Ashes
My first encounter with Pete Steeler involved a stolen Decepticon transformer and five stitches.
Of course, since he had been the aforesaid thief, I hadn’t felt any remorse whatsoever over the five stitches that he’d had to get to his upper lip. That is, I felt no remorse until my mother practically twisted my ear off to make me apologize in the ER as his mother kept a bloody towel held over his face while he scowled at me.
There was really no way for me to know, at five, that this was going to be the start of a beautiful friendship. In fact, I think I might have whispered to him, as our mothers dragged us out of the ER, that he should get used to the hospital because I was going to be the one to put him in it again.
One too many rated R cop’n’robber flicks will do that to a kid. Or, at least, that’s my best excuse.
On the other hand, it did end up being rather true, because I got Pete’s ass in the ER a total of five times after that before we hit high school. I dared him to jump off Pierpoint bridge. He got a plate in his arm to help the broken bone heal right. I told him I knew how to drive an ATV, and he got another twenty three stitches up his side. The list goes on, and I feel a bit ridiculous listing all the injuries I helped Pete incur.
Hey, it’s not like he was alone. I’ve had my fair share of stitches and broken bones. It’s just that all his were a direct result of following either my advice, my suggestions, or a dare I’d believed no one would be stupid enough to take.
To tell the truth, I don’t think I’ve ever met or will meet again someone quite as gullible as Pete.
At sixeen though, Pete managed to put himself in the hospital with something that I had absolutely no hand in. Then there were rounds of radiation, chemo and surgery that kept up right until the spring of our senior year.
And then, with a lot less fanfare than he’d ever displayed any of the other times I’d helped him seriously maim himself, he went and died five days before we graduated from high school.
~*~
“Gracie!” I yell at the top of my lungs, knowing full well that she could hear me but acknowledging that she most likely would ignore me unless I bellowed. Honestly, the girl is an attention slut if I ever met one. But, since she is the token person with female bits in our group, we put up with her tyrannical ways.
“Dammit, Zack, not all of us can wear a crappy pair of jeans to a funeral and get away with it,” she retorts peevishly, swishing out of my room wearing some monstrous looking frilly skirt thing. Not to say it didn’t look nice, because it did. Just, from the girl who practically lived in cut offs and her brothers’ muscle T-shirts, it was weird.
“It’s not a beauty contest, Gracias Gracie. It’s Pete’s funeral. You know what he’d think of that skirt,” I snort, snapping her bra strap as she walks past me, nose in the air.
“Well, yes, but the funeral really isn’t about Pete, is it?”
What the fuck? “Gee, I dunno, who do you think we’re all donning black for?”
“Pete’s parents, his brother and sister, his extended family, the community. I mean, honestly, Pete’s not here any more. You and I know he’d hate this, but it’s not up to us, and trust me, no one is interested in listening to what we have to say on the subject.” Gracie threw on a pair of strappy sandals that made the skirt seem unfeminine in comparison. Of course, she got me back for the bra snapping with a vicious elbow to the ribs when she stood back up. Or, it might have been for the Gracias Gracie bit since she abhors it when I call her that.
“So, fuck them. This was not what Pete wanted.” Point in case, I was not putting on a pair of slacks, a dress shirt and a fucking tie. God bless, Pete, I loved the guy. But there’s no way I’m dressing up like a chimp for him, and he wouldn’t have wanted me to anyway. “We were supposed to party. He wanted there to be kegs and strippers and death metal music loud enough to bring the cops.”
“He didn’t even like death metal,” she points out, completely avoiding the whole point.
“So? He didn’t want it to be some cheesy ass ceremony where we all stood around pissing and moaning about how young he was, how full of life he was, and how it was such a crying shame that he died so young.”
“You don’t think I know that?” She demands, throwing a tie around my collar-less shirt and pulling me out the door with it. Gotta love a woman who knows exactly what she wants and isn’t the least bit intimidated by someone who’s got six inches and a hundred pounds on her. Or, maybe, she just knows that in a pinch, she could take me. God knows the she-beast put me in the emergency room just as often as I put Pete there. I have the scars to prove it.
“This is such bullshit,” I tell her adamantly and she pushes me towards the passenger side of her car. We’re off to pick up Jon and Igor next as they round out what used to be our quintet.
“Suck it up and grow some balls,” she advises me. “You cause a scene and your mother will castrate you and Mrs. Steeler will never speak to you again no matter how close you were to Pete.”
I say something rude and impolite which earns me a vicious slap upside the head. I swear, this girl is into violence.
