Four years after I graduated high school I was living in a rundown apartment by myself a long way from my old town. One of the windows in the kitchen was smashed and covered loosely with a trash bag. It has been like that for months after some kid hurled a brick through it for fun. I was too nervous to call the landlord and have an argument with him about how it actually got broken. Losing the argument meant owing him money I didn’t have. One of the only pieces of furniture I owned was a sofa I found on the side of the road with a cardboard sign that read “Free” stuck between the cushions and backrest.
In addition I had a fridge, a stove with those flimsy metal coils for burners, a mattress on the floor, a small desk, a microwave, a rickety chair, and a huge old box TV. The kind you still needed to slap the side of to clear up a wobbly image and sweep away the static. I survived on nothing but hot dogs, ramen, and frozen vegetables. I spent most of my time in the apartment — when I wasn’t working — vegging out in front of the television trying to pretend I wasn’t actually living in this dump, that I wasn’t on a collision course toward a lackluster life.
When the TV wasn’t working I would stumble through the memories of high school with both fondness and terror. There never appears to be an “average day” in the life of the average teenager. Poring over my memories it seemed as if each day was either amazing or terrible, but I suppose trimming that fat is what the mind does automatically. I was a bit of a weird kid in high school. I had an innocent looking face and a knack for social mimicry. I could get along fine with everyone, but it was very difficult for me to develop intimate friendships.
I was a new kid as a freshman, but everyone at this particular high school had gone to middle school together, as it was located in the same building. It was a rural area which worried me even more. Everybody must already know everybody and I’d be the only person who doesn’t. Luckily, I met my two best friends David and Jeremy the very first morning of my high school career. Maybe I walked in looking frightened. Maybe I just looked confused. I saw Jeremy point at me from one of the lunch tables where everyone was gathering before our first class.
“You!” He said to me. I ignored him because I was sure he was trying to get the attention of someone behind me.
He repeated himself with more fanfare in his voice, “You! Black shirt, Cargo pants, come over here. Sit down.”
I followed his instructions and sat down at the table where he and a bunch of other kids were already sitting. He introduced me to everyone and I introduced myself back. Half of the table was ignoring us — because I know now that this is just how Jeremy tends to be all the time.
He put his arm around me, put his other arm around the boy sitting on the other side of him, and with as much confidence as someone proclaiming that the sun will rise Jeremy said, with no room for argument, “You. Me. Dave. We’re gunna be best friends the entire fuckin’ time we’re in this place.” And it was so.
My phone buzzed. I hadn’t gotten a text in six days. I thought it was my mother doing her weekly checking up on me, but it turns out the message was from Dave. It had been years since we last spoke to one another. Nothing hard feelings related. Nature took its course when I moved out of town again. You try to keep in touch for a while, but then you forget, then you get busy, and then you get too tired to deal with anything that doesn’t involve your basest functions. Old friends prioritize each other less and less until eventually they’ve not spoken for so long it feels strange to start a conversation that doesn’t acknowledge the absence. I opened the message and it said, “Jeremy died.” My ribs turned to lead and I called him.
“Hey man,” Dave said trying to keep his composure.
“Hey,” I responded.
“So uh…yeah I guess it happened yesterday,” he said.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Bad batch of heroin. Wanted one last hurrah before finally doing that computer science program he kept talking about,” Dave said.
“I thought he kicked the stuff,” I said.
“We all did,” he said.
I looked up at my ceiling and sighed, “Fuckin’ idiot.”
“He was sleeping over Wyatt’s house and he had some on him. Took the opportunity. Never woke up. Found cold on the couch.”
“Are…” I stammered, “Okay, when’s the service?” I asked.
“Sunday. 3pm. You need a ride? Place to stay?” He asked.
“Ride? No. Place to stay? Yeah.” I said.
“I’m still living with my mom, but I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you,” He said — trying to talk about anything else.
“Yeah man, I’ll head over now.” I said.
After an uncomfortable farewell I got in my car and started driving. Memories of Jeremy flooded into my brain as if a dam had burst. The three of us did nearly everything together, but I was closer to David than I was to Jeremy. David was closer to Jeremy than he was to me. I remember getting Jeremy’s older brother to sell us miniature apple flavored cigars when we were freshmen and weaving through the woods around David’s house talking about whatever popped into our heads at any given moment.
