The Blue Dungeon
Jean Chandler
“I’m not going to that, that place, ever.” A surge of nausea moved from his stomach to his throat and stuck, solid and hard. Brian’s eyes darted across the softness in his mother’s green eyes and porcelain skin to assess if she had figured out that because of him, his father was dead. Her features were tight, with a concerned arch in each eyebrow, and although she hunched toward him looking worn out and tired, she didn’t seem angry.
Brian could feel tears begin to accumulate on the edges of his dark brown eyes. He turned abruptly and ran up the narrow stairs toward his room, his mother calling out behind him, “Brian, come on back, so we can talk some more. I have to call the school tomorrow.” As he ran past the fish bowl where one goldfish swam in perpetual, tight circles, he could see coffee from his mother’s mug slosh onto the kitchen table. “Come on, Hon,” she pleaded. “Seeing the school counselor is a good thing.”
He tried to smash kick his soccer ball, sitting halfway up the stairs. He wanted to hit it hard against the wall so it would ricochet and break something; but he stumbled instead, hitting his chin soundly against the last step. The gray speckled carpeting provided some protection—a small concession given he felt nothing was safe—and he groaned as he moved his sore lower jaw to determine the damage.
“Never,” he called back, not loud enough to be heard.
He wanted to run to his mother. He wanted comfort. He wanted to be held. He wanted her to see how badly he hurt. He wanted her familiar crying, faintly creeping up the stairwell, to stop. Too mad to console her, he moped to the bathroom mirror, stood on the stool, and watched as the burn on his chin reddened, like his eyes, and tears pushed for release.
A sparrow outside the bathroom window caught his attention as it landed on the bird feeder he’d hung up with a coat hanger outside their second-floor apartment. Behind its wings, dulled a grayish hue from the cold December air, and through the grimy film coating the glass, the rooftops of the local businesses and apartments descended down toward Boston and spread out like an oil spill.
Brian looked back at his small head, light blond hair, puffy face, and wet eyes in the mirror, remembering how he hadn’t cried at his father’s funeral two months earlier. He remembered who had: his mom; Aunt Sally; a lady from his father’s auto shop; and his cousin Tommy, who was only four years old, exactly half his age. Brian had known he wanted to be at the funeral, even when his mom said he didn’t have to go.
“The casket will be there.” She had paused. “Open. You need to decide if you want to look in and see Daddy, the last….He….” She hadn’t been able to finish before sobs took her over.
Going into the funeral home that chilling October afternoon, his body and brain had disconnected into fuzziness, just like the day his mom had vaguely told him about the accident and the hospital, and said the words “passed on.” He’d wanted the words to disappear, ripped from the air, as if they had never been spoken. He’d felt punched and knocked off his feet when his sobbing mother had told him the dark news after school. Blood seemed to have rushed to his head, making him dazed.
As he’d climbed head down toward the darkened funereal doorway, it was as if he were watching someone else’s feet ascend each stony step. His new black tie had felt tight around his neck. He had tried not to step on the ants coming out of sandy mounds between the stones, but part of him had wanted to kill them all.
People were gathered around a large TV screen showing a video of his dad: scenes with Brian as a baby, beach vacations, the Alaska trip with his father holding up a one-and-a-half-foot salmon, and his dad in his shop working on the yellow mustang with flames painted down the side. They had cycled over and over, endlessly, in the stuffy room with no windows.
He remembered when Mr. Cain, with his potbelly stretched tightly against his black suit, had said, “Now you can come closer and say bye to your dad.” Brian had been both appalled and relieved at his own unexpected bravery. With a stiff but sympathetic smile, Mr. Cain had waved him closer to the mahogany box, half covered in flowers. “And you can put whatever you brought into the casket now. Oh, I see, a baseball glove. Very nice idea. Very nice.” Brian had walked up and seen his father’s face. It was still. He touched the cold skin.
