The Boy in the Black Suit: Chapters 7–9

They also were giving him less pain medication, so at least he was able to keep his eyes open long enough to know I was there. I remember the third morning I showed up, it was the first time he was all there and not doped up on medicine—he looked at me and squeezed his eyes into little slits as if he was trying to make sure it was really me, standing there.

By the third week they had transferred him to the rehabilitation center next door, which was good.

Even though recovery was going to take some time, it was better than sitting in that hospital. Nobody likes hospitals.

He looked skeptical. “Well, how is it? I mean, you gotta touch dead people?”

I thought of doing to him what I did to Chris when he asked that question, but my father might’ve flinched and thrown all his broken bones out of whack even more.

Day after day, week after week, funeral after funeral, I searched for that person—almost always sitting in the front—and watched them deal. Saw them rock back and forth, the sound of their hearts breaking, weeping, sobbing, all in the pitch of pain. Desperately begging for help in a room full of uncomfortable people who want to be helpful, but just don’t know how.

Every time I saw them, the closest ones, bent over in tears, it felt like a warm rain came down inside me. Even though I knew that I couldn’t help them and they couldn’t help me, just knowing that we were all struggling with this thing...that helped.

Mr. Ray went on to tell me that when Mr. Price found out his lung cancer was terminal, he started working on what he thought would be his best role ever. To play himself, at his own funeral.

Besides the happy, sad, and funny funerals, there were the super quick in-and-out funerals, or as Robbie Ray called them, drive-bys. There was also what they called “reunerals”—funerals where people showed up who the rest of the family hadn’t seen in years. A reunion.

“So who we got today?” I asked Mr. Ray, casually. I always liked to know ahead of time whose funeral it was, just because every now and then it was somebody I knew.

All you have to do is make sure the repast room is ready to go with food on the tables and all that.

But at noon, when that hearse pulled up outside and I went and got in, the fifty or so students who could leave early like me were definitely confused, and I knew there would be a new rumor boomeranging from lunch table to locker about how I ride around in death-mobiles.

The preacher continued explaining that it would be a short service because “it ain’t no point sitting around pouting,” and “sister Brown wouldn’t want no whole lotta tears.”

The singing went on for a while, one song after another. They were all upbeat, and, luckily, it was one of the few times a funeral actually had a good choir.

The homeless folks dressed in their best, and either smelled like too much cologne or not enough deodorant, and the stench sort of snuck around enough for everyone to smell it, but not enough for anyone to care.

If I told her that I worked for the funeral home, then I would be dude who worked with dead people, which wouldn’t be a bad thing—if I wasn’t a teenager. Teenagers work at fast-food joints, not funeral homes.

Every few bites I looked up and glanced at Love, still slapping food down on white, flimsy plates for all kinds of different people.

Guys always wondered how Chris was doing it—how he was getting all the ladies. But I knew exactly what it was. He was nice. He was honest. He was always dressed in the latest, which was a major plus. He was hilarious. And the key to it all was the fact that he was a mama’s boy. I was too, but it was different.

He tried to be funny and finish his food slowly—something that I’m sure took every ounce of willpower he had—but I leaned over and coughed right on his plate, a stupid immature move I learned from twelve years of New York City public school.

We had been texting for exactly thirteen minutes, asking random questions, trying to figure out if we knew any of the same people, or if we liked the same kind of music—the usual interview process you go through when you’re trying to get the job as boyfriend.

But texting it, I didn’t feel much of anything, and I liked that. It was the first time I could mention her death and not feel like I was dying too.

I stood at the gate and looked out at all the tombstones, white and gray, sprouting from the ground like weird teeth.

I walked and looked at every headstone I was passing.

‘“In Loving Memory’?” I said out loud. “Is that what you would’ve wanted on there? ‘In Loving Memory’?”

It probably would’ve been something like in laughing memory, or even something like lol, which she was totally obsessed with when she first learned how to text message.

So many burials, and here I was wishing that I could bury a few things of my own. Bury the fact that I’m standing at my mother’s grave after she left me in the world to fend for myself. Bury the fact that my father is a drunk and now can’t even walk, so he can’t help me. Bury the fact that almost every kid in my school thinks I’m a damn crackpot. Bury the fact that I’m empty. Empty. Empty! I wish I could bury every damn thing!

“They’re all cracked up and brown and nasty. Overrated and overpriced, all for what? They’re dead. DEAD. I just don’t get why you were so head over heels for stupid flowers. Why everybody is. Look at them. They’re wilted already. So damn stupid.”

And before you knew it, I had grabbed a fistful of the flowers by their brittle stems and began beating them against the ground.

I banged them on the dry grass over and over again, as if I were hitting a drum, the leaves crunching and exploding into chips and tiny shards.

“Stupid,” I whimpered one last time, now trying to catch my breath.