The Illusion of Separation

I accidentally walked in on Carter crying.

It was about an hour after we'd come home and I had been sitting around on the couch with Chris, not quite sure what to do. Chris had been whistling to himself for most of the past hour and it was beginning to drive me crazy. People think that once you're in a relationship, you love everything about that person. It's not true. The person makes you want to beat your own face in sometimes. Makes you go nuts. Drives you up a wall. Chris was doing that right now, and it didn't help that I felt like shit for not reacting like I was supposed to.

Finally, I got up and started down the hall to Carter's room. I was planning on talking to him, trying to put the thoughts rushing around in my head into words, but as soon as I opened the door I could hear a sniffling, a quiet whimpering sound, like the quiet tears that boys cry. I opened the door a little wider, since Carter hadn't heard me, and stepped inside, closing the door gently behind me. He still hadn't heard me, and he kept crying.

I went over to the bed, sighing heavily and sitting down beside him. His knees were drawn up to his chest and he had his face in his arms, hiding it, like he was afraid someone would see even though there was no one in the room. He had to have noticed me now. I put an arm across his shoulders and said, "I'm sorry, Carter."

"It's just..." His voice was shaky and my heart sank. "...Chris is gone now, you know? He's not ever coming back. We were fuckin' best friends and he disappeared on me. I didn't even get to say goodbye. And now...well, now I fuckin' don't know what to do with myself, Hannah. It's always been me and him. I'm so used to him doing stupid stuff. Writing on the walls and all that shit. And now..."

He was closing down and shutting out. Chris was gone, and he was beginning to recede into himself. But the whole shitty part was that Chris wasn't gone, and actually he was standing right next to the bed, watching Carter with sad eyes, probably wondering what he was supposed to say to fix this. There was nothing he could say, though, for the first time in his life and it was easy to tell it was killing him since Carter wouldn't be able to hear him no matter what he said. Chris wasn't so good with words unless they were in music anyway but at least he'd be able to try and comfort Carter. That was taken away from him now, and he pressed his lips together, silent. I could see it was stressing him a lot and I tried to pretend like he wasn't even there.

"Carter..." I wanted so, so badly to tell him about Chris. But no. I couldn't. He'd hate me forever for trying something like that. He'd think I was the worst friend in the entire world. "I'm sure that he's up there somewhere looking down at us and he doesn't want you to stop making music. He doesn't want you to stop being the person you were when he was around. He wants you to stay the same, you know? Think about it. If he was here, what would he say?"

Chris turned away.

"The same thing." Carter shook his head and sighed. "This is just so fucking unbelievable. We're going to have to bury him."

Chris stood up very straight at that and looked at me with wide eyes. "Uhm, no, you're not. Who the fuck says you're going to have to bury me?!"

Chris's parents had decided that they were going to have a memorial service and a funeral. I didn't want to go at all but I knew I was going to have to. Christofer would go even though he knew it would mess him up. He did a lot of stupid things like that and that meant Carter and I would have to go, of course. Well, then again, since Carter didn't know about Chris still being alive, or whatever you'd call it, he might stay home. But he was also kind of a big-brother figure and maybe he'd come along to keep me sane while we watched Chris get put into the ground. Lord knows I hated funerals and both Carter and Chris knew that. They hadn't objected when I'd refused to go to one of my cousin's funerals, claiming that I took stress in a very different way and tended to laugh it off, which would be incredibly inappropriate at the funeral. They'd even stayed home with me.

"I know," I told Carter. "I hate this. It's stupid that his parents want to do that." I was trying to explain it to Chris without sounding like a crazy person, and he nodded as I spoke. "He would just want us to be like, 'Oh, bye, Chris' and that's it. He wouldn't want some kind of formal sendoff where people have to dress in suits and ties and dresses and stuff."

Carter laughed just a little. "You're right. Hey, we shouldn't wear shit like that at the funeral. We should just come how Chris would want us, you know?"

"Yeah. Besides, what are they going to do, kick us out of the funeral?"

