In Company
The senior boys’ soccer game was the first and only match I went to in high school. It was forgettable, and they’d go on to lose the game, but during the second half I spotted Mr. K, my old physics teacher, on the sidelines. He leaned on the chain-link fence beneath a lamppost. Seeing him for the first time since June, I asked Mr. K how he was doing, how the new grade was treating him in his second year here, and most pressing—I asked if the rumors of his leaving next year were true.
He laughed. “I have no plans to leave,” he’d said. I don’t know why he went to that game. The bleachers’ usuals said it was the only time they’d seen him there, too. He waved us off with well-wishes, saying, “I’ll see you in the halls.”
*
Some weeks later, I was out in my 2003 Saturn Ion heading toward a restless sleep that met the start of another school day. Any time spent out on the road felt more relaxing than at home, thinking in the way that all teenagers do that this—this inescapable, unending this—was my whole world.
My mother called me while I was driving, and asked if I could come home. Usually, she let me roam the county until I popped a flat or ran out of gas, so I made it back going 40 down 25 mph roads.
When I asked her if the family was alright, she laughed a little, and said, “Yes. Do you know Mr. Kitanasono?” He had died of a heart complication. He was 25.
*
In school the next day, I walked beside my long-standing high school crush, who looped around the track field in despondency. We all did. The teacher had suggested it as a way to get our brains moving in the wake of this tragedy.
That word had been thrown around all day. What a tragedy. You know, it’s always tragic when a bright light goes out too soon. We at Franklin High School mourn the tragic loss of everyone’s favorite physics teacher. For one day, no adult told us what to do. We were offered outlets one after the next until 2:05, and sent off with awkward smiles and assurances of normalcy in the days to come.
For a long time, I stared at her on that track. We made the loops together, side by side, and I felt an unashamed selfishness that this was my chance. I could swoop in, hold her, and tell her everything would be alright. She’d grab onto me, say she wouldn’t know what to do without me, and I’d suggest we meet up after school to talk some more. Make-out session. Relationship. Bing, bang, boom. That’s the benefit of a tragedy, right? Love and support, with an emphasis on love.
I never said a word. After a while I stopped looking at her. We walked until we turned out of the gym and toward the cafeteria, where we sat at separate tables.
*
The spring spilled into summer, the nights growing longer and more humid. On one such evening, I skulked through foreign neighborhoods with my friends. We drove in my mother’s SUV, headlights off, speakers set to a low hum. I was the getaway driver.
We looked through the fading spring haze toward unlit homes. If they had no garage, we kept on. If they did have a garage, we stopped the car and rolled down the windows to get a better scope of the lay. If the garage was open, and if there was even an inkling of a fridge, the others would slink out. I, for my part, would stare ahead and behind for oncoming traffic. They would return rosy-cheeked and cackling, and we would speed off to the next culdesac. It hardly mattered if we scored anything, be it a beer or a half-empty wine bottle. The point was beyond us. All we knew was the hunt.
Another night, the runners had been spotted by a homeowner and chased back to the car, making a narrow escape. They returned a few nights later, only to find the man sitting in the dark of his garage. He screamed at the runners when they approached, and they left screaming back. Did he have a gun, I asked them? A knife? Anything? They had no idea. How many days must he have done that for, I wondered. How many more would he be doing it, now? They couldn’t say.
“We’ll get him, though,” they said. “He just doesn’t know.”
We never did.
*
On my eighteenth birthday, my best friend and I planned a trip to Sagamore Beach. We lived an hour and a half from most beaches on the Cape, and had spent our weekends cruising from 11:00 p.m. to 3:00 in the morning, always wondering what it would be like to drive until the sun came up.
He came over after work, and we went straight to sleep. Our alarms went off at 3:30 a.m., and we slipped out through the front door. In that busted old Saturn Ion, I slid in a cassette with our favorite songs of the season, and we rode the empty highways until the ocean made its way alongside us. A dim purple glow rose over the road.
We spoke very little. Exhaustion played a part, but I felt that there was something else going on. Several of our friends had already left for college. Others were waiting for the inevitable day to come. And what few remained were planning on sticking around, working for their parents or taking a gap year. This was a moment in our lives. A living, breathing moment. In my gut, I could make no better sense of it than that.
When we got there, the lot was expectantly bare. A flock of seagulls watched us from the lampposts. We squawked at them, laughing as they took off with insulting disregard. With two folding chairs and a portable speaker, we sat on the shore as the waves crashed against the sand.
The sky burned away at an endless slog. Indigo. Burgundy. Scarlet. Gold. The sun had yet to show its face, and it was nearly 5:30. At one point, a man entered the beach to take pictures of the crashing waves. We watched him in silence.
When it was bright enough to call it morning, he wished me a happy birthday and we rose to leave. When we did, I spotted the old bastard over my shoulder, and grabbed my friend across a creaky wooden bridge. We watched the sun crest, the wind whistling through the reeds, the sting of saltwater in our noses.
Soon he’d be off to Rhode Island, and I to New York. Our futures were bright, but our lives felt like they had only just begun. To leave this place—and each other—felt treacherous. It seemed a trifle insane. What the hell were we thinking, doing a trip like this? We’d just given the seal of approval on our friendship’s demise.
On the drive back, we spoke of friends and adversaries, couples and hookups and which would last longer than others. He told me, as he had many times, how afraid he was to lose people, and how all his life he’d gone from one “best friend” to the next, and felt abandoned by them with every passing name. We promised each other this would not happen to us.
As we got off the highway and returned to town, we spotted our middle school science teacher in the next lane. She glanced over at us and looked away. I guess she didn’t recognize us.
*
My crush’s father died in the spring of our freshman year of college. The boys and I got together before the wake. We wore a blend of blues and grays and blacks, sweaters and vests and sports coats. On the ride over, we joked about how college was going—friends we’d made, girls we’d met, classes we’d dropped or gotten away with cheating in. We considered where to go for food, and settled on any of the usual spots by the time we found parking.
It was a typical March in Massachusetts. Cold, cloudy days clinging to snow on every street corner and supermarket parking lot, brown and slushy and hated by all. I remember seeing the trees, still barren, stretch down the street and bobble in the wind.
The funeral home couldn’t have been more than a few hundred feet down the way, but staring down the road, it felt like a mile. We exchanged glances, some masking red eyes and puffy noses. I was too fueled by adrenaline to cry. In the silence, someone asked who would go first. Somehow I led us to the front stoop, a supportive hand from someone I cannot remember gripping my shoulder.
It hit me as we reached the front door. I froze, unable to press on, much less to turn back and face them—to tell them I couldn’t do it. For a while, we were all stuck there, watching death waft in and out with each passing face.
My best friend walked up beside me and smiled. Wiping his eyes, he stepped through the door. We all followed.
Jack Lane is a prose, comic, and nonfiction writer attaining his master's at Boston University. When he's not writing, Jack works as a communications professional, plays instruments, and hangs out with his cat, Cappuccino.