Caleb\u2019s brother found him March 16th. Overdosed in his empty bedroom. He had been dead for two days.<\/p>\n
Caleb was my younger cousin. My stepdad\u2019s nephew.<\/p>\n
He was 26. He had a fiancee and three kids. His first son died before he learned to walk. He had a sister who died before he was born. His parent\u2019s were divorced.<\/p>\n
Last year he got a DUI and assaulted his fiancee. She took him back. They tried to make it work.<\/p>\n
Caleb had overdosed before. His brother told my stepdad.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was bound to happen,\u201d he said, \u201cI was just waiting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he said, \u201cI don\u2019t need to talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Caleb had lived in Kannapolis and I lived in Philadelphia. All of the public schools in the district shut down the Friday before and people said it was dangerous to cross state lines and the country just started to figure out that the virus wasn\u2019t going to slow down until we slowed it down ourselves.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t have a job. Kaitlin would work from home until the end of the year. There would be no March Madness or Stanley Cup.<\/p>\n
So I didn\u2019t go to Caleb\u2019s funeral. It didn\u2019t seem safe. It didn\u2019t seem smart. I didn\u2019t know how many people were going to die and I didn\u2019t want more people to die because of a funeral and I didn\u2019t want to die then.<\/p>\n
Most of our family felt the same. Only ten people came to the viewing. It was a small gathering. The funeral home limited the number of visitors. It seemed smart.<\/p>\n
Caleb and I weren\u2019t close. We\u2019d never really been. My stepdad didn\u2019t visit his brother. They hadn\u2019t spoken in a few years. Something about their mom\u2019s will. Something about Caleb\u2019s dad getting all the money and my stepdad not getting any.<\/p>\n
Then Caleb\u2019s dad stopped talking to my stepdad and Caleb and his brother stopped talking to me. It had been that way for the last four years.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t remember the last time I saw Caleb. It was before 2016. I couldn\u2019t remember the last thing we said to each other. The last thing we said to each other was probably nothing. A nothing nod walking out of someone\u2019s house after Thanksgiving dinner.<\/p>\n
The last big memory I had of Caleb before his death was not a good one.<\/p>\n
When I was 13 I dated a girl named Audrey I didn\u2019t want to call my girlfriend. I was embarrassed or something. I didn\u2019t want people to know I dated her because I wasn\u2019t a good person. I told myself it was because of her body or because of her oily hair but it was me. She was good and I wasn\u2019t. She knew that a long time before I did.<\/p>\n
I thought I deserved someone more popular and maybe she didn\u2019t care or cared and never said it. We never talked about what we should be called. I never brought it up and maybe she was afraid things would change if she said something first. We did everything that girlfriends and boyfriends did except talk.<\/p>\n
Audrey lived a few block away from Caleb and his brother and their parents. Caleb was 9 and his brother was 17. Even then we didn\u2019t see each other much. If we were all outside we would sometimes wave. Sometimes nod.<\/p>\n
Caleb was still a little kid at the time. He and Audrey had rode bikes and played Mario Kart<\/i> before she got old. He didn\u2019t know what a teenager was yet except it meant his brother had given up playing altogether.<\/p>\n
Audrey and I barely talked to each other and Caleb was my cousin and her one time friend and we had just became teenagers. We didn\u2019t have cars and didn\u2019t know how to explain that we weren\u2019t kids and that he couldn\u2019t play with us.<\/p>\n
So sometimes Audrey and I had to deal with Caleb when we were together. Neither of us liked it because of all the words we didn\u2019t know that meant he was getting in the way of the thing we didn\u2019t have a name for. We were mean to him instead. It felt easier.<\/p>\n
We laughed at him for being 9 and not being 13. For having a lisp. For having too much energy. For being goofy the way a kid was right before they turned into a teenager. We made fun of him because we were teenagers and he wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
There was a snow day that year and all the schools in the district were closed. My mom dropped me off at Audrey\u2019s house so we could stay inside doing the things that girlfriends and boyfriends do until it got boring then walk around the neighborhood. Even 13 year olds got tired of mutual masturbation and movies about dead people.<\/p>\n
In a field a few blocks from her house we had a snowball fight. I threw snowballs at her and she threw snowballs at me and we rolled in the snow. We shoved handfuls of snow into each other\u2019s clothing. Her hand opening my shirt touching my chest. My hand down the back of her pants. Parts of our bodies we had not yet touched. Had not seen in the dark of a bedroom.<\/p>\n
Caleb followed us down to the field and asked to play. He wanted to be involved in the snowball fight. Our fun. But he was just a kid and we were just teenagers and we were acting like girlfriend and boyfriend but didn\u2019t use those words. And even if he was a kid he couldn\u2019t see us acting that way.<\/p>\n