“We’ll throw our own funeral later,” she finally agrees in exasperation as she pulls out of the driveway.
Damn straight we will. My man deserves only the best of send-offs.
~*~
The funeral is putting me to sleep. Which is a kind way of saying it’s boring as fuck and I want to gouge my eyes out to get away from all the weepy people. Weepy people suck. It’s all tears and snot, and Jesus fucking Christ get them away from me. Pete gave me this vintage ‘Doors are for Dummies’ t-shirt and if they get snot all over it from crying on me, there will be hell to pay.
Besides that, I’m just not the comforting type.
I less than subtly shove Mrs. Steeler in Gracie’s direction and she shoots me a rather dirty look as Mrs. Steeler gears up for more mourner theatrics. And it’s not that I don’t love Mrs. Steeler. She’s like my second mommy. I just don’t deal well with people blubbering on me. She knows that. I suspect that, if she weren’t so torn up over Pete, she’d be giving an evil cackle at my supreme discomfort.
However, Pete’s death has turned her into a pod person. Much like it’s turned half the community into pod people.
Pete’s younger brother, Kyle, in standing off by himself in a corner and I have to say that pretty much fits his personality. I quick as fuck slowly meander my way over to him so that I can use whatever anti-people rays he’s emitting to shield myself as well.
We’re not close, close. Not like Pete and I were close. And not like I’m close with my own sibs. To tell the truth, Kyle’s…well, he’s just weird. Which hey, to each their own. I’m all for doing your own thing. Whatever works.
He’s eighteen months younger than Pete. And since he’s some kind of super genius (more like Pete was some kind of super stupid. Sometimes I wonder if maybe that transformer to the head didn’t do some permanent damage.) he’s in the same grade as us. We just never really hung. Plus, he hated the hospital which is pretty much where we spent a good majority of senior year.
“Zack,” he mutters a greeting, slouching even lower and hunching his shoulders in even more as I half-heartedly punch his arm.
“Yo, Kyle. Quite the crowd, huh.” Dear god, I’m making small talk. With the antithesis of the ability.
Case in point, he just nods and we stand together in silence. I watch, somewhat amused as my mother manages to catch hold of Jon and Igor. Poor bastards, they’re getting slobbered all over. I’m all for brotherhood love and loyalty, but the fuckers are on their own with this one. Although, Igor manages to glare at me while my mother starts recounting loudly about what a sweet boy Pete was when he was younger. His look promises retribution and I manage an amused chuckle that makes Kyle look at me askance.
Obviously the funeral has turned Mom into a pod person too, because she’s forgetting every prank Pete helped me pull and the number of times she threatened to rip his head off his scrawny shoulders if he dared to touch her flowers one more time.
It’s about the time that Jon’s flicking me off as my aunt Myrtle grabs him in a bone crunching hug that I spot the urn. Dear old Pete was cremated. I have the plate from the arm I helped him break in my pocket right now, a comfortable weight against my leg. His ashes, though, are sitting there in that urn.
And then genius strikes.
I must’ve made some kind of noise too, because Kyle is looking at me like I’ve managed to turn myself into Gonzo.
Since I’m me, I need an accomplice. I know Gracie will kill me if I rope her into it and both Jon and Igor look like they’d prefer to help my skin leave my flesh instead of helpful friendly, so that leaves Kyle.
Hey, I’m an equal opportunity corrupter.
Grabbing his arm, I drag him, only slightly protesting, outside. It looks like a scene from Bambi outside. The birds chirping, little cute creatures scurrying around, and well, there are a couple dogs humping over by the dumpster, so maybe Pete would approve after all. Dragging Kyle to Gracie’s car, I shove him towards the passenger side and he climbs in rather docilely.
He might just be the best accomplice I’ve found yet.
I hop into the drivers’ seat, fish under it for Gracie’s spare key, and then we’re off.
Kyle, silent monk mute that he is, doesn’t utter a word while I drag him out to the fire pit in Jon’s backyard. He doesn’t ask a single question as I shovel ashes into an old seventies orange Tupperware bowl, and he doesn’t stop me as I drive us both back to the funeral.
He even helps with diversionary tactics and keeping watch as I switch Jon’s backyard barbecue ashes for my beloved best friend’s.
~*~
“No,” Gracie gapes at me, slack jawed and opened mouth, “oh no, you did not.”
“Oh, yes I did,” I crow proudly, holding out Tupperware Pete proudly.
“That’s fucked up, man,” Jon tells me, but I can tell he’s okay with it, because he’s got this shit eating grin on his face. Igor looks a bit perplexed, but then again, he’s only been state side a couple of years and there are times that we confuse him.
