Finally, Candace stood, inhaling her newly renewed sobs as she practically dragged Abram with her toward the coffin. Cicely dutifully followed her parents, scuffing her feet on the fine-piled carpeting.
John stood at the podium, tapped his finger on the microphone even though it was obviously on, and cleared his throat. “Okay. Here it goes ... I have no idea what it means, but this was, like, one of Colby’s favorite poems from English lit. I think he wrote a paper on it …” He glanced up from his cheat sheet to Luci, and she nodded to encourage him to continue.
Oh, yet we trust that somehow good will be the final end of ill, to pangs of nature, sins of will, defects of doubt, and taints of blood …
A line had begun to form up the center aisle toward the coffin. Mourners shuffled over to look at Colby’s body, then crossed away down a side aisle to exit the church. It was old-fashioned and ritualistic. Luci had made sure that Colby’s mother intended to subject herself to such a display. It was part of the plan.
That nothing walks with aimless feet; that not one life shall be destroy’d, or cast as rubbish to the void, when God hath made the pile complete.
Luci straightened her skirt and started to rise, only to be immediately pulled back to her seat by her girlfriend, Melinda, who was sitting on her left.
“You’re not going up there!” Melinda hissed. “This is all just sick. Looking at him and everything. You aren’t going up there. Are you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then. I’m coming with you.”
Luci stood. She had steeled herself to move forward but was now forced to wait to step into the aisle. It was blocked by a wave of stragglers who had decided to brave the trek at the same time as her.
Thus stalled, she was forced to listen to John not understanding a single word coming out of his mouth, but continuing to recite the poem as requested. Because ultimately, that’s what true friends did for each other.
That not a worm is cloven in vain; that not a moth with vain desire is shrivell’d in a fruitless fire, or but subserves another’s gain.
This was the best Luci could do on short notice. The best she could do under the circumstances. Abram had almost convinced Candace that an open casket was obscene. She’d heard their fight from the front yard, though Colby’s parents had assumed she’d left after delivering her mother’s tuna casserole.
She hadn’t. The light had been on in Colby’s room. Luci had waited, but he obviously hadn’t appeared at the window to grin down at her. Colby wasn’t prone to smiling, but he’d always smiled at her from that window.
Melinda, never the patient one, shoved by Luci to hiss at the slow-moving line of people blocking them from the aisle. “Wake up, people. Girlfriend here.”
She gave Luci a little shove to urge her forward, but people seemed super slow to understand that they needed to move out of the way.
“I’m okay going to the end of the line,” Luci said to placate her fierce friend.
“Forget it. If you’re doing this, then do it. We have to get to the wake, don’t we? I thought you made cheesecake.”
People shuffled enough for Luci to step into line. Melinda pressed in behind her while hissing like a cat at the guy at her back. Luci wrapped her hand around her friend’s wrist, and that seemed to settle Melinda a little. No one knew how to protect her, so they were going off in all the wrong directions. She knew she wasn’t helping, but she didn’t feel much like talking it out.
Behold, we know not anything; I can but trust that good shall fall. At last — far off — at last, to all. And every winter change to spring.
After what seemed like ages, Luci stepped up to look down at the pale boy, forever seventeen now, in the gleaming mahogany coffin. Colby would have loved this coffin. Luci had made sure that Candace knew that before meeting with the funeral director. It was atrociously expensive, but they wouldn’t be splitting an inheritance between two children now, so the money probably didn’t matter.
Yes, that was morbid. Luci had to be careful that she didn’t get sucked down into all of this death and darkness. Colby’s face was a little too thin and his dark hair looked recently cut and traditionally styled. He wouldn’t have liked that at all, but Luci — limited in time and hindered by weighty decisions — could only fight the important battles.
Melinda, who’d been hanging off her arm, turned her back to give Luci some privacy. That gesture alone let her know she’d been staring too long. But it was harder to look away than she thought it would be. Suppressed emotion threatened to break through her cast-iron resolution. She fought the urge to reach out and stroke Colby’s cheek. She would never have done such a cheesy thing in life, so why do it in death?
So runs my dream: but what am I? An infant crying in the night: an infant crying for the light: and with no language but a cry.
She took a deep breath and placed her hand on Colby’s chest. It would never rise with breath again. She exhaled, tucked the register roll that contained her final note to him in the breast pocket of his new pinstriped suit, and turned away from her first love.
*
Though her mother had smoothed the collar of her hated black dress and fussed with her hair clip, Luci had insisted on driving to Colby’s parents’ house with her friends. Melinda had gotten an old BMW — originally her brother’s car — for her sixteenth birthday. Luci slid into the passenger seat at the church. John, his girlfriend Trina, and Trina’s friend Zoe had piled into the back.