I watched as Pamela, Alex's fourteen year old sister, placed a flower on Alex's coffin when Pastor finished speaking. She, like Sarah, Jesse, and I, had dry eyes. Meanwhile, his mother and father were both crying. Sarah and Jesse stood with their parents, whose faces were strained and sorrowful, wishing to God that there was some way they could spare their children of the pain, yet knowing that it was an ugly fact of life over which they were powerless.
My parents would be back tomorrow.
Jackson stood beside me. Apparently, I had taken it worse than Sarah, and Jackson had been checking in on me frequently. I guess if I had stopped to think about it, I'd have found his constant attention irritating, as if I were being babied. Of course, that never occurred to me then. I was neither irritated nor grateful. It was as if I was just numb, in shock. Which, of course, was why he was keeping an eye on me.
I suppose that I had always known that someday we would all go our separate ways, but I didn't expect it to be so soon, and I sure as hell didn't expect it to be like this.
"It's not fair," I said later that evening. The older generation was at Alex's house, socializing with his parents. We had sensed that a separation was needed, and so most of the teenagers had migrated here.
We sat on the beach, watching the waves roll in and back out. In and out. Back and forth. Life and death.
No one answered my comment. I doubted many had heard it, I had spoken so softly.
The adults had cried at the funeral, but the rest of us had been brave, tough. In shock. And as soon as our mothers and fathers were out of sight, we had held onto each other and cried hard. I imagined that Pamela's cries were heard for miles around. Her friends were around her now. I could faintly hear them talking about how their summers had been, how they were looking forward to or dreading high school, anything to try to distract her.
A tear still occasionally trickled down my face. It had taken until today for me to cry. I think it had taken until today to believe that Alex was really gone. I kept expecting to see him come running up, apologizing for making us worry.
"He never did like to have people worrying and fussing over him," I said quietly. Sarah, Jesse, and Jackson, the only ones who had heard me, nodded.
The sun sank below the horizon, but the light still shone through the water in the distance, creating an almost surreal image. The ocean was lighting the sky, and the few clouds were pink, purple, orange, and bright, bright red. The air started to chill down, and Jackson stood up and suggested building a fire.
Finally, something to actually do. The four of us busied ourselves gathering driftwood, and the others soon caught on and joined us. Someone produced a matchbook, and a few minutes later, we had a blazing fire going. The fire seemed to warm everyone up, both inside and out, and we managed to have a happy atmosphere. Jackson and I had both brought our guitars, as had a few other people, so we sat around, playing all kinds of songs -- Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Beatles, and original bits and pieces which the lot of us had composed in hopes of being "discovered."
Around ten or so, Pamela and her friends left, and the only ones still there were the older ones, the college students and high school seniors. We didn't want to leave. We didn't want to go back to our normal lives, where we would remember that one of us had died, and he hadn't even gone to war to do it. I, especially, didn't want to go back home to an empty house. Even though my parents would be back the next day, the house was still empty tonight. I wasn't afraid of anything happening to me, of course. I was afraid of my own thoughts, reluctant to be left alone with them.
It was just before five when the first rays of sunlight began to brighten the sky above the hills. Sarah and Jesse had long since gone home. Easier to come home late than early in the morning to questioning parents. There were still a fair amount of us left, though. We had been singing and telling stories by the firelight all night. The waves now reflected the sparse light, and the fire soon died out, leaving only a pile of ash.
A lot of the people who were there had been dozing off and on, and were now going to sleep a little longer before leaving. The others, including Jackson and I, grabbed whatever we had brought and went off to go to wherever we were going. Funnily enough, neither of us felt very sleepy, so we went out for breakfast. It felt good to be out and about in California again. I wondered how I could feel more at home anywhere else, but decided not to ponder it too deeply at the moment.
Instead, Jackson and I talked. It was funny, because we had never really sat down and talked before, but now that we did, it was free and easy. We had many of the same interests, and we had actually known each other for years. So we had some common ground. I made some comment about last year's homecoming game, and he laughed and asked if Sarah had told me about the rivalry between his school, Sunny Hills, and the other high school in town, Troy. Of course, I'd heard nothing about it.
