Chapter Text
The memorial service was always awkward.
Zachary Scuderi always felt at his heaviest the night before, when he looked outside at the sun setting and realised he couldn’t pretend that it wasn’t happening again. Like clockwork every year since his best friend had died. Had been officially presumed to be dead. Had gone missing for so long they threw a funeral. However Zach sliced that cake, it didn’t change that the icing was made out of pure shit.
They practically had it down to an art by this point. Zachary would come home from school like usual on May 12th. He would try very hard not to feel like more eyes were upon him than usual. Maryville, Kansas was a small town where very little happened, let alone a fifteen-year-old vanishing without a trace. He gave himself a free pass on his homework, dicked around on the internet, ate dinner. His parents would skate around the topic of what tomorrow symbolised. He let himself sink into the fantasy for a few minutes. The windows of the house at the end of their road weren’t boarded up, they shone with warmth- a family inside the walls. Will Hartman was waiting at the manhole cover that they had spent an afternoon in the summer calculating as exactly equidistant between their houses. Maybe he had his skateboard. Zach could never finish his dinner that evening, and fully expected for the fourth year running to slope upstairs with half of his plate going cold on the family dinner table. His parents would let him get on with it.
His little sister Emily would come into his room and hug him quickly. She never specified why exactly, she just wrapped her skinny arms around him and squeezed as hard as she could. She would pat him on the head and give him a watery smile. She would leave. Zach would stare at the wall for a while, and daydream until his phone beeped. Hai ‘Ever the Ringleader’ Lam would text him as the sun faded into a warm mid-Spring dusk. The four of them would go and drink enough for five up on the hill, just outside the neighbourhood. Last year they had talked about Will a little for the first time, holding their own little memorial in a sense. It had felt like progress.
Unfortunately Zachary was making little progress in his AP Computing. If little was equivalent to ‘zero’. He rubbed his brow, the dust of the high school computer room making his eyes feel dry and pinched. He checked his watch; five thirty, on the 12th of May 2014. The code in front of him was looking blurry and he could feel a migraine pinching on his temples like probing fingers. He scoffed in disgust and started shovelling his notebooks into his bag. Stupid subject. He liked the internet not ‘computers’. He could scrape a passing grade in it if he finished this coursework by the end of the month. He wondered if he would get called into the principal’s office tomorrow, as had become tradition.
After the memorial Principal Patterson would call him into his office and gently enquire about his emotional wellbeing. Zach would thank him for his concern, and assure him he was doing fine. After that he would slam his fist into a tile, or simply just cry in the bathroom for three and a half minutes, before taking the rest of the day off to sit in his room and stare at the wall until May 14th rolled around.
The walk home only took 15 minutes, the late afternoon sun filtering through the birch trees that lined his walk from the high school to his house. Zach felt like he was having a small out-of-body experience, or maybe just a short existential crisis. He couldn’t separate the two timelines on days like today; there was a world where nothing bad ever happened to William Hartman. His legs felt wobbly as he trekked the same trail he did every day, imagining that Will was with him. Taller, probably. Less obnoxious, probably not. He wondered if Will was still alive, would he refuse to step on cracks in the pavement still? How much of the boy he knew would remain in the man he could have been today? Zach’s throat felt impossibly dry.
He cut across the fields, as they always did. A small, snide part of his brain accused him of being a masochist. Imaginary, ghostly figures ran across the vista in his mind. They had played here for years- Cops and Robbers, Pokemon, World of Warcraft, (after both of their moms banned them from computer games for a week after reading an article in the local paper about how it ‘stunted’ kids), making dens, climbing trees, stealing beers, proudly showing their friends the shitty den they had made when they were thirteen, smoking their first joint. Zach felt the sudden urge to start running. He wanted to outstrip how fast the inevitable crush of time caught up with him. He wanted to sprint like a kid again. He wanted to double over and heave with tears because he knew ‘childhood’ was something synonymous with ‘Will’ and both of those things were lost to him.