We both shared a small laugh, quiet, like we were afraid of disturbing something. Carter wiped at his eyes and I laid my head on his shoulder. I was going to have to tell him sometime. Chris was standing right there and it wasn't like I could ignore his existence in front of Carter forever. It was getting tiring not being able to talk to Chris like the three of us could before. Maybe I should at least try getting Carter warmed up to the idea of Chris being there so that when I finally told him, he wouldn't freak out and think I should be locked up in the mental hospital.

"What if Chris was still here?" I asked quietly, staring at the ceiling. "I mean, just think about it for a second. What if, for some reason, he didn't move on like he was supposed to? You know, all that shit with the ghost stories and how some people don't immediately go on to heaven. I like to think he's still around somewhere, because Chris isn't the kind to give up without a fight..."

Carter sighed, seeming a hundred years old. "That would be really nice. I'd like to think that Chris would still be around somewhere. I mean, if angels or somethin' were trying to take him away he'd probably hold onto the tree in the front yard and he wouldn't let go, not even with the promise of heaven. He'd try as hard as he could to stay here."

Chris got onto the bed in front of Carter, sitting criss-cross applesauce and taking Carter's face between his hands. We always joked about how Carter was going to be the one to grow up the fastest, since I hated the idea of being an adult and Christofer was so against it he was practically Peter Pan, stringing Carter and I along as his Lost Boys even though we all knew it was inevitable we'd grow up. Carter was the one who took care of business that needed to be taken care of. Carter was the one who paid his own bills, who had graduated before either me or Chris. He was the one who booked shows, who talked with managers of venues, who knew what the world was really like whereas Christofer tried to pretend like there was nothing except his music, like simply by playing a song he could stop the hands of time. Chris's fingers gently wandered across the stubble on Carter's face from not shaving for two days, and he whispered, "Don't you see me, Carter?"

But Carter didn't, despite the fact that we were both Chris's best friends and we should have both been able to see him if I could. It was breaking Chris's heart, and he stayed in the same position for a few more seconds before stretching out on the bed with his head in my lap. Like always, I was worried that maybe I smelled weird or something, which was irrational because Chris was the last hygenic person I knew. He slept in the same clothes he wore to school in the morning. He didn't wash his hair for days on end. He'd just been starting to smoke pot heavily a few months before he died, and that resulted in his tongue always being kind of white and filmy and his breath always stinking. He was the dirtiest kid in our entire class and probably our entire school, and I was sure he wouldn't care what I smelled like. I still liked to pretend it mattered, though, like maybe someday he'd realize that I was making an effort and maybe he would try to make one, too. It didn't annoy me how dirty he was, but it wasn't the greatest thing in the world either and it was one of the several things I would change about him. People say when you love someone, you love everything about them. I knew I loved Chris more than anything in this world, but I really did wish he wouldn't proudly tell everyone how long he'd gone without a shower. A little shampoo would be nice even if his hair would actually behave for once and not be that adorably messy brown mop I thought was the cutest thing.

He started humming the chorus to "hummingbird", my favorite song of his that he had written and performed for us. I usually liked his faster-paced songs because I was the kind of girl that wanted to get as far away from Joplin as I could, maybe join my mother up North and figure out what it was like to not be dominated by your father, to have something to do, to eat a Ramen-To-Go like my mom prided herself on being able to do. I wouldn't ever be able to survive without my huge breakfasts and moderately-sized lunches, but I wanted to try anyway and see what it was like. Fast-paced songs described how I wanted my life to be: upbeat, interesting. But "hummingbird" was one of the slower ones and somehow it had become my favorite. Christofer said I must have liked the chord progression because he thought it was one of his worst, and he laughed when I stared at him blankly not knowing what the hell a chord progression was. Then he started spouting off letters and something about suspended chords and by that time I was so confused I just turned around and left the room with him cracking up behind me.

The lyrics meant a lot for the state Chris was in right now. This world has lots to offer, but in time it will go dark. Well, Chris's world was already dark. He'd already halfway left it. It made me wonder what the world had to offer him now, what he was supposed to do here now that he was stuck halfway between worlds. But the next line gave me a little hope. The lyrics read, And if this love is what we say it is, I'm sure we will go far.

Chris may have been dead, but I was going to love him as much as I can, and hopefully that would be all we needed to go as far as it was possible.