Chasing William (2 page)

“Crissy!”

I haven’t even made it to the door and I’m
being attacked from behind. It’s always funny how enthusiastic
people are on the first day of school. Of course, it’s also nice to
know everyone you cared about survived the summer. I wasn’t usually
a touchy-feely person, but that was enough to make me want to go
around giving hugs.

“Hey, Mars!” Marissa was by far the happiest
of my little group. Sometimes we’d make fun of her for being too
naïve or stuck in Neverland where she could never grow up like the
rest of us. Looking at her now, genuinely happy to be alive and
more excited about the future than anyone I’d ever met, I felt a
little jealous. See, another thing William’s death had made me
start thinking about was how short life was (and how little I’d
done with mine). Say what you will about Mars, you couldn’t say she
wasn’t living life. I’d give anything to trade places with her and
live in her bubble where the world was good and full of
potential.

“Hooow was your summer?” Mars has a habit of
stringing out her vowels when she’s really excited. She grabs my
arm and skips me to my locker. I feel a sudden twinge of pain in my
heart as I think about what the world would be like without her. I
wish I’d taken the time to really get to know her, but any extra
time I could’ve spent with my friends would have had to come out of
my time with William and I couldn’t imagine giving that up,
especially now. Funny how life works sometimes.

“Alright. Lots of work, saving up for
college, you know.” It’s strange how contagious Mars’s energy is. I
haven’t felt this happy for weeks. I can tell it’s an artificial
boost, though, like a chameleon taking on the characteristics of
its surroundings. I know once Mars leaves I’ll go back to feeling
miserable. I wish I could be the kind of person she is and I’m
almost tempted to follow her around all day just to keep that happy
feeling around. “And how was your summer, dear?”

“Fantastic! I had this internship at a
doctor’s office and got to work with all these sick kids.” Mars
continues to ramble on about her summer and that good feeling keeps
building. She’s just so happy. I used to find that annoying: it was
actually the reason I didn’t spend much time with her outside the
group. I thought I’d find her exuberance even more frustrating now,
and there was a part of me that had trouble understanding how she
could be so happy when my world was falling apart. More than being
upset by it though, I just want to soak in as much as I could. She
isn’t being happy for my benefit or trying to cheer me up. She’s
just naturally happy and that’s something I could use more of in my
life.

“That sounds perfect for you, Mars!” Now, as
grateful as I am for a little of Mars’s extra happiness it’s still
hard to keep up with everything she’s saying and I really only
catch one in every ten words.

“It was just so great! I can’t wait to do
this for the rest of my life!” That was another thing about Mars:
she knew what she wanted to do with her life. She’d had her top
five schools picked out freshman year and every one of them would
probably fight over her. I’m jealous of that too. It was hard
enough trying to figure out what I wanted to do when things seemed
normal. Having to deal with that and losing William was a lot to
swallow. I’m trying to just push college out of my mind. It’s not
the best strategy, but it works for now.

“You’re so lucky you know what you want to
do…” I stop as the bell rings and Mars skips off to class.

“Hey, why weren’t you at Amanda’s this
weekend? We all missed you!” Mars calls over her shoulder.

I don’t know anything about a thing at
Amanda’s place. Every year our friend Amanda has the group over for
an end-of-summer party. I hadn’t heard from her this year. I
thought she was too busy to have anything. Maybe I’d just misheard.
Guess I’ll figure it all out at lunch. Everything usually gets
resolved at lunch. That’s like, the high school code.

I have to say that very few classes seem
important to me now that William is dead. It makes more sense that
we should all be out doing something we love instead of learning
about things that really don’t help us live life. I’ve always liked
English though. I know there are plenty of people who’d consider it
one of those useless classes, but it makes sense to me. All these
authors wanted to do was create a place for people to escape to,
and probably escape themselves. I can see how having a place to
escape to might come in handy out in the real world. I could use
one. That’s why I’ve been spending so much time reading. It keeps
my mind from thinking about William. English makes sense to me. I
can hide behind it. Maybe I’ll go to school for English. I’m not
sure what I’d do though. You can’t exactly get a job in escapism
and I’m not sure I’d be a great teacher. My English teacher, Miss
R., she’s great. You can tell she wants all her students to
succeed, she doesn’t have favorites or people she hates, and the
classroom is fair. I don’t think I’d be able to do that. There are
people I’m not sure I’d be able to stand.

