Angela

To hear Angela tell it, we were born at the exact same time, in the same hospital, and in rooms that were adjacent to one another. I’m not sure that I ever believed that story when either of our parents told it, but it was interesting to imagine that as one more thing tying me to Angela. We grew up together, our families living as neighbors for as far back as I can remember. Our fathers had been best friends in high school and our mothers had roomed together in college.

I’m not sure if it was our parent’s friendliness that brought us close together or simply the amount of time we spent together as kids. We were inseparable. Playing, eating, and even taking naps together.

Now I stand in the white washed halls of the very same hospital that everything started in. I can almost imagine the smell of antiseptic and dirty bed sheets. The light, unnatural and caustic to the eye and the heart, reflects off the pure white walls and the scuffed checkered tile floor. An alternating patter of black and white that stretches on around a corner I cannot turn. I’m tethered on the spot despite how much I want to run, to fly from this spot and see real daylight, smell the freshly cut grass and taste the first real winds of spring.

This is where it all began, the Meghan Werkheiser Memorial hospital. This is where Angela and I were born. This is where we came when we were sick, when we broke a bone, or when we needed a volunteer job. This room, 424, is only three doors down from the one in which Angela was born. The maternity ward had been relocated only ten years after we came into the world. It seems a cosmic joke that Angela, 87 years old, should lie dying only a few paces from where she was born. But not everything goes the way you expect it to.

I never expected to die at the age of 18. I never expected that I would never make it to my graduation party. I never expected to lose my life saving the person who, in the whole world, meant the most to me.

She never saw the bus coming.

It was too hot to be wearing a cap and gown. Sweat plastered my curly hair to my forehead and there it stayed; a constant annoyance to match the heat. It didn’t help that our graduation attire was a dark purple and absorbed the sunlight like a photovoltaic panel. Wired up, the students of Reibold High would have produced enough energy to light Las Vegas for a holiday weekend.

By some supernatural coincidence, Angela and I ended up sitting next to each other at the end of the 4th row of chairs. She looked just as hot as I felt and her long hair, the color of a clear starlit night, could not have helped as it spilled from the back of her cap and cascaded in a solid sheet over her shoulders and down her back. She was vigorously fanning herself with the Graduation program while we waited for our names to be called, our fake diplomas to be given to us, and for the rest of our lives to start.

It wasn’t a fantastic ceremony and I sometimes find myself irritated when I think about how dull the last two hours of my life had been. The Valedictorian’s speech was shoddily rehearsed and full of dry, over-used pop culture references. The principal seemed to have studied graduation speeches from movies, extracted every cliché, and strung them together until they stopped at the ten minute mark.

Our special speaker was a little more interesting. As a retired truck driver who had graduated from our school and who now made his living writing kids books, Bob Williams didn’t lie to us.

“It’s never going to be easy,” he started. A ripple of mild attention worked its way through the sun-blasted graduates. “Some of you have ideas of what the perfect life would be, some of you have an idea of how you’re going to go about achieving that perfect life, and some of you don’t have the vaguest idea of what you are going to do five minutes after you receive that piece of paper that you came here for today.” Here he paused and stared out over the crowd, catching the eyes of a few of the students. He caught my gaze and held it for a second and I realized that this was a man who lived, who faced down opposition, hard times, despair, and yet he had, at the same time, experienced intense moments of happiness, elation, passion, and excitement. Without taking his eyes from the students, Bob Williams continued.

“Is it important to get a good education? Sure, if that’s what you want to do. I didn’t go farther than Reibold High and I like to think I turned out okay,” an appreciative chuckle swept across the crowd, “but not everybody can do what I do. It takes a lot of nerve and grit to drive a big rig, so some of you might be better off going to college.” At this there was a full roar of laughter and Bob smiled the kind of smile that can only come from being deeply satisfied on the inside. “Yes, a good education is important, and you’ve been giving a great one here at Reibold no doubt.” A general smattering of applause and some cheers of ‘Reibold Rangers Rule’. “But I didn’t come here to talk about how important your education is, Mr. Varney,” and here he spoke into the microphone in a conspiratorial whisper, “that’s your principal,” the crowd roared with laughter and Bob returned to his speaking voice “already covered that.”

“I’m here to talk about your connections. Look around you.” I looked to my left and found Angela staring at my face in a way that made my heart skip town. Her eyes were the dazzling green of a grassy field in full sunlight and I had to fight the giddy smile that threatened to erupt onto my face. I played it cool, slapped on a lopsided grin and hoped that my eyes, which had quickly shifted downward for a fraction of a second, hadn’t given me away. Angela looked at me for an eternity of a second before turning back to Bob who continued speaking.

