Adam Selzer by T J

Author:T J [J, T]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-01-16T23:20:31.445000+00:00

“Well,” he says, “I understand if you never want to see me again. I wouldn’t blame you.”

I look at him, and at his eyes. I’ve always heard that dead people’s eyes are kind of glazed over, but that’s not the case with Doug. His eyes are alive. He’s alive. Maybe he was dead once, but he’s alive now. He’s a little broken, but we’re all a little broken, right?

There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen knows everything.

Doug’s alive. And he’s mine.

“I just have one question,” I say. “Did you ever think, when you were alive, that you would get a lot hotter if you died?”

He looks confused for a second; then he starts to smile. Then I guess it sinks in that I’m not going to dump him, and he starts to chuckle. I can see that he’s really relieved, like a weight is off his shoulders. It must be totally stressful to have to keep a secret like that, especially from someone you like.

And then I laugh, too, and we just sit there in his grave, laughing.

“Like they say. Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse,” he says, when we settle down.

“I didn’t really read the whole memorial Web page,” I say. “What was dying like? I mean, it’s cool if you don’t want to talk about it, but I’m curious.”

“It wasn’t so bad, I guess,” he says. “I don’t really remember, though. I remember being in my car, and then there was this big noise, and the next thing I knew I was wearing a Megamart vest over this suit. I looked like an idiot.”

“That was it?” I ask. “No white light or any of that? No frenzy after rising up?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I seem to remember there was something in between dying and rising up, and I want to say there was a green field or something, but now it’s, like, one of those dreams you can’t quite remember, you know?” He pauses. “I hope I didn’t get, like, reincarnated. Some punk toddler would be running around with my soul.”

I chuckle. “I wouldn’t worry about it. If there’s such thing as a soul, you have one.”

“I must have been in a frenzy to dig my way out of the grave, but I don’t remember that at all, either. You don’t really think when you’re in frenzy mode.”

“So, your parents moved after you died?”

“Yeah,” he says. “My parents were already planning to move to Florida. I was kind of pissed off about it. That’s why I was out driving recklessly.”

“You didn’t want to move to Florida?”

“I had two months before I graduated,” he says. “If I moved, in ten years, my high school reunion would have been with the people I went to school with for two months, not the people I’d known since kindergarten. And it wasn’t, like, Miami or some decent part of Florida. It was some part that’s even worse than here. The Redneck Riviera, they call it.

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