But he didn’t run. He walked the length of the field and started down the block the other side at the same pace, trying not to hyperventilate. He checked his watch; five-forty on the 12th of May 2014. Zach tried not to sigh. He knew this was going to be long evening. Everyday Will lurked, behind postboxes and in half-heard laughs, but today he was everywhere. Zach could scarcely glance around without some memory rearing it’s head: the red hydrant that Will had cracked his tooth on trying to jump over on the corner of Cherrywell, the kerb that Will had bought weed from Michael Santana on whilst Zach lurked around the corner, ready to leap out and pretend to be a cop at the first sign of trouble. The apple tree blossoming on the apex of the street corner that they had sat under when Will had been crying about his parents’ divorce. That had been a handful of weeks before his disappearance. Zach found himself listless by the tree, staring at a viridian apple slowly rotting on the grass. Sickly yellow decomposing into verdant green under the watchful sun. He thought about Will’s palm, burning hot pressed against his own and how he had cried with his face pressed into Zach’s shoulder, tears drying in salty tracks on the fabric of his jumper. The entire neighbourhood was paved with memories, great and small, of Will Hartman. Zach felt the itch under his skin that flared up whenever he thought about starting college in the fall in Pittsburgh. It demanded to be scratched, even moreso on days like today. Maryville was an idyllic place in theory, but for him it was a minefield, a honeyed poison. Every beautiful view was a painful reminder that there was someone missing out on it. That the world where nothing bad happened to Will Hartman was not the one that Zach was living in.
***
The sound of a lawnmower spluttering to life sent a jolt through me and I tried to stifle my squeak of embarrassment. I walked home quickly, trying not to think about the salt-slick sniff of a boy crying or the kite we stuck in my neighbour’s tree that I know will be there if I look up. I look up, helplessly. I can hear a ringing in my ears, it sounds exactly how Will would laugh when I got startled. I remember the month-long obsession with the jump-scares when we were thirteen, scarcely bearable at the time. It’s really hard not to think about how much I yearn for that, the absolute lowlight of our friendship. The kite is purple. I can remember that I wanted blue and Will wanted red so we compromised. I wish I could snap at him, call him an idiot, tell him if he jumps out on me from behind his door again I’ll make him eat it.
It takes me an extra minute of fiddling to pull out my keys and unlock the door because my eyes are blurring with unshed tears. I wonder why I feel so much less sturdy than I did this time last year, but then I consider that maybe every time it’s over, I try hard not to remember it until next mid-May. I move through mechanical operations because they’re easier than considering my progress through the grieving process. Keys go in the bowl, I move a stack of letters from the doorstep to the coffee table, peek into the living room. Emily is there, watching TV and eating toast. I open my mouth to say hi, but only a creaky sound comes out and I decide that I want to be alone for a while, rather than distress my little sister with any crying outbursts.
I go upstairs and I don’t have any crying outbursts. I’m not really surprised, I never did. Even the first night, when a dour-faced man in a police hat came over and asked if I had seen my friend Will since yesterday, and my mom cried after they left. I put the pieces together and sat upstairs, numbed. After I started frantically printing posters with Will’s face emblazoned across them and it sank in that my best friend could actually be gone, I curled up in a cupboard in the copy room for an hour. Two weeks after that, it became apparent that he wasn’t going to come back. I sat in our den for almost an entire day and didn’t speak to a soul. Four years ago today, I had sat on the same spot on this bed and contemplated the purpose of a funeral with an empty casket. It still hurt. It still stuck like a tiny bone that would never dislodge itself from the side of my throat. I hadn’t given up. Why did everyone else have to?
I tried to solve the mystery of what happened to Will on eleven separate occasions, to varying degrees of success. Last year had felt like a strange kind of turning point. At school we had started mentioning Will in conversation again, like he was an absent friend on an international exchange or something- the permanent kind that meant he was never coming home and we had to talk about him in the past tense. But nevertheless, it had made a difference. Will Hartman was no longer a taboo subject. I felt in control again for a while, like I could turn remembering off and on. Now I feel seasick, tossed about by a vortex of memories. The facets have splintered off the wall and are spraying, the water is filling up the room and I’m drowning.