“No doubt you see your friends, people you’ve known for four years day in and day out. I’m sure you all know a lot of people, you have to when you attend class with twenty other students, but I’m talking about the people you stand around with before homeroom, the group you eat lunch with everyday, the ones who stand at the entrance to the school in the pouring rain waiting for you to go back and get the umbrella you left in Mrs. Stevenson’s math class. You will remember and cherish these people for the rest of your lives. Some of you may drift apart, some of you may forget to call or write, and some of you…well some of you may leave us forever.” The audience listened intently, drinking in Bob’s words, nodding, agreeing, looking at the ground solemnly and remembering David Katsh who was lost during a snowstorm just this past winter.

“But that doesn’t matter. The next time you see or talk to these people, it will be like the old days, it will be like the years between your last parting had melted away and nothing stood between you but the memories of a shared high school life. Don’t forget the friends you’ve made here. These connections will sustain you, they will help you through hard times, and they can even save your life.
“Don’t forget that these people, outside of your family, know you best. They will help you without asking questions, they will give you the shirt off their back and the last crumb of food in their cupboard. Do the same for them because you can get the best damn education you want at any time in your life, but these are the best friends, the best people you will ever know.”

With his final words Bob Williams gave a small bow and walked slowly off the stage. It was a moment before the crowd awoke from it state of intense attention and the stadium exploded as all four hundred students and over a thousand parents and family stood, cheered, stomped their feet, applauded, and some even quietly stood with tears streaming down their faces. I looked at Angela who had cast a sidelong glance at me and I felt a small, warm pressure on my hand. I looked down with surprise to find that she had taken my hand in hers and we stood like that while Mr. Williams’ standing ovation slowly wound down.

It was an indication of how dreadfully boring and oppressively hot the ceremony was when the crowd, so fired up from Bob Williams’ speech, settled back into quiet, heat induced aggravation while they waited for the names of 400 people to be read in different states of correctness. I was vaguely aware that these were my last few moments as a high school student as Lucas McMurdy was called out over the loud speaker and I stood up to receive my diploma.

Caps were thrown, congratulations were exchanged; embraces, kisses, and tears were to be found in abundance. Families looked with new eyes upon their sons and daughters, now officially adults, and tried to imagine them as the children they had been moments ago.

The lingering warmth of Angela’s hand, different from that of the scorching sun, remained with me as I greeted my own parents, smiled, laughed, and joked about the present and the future. Angela’s parents, like a second family to me, embraced me as if they had not one but two high school graduates; my parents did the same for Angela. It was time to go home; it was time for our party.

We had approached our closest friends and arranged a joint party, a grand end of school bash to celebrate everyone’s graduation so that nobody had to be left behind. Begging off our parents’ insistence that we ride with them back to the house, Angela and I began the thirty minute trek. It was a walk we had both shared these past four years and one that mirrored the four years before that in middle school, and the four years before that in elementary school. Like the two previous paths, the “high school march”, as we called it, was special to us because of the uninterrupted time we spent together five days a week, for an hour every day. We had both agreed that we would walk that path together for the last time as high school graduates.

“I’m really glad that my Mom took the cap and gown with her. Talk about hot!” Angela started as we crossed one of the outlying soccer fields of Reiban High, “No clouds, no wind, and we were in the middle of the stadium without any shad whatsoever. I know we’re supposed to cherish this moment,” Angela looked at me with a disdainful smile that said all too well how she would remember her last moments in that stadium, “but the only thing I really liked was that Truck Driver’s speech.”
“Bob Williams.” I stated with a glance in her direction.

“What?”

“Bob Williams. That was the truck driver’s name. I’m glad we got him and not Mrs. Peabody. Last year’s graduates had to sit through forty five minutes of her experiences working with quantum mechanics theories. Science isn’t boring per se, but forty five minutes of wave form algorithms in this heat may have caused a few casualties.”

“Okay, smart as you or I may be, and you’ll notice that neither of us were asked to quote our favorite musicians on stage, if you mention algorithms of any kind for the next two months, I’m going to have to pound you.” Angela’s smile was wide, taunting, and mischievous as she ground her fist into her palm.
“Yeah, sorry I brought it up. But Williamson’s speech, it really effected people didn’t it?” I looked down at the ground, we had both known David Katsh and we both had friends we didn’t want to lose, friends we wanted to hold onto for the rest of our lives.

