Written Word Weds. - Obligatory witty subtitle

Today is the first time I actually feel like I'm posting out of obligation, rather than a sheer enjoyment of writing . . . which is kind of ironic, what with it being Written Word Wednesday and all.

So, here's another semi-edited short story from college containing thinly-veiled versions of people I know.

The Year-and-a-Half High School Reunion

Roger was lying upside down on an enormous bean bag, acting on a misguided hope that the increased blood flow to his brain would help him come up with a speech topic, but so far it had only managed to make him slightly nauseous. His CD player was loaded with what he thought of as his "guilty pleasure" CDs, ones he enjoyed listening to but wouldn't brag about having to most of his friends. These CDs usually helped him concentrate, but tonight they were serving more as a distraction than an inspiration. He was absent-mindedly singing along with Linda Rondstat's "Love is a Rose" when a knock came on his dorm room door.

He yelled, "Just a minute," as he reached for his remote in order to switch his stereo from CD to radio mode. As the strains of the latest effort from Ben Folds started to emerge from the speakers he did a backwards somersault off of the bean bag, rose to his feet, and went to open the door.

He had barely gotten it open when he was suddenly pelted in the chest by a football. Startled, he groped at the projectile, but was unable to keep it from hitting the ground. His efforts were met with a chuckle from the hallway which transformed to a theatrical gasp of astonishment as he glanced towards its source.

"How could you drop it, Roger? It was a perfect pass, right between the numbers." With those words the newcomer picked up the football and pushed past Roger into the dorm room.

Roger laughed under his breath as he shook his head, his usual reaction when dealing with his former floor-mate, who somehow managed to be both the most annoying and the most entertaining person Roger knew. A man of many paradoxes was Vick Chalmers. "To what do I owe this pleasure, Vick?"

Vick collapsed on the bean bag and began tossing the football in the air. "I need some help."

Roger sat down on the corner of his bed. "That goes without saying. What with? Spanish? Calculus? Poli Sci?"

Vick shook his head. "Women."

Roger gave Vick a suspicious look. "Since when do you need my help with women?"
Vick returned the look with a large smile which Roger knew only too well, a smile that boded no good for the one in its path.

"Since the girl I'm interested in went to high school with you." He waited a few seconds before unleashing the real bomb shell. "You do remember a Lisa Patterson, don't you?"

"Lisa's going to school here? Since when? And how did you meet her? And how did MY name come up?"

Vick held up is hands. "Whoa, Silver, hold up. One question at a time. I met her at that workshop I had to go to for my theater class this afternoon. During one of the lame icebreakers she had to say where she grew up. I figured there couldn't be two Talahina's in Oklahoma, so I introduced myself to her as a friend of yours. She nearly bowled me over asking questions about you, so I gave her your phone number. She should be calling you any minute now to ask you out to dinner sometime."

"You did WHAT?"

Vick's mischievous smile grew. "Hey, it was the least I could do. I mean, as long as I was having to update her on your exploits I couldn't really hit on her effectively. So I figured, what the heck, I'll just let you two kids get together and reminisce about the good ol' days back at Podunk High. And in the midst of your great reunion you can slip in how lucky you were that she ran into your wonderful friend Vick, and isn't he just the nicest guy? And completely single too, did I mention that?"

Roger stared at Vick for a minute before responding. "So you arranged this torture just so I can try to fix you up with her, is that it?"

"Why Roger, do you take me for such a shallow person to set this all up just so I could get a date?" Vick asked with a voice full of almost-convincing hurt. "I mean, it would be great if Lisa and I were to get together because of this. But even if we don't work out, at least I'll have the pleasure of watching you squirm in anticipation of your big dinner. And believe me, that will be payment enough."

As Roger gave Vick another suspicious look, he briefly thought that if he continued associating with his friend, his face would soon freeze that way.

“What makes you think that I’d be nervous to have lunch with her?” Faced with Vick’s carefully neutral expression, Roger felt a sudden burst of insight. “Oh, crap, that stupid game of Truth or Dare last year.”

“Oh, you mean this is THAT Lisa? Why, I had no idea. None whatsoever.” Vick’s amused expression belied his innocent words.

Roger tried to summon a sense of outrage, but after a year and a half of being friends with Vick, it took a lot more than that to kindle any sort of feeling other than bemused resignation.

"What if I don't agree to meet with her?"

"But you will, Roger. We both know you will, so there's no need to go through one of your 'hypothetical situations.'” Roger couldn’t argue with that; a determined Vick was like a force of nature, it was easiest to just retreat to your metal shelter and weather the storm.

“Just be sure to give me all of the gory details," he said, launching himself off the bean bag and towards the door in one fluid motion.

