Prologue
No one should ever have to bury their best friend. So why did I find myself here?
The entire room-no-the entire world felt motionless and empty. A meteor had fallen down to Earth, and I had been standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. It crushed my soul and flattened out my heart.
I wished that I didn’t feel anything anymore because I was feeling every brutal emotion you could imagine, all at once.
I sat in the back of the funeral house, asking the one obvious question.
Why me?
Oh, Jordan. Stop being so selfish.
Why him? Why my best friend, my only friend? I couldn’t fathom where I had gone wrong, surely I had gone wrong somewhere. Maybe if I could have been there with him, he wouldn’t not be here.
My legs felt like ramen noodles when I stood. I slowly stepped out and into the aisle and walked up to the casket. This was the first I’d seen him since it’d happened. His face was painted an unnatural milky white. His lips were puffy and pink. They formed a far too contented smile.
What do you see up there?
I touched his fingers to mine. They felt like frozen stone.
Come back.
The funeral was over but I was still grieving. My lips tried to form the word, the one word that made the most sense. Goodbye. But I couldn’t. Not like that. Possibly not ever.
The burial is tomorrow. All that I could think about is that in a couple thousand years, if the casket was opened, all that’d be left is bones, dirt, and a single bullet.