I take a deep breath. I am not drowning. The ringing in my ears does not sound like the laugh of a fifteen-year-old. I am fine. I toss myself backwards onto my bed and grab my laptop, the warmth of the hard-drive of my stomach weighing me down into reality. I click around idly, eager for a distraction from my indefinitely increasing migraine. I manage to lose myself in a forum on recent game releases until I hear a fracas from downstairs.
“Zach! Zach honey, could you come and help me with this shopping?” The sounds of the door opening and closing filter up the stairs into my room and I sigh half-heartedly, a huge part of me grateful for the opportunity to break up the monotony of scrolling, opening tabs, closing tabs, skimming other people’s boring opinions on games I will probably never buy. I check my watch as I clunk down the stairs and grab the three shopping bags by the door, carrying them into the kitchen. It is five past six, on May 12th 2014. My mom is humming and sorting the groceries, and I feel the overwhelming urge to hug her.
“Thank you, where would I be without my big strong son huh?” She says, kissing me on the top of the head, cupping my face fondly before she starts unpacking them. I know well as she does that I’m short and on the chubby side, but my retort gets stuck somewhere between my throat and vocal chords as I wonder where Will’s mom is, without her son. Instead I chuckle half-heartedly and shift from foot to foot, wondering whether to make an escape. I don’t really want to help with dinner, but on the other hand sitting in my room alone with only the ghost of my dead best friend for company was beginning to become too oppressive.
“Do you want some help making dinner?” I hear a strange, robotic voice saying. I’m sure it came from me, but it sounds so fragile and alien I can’t be sure. My mom looks at me a little strangely, like I had just asked whereabouts to lay my next batch of eggs.
“Sure, why not? I was just going to make chili for when your father gets home. Are you alright sweetheart?”
I nod, the compassion in her voice making my heart clench. I don’t resist at all when she wraps her arms around me. I cling to her a little bit, trying not to cry.
“It’s okay, baby. I know tomorrow is always a horrible day. But it’s good to remember Will, right?”
I want to tell her that my head is so full of Will right now it could burst. There isn’t space for anything else, not breathing, not thinking about the future. I am rooted to a sidewalk, a hundred metres away in space but years, what feels now like centuries ago in time, waiting for a best friend who is never coming back. I hug her extra-tightly for three more seconds, my mom’s regular scent of rose-based perfume and acrylic glues from the nail bar she works in washing over me like a gentle rain after a drought. I remember what Will smelt like every time I hugged him; lavender detergent, pine needles, sweat, something else warm and intangible that was uniquely his.
I wipe my eyes and start slicing carrots.
***
Logically, you know that there is plenty of air in the room. If push came to shove, you could explain the concept of oxygen, its molecular structure and behaviour, and how it is absorbed into your lungs. None of this basic conception of science explains why you cannot breathe. It is a regular family dinner, the kind you usually enjoy. But today it feels like a big lie and the parade of normality is suffocating you. Your little sister is nattering away, about English class and hockey and her friends. You feel the overwhelming urge to wrap her in cotton wool and keep her like this forever, her greatest worry the next Varsity game. A special kind of cotton wool that keeps away horror and violence and great unending mysteries that break up families and wake up kids, with nightmares that their best friend is somewhere, screaming and in dire need of help you don’t know how to give. The chili is tasteless, and your culinary talents are severely lacking if the unusually chunky carrots floating about in it are anything to go by. At the end of the table you can tell your dad is watching you carefully, anxiety colouring every line in his taut smile. He worries about you so much, you can hear it in every probing question he asks about your studies and non-existent extracurriculars. And non-existent friends a mean voice adds somewhere in your brain.
You eat a little more, feeling guilty. The evening feels like it has been blocked out on a stage years ago by a blind crew; Emily never lets silence settle, mom reassures you, dad is stoic and there if you need him. They all have roles, catering to you, the variable. You are the bomb they are tiptoeing around and you know it. You pick at your plate, determined to eat at least some of your meal. Everything seems to take longer to chew than usual and sticks to either side of your oesophagus on the way down. You glance at your watch. It is almost seven on May 12th 2014. Your mom and dad are discussing what time to go to the florists at the weekend. Their voices are like sounds from the other end of a conch shell, distant and indistinct. You take a sip of water and your hand is shaking, beads of liquid dancing around inside the old plastic tumbler. Your dad frowns and offers you a beer. You decline and go upstairs on autopilot.
