He sat staring at me as if trying to decide what to say. Finally, as his teeth raked a hard line over his bottom lip, he spoke, “In millions of different ways…but the one that means the most to me you never knew about, did you?" He raked his hands through his hair. "Ever since the day I moved next door to you, and you stood up to me with that skull picture you drew…Joey’s right. I’ve been in love with you since fourth grade, Charlie." He rubbed at the back of his neck and his voice lowered. "It’s the only thing in this world that I’ve ever been sure of. When you went to that stupid dance with Mason a few months back, you took my heart with you. You ever feel like you wake up and part of you is missing? You were that part. Kinda been lost without you.”
My thoughts scattered, exploded like a sky full of fireworks. My body quivered with the effort it took to control myself and not jump into his lap.
Running his hand through his hair, he looked at me with that confident grin of his. “What do you say, Charlie? Want to try jumping down the rabbit hole again? I promise I’ll be better than any adventure you could ever read. The way I see it, Charlie, is that you’ve always belonged to me—”
“Jase Delaney, you make my freaking head spin, and I think I’m going to enjoy years of therapy because of you andyour adventures,”
A loud crash broke through our conversation, echoing its sharpness against the heavily decorated walls. It sounded like someone spilled a ton of beer bottles on the floor, and then sheer pandemonium let loose as people screamed and a chair sailed through the air. Immediately, I thought it was the police raiding the bar for serving under-aged kids. People scattered and crowded around the entrance; my heart throbbed in my throat as I scanned the chaos, trying to find out what was happening.
Twisting back around to meet Jase’s wide eyes, I watched him bolt out of his seat and run into the mass of people. My insides flipped as I stared after him.
Through the crush of bodies, I saw Slate Marshall, standing, hovering over a lump of someone on the floor. Everything in my head went dead silent when I saw the shaggy, jet-black hair that lay against the floor through the tangle of shuffling feet.
“Joey!” The scream ripped through my lungs and tore through my throat, but all I could hear was the deafening throb of my pulse in my ears. Lunging out of the booth, I struggled to get through the thick mass of bodies that surrounded my friend. Heads blocked me, all people I knew from school, with terrified expressions on their faces. A burning surge of adrenaline shot through my entire body, and everything—but me—seemed to move in slow motion. Movements stretched out awkwardly. Hands tried to grab me. The voices were garbled and sluggish. Everything seemed blurred and stilled, only my quickening pulse pounded faster in my ears, accelerating into a painful rhythm.
Joey’s body lay limp on the disgusting bar floor; under his beautiful, soft hair seeped a thick puddle of dark red blood, spreading and stretching out sickeningly fast across the lacquered shine of the wooden floor. Red tears streamed down his swollen, battered cheeks. The streaks made him look as if he was beaten so hard that he was crying blood. Jase’s arms grabbed onto me tightly, as if he were a human tourniquet, haltingmyblood,mylife,myhappiness from pouring out all over the bloodied floor to mix in with Joey’s. If I’d had the energy, I would have stopped him. Let me melt into the piss and beer stained ground along with my best friend; let the three of us melt into everything and nothing all at once. Together.
The crowd shifted. The screams got louder, and Jase’s hands let go of me.
Time sped fast in blurs of motion around me as I dropped to my knees. “JOEY! Come on, Joey! Get up!” I pulled at him, trying to grab his hands, but they were too slick and slippery with blood. I tried to crawl closer to him, but thick, rough hands were yanking me backward. Violently, my face was grabbed and twisted to look into the putrid, smiling face of Slate. I convulsed and gagged on hot vomit, realizing his dirty hands, the ones that just brutally beat my best friend, were now on me. And they were covered in Joey’s blood. My body gave out, but I didn’t fall far.
Yanking me off the ground by my chin, Slate forcefully pulled me against his chest and slurred through a puff of bitter whiskey breath. “I hope he fucking dies. Then, I’m coming after you. I’m gonna fuck you so hard you’re gonna split in half, bitch.”