I remember we had this stupid inside joke about the Mesothelioma commercials that bombarded basic cable back then.
“Everybody better watch out for that Mesothelioma,” he’d say, “Lock your doors, pal. Or else Mesothelioma will come a get ya. Literally rip you limb from limb.” It’s not that funny now — lots of jokes sour into embarrassment when you grow older — but it was hilarious at the time. On numerous occasions I’d be in my apartment and the commercial would air. I’d reach for my phone to text Jeremy and say, “Hey man, guess what was just on?” But every single time I’d put the phone down and think it had been way too long since we last connected, and trying to open up with a crass cancer joke instead of a groveling explanation as to why I hadn’t contacted him for such a lengthy period of time might offend him.
The three of us had our first drink together too. We started a fire in Dave’s fire pit one summer weekend after sophomore year. We sat in three folding lawn chairs in front of the fire listening to the coals crackle. When I would look up a tangle of tree branches slithered through the evening sky. There wasn’t much light pollution. On particularly good nights we could faintly make out the splatter of the Milky Way. It was beautiful all the same.
David went inside without saying a word and brought back three half-empty plastic cups filled with a deep brown liquid. He told us that this was coffee-flavored brandy. All three of us thought it tasted terrible, but we all pretended we loved it and tried to comment on the subtle flavors of the liquor like we’d been there before. Jeremy would usually try to do something funny and dangerous like putting far too much wood on, or setting the end of a small stick on fire and waving it around like a torch.
He made these nights around the fire a little less somber and serious. Despite my and David’s attempts to talk about life, girls, future job prospects, philosophical questions, our issues, our parents, our siblings, anything really. Whenever the conversation would get beyond a certain threshold of heavy Jeremy would chime in with a joke, or change the subject entirely. Eventually though, he opened up a little bit, and over time we got him to join us in our juvenile quest to understand everything. Jeremy made life feel a little bit more free.
Whenever any of us had a major life issue we’d plan to meet in David’s backyard, start a fire, and ramble on about it. We couldn’t fix it, but we’d talk. Jeremy never told us about his drug problem. We knew he took drugs — even some of the harder stuff — but we didn’t know that it had become a problem. There were clues that the both of us should’ve picked up on. Start hanging around certain kinds of people. Started wearing long sleeve shirts and jeans in the summer. Having to leave early because he was getting sick.
My worst memory of Jeremy is the morning after a sleepover we had at David’s house. Dave had an elderly dog with hip problems and so — every day at dinner — he’d need to put its pain pill inside of a piece of food and trick the poor girl into eating it. David’s mom discovered that some of the pills went missing and immediately accused Jeremy of taking them. Jeremy defended himself against this particular accusation, but coincidences like this had already piled up over the years and his arguments started straining credulity. I arrived at David’s house, we greeted each other, started a fire, cracked a couple beers, and sat in our traditional lawn chairs now shredded with holes by time and use.
David was a quiet guy. Reserved. He never went off on a tangent, and preferred to speak in body language whenever he could get away with it.
“How are you holding up?” I asked.
“As much as I can,” he responded.
He picked up a long piece of wood and started poking the coals around. It was clear that he didn’t want to talk about it. He just needed somebody to watch his back in the dark while he rifled through his own memories, and I was willing to do that for him. The fire was near to smoldering out when he got up and started walking inside.
“If you’re gunna stay up make sure it’s out. Couch is all yours.”
“Alright,” I said.
The next day we arrived at the funeral home, but not before driving past the park in the center of town. The nearby lumber mill would gather up a bunch of its scrap wood throughout the year and then on July 4th they’d pile it up in the middle of the park and set it ablaze. Almost everybody nearly always went, and everyone acted surprised to see everyone else there despite that fact. They’d end the night with a fireworks show too.
The funeral home was a very tiny white building. I saw familiar faces gathered outside and a couple of them were already crying. I hadn’t cried yet. I needed to be a stern face for the others here, and the reality of the situation wasn’t quite hitting me yet. I gave a few hugs and then returned to David’s side.
“You gunna be alright?” I asked.
“Yeah. Let’s just go,” he replied.
We walked through the door and his mother was standing there in the casket room’s entryway thanking everyone for coming. To her right were a bunch of prayer cards with Jeremy’s face on it, and a bunch of quartz pieces that had been smoothed by ocean waves. I took one of each and put them in my pocket. His mother had been sobbing. When she saw the two of us approach she ran up and hugged us tightly.
