I was prescribed bupropion by Dr. Brace. A common side effect is seizures, so I became fixated on the fear that I would have one.
When I was in the seventh grade, I went on my first date with a boy named Steven at the rundown theatre in a nearby town. He was epileptic. He wore an engraved medical bracelet around his wrist so people knew what to do if anything were to happen.
A few days after our date, one of my classmates spread the news she had heard from her mother. The school was alive with gossip before the first period.
One person who didn’t know, though, was his best friend, Daniel. He’d showed up late for school that day. I was standing by my locker in the empty hallway when he came up beside me.
“Hey, Grace.” He was shorter than me; he hadn’t yet gone through a growth spurt like most of the boys in our grade. I hunched, trying to make myself smaller. He must have noticed, his dimples deepening as the corner of his mouth drew up.
When Steven took me on that date, we had doubled with Daniel and his girlfriend, Rebecca. Steven bought me popcorn and candy because I couldn’t decide which I wanted. During the movie, he’d reached over and placed his hand on mine, which was lying palm up in my lap. He gently stroked the base of my thumb with his. It was greasy and warm from the popcorn butter, but the gesture was sweet.
“Hey, Daniel.” I cleared my throat. I paused, glancing down at the checkered floor in an attempt to steady myself. “I guess you haven’t heard.”
“Heard what?” he asked, his eyes widening.
“Steven died,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “He had a seizure and fell in the shower.”
Daniel’s face showed absolutely no reaction. He blinked a couple of times.
“He hit his head.” I noticed my legs were shaking from bending, so I stood upright, but I continued to shake.
He stared at me, his head tilted up, our height difference now glaringly obvious. “Oh, okay,” was all he said, and then he walked away.
The funeral was held in Steven’s hometown in a cathedral that sat isolated on a cliff overlooking the ocean with fingers of headland jutting around it. The winds were high and waves crashed on the rocks below a parking lot filled with cars and confused people, dressed in black, clutching their hats and one another, making their way inside.
The church smelled of pine and incense. Multicoloured light leaked onto the altar, streaming through a stained-glass image of the Virgin Mary. I don’t think any of us kids fully understood what was happening. I watched as a group of boys made paper airplanes from their memorial pamphlets and let them fly, snickering when they hit the bald spot on the back of an older man’s head. One of the boys hissed “bullseye” before high-fiving his friend.
I followed the line of people. I wasn’t sure where it was going, but I was trapped in its movement. Wails erupted from the front of the church. The closer I came, the more uneasy I felt.
I reached the front, and the man and woman who stood before me parted ways, revealing an open cherrywood casket lined with red velvet. Steven was lying inside. His eyes were closed, his mouth tightly shut. He looked as though he had been stuffed, like a taxidermized animal that had been hunted and put on display. Wearing a black suit and red tie, with his hands resting on his chest, his skin was so white it emanated blue. The people behind me commented, “He looks so peaceful.” He looked nothing like I remembered.
I only glanced at him for a second before my chest heaved sharply and I started sobbing. A woman put her hand on my shoulder and ushered me to a pew filled with my classmates.
The choir sang mournful hymns while Steven’s two-year-old niece ran up and down the aisles. Her footsteps and laughter reverberated in the expansive space. Steven’s mother and father sat in the first row, quietly crying. The two noises began to meld, their timbres so alike they became indistinguishable from one another.