Ms. Horton, the school counselor with long red hair, came and got him during a spelling bee in his third grade homeroom for the monthly group she lead. He’d been watching a noisy fly struggling in a spider’s web on the school window. A row of school buses stood behind it, forming a barrier to the playground. After his mom let him wait three months, until March, he’d agreed to go only once to that horrid place—the guidance office. He knew it was where the problem kids, the ones who were always getting into trouble, got sent. Not him. It was down at the end of the hall, behind the heavy blue door. “The Blue Dungeon,” the kids called it.
Ms. Horton had a face that reminded Brian of an owl, because her eyes seemed more round than oval. She wore a floral dress, and feathers and shells hung in her necklace. She had been at the school since Brian had started there, but he’d never spoken to her. He’d heard she had a small terrier dog that some kids had seen. She spoke softly and seriously as they walked to the dungeon, as if Brian were an important person to speak with. “Your father died just five months ago?” Brian nodded a yes, but kept his head down.
The day before, he’d pleaded with his mom about Ms. Horton. “Mom, why did you have to tell her about Dad? I don’t want anyone to know he’s gone.”
“She can help with your feelings,” she’d encouraged. “And it may be time you sleep back in your own bed and not with me anymore.”
His face felt feverishly hot. “Don’t tell her stuff like that!” he’d yelled. Thoughts of what else his mother may have revealed flooded his brain’s synapses, feeling like random balls in a pinball machine, constantly banging against metal, sounding off loud alarming bells, and flashing glaring blinking lights that were too bright for his eyes. Sighing, he closed his heavy aching eyelids.
“Don’t worry, it’s ok. I didn’t,” she had assured him. “But it’s the kind of thing counseling can help.”
She sat on the old couch, with a bandanna around her head again, wearing her disheveled sweat pants again, with the same weary slump to her posture. She had dark circles around her eyes and sipped on a large tumbler of coffee. Brian noticed the pile of laundry stacked by the washing machine. His mother never seemed to get to it in time for soccer practice anymore. His soccer uniform was still on top, covered with mud and chocolate milk stains shaped like intertwined cobras.
That morning, he’d overheard his mother talking on the phone to her sister, “I feel really empty. Sort of void. I’m more busy, but more lonely, too. And drained. And ever since Jim died, when I can’t sleep, my memory is the first thing to go. It just disintegrates.” He’d looked up disintegrate in the dictionary. He understood. It’s what was happening to his family.
“What’s there to fix?” he said, grudgingly. “There’s nothing wrong with sleeping in Dad’s place.”
Even though it was five months since his father had died, the pillow still smelled like him: a faint minty smell mixed with spice aftershave. He hadn’t let his mom wash it for months. Besides, he was protecting his mom by being there every night. Especially nights when she cried, thinking he was asleep. He had to be sure she didn’t die, too.
He was certain in that moment that he would be silent and tell Ms. Horton nothing.
Ms. Horton’s office had a red rug, and because he kept his head down, Brian noticed it had a tear in the middle. He wanted to go outside. When she looked away, he looked up and watched as gray fog slowly moved outside her office window, revealing a large pine tree one minute and covering it the next.
“Have a seat anywhere,” she told him, pointing to a ring of chairs surrounding the rug. Big circles with faces on them were covering the rug’s center. They had feelings written on them that matched each face: sad, happy, angry, afraid, confused, embarrassed, guilty, anxious. She asked him to stand on any feeling he had felt since his dad died. Because he didn’t have to talk, he put one foot on Sad and one on Angry. He should have stood on Guilty, but he didn’t want her to know.
In April, Brian decided to go back to see Ms. Horton a second time. Just once more. Only because, after they had spent some time alone, other kids with dead parents came into her office, and he liked to listen. Ben, a fifth grade boy, had corrected Ms. Horton the previous month when she’d asked, “Is it okay when your parents don’t tell you everything about how the person died?”
“No!” Ben had shouted. “You gotta tell a kid everything. Never, ever, hide the truth!” That’s what Brian thought. He wanted to know everything about the avalanche that had buried his Dad, but his mother wouldn’t say a word about it.
