Page 1 of Goodbye Days

Depending on who—sorry, whom—you ask, I may have killed my three best friends.

If you ask Blake Lloyd’s grandma, Nana Betsy, I think she’d say no. That’s because when she first saw me earlier today, she grabbed me in a huge, tearful hug and whispered in my ear: “You are not responsible for this, Carver Briggs. God knows it and so do I.” And Nana Betsy tends to say what she thinks. So there’s that.

If you ask Eli Bauer’s parents, Dr. Pierce Bauer and Dr. Melissa Rubin-Bauer, I expect they’d say maybe. When I saw them today, they each looked me in the eyes and shook my hand. In their faces, I saw more bereavement than anger. I sensed their desolation in the weakness of their handshakes. And I’m guessing part of their fatigue was over whether to hold me accountable in some way for their loss. So they go down as a maybe. Their daughter, Adair? Eli’s twin? We used to be friends. Not like Eli and I were, but friends. I’d say she’s a “definitely” from the way she glowers at me as if she wishes I’d been in the car too. She was doing just that a few minutes ago, while talking with some of our classmates attending the funeral.

Then there’s Judge Frederick Edwards and his ex-wife, Cynthia Edwards. If you ask them if I killed their son, Thurgood Marshall “Mars” Edwards, I expect you’d hear a firm “probably.” When I saw Judge Edwards today, he towered over me, immaculately dressed as always. Neither of us spoke for a while. The air between us felt hard and rough as stone. “It’s good to see you, sir,” I said finally, and extended my sweating hand.

“None of this is good,” he said in his kingly voice, jaw muscles clenching, looking above me. Beyond me. As though he thought if he could persuade himself of my insignificance, he could persuade himself that I had nothing to do with his son’s death. He shook my hand like it was both his duty and his only way of hurting me.

Then there’s me. I would tell you that I definitely killed my three best friends.

Not on purpose. I’m pretty sure no one thinks I did it on purpose; that I slipped under their car in the dead of night and severed the brake lines. No, here’s the cruel irony for the writer I am: I wrote them out of existence. Where are you guys? Text me back. Not a particularly good or creative text message. But they found Mars’s phone (Mars was driving) with a half-composed text responding to me, just as I requested. It looks like that was what he was working on when he slammed into the rear of a stopped semi on the highway at almost seventy miles per hour. The car went under the trailer, shearing off the top.

Am I certain that it was my text message that set into motion the chain of events that culminated in my friends’ deaths? No. But I’m sure enough.

I’m numb. Blank. Not yet in the throes of the blazing, ringing pain I’m certain waits for me in the unrolling days ahead. It’s like once when I was chopping onions to help my mom in the kitchen. The knife slipped and I sliced open my hand. There was this pause in my brain as if my body needed to figure out it had been cut. I knew two things right then: (1) I felt only a quick strike and a dull throbbing. But the pain was coming. Oh, was it coming. And (2) I knew that in a second or two, I was about to start raining blood all over my mom’s favorite bamboo cutting board (yes, people can form deep emotional attachments to cutting boards; no, I don’t get it so don’t ask).

So I sit at Blake Lloyd’s funeral and wait for the pain. I wait to start bleeding all over everything.

I’m a seventeen-year-old funeral expert.

The plan was we’d finish our senior year of high school at Nashville Arts Academy. Then Eli would be off to Berklee College of Music to study guitar. Blake to Los Angeles to pursue comedy and screenwriting. Mars hadn’t figured out where he was going. But he knew what he would be doing: comic-book illustration. And I’d be heading to Sewanee or Emory for creative writing.

This was not the plan: for me to be waiting for the funeral of the third member of Sauce Crew to begin. Yesterday was Mars’s funeral. Eli’s the day before.

Blake’s funeral is at his small, white Baptist church—one of about 37,567 small, white Baptist churches in the greater Nashville area. It reeks of graham crackers, glue, and old carpet. There are crayon-drawn pictures of Jesus, resembling a bearded lollipop, handing out blue and green fishes to a multitude of stick figures. The air-conditioning doesn’t work well in the early-August heat and I’m sweating in a navy-blue suit my sister, Georgia, helped me pick out. Or rather, Georgia picked it out herself while I stood there, dazed. I came out of my stupor briefly to express that I thought I was supposed to get a black suit. Georgia gently explained that navy was fine and I could wear it after the funeral. She always forgot to say funerals. Or maybe she didn’t forget.

I sit in the back of the church, forehead resting on the pew in front of me. I watch the tip of my tie sway to and fro and wonder how humans got to a place where we said, “Whoa. Hold on. Before I can take you seriously, you need to hang a brightly colored strip of narrow pointy cloth around your neck.” The carpet is blue and flecked with white. I wonder who designs carpet. Whose life’s calling this is. Who says, “No! No! It’s not right yet! It needs…specks of white! And then my masterpiece is complete!” I mull over this stuff because the world’s reliable absurdity is one of the few things that can distract me, and I welcome distractions right now.

My forehead aches from resting on the hard, smooth wood. I hope I appear to be praying. That seems a church/funeral-appropriate thing to be doing. Plus it saves me from having to make small talk (which I despise under the best of circumstances) with the people making a hushed, sorrowful buzz around me, a swarm of mourning locusts. Isn’t it terrible….What a loss….He was so young….He was so funny….He was…He was…He was. People take shelter under clichés. Language is powerless enough in the face of death. I guess it’s asking too much for people to veer from the tried-and-true under such circumstances.

There’s a huge crowd. Blake’s extended family from East Tennessee. People from Blake’s church. Friends of Nana Betsy’s from work. A bunch of our classmates from Nashville Arts. I’m friendly with most of them, if not friends. A few come by and quickly express sympathies before moving on, but they mostly leave me alone and I’m grateful. That is, I’m grateful if they’re leaving me alone for compassion’s sake and not because Adair has already persuaded them that I’m a killer.

There’s a rustle beside me, the cushion of the pew depressing, a warmth, and then the sunlit perfume of honeysuckle. If any smell stands in defiance of death, it’s honeysuckle.

“Hey, Carver.”

I look up. It’s Jesmyn Holder, Eli’s girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend? They never broke up. They’d been dating for maybe two months. She has dark circles under her eyes. She wears her grief like dust on her face.

“Hey, Jesmyn.”

“Can I sit here?”

“Sure.” Glad there’s at least one future classmate Adair hasn’t gotten to yet.

“I guess I’m already sitting here.”

“I heard someone say once that it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.”

“You here alone?” Jesmyn asks. “You were at the other two with a girl.”

“That was my sister, Georgia. She had to work today. Sorry we didn’t really talk at the other two funerals.”

“I wasn’t in a chatty mood.”

“Me neither.” I tug at my collar. “Is it super hot in here?” In general, I’d rather be bitten on the nuts by a Komodo dragon than make small talk. But sometimes you do what you have to do.

“Yeah, but my Filipino genes are fine with it,” Jesmyn says.