Caleb knew us both from before. Separately. He had some strange power over us by bearing witness to our behavior. He was the only one outside of ourselves that knew we acted like girlfriend and boyfriend.<\/p>\n
He was a spy. I knew it. He could tell his parents or my parents that Audrey wasn\u2019t just my friend. That we were a couple. If they knew we were a couple they could take that away from us. They could end it.<\/p>\n
I needed them to think we were just friends so nothing had to end.<\/p>\n
He was a spy for her too. He knew about her past life before she became a teenager. He knew her better than I ever did and she no longer wanted to be the person he knew. The person he knew could not be the person I knew. The person she used to be could not exist anymore. She had to erase that person or we might never be girlfriend and boyfriend.<\/p>\n
We didn\u2019t know it at the time but we would never be girlfriend and boyfriend. There might have been a possibility for it long long before the day with Caleb but it passed somewhere silently. We never once used any of those words.<\/p>\n
We told Caleb to leave us alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo play somewhere else,\u201d Audrey said.<\/p>\n
He threw snow balls at us. He threw snowballs mostly at her. Mostly he was mad at her because he had known her longer. Because she wasn\u2019t some new family. She wasn\u2019t someone he was still trying to figure out.<\/p>\n
He knew us. He should be able to play with us. He threw snow balls at us harder and harder. We wanted it to be quiet again. We wanted there to be no words no eyes. We only wanted to do. To touch. To be two people in the snow.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re acting crazy,\u201d Audrey said, \u201cYou\u2019re acting like your mom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Caleb ran after her and jumped on her and punched her repeatedly in the chest and face and body. He put his entire weight into her and hit her until I pulled him off.<\/p>\n
He cried hard. He couldn\u2019t talk. He couldn\u2019t get words out through the rage.<\/p>\n
He ran back to his house. We walked back to hers.<\/p>\n
Later Caleb\u2019s dad came over and told us we had acted terrible.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have no right to talk to Caleb like that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He told me he was disappointed. That he didn\u2019t understand me. He barely knew me and I wasn\u2019t making it easier.<\/p>\n
I had crossed a line. There was a moment before all of that happened where I had a chance to be a part of his family. There was a chance for me to feel like I belonged. To feel love and acceptance of a new family. To make my stepdad happy. To prove he was raising a good person.<\/p>\n
But I wasn\u2019t a good person.<\/p>\n
Audrey and I stopped hanging out after that year. When we started high school we didn\u2019t talk to each other. It was my choice.<\/p>\n
One night when she was 14 her dad had a heart attack in the living room recliner. He was watching tv after dinner. They found him the next morning. The tv was still on.<\/p>\n
She called me a few days later. Because I had gone through the same thing. Because my dad had died suddenly. Because I had felt her pain and was one person who could relate. Because we had been the closest thing to girlfriend and boyfriend as two people could be without using those words.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what to tell you,\u201d I said, \u201cI can\u2019t help.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then I hung up.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t go to that funeral either.<\/p>\n
Caleb got out at the right time. Before he had to be stuck inside with nothing but his past. Before he had to get clean and make amends. Before he had to decide if he could be a good person again. Before he could decide if there was anything good left in him.<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t apologize to Caleb.<\/p>\n
Now six weeks into the virus a funeral felt like nothing. It would have been possible. It would have been easy. It wasn\u2019t the virus that kept me from going. I didn\u2019t want to have to look his dad in the eye. I didn\u2019t want to speak to his brother. I didn\u2019t want to say sorry for one thing and mean it for another.<\/p>\n
I was afraid that it was too late for me too. They did not need to hear my apologies. They did not need to see my face or hear my grief.<\/p>\n
There were no amends for me to make.<\/p>\n
At the funeral there would have been more action without proper names. Handshakes and shallow hugs. Half smiles and solemn nods. But we would all know what was underneath.<\/p>\n
I was a bad person and I wasn\u2019t worth the energy it took to fake it. I didn\u2019t want to know what they had all known for years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had crossed a line. There was a moment before all of that happened where I had a chance to be a part of his family. There was a chance for me to feel like I belonged. To feel love and acceptance of a new family. To make my stepdad happy. To prove he was raising a good person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":16108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-graham-irvin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16106"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16109,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16106\/revisions\/16109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}