“It was moving. I think sometimes we’re afraid to think about our friends, about losing them, about making sure that we nurture those bonds we’ve formed. But he was right, we can never forget the connections that we forged here, forgetting would be worse than losing our friends. You can remember somebody who’s gone.” Angela looked up into the sky and shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand. Her hair sparkled and I was reminded, in this moment, of just how deep my connection to her ran.
“You, uh, squeezed my hand earlier.” I rubbed the side of my nose and looked up into the sky as well. When I looked earthward once again I found Angela staring at me in that same way that had made my heart beat noticeably faster. “Wha..?”

“I love you Lucas. You are important to me in a way that I don’t think most people will ever understand. Our whole lives we’ve known each other I don’t intend for that to ever change.” She said this with a straight face, her green eyes looking straight into mine without hesitation or embarrassment.
I dropped my hand from my face to my side and fully returned her glance.

“I love you as well Angela. I…” She was hugging me and it was a moment before I could recover from the sudden shock and return her embrace. “Angela?”

“I’m just glad that we’re here, together, walking the high school march and moving forward in our lives.” She said as she broke away from me, “Anyway, now the mushy parts are over,” we both smiled, “we have a party to get to, graduation gifts to open, lives to get on with. We better not keep our parents waiting either.”

With that we began walking in earnest.

“No more old Mrs. Frazzard in the Cafeteria.” Angela stated matter of factly.
“Oh come on, she was a laugh riot, remember when she forgot to change out the milk from the day before and everybody was wondering what the smell was? Grade A hilarious.” I chuckled.
“Well yeah, you’re right. And the time she…”

But I never heard the last part. Time had slowed to a crawl and the world around me had drained of color. Angela was a few feet ahead of me stepping out onto road at the corner of Willow and Yew streets. I was acutely aware of everything around me. I could hear the sound of the rubber on the soles of my shoes as they rebounded off of the pavement. I felt the rush of air over me as I pushed my way through an atmosphere that was suddenly thick and oppressive. I could smell the slightly harsh smell of hot blacktop tar. I saw the glint of silver reflecting the sunlight off of the bumper of an intercity bus. All of this I sensed in a fraction of a second as my mind and my body screamed one single command in unison.

My feet left the ground, my mouth moving soundlessly as I tried to warn her, to pull her back from an almost certain fate that I feared I would be too late to divert. Each instant was an agony of thought. Would I make it? Would she be safe? My shoulder collided with the small of her back and I saw her fly away from me. Her body twisted in mid air and she must have caught sight of the bus and then her eyes locked onto mine and in that moment I knew a lifetime of love and memories. I knew years of sitting together on the swings, trading music back and forth, debating politics, playing recreational sports, and attending parties together. Her green eyes, glazed with the beginning of tears told me what she had planned for the future, the intimacy, dating, marriage, children, growing old together, and welcoming a long rest together after a full life.

She hit the ground and broke eye contact. I felt a brief explosion of pain and my whole life went dark.

* * *

I was a shapeless idea, only moderately aware. I could feel time and space as it penetrated what little conscious thought had collected to form my identity. It was like sitting in the ocean with the waves rolling over you; you can feel how powerful, how endless it all is as it surges backward and forward without the slightest acknowledgement that you are there.

As it passed through me I was privy to its secrets. Past, present, and future were open to me as if the very words were written in the air before me , waiting to be snatched won and read. However, as I passed from being a mere thought into a collection of thoughts with inherited memories, the rudimentary conscience that had begun to coalesce also began rejecting the information from this sudden clairvoyance like a transplanted organ.

It would seem, from my perspective that the more human the mind, the consciousness, the soul; the more unwilling it is to accept this infinite form of information willingly. It is almost as if we reject the easy answers, find that an existence with ultimate knowledge is akin to cheating your way through life, or whatever comes before or after it.

The memories that my loosely combined thoughts had inherited began the process of solidification. I did not feel or think about these things, I observed it like a documentary; a documentary about a boy, barely a man, who made a sacrifice which time told him that no matter which way it flowed or what stream it eddied in, the same sacrifice would always have been made.

I was not anger; I was not fear, depression, happiness, or curiosity. I was a recording device, an ethereal DVD burner. Knowledge of the memories was used to group the loose thoughts into a tighter bundle which attracted their scattered siblings, pulling them in tightly as the memories glued everything together.

The concept of “I” began to form among the thoughts and memories. Suddenly it was a cold dark hallway, icy, slippery, oppressive, and my thoughts and memories fought their way through the cold and the ice down a tunnel as long as time itself, all the while fixed upon the flickering blaze and warmth of “I” that burned brightly somewhere up ahead.

