Eddie exhaled, didn’t look anyone in the face, and said, “Guy’s a Chester” (as in, Chester the Molester). During the first month of my freshman year, Eddie sat behind me in English and kicked my thighs and jammed a foot in my lower back. He threat-whispered about how he was going to kick my ass using typically ’80s homophobic vocabulary. My defense was that of a baby rabbit in tall grass: I didn’t turn around, didn’t say anything, didn’t move. One day, unrelated to his tormenting of me, the teacher threw him out of class for swearing at her and sent him to the principal’s office. I honestly don’t remember if he swore or not. The next day in class I spun around to face him as he sat down, him and his big stupid face and perma-flushed cheeks, and before he could snarl something at me, I babbled that I would tell the principal he didn’t swear if he needed me to. His weaselly eyes dilated (not softened, there was never to be any softening), he nodded, and the flush in his cheeks tuned a few hues lighter from war red. A peace achieved, but at what cost to my soul?

You have always been a soul spendthrift.

“This is so weird,” Cayla said. She was in one of my honors classes, ran cross-country, was a cashier at Star Market (where I worked too), and liked to draw and paint. She was friendly to all at school, but her comfortableness within her own skin made her off-putting to the rest of us maladjusted teenagers. She often joked she was from the Jewish family of Beverly.

Eddie and Cayla had yet to confide in me why they had joined our esoteric club, beyond expressing a similar desire to accrue extracurricular activities that would most assuredly lead to future successes in life. It really didn’t matter to me why they joined. Because of our shared honorable endeavor I hoped we would be friends forever (cue an ’80s-movie montage of carefree madcap adventures while we learned to accept each other’s differences).

[Note: We would not do any of that. But I did think so in that instant.]

Eddie turned and walked backward toward the casket. His smirk was too eager to mask his social ineptitude with cruelty. He said, “Five bucks and I’ll stick my pinky up her nose.”

Cayla dug into her shoulder bag and pulled out a five, calling his bluff. Eddie declined with a shrug and a brief collapse of his shoulders.

The three of us stood before the padded kneeler set by the coffin. We were close enough to each other to hold hands. We were holding hands, metaphorically speaking. We psychically supported each other as we prepared to participate in a time-honored, vital social ritual. And we stared at the body of Kathleen Blanchet.