Ben’s father hung himself, a suicide seven months ago. Shanna’s sister died in a drunk driving accident. Manuel’s mother was hit on the highway when she was changing a tire; Manuel was in the car. Shawn’s father had cancer and had had an oxygen tank ever since Shawn was a baby. Shawn had to take a test to see if he’d get the same cancer when he grew up. Maria’s father had a heart attack while he was getting dressed to go out for her mother’s birthday. He was cremated. Braden forgot to close the babygate on the stairs, and his little brother Benjamin fell, hit his head, and died a week later.
In April, Alice, a seven-year-old girl with long, blond hair in a pony tail, joined the group and talked about her mother’s three body parts that her dad went to New York to get. Her mom had died on September 11. Her family was trying to decide if they should bury them. They weren’t sure since there was no telling if other parts of her mom would be found later. It was part of her hip and two parts of the little finger on her left hand.
Alice said, “I want a funeral every time they find some of my mom.” Alice had a small silver locket around her neck filled with some ashes and even a tiny bone chip that she showed everyone. “It’s like my mom is close,” she said smiling, putting her hand over her chest. Brian thought of his dad’s pillow and aluminum fishing rod.
At the funeral, Brian’s eighty-six-year-old Aunt Elena, who had deep wrinkles in her forehead, had said, “Now just remember this: it’s better to just go on, not to discuss your father anymore. Put the dead to rest. I know. Memories are much, much too painful.”
But Alice talked about her mom all the time: how she’d liked chocolate ice cream with cherries on top, how she had worn clothes in her favorite color red almost everyday, and how she’d braided Alice’s hair. Remembering made Alice smile.
Brian also remembered Aunt Elena saying, “It’s not right for a child to go to a funeral.” And Brian was certain she was dead wrong.
Brian silently watched Alice as she told the story of her family’s visit to her mom’s grave. She talked so fast, it was hard to hear all her words, which kept running together. She laughed, too, which made everyone else laugh nervously.
“Well,” she said, “we brought pasta with tomato sauce, my mom’s favorite, to have a picnic together, and Dad cooked it, my mom always snuck more at the table when she thought we weren’t looking, ‘cause that’s how much she loved it, the pasta, I mean, and then, when we were there, with my brother, Jason, and me, at the grave, my dog, Lulu, she like knocked over the pasta bowl, and it fell right on the grave, right where my mom was, in the dirt, so we started laughing, so hard, ya know, ‘cause Mom got some pasta after all, you know, even though she’s dead and all, we left it there for her, isn’t that funny?”
By the end, Alice seemed to be both laughing and crying, so Ms. Horton gave her Kleenex. Brian found it hard not to smile about the pasta, but, as usual, stayed silent. He’d also learned to be silent whenever phone callers asked for his dad. After the first call, from a man with a southern accent, Brian began having recurring dreams about the phone.
“I’d like to speak to Mr. Schwed, please,” the southern man had asked.
Brian was quiet at first. “Ah, you can’t, ‘cause, ah, you can’t,” Brian answered.
“I’d like to leave him a message.”
“You can’t,” Brian stammered again softly, his lip quivering.
“Why not?”
Brian spoke the surreal words he hated hearing and saying most: “He died.”
Brian hung up slowly after the man awkwardly apologized and said goodbye. Ever since then, he would just be quiet until the caller hung up. He didn’t tell his mom. In his dreams, his father would walk to the phone in his green T-shirt, smiling, and say he wasn’t really dead anymore. They would walk out to the basketball court at the end of the street and have a contest to see how far apart they could stand and still catch a baseball without dropping it.
After Alice blew her nose, Ms. Horton explained, “Each one of you can decide how many monthly groups you want to attend. Most students come every month during one school year. That’s ten times. But some students have decided to come to group for as long as two years.”
Brian decided on only three sessions. He’d come one more time in May, when each person had to bring in an object that reminded them of the person who died. He wanted to bring the fishing pole his dad had let him use on their trip to Alaska. He had his dad’s green T-shirt, the one he always carried in his black backpack, like Alice had her locket; he could show that, but the fishing pole was better.