Memories overlapped, attached, strengthened, combined the thoughts, arranged them in order, and bound them in place. With cohesion came thought and suddenly the memories were fluid, a lubricant between the thoughts that could be sifted through at will.

The concept of “I” became the acknowledgement of “I” as the flame of conscience engulfed my mind and memories, fusing them permanently as one and burning my existence into being. At first I perceived through sight alone. I did not feel, I did not hear, I did not taste, I could not smell.
I was not afraid.

It was dark and I was alone but memories of a warm hand, a moment’s glance, these kept me from being scared; they told me that everything would be okay. I began to feel something, a tingling sensation like unrealized potential that slowly crept over what I imagined to be my body, I had not looked down at myself yet.

I thought that I must make sure that I am complete, so I looked down and saw my body, the same one I had lived in for 18 years, but I couldn’t feel it. It didn’t move. I felt the tingles and they stayed with me for some time. I was wearing a black t-shirt, faded blue jeans, and a pair of black sneakers.
These were not the clothes that I had died in.

The dark world around me erupted with color so blindingly bright that I wished to close my eyes against it only to realize that I couldn’t. I stood blinded by my suddenly vibrant surroundings and my vision slowly sorted out the scene before me.

There was a road, an intersection, and a bus was pulled off to one side. I stared at the back of the bus because I knew the intercity buses did not stop on streets like this, they went right on through to the center of town. There was a new 2008 Honda Civic parked on the other side of the street, facing the wrong direction into traffic. There were a few more cars backed up in a place where there was no stop light.

I became aware of a buzzing in my ears, like the static on a television when the volume is turned down really low. I waited patiently, my vision had returned, maybe my hearing would return as well. I wanted to pass the time by taking in more of the scenery but I still could not command my body, which still tingled, to turn in place. There was a sudden clarity akin to when your ears pop at high altitudes and I could hear. It was mostly quiet.

Some sound, something I could not quite distinguish from the quiet, was pulling at my heart, it made the tingling of my body intensify, especially around my chest. Without meaning too, without willing it at all, I began turning on the spot, drawn around by the sound that I was suddenly afraid to find the source to.
What I saw was what I least expected. That soft, whispery sound like a secret breeze was the quiet moan escaping from my mother as she kneeled near something that lay in the road. My father sat next to her with his arm around her shoulders, they were both shaking.

I could see Angela’s hair through the gap between my parent’s heads and again, without willing it to happen, I was moving, this time towards Angela. The gravel that lay loosely on the road did not crunch under my footsteps, there was no sound as the legs of my jeans rubbed together while I walked. I didn’t feel the air that I moved through and it was only with the most miniscule amount of surprise that I realized somewhere in the back of my mind that I was not drawing breath.

I stood in front of Angela, only she wasn’t the same person I had known for eighteen years. She was also on her knees in the road and I thought this was foolish until I saw her face. It was blank. The usual light, the intelligence, the smile that all occupied her expressive eyes was gone. What were normally bright green and full of life, were now dull, almost grey and staring into some far off void.

There were bits of gravel from the road mixed in with her hair and I realized that she had a trickle of crimson running from her hairline, down the side of her angular face, and disappearing beneath the collar of her shirt. She had not even made an attempt to wipe it away, her hands lay at her sides, palms up, her wrists resting on the asphalt of the road.

She made no sound but I could see that she was almost imperceptibly quaking where she kneeled. It was like a shiver that started in the ground and worked its way to the tips of her hair. A small drop of water hung shivering from the end of her short pointy chin and as I watched I saw it fall and land with the tiniest of splashes on her lap. There were two tiny, yet constant streams of water that flowed down her face, delicate like her features and they would have almost gone unnoticed if they hadn’t been so unnatural. Angela was a very happy person, she didn’t normally cry. This sight, more than anything else, caused a feeling of tightness within me that had I been able to break down in tears myself, I would have done so without hesitation. What had hurt her so bad that I hadn’t been able to protect her from it?
I looked down, following the line of Angela’s body, across the twelve inches of asphalt and came to rest on what was, seemingly, the cause of everyone’s strange behavior. The tingling I felt grew so faint that I feared for a moment the complete loss of it. The loss of that small sensation would, I thought, cut me off from everything around me; I might lose focus and become a scattered grouping of thoughts and memories again.

