Cancer

Vegas was just as I had left it. In three years, nothing had changed: it was still hot, still dry, still cheesy and tasteless. Still full of the memories I'd tried so desperately to put behind me.

I was back in the city by the next morning, riding in the back of a yellow checkered taxi cab as it bumped along the Strip, the flashing neon lights waking me slightly from the daze I'd been in for the past eighteen hours or so. I was too confused, too completely knocked off my feet by life's cruel and sudden hand--and then the eight-hour overnight plane ride and the five cups of coffee and two Red Bulls hadn't helped much, either. Caught four ways between lack of sleep, way too much caffeine, painful nostalgia, and blatant shock, I was left reeling.

I hadn't slept--truly slept, without nightmares or without lying awake for hours beforehand convincing myself that I was fine--in years. And as we sped away from the Strip and took streets less traveled by to a more familiar, suburban-like Vegas, almost every time I looked out the window, I saw something that triggered a memory--a memory I didn't want anymore.

And then, of course, there was the biggie, the monster, the king of all kings to trump the whole stack of heartaches I was currently dealing with:

My father was dead.

-----

And it wasn't even that Dad was dead, really. It was more that I hadn't gotten to say goodbye, that I hadn't even thought to say goodbye, that it had never once occurred to me that maybe I would wish I had spent more time with him someday. Someday was here now, and I hadn't seen it coming.

I loved my father. I really did. Living with him in Vegas for those few months had brought me so much closer to him--closer than I had ever been to my mother in the whole eleven years I had spent with her before that, even.

But after the whole Brendon fiasco, I had sort of forgotten everyone but Brendon, including myself. I moved all the way across the country to New York and immersed myself in school, blocking out any possible friendships or, God forbid, relationships. It had taken me a long time to come around to trusting Brendon, and once I did, I got burned, just like I knew I would all along. I had learned my lesson and I was not going to take that chance again--I couldn't handle it again, I wasn't strong enough. Mom was right.

But what was worst of all was that I hadn't even seen my father in those three years. I had spoken to him on the phone for at least five or ten minutes every single Sunday, and we had sent each other gifts on our birthdays and Christmases and Father's Days, but I had never gone back to Vegas--not even to visit. I told Dad that I just really hated the city, but I think he knew better; he was, after all, the one who had told me (when I hadn't asked) that Brendon was still living there. But I was ashamed to admit that just the thought of a single person could keep me away from a whole city, and even my own father in his final years.

-----

It was a heart attack. That was what Aunt Tricia had said over the phone, heart attack, like it was a person, a murderer--like we were hoping for a life sentence.

Unexpected. Never saw it coming. A bad one. But he was forty-three, you know, and he worked too much, all the time, really....

The words floated in one ear and out the other. I was too tired, in every sense of the word, to comprehend any of them. He left me everything he had, including the big house I'd spent the happiest year of my life in, but of course I couldn't stay there. I couldn't stand it.

Mom flew out from her new home in Baltimore (she and Chris had gotten a divorce six months ago; I wasn't that surprised, or even very sorry) and we shared a hotel room. She cried a lot, and I mostly just patted her back and mumbled whatever sounded right.

I know she must have wondered why I didn't seem to care that my one and only father was dead, but I did care. I cared a lot. So much so that words seemed disrespectful, even, in their inefficiency. There were no words worthy of him. There were no words capable of describing exactly what I was going through.

-----

I was selling the house. That much I had already decided. And my decision was only further cemented when, on that same day (the most excruciating of all Mondays), I drove out to the neighborhood I used to call home to see the house that now belonged to me.

I parked my car in the driveway, to the right and as far back as possible, right up next to the house, in what used to be Brendon's usual spot. I walked past the sidewalk on which I had spent so many humid mornings and sweltering afternoons arguing with him. I glanced up at the front window of my former bedroom and then hesitantly approached the front door, just as Brendon had so many times.

And all at once, I hated myself. I was making this about Brendon when it should have been about Dad. Damn him. Damn him. Damn him. Did he have to take every single piece of me, claim it as his own? I didn't even have the thoughts for anyone else anymore.

I tried to put all of this out of my mind, to focus simply on the task at hand as I fished the keys that had been collecting dust in some forgotten desk drawer in my apartment for the past three years out of my pocket. I unlocked the front door and pushed it open, carefully, silently, as if afraid to cause some sort of interruption.

I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. The cold, sharp edges of my old house keys bit into the palm of my hand bitterly as I squeezed them desperately, as if my grip on them was all that was holding me together.

I fell apart anyway.

The house was just the same. Just exactly the same, just as I had left it three years ago. There, right in front of me, was the same expensive Italian-made bench I had sat on when my mother had come to take me away from my new home in Vegas that first Christmas; the same bench Brendon had been sitting on when he begged me with his eyes not to go. Through the archway to the left, I could see that all the furniture in the living room was just the same; it was the same room we had spent so many afternoons in, pretending to do our homework and making up reasons to touch each other. There, on the wall, was our prom picture, taken just three weeks before that dreaded day in the airport--the beginning of the end.

I shut my eyes tight against the tears springing up there, and I was disgusted with myself again. My father was dead, and I was crying over some stupid kid. Some stupid Vegas boy.

I took a deep breath and crouched down on the floor (the bench was only a few feet away from me, but there was no way I was even going near that thing--no, not ever again.) I pulled my knees up under my chin, clutched onto my own arms frantically. I bit my lip until I tasted blood, and still my heaving sobs echoed throughout the empty house.

All of the furniture, all of the paintings, all of the fancy light fixtures--they were still here. But the house was so much emptier now.

-----

For some unfathomable reason, I then decided that I should revisit Brendon's old apartment, but they had torn the old apartment building down and built an F.Y.E. outlet in its place. The whole left window was taken up by a huge poster: in flambouyantly ornate letters at the top, it read "PANIC AT THE DISCO: PRETTY. ODD." Underneath the title was the release date (which was sometime later this month) and a picture of Brendon, Ryan, Spencer, and Brent's replacement, all dressed up in dusty-looking old suits that sort of resembled the one Brendon had worn to the Halloween dance all those years ago.

I drove back to my hotel, wondering how, in such a huge city that was so teeming with life, anyone could feel as lost and abandoned as I did.