DaySleeper

I am in my best clothes, a pair of dress pants and a button down white shirt. Avid wears a blazer and dark jeans, while Alice is in a black dress. We enter the church quietly, and I look at the time. It’s eleven in the morning, and the service is set to start. Only eight other people are here for Kane’s funeral.

I recognize his mother instantly. She looks just like him, the same hair and eye color, and even the same nose. She is shorter, slimmer, and her face is pointier in general. I met her once. She didn’t like me, but then again, she didn’t like Kane. I think that got to him a lot.
She looks up and I can see the recognition in her face until she masks it and turns back. We sit in the third row, myself between Avid and Alice.

“Thank you both for coming with me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of making you come alone,” Alice assures me, patting my hand. The casket is wheeled in and the preacher comes out.

He begins to talk about Kane, as if he had known him. A loving son, a smart boy, killed tragically, and isn’t it true, only the good die young?

Avid keeps a straight face the entire time, though I know for a fact, based on this morning’s argument with Maggie, that he hates the guy.

“Cade shouldn’t be going in the first place,” Maggie had hissed.

“He loved him, and I don’t fault him for going,” Avid had whispered back. I’d stayed behind the wall, listening.

“Then why do you have to go? Did you love him too?” She had demanded.

“Of course not,” he had shot back, “I hate him more than anyone I’ve never met. But Cadence needs me right now. I would never leave anyone I care about to go to a funeral alone. He’s devastated.”

“It’s unhealthy,” Maggie argued.

“I think he needs to go, and he asked me to come, so I’ll go.” Avid had said, and that had been the end of that.

Regardless, he does not let on that he hates Kane the entire time. I stare at the casket, and imagine the body beneath the gleaming wood, hard, skin looking pasty and powdered and manufactured. I debate whether or not I will go to the front and look at him, if they open the casket. I hope they don’t.

“Kane was well loved,” the preacher concludes, “And let us all pray that he’s on his journey to heaven now.”

With that, a song begins to play in the church, and it echoes off like in an empty building. The church is far too big for how many people actually showed up. The music, along with the finality of it all, has me crying into Alice’s shoulder while Avid pats my back. I feel Alice’s tears falling onto my head.

“Shh,” she soothes, “It’ll be okay.”

I nod, but I still continue to cry.

“Do you want to go home?” she asks. I shake my head.

“I don’t know these people. Kane must not have known them well either. I can’t leave him here with strangers and his mother.”

“His mom is here?” Avid asks. I nod and tilt my head back to where she had been sitting.

“Oh,” Avid says, “Do you want to talk to her?”

“She hates me. She hated him too. I don’t know why she’s here.”

“Moms don’t hate their kids.”

“She hated him,” I assure him, “And my mom hated me. I guess that’s why we worked… for awhile anyways.”

Alice hushes me and says we should go. I nod. Avid stands and helps me up as well.

“He’s in a better place now,” Alice says, and for once, the phrase doesn’t sound cheesy. He was miserable here. He told me so himself.

“Yeah,” I agree.