"Well, when we'd play each other, everyone from Sunny Hills would shout to Troy, 'flush 'em down the Troy-let!'"
"That's awful!" I laughed.
He shook his head. "That's mild! Troy chanted back, 'Sunny Hills, Sunny Hills, thinks they're it. S-H for Sunny Hills, I-T for it!'"
Now I laughed even harder. "You're right, that is worse! I wish I had known either of those when my high school played those!"
Memories of high school rushed back to me. What I wouldn't give, right now, to turn back the clock a year. I'd even put up with Leary, and do it happily, to have Alex back.
My thoughts must have showed, because Jackson suddenly said, "It gets better."
"Hunh?" was my inspired response.
"You don't want to let go, because you don't want to forget him. You won't forget him, don't worry about that."
I nodded. "I know, I just..." Something in his words, his voice, struck a chord in me. "Who was it?" I asked.
He sighed. "An old friend. I hadn't seen him since junior high, but we'd kept track of each other. He was drafted a couple years ago."
I nodded. I was beginning to realize that I was exhausted. I caught Jackson stifling a yawn and started to laugh. "Let's just both admit that we're boring right now and go home!" I said.
Jackson laughed and nodded. "I assume you mean for me to take you to your house, m'lady?"
"If you please," I said, imitating his mock accent. We had both been awake for almost twenty-four hours straight, so we were more than a little out of it, and we showed it by acting goofy.
The goofiness had started to wear off by the time he dropped me off, though. Everything was catching up with me, and I was dead tired. I tried not to think, because my thoughts kept wandering to Alex, and I didn't want to cry. I went inside and up to my room. Still wearing my jeans and shirt, I flopped down on my bed, and was asleep in minutes.
I'm not sure what woke me up, but when I sat up and looked out my window, I could see my parents' car just pulling up to the house. I quickly pulled my hair back, washed my face, and brushed my teeth. I couldn't have been asleep for more than a few hours, and I was still bone tired.
"Janice?" I heard my father call a few moments later.
I ran downstairs. "Dad! Mom!" I was having trouble feeling the thrill of seeing them that I knew they expected, so I put on an Oscar-caliber performance. "You're back! Where was this trip to? What did you do? Did you bring me anything?" They were expecting to come home to a child, so that was what I gave them. Far be it for me to rock the boat.
"Honey, slow down! How do you expect us to answer if you don't give us time?" Mom said with a smile.
I shrugged.
"New Orleans, believe it or not," Dad said. "The branch down there is having a hard time."
"Trouble learning to local jargon?"
"No mafia connections."
"Ah," I said with raised eyebrows. That was a new one. I wasn't sure how much of this I really wanted to know, and said so.
"Well, my job down there was basically to review what they had been doing so that I can give a report in a couple days. Evaluate whether the potential market is there."
"Is it?"
"Hardly. I was against a branch down South from the beginning, though. I think they also sent another representative there to evaluate it from another perspective. Frankly, though, I don't see any loopholes that he'll be able to find, though." Dad shook his head. "It's just ridiculous."
"Well, your father's answered your first question, I think," Mom said. "And a little of the second."
"Yeah, I don't expect that you'd have spent a lot of time observing in the office!" I said.
"No, I spent it in the hotel room, trying to recover from that spicy food!"
"What, no shopping?"
"I didn't say that, now, did I?" She unzipped her carry-on bag and pulled out a small package and handed it to me. "Go ahead, open it," she said after a moment.
So I did. It was a small but very colorful and ornate jewelry box. I opened it and managed to keep from laughing as I heard this supposedly New Orleans creation playing "Fuer Elise." I smiled and hugged my mom. "It's great!" I said.
"I knew it! I saw it and just thought of you. See, no one knows you like your mother!"
Darn right. I loved the song, but the box itself was just... weird. I couldn't really blame her, of course. She hadn't actually seen me in so long, and even this past year during school, none of us really spent much time together.
I wondered what she would think if she heard that I'd been in a band!
I wondered what she would do if I told her that I planned to go back.
Chapter 11 - - - - Chapter 13