"What, aren't you going to stay and witness my humiliation in person?"

"As much as I would love to, it's time for flag football practice. I've got to go and undermine the quarterback's authority before game-time. Enjoy yourself, young one." Roger watched him leave with a sense of regret, although he wasn’t sure why
As he stared at the phone Roger reflected on his relationship with Lisa Patterson.

She had transferred to his small school in the middle of their sophomore year. Before the year was over, Roger was totally smitten. It had been more than just her good looks, which he was sure was a more likely reason for Vick noticing her than her mention of Talahina. No, what really won Roger's heart had been Lisa's acting talent. Her portrayal of the suicidal Jessie in the school's production of 'Night, Mother had touched him deeply. He was amazed that a girl who obviously had so much going for her could capture the spirit of a character who had nothing left to live for. One of the girls Lisa had beaten out for the part claimed it was because she didn't have a personality of her own to get in the way. Roger brushed that away as jealousy; he had seen the quiet steel hiding beneath her placid surface.

But Roger had been the school nerd, trapped in a shell of shyness which he found nearly impossible to break. He had had to settle for being her friend, especially after she started going out with one of his few friends. After graduation Roger had headed straight to a four year university, while most of his classmates went to the local junior college. Away from home for the first time, hours away from anyone who had ever known him, Roger finally found the strength to break free of his shell. But at the thought of seeing Lisa again, he could feel himself sliding into his old cocoon of cowardice.

His phone began to ring with that odd double tone which signified an off campus call. Roger began to back away from the phone, until he realized just how ridiculous that was. "Stop it, dummy," he scolded himself, "it's just a phone call." But the thought of answering the phone; of talking to his first big, unrequited love; of arranging a meeting with Lisa (he couldn’t even begin to think of it as a “date,” besides, she was surely still with John, they were such a perfect couple, why hadn’t he mentioned that to Vick?); of trying to be the new Roger in front of someone who only knew the old Roger; the sheer weight was overpoweringly frightening. He felt like there was a physical barrier surrounding the phone, a barrier which seemed to grow stronger with each double ring.

Staring numbly at the phone, he heard a phantom sniggering in his head. Realizing that he had internalized Vick’s sarcastic laugh, Roger snapped. Somehow finding a hidden reserve of strength, he reached for the phone, smashing the barrier back into the nothingness from which it came. But as he lifted the receiver to his ear all he heard was the dial tone. He slammed it back into its cradle and collapsed onto his bean bag, tears of frustration forming in his eyes. She would call back. He knew she would. And somehow that thought was even more frightening than the thought that she wouldn't.

*****************************************************************

Roger limped into the lobby of Kirby Hall with a snarl on his face. As if it wasn't bad enough that it was taking him ten to fifteen minutes longer than usual to walk to class with his injured foot, the janitors decided to lock the side door to the dorm on the coldest day of the semester so far, forcing him to hobble around to the front doors while the wind cut right through his thin jacket. All he wanted to do now was go upstairs to his room, dump his backpack on the floor, and relax to some of his "guilty pleasure" CDs. He was in an Abba mood, he decided.

Totally focused on getting to the elevator, he didn't notice the figure sitting on the lobby couch until it spoke. "Roger, what did you do to your foot?"

He was completely caught off guard by the sound of that voice. He turned towards the couch slowly, unsure of whether he really wanted to be right about the speaker’s identity. As his eyes fell on her, though, there was no mistaking her. It was Lisa Patterson. Roger felt his body go numb from shock.

"And don't you ever go to your room?" Lisa continued, the lack of an answer to her initial question not bothering her a bit. The small part of his brain that was still functioning theorized that she was used to having this effect on men. "I met your friend Vick a couple of weeks ago and he gave me your phone number. I've been trying to get a hold of you ever since then but you never answer. I even checked the campus directory to make sure I had the right number."

"Well, I usually only stay in my room whenever I'm ready to go to sleep," Roger explained, happy to escape into an exchange of trivial information, "and that's usually not until around two in the morning, so it's pretty hard to get in touch with me. Mom's always complaining about that too. I keep meaning to get voice mail, but I just haven't got around to it yet."

He neglected to mention that ever since that first nerve-wracking experience waiting for her call he had been avoiding all off campus calls like the plague. But now that she was actually here he could feel his pulse start to speed up. He couldn't believe that she had made the effort to find out where he lived. "I've been acting like a jerk," he thought to himself.

"I'm sorry you had to come all the way over here to talk to me," he said. "Let me go put up my backpack, and then we can go get something to eat."