Jase’s arms savagely yanked Slate off of me and I fell back to the floor, grabbing onto Joey and wishing with all my might that he’d be okay. I heard the sirens in the background, but the sound of Jase’s fists viciously hitting Slate’s skin was the only thing I listened to.
The next thing I can vividly remember was being in the hospital, listening to the sounds of Mrs. Graley sobbing as the stoic faces of the doctors apologized for not being able to save the life of her sixteen-year-old son.
Slate Marshall had beaten my best friend to death.
After coming up behind him and hitting him in the side of the head with a glass bottle, Joey fell to the ground. While he was out cold, Slate Marshall kicked my best friend in the face and head until everything that made him Joey was gone, slipping out like red satin across the floor.
I stared quietly into the stark whiteness of the hospital walls, completely empty inside. A low buzz swam in my head. A small, yet growing pain curled out in waves from my chest.
Then, it hit me.
It hit me like two big pieces of shit in the face. Joey was never coming out of the doors I watched them roll his body through. He was never going to graduate from high school. Never going to get married and have a family.
He was never going to get past sixteen.
And it hurt, it hurt like the kind of pain that you don’t truly feel at first, and then when you do get over the shock, it's the absolute worst kind of pain, the kind that literally takes your breath away.
I folded in on myself, wrapping my arms around my stomach, trying to hold in the explosion of pain that was threatening to shred me to pieces.
Screams tore from my lungs so loudly that they burned at my throat. I was sobbing so violently I couldn’t catch my breath. I screamed for his mother, dropping to her feet as she held her head in her hands, sobbing into her palms. “Donate his heartplease; don’t stuff him in a wooden box. Please. Please. Please keep him alive. Don't put him in the ground. Let someone else feel the warmth of his heartbeat. Let others know Joey and how amazing he was. Don’t put all the pieces of him in the dirt.Please don’t. Please keep him alive.”
My fists started pounding against the walls, and the vilest words came out of my mouth.How could Slate Marshall’s wish come true? Why would God do that? Slate said he hoped Joey would die. What about my wish, God? Why didn’t my wish for Joey to live come true? Why was Slate better than Joey? Why would you do this to his mother? The mother who loved and cared about her kid is the one who loses him? My father wouldn’t even know I was gone. My mother would have been too drugged up to notice, and how about Jase’s parents? God, you took the wrong kid, you should’ve taken me.
Not Joey. Not my Joey.
For days after, all I could see in front of my eyes was my best friend dying. The scene didn’t stop rewinding itself in my head, rewinding and replaying the last things he said to us, the shatter of glass we heard, and the cold lifeless look in his eyes when I finally reached him.
If I closed my eyes, it only got worse.
During his wake, in the funeral home, crowds of kids from our school sat sobbing and wailing into their hands or each other’s shoulders. Students from our school, who had never spoken to Joey, or worse, teased him along with people like Slate Marshall, hugged each other like they had losttheirbest friend, as if this tragedy somehow actually affectedthem. Whispers of their stories and memories of him filled the funeral room, making it twist repulsively with the decaying smell of flowers that had me running into the bathroom stall to heave up stomach bile. Their fictional memories of a boy they bullied or turned their backs on when the damage was being done by someone else. The boy everybody teased. Now they were all crying because he was gone.
Soon they were going to put him in the ground, I thought. My stomach coiled and rolled, and I heaved more. Six feet under the dirt with the worms and bugs and darkness. Joey was going to decay. Rot. Get eaten by bugs. Picked on nibble-by-nibble, like when he was alive. I was choking myself with tears, gagging at the disgusting thoughts and images that flooded my mind.
Having to view my best friend in a rectangular box, surrounded by white satin material, like a damn display doll, was one of the worst things I was ever forced to do. His usually tanned skin looked strangely porous and chalky, and it looked like someone had given him a freaking haircut. My fingers itched to touch his body, to poke him, caress him, kiss his cheek, and breathe life into him again. I was so stunned by the thoughts that I barely registered Jase clasping his hand in mine and lacing our fingers together.
