“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.

Chapter 25

I stared up at the decrepit three-storey row house. A couple walked by, screaming at one another. “Fuck you, you fucking asshole.” The woman’s voice was shrill.

“Fuck you,” the man yelled back. “Good-for-nothing whore.”

“Can’t I just wait outside?” I asked, pulling a cigarette from a pack in my pocket.

“You’re going to look sketchy if you do that,” said Jack.

“Who cares?” I snickered, lighting the cigarette. “No one fucking cares. Everyone’s always afraid of looking sketchy.”