"Actually," Lisa said, "it's just luck that I ran into you, I'm supposed to meet someone here for lunch to work on a group project.” Roger struggled furiously to keep his disappointment from manifesting on his features. “But I am glad that you came in," she continued, scribbling on a corner torn from the college newspaper, and then handing it to Roger. "Here's my number. I'm a little bit easier to get a hold of than you, apparently. So I'll be expecting a call before the week is over, okay?"

Roger was saved from having to verbalize a response by a loud voice coming from around the corner of the lobby. "I can't believe they locked the doors," the voice was complaining. "It's frickin' freezin’ out there!" An instant later Vick rounded the corner along with his cousin Karen, who lived on the fourth floor of Kirby.

A huge smile began to spread across Vick's face as he saw Roger and Lisa together. "Hey guys, what's up? Glad to see you two finally got a chance to get together."

Before either one of them could respond the elevator doors opened up behind them.
"Are these punks bothering you, Lisa? You want I should take care of them?" These not-quite-joking words came from Mitch, a thoroughly unpleasant individual who Vick had often theorized only got into college in order to fulfill a “muscle-bound moron” quota. The numbness returned to Roger's body.

"That's OK Mitch," Lisa said, "I think I can handle these two by myself." She picked up her purse and headed towards the doors with Mitch. "I'd better get a call from you real soon, Roger," she called over her shoulder, "or I just might let Mitch take care of you." And with that she was gone.

Feeling his knees begin to give, Roger started towards the elevator, Vick and Karen following close on his heels.

"What, are you going to let that ape walk away with my girl?" Vick asked as Roger pushed the call button. "You're supposed to be going out with her, extolling my virtues, not letting her by wooed by that monkey."

"Leave him alone, Vick," Karen said. Roger was staring at the elevator, wondering why it was taking so long to come down.

"Why didn't you use the limp, man? All you had to do was exaggerate it a little bit, make yourself look more pitiful than usual, if that's even possible. Chicks eat that stuff up." Karen snorted at his use of the word chicks, as she usually did. Roger found himself starting to smile despite himself.

"What, you think it was an accident I broke your toe while we were playing ball?" Vick continued. "I knew you would need every weapon you could get. It’s not like you have my stunning good looks and suave personality to fall back on."

The elevator finally reached the ground floor. Roger tried to maintain his scowl as the doors opened, but finally let out an exasperated laugh. "Can't you let me wallow in my misery for at least a couple of minutes?"

Vick shook his head violently. "Nope, it's against my policy to let anyone I'm seen hanging around with be depressed." He slipped into his radio announcer voice. "Our motto here at Vick's is if you look sad, I look bad. And believe me, between your love life and my cousin’s abysmal GPA, I'm exhausted almost all of the time."

"What do you mean my love life? I thought it was your love life you were worried about."

"Oh, did I say YOUR love life? Man, what was I thinking?" He flashed his mischievous smile once more as the elevator doors started to open. "Well, looks like your stop, guess you gotta go, no time to talk, buh bye." He started to push Roger out into the elevator landing, pausing for an instant to say, "Not that I'm rushing you or anything," before finally ejecting him from the elevator. As the doors started to close Vick flashed him a military salute. "Buck up, soldier. Before I have to break another toe."

Roger stared at the elevator for moment, half-tempted to hobble quickly up the stairs to Karen’s room to slap Vick around, but he knew it would be a waste of time. He glanced at the piece of paper Lisa had handed to him. Vick was right, he reluctantly decided. It was time to give her a call. "What's the worst that could happen?" he muttered to himself, extremely glad that Vick wasn't there to answer him.

*****************************************************************

"You WHAT?" Roger's mouth would have been hanging open in astonishment if not for the fact that he had just shoved in a handful of cheese fries. He hurriedly chewed the mass of food until he could comfortably speak around it. "When?"

"We broke up sometime in September," Lisa answered, casually taking a sip of her Dr. Pepper. "We decided this long term, long distance commitment thing wasn't going to work."

"But you guys were the prefect couple. It was always like you were already married." Roger wasn't exaggerating a bit. Lisa and John had seemed made for each other, like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting of the All American boy and his girl. The sheer perfection of their relationship had added to Roger's reluctance to express his true feelings to Lisa.

"That was our big problem, though," Lisa continued. "We'd been like a married couple for over three years. I'm too young for that sort or thing."

Roger tried to assimilate this new information. He was really at a loss for what to say now. His dinner with Lisa had started off slowly. Ever since they had gotten to Eskimo Joe's their conversation had consisted of the same old trivia he had to spew every time he ran into anyone from high school: how did he like school, how were his grades, did he ever miss Talihina? He hated those little gabfests. He had changed so much since high school, and most of his friends had changed so little, that he never knew how to act. His question about John had been his last hope of starting a real conversation.