You taste copper in the back of your throat as you close your door gently. You feel your knees buckle and you kneel, helpless and crying. Now the tears come in earnest, dribbling hot down your cheeks. Every year like clockwork, this was the worst bit. You press your fist into your lips and sob silently. Everything is so disconnected, unreal. You feel like you aren’t even a person. Looking back at you in the full-length mirror, propped by the end of your desk, is a strange boy with a round face, contorted by tears. Long hair frames big, blue, vacant eyes that you cannot understand. You let yourself fold over and feel everything. All of your sorrow is so real and tangible it physically hurts, you are being strangled by the overwhelming feeling of loss and sadness and anger. Your rib-cage feels like it might splinter in half with how irrevocably heavy your heart feels. Outside, the sun sets.
Your sister finds you like that, curled up on the floor. You don’t even have the energy to feel ashamed any more. Your head feels impossibly light, like you’ve dislodged something inside it with the sheer force of tears produced.
“Hey.” She kneels down in front of you. “I know this sucks so much, every year. But mom and dad and I love you loads, okay Zach? I miss Will too, but don’t give up hope, okay Zach?” It breaks your heart how gently she speaks to you, like she’s coaxing a baby bird out of its nest for the first time. You look up at her and want to burst with pride at the wonderful person she is growing into. You barely even resent how she yearns to protect you, all of your brotherly instincts thrown into disarray by the sudden outburst of emotion.
You accept your hug, trying not to tremble too obviously in her grip. She smiles at you, a big reassuring grin, and leaves, closing the door behind her. You sit up a little, your previous theatrics feeling a bit macabre and silly now. Your phone beeps from the pocket of your jacket, splayed across your bed next to your laptop. On the one hand you hope it’s a text from Hai, but on the other a strange trepidation burns in the pit of your stomach. You wouldn’t say you had become a loner in the last year, but you have definitely become more lonely. Eating lunch with Hai, An and Daerek had become something you did once a week, as opposed to every day. You wonder if your distance is going to be a factor in your part of the memorial, the only part that ever felt truly important, like Will would have wanted it.
***
I thought about it carefully as I walked towards the mailbox on the end of Frith Avenue. It was hard to pinpoint exactly when I had become more distant with my friends. It wasn’t like I had replaced them with anyone, I had a smattering of people I spoke to in my classes I would call ‘friends’ besides them. I began to wonder if I had just withdrawn altogether over the past year. I couldn’t call when I had started going home during free periods and lunch breaks over the past year, but it had become my routine without me even noticing it. I wondered if Daerek and An had noticed. I didn’t doubt that Hai had, Hai was disturbingly perceptive even when we were little more than children.
As I rounded the corner they were all exactly where I expected them to be; An sitting on top of the mailbox, Hai leaning against it, Daerek standing on the kerb next to them. It seemed like some gross tableau of times gone by, I could see each of them as their younger selves in the same poses. An hadn’t grown much, but he was bulkier now. He still screwed up his nose when he laughed in the exact same way he had since I met him as an eleven year old. Hai on the other hand had skyrocketed in height but was still skinny, all angles and bones. Daerek was a year older and had grown an impressive beard during his final year of high school. I tried to remember when he had got new glasses, but I figured it had escaped my notice over the past year.
“Hey Sneakers!” Hai called over as An hopped off the box.
I replied with a cautious, “hey” as I approached. My voice still sounded undisguisedly twisted and strange from crying to my own ears.
Daerek slapped me on the back genially as soon as I was within arms length. “How are you dude?”
I pressed my mouth into a thin line. “Been better, you?”
Daerek answered my question with one of his own. “Want a beer?”
“Desperately.” I replied, cracking a wry grin.