I see Amanda sitting over to the side so I
go over to join her. I’m not sure I really want to sit by her but I
feel obligated. It’s weird how you always feel like you have to sit
by someone in your “group”. I hate sitting off to the side,
especially in Miss R.’s room because there are only three desks
over there and whoever sits in them sticks out. I’d rather sit in
the center of the classroom with everyone else. It’s not that I
really want to hide. It just makes class easier when I don’t feel
like everyone is staring at me. Some people are front row people,
like Amanda. They like to be singled out and want to share their
opinions as often as possible. I’m one of those people who’d rather
sit in the second row. I pay attention, but I only talk when I have
something to say. I’m not too crazy about always being in the line
of fire. I sit by Amanda anyway. It’s like the unspoken rule of
high school: you sit by who you know.

Amanda doesn’t seem too excited I’ve come to
join her. It makes everything I went through in my head combine
into this knot of frustration. None of this highschool stuff is
important, I know that, but somehow I still seem obliged to play by
those rules.

“Hey, Amanda!” Amanda was the first friend
I’d made in high school and we always said that meant we’d be best
friends, but things had started to fall apart last year for no
apparent reason and I wasn’t sure how to fix it.

“Oh, hey.” She looks up at me for a few
seconds then back at the floor, or more accurately, her cell phone.
She sends a quick text and then looks up again, a little more alert
this time.

“Oh, hey, Crissy! How are you?!” She gives
me a halfhearted hug from her desk and then goes back to her
phone.

“Fine. Hey, I heard you had a thing at your
house this weekend?” I wasn’t planning on saying anything. It just
came out. I guess I miss my friend, especially right now, and if
there’s any way to go back to a point in time where I could talk to
her about something like William and death, I’ll take it.

“Yeah, Pru told you.”

“No, Mars mentioned it today.”

“No,” Amanda starts laughing like I’m an
idiot,” Pru called you and told you to come.”

“She didn’t.” I shrug. “I was just
wondering.” The one thing that really bothers me about Amanda is
how I can never be mad at her. I know that sounds strange, but
sometimes it’s healthy to get angry and everyone’s entitled.
Amanda, however, has a gift for always making it someone else’s
fault. I think it would bother me less if she just said she forgot
to invite me.

“Yeah, sorry, you know I’d never forget to
invite you! Pru’s just kind of an airhead, you know that.”

I nod, but it’s a pretty lame story. If she
really wanted me to show up she would have called me herself. Since
when does Pru call to invite people over to Amanda’s house? Still,
I have more history with her than anyone else and I’m not ready to
give up on that yet. Maybe she’ll understand when I tell her about
William. Tragedies like this are supposed to bring people together.
If William’s death can bring me my best friend back then maybe it
will hurt less. I wait until class was over and we are walking to
lunch, trying to linger long enough so the hallways would be empty.
I am going to do it. I am going to tell someone the whole story and
then maybe everything will feel a little less miserable.

“Come on, Crissy, let’s go.” Amanda is just
one step away from tapping her foot.

“Yeah, I’m coming. So, Amanda, my summer was
kind of crappy. You remember…”

“You think your summer was crappy? Let me
tell you about mine. My. God. I wish my parents would just get a
fucking divorce already. I mean, come the fuck on.”

That’s another thing about Amanda: she likes
to say fuck. I’m not sure why. Maybe she thinks it makes her look
tough. I guess it works some of the time. Other times it just makes
her look like she doesn’t know any words longer than four
letters.

“Yeah, that’s not too great.” I don’t want
to just skip over Amanda’s problems, but she has so many of them.
Everything in Amanda’s life is a problem to her somehow. Usually
that doesn’t bother me, but I really want to get out what I have to
say before she goes on about her problem. If I don’t say something
now, today, it will just get harder to open my mouth. “But, you
remember William? Well, he died over the summer.” There, the tough
part was out. Now it won’t be so hard to finish the story. Amanda
will feel for me, she’ll let me talk. I won’t be so alone.

