The boys in school react to the news with stoicism. They’re more stiff upper lip, more ashen-faced, save for Theo. He punches a locker so hard that he breaks his hand. Shatters a bunch of bones. The school nurse has me drive him to the ER. Theo will be benched with the injury for the rest of the season.
Our mother has the nerve to be mad at him. Not Theo. I mean she’s mad at Braden for ruining Theo’s season.
I can’t.
I can’t.
I can’t.
*
NSHS brings in therapists because the whole school is gutted, students and staff alike. How could anyone in Braden’s orbit not be?
What’s so fucked-up is that this is not our first rodeo, this is not our first time around. We recognize these grief counselors when they appear in their nondescript cardigans, with their salt-and-pepper hair, toting boxes of Kleenex. We’ve even learned their names because we see them so often.
Mrs. Callahan.
Mr. Regillio.
Ms. Verde.
This visit is going to go down like every other time, where they’ll be here for a couple of days, seeking out kids who are actively mourning in the halls. They’ll hug us and implore us to feel our feelings. They’ll promise us it will get better. They’ll tell us to take all the time in the world we need to feel right again.
Except the promise that we can take all the time we need is a tremendous lie, because they’re here for two days and then the school expects us to move on because midterms are coming up and the deadlines for early admission applications loom, so, really, we need to pull it together and that’s not going to happen if everyone’s standing around, feeling their feelings.
Then those grief counselors in their nondescript cardigans with their salt-and-pepper hair pack their Kleenex back into their hybrid vehicles and drive off into the sunset, like nothing ever even happened.
Until next time.
How can they be sent away when we’re clearly not done with them?
I try to find out as much as I can from the counselors, but they’re so busy when they’re here. How can anyone expect three people to process two thousand students’ worth of grief in a couple of days?
In the interim, I do what I can in peer counseling, which is never enough. I mean, the whole certification takes twenty hours, and the suicide segment was less than an hour. We’re taught to refer those with suicidal ideations, but we’re on our own when it comes to helping others deal with the aftermath.
I guess North Shore believes we shouldn’t grieve for long, that we’re better than that. I mean, do we not breed excellence here?
Maybe I drink too much of the Kool-Aid, because each time, I try to go along with the program. To shut down my emotions, which would consume me if I let them. Maybe the easiest thing is to just trust in our excellence or some bullshit like that. Yet if I do this now, that would mean Braden fell short of excellence, and I don’t believe that.
Can’t believe that.
If history is an indication, in two days from now, the memorials erected to Braden will have been removed. The counselors will be gone. All the flowers and candles, all the notes and pictures and footballs will have vanished. The administration will have been careful to make sure Braden doesn’t look like a martyr.
(Isn’t he, though?)
NSHS will be vehement about us remembering that even though Braden’s life is over, ours aren’t. And again, they’ll remind us that college application time is right around the corner.
Like they do.
Like they always fucking do.
The driven part of me will agree that I need to keep pressing forward because Princeton awaits. Braden used to tease me all the time, saying that I wasn’t destined to be a Tiger, because I’m much more of a cougar. (Liam’s three months my junior.) Then I’ll think about everything I have coming up and the cynical part of me wonders why even bother?
Right now, I wonder how I’m going to muster the energy for any of what’s to come.
This time is different.
This time is so much closer to home.
*
The two days have passed, and everything I predicted has happened. The counselors are gone. The flowers have been incinerated. The school is trying to maintain a fa?ade of normalcy. But I can’t seem to snap back this time, to rally, to forget.
I feel...hollow.
Like an empty husk, the contents long since rotted away, the outside a vacant shell, a brilliant fa?ade.
If losing Braden hasn’t been bad enough, the press coverage is making all of this a million times harder. The reporting seems fair enough, but it’s the reactions to the stories that are devastating. It’s like, “Hey, how ’bout we take one of the worst things that ever happened to you and put it on the national news and let all kinds of viewers offer up their unfiltered opinions on shit they don’t understand?”
People who aren’t from North Shore are being super harsh on social media, not at all sympathetic. Our teachers implore us to never read the comments, but I can’t help myself. I always hope that others have the answer, that they’ll make me understand why it happened, that the life he lived then lost was not in vain.
They never do, though.
These strangers, this faceless mob, they’re passing judgments based on B-roll of the makeshift memorials in front of Braden’s huge, gated house, with its rolling green lawn and driveway full of imported cars. They see pictures of this handsome kid on exotic vacations, like skiing in Gstaad in his silly cat hat, or standing on the beach in Bora Bora, six pack abs on full display, and all they can say is hashtag firstworldproblems.
These haters make everything worse for those of us who cared about Braden.
Who loved him.
But never told him.
*
I feel like I’ve been cauterized, like my ability to experience emotions has been burned closed. In a bout of self-protection, an attempt to keep myself from falling apart entirely, I’ve sealed off that which allows me to feel, to staunch the metaphorical bleeding, to protect what’s left.
I can’t make sense of this.
I have to know why.
I have to figure out exactly why.
If I can determine this, if I can get to the bottom of why, maybe I can pass along the word. I can stop this from happening again and Braden’s name will be the last entry on a long, tragic list. So now is the time to be rational. To be diligent. I fight every instinct that’s telling me to lie facedown on my bed and sob for the next week.
Month.
Year.
I rally against all the impulses that make me want to pick up his favorite hoodie, which he left in my room the last night we talked, and cling to it like a child with her security blanket.
How can he be gone when his stupid sweatshirt is still in my bedroom?