At dinner the night after his third group with Ms. Horton, while he was eating his macaroni and cheese, Brian gave his mom the school Father’s Day flyer addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Schwed.” His mother had already called the school twice and asked to have “Mr.” taken off their address label.
“Father’s Day is next month,” he said. “I forget the date, June something. It’s on the flyer. Anyway, everyone’s dad comes to school and tells about their job. Like last year, when Dad came with his model of the yellow mustang. He let everyone take it apart. Remember, in the cafeteria? What do I do now?”
His mom answered, “It’ll be really hard, like the holidays were in December, without Daddy.” Her face was limp. “What if Uncle Bill goes? He flies planes. That could be neat for the kids. I can ask, if you want.”
Brian was glad she didn’t suggest that she’d come to school in his father’s place, because that would be so embarrassing. Plus, he was worried they didn’t have enough money. She’d mentioned her concern about money a few times when he’d wanted video games and baseball equipment that were too expensive. She needed to go to work and not to lose her job at the airport check-out counter, even though he liked it better before his dad died, when she didn’t have to work and wasn’t always down and tired. She was talking about selling Dad’s car for the money, too.
“Okay,” he said, trying to think of how he’d explain his uncle to the kids who didn’t know yet that his father had died. He could feel what Ms. Horton called an “unexpected grief surge” coming on—the sadness that hits so hard, it’s like the first time you’re told the person died.
He’d had another surge that morning during group when Shawn had asked, “Why can’t hospitals just be for new babies, and not dying people, and not cancer? Why do people have to die anyway?” Ms. Horton had said she didn’t have an answer, and that some questions couldn’t be answered easily. She had told Shawn he asked good questions and then asked if anyone else had an answer. Brian knew why his father was dead. It was his fault. But as always in Ms. Horton’s office, he hadn’t spoken at all, preferring to listen and to watch.
He’d looked around the counseling office to distract himself from his sudden queasiness. Soft nurf bats and balls stood in the corner for getting out anger and pent up feelings; the sand box looked empty, because he’d buried all the people earlier; his journal was in the safe box where no one could read it; and all the kid’s drawings covered one wall. Manuel had drawn a dark purple heart, cut in two, with a jagged black edge and tears coming out the cut.
Brian liked seeing the picture he drew of himself and his father fishing in Alaska. He’d gotten his dad’s face just right, the color of his curly brown hair and mustache, and his reddish wire rim glasses, although in the past seven months, it was getting harder and harder to remember his face and voice. He wondered what was happening to his dad’s face and body now. His mom had seemed too nervous to talk about it when he’d asked. But he wanted to know exactly what was happening to his dad under the ground, deep inside the earth.
As he finished his macaroni and cheese, his mother said, “I talked with my therapist today, and it made me really realize that I haven’t been the best mom since Dad died.” She paused and put her fork down. “I am sad and tired a lot of the time, more than I want to admit. I don’t play cards as much. And I get angry more than I used to.” Brian rolled his eyes wide in agreement and nodded, and she smiled. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I love you more than anything and always will no matter what, even if it doesn’t seem like that some of the time. I am so proud of how you’re handling everything, all the changes since Dad died.”
Brian nodded, remembering that next month, in June, Ms. Horton’s group project was making memory boxes. They would color and decorate the box with stickers and crêpe paper, then take it home and fill it with things that reminded them of their loved one. A week ago, on his ninth birthday, his mother had given him his father’s class ring. It was the worst birthday he’d had, because it was just him and his mom eating the cake, alone, and he didn’t get to go to a Red Sox game with his father like he had the last three years. But at least he could see his mom was doing her best, and he had the ring, the blue sapphire, to put in his memory box along with a picture of himself with his dad in Alaska. So he would go to the guidance office one final time before summer vacation for his fourth session to make the memory box. Next September, once he became a fourth grader, he wouldn’t go anymore.