Except for the blood which had already began to thicken where it lay on the road in the cracks in the black top, the oddly bent limbs, and the torn clothing, the body that lay before me might have been asleep. The face was serene, the eyes closed, the hair disheveled, the mouth touched with an amused smile that the world around it did not share.

There was something eerily familiar about the shadow under the jaw line, the pointed chin, and the nose with more bridge than most people desired. The clothes were familiar; the shoes, the hair, that hand, though it was cut, scraped, and full of grit, was familiar down to the unevenly chewed fingernails.
It was me! Oh god, it was me on the ground! I’m bleeding! I’m broken! I’m not breathing! Oh god, somebody!

But that didn’t make sense, how could I be in two places at once? My vision darkened as my mind panicked and ran in circles chasing an explanation that would not come. Bloody, broken, and with a serene, almost amused face. The blood! It was dark, darker than I had ever seen, almost black like the road and I nearly followed it. I nearly followed that blood down into the cracks in the black top, into the earth, into non-existence, as my mind closed on the only explanation it could find.

That was my body and I am dead.

I looked around wildly, silently begging for help that would not come, hoping to awaken from a nightmare that could not be real, even if that meant sitting through the awful heat of the graduation ceremony again.

This last thought coincided with my gaze one again falling upon Angela. I was immediately inundated with images and words; memories that, while they were the most important part of the puzzle, had been suppressed, reserved, waiting for just the right moment to spring forward and shine their baleful light on the darkness that surrounded me. And I knew, with absolute certainty, that this was no dream. I remembered the bus, the running leap, Angela’s face, and my sacrifice.

Once more I was the calm observer, the initial shock bleeding away quickly as I silently accepted what lay before me on the road. I could move on my own now and I kneeled in front of Angela, taking in the sight of her face. I was certain that whatever awaited me in the afterlife was sure to happen soon because of my acceptance of the truth. I kept expecting to see a bright light or hear a chorus of some kind. Without warning there was a flash of light and a blast of sound. Before I realized their source I locked my eyes on Angela. Before I left for wherever it was I thought I might be going, I wanted to give her some form of encouragement, some last word. I wanted to tell her everything would be alright. Most of all I wanted to tell her, once more, how much she meant to me, how much our time together had meant, how cruel it was that in the very beginning of our lives we would be separated, and how happy I was that she was still alive and would go on living.

With each passing moment this desire burned stronger. It turned into a need and then a necessity that could not be ignored as if the whole world would burn away if I didn’t say it.

“Angela! I love you!” The words burst forward as blinding molten pain crushed me and tore across my being. The tingling that, by this time, had become a barely noticed constant, was now a surge of sharp serrated agony. If I could have spoke or screamed I would have filled the void with a sound that would tear apart existence itself.

The pain subsided as quickly as it came and yet I felt damaged, injured, and weak. The world around me had darkened and the edges of my vision were black walls streaked with thin strips of light. I did not understand what had happened. I looked once again on Angela and, to my great surprise, her face was not blank anymore. Her face was screwed up in an anguish that I had never experienced, her arms were wrapped around her stomach and clenched tightly, and the small streams that had once flowed over her cheeks were now replaced with fast flowing rivers.

She was visibly shaking now; quaking on the spot and I wondered why nobody was helping her, comforting her. My father was stony faced with tears streaking down into his well-maintained beard. He was staring at the ground beneath his knees with his arm around my mother’s shoulders. My mother’s face was in her hands, the moaning from earlier was replaced by quieter sobs.
I turned as the light and sound from earlier grew closer. I had resolved to face whatever was coming head-on, but it was not a bright white light or a chorus of voices raised in welcome that greeted me. It was an ambulance, sirens blaring, followed closely by a police car.

I wondered, for the first time, why they hadn’t been there sooner. The light tingling became an angry buzz as I thought about how late they must be, too late to save me at least. They were here to collect my body, to ask questions. They were here to clean up what remained of my life.
My father stood up, his face still set and unmoving. He walked slowly toward the pair of paramedics that were pulling a stretcher down off of the ambulance. The metal of the stretcher clanking against the back of the ambulance was harsh in this atmosphere, like an invasion of privacy, and my father stopped, blinking as he looked down at the stretcher before him.

The officer that had come along walked around the side of the ambulance and surveyed the scene. My father looked up again as the paramedics began to pass him with the stretcher.
“We’re sorry, sir, there was a…” but what he was sorry about was quickly cut off as my father’s fist smashed into the side of the closest man’s head. The man, caught completely unaware, fell sideways into the stretcher, toppling it and pinning the other paramedic beneath it.
“What the fuck are you doing? Jesus Christ, I’m bleeding!”

