Mr. Stephens wrapped an arm around my shoulder, engulfing me, and I wanted to cry.

Eddie said, “It wasn’t that heavy. Eat a fucking sandwich sometime, you rail.”

I wriggled out from Mr. Stephens’s embrace. “It wasn’t too heavy for me. I don’t know what happened. I was fine, it was easy, and then, I don’t know, I just got light-headed. Or more like, heavy-headed.”

Mr. Stephens said, “You did perfectly well. It was an emotional ceremony and upon seeing a body for the first time some people have delayed physiological responses. I’ve seen it many times.”

[Note: 2007 me knows Mr. Stephens’s “delayed physiological responses” was an unknowing (on his part) clue to what had happened to me and to what would happen, the type of clue the universe mockingly provides.]

One of the men in black suits apparated at my side with a plastic cup of water. I begrudgingly accepted it. As I sipped, everyone’s focus and attention shifted away from me.

Cayla asked Mr. Stephens if he would write her a college recommendation and handed him an envelope (no idea where she had kept it hidden) with her academic record and list of extracurricular activities.

Eddie ripped off his tie, wrapped it around his forehead like he was a parking-lot Rambo, and skulked off toward his car chuckling to himself. Even though I knew he was chuckling at me, there was nothing sadder than a person laughing by themselves.

The other man in a black suit rooted through a brown paper bag and offered me half of his ham sandwich, slathered in radioactive yellow mustard. I hated mustard.

I wished I had passed out or died.

I don’t remember the first dead person I saw. Is that strange? Has it been so long that I can’t remember? That memory wing in my house of cards must’ve collapsed and been replaced ages ago. I think whoever it was I saw was very old. I can summon faces of elderly family members who passed, but not of them in their caskets. I’m thankful for that, frankly. I must’ve seen a dead person when I was quite young, and I’m sure it made an impression on me. I’d be a monster otherwise, right? Although, our Western culture’s reaction to death and dying is totally fucked up. There are other countries—so I hear—where death isn’t taboo, isn’t something to hide or send shuffling off into the bleak, white corridors of hospitals and nursing homes. I say that and it sounds nice, but like you I am but a widget and cog within our capitalist, consumerist, puritanical culture. I’ll admit it: death freaks me out.