"You never did tell me what happened to your foot," Lisa said, saving Roger from having to rack his brain any longer. "Did you strain something studying too hard?"

The good-natured jab at Roger’s book-worm qualities rankled a bit. Struggling to appear nonchalant, he replied, "Nah, I was playing basketball with Vick the other day. He tried to push past me, our feet got tangled together, and when we went down he somehow broke my toe."

Lisa gazed at him with a strange look on her face. "I didn't think you liked to play basketball."

It's not that he didn't like to play, he thought to himself. It's just that in high school he was always afraid of embarrassing himself. But Vick had assured him that if he didn't embarrass himself playing basketball, Vick was going to embarrass him somewhere else, so he might as well be getting in shape when it happened. As usually happened when faced with Vick-logic, Roger conceded defeat.

"Well, Vick needed someone else to play, and I was the only one around." It was the truth, but only a part of it. Why was he so nervous about letting her know how he had changed?

The look on Lisa's face didn't change. "Speaking of Vick, did he say much about what happened when he and I met?"

"Not really. Just that he told you he knew me, you asked him about me, and he gave you my number."

"Did he tell you what I asked about you?"

"No oo," Roger said slowly, not sure where she was going with this.

"I asked him if you were still the same shy kid you were in high school. And know what he did? Nearly fell out of his chair laughing. He said he couldn't remember the last time anyone had called you shy, that you were one of the most out spoken people he knew. Then he gave me your number so I could see what he was talking about."

Roger stared at her, unsure of how to react, but positive of one thing: he was going to kick Vick's butt as soon as he saw him, broken toe or not. He knew Lisa was waiting for him to say something, but he found himself struck speechless.

Apparently tired of the silence, she continued with some exasperation, "You know what? I'm still waiting to see what he was talking about. After I finally ran into you I thought he was just pulling my leg. But I've been watching you tonight, Roger. There's something different about you, and you're trying to cover it up."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, come on, Roger. Just because I wasn't valedictorian doesn't mean I'm an idiot.” He winced at the sharpness in her tone. “You don’t get to be a good actress without being able to read people. And I can tell you've been putting on an act ever since I saw you in Kirby the other day, and I'd like to know why."

Roger was flabbergasted. He had never heard Lisa talk like that before. In her own way, she had been as quiet and unassuming as he had back in high school; she just had the self-confidence that made it work for her. To hear her speak so bluntly, to finally let that inner steel shine through . . . maybe he wasn't the only one who had changed in the past year and a half. He decided he had better come clean.

"It's just that everyone knew me as the nerd in school for as long as I could remember. Every time I tried to change my image I stopped myself because I was afraid that people would like the real me even less. I broke out of that shell when I came to college here, but I still have trouble being the new me around people from back home. I wasn't sure if you could handle an out spoken version of me."

Lisa was shaking her head. "Roger, how could you possibly think that I wouldn't want you to break out of your shell?"

"Hey, just because I was valedictorian doesn't mean I'm a genius, okay?" Lisa laughed, which put him at ease. "Listen, I'll make you a deal. I'll try to loosen up and be myself if you agree to go out with Vick once."

"I told you I'm not looking for a relationship right now."

"Trust me, neither is he. And I think he was only using the excuse of hitting on you to get me to see you.”

A skeptical look crossed her face. “You think he was saying he wanted you to set him up with me because he was trying to set me up with you? That seems like an awful lot of effort, don’t you think?”

Roger shrugged. “Maybe that was it, or maybe he was just enjoying a new type of mind game. He loves trying to shake people up. But if you could go out with him in your full-on 'vamp' mode, maybe he'll be the one shaken up for once."

Lisa looked at him quizzically. "Are you sure that will work? Vick doesn't seem like the type who'd be shaken up that easily."

"Believe me, out of all the things that could shake him up, you are the one that I will enjoy seeing in action the most."

As the two began to outline a plan to give Vick a taste of his own medicine, Roger stifled a sigh. So, here they were: the new Roger and the new Lisa, falling into a new variation of an old theme, that eternal quagmire known as “let’s just be friends.”

“The more things change,” he thought to himself bitterly, and then dove headfirst into drafting their plan of attack.

Written Word Weds. - Last Chance and the Mourning After

Capstone update: a little over 1,000 words done on each essay, odds are good that I'll be pretty much done by tomorrow night *knock on wood*

As you may have guessed, since I'm back in school mode, that also means I've been back in can't-read-unless-it's-school-related mode. Which is a shame, since practically every book I had on hold at the public library came in for me right before I left for Miamuh. What's a double shame is that one of them is Thud!, the latest book in Terry Pratchet's Discworld series, which is, if not my all-time favorite fantasy series, at least my all-time favorite humorous fantasy series. And it's not just a new Discworld book; it's a new Discworld book about Commander Vimes and the Watch, and the Watch books are my favorites. Other books just sitting there waiting for me to read them are Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel; My Father the Spy; Wellspring of Chaos; Spanking the Donkey; The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell; Kushiels' Dart; and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book), A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction.

