<\/p>\n
\u201cHey Danny! Danny Mellon! It\u2019s me! Didn\u2019t know you were back, man, you should\u2019ve called first thing!\u201d<\/p>\n
I yell this out my car window after I see Danny sitting in the left lane. We\u2019re on our way back into town at lunch hour, and the light\u2019s a fresh red he almost ran. He\u2019s driving a BMW, the kind of car I\u2019d expect him to be driving, but he hasn\u2019t washed it since winter and there’s three big orange scrapes on the passenger door. Inside he leans forward to fiddle with some knobs on his dash and I can see the skin of his neck rolling over his collar, a pissed-off shade of red.<\/p>\n
\u201cDaniel Anton Mellon!\u201d I yell. \u201cDon\u2019t act like you don\u2019t know me. Who was your best friend in high school, huh? The guy who kept you from killing yourself?\u201d<\/p>\n
But Danny doesn\u2019t even turn sideways to see who\u2019s shouting. I lean out of my van to show him my face, thinking maybe he couldn\u2019t see me before, but even that doesn\u2019t get him looking\u2014it just makes him lock his doors.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s when I know Danny\u2019s got big problems. If you were sitting at a red light in your hometown, a dinky nowhere place with six hundred people max, and a guy was shouting your full name from the next lane over, you\u2019d at least glance at him. Right? You\u2019d feel safe enough in the place you came from to take a look when somebody\u2019s trying to get your attention. You\u2019d think it must be somebody who knew you, and if there was any chance it could be your old best friend from high school who you haven\u2019t talked to in ten years, then you\u2019d definitely look up. Even if you did just come crawling home with your tail between your legs because your life fell apart, and were too ashamed of yourself to call your buddy up and tell him so.<\/p>\n
Of course you\u2019d look. But Danny Mellon doesn\u2019t, not even with me banging my door and hanging halfway out my window. Maybe he\u2019s on Prozac. Maybe he just got fired. Maybe his wife\u2019s cheating on him\u2014but that\u2019s bullshit, because his folks would have said something if he finally got hitched. Maybe he\u2019s thinking suicide again, and that means he needs me more than ever. Everybody thinks about suicide when they\u2019re sixteen, but thinking about it when you\u2019re thirty-five\u2019s another deal. I lean out again, as far as I can this time.<\/p>\n
\u201cHey Danny, it\u2019s me! Remember how we used to get high by the old power plant? Remember that night with Carly Sutton? Huh?\u201d<\/p>\n
Still nothing. Danny\u2019s problem is, he may be back in the town he came from but he doesn\u2019t belong<\/i> here anymore. Sure, he came back a few times, but he usually had enough cash to fly his mom and dad out to see him instead. Swimming in cash like a rat in a sewer, from what I hear. Boston and Chicago. The kinds of jobs armed guards escort you out of once you\u2019re fired so you don\u2019t have a chance to finish off the back door deals they caught you starting. Which is what happened to Danny, rumor has it. Twice.<\/p>\n
Just when our light\u2019s about to turn an ambulance zips up and trips the green going the other way, making us wait through another red. It\u2019s a crappy system\u2014even I feel like running that light. Danny\u2019s pissed as hell, screaming at the ambulance or at the world or at God, banging his fists against the steering wheel.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s your hurry, Danny?\u201d I say. \u201cOn your way to interview for a million dollar job?\u201d I laugh at him, laugh it all off. But here\u2019s what I wish I had the balls to say to Danny Mellon:<\/p>\n
You are not<\/i> bigger than this place. You are not<\/i> bigger than the people who stuck around to help their grandfathers die, or to help out their best friend\u2019s dad after his only kid died on him. I\u2019m talking about me<\/i>, Danny. The guy you told to get a life when you came home for Ryan Molnar\u2019s wedding. Remember? You just had<\/i> to leave for the airport right after I gave the toast, and didn’t even thank me for the lift. Instead you just railed at me for giving up that hockey scholarship to Colgate, my only ticket out of town, just because I was the last guy who saw Richie Elson alive and didn\u2019t want his dad to feel alone in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t waste your life here,\u201d you told me. \u201cThis isn\u2019t the world. The world\u2019s out there, life\u2019s out there.\u201d And then you called your boss to schedule a racquetball game at 6:30 the next morning, on court-fucking-C.<\/p>\n
Well who\u2019s got the life now, Danny? Remember Kristin Lanier, with the blue eye shadow, who you used to paw yourself to sleep over? We\u2019ve got two kids, great-looking daughters, and they\u2019re safe everywhere they go in this town because everybody knows whose kids they are. That\u2019s<\/i> having a life. Standing your goddamn ground and paying back the ones who helped you grow up straight. People know<\/i> me, Danny. People wave at me when they see me on the street, or in the next lane over, and I wave back. I don\u2019t sit around swearing at the light, telling myself under my breath how I\u2019m a complete and absolute failure who deserves nothing.<\/i><\/p>\n
But I don\u2019t say that to him. Just can\u2019t get all those words lined up on my tongue.<\/p>\n
I back up my van to get another angle on Danny just in time to catch him mumbling, and I know exactly what he\u2019s saying because he had that same look on his face twenty years ago, when he said those same words to me. Absolute failure<\/i>. Someday he\u2019ll have the balls to say them aloud again, and that\u2019s when he\u2019ll finally look me up. Someday he\u2019ll need to say those words to a flesh-and-blood person just to keep himself alive, and I\u2019m the flesh and blood he trusts the most even though he doesn\u2019t know it anymore. He can ask anybody in town, and they\u2019ll tell him where to find me. He won\u2019t have to say he\u2019s coming to cry on my shoulder\u2014everybody knows that\u2019s what he needs, everybody\u2019s waiting for it to happen, because when it finally does they\u2019ll all know he\u2019s home for real and done pretending. Ready to be one of us and not pretend he\u2019s better.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s what they\u2019re all waiting for<\/i>, I want to say. So call me, Danny. Look at me, just one time. Let me see your face<\/i>. But I don\u2019t say any of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cLight\u2019s green, prick!\u201d I yell instead when it turns. I wait ten seconds, but the Beemer doesn\u2019t move.<\/p>\n
\u201cHey Danny. You can go now.\u201d But it still doesn\u2019t move. So I roll through the intersection as slowly as I can, looking in my rearview mirror the whole time, and make my turn for home.<\/p>\n
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