KING(89)

He’d never wake us up like that again.

Preppy’s closet was a large walk-in, overflowing with clothes of all kinds. One wall was lined with storage bins that were all neatly labeled. One bin was partially opened. The label read Shit random chicks leave in my room and was filled with women’s clothing. I guess that solves the mystery as to where Preppy was getting all my clothes from.

I chose a yellow shirt and the loudest bow tie Preppy owned, a multi-colored checkered pattern, from a bin labeled Awesome Fucking Bow Ties.

Suddenly, holding his clothes in my hands, the final clothes he would be wearing at his funeral, it all became too much. I crumpled to the floor and held his jacket to my chest. My heart felt a million times its size. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t do much of anything except silently cry, holding onto a little piece of the only true friend I’d ever known.

I don’t know how long I was down there, but I must have cried myself to sleep, because I woke with dried tears on my cheeks and Preppy’s suit wrapped around me in a crumpled mess. I stood up and rehung the jacket onto a hanger and just as I was about to hang it on the back of the closet door in an attempt to dewrinkle it, I saw something taped to the back of the closet door. A small white envelope. And in Preppy’s messy handwriting the words:

OPEN ME MOTHERFUCKERS

*

King insisted on taking his bike to the funeral in what I think was his way of continuing to avoid any sort of conversation. When we pulled up, there were already several bikes parked along the road that wound through the lush grounds of the cemetery as well as Gladys’s old Buick.

We were the last ones to arrive. Bear and a handful of bikers, Grace, and six of the ‘Growhouse Granny’s’ were already seated under the portable canopy covering the rectangular hole in the ground that Preppy’s shiny black casket hovered above. All were dressed in black. Some of the grannies wore matching black floppy hats. King wore a black collared shirt and jeans.

I threw caution to the wind and wore a yellow sun dress. I think Preppy would have liked it.

As we took our seats on the damp plastic chairs in the front row, King grabbed my hand and set it on his lap, intertwining our fingers, bringing me as close as he could bring me without sitting me in his lap.

The preacher nodded to King, then started speaking about life and death. He even tried to say a few words about Preppy, although the two had never met. I had to stifle a laugh when he referred to him as a wholesome and well-respected member of the community. For a fraction of a second, King’s stoic face gave way to reveal a hint of a smile, while Bear downright let out a blast of laughter from where he stood against one of the canopy poles. The preacher paused to collect his thoughts, then continued.

“Who has words for our dearly departed today?” His voice was mechanical, like he was reciting a manual.

I felt for the envelope in my pocket to make sure it was still there. When Bear started walking to the front of the small crowd, I stood and cut him off. King shot me a look of confusion, and Bear stopped in his tracks.

“Hi,” I said, realizing my voice wasn’t loud enough for everyone to hear when some of the grannies put hands to their ears to amplify the sound. I tried again, speaking a little louder this time.

“My name is Doe, and although I didn’t know Preppy, er, Samuel, very long, he was my friend. A great friend. My best friend. As much as I want to say a few words about him and how much he meant to me, in typical Preppy form, he’s already beat us to it.”

I took the envelope from my pocket and unfolded the notebook pages with small scribbly handwriting. I’d already read it, and I didn’t want to cry, so I tried to zone out while I read the final words my friend wanted his friends to hear before we laid him to rest. “So, just a warning, I know we have some…mature folks in the crowd. Because this is coming right from Preppy, it contains some, um…colorful, language.”

I glanced apologetically at the preacher whose attention was already down at his cell phone, his thumb raced across the keys.

Friends and MoFo’s,

Like you thought I would let you have the last f*cking word.

Fuck that. I’m way to OCD to have you try to come up with some nice things to say about me, so I came up with them myself. I’ve updated this weekly since I was ten years old, thinking that because of the situation I was living in that I wasn’t going to make it to see twelve and that my family, if you could bother to call them that, wouldn’t expend the effort to say anything at my funeral. And the thought of that, the thought of silence when they put me into the dirt was worse than the thought of dying to me. After that, it became kind of a habit, so I kept doing it.