“Yeah. I know. Pru told me. How’d you find
out?”

“Um, wait. How would Prudence know?”

“Her mom found out somehow. Why do you ever
care? You guys dated for like 30 seconds, big fucking deal. Me and
Jake actually survived the freshman year, immature stage. It’s been
almost three years. That’s a real relationship. Besides, William
was a fucking heroin addict. I doubt it was a surprise.”

“Well, I’d heard he’d been clean for a few
months, um, six or seven months. So he wasn’t just an addict.”

“An addict is a fucking addict. They don’t
change. And why the fuck do you even care?”

“Um, I, um…” I just shrug. I don’t know what
else I can say. It took so much reserve strength to get those few
words out I don’t have any left. This is not the scenario I had
pictured. She can’t even tell how upset I am.

“Come on, Crissy, lunch is half over.
“What’s your deal?”

“Bathroom. Meet you later.”

“Whatever.”

Amanda walks off without even glancing in my
direction. I’m shaking, too upset to even cry. I don’t understand
how she can be so heartless. I guess I can understand that she
doesn’t know William was still my boyfriend. That was my fault.
Still, someone we knew had died before they could legally drink.
That had to deserve some kind of empathy. Maybe I wouldn’t care if
I hadn’t known him, hadn’t loved him. I mean, I’m sure there were
other people my age who had died before William and I didn’t care.
Amanda might not have been so out of line. It just seems so wrong.
It’s hard to think about the person I was before William died. The
whole thing has changed me so much. I guess if you don’t know how
it feels you can’t understand. But still, something about her
attitude is so cruel.

I spend the rest of lunch in the bathroom
and Amanda doesn’t come to see how I am once. Neither does anyone
else.

To:
William Davis

Message:
In case you didn’t know, the
rest of the world is still turning. I know, it sounds so strange,
doesn’t it? I mean, I knew that would happen it just seems a little
strange. As far as problems go, I’ve never really had any worth
mentioning until now. Sure I’ve done my fair share of complaining
(especially to you), but I thought when something really happened
people would care more. I remember when you first came back from
‘“That Place”’ and you told me about all you were going through and
I told you about all my “important” issues at school. You said that
even though I was older than you I still had some time to grow up.
Of course, you quickly followed that with a kiss and said you hoped
I’d never have to grow up the way you did. But I think I finally
get what you meant. I just wish you were here so I’d have someone
to talk to about this cruel revelation. Although I guess if you
were here for me to talk to I wouldn’t have this problem. I believe
that is what they call a paradox, lol. Still miss you, still love
you. Wish I knew how to handle things.

“
In solitude we find solace.
In loneliness we are alone.”

Now, when you follow the magic of the
fortune cookie, good quotes become like a kind of addiction. Every
profound one-line phrase seems to be something much more special
than it would be otherwise. People usually talk about how important
it is to talk about things in context, how everything’s different
once they explain what they meant. That’s true to some extent, like
how there’s such a big deal about Tom Sawyer being taught in
schools. Take one word out of context and it’s a hate crime; leave
it in context and it becomes a social commentary about a culture
and a lesson in change and progress. Sometimes that’s not always
the case though; some lines can be greatly improved by being taken
out of context. Like in
The Great Gatsby
when Nice describes
Daisy by saying “her voice had money in it”. It’s a great line. The
kind of line you could ponder for hours and create thousands of
scenarios surrounding it. There’s a whole world in that line, but
if you read it as a part of the whole book, you might not even
notice it. You could skim over all those worlds, all those
possibilities, and not even know it. I went through a Fitzgerald
stage a few years ago (who hasn’t gone through a Fitzgerald phase?)
and he has some fantastic, wondrous, one-liners. My favorite is
from
The Beautiful and the Damned
where he writes that
“people often choose inimitable people to imitate”. There’s a line
that doesn’t need context---it’s a story all on its own.