Of course, sulking slightly against the side of Gracie’s car, Kyle doesn’t look anymore enlightened, so I suppose it’s time to reveal my master plan. “Okay, plebes, you all know that the last thing our dear Petey wanted to be was a dust catcher on the fireplace mantel.” I gesture grandly with a bow. “So, in memory of the best bad ass friend in town, we’re headed to Pierpoint bridge.”
“You’re cracked,” Igor finally pipes up. It’s heavily accented, and sounds just a bit funny since it’s some of the slang we’ve lovingly spent the last few years imparting to him, but the message gets across all the same. What’s more, my posse all seems to be in agreement.
“Zack, there’s no fucking way. We can’t,” Gracie tells me, swishing her swishy skirt in indignation.
“Who’s stopping us? Mrs. Steeler didn’t even notice that I switched it. I vote she’ll never know unless one of us tells her, and hopefully by the time that happens,” I have to keep myself from looking in Kyle’s direction, although, he has to know that he’s the weak link here, “she’ll have come to her senses and realized that this was what Pete wanted.”
“Man, I dunno,” Jon mutters hesitantly.
“I’ve already got all the tunes he picked out for his funeral that-if I may so politely point out-have yet to be played waiting in Gracie’s car.” Why are they resisting so fucking much? This was what Pete wanted. He did not want to be the community’s martyr. Or the poster child for Leukemia. He didn’t want us to spend the whole damn day crying since we’d spent so much of the whole damn year leading up to it, bawling our hearts out to him.
“Let’s go,” Kyle pipes in quietly, scaring the shit out of the rest of us. “It’s what Pete wanted,” he shrugs as he climbs into the backseat of Gracie’s car. Kyle’s word seems to be the final word, and the rest of them are all clambering in soon after.
Pierpoint is the perfect place for a funeral, in my estimation.
It’s where I convinced him to jump off the bridge. It’s where we both first learned how to smoke. It’s where we all talked about the future and it’s where we all hung out when our wee little town could not offer anything above a PG level of excitement. It’s where Pete lost his virginity to Gracie and where I first admitted to him that I thought boys were pretty.
And we’re going to throw him the best damn funeral anyone’s ever fucking had.
~*~
Graduation day sees me nowhere near the stadium filled with the three hundred seniors and their ten thousand bestest best friends. Hallelujah.
In fact, I’m sitting on Pierpoint Bridge watching the sunset and toasting to Pete with half a bottle of vodka in one hand and a Snickers in the other. My mother, when I finally haul my worthless ass home, will most likely put my balls in a vice and happily twist away over the fact that I’ve managed to miss my own graduation. The way I figure it, if I don’t show up, it’s not exactly the end of the world. Gracie said she’d be by later with Jon and Igor, so it’s not like anyone’s thinking I’m contemplating the dark and lonely night out here.
Although, speaking of freaks contemplating the dark and lonely night, I spot Kyle walking his way lazily towards my spot on the bridge, head bent down and hands shoved deep in his pockets. I hope to hell he doesn’t expect me to spout any enlightening crap. I’m fresh out of meaningless platitudes.
“Yo, quite the crowd, huh?” He says it completely blank faced as he sits down next to me, the weird little shit.
“Graduation is for losers.”
“You flunked out, didn’t you.”
Ha, ha, joke’s on him. I graduated with a 3.8 (dude, 4.0? Even I’m not that big a nerd) which is actually more of a result of all the homework I did out of sheer boredom while in the hospital waiting to see Pete or sitting quietly next to Pete when he’d had too much excitement for one day. “Hey, aren’t you valedictorian?” I ask as it dawns on me. He shrugs a shoulder, which really isn’t an answer at all, and it kind of pisses me off.
And this is the Steeler who got all the brains in the family? Man, that’s just fucking sad. Nice to know my mother’s impression of Pompeii will be miniscule compared the eruption Mrs. Steeler, the school, and the entire senior class will have over the fact that their valedictorian has decided that graduation just isn’t his thing. “I hate this bridge,” he informs me with a scowl. Like I care?
His long gangly legs are hanging off the edge of the bridge and the water at this point is maybe five or six feet below us. He’s got this mulish, depressed sulky look going on too, and I have to say, he’s totally ruining the mood I came here for.
Propping my back against a support beam, I brace myself before taking a foot and shoving his scrawny ass. He teeters for a moment before flailing with a panicked look on his face. Then he falls with a rather grand splash, if I do say so myself, into the water below. It takes him a moment to surface, but he finally does, hair plastered to his skull, and sputtering indignantly.
