What Happened to Cormac Li? ✔

/ 3 /

  "Thank you for coming today, Emily," Mr Li said, embracing me in a hug.

  I wasn't going to go. The thought of attending my best friend's funeral made me dizzy and confused. It wasn't supposed to be this way.

  My mom had come into my room early in the morning with a black dress ironed for me. She sighed at the sight of my untouched dinner from the previous night.

  "If you don't go you'll end up regretting it."

  I didn't care about regret in the future. I could barely focus on how I felt in the present, never mind the future. The only reason I went was because I wanted answers. I needed answers. I needed to know what went wrong.

  "W-what...what happened?" I asked, speaking for the first time in three days.

  My voice was coarse and sounded foreign to my ears after three days of silence. But, if anyone had answers it had to be Cormac's own father.

"I was going to ask you the same thing," He said quietly.

Never mind.

  "Can you come over later? I just... I have so many questions."

  He was going to ask me the big 'why'. And I wouldn't have an answer for him. Unless I could find out in the coming hours. It was improbable. Maybe he had answers but just didn't know it yet. Maybe he knew something that he didn't think was significant but really was.

"Um, sure."

He patted my sharp shoulder. I was too skinny. My shoulder blade was a knife.

"Thank you."

He left me staring at my best friend's coffin. It was at the too of the church and I was near the exit but I couldn't bring myself to leave. Even as I saw the pallbearers assembling beside it, ready to bring his lifeless body to his final resting place.

It was raining. Cormac used to love the rain.

I refused to see his body even though it was open casket. I had seen him dead before. I didn't need to see him again.

The locker room had been dark, apart from the glow of the moonlight so I didn't even see him properly then. The final time our eyes met and I saw his every corner and edge was when we danced together at the winter formal. We had been fighting but Cormac apologised. I was confused as to why he was so insistent on making peace but I guess it's not so confusing anymore. He knew that it would be his last time seeing me.

The football team were there. Dressed in suits that looked comically tight on them, like the seams would rip at any minute. Of course they had come. Cormac was their captain. They looked like penguins.

  "Emily, hey..." One of them said to me. Brady? Brandon? Brendan?

  I nodded back at him.

  "I'm really sorry for your loss. I know you and Cormac were close."

  Understatement of the year.

  Why were they there? They didn't deserve to be there. None of them knew him like I did. Cormac was the sun, I was the moon and everyone else was a lifeless meteor.

  "Do...do you know why he did it?"

  Of course, it was also hypocritical of me to say I knew him because I couldn't say that without knowing why he killed himself.

  I shook my head pathetically.

  Brandon (?) nodded. "Are you okay?"

  I met his eyes and shrugged. Why was he still there? Could he not just leave me alone?