“It really means a lot that you boys came,” she said.
When we finally got inside there was a long slow line of old acquaintances and members of his family waiting to pay their respects. The casket was open. David was ahead of me in line. When it was his turn he walked up, put his hands in his pockets, and stared silently at Jeremy’s body. After a couple of minutes he took out the piece of quartz and started rubbing it as he looked inside. Then he walked away to a seat on the right.
It was my turn. I walked up to the casket and stared into it. What was inside did not look like Jeremy. While the mortician tries their best, they never can make the dead look like their living selves. It looked like someone had constructed a melting mannequin to resemble my friend and stuck it in a casket. It was the first time I’d ever seen him wear a suit. Except I wasn’t actually seeing him wearing a suit — just something dressed up as Jeremy with a suit on it.
You hear stories of what someone who overdoses looks like. See it in movies. I saw it once in a nightclub bathroom about a year ago too. Some stranger was slumped over on the toilet with his pants down. His head was limp against his shoulder and his legs were sliding out from under him. The needle flopped carelessly from his inner elbow, barely clinging to the underside of the skin. It pained me to imagine that man with Jeremy’s face.
David almost broke down during the eulogy, but he managed to get through it. Everyone retreated to the parking lot and the pallbearers loaded his body into the hearse, signaling the beginning of the procession. We both got into David’s car, and as soon as the doors were closed he started pounding his fist into the steering wheel, screaming obscenities in a cracked voice with each hit.
“I’m gunna find these guys. These fuckin’ dealers. That fuckin’ scumbag that gave it to him! I don’t give a shit they can kill me if I don’t get the right jump on em. But they’ve got to pay for this. Somebody’s gotta pay for this. This can’t just be a goddamn whoopsie daisy.” David said as he started the car.
I grabbed his arm before we could get rolling.
“Don’t do that,” I said.
“I said I don’t give a shit! I’m shooting every single one of these fuckers in the teeth. Whoever sold it to that jerkoff and the jerkoff himself,” David wailed through heaving sobs.
“Don’t make me lose two friends,” I said.
David was angry and vengeful. He’d grown wings of righteous fire. I needed to physically restrain him until he calmed down and promised me that he wouldn’t go through with it whenever I ended up leaving. David broke down for a few minutes and I gave him a little while to get it all out.
“Come on man, he needs us there,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said.
After the ceremony at the funeral each of us put our little handful of dirt over the casket after it was lowered into the ground. His parents were crying, our former classmates were all red-eyed and wiping their noses, but still I couldn’t bring myself to tears. David and I went back to his house after sitting around the hole in the earth where our best friend was going. We were the last ones there aside from his parents, and they asked us if we wouldn’t mind letting them have some alone time with their son. We respectfully said our goodbyes.
That night we had another fire in David’s yard, but set up an empty lawn chair between us in honor of Jeremy. Neither of us said a word to each other all evening. We spent the entire time getting lost in the whips of the flame, the majesty of the clear night sky, and the booze. Occasionally one of us would notice the fire was getting low and throw another log on, or we’d reach into the cooler to grab another drink. But other than that only the sporadic pop from the fire and the constant music of crickets lit up our ears. I still hadn’t cried.
“Okay. Going to bed. See you tomorrow,” David said as he got up and walked back inside. I sprayed the logs with his garden hose and went to bed as well. I left the next morning after making sure Dave didn’t need me to stay another day. I drove home and entered my sordid kitchen once again. I passed by the shattered window, sat down on the ragged sofa and turned the TV on. I started to worry that Dave didn’t think I was taking this hard enough, but I very much was. It haunted my mind for the next few nights and I could barely sleep. Was I truly this callous? Have I been so worn down by the few years of independent life I’d lived I can’t bring myself to cry at my best friend’s funeral?
After work around a week later I came home, put a hot dog in a stale bun and microwaved it. I plopped down on my sofa, cracked a beer, and turned the TV on — as was my routine — getting ready to enjoy a night full of mind-erasing programming. The commercial came on for the law firm that specializes in cases surrounding the contraction of Mesothelioma. I chuckled to myself, reached for my phone, and then I wept. I wept like a goddamn baby.