We traipsed up to the hill on the far side of the town dump. It was secluded, Will’s mom had always worried about us going up here and ‘getting in trouble’ and not being able to get help. The irony of it makes my gut twist now. It had always felt like our own little kingdom. We had needed the space on the first year. I had been about to turn fifteen and got so wasted I almost didn’t make it to Will’s funeral the next day. The year after that had been just as raw. We had all gotten trashed and cried in each other’s arms, the same as the year following that.
I groaned as we reached the top of the hill and flopped down. It made my stomach clench that we still sat in the same formation as we used to, familiarity seared into our brains. Hai, then An, then me, then a small gap, then Daerek. The small gap gaped like a chasm, but in another sense it comforted me. The others hadn’t forgotten about Will either. We splayed about, the warm evening laden with a nice breeze. A silence hung in the air, pregnant and irreproachable.
Hai burst into a flurry of saying what we were all thinking. “I just hate the memorial service so much. First the fucking superintendent of all people, the guy who suspended Will twice, gives a speech about how great he was-”
“Then the orchestra plays something garbage that he would have hated, with zero trombone in it. I mean, the band should be doing that for sure.” I interjected, glad to finally be able to air my incensed feelings.
An nodded vigorously. “The band should play a rousing rendition of Smash Mouth’s ‘All Star’. It’s what Will would have wanted.”
We all laugh for a moment, but it fades quickly, like it gets stale the second it hits the air. My voice doesn’t sound like my own when I speak quietly. “I wish we at least had a body to bury. I wish I at least knew what happened to him.” It all comes out in a rush, tight and strangled. It feels odd to externalise these thoughts.
Hai nods. “I know what you mean. A part of me still really wants to believe he’s out there somewhere, but…”
“It’s been four years.” Daerek says, his older, slightly deeper voice bringing me back down to earth with its sombre tone.
He doesn’t say what is playing through all of our minds; how could a kid possibly survive undetected for four years? It isn’t possible, not unless Will has been enduring hell. I have the private, painful dilemma in my head about which would be better, Will dead or Will undergoing kidnap, torture, God knows what. I land on ‘dead’, just like I always do, just like the police and Will’s parents did. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.
The lull in conversation is punctuated by sips from beer cans and An tossing an empty down the hill. It hits three stones on its journey down, each resonating with a clang. I try to exhale the heavy feeling collecting in my lungs but it just won’t shift. It is eased only by the knowledge that all three of the men I am sitting with contain the same suffocating sixteen-year-old inside them that I do, and talking around their screams is hard. I wonder if they’re the only people who will every truly understand me, who witnessed and accepted that in some senses I was half a person when Will was alive, and now I am a person trying to become whole. I have come close, very close indeed, but only by sleepwalking through my high school life. It must be really obvious to my close friends I’ve never even tried to build another relationship in my life resembling the one I shared with Will. I finish my beer and Daerek hands me another. He clears his throat.
“I’ve applied to Dartmoor.”
“Pittsburgh.” I supplied.
Hai shrugged. “K-state, probably”
“Queens,” An added, “I can’t wait to leave.”
“How come?” Hai asks, popping the tab on his next beer.
An shrugged. “Well most days I can, but today I wish I were anywhere else.”
“Anywhere with less memories.” I mumble it, but everyone hears me.
“I miss him too, everyday man.” Daerek says, kindly.
I try not to sniff. “I don’t miss him everyday. I definitely think about him everyday. Just dumb stuff, like ‘oh, Will would like that if he lived to see it exist’, like it’s just a fact of life.”
“He would love Chipotle.”
“And Omegle.”
“He would definitely rag on all the latest WoW updates.”
“Do you think he would have kept bleaching his hair?” Hai wondered aloud.
I snorted with laughter. “Fuck I hope not. He used to do it at mine every time! I had zero nice bath towels.” I could remember the cloying smell of bleach as a mainstay in the bathroom I shared with Emily for months.
“He would have kept it up if Ms Kellerburg had kept trying to give him detention for it, just to spite her.” An said sagely. “He hated that woman so much.”
