January, 2014    

    Ever Eberhardt's funeral was in the quaint Memoriam Lanes Cemetery beside the long, winding road that lead out of Seabrook. Although she had made a new home for herself with Reese in Chicago, her father wanted nothing more than to have his only child close to the home she grew up in. So close that he only had to walk ten minutes down the road to get from his house to the cemetery.

    Memoriam Lanes was well-kept. All of its diverging paths lead to the center of the cemetery where a water fountain sat with an angel blooming from its top like a cereus. Coins reflected the sunlight beneath the fountain's rippling tides. Flowers of all types sprouted up around the paths in muted tones, shrinking away from the heavy soles that crushed the gravel beside them. All of the trees were young birches whose branches reached towards the sun in green rays, and whose thin, white bark flaked and fluttered away on the breeze in the motion of wounded butterflies. The names of the headstones, even the oldest ones, could be read as clear as the sky on Ever's burial day.

    Everyone was in attendance for Ever's funeral. Even people from high school that she barely knew, and people that she didn't like much at all. They had a common interest in being there: To pay their respects to someone as extraordinarily unforgettable as Ever Eberhardt. No one in Seabrook, not even the ones who left to see what else life had to offer outside of Seabrook's insignificant corner of the universe, had ever again met someone as eventful as her. Ever in herself was an event, from her spending every penny she had on lottery tickets so she could  "build a time machine," to when she started selling cigarettes at school to buy Coldplay tickets, despite never smoking a day in her life, and then tried to sell a pack to the gym teacher when she got caught.

    Milo, Iggy, Marty, Jay, Doogie and Todd were there as well.

    Since dropping out, Milo's mother's cancer went through three more bouts of relapse and remission, so he never left Seabrook. He stayed stagnant, tending to his mother during the day and sobbing himself into exhaustion every night whenever he saw commercials for the technical institute he dreamed of attending. He never envisioned himself mowing lawns and painting houses for grocery money at twenty-one years old, but as he weeded his neighbor's garden one day, staring into the center of a white tiger lily like it was some magic mirror or portal into the future, he saw many more lawns and peeling houses in his destiny. However, since hearing of Ever's death on the local news, Milo could no longer see a future for himself, not even mowing lawns. It was like he died with Ever. That glacier in his chest felt like it was the weight of a monument as he sat in the back row of her funeral. His eyes were redder than every blush Ever caused him to have, and he was paler than what he imagined her lifeless skin  being. He didn't feel like he was actually there at all. He was a ghost of his former self. A ghost at a funeral.

    Iggy was one of the few that did leave Seabrook, but it was only after her parents gave her enough money to support herself and her son, Isaac, for awhile. Once all of the changing hotel rooms drained what her parents gave her, Iggy resolved to move in with her older sister, Isabel, who lived in a big city twenty miles outside of Seabrook. Before the move, Iggy barely managed to finish high school, and for the first year of Isaac's life she became a reservoir of life-depleting hatred. Hatred for getting pregnant by a man whose identity she would never know. Hatred for not being able to go to college when she wanted to. And a special sort of hatred for not heeding Ever's warnings about promiscuity. It's not like Iggy didn't love her son. She loved Isaac dearly, but she wished on every shooting star and every coin in every fountain that she had him later. Despite that, her life still turned out pretty good, by her standards. Once Isabel helped her finish high school, she went to cosmetology school and became a hairdresser. She made enough money to send Isaac to one of the better preschools in their area, wherein he was beginning to learn Spanish. But all of that wishing resurfaced and hit her like a brick on the day she received an email about Ever's death. She thought of how devastating it was for Ever to die so young, and then she thought of all the things she could have accomplished in her life if she hadn't gotten pregnant when she did. Ever was doing great things: Graduating college, cultivating a fast-blooming career as a comic book artist, and being whisked around the world by a handsome fiance. What did Iggy have to show for her life: a kid she had as a teenager and a minimum-wage gig at a salon? Despite how disturbing it was, as Iggy sat in one of the middle rows of the funeral, she became envious of Ever. Then she started to cry hysterically when she realized that Ever was dead. Iggy was jealous of a dead person.

