The Grieving Stage

Chapter One

June 12th, 2016

None of these people are actually sad. I know fake emotions better than anyone. Afterall, I've been faking "OK" for six long months.

My dad was a cop, the best officer in his precinct . He was looking at a promotion, until he wa looking down the barrel of a gun. When the gun went bang, he stopped looking at anything at all.

The deputy that had been with my father on that drug raid, Charles "Charlie" Donner, said my father yelled my name just before the bastard pulled the trigger. As if I could've saved him, could've spared his life somehow, stopped a bullet from my exceptionally uneventful Algebra II class. Or maybe he was telling me he loved me, but the bullet cut his sentence short, just as it cut his life short.

None of the people here are thinking that, though. I know I am completely alone in my train of thought. Everyone else is imagining what's at the buffet that will be taking place in about ten minutes. Everyone else has moved on. I never got the memo that I should.

On the outskirts of the crowd, showing real emotion, are two strangers, probably siblings, from their similar looks. They keep their large blue eyes on my father's sister, Aunt Caroline. The girl held herself tall, doing everything she could to not cry, her face a mixture of stone and molten sorrow, ready to burn through the surface at any moment. The boy stood tall as well, but didn't bother to fight back the silent tears on his face. I suddenly wish I were strong enough to cry, but I cling to the numbness nonetheless.

The casket hits the cold earth six feet below, never to see sunlight again, just like the great man within it. I toss my rose, which is yellow, my father's least favorite color, hug all the right people,and turn to head back to the black SUV waiting for me on the side of Cemetery Rd. How creative a name for a road with a cemetery on it.

As I spin around, only to come face to face with Charlie. He obviously hasn't shaved in at least a week, and his breath smells like bourbon.

"Hey kid," he says, unintentionally taking me back to all those Sundays Dad would invite his buddies over for a huge feast and poker afterwards. In an uncomfortable motion, he pushes his curly brown hair out of his eyes. I don't think he's gotten a haircut since my father died in front of him.

In response, all I can muster is a simple "Hey."

"You, um... You doing OK?"

Shrugging, I respond. "Guess I'm doing as good as I can be. How 'bout you?" I watch the two kids leave, walking instead of getting into a vehicle.

Charlie nods in front of me. "Just about the same."

I have to admit; there were times when I blamed this poor man for my father's death. The only reason was that he came home and my dad didn't. "I'm gonna go home, Charlie. Enjoy the food."

"Are you old enough to drink?" he asks, out of the blue, as if coming out of a haze.

"No. I'm eighteen, Charlie."

"Oh. That's right. I'm gonna head out then, too."

"I'll see you later then."

"Sure, sure. See ya." He turns and leaves, pulling onto the street in a Subaru. Not before it sunk in that I wouldn't see him again. Not before I noticed the bags under his eyes and the way he was favoring his left leg when he walked.

Charlie killed himself that night. People saw it as a tragedy. Still submerged in my uncaring cocoon, I only saw it as another inconvenient funeral to go to.

****

Three months later. September 3rd, 2016

Dawn comes again, no matter how hard I wish the Sun would come crashing to Earth and burn everyone and everything alive. It is also the first day of my senior year, where I'm suppose to make memories and shit. That doesn't really work for me. I'm still trying to remember how to function like a normal kid.

It should be over now. I shouldn't still feel the sharp pain in my gut. My sleep patterns should have regulated by now, and the migraines should have gone away. The way I am now, my brain wants to fall asleep at random hours in the day, and the struggle of keeping myself awake seems never ending

Hearing my brother in the next room, I decide to make him and myself breakfast. This happens on rare occasions when I feel like I can function enough to run the stove and not want to just let the house burn. With me in it. As I hit the bottom of the stairs, the small mountain of takeout containers is already visible. That's all we've been eating for our "family dinner time" for the last nine months. The smell of stale Chinese, Thai, and Italian food invades my nose, but I do not care. Tyler, my younger brother, has always been bothered by it, along with the food itself. He's gained a lot of weight lately, and I can't help but think it might be what he's eating. When I think about it, I've been packing on a few pounds too, but it takes a lot of effort to think about myself, so I stop and crack two eggs into a hot frying pan. I like mine sunny side up, while Tyler likes his just the opposite. I'll eat just about anything, though, so I flip them both at the same time, using the pan itself instead of searching for a spatula.

Tyler finally comes down the stairs. As the early dawn light filters through the white kitchen curtains, it hits the back of his head in just the right way as to create a halo of gold. As he opens his bottomless void of a mouth and rubs his puffy eyes still adjusting to wakefulness, he doesn't look quite angelic enough to pass with the crown of light.

"You're making breakfast?" he asks incredulously, blue eyes that are identical to mine widening in a comical way.

I muster a half smirk and respond, "Just eggs, bro. It's your first day of high school, remember?"

"Oh. Yeah." He pauses in a way that tells me he wants to ask a question, so I wait calmly. "Hey Jake, can I ask a question?"

"I'm sure you can. The real thing to wonder about is whether I'll answer or not."

Undeterred, he fires away. "What if my teachers don't like me? Or what if I don't like them? And what if no one wants to sit with me at lunch, and I'm at a table all by myself, and people think I'm a loser without any friends until I graduate?"

He continued with his barrage until I finally cut him off, sliding the eggs onto a plate and tossing two forks on the table. "None of that is going to happen. And if it does, you'll be able to talk to your teachers, make new friends, and deal with all the other shit. And you'll be facing it all with a full stomach." I sat at the table, across from my brothers usual seat. We shared a plate, just like we did every time Mom wasn't home. It was the one thing that hadn't changed since Dad died.

I wasn't aware he had made toast until he'd plopped one half, cut diagonally, on either side of the square porcelain plate. "Thanks, Jake. I know it's hard for you to cook anymore."

We ate in silence after that.

I don't remember anything from school today. I went through six different orientations, and a seventh would take place tomorrow, when I had my first gym day. I'm not sure why I chose to take gym this year; only the guys with their heads full of steroids and beer (great combination, I hear) and one girl elected it. I don't know why the girl wanted to do gym. Maybe she just gets off on sweaty guys.

At home, Tyler is texting his three friends about his first day and all the things he gets to do and complaining about the things he can't. I don't really understand the reason he's telling them. I don't bother to critique, because he won't listen anyway. Instead, I make my way to the kitchen, thinking about what we might eat tonight. I don't want to cook twice in one day; that would be too nostalgic, to much of a reminder of my father. Maybe, I'll just order the pizza for my mother rather than making her go through all the work. 

While I grab the phone, I notice a letter addressed to me. Why anyone would write to me, I can't even fathom. The letter isn't opened, and there is no return address, which I find as odd, because the county law is that there must be identification of the sender before the article of mail is actually sent. Which means that this note was handed to my mother personally. And she hadn't even opened it, which meant that she already had some idea of its contents.

Well, there was really no choice but to open it.