“You ass!”
“You’re like rubber I’m like glue,” I start off, only to realize that I’ve started wrong. Fuck. Oh well, I grin at him and laugh before tossing the bottle in my hand as far as it will go over the water. May some fish get incredibly tipsy on my leftovers. “Feel free to drown yourself,” I tell him, completely straight faced. “I promise not to stop you.”
“Yeah, you’re a real pal,” he retorts without any real heat behind it. “I’m not going to drown myself in four feet of water. Even I’m not that lame.”
“Of course you aren’t,” I mock.
“You’re just going to sit up there and laugh at me.”
Well, of course not. What does he take me for? Some kind of insensitive jackass? Shrugging, I stand. Peel off my shirt, my shorts and my boxers all in short order, having a grand old laugh to myself as Kyle’s eyes go huge.
And then, with the grace god didn’t give me, I flop into the water next to Kyle, making sure that the wave I create drenches him once more. “People drive on this bridge!” he practically shrieks at me.
“So? I’ve got nothing to hide.” I spit water into his disgusted face. “Besides one or two cheap thrills isn’t going to kill anyone.” Hint, hint. Remove stick from ass.
He, of course, plays the dense card before returning to sulking. Fuck man, I never had to baby Pete this much to get him out of a bad mood. You’d think that sometime in the thirteen years I’d known him he could have at least mentioned that his brother was a little high maintenance princess.
“Pete always said you were a raging exhibitionist who would be right at home in a nudist colony,” he mutters back before slamming a wall of water in my direction. That is tackling grounds, so I do so.
And hey, if my hands just happened to ‘accidentally’ touch his scrawny ass, well no harm done, right?
~*~
I’m flopped out spread eagle on the bridge with my legs bent at the knees and dangling off the edge when I hear the telltale sputtering of Gracie’s car. There’s a shirt over my crotch, but only because Kyle refused to say more than two fucking words to me until I was ‘decent’. It’s actually starting to get dark outside, but that’s never stopped us before.
“Oh, you two are in such shit,” Jon whoops, being the first to clamor over the railing. It’s amazing he can even do that considering his lack of grace makes me look like I’m capable of performing Swan Lake. He’s peeling off his shirt and trying to toe his shoes off at the same time as he comes too close to the edge and falls in.
Being the kind and considerate friend I am, I laugh like a hyena as he surfaces, sputtering. “Way to go, twinkle toes!”
“Fuck off,” he flips me half a peace sign. “Just wait, I still owe you for the Aunt Myrtle snot.”
“She is a nice lady, and you should respect your elders,” Igor announces solemnly, but there’s a vicious gleam in his eyes. Cheeky brat. My aunt Myrtle, despite Jon’s supreme disgust with her, is in her early thirties and built like a brunette Marilyn Monroe. It’s just that she seems to believe herself to be the lead actress in the soap opera of everyone’s life. Drama Queen just doesn’t quite cover it.
“Right, like we didn’t see you ogling her double D boobs,” Gracie snickers, elbowing Igor as they climb over the edge. They’re still wearing their caps and gowns, but Gracie’s already peeling hers off to reveal a motor oil smudged muscle T that obviously once belonged to a brother and a pair of old cut offs that barely cover her ass. Igor peels off his gown and I’m treated to the wonderful sight of him in a muscle T and a pair of cargo shorts. I say if he gives Aunt Myrtle two years she, not to mention the rest of the female population, will probably be creaming their pants over him.
“No, he has a point,” I pipe in, “we should always respect our elders. As long as they represent some kind of eye candy appeal, of course.” I sit up, shrugging.
“And when we need etiquette lessons in how to be a shallow Neanderthal, you’ll be the first person we come running to,” Gracie says sweetly before peeling her shirt off. I sneak a look at Kyle, snorting slightly as his eyes bulge out once more. Poor kid. We’re probably the most action he’s seen in his entire life.
“You’re gonna make her nervous, man. And then she’s gonna put the shirt back on, and really, wouldn’t that just be a crying shame?” Snagging an arm around his neck, I ruffle his hair less than gently until he snaps out of trance long enough to shove me away.
Gracie is used to me and my crassness, so she ignores me and my comments completely. Igor, however, rolls his eyes before smacking me upside the head. “Don’t be an ass. Behave.”
“Bite me, bitch,” I laugh as he peels off his clothes. The display of so much skin seems to be too much for Kyle, because he’s looking pointedly out across the bay in the opposite direction from us all.