    Marty had just shot up with Merida when he saw the morning paper where Ever's obituary smiled up at him from the photo they used of her at graduation. Marty and Jay were in that photo as well, but their faces were cropped out to focus solely on Ever. At first, he thought it was the Local Hero section, where they often put policemen, firefighters, or Seabrook graduates who went on to have illustrious careers, until he saw her name harshly bolded beneath the photo and the date of her death just beneath that. He had never come down from a high so fast in his life. He only talked to Ever once since the argument they had about him dropping out of college. It was her telling him that she got engaged and that she wanted Marty to be at her wedding. She sounded so happy and so alive. Up until that point, he thought he was happy too, but when he heard her voice he finally knew what real happiness sounded like. He realized that his happiness in all of the syringes and pipes was just a placebo. When Ever asked him if he would come, he said that he didn't want to and hung up. They never spoke again after that, but seeing her obituary made him regret what he said. Of course he wanted to be at her wedding. She was his best friend, and he wanted nothing more than to support her like all the times she supported him, but he didn't think he could handle seeing her and ruining her happiness when she discovered that he was on drugs, so he made an excuse. The excuse that he didn't want to come no matter how much every nerve ending in him screamed otherwise. Finding out that she died drove him over the edge. That night, he overdosed. He flat-lined three times in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, but the paramedics kept reviving him. He only survived because one of his younger brothers found him unconscious on the basement floor right after he overdosed. If the ambulance had arrived just five minutes later, he would have died, the nurses said. Marty wished they had arrived five minutes later as he sat at the front of the funeral, staring at the arrangement of flowers surrounding Ever's casket.

    Out of the eight years he was sentenced to serve in the state penitentiary, Jay only served a little less than four. He was released early due to overcrowding, good behavior, and the perk of him being a first-time offender. His cellmate — a squirrely, unassuming little man with an knack for car theft — clapped him on the back on the day of his release and told him that he was lucky. But Jay didn't feel lucky. Being released only reminded him of losing his football scholarship, being a felon for the rest of his life, ruining a women and her family's lives, and how much love he lost for his brother. It wasn't just that Andrew was part of the reason for Jay going to prison, but it was also that Andrew had never visited Jay once during his incarceration. Andrew couldn't even spare a phone call or a letter in which Jay hoped for an apology. It was like Andrew didn't even care. That was reinforced once Jay got back to his parents' home in Seabrook, where he found two police cars in the driveway. The night before, Andrew broke in and stolen their parents' valuables, including Jay's football trophies. With that, Jay began to hate his brother. The police never caught Andrew, but they did find many of the family's belongings at a local pawn shop. Jay got a janitorial job at Seabrook High School and used his pay checks to help his parents replace the belongings that were not recovered. It was at his job, mopping the halls he used to commute with Ever to class everyday, that he was informed of her death. Their old principle, Mr. Keller, told him. Jay wasn't an emotional person, but Mr. Keller had to hold him up when the sobs began to fight their way out of him. Ever was the only person, other than his parents, that called him during his incarceration. Ever was one of the only people that sympathized with him. Everyone else in Seabrook thought of him as a monster or the scum of the earth. But Ever never did. She spoke nothing but words of encouragement. She told him that he would get his life together after he got out. She assured him that he would finish college, get a good job, and live the best life he could. She was the only one that believed he could be better, but now there was no one. He was reminded of that painful thought when he arrived at her funeral. There, he sat beside Marty. They looked each other in the eyes with the unspoken agreement that they were currently living the worst days of their lives.

