“I’m staying with the McIntyres,” Jackson says.
I’m such an idiot. He smells like cigarette smoke because he was outside with your dad, and he only got the shoulder pat because he’s been with them since last night. He must be staying in your room. Of course he is. He’s chief curator in the main exhibit of the McIntyre Museum, taking in all the archives of your life. I can see it all: our framed puzzles on your light-blue walls, a bookcase full of sketches you later animated at wicked speed, awards you didn’t mind “showing off,” your computer station decked out with robot magnets and old Tetris cartridges, the golden unicycle wheel you won at that carnival in the Bronx last summer, the plastic bat you used to beat the pi?ata at Denise’s seventh birthday, then saved for the zombie-pirate apocalypse . . .
The outsider is inside the nexus of your life, and I hate it.
“We should probably take our seats,” Jackson says. He checks his watch; it’s an old one of yours. The way he flashes it is hardly discreet. “The mass is probably starting any minute now.”
We walk into the service room together. I switch sides when he walks to my left. He doesn’t pay it any mind, going straight for the empty seat in the front beside your mother. Ellen is in full black and silent, resting her head on Russell’s shoulder. I’m ready to rage over where Jackson found the nerve to sit next to your parents, when my eyes find your body.
Even seeing it isn’t enough to believe it.
You’re in a mahogany casket, dressed in a black suit I don’t remember you owning. There are tons of flowers placed around you. It reminds me of the summer afternoon you confessed your love of calla lilies, scared to admit it because “flowers aren’t manly.” When I rambled about my secret obsession with immortality irises after discovering them in some comic, it became a happily manly conversation. Afterward, we’d occasionally visit your grandmother’s flower shop before it closed last winter, losing out to all her competitors during the Valentine’s Day rush. I process the flowers in the room again, not spotting any calla lilies.
I should’ve brought some white ones, your favorite. I’m sorry.
I walk toward you even though I know it’s not time for that. The minister is about to lead everyone in prayer or sing a hymn, but it’s you, Theo, in a box. My vision shakes, my knees tremble. My mom calls for me, and my dad appears at my left side, pulling my arm. I shake him off and switch sides before letting him guide me to our seats on the far left of the room, away from your family and Jackson. The seat is uncomfortable. Too many eyes are on me, so I sink to the carpeted floor, crossing my legs like it’s fifth grade all over again.
Father Jeffrey opens with a verse, Matthew 5:4: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
I guess there is something comforting about being in a room with people who love you. But you should’ve been given more time in this universe. That way, when you were ready to die, you could pack stadiums with people who loved you, not a single room.
There are hymns sung, but not by me. We agreed that I can do a lot of things—like keep up with a car for four blocks before losing my breath or ride a bike with no hands for long stretches of time—but I cannot sing. Jackson is singing, though. I can’t make out his voice in the chorus of others, but he’s looking at you with a tilted head, like a curious child asking you why you’re sleeping in a box.
The eulogies begin, and they’re brutal. Your mother is the first one up, and she tries to joke about the nineteen-hour labor she went through with you, before she shuts down and quickly reboots. She tells everyone how she’ll miss nursing you back to health whenever you were sick, and how she regrets confiscating your Xbox One after you received a C+ on your earth science midterm. Denise is next. She tells everyone how you two used to have dance parties in the living room, which I never knew, and when she loses it, I snap up from the floor and race toward her because you’re in a casket unable to do so yourself, inviting her to sit back down with me.
I’m not surprised your father tells the story about how your first word, “sock,” was the first time it clicked with him that you were a little human being that was going to grow up to use all kinds of words to get around the world. Aunt Clara will miss your “funny little movies.” Uncle Ned doesn’t know who he’ll talk to about engines anymore. Wade keeps it quick, too, saying he misses you so much already and apologizes for wronging you. Your neighbor, Simone, is still grateful for the month you went grocery shopping for her after she crushed her leg in a car accident.
Then it’s my turn.
Not sure what they want to hear from me.
Maybe they’re interested in how our friendship began in middle school over Pompeii. And now I’m supposed to be delivering your eulogy.