The Kiss: An Anthology About Love and Other Close Encounters(100)

This was the best Luci could do on short notice. The best she could do under the circumstances. Abram had almost convinced Candace that an open casket was obscene. She’d heard their fight from the front yard, though Colby’s parents had assumed she’d left after delivering her mother’s tuna casserole.

She hadn’t. The light had been on in Colby’s room. Luci had waited, but he obviously hadn’t appeared at the window to grin down at her. Colby wasn’t prone to smiling, but he’d always smiled at her from that window.

Melinda, never the patient one, shoved by Luci to hiss at the slow-moving line of people blocking them from the aisle. “Wake up, people. Girlfriend here.”

She gave Luci a little shove to urge her forward, but people seemed super slow to understand that they needed to move out of the way.

“I’m okay going to the end of the line,” Luci said to placate her fierce friend.

“Forget it. If you’re doing this, then do it. We have to get to the wake, don’t we? I thought you made cheesecake.”

People shuffled enough for Luci to step into line. Melinda pressed in behind her while hissing like a cat at the guy at her back. Luci wrapped her hand around her friend’s wrist, and that seemed to settle Melinda a little. No one knew how to protect her, so they were going off in all the wrong directions. She knew she wasn’t helping, but she didn’t feel much like talking it out.

Behold, we know not anything; I can but trust that good shall fall. At last — far off — at last, to all. And every winter change to spring.

After what seemed like ages, Luci stepped up to look down at the pale boy, forever seventeen now, in the gleaming mahogany coffin. Colby would have loved this coffin. Luci had made sure that Candace knew that before meeting with the funeral director. It was atrociously expensive, but they wouldn’t be splitting an inheritance between two children now, so the money probably didn’t matter.

Yes, that was morbid. Luci had to be careful that she didn’t get sucked down into all of this death and darkness. Colby’s face was a little too thin and his dark hair looked recently cut and traditionally styled. He wouldn’t have liked that at all, but Luci — limited in time and hindered by weighty decisions — could only fight the important battles.

Melinda, who’d been hanging off her arm, turned her back to give Luci some privacy. That gesture alone let her know she’d been staring too long. But it was harder to look away than she thought it would be. Suppressed emotion threatened to break through her cast-iron resolution. She fought the urge to reach out and stroke Colby’s cheek. She would never have done such a cheesy thing in life, so why do it in death?

So runs my dream: but what am I? An infant crying in the night: an infant crying for the light: and with no language but a cry.

She took a deep breath and placed her hand on Colby’s chest. It would never rise with breath again. She exhaled, tucked the register roll that contained her final note to him in the breast pocket of his new pinstriped suit, and turned away from her first love.





*


Though her mother had smoothed the collar of her hated black dress and fussed with her hair clip, Luci had insisted on driving to Colby’s parents’ house with her friends. Melinda had gotten an old BMW — originally her brother’s car — for her sixteenth birthday. Luci slid into the passenger seat at the church. John, his girlfriend Trina, and Trina’s friend Zoe had piled into the back.

Melinda didn’t need directions to the updated Craftsman-style home. They’d all driven to and from Colby’s place hundreds of times over the past four months. Colby’s parents had been surprised and overly delighted, when his friends started coming around. Cicely had always hung around the edges of the group, for the store-bought — but still tasty — treats that Candace provided.

Colby had a pool, but it hadn’t yet been warm enough to swim since his family moved into town in November. Luci had taken him to the Christmas dance. Her friends thought she’d gone crazy, but they didn’t say anything outright. He’d only danced the slow songs, gently rubbing against her during Don’t Stop Believing at the end of the evening. By then, Luci had already decided to like him long term, and not just because he was the newest, most interesting boy she’d laid eyes on in twelve years. He stirred something within her. Hormones, probably. Love, maybe.

Various people from the church service were parking along the street as Melinda pulled up to the house. They were carrying casserole dishes, or baking, or flowers from the church. Lilies dominated.

Melinda double-parked, then turned to look at Luci in the passenger seat. Luci gazed out and up at the house. The afternoon was gray enough that she could see the light was still on in Colby’s room.

“We could just blow this totally off, you know,” Melinda said.

“I know,” Luci answered. She didn’t feel remotely ready for everything that was going to happen next. Everything else she hoped she’d planned perfectly, but didn’t actually want to do.

No one else spoke. Trina started texting or tweeting in the back seat. The beeping of that had always bothered Melinda, who threw a dirty look over her shoulder.

John elbowed Trina and tried to change the subject. “Yeah, um. I really didn’t get that poem you had me read, Luci.”

Zoe piped up. “Isn’t it about death and God and stuff?” She was fairly new to the group, and wasn’t completely sure yet when it was a good time to contribute.