    Doogie almost didn't make it to the funeral. It wasn't the traffic, or the weather that hindered her. It was that voice in the back of her head. The voice that screamed as loudly as a broken child whenever she set foot outside. The police never found the man who abused her, prompting her to move back in with her parents. She quit her job, and she began taking her college courses online just so she didn't have to leave the house. Her father talked her into seeing a therapist, but when she learned that the only therapist with patient openings in their area was a man, she all but curled into the fetal position and died. When her father tried to coax her into the car, she burst into a fit of uncontrollable sobs, her limbs went limp, and she felt a deathly restriction in her chest. That was how she reacted every time she was faced with the prospect of being in the presence of a man that was not her father or one of her brothers. Her mother Googled it one day, and came up with the term androphobia. It stood for the immense, morbid fear of men. Doogie knew there would be men at Ever's funeral, men she didn't know because Ever was apart of almost every social circle that had ever existed during their days in Seabrook, and so the only way she could go was if her mother, her grandmother, and two of her aunts went to the funeral with her. As Doogie tentatively stepped into Memoriam Lanes, the four women shrouded around her like the clouds sailing over the sun. They all sat in the back-most row, where Doogie locked eyes with Milo for a moment. He waved. She looked away.

    Todd was one of the last people to arrive at Ever's funeral. He would have came sooner if his anger management session hadn't been scheduled so close to the funeral. Since the day he attacked Greenlee, he began attending sessions with a Dr. Anne Tov to better manage his emotions. At the time, he didn't think he even had emotions anymore, and only went to Dr. Tov's sessions to appease his uncle who kept expressing concern about Todd's behavior since the death of his parents. The more Todd went to the sessions, the more he began to feel again. Most of what he felt was horror at what he had done to Greenlee, and the rest was an overwhelming sadness where the love for his parents used to be. He hoped he would feel better if he apologized to Greenlee. Since she didn't press charges, he thought she would be willing to accept him once he got his life in order, but what happened was the exact opposite. As soon as Greenlee answered the door of her parents' home, she screamed at him to leave and that she wanted nothing to do with him before tearfully slamming the door shut. He still felt the need to apologize, so he sent her a letter. He wasn't sure if she read it or not, but just writing it was enough for him. His life found normalcy after that. He went to work everyday, and began fixing up the house on the weekends. He and Iggy talked on the phone every Wednesday during her lunch break at the salon and his cigarette break at the repair shop. She always talked about coming to visit him so he could meet Isaac — even though Todd was never fond of kids, he thought he would like Isaac. It was on one of their Wednesday talks that Iggy broke the news of Ever's death to Todd. He didn't know how to process it. He couldn't cry or even think. He was just angry. Angry at the person who ran into Ever, and angry that he didn't maintain his friendship with Ever, and angry at life in general. Instead of remembering all the things he and Dr. Tov talked about, Todd went out after work that day and found a fight with a man twice his size that patronized the bar down the street. Todd got in a few good punches, but the man would have slaughtered him if it hadn't been for a few passerbys pulling them apart. Todd laid on the pavement outside of the bar for a long time, his left eye swollen shut and a river of blood from his mouth pooling into a small ocean beside his head. That was when cried. He cried for Greenlee, and his mother, and his father. Most of all, he cried for Ever because she had so much life to live before it was cut short in an instant. Todd cried again when he sat next to Iggy who continued to sob and wail hysterically in the middle of the funeral.

    Most of the guests at the funeral sat admiring Ever's casket before the minister took to the podium. Her casket was beautiful. It was long and a shade of silver that captured the sunlight. Golden details sprawled across its sides in thin rivulets that looked like liquid gold running down a tilted surface. A bundle of white flowers sat on its top, their spindly petals standing out in starry rays that looked as though they could die at a touch anymore potent than the wind. The casket was like a fairy boat waiting to be sent out into the dark.

    Milo thought that the casket's beauty was compensation for not being able to see Ever; she was too damaged from the accident for her casket to be opened. Despite its grandeur, everyone knew that the person inside was far more beautiful than any fancy, ornate trappings they could possibly bury her with. The world was at a loss without her, Milo thought. Then he whispered, "Ever, where did you go?"

