Only Child(82)

I walked in the cemetery and everything got very quiet after I passed the gate. Behind me were the cars from the preschool and all the traffic sounds, and in front of me was nothing but quietness—the gate like blocked out the sounds.

Here the cemetery didn’t have any walkways like in the part where Andy’s grave was, but grass growing everywhere and gravestones sticking out. The gravestones looked all beat-up and creepy, and some were not standing up straight and all around them it looked like a garden with bushes and big trees everywhere. I tried to read some names on the old gravestones, but I couldn’t see the whole names, they were mostly disappeared. A lot of the gravestones had cool designs at the top, all different kinds of crosses.

I tried to walk with careful steps because I didn’t want to step on the graves with the dead people in them. It was creepy to walk and to think about that there were actual dead people under the ground. But these graves were really old, so there were probably only bones left and no other parts of the bodies, because everything but the bones turns back into earth.

The wind was making the bushes and trees move around, and they made a scary sound like someone was whispering and making shushing sounds. I thought about the old dead people under me and I listened to the whispering and shushing, and it was giving me a bad feeling in my stomach, so I started to walk faster and I looked for the way over to the other part of the cemetery, where they put the new dead people. When we were there for Andy’s funeral, it was a little pretty, even though it rained the whole time. There were lots of flowers everywhere on the other graves, and the wet leaves from the trees made the ground look colorful and shiny, and everything smelled good from the rain.

I walked up a little hill, and on the other side was where the other, prettier part started. It looked much bigger than how I remembered it from the funeral. Also I didn’t look at it from this side before, so now I wasn’t sure anymore where Andy’s grave was. The wind was blowing harder, and it made my forehead hurt, and my eyes got tears in them from the coldness. I got out my hat and gloves from the big pocket in my backpack and put them on, and I pulled the hat all the way down to my eyes to get my forehead warmer. Then I started to walk around to look for Andy and his grave.

There was no one in the whole entire cemetery, so that was good, because if someone came they were probably going to think it wasn’t right that a boy was at the cemetery alone, and then they were going to ask me about it and find out that I came here all by myself.

I stopped a lot of times to look at the gravestones, and I actually didn’t know what Andy’s looked like because it wasn’t there yet at his funeral. It takes a long time to make gravestones, and so they’re not ready for the funeral and get set up later.

I saw the road at the end of the cemetery where we parked our car at Andy’s funeral. I went down there and turned around and then I recognized the cemetery better and I knew Andy’s grave was going to be all the way on the right side and not very far in.

There were a lot of walkways around all the graves, and the gravestones were new-looking and shiny, and I could read all the names on them and the numbers. The first number is the birth year from the people in the graves, and the second number is the year they died, and that way you can tell how old they were when they died. Mommy told me that when we went to the cemetery in New Jersey where Uncle Chip’s grave was and we brought flowers to put on his grave, it was exactly one year ago that he died, and that was only like a couple weeks before Andy got killed from the gunman.

I looked at the gravestones to find Andy’s name.

    HERMAN MEYER

1937–2010

ROBERT DAVID LULDON

1946–2006

SHEILA GOODWIN

1991–2003



I counted from 1991 to 2003 and that was only twelve, so Sheila was twelve when she died. That was just two years older than when Andy died, and I wondered why Sheila died when she was only twelve. I walked and I walked and I read the names, and sometimes I stopped and checked to see how old the people were when they died. I started to get tired, and the backpack was starting to feel really heavy on my back. Maybe it wasn’t on the right side where Andy’s grave was, but on the left? Now I wasn’t sure anymore.

Then I remembered the big tree next to Andy’s grave from when we were there for the funeral, the one that looked like it was on fire from all the orange and yellow leaves. Now there weren’t any leaves left on the trees because it was going to be the first day of winter next weekend. But I looked around for tall trees, and there was one close to me, so I walked over. And then I saw it, right next to the tree: Andy’s grave. Andy’s gravestone was blackish grayish and very shiny, and at the top it was the shape of a heart. The letters and numbers on it were white, and my throat started to hurt when I read them. I whispered even though there was no one there to hear me: “Andrew James Taylor 2006–2016.”

The wind was swooshing around me like it was picking up my words and whispering them back to me and carrying them up and all around. I liked the sound now. It wasn’t giving me a bad feeling anymore. It kind of made it feel like Andy’s name was all around me. Now I thought it was good that I came, and maybe now I was going to feel Andy again and talk to him like in the hideout—when he was still in there.

I checked Andy’s watch and it said 3:45. The man from the news said that Charlie was always coming in the evenings, and it wasn’t evening yet, so I still had to wait for him to come. My belly started to feel hungry again, and I remembered I never ate the granola bar because I got scared about the bad guy in the white van and I dropped it in the parking lot. So I decided to take out all the things I brought and eat something. It wasn’t dinnertime yet, that was going to be around six or seven, so only a snack for now.