This is My Message to You

Orange

ORANGE

I didn't go to his funeral.

I got all dressed up in some black dress and somehow made it downstairs, into the car, and all the way to the church without thinking, but when I saw all the girls from my high school there, crying their eyes out over the most beautiful boy in the grade, I couldn't do it.

My mom never once asked me what was wrong or what I was feeling during that entire week, that week of hell right at the end of July. When I stopped dead at the back of the church, she just patted my shoulder and said she would find a seat inside if I wanted to join her eventually. I watched her walk to a pew near the front, saw her embrace Connor's family, and on instinct I looked for Connor sitting next to his mom as always, bored and listless.

He wasn't there.

He wasn't there and he wasn't just skipping church because he stayed the night at a friend's house – he wasn't going to show up in that knit sweater from his grandma that he wore every Christmas – he wasn't going to turn and give me that fucking annoying smile in the middle of the service – he wasn't there and he wasn't ever going to be there again.

Somehow, sometime later, I found myself in the field down the road from the church, my shoes slipping in the wet, muddy grass and sweat beading on my forehead as I gagged and panted in the same breath. I think I remember running and tripping and throwing up in some bushes, but my memories from that week are all screwed up in my head.

I stood still in that field for a couple minutes, breathing hard and wishing desperately for some water, and then I looked up at the sky. Thunderstorms had rolled in and out of our town for the past couple days, but now the grey clouds began to dissipate, some brave sunrays bursting through and making everything glow. Through the grey came a glimpse of that brilliant blue that comes only in the deepest days of summer.

That stupid song started playing in my head:

Singing don't worry 'bout a thing...

My legs got tired very suddenly, and I sank down right there on the muddy ground in my nice dress, and I knit my fