HEY.
So.
This is your place now, huh? Who knew mausoleums were so chilly.
Cold but classy, by the way, in case you were worried.
I think you’re the only kid in your block. Most of the ash pots have little black-and-white pictures next to them, grandmas and grandpas. An “Aunt Marcie” that looks pretty gay to me. There’s at least two sets of plastic flowers in your row.
So maybe not so classy.
Your ashes are in a little white urn that looks like someone pulled the label off a can of soup and painted it white, which is cool. Definitely different. There are little shriveled rose petals on the ground in front of your locker thing that look like confetti. Also, someone’s taped a pink ribbon to your little window.
I wonder if you hate the fact that you’re basically in a locker. Which is maybe like being trapped in school for the rest of your life. Your afterlife.
Or you’re dead, so maybe you don’t care.
In case you’re wondering what’s going on with my face, I have six stitches below my bottom lip, which actually itch like fucking crazy. (It used to be seven stitches—but I pulled one out in my sleep.) When your fellow student Trevor Bathurst grabbed my foot and I hit the stairs with my face, my front teeth went right through the flesh right below my bottom lip. I cracked my bottom tooth and punched out my top front tooth. I look like one of those pictures from an ad where someone has blacked out one of the teeth with a ballpoint pen. I’ve spent two days at the dentist getting things pulled and filed, although I was completely high for the whole thing.
On the drive home, my dad said, “Wish I was getting knocked out.”
Oh yeah and the thing that looks like a kid’s pirate beard under my chin, is the leftover bruise from where my chin hit the stair, and the splint is because I also broke my pinky finger somehow. I look like I’ve been in a fight.
I mean, I guess I have.
At least I managed to kick Trevor in the face, which I don’t remember doing but when the police talked to him, apparently he had a broken nose and he told the cops I assaulted him. So. Good for me. Mark broke his arm wrestling Trevor to the ground.
Saving me. I guess.
So I suppose I’m here because I wanted to tell you in person how you died.
The whole thing.
After the fight and the barfing and the police coming to my house and everything, Carrie went to the station, and she told the detectives what she told me.
She said that on the night you died, Shirley was sleeping with Trevor, because they were on again and off again, which maybe you knew?
Anyway, they’re mid bone, and he got a call and ran off. And Shirley was mad and she thought Trevor was cheating on her, right, again I guess, so she followed him in her fancy SUV. But then when she got to the park, she saw Trevor and Mark getting into Trevor’s car. And they were arguing. And Shirley got scared. She said she thought it was drugs, and so she called Carrie, her best friend, her former best friend, and told her she was at the park and she needed help.
And so, at like midnight or something, Carrie takes her dad’s car and sneaks out and goes to the park because Shirley was so freaked out. And they went up to the playground and that’s when they found you. Lying in the snow next to the swing set. There was lots of blood and your eyes were closed. And Shirley thought you were dead. And Carrie thought you were alive.
And Carrie wanted to call the police, but Shirley was scared. And she was in love with Trevor. And she was all, like, what if something happened to Trevor? And Carrie realized Shirley is the least intelligent person ever and after that they stood in front of Shirley’s car in the park parking lot and screamed at each other until Trevor and Mark came back and Trevor told them you were dead.
Trevor told them if they didn’t leave, they would all get arrested for murder. And Shirley was, like, so happy to see Trevor not cheating on her. And she begged Carrie to just go home. Like it was no big deal, and Todd was dead so they should all just go home, like Trevor said.
And Carrie said she was, like, you asked me to come here. What the fuck?
And Shirley was, like, it was a mistake. He’s dead. Just go home.
So Carrie left.
She left you there.
That’s what she told me that night after, not that you care, but OKAY after the first time I ever had sex, the person I had sex with told me that she saw you in the snow, BLEEDING, and she left you there because Shirley and Mark and Trevor told her to.
Even though she thought you were alive.
Even though she said she told you she was coming back.
She didn’t.
I just really, really hope you didn’t hear her that night.
That’s actually something I think about a lot, is you hearing Carrie say, like, everything’s going to be okay.