Brian was surprised over the summer how much he missed the grief sessions and being with the other kids who talked about missing someone close to them who had died. They seemed to understand more than anyone else what he was going through. The summer had mostly been boring, because his mom was working and he had to stay with different adult relatives during the day, doing things with them like shopping and errands. He saw a few good movies, went swimming weekly, and went to the miniature golf course three times with friends, but not much else. So in September, when Ms. Horton asked him if he wanted to come to another group, he agreed to come briefly to see everyone.
During the session, Ms. Horton mentioned how next month would be October, the first anniversary of his father’s death. Ms. Horton, wearing a brightly colored scarf, said, “It is very hard to go through the one-year anniversary. People often remember all the details of the death, and it brings up deep sadness.” She suggested he and his mom think of a special ritual to honor his dad. Before he left, Brian silently nodded in agreement that he’d come back for a sixth session in October because it was the anniversary month.
Brian and his mother decided to do two rituals in October. First, they lit a candle on the anniversary day. She set a picture of his dad next to the candle. She asked him to say something about his dad, but Brian couldn’t think of a way to put into words the intensity he was feeling inside. So he said, “I wish you weren’t dead, Dad,” which made his mom cry. She clung to him; his own tears followed, slowly at first, then more, and they rocked a long time.
In the afternoon, at the gravesite, they released a helium balloon into the sky with two notes attached: a private one from his mom and one from him. It was the first time he had written to his dead father.
Dad, I love you. I miss you alot. I scored 2 times in soccer yesterday. I wish you were not dead and were still alive. And here to make our problems less. Love, Brian
The second time Brian wrote to his father was on Valentine’s Day during his tenth session. He hadn’t planned on it, but had continued each month to attend the groups in the Blue Dungeon. It just seemed more right to go than to stay in his classroom, and he always felt lighter when he left the group. Some fourth graders thought making valentines was only for the littler kids. Brian didn’t. He wrote a valentine for his father to put in his memory box, to keep it private.
Dear Dad, I wish you were still here to do stuff with. I miss our baseball and basketball throwing and everything. I am OK. I nailed your fishing pole to the ceiling over my bed. The fishing line comes down and almost touches my pillow. I stuck your picture on the hook. So your picture is hanging over my bed. I can see you. I talk to you too. Every night before I go to sleep. I love you. Love, Brian.
When they finished their valentines, Ms. Horton asked them, “What do you think death looks like? Draw or use clay to show it.”
Brian silently drew his dad, laughing and working on a car engine. Then he colored it over, completely in black, with a thick marker. All that showed on the black page was “James B. Schwed” and the date his father had died inside the shape of a tombstone on the top right corner.
Alice made the Grim Reaper out of clay, and Shawn drew a picture of four angels flying high above a green meadow.
Looking at Shawn’s angels, Brian spontaneously and unexpectedly spoke aloud. He asked Ms. Horton, “If my dad’s in heaven, what does he do there?”
Ms. Horton looked up from helping Alice. Her long silver earrings dangled against her neck. Everyone stopped working and waited to see what Ms. Horton would do after Brian’s many months of silence. Manuel looked at Brian, dropping his jaw open exaggeratedly wide and fully opening his eyes.
“It’s good to hear your question, Brian,” she answered in her natural tone.
Flushed and embarrassed for forgetting and speaking after ten silent sessions, Brian looked out the window and watched some children exchanging valentines on a wooden bench.
Alice said, “I think he’s smiling and looking down on you, like my dad says my mom does to me.”
Ms. Horton nodded and added, “Different people have different ideas about heaven, and each one of us gets to decide what we believe.”
Brian shook his head and said, “My dad liked any candy bar with chocolate in it, and building towers with Lego’s, and letting me ride on his back—he called it Horse. I wanted you to know that.”
The second half of group, each person pulled a question to answer from a yellow bag with a drawstring. Shawn’s question was, “Is it your fault that the person died?” Brian felt sick and looked out the window again, wanting to run away. Shawn said he thought that by touching his dad at the hospital once when he forgot to wash his hands, it had made his father’s colon cancer get worse. Tearing, he said that not washing his hands might have started the cancer, causing the diagnosis. Ms. Horton explained he was wrong and why.