Anyway, since this is Written Word Wednesday, I figured I'd post some of my own scribblings in lieu of any reviews. So, here's a short story I wrote for my Creative Writing class many moons ago. 'Tis a bit clunky in parts (I cringed at some of my phrasing while re-reading it just now), and while I haven't the wherewithal to do a total rewrite just now, I did do a significant bit of rewriting, as anyone who's read the original could tell.

Moving on

"Can I help you?"

The voice snapped Josh back to reality from whatever world he entered when he was daydreaming. He turned towards the speaker, a middle aged nurse with peroxide blonde hair. "No thanks," he replied, "I'm just here with my roommate. His Grandfather's sick, and - - "

"Oh, you must mean Shel Barnes!"

Josh looked at her in amazement. "How did you...?"

The nurse laughed, which struck Josh as odd, until he realized she was just trying to put him at ease. "It's no big trick. Ol' Shel's the only Grandfatherly type in the ICU with any visitors right now, and I just saw Billy walking in. You really came with Billy all this way from school just because of Shel?"

He nodded. "Yeah, Bill's mom called a few hours ago and he didn't seem to be in any shape to drive here alone, so here I am."

"Well, I'm glad Billy's here. It'll mean a lot to Shel to see his family one last..." Her voice trailed off. She started to move down the hall. "Well, if you need anything don't be afraid to ask."

As he watched her go off to make her rounds Josh found himself marveling again at the magic small town Oklahoma. From the instant they had walked into the hospital, Bill had been bombarded by sympathetic hugs and handshakes from practically everyone they saw. It boggled Josh’s mind that everyone knew everyone else so well. It was nothing like that in the "big city" where he grew up, as Bill insisted on calling it.

Josh and Bill had met each other their freshman year due to the wonderfully random process of Residence Hall roommate selection. When he first received his letter notifying him that his future roommate, named William Robert Sheridan, was from some rinky-dink town Josh had never heard of, his first thought was "Great, I get to spend the next year with some hick named Billy Bob." But from the instant the two boys met, they clicked. Bill found out that some things are universal no matter how large a town you came from: sports, cars, and the opposite sex. And what differences there were seemed only to amplify their friendship. Josh, an only child, began to view this small town boy, on his own for the first time, as the younger brother he never had. As he put it, he was determined to “show Bill the ropes,” a pronouncement Bill always met with rolled eyes. Bill on the other hand, grandson of a minister, seemed determined to save Josh's pagan soul. An odd duo, perhaps, but Josh considered Bill the best friend he had ever had.

Bill's mother had called a few days earlier to tell him that his grandfather had come down with a nasty case of pneumonia, but he was doing OK and there wasn't any reason for Bill to make the long drive home. Bill had been uneasy ever since then, and Josh had known something was wrong the instant he had heard Mrs. Sheridan's shaky voice on the phone earlier that evening.

"I'll get Bill for you," he had begun.

"Wait a minute Josh," she interrupted before he sat down the phone. "I want to talk to you for a minute first."

"Umm, sure. What about?" he asked, unsure of where this was heading. In his experience, when a friend’s parent asked to talk to him, it was generally to gripe him out for being a bad influence.

"His granddad has taken a turn for the worse, and I think Bill should come home as soon as possible. It's late, and it'll be even later by the time he gets here. He won't be in any shape to make the drive alone, so I want you to promise me that you'll ride with him."

Josh was stunned into silence for several moments. The thought of having to be cooped up with a depressed Bill for the long drive made him extremely uncomfortable. He briefly considered telling his friend’s mom “But I really suck at this stuff,” but quickly decided that would probably prompt something a little more heated than the usual bad-influence speech.

"You know how your son is, Mrs. Sheridan," Josh protested, taking a different tack. "He'll never agree to let me make the trip just for his sake."

"Then tell him it's for MY sake, okay, Josh?"

The worry in her voice broke down Josh’s last ounce of resistance. "OK. I promise." He then called Bill to the phone and went straight to his room to pack a change of clothes. Bill was so shaken by the call that he didn't even object to Josh driving.