I laughed some more, and every time it felt more natural. Will was a lot of things, but for the most part he was a clown. I imagined how unimpressed he would be by how dour I had been about his death for the past four years.
“Will wanted us to laugh. He dedicated ninety-nine percent of his time to it.” Hai said, a little sadly but tapping into my thoughts exactly.
An snickered. “What was the other percent?”
“Jacking it.” I replied with confidence.
We chatted idly, getting gradually drunker. Conversation meandered around Will, high school, video games and general shit-talk. An challenged Daerek to wrestle and won by a significant margin.
We packed up when the moon was highest in the sky. I checked my watch, quarter to midnight on the 12th of March.
“Thanks for doing this guys, I don’t think I could hack tonight alone.” Daerek said, sincerely but stumbling.
“Hopefully I’ve drunk enough beer to slip into a horrible, tipsy, uneven slumber.” I agreed, almost staggering down the hill myself.
“Tomorrow first thing, yeah?” Hai said, strategising even whilst rolling a blunt and paying no attention to where he put his feet.
“Meet up at basecamp?” An asked with a knowing grin.
I laughed. It felt right to call our spot under the bleachers ‘basecamp’ again. I had distanced myself from my closest friends without even meaning to and I feel a sinking guilt for it, but I feel hopeful. I will pass AP Computing, I will be less flaky on my friends, I will leave Maryville in a few short months and everything will be different. Not necessarily better, but different, and that is enough for me right now.
***
Zach walked home across deep leylines that held the landscape together for him. The route they used to take every week; through the dump, past Hai and Daerek’s houses, up and round to drop off An, then the final stretch back to where he and Will lived. Now where only he lived. The night air was warm and clouds stretched over the sky like gossamer, lit up by the pearly moon. An gave him the butt-end of the joint to smoke and he puffed it lazily as he sauntered back to his house, slightly intoxicated and feeling a little more safe in his own skin. Tomorrow he would wake up, probably vomit, and then try and live out the day in as normal of a fashion that could be expected.
The floral taste of weed seeped through to make the edges of the evening a little hazier, blurrier, kinder. Will wasn’t lurking in wait, just this once he was walking alongside Zach. He wondered glibly if it was healthy to have imaginary conversations with his dead best friend. He decided it was problematic at best, but he was a little stoned and drunk and willing to give himself the benefit of the doubt. He giggles to himself, remembering the first time Will bleached his hair in Zach’s bathroom, an act of defiance aimed at no one in particular.
It was hard to gauge what would Will say if he could see him now. If he just sauntered out from behind a conspicuous lamp post and struck up conversation;
“You didn’t grow much, huh?”
“Still cute Zach, classic little lesbian.”
“I’m sorry for disappearing.”
The high-pitched whine Will made whilst he was trying not to cry seemed to reverberate in time to the electric throb of the powerlines overhead Zach wondered if this was what a mentally stable person would do.
“I miss you so much.”
He murmured to the empty street. He glanced upwards to catch a glimpse of their kite, some lingering, concrete evidence that Will Hartman was not always a person who exclusively existed in Zach’s head. It was gone. He started, dropping the embers of the joint in shock. That kite had been lodged between the largest bough and set of skeletal branches for almost eight years. Zach felt the bottom of his soul drop out for a long moment, before he saw the frail twist of metal sticking up from the grass. It had fallen back into the land of the living. A host of emotions tore through him. I should bury the kite. I should burn it. I should put it in a glass cabinet where no one else can touch it. He let his slightly drunken fingers feel down every weather-beaten nook and cranny of the kite, it’s thin metallic spine split and broken. The fabric frayed and sun-bleached violet. Zach bundled the kite into his arms and took it inside with him, putting it on his desk. He doesn’t feel its presence like a spectre, like a living, breathing part of Will Hartman standing over his whilst he sleeps. It feels natural, like laying a part of him to rest. Like something coming full circle. Like a memento of a time past, as opposed to one snatched away from him.
Zach drifted to sleep uneasily, dreaming of pine needles and splintered teeth and hands so hot they scalded his skin to hold.