She asked if anyone else wanted to answer the question. Brian didn’t, but started talking anyway, his voice, deep and abrasive, rage noticeable in his eyes. “I hate snow,” he said. “It kills people.”
His tone quieted the stirrings in the room. Brian pictured the details of the avalanche, which he knew because Ms. Horton had told his mother he needed to know the full story, truthfully. He pictured his father in the frigid snow, dying. He was buried for four hours before they found him. One red ski boot showed in the snow and that was how they had found him. He had five crushed ribs, punctured lungs, and a broken leg at the knee. It took a long time to get to a hospital. On the way to the hospital, he died.
Slowly, Brian continued, “When we were out in the car together, alone, at a car wash, my dad said he didn’t think he’d go skiing and snowboarding with his friends. They go every year in October. Down in Chile, in the Andes Mountains. That’s in South America. Because it’s still winter. And one of his friends lives there. And I said it was a good time to go, ‘cause most of my soccer games would be over and he wouldn’t miss any. Now he’s gone. Forever.”
He paused. “If I just hadn’t said that, he wouldn’t have gone, and wouldn’t be dead from the avalanche. It crushed him. Plus, if only I hadn’t been so loud all the time and getting in trouble and making him mad and tired, then maybe he wouldn’t have needed to go away skiing in the first place, to get away and rest. Because of me, he went.”
Brian felt relieved from his confession, yet simultaneously his hands were vibrating and shaking under the desk. His mouth felt dry. He wasn’t sure if children were sent away to some sort of prison for things like this. He wondered fearfully what punishment would happen next and began reviewing all the possibilities he’d come up with since the funeral sixteen months earlier.
Ms. Horton walked over to him, sat down next to him, and explained, “It’s not your fault. You didn’t cause your father’s death.” She stared straight into his eyes and didn’t blink. “It was out of anyone’s control. No one could have stopped it from happening. It was nothing you did.” The room remained deep in silence. Again she said firmly and with resolution, “It’s not your fault.”
He listened hard to her words and watched her face. He nodded slowly, remembering words his mom had spoken recently, “Dad told me for months he wanted to go on that trip. No one could have stopped him. Skiing is what he loved, even more than cars.”
He let Ms. Horton’s words and his mother’s words mix together, and tried to make sense from the confusion of contradictory thoughts. Swirling emotion moved in his belly as he sat with his head down, hands gripping his knees in a vice, staring at the tear in the red rug. With a surprising suddenness, he believed Ms. Horton. He knew she spoke the truth, and he could feel it settling into his spine.
Before he fell asleep that night, he looked at the photo of his father hanging from the fishing pole. “I love you, Dad,” he said. “And it’s okay to talk to a picture, or into a tape recorder, or even to write people who are dead. Ms. Horton said so. As long as you know that the person isn’t coming back. She says using the word ‘dead’ is important. ‘Gone’ or ‘left’ or ‘passed on’ means you might be coming back. You’re not coming back. Memories are forever though. I’ll never forget you. Anyway, good night.”
He rolled over and pulled the quilt his Aunt Sally had made for him up to his chin. It was made from different pieces of his dad’s clothing, even a small piece from the edge of the green T-shirt that Brian let his aunt use. He had the rest of the green T-shirt under his pillow. He closed his eyes, remembering Ms. Horton’s words: “It’s not your fault.”
June warmth and humid air filled the school hallway along with the smell of paste. Coming from his last group visit, Brian stopped by the hall window to get a better look at the stones in the light. His soccer shoes dangled from his belt, and he set his backpack, crammed with homework, on the metal window ledge. Ms. Horton had given him five stones as a way to say goodbye. He shook them out of the aqua paisley pouch into his hand.