They left immediately and arrived at the Miami (pronounced Miam-UH if you valued your life) Regional Health Center around midnight. After getting a medical update (kidney failure), Bill had asked to go in to see his grandfather alone, leaving Josh stuck in a waiting room full of Bill’s nosy, noisy relatives. After hearing the eccentric Aunt Charla proclaim loudly that the Living Bible was written by a bunch of foreign lesbians with plans of world domination, Josh decided that he would be more comfortable waiting in the hallway.

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed the doors to the ICU swinging shut and barely caught a glimpse of his roommate hurriedly rounding the corner of the nurses' station headed towards the stairs. Knowing that Bill’s frantic exit presaged an emotional encounter, Josh steeled himself and headed after his friend, muttering to himself “Man, I suck at this stuff.”

The small hospital's parking lot was fairly well deserted at that time of night, making it easy for Josh to find his car. Bill was leaning up against the hood, arms clutched tight around himself.

"Want to talk about it?"

Bill's fingers groped at his jacket. "I had to get out of there, man. I couldn't lose it in front of him. I just couldn't."

"I thought your mom said he was sedated."

"He is. It's just that he hated all that sentimental crap, y'know? It'd be like letting him down if I broke down in front of anyone."

Josh shook his head. Bill was one of the most sentimental guys he knew and had never been the least bit apologetic about it before, no matter how often Josh razzed him about it. "From what all you've told me about your grandpa, I don't think he'd find any fault in your being just a tiny bit emotional."

"Since when have you expected me to think about things rationally?" Bill asked, trying to lighten the mood. There was a brittleness to his tone that kept it from being wholly effective, but Josh decided to play along.

"Since never, I guess. But one can always hope, right?" Receiving no response, he decided to change the subject. "Y'know, I think it's pretty cool the way your fam- - "

"Look at that," Bill interrupted. Josh glanced in the direction he was pointing, but all he saw was a nurse entering the hospital.

"Look at what?"

"I'm pretty sure that nurse thinks we're a couple of stalkers. She got halfway across the lot, saw us, and did a 180. She probably went to get a police escort."

"So much for small town openness."

"Hey, we may not be in the big city, but we're not exactly in Hooterville either."

"You're right, Hooterville's about twenty miles south, isn’t it?" Before Bill could frame a response, they noticed the hospital's automatic doors opening for the nurse, along with the predicted police escort. Both of the boys had to struggle to contain their nervous laughter as the uniformed duo walked past them to the car parked directly in front of Josh's blue Pontiac. The cop's eyes seemed to drink in every detail of Josh's face for a future lineup before lighting up in recognition as they turned to Bill.

"Hey Bill, almost didn't recognize ya, it's been so long. Sorry to hear about Shel. He doin' all right?"

"It's touch and go right now, Jess. Won't know anything until some of the tests come back tomorrow."

Jess-the-policeman nodded sagely. "Well, me and the missus will keep you guys in our prayers." He finished his escort of the nurse and started back towards the hospital. "You boys might want to consider a different place to talk at this time of night," he said as he passed. "Some of my co workers might be a bit more trigger happy than m'self."

Josh waited until the cop was out of earshot and then turned to Bill, ready to make a sarcastic remark, but stopped when he noticed the tears welling up in his friend's eyes. While Bill had always been a tad emotional, Josh had never seen him come this close to crying before. Unsure of how to react, he was somewhat relieved when Bill spoke first.

"I think I could have handled this just fine if I hadn't seen him," he began. "I mean, as long as I was just dealing with the concept of his death in the abstract, I was fine. A little sad, sure, but still relatively all right. But when I saw him..." His voice broke.

"Bill, you don't have to "

"He looked like a mummy," Bill said. "A damn mummy. With his hands strapped down, tubes tied all over him, his mouth taped open, eyes rolling back in his head...This was my last chance to see him, my last chance to tell him how much he meant to me, and all I could think of was how much he looked like a reject from some B movie. He just looked so . . . so LOST." And with those final syllables Bill finally broke down, tears streaming down his face. Josh watched in silence, wanting to reach out, wanting to comfort his friend, wanting to do anything to stop the flood, but not knowing how.

*****************************************************************


Josh quietly opened up the side door of the house and crept outside. He eased the door shut and then went through the open gate into the back yard. He sidestepped large piles of junk littering the yard, leftovers from young children at play, and sat himself on top of a beat up picnic table. He stared up into the clear night sky and tried to process the events of the previous week.

The boys had spent the weekend in Miami before being ordered back to school. "There's nothing you can do here," Bill's mother had told them. "And I doubt either one of you can afford to miss any classes.” Josh had assumed that was aimed more at him than straight-laced, straight-A Bill, and found himself oddly touched by her concern. “Besides, it'll do you good to go back and get your mind off this whole mess." They had barely gotten settled back into their schedules when they got the phone call Bill had truly been dreading. When Bill asked him to come back for the funeral, Josh couldn’t think of a graceful way out of it. Besides, as much as the thought of seeing Josh’s family in full-on mourning had terrified him, he also had felt strangely obligated to see this through to the end.