My father took another step forward before he was wrestled to the ground by the police officer.
“Get off me! Get off! Where the hell were they?! You sons of bitches! Where were you?! Why didn’t you save my son?” And as suddenly as the blinding rage that had overtaken him had come, it left, and my father lay on the hot asphalt sobbing like my mother.

“Like I was saying,” the man pushed a roll of gauze against the side of his head, matting his blonde hair with blood, “there was an accident involving four vehicles down the road the way we came. It required both of the local ambulances.” The man’s voice softened as he realized that his justification wasn’t reaching anybody, “that’s what took us so long,” he trailed off into silence.

The officer sat my father up and turned to the man he had struck, “Well Barry, gonna press charges?” The question hung in the air like a strangling mist. The ultimate insult to a loving father would have been his arrest at the scene of his son’s death.

“No Rick, forget it,” Barry replied quietly as he helped the other paramedic lift the upended stretcher, “It’s not Claude’s fault,” Barry continued, “I can’t say I understand how he feels, I’ve never had any children, but I’ve seen enough in this job…I’ve seen enough.”

Barry’s jaw was clenched tightly and a drop of red shivered at the end of a strand of hair.

“You know him?” Rick asked, looking puzzled.

“He’s a good friend of mine,” Barry turned his face away from my father, “took him and Lauren over there to the hospital eighteen years ago, back before we had the new ambulances.”

Barry nodded toward Angela, “Took her parents as well on the same exact night,” Barry looked at the gauze pad in his hand and tossed it to the ground, “This is the worst thing that could have happened today Rick.”

“What about the accident down the road?” Rick asked.

“Nobody died, Rick. Two broken bones and some lacerations. The cars are totaled which leads me to believe that you might want to talk to the driver of that bus over there.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, first off, the cars down the road were all hit from behind at a red light.”

I looked at the bus parked along the side of the road. It was an older model, dirty and scuffed from years of use. I hadn’t noticed until now, the long silver scratches on the side facing me. As I traced their journey from the front of the bus rearward, I could almost hear the shriek of metal on metal.

“That bus looks a little beat up. Guess I should go talk to the driver,” Rick slouched off in the direction of the bus, disappearing around the right side before Barry and the other paramedic made their way to my body.

I moved toward the bus, a morbid curiosity about the circumstances surrounding my ejection from life, driving me forward.

“You can’t take him.” The voice was a shock, like diving into icy water and I whipped around to see Angela looking up at Barry while the other paramedic, looking embarrassed and out place, stood a few feet away.

“Listen, sweetheart,” Barry began as he slowly kneeled down.

“No! You can’t take him!” She was getting louder with each word and I saw my mother look up from where she was kneeling.

I moved beside my body, standing just outside the space that stood between Angela and Barry.
“Angela, right? I know your parents. Listen, we can’t leave his body here,” Angela hiccoughed loudly at this but Barry kept speaking, “I’m sorry sweety but he’s gone.”

Angela looked Barry straight in the face and behind the tears I thought I could see a flicker of the life that normally burned so brightly there.

‘You’re wrong. He’s still here.” She stated without hesitation. I became excited, wondering how she knew.

Barry looked nonplused; he had, in the long course of being an EMT, probably dealt with hundreds of people that were angry or distressed over the injury of death of a loved one. He started into what seemed like a tired and well rehearsed explanation.

“You’re right of course. He is still here, as long as you remember him the way he was, he’ll always be…” Barry trailed off as Angela began shaking her head.

“No! Don’t you feed me any of that. Lucas is still here, he’s still alive! You can’t put him in that bag!”
At her words I saw the black bag that was now sitting atop the stretcher. It reaffirmed the reality of the situation for me. There was no going back. Angela, while I loved her for her unwavering position, was chasing a dream. There was no way she could know I was here. Nobody else had so much as glanced in my direction. There was also no way that I could still be alive, my body had not drawn breathe for awhile now, and the paramedics, being forced to deal with my father and Angela, still hadn’t check for so much as a pulse.

“But,” Barry plowed forward, “we have to Angela, we can’t leave his body there!”

“No!” Angela was on her feet as she screamed the word, “You don’t understand. You’re not listening to me! He’s not dead! He’s still here! I saw him,” surprised, Barry and I stood stunned in place, “He said something, I didn’t hear it but he was there in that stupid black t-shirt and those ratty jeans. So you can’t put him in that bag! You can’t! I won’t be able to hear him…he won’t be able to breathe!”