She’d said, “These four smooth, shiny stones are for all the hard work you’ve done since your father died, especially learning ways to keep him alive in your heart.” She’d pointed to the line of dots on her calendar by his name, one for each monthly session. “You have come here for fourteen groups, almost two years.” Then she added, “To the Blue Dungeon.” Brian panicked that she had found out the secret nickname, instantly worried she’d be mad. But she smiled warmly and raised her eyebrows in an exaggerated way, letting him in on her secret joke; she knew what they called her office. She’d continued, “And this one stone is hard and jagged, like the place in your heart where you will always feel the pain, loss, and sadness.”
His sadness and anger had been stirred up lately. He thought about how he’d been arguing with his mother about Doug, intensifying the familiar longing for his father. His mother had started spending time with Doug, Alice’s dad. They had met after school on parent’s night. Doug was coming over for dinner that night and bringing Alice along.
“You can’t have them over. I don’t want him here!” He had yelled to his mom the night before.
“I like Doug,” she’d said, stopping her chopping of carrots and looking worried that he was so angry. “He understands about having your partner die. It’s hard to always be with couples.” Brian had glared at her silently. “We’re friends for now. Nothing serious.” She’d dried her hands on the towel. “I’m sorry I upset you. But it’s been a whole year plus eight months since Dad died. I’m not sure I am ready myself to seriously date anyone, and I know no one can ever replace Dad. But someday, who knows, I may want to get married again. It could happen.”
Not if I can help it, Brian had thought angrily. The conversation had made him feel worse. He was handling the family himself just fine, taking out the trash and making sure the windows were closed when it rained. He wanted his own dad around, not some man who might start pretending to be his father. They’d only gone out to dinner twice, but he worried Doug would become her boyfriend.
“Of course, I’d talk to you first before we made any big changes in our lives,” his mother added.
“I bet you forget Dad,” he’d said and left the room. He’d only felt better when he’d told his dad’s picture that he would not ever forget him, even if his mom started dating. He actually liked Doug just a little. He seemed to make his mother feel better, but he would never admit that to her.
When he’d told Ms. Horton about Doug, she had said, “Grief never ends, but you are starting to open up to a different life without your dad.” Sometimes things Ms. Horton said made him want to puke.
Squinting in the bright sunlight, he looked out the school window. Kids were playing on the two game fields, and he could see out past the playground to the horizon where a water tower on a hill seemed to touch some clouds. As he leaned his head out the open window, his dad’s ring, dangling on a string around his neck, clanked against the glass. He held it tightly, feeling its warmth, like the five stones in his other hand.
On his tenth birthday last month, he had gone to his father’s grave, which he’d also done on his father’s birthday. He’d sat quietly, leaning against the headstone. It was like sitting in the front seat of his dad’s yellow mustang, parked in the garage, in terms of being close. He never told his mom because she worried about the car accidentally rolling. When he got his license, he planned to drive it himself.
At the grave, he’d decided that on Father’s Day this year, he would talk to the class about his dad. He would tell them about him, how he’d died, and what he did for a job. His Uncle Bill had come last year, but this year his dad would be there, through him. He’d called Manuel to run the idea past him. He had liked it, and said he might do something like it on Mother’s Day for his mom. He’d said, “It’s all about remembering them, ya know.”
The school bell rang, signaling freedom from the school day, and Brian jammed his stones in his backpack. When summer vacation started, he and his mom were going on a trip to the car show, where his father always showed his remade and remodeled cars. Some of his father’s skiing buddies would be there. No one else had been killed in the avalanche.
Brian had an urgent feeling of wanting to run, though not to run away. A bounding energy was pushing inside him, making his legs tingle. He leapt down the outside stairs three at a time, heading toward the sidewalk that was busy with rushing students. He stumbled on his landing at the last step, but caught his balance. He sprung onto the school bus, grabbed the vertical pole at the top of the steps with both hands, and in one smooth motion, swung around the pole, landing firmly in the front seat. A puff of air gushed from the vinyl seat cushion, and in an uncharacteristically loud, strong voice, he said, “Let’s go.”
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