And then her doing nothing.
She drove home and got into bed. And she told herself that you were dead. She said Mark said it was an accident. She thought they were just going to leave your body there. She didn’t know that Mark and Trevor had gone to Trevor’s house to grab garbage bags because they were going to take off all your clothes and drag you into the woods.
That’s what Mark told the detectives and our parents (while I was in the other room, listening). Mark said they wanted to remove your clothes in case there was evidence because I guess Mark watches crime TV shows, too.
Although I guess they left your mittens behind, which someone’s dog found the next day. So. My brother is a sloppy criminal is I guess what I’m saying.
Apparently, you had pink mittens on you that night.
I don’t know why I like that idea so much. I picture you knitting them. Not that I really know anything about you.
I do know that when Carrie talked to the detectives, they said you were mostly likely alive when Carrie and Shirley saw you. That you hit your head, but you died from the cold.
I mean so really, they all killed you, is basically what I’m saying. They could have saved you, but they didn’t. Not Shirley, not Trevor, not Carrie, not Mark. None of them.
And I know it’s not really your problem anymore, but I don’t really know what to do with that.
Maybe it’s not about me.
Or maybe it’s about everyone in this bigger way I’m sure my mom will never write about, because it would be a super dark children’s book, about how people do shitty things for shitty people when they would be way better off hanging out with less cool but much nicer people like you and me. (I’m assuming you’re nice if maybe you were a little geeky and annoying.)
A week after she confessed, Carrie sent me this super long email. She told me what she told the cops, most of which I already knew. She also told me how horrible Shirley was and how Shirley was, like, so wrapped around Trevor’s finger it was disgusting and pathetic.
She also said that she and Shirley slept together when she was fifteen.
This was in an EMAIL, okay? Which is probably evidence.
It feels like maybe Carrie was my friend because I was the opposite of Shirley. And she was sick of Shirley’s bullshit.
But also pretty fucking ironic that all the things she hated Shirley for a) being a user while being b) wrapped around someone’s little finger, apply to her just as much.
I haven’t talked to her since we slept together. Although she texts me every once in a while.
So yeah, I don’t know what happens now.
I’m pretty sure Trevor and my brother go to jail, although they’re out on bail. And maybe Carrie and Shirley will have to do community service or something?
I guess none of that changes the fact that you’re dead.
And I’m here.
Alive.
Todd.
I’m sorry my brother was a jerk to you. I’m sorry he wasn’t your friend. He fucking should have been. He should have saved YOU. I don’t hate him, but I don’t forgive him. I don’t forgive any of them.
McVeeter is out of jail, so you know. Which is good. Although it’s still fucked up that you can go to jail for something you didn’t do. I wonder if he went back to Albright or, like, moved to New York or something. Whatever you do after something like this happens.
Anyway, maybe you already know all this.
Maybe you’re already haunting the spot where Trevor and Mark burned all their winter stuff with your clothes afterward. To destroy all the evidence. They burned it in Trevor’s backyard barbeque pit, so actually this is further evidence that they are lazy terrible criminals because the police found the stuff later. Your clothes, half burnt. They also found a piece of Trevor’s winter coat that had blood on it. And a bit of Mark’s boots.
At home, my mom is crying all the time and my dad has started smoking outside and the house is sort of crap and there’s blood on the stairs still and everything is shit but mostly I know it’s REALLY shit for you, because you don’t get a chance to have anything be better than dead now.
But I do.
So there, Todd. That’s the end of the story of you. A story I weirdly get to tell after having so much anxiety about someone else telling my story all the time.
Anyway, I’m going to try and learn something from it.
I promise.
I’ll say this. You don’t know me, but I’ve felt lost for so long but I don’t feel lost now. I know where I am.
The snow is melting and I can hear the water rushing beneath the cliffs of snow in the cemetery. I can smell the green things getting ready to come up from under the ice. The sky is blue and bright.
I’m walking home, away from you but not forgetting you. Never forgetting you.
The sun is warm on my face.