She looked ready to continue when my mother, quiet and graceful, stood in front of her. I stepped to the side in order to see them both clearly.

“Mrs. McMurdy?” Angela looked up at my mother’s face, which, while tear streaked, was caring; gently arranged with a soothing, almost serene look.

“He’s still here, don’t let them take him,” Angela begged in a barely audible whisper. My mother shook her head and I knew what she would say before she spoke.
“He’s gone Angie, he’s gone.”

Angela stood unmoving, unblinking as if she had been caught in a spotlight. As her face began to melt from indignation to overwhelming shock and then back to grief, my Mother stepped forward, wrapped her arms around Angela, and slowly lowered her to the ground. The y remained that way, my mother quiet and Angela, grief stricken and sobbing, until the paramedics and the coroner, who had arrived ten minutes later, pronounced me dead and began the process of clearing my last few moments of life from the road.

***

My parents drove Angela home. My father took the driver seat and my mother sat in the back with Angela curled up next to her. My mother absently stroked her hair. Angela stared straight ahead. My father was one with the car. His movements and gestures were mechanical, no energy was wasted. He didn’t even complain about the other drivers, a favorite past time of his. I occupied the passenger’s seat. I paid no attention to the seatbelt; I didn’t feel the pull of the car turning or the gentle push of my father’s well executed acceleration.

The scenery passed by quickly and I only barely registered the groups of people scattered in front yards, back yards, and parking lots. They were celebrating the beginning of a new chapter of their lives. My book was already finished.

We slowly rolled by my house on the way to Angela’s. The mood here was decidedly different. People were sitting on chairs, on the ground, and on the steps. It looked like somebody had commanded them to sit and they had all obeyed on the spot. This was no party. They weren’t celebrating from where they sat with the shock and distress that stretched from face to face. This was a vigil, a few hours of devastated mourning. This was a support group without a leader.

Somebody had obviously called ahead, probably hoping to delay the arrival of too many people; hoping to lessen the impact on a day set aside for joyous, long-overdue celebration. I thought about how this might have gone if I hadn’t died. Angela and I would have entered the yard from the back and slipped in among the partiers, pretending as if we’d been there the whole time. The music and the laughter would rise in equal measure to the revolutions of the clock. Cell phones would be lost, broken, and dropped in the toilet, only to be replaced by proud parents temporarily blinded by the achievements of their children. Gifts would be exchanged among friends and squirreled away to be opened tomorrow. Calls of thanks, from brand new phones, would crisscross the town. Then people would wake up the next day and go about the process of getting on with their lives; wherever it might take them.

I felt as close to a burning shame as the tingling could recreate. These people, my friends, would not remember this as the day that they had graduated. My heroics would shadow this day on the calendar of their memories. Their lives were not destroyed; their time wasn’t cut overwhelmingly short. But this might alter their path. They might fail a college entrance exam or lose a summer job because of the loss that, for all appearances, had gripped every person who had the misfortune to show up.

Others would learn the truth later in the evening, still others would not find out until the funeral announcement went around. These people would be affected, but never to the extent of the people at this party. It was a matter of comparing a bruise with a deep laceration.

***

They sat around the living room in silence as the daylight slowly passed on into dusk. The radio, forgotten in the background, was playing something from the early 90s, but nobody listened. I heard the music but felt disconnected from it, as if the energy used to recall the artist’s name would be a waste. The cherry coffee table still had bits of Angela’s scrapbooking material on it, and this is what I focused on. She had been working on a graduation page. Words like “congrats!” and “off to college” littered the table on neatly cut out squares of paper. The borders were carefully arranged and ready to accept pictures that would never be taken.

My father sat in an old wooden rocking chair; the chair rocked slowly and silently back and forth with an almost imperceptible motion. Angela’s father, on the other side of the room, occupied a faded leather recliner with canvas threads showing through on the arms where Angela and I, much younger back then, had climbed and wrestled with him.

The ‘tink’ of ice melting was the only indication that someone had brought drinks into the room. My mother held hers but otherwise paid no attention to it. The front on every other glass was undisturbed; rings of condensation on the table were a testimony to how long everyone sat in silence.

My mother and Angela’s mother shared the love seat. Angela sat on the floor, picking at the fibers of the sea green carpet. I’ve heard it said that silence in a situation such as this is oppressive, weighing down on the lungs and the heart, making it hard to breathe until, panic stricken, you find some excuse to leave. This silence was not the same. There were no unasked questions, no awkward pronouncements; there was only flat, dry, tired quiet. Words had not stopped on the tip of the tongue; they had died, dried up, and blown away. There no tears, there was only an intense weariness that denied the energy necessary to squeeze them out.

