating cold cuts.
Family, coaches, teammates. You peered in the window and saw your parents nodding at something the reverend was saying.
Get away.
That’s the thought that came next.
As soon as you can.
It was too early for college, but you needed to find a way out of your current life.
Away from the painful conversations with your family that were coming, and all the reminders of Sean that would greet you everywhere you went.
Nothing was going to change if you stayed here, except maybe your dosage of medication.
Somehow, you were going to have to find a way out.
About a month later, when you’d hit a dead end in therapy, and nothing seemed to be getting better, your parents would sit you down one afternoon with a plan.
They’d tell you it was time to try something new.
That they couldn’t risk losing another child.
Your dad would hand you his phone, open to a website.
Find your potential through experiential therapy in nature, it would say, over a picture of a glittering lake.
“Sean would have liked it,” he’d say.
And he would be right. But he wouldn’t have to sell you. By that point, you would be ready to go anywhere that wasn’t the same home and school where everyone knew you as Sean’s brother. Anywhere that wasn’t a museum of his life cut short. Even the middle of the woods.
Back in the church, before you knew about any of this, you were already saying goodbye. You were saying goodbye to this day and to this awful funeral. And in your head, you were already saying goodbye to the only other person you loved. The one you’d just spent the afternoon with.
“I don’t think I can do this sad snack buffet,” she said. “I’m gonna go.”
“I understand,” you said.
Which meant it was time to part. She stepped in to hug you, but you were pretty much already gone by then, so you instinctually backed away.
She stopped and just looked at you for a moment, not quite sure why you couldn’t even hug someone who was grieving beside you.
You were positive, in that moment, that you would never hear from her again.
But later that night, you got a phone call, and you just watched her name appear on your phone until it disappeared.
She called again the next night, and the next. You let them all go to voicemail.
They’re still there, the messages. In your phone. Un-listened to. You’ve carried them around as you sleepwalked through life for the past half year. And you carry them still, in a bag, in the woods, like a penance.