the boy who never changed (short story)

“He wore the same shirt every day. The same shoes, the same jeans, the same sunglasses. He smoked the same cigarettes and spoke in the same tone. He kissed the same girl and told her the same lies. He was the most extraordinary person I’d ever known.

He’d always hated music with synths. He’d hated riding in airplanes – the salty peanuts, the stale stench of the air, the sleepy eyes. And he’d hated himself. He hated the liar he was. I think that’s why he did it. He got tired of lying to Katherine and lying to himself. Tired of hiding.”

Joe had always been more than a brother to me. He was my best friend. Every Friday was Joe and Kayla Night. We usually grabbed pizza, but once we’d gone bowling and more than once we saw a movie. Sometimes he’d ask me to stay at his house. On those occasions we would stay up until four in the morning watching movies from no later than 1995 and eating chips and salsa. Those were my favorite Fridays.

On this specific Friday, Joe seemed particularly tense and particularly intent on making me happy. I hadn’t thought much of it. When he’d asked me to stay over, I’d thought it would be a fun Friday night with my brother. We spent most of the night watching films like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club and arguing about why he should quit smoking. A perfectly normal night.

Joe lit a cigarette next to me. “So, you’re smoking inside now, eh?” I asked.

“Yep.”

“Those things are going to be the death of you,” I said, half joking.

“Well, I figure I’ve only got so long anyway.”

Occasionally, he would drag me down to the local Catholic church for Saturday morning confessional. Neither of us had ever been very religious (and if you knew the kind of things we hid, you might understand why), but his girlfriend was and he did it for her. I did it for him.

When I woke up on Saturday morning, I expected it to be that way. I expected him to come knock on his guest room door, let it slowly creak open, and then scream to wake me up in a way only Joe could.

But he didn’t.

I expected to stumble into the kitchen and see him scrambling eggs and squeezing fresh orange juice. I expected him to turn and smile at me, then ask how many eggs I wanted.

But he wasn’t there.

I walked into his bedroom, then expecting him to be sprawled out on his bed, snoring lightly, having slept through his alarm clock, which almost never happened.

But he wasn’t there either.

I went to the garage, expecting to see it empty, thinking maybe he’d gone without me.

But his car was there.

And he was in it.

His mouth was slightly open and his eyes were shut. I thought I was dreaming.

So I ran back to the guest room and tried to sleep for ten minutes, thinking that losing consciousness in this alternate reality would awake me in the real one.

When that didn’t work, I shook my head vigorously. When that didn’t work, I slowly walked back to the garage. This time I took it all in. The only light came from the windows at the top of the garage door the air reeked of cigarette smoke and gasoline. The windshield wiper was placed over a note.

A note.

They asked me to speak at his funeral. I didn’t want to, but agreed, feeling somehow responsible for the pain they felt.

“I don’t really know what to say,” I said.

“You’ll think of something,” said my dad. “You always do.”

I spent the week leading up to the ceremony attempting to write a speech. My room quickly filled with piles of crumpled paper. I should have cleaned it, but the mess made me feel like he was there with me.

When the Saturday arrived, I woke up late and put on the dress Joe had bought me for my birthday. It wasn’t typical funeral wear, but I didn’t care.

I rode in the second limo with Katherine. As his long-time girlfriend, I think she felt she deserved a family spot. She just sat there staring out the window with tears in her eyes, not letting them fall.

The driver pulled into the church parking lot and Katherine turned to look at me. “I’m sorry,” she said. I nodded. She turned away again.

My mother was the first to speak after Father James did the traditional prayer.

“Well,” she started, “this isn’t going to be easy. Joe was the best son anybody could have asked for. And though it was short lived, his life was meaningful. He made a great impact on everyone he met, and his father and I were so proud.” She started to tell a story about when Joe was four, but she began crying so hard that her words were all jumbled.

Some of his friends went up to speak, all taking about seven minutes to tell funny stories about high school and college. I didn’t pay much attention.

I thought back to the time Joe started smoking. We were going on an impromptu road trip for the weekend, due to the fact that his girlfriend had just dumped him. He was extremely distraught and could barely form a sentence. She had been his high school sweetheart and he was now a college sophomore.

We stopped at a gas station for energy drinks and pretzels. He decided to buy a pack of cigarettes and a blue Bic lighter. I didn’t mention it for a while, but by the time we reached our destination, he was already almost done with the pack.

“Since when do you smoke?”

“Since my first love dumped me over the phone,” he said. It was the first fully coherent sentence he’d made the whole trip.

Katherine stood up next to me and made her way to the stage. She had a wet tissue in one hand and a pink note card in the other. As soon as she started telling the story of how they met at a coffee shop tears rolled down her face. I was envious of her tears. I hadn’t cried once since I found him. I kept it all inside because I was afraid that if I cried and let it out, I would forget this feeling. And I didn’t want to forget.

Katherine finished quickly and walked toward me. I’d never liked the way she looked. Her teeth were too big for her little mouth and her waist was sickly small. But Joe was deeply in love with her.

I remembered when he told me he loved her.

“Kayla, I think I’m in love.”

“With Katherine?”

“Duh.”

“Does she love you back?”

“Well, I don’t know. I haven’t told her yet.”

“You have to tell her or she’ll think you don’t.”

“But I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of what? Rejection?”

“No. I’m afraid of her loving me back,” he said sheepishly.

It was my turn to talk. I slowly walked up to the stage, shaking with all the held in emotion. I told them about his shirt and his shoes. I told them the things he hated and why I thought he did it.

“And, honestly,” I said, “I feel as though I should take responsibility. I was there when it happened, but I didn’t do anything to stop it. I would have, had I known. But I’m sorry. You know, I remember once when he sent me a Valentine’s Day card. It’s hanging on my wall. He was off at college then and I had never been so happy to receive a piece of mail. He told me he loved and missed me and that he was praying for me. He always said he didn’t believe in God, but I don’t think that’s true. It was always God he turned to in his most difficult times, not me. I was so jealous of his God.”