I was not alive, but I was there, sentient and observant; restless with all the quiet and unmoving air. I paced the room, careful to step around objects and everybody there, without really thinking about why I was doing it. My steps made no noise and I didn’t cause the scrapbooking paper to rustle as I walked by.

***

The night wore on, the phone rang and there were knocks at the door. Both went unanswered. I don’t know whether everyone present sat in deep thought or if they simply existed for a few hours like caricatures of life cut from stone. Around vie in the morning my mother nodded off and slumped against Megan, Angela’s mother. My father’s eyes focused for the first time in hours, and he blinked in the pre-light.

“I better take her home.” My father’s voice was barely a whisper but it had the effect of a bullhorn. Save for my mother, everyone looked at my father as if they hadn’t even known he was there. Frank, Angela’s father, nodded toward my father, his prominent bear touching his chest for a moment and casting the lines of his face in deeper shadow.

My father helped his wife to her feet and turned toward the door. I didn’t want to stay in that room with the unbearable silence. I followed my father out onto the front porch and into the cool morning air. Flowers had already bloomed in the garden under the front windows and on this morning they were an explosion of color. Angela never paid much attention to what she and her mother were planting. She usually took a handful of seed and scattered it with the end result being a mix and colors and flower types.

My mother and father began walking across the sloping lawn toward our house. I followed slowly behind, taking in the sights and sounds of an early spring day. As we approached the boundary line between our property and our neighbor’s property I began to hear something that seemed out of place. It was barely audible, a whisper lost in the wind. I paid it barely a moment’s notice as I kept pace, unseen, behind my father. The farther from Angela’s house we got, the more noticeable, and the less ignorable, the sound became until was a voice, clearly speaking as if the person was talking directly into my ear.

“Don’t go…”

I whipped around, barley noticing that I didn’t feel the normal force of turning so quickly. The voice had been clear and familiar and for a split second I thought that everything had been a dream. However, as I turned on the spot I realized that nobody was there. Slightly confused, I turned to find that my parents were no half again closer to the door of our house. I made to follow them again.

“Lucas, don’t go, don’t leave me behind.”

I froze. The tingling sensation had become weaker and the voice had sounded strained, almost weak with pleading. I knew the voice, but found it hard to believe.

It was Angela, calling to me. I couldn’t see her outside but she had been un-muffled, crystal clear. Had she followed u out? Did she know I was here? Sure she claimed to have seen me, but she was emotionally distressed at the time.

I waited a few minutes to see if she would appear, smiling and open-armed, out of the crisp morning air. When she failed to appear, laughing and telling me it was all a joke, I decided that I was hearing things. Besides, what did I know about my current situation, maybe people who died heard voices all of the time.

I made it half way to the door of the house before my vision darkened at the edges and I began to lose even more of the tingling sensation.

“Please! Don’t go!”

This time the words struck me like a physical blow to my consciousness and I instinctively took a step back. The moment I did the world snapped back into focus and sensation flooded the parts of me that I will loosely refer to as limbs. I’ll point out that I imagine myself as whole and complete; two arms and two legs. But I’ve never figured out if this is only a projection my mind uses in order to capture and encapsulate my consciousness and memories. Perhaps like a glass holding water, my perceived body keeps my mind from spreading and evaporation.

I cautiously tested the boundary I perceived by stepping over it. The further forward I moved, the darker my vision became and the less I felt and heard until her voice came back. I stepped back, utterly perplexed. My parents were in the house already; the door was closed and probably locked.

I had graduated, I had saved the person I loved from death, I had died, and now I was along outside in the slowly brightening morning. I was hearing voices, but not just any voice, the voice of a young woman who was more important to me than my own life. And she was inside of her house. I closed my eyes, thinking of Angela as we had been. I wanted to open my eyes and be seated at graduation again. When I did open them, I was surprised. I was not at graduation, but I was in Angela’s house again, standing next to her bed.

She was curled into a tight ball underneath the same maroon comforter I had seen for the last five years. She had been crying again, the streaks down her face and the dampness on her pillow were evidence of that. But now she seemed a little more relaxed and she slept peacefully. I didn’t feel tired, I didn’t feel awake. I existed in a perpetual state of awareness and I wondered, for the first time, how long it would be that I was like this.

I stood next to her bed until she woke with a start at two in the afternoon.