    That was the question on all of their minds. Jay and Marty didn't believe in an afterlife. They shared the thought that she was just gone, that her life and everything she was ceased to exist. That notion was depressing, but neither of them could bare to think of her being trapped somewhere between the stations of life and death, like a spirit in an eternal limbo. Iggy's deeply religious parents were the motivation behind her belief that Ever was in heaven bantering back and forth with God. Her sobs were replaced by a brief smile at the thought. Todd didn't know what to believe. He liked the idea of his parents and Ever being in some beautiful place beyond the universe, but he never put much stock into intangible things. Doogie was always a fan of the theory of reincarnation. She believed that Ever was being reborn out there in the world somewhere so she could live all over again, but the thought of Doogie not knowing this new Ever broke her heart. And Milo... well, he was too exhausted from crying to fathom where Ever could be. He wished someone could just give him the answers to all of life's terrible things. That would make living a whole lot easier.

∞ ∞ ∞

    After the funeral, the six former-friends convened. Doogie almost couldn't bare to part from her family, but she found solace in Iggy's tight embrace. They all piled into Marty's van, wherein the atmosphere was enshrouded in a heavy, silent sadness that reached its melancholy tendrils into each of their chests. Their destination was Ever's favorite bar, Moony's, that she often patronized with a fake ID while in high school.

    None of them could ever recall enjoying Moony's, but Ever always did. In all actuality, the place was a dump. The stools were lop-sided, the tables were split from bodies thrown against them during drunken brawls, the floor was lined with cigarette butts and liquor, only a handful of buttons on the jukebox actually worked, and the whole place carried the light stench of mildew. To top it all off, the owner, Herman Mooney, who also doubled as the bartender, was hard of hearing. By the end of the night, almost every patron left with a sore throat from shouting their order at him.

    Despite Mooney's pitfalls, Ever loved it because it had "character."

    The six of them crowded around one of the tables in the back of Moony's. There, each of them ordered an especially strong drink, except for Jay. As the rest of them drank, Jay flicked the neglected shells of long-eaten peanuts around the battered table top.

    "It's not right," Marty muttered from around the lip of his glass.

    All the eyes of his former friends locked onto him.

    "She didn't want to be buried," he said, staring into the liquor like he expected to see something more than what it was. "She told me that she wanted to be cremated, and she wanted her ashes spread beneath the pier at Ellingston beach on a windy day in July."

    Iggy fought back a doleful laugh. "She was always so specific."

    It was quiet for a moment, save for the other patrons of the bar, before Jay spoke. "Please tell me that your lives have been better than mine since graduation."

    "I didn't even graduate," Milo muttered. He swallowed the bronze booze with a screwed-up face and a wetness in his eyes.

    Doogie looked especially surprised. The only one of her former friends that expressed as much of an interest in school as she did was Milo. To hear that he dropped out caused her to choke on her liquor for a moment. Marty went to pat her on the back, but she quickly flinched away from him.

    "I got pregnant a couple months before graduation," Iggy said. She dug through her purse and pulled out a picture of Isaac. He looked exactly like Iggy, of which she was eternally thankful for.

    They were all in agreement that Isaac was a cute kid. Iggy smiled broadly.

    "I've..." Marty started, then retracted the thought before changing his mind and blurting it out, "I've been struggling with drug addiction."

    "I think we all saw that coming," Todd scoffed, swirly his vodka around, "but at least you never beat the shit out of your own girlfriend."

    "You did what?" Jay spat.

    "I was having a really rough time. Both of my parents died, and I went out of my mind for a little while, all right?"

    Jay was disgusted. The most lowly men he had ever met were one's that battered women. He was tempted to express his contempt until he realized that he was no saint at all. Then his face fell. "I was drunk driving and got into an accident that paralyzed a woman... a mother. I spent four years in prison for it."