Josh's head was currently throbbing due to the intense amounts of perfume worn by all of the elderly women attending the funeral, several of whom also stopped by Bill's grandparents' house to deliver food for the family. That had been several hours ago, but the offending fragrances seemed to have bonded to Josh's clothes. He began to rub his head gently, hoping to offset some of the pressure from his sinuses.

The sound of the side door opening caused him to cringe with the panicked thought, "Oh crap, the rugrats have escaped." Bill's young cousins, in an unconscious effort to exorcise all of their pent-up aggression, had claimed the back yard as their private battleground, constructing forts from piles of bricks stacked under the picnic table. They had also built "dummies" to practice their karate skills on, made from the planks of wood on which the bricks had been lying. The results of this mayhem were now scattered throughout the yard. He braced himself against the arrival of the howling mob, but was immensely relieved to hear instead the voice of his roommate.

"What, did my family give you a headache?"

"In a roundabout way, yeah, I guess they did."

"They do have that effect on some people." He gave Josh an appraising look. "Are you OK?"

"Nothing a frontal lobotomy wouldn't cure." He waved off any further questions in favor of one of his own. "So how in the world did you notice I was missing from that press of humanity?" It was a legitimate question. The house, which had been barely big enough for Bill's grandparents by themselves, was filled to overflowing with aunts, uncles, cousins and friends of the family.

"Well, I admit I didn't realize you were gone at first," Bill said, stooping to pick up a miniature soccer ball about the size of his fist from underneath the table. "But then little Bev came up and asked me where Flunky was."

Josh groaned. Earlier that day following the funeral, several of the children began to pester the adult members of the family about going to the park. Finally Bill's Aunt Charla exclaimed, "Oh, just get Bill and what’s-his-name, Flunky, to take you." The slip up had stuck in the young ones' minds.

"Oh, don't be like that," Bill said, laughing. "You always said you wanted a nickname." Josh just shook his head, which caused another groan to escape his lips, this time from pain. Bill sat down beside him on the table and handed him some pills. "These are from my Aunt Tina, the walking pharmacy. She said they should help."

Josh grunted his thanks before swallowing the pills dry. The two of them sat in silence for several minutes, staring into the nighttime sky, appreciating the relative quietness. Bill was the first to break the silence, staring at the ball in his hands as he began to speak. "Josh, I really wanted to tell you how much I. . ."

"Oh, no, you don't!" Josh interrupted. "You were getting ready to gush, weren't you? You know how much I hate it when you gush."

"I was just going to say - -"

"How much you appreciated me coming, that I didn't have to do that, what a nice guy I am, and so on and so forth. Am I right?"

"All except for that thing about you being nice, yeah."

"But you've already said all of that. Several times. And so has most of your family. I didn't come up here to hear what a great guy I am. I can hear that anytime."

Bill laughed. "I'm sure you can."

The two boys sat in silence once again. Bill began to toss the mini ball back and forth, from hand to hand. Finally the temptation became too great for Josh, who reached out and snatched the ball in mid toss. He then began to throw the ball in the air and catch it again, all with his right hand, positioning himself so that Bill couldn't reclaim the ball without lunging across the table.

Staring intently at the ball as he tossed it, Josh decided to break the silence this time. "Y'know, your family kinda took me by surprise."

"How so?"

"Well, the only other funerals I've been to have been for a couple of my great aunts and an uncle, none of whom I could remember ever meeting. It's amazing, really, how my entire family falls to pieces over these people they almost never see, and even if they do it's usually not on very good terms. I actually looked forward to the funerals since mom and dad were too busy trying to out mourn one another to think of anything to fight over."

"That's awful."

Josh shrugged. "That's just the way it was. But with my highly dysfunctional family having that strong of a reaction to a death, just think of how I imagined your family's reactions would be."

"You were expecting, what, a house full of babbling hysterics?" Bill asked, making a sudden reach for the ball.

"Well, to be fair, I think most of your family babbles hysterically at the best of times," Josh replied, successfully fending off the attack. "Frankly, I was half expecting to see your darling Aunt Charla decked out in a Biblical sack cloth, wailing and gnashing her teeth through the whole ceremony."

"Ah, so you were disappointed that we didn't put on more of a show?"

"On the contrary, you guys put on a great show. From the moment I stepped into your grandparents' house last night I felt like I was surrounded by a mob of Theatre majors. Everything they did and said was so extravagantly done I felt like I should applaud. Your Uncle Mark was cracking jokes all the way to the cemetery, for crying out loud."

