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Jeremy lay on his back, gangly legs stretched over the faded red pull-out couch. He lazily fidgeted with the controller, watching as his tiny avatar got beat up by another zombie, giving a frustrated grunt as his character died. Michael sat beside him, slouched over, furiously mashing the buttons as the small pixelated version of him got splattered with pixelated red dots. The screen brightened to red, then faded to black as the level restarted.
Jeremy sighed, one hand running through his messy brown locks, the other reaching for the assortment of snacks and soda haphazardly strewn across the coffee table. He grabbed a bag of spicy Cheetos, tearing it open and tossing one into his mouth. Michael reached for the open bag, hastily grabbing a handful before they restarted the level for the third time. The classic starting theme began as their tiny video-game selves faded onto the screen again.
Michael had kept true to the promise of “getting stoned in my basement”, and it had been four hours since they had come down. Jeremy was barely focused on the game, eyes flicking around the dim-lit basement, the only light coming from Michael’s old TV.
The basement door, painted a cold white that didn’t quite match the off-white, almost beige basement walls. Michael’s parents hadn’t bothered to change them.
The faded red pull-out, somewhere that was suitable enough for both of them to play video games. Nice enough to sit on, but not so fancy that they were afraid to ruin it.
The old white table. The one that the five-year-old Jeremy and Michael had come down to, seeing it as a canvas to be painted on. Michael had grabbed a bag of sharpies, and their names, messily scrawled, were in the very corner. A “BEST FRENS” that was scribbled in the same ragged font, before they had known how to spell well. A Pac-man drawing, the same one that both of them had gotten tattoos of in seventh grade.
The cabinet. The one that all of Michael’s retro video games were stuffed into, a collection of outdated video games with faded covers, some of them from yard sales, many having lost their bright colors, but it didn’t matter.
Michael’s collection of cassette tapes. Some of them from when he was an angsty middle schooler consisted of loud rock music. Many were Bob Marley, and many were some obscure artist that Jeremy didn’t know of, that Michael would go on an impossibly long tangent about until Jeremy fell asleep. All were stored in a cardboard box that was carefully inscribed “CASSETTES” in all-capitals.
The glow-in-the-dark stars plastered to the ceiling that Michael had begged his mothers’ to buy for him, the glow now dimmed, but still there, albeit faintly.
And, of course, Jeremy thought,
Michael himself.
Michael, with his signature red hoodie, the many patches ironed on making it indescribably his.
Michael, with the Pac-Man tattoo that matched with his own when their arms lined up.
Michael, with the glasses typically reserved for cranky middle-aged women with terrible vision, but somehow, by miracle, made him look even cuter than he already was.
Michael, with his deep coffee-colored hair that smelled strongly of the cheap mint shampoo from Target, after he showered.
Michael, with his chocolate-brown eyes, reflecting the colored and pixelated screen as he focused on brutally annihilating the pixelated zombies.
Michael, Michael, Michael.
His first friend.
His best friend.
Michael, who could somehow find it in himself to forgive Jeremy, even after all that he did, even after Jeremy had treated him that way.
Michael, who had cared enough about him, that he had snuck into Jake’s Halloween party to warn him about the SQUIP.
And Jeremy didn’t listen.
He ignored his closest friend of twelve years, who was just trying to keep him safe.
And called him “ Loser ”, hurting him in a way that he knew was something that he could maybe never really apologize for.
He knew that he didn’t deserve to be by Michael’s side. Michael could be friends with pretty much anyone now, especially after the SQUIP accident. Being a “nerd”, “loser”, or “geek” was the new trend now.
And yet,
He still chose to stay by Jeremy.
Jeremy Heere, the boy who started this whole mess.
Jeremy Heere, with all of his flaws and imperfections and problems and mistakes.
“Are you paying attention? You’re getting eaten by a zombie, dude!” Michael laughed, as Jeremy snapped out of his trance.
He was lying on his back, staring up at the faded glow-in-the-dark stars, the sound of his character getting brutally murdered playing in the background.
Michael switched off the screen, and plopped down next to Jeremy, lying impossibly close, not realizing that Jeremy’s face had turned a shade of deep red. His gaze drifted from the glowing green stars to Jeremy, who looked half-awake. It was two in the morning, after all.
“Whatcha thinking about, Jere?” he asked, a sleepy smile on his face that could either be attributed to the pot or how late it was.
Maybe both.
“Mmm… I don’t know, just...stuff, I guess.”
They lay there in silence for a while, one of the stars peeling off, both of them too stoned to do anything about it besides stare.
Then, suddenly, Jeremy quietly asked,
“Hey, Micah, do you remember that time I fell off of the swing set in first grade?”
Michael smiled. “...Which time? There were so many.”
Jeremy seemed to be reminiscing about something that had happened so long ago that it could have been a dream, too hazy and faded to remember clearly.
“That time that we went on the swing set, and you pushed me so hard that I fell off, and you had to get the nurse, and kept laughing the whole time?”
Michael laughed quietly, a laugh that Jeremy wanted to keep for himself, to be the reason for his smiles, his laugh, the way his eyes lit up whenever Jeremy came over.
“Yeah, why?”
Jeremy smiled.
“Dunno. Just randomly remembered it. Hey, what about that time when we got the Pac-Man tattoo when we were thirteen?”
“Oh, yeah! My moms were so mad that I secretly got a tattoo pen… they got over it, though.”
As if in lieu of this event, both lifted up their arms, the tattoo lining up perfectly.
They lay there a little longer, staring at the ceiling, no light other than the barely-hanging-on stars, until one of them finally peeled off and drifted down.
Almost as if on reflex, Michael caught it.
He held it in his outstretched palm for a moment, finally sticking the faded star onto the back of his other hand.
Michael smiled a soft smile, so different from his irresistibly, happy, contagious one, but just as endearing, just as angelic, the one that nobody but Jeremy got to see, the smile of late nights and Apocalypse of the Damned and tired, yet happy, their twelve years of friendship.
Jeremy was sure that Michael had to be an angel that had descended from the farthest reaches of the cosmos that had come down to Earth, becoming his closest friend, and the boy that he had grown to become impossibly infatuated with, the boy that Jeremy didn’t deserve.
His eyes flickered to Michael in the dark, who was only illuminated by the star sticker softly glowing in the darkness of the basement.
His smile, soft.
His eyes, sleepy.
His face, drowsy and stoned, yet perfect at the same time, a star-borne seraph.
At that moment, he was absolutely sure that Michael was an angel descended from the stars.