    Their attention shifted expectantly to Doogie. Her mouth fell agape, and she squirmed under the pressure of their stares. She felt like their eyes were exposing all of her vulnerability. Then she felt naked, like that night in the alley. A panic attack hit her like a wave, sucking all of the oxygen from her blood and replacing it with a frozen feeling that rushed through her veins. Her eyes swelled with tears, and before she knew it she was wrapped up in Iggy's arms again.

    "Judging by her reaction, I'd say that Doog has had it the worst," Todd said.

    Marty got up from his seat, muttering, "I think we're gonna need more liquor."

    Milo couldn't bare to see Doogie cry, so he focused his attention on the glass between his calloused fingertips instead. The tequila glistened in the dirty glass like the tiger lily in his neighbor's garden. The ripples his trembling hands sent through the liquor swam around the glass, reminding him of the way the lily moved when the breeze weaved its way through the garden. Like when he foresaw his future in the lily, he came upon a realization in that glass of tequila that stared up at him with the reflection of his face. When he looked up at his friends, he was as white as a sheet.

    "Ever was right," he said. "All of her premonitions came true."

    "What the hell are you talking about?" Todd snapped. "Did Marty get eaten by a lizard? No. So her premonitions were wrong."

    "Forget the lizard," Milo shouted, jumping up from his seat so abruptly that it reeled backwards and clattered on the floor. "The last premonitions she told us all came true! I dropped out of school, Iggy got pregnant, Marty is a crackhead—"

    "Heroine," Marty interjected.

    "Jay went to prison, Doogie is obviously traumatized, and you turned into Chris Brown!"

    "I don't remember Ever saying anything about Chris Brown," Marty said before Jay slapped a hand over his mouth.

    "What the fuck did you just call me?" Todd seethed. His chair was thrown amongst the forgotten cigarettes and spilled booze as well.

    "Will both of you stop it!" cried Iggy. "Instead of taking out the miseries of our lives on each other, and instead of downing a few drinks to try to forget how miserable we are, why don't we try to be better? Drunkenly fighting each other isn't what Ever would want! Have any of you thought for even a second that maybe Ever was so obsessed with those stupid statistics because she wanted to prove them wrong?"

    The volume in the bar was dialed down to a whisper as the former friends stared at Iggy, whose face was tinged red with all of the excess emotions still brewing inside her.

    Todd and Milo exchanged guilty glances. Beneath the ruckus of Doogie's sobs, Todd muttered an apology, extending his hand across the table as if to wave the white flag. The look in Milo's eyes was doleful when he extended his arm as well, meeting in the middle air above the cracked table in a tight handshake.

    Jay broke the silence. "There's still time for us, time for us to be better. None of us are too far gone... not even Marty."

    "What's that supposed to mean?"

    Everyone shared a chuckle, even Doogie who mopped up the last of her stray tears with the sleeve of her shirt.

    "I think I've already started," Jay smiled, looking at the empty space on the table were his drink would have been.

    "In that case, I have a proposal," Iggy said. "We are all going to strive to make the best of our lives and to prove Ever's theories wrong. We're not going to let the remainder of our lives be defined by the mistakes we've already made. So, one year from today, we'll all meet again, beneath the pier at Ellingston beach. There, we'll share our progress. If we're successful in whatever it is that we aspire to change in our lives, it will be because of Ever, and we'll give her a final send-off. We'll say goodbye to her the right way."

    Each of the six around the table nodded their heads in agreement and acceptance. With that one motion, they all made a promise to Ever. A promise that they would release themselves from the stigmas of their past mistakes, and to fulfill the potential for greatness that Ever believed they all inherently possessed. They became truly aware of their existences, who they were, and why they made the decisions they did in their lives. It was then that they became committed to living. Not existing in the shadows of their prior lives like they had up until Ever's death, but actually living. The type of magnificent living that encompassed all it meant to be really alive, to acknowledge every moment and to feel every instance of life, just like they had experienced on the days they spent on Ellingston beach with Ever.

∞ ∞ ∞