"That's just the way my family deals with stuff," Bill explained. "Mom's always saying that if you don't laugh you gotta cry, and none of us like having puffy eyes. So we laugh, if we can."

"I wasn't trying to be negative about it," Josh said. "It just wasn't what I expected."

"Yeah, my family has that effect on people too." And with those words Bill launched himself at the ball, tackling Josh in the process. The hit the ground hard, and began to wrestle over the ball. They struggled for several minutes, until Josh finally wrested the ball away from Bill. He rolled out of reach, sat up, shot a quick, smug smile at his roommate, and then casually tossed him the ball.

"So you feel better now that you worked off some of your aggression, or do I need to set up some ‘dummies’ for you to clobber?"

Bill chuckled. "Feeling a little better, thanks. And yourself?"

"Oh, great. Nothing like having your head slammed into the ground to help ease a monster headache." He waited just long enough for Bill to start an apology before continuing. "Don't apologize, dork boy, I was joking. Jeez, you’re so predictable. Your Aunt's wonder pills have already kicked in. I am feeling no pain."

Bill started to get up. "Well, we'd better get going. I'm supposed to drive my cousins over to my folks’ place so they'll have someplace to sleep."

Josh motioned for him to wait. "There's something else I want to talk to you about, real quick." Bill gave him a puzzled look, but settled down into a crouch and motioned for him to continue. Josh took a deep breath before plunging ahead. "I, um, well, I . . . aw, hell, you know I suck at this stuff. But, I was just wondering how you're holding up through all of this. You've been pretty quiet about everything."

Bill didn't speak for minute. "It's like I said when I first saw him in the hospital, with all of those tubes coming out of him. I could handle all of this in the abstract: my granddad's dying, my granddad's dead. No problem. It's only when I'm confronted face first with it that it starts to get to me. Did you notice how, even though it's standing room only in there, nobody wants to sit down in the recliner? That's because it was his chair. He never made a big deal about it, never chased anyone out of it. But we all knew it was his just the same."

Josh pressed him again. "You kind of side-stepped the question, bud. How are you holding up?"

Bill's grip on the ball had hardened so much Josh was afraid the ball would burst soon. "Want to know the truth?” he asked, an odd tone coloring his voice. Josh nodded for him to continue. “In a way, I'm kind of relieved he's passed on, isn’t that awful? He hasn't been in good shape since his first bypass several years ago. He was starting to lose his sense of balance. For a couple of years I had nightmares where he would start to fall and I was the only one who could catch him. Only I would always be too weak and he would drag me down with him, crying for help the whole time.

"The pneumonia was really a blessing in disguise. He got to see all of his children and grandchildren one last time. He got to know how much everyone cared. And he got to show us how much he cared.” A slight pause. “Then he decided to move on to the Lord's kingdom, and that was that."

Something in Bill's voice struck a chord in Josh. "What do you mean 'he decided'?"

A small sigh escaping his lips, Bill raised himself off the ground. "He didn't just die in his sleep, Josh." The ball was now noticeably losing its stuffing, but Bill was oblivious. "Early Thursday morning he worked his tongue up underneath the breathing tube and managed to dislodge it from his throat.” The shattered note in his voice sent shivers down Josh’s spine. “Grandma refuses to believe it. She thinks he just got restless in his sleep and it accidentally came out. But mom and dad both talked to the nurses who were there. They said there was no way it was an accident."

Josh was amazed. "But . . . he was a preacher. Isn't suicide a mortal sin or something?"

"Not to us Baptists it's not," Bill answered, laughing a dark little laugh unlike anything Josh had heard come from his throat. "But I don't think of it as a suicide anyway. It's such a negative word. I prefer to think of it as knowing when your work on earth is done and it's time for you to move on." At this the boys’ eyes locked, Bill’s gaze seeming to plead with Josh to agree with his rationalization, to validate his way of coping. Josh, completely out of his depth, could only stare back in silence, until Bill finally broke the tableau, glancing down at the wounded ball in his hand. This glance at the mundane snapped him back to reality. "Speaking of moving on, we better get back inside before they send a search party after us." Bill turned towards the house, mindlessly dropping the ball to the ground as he made his way inside.

Josh quietly watched his friend enter the house, mentally kicking himself for opening up his roommate’s wounds without any idea of how to patch them back up. “I really, really suck at this crap,” he mumbled to himself before heading towards the house, pausing long enough to scoop up the ball, noting as it went into his coat pocket that it would only take a couple of stitches to put it right again. "At least there's one thing I can fix," he thought to himself, taking one last deep breath of fresh air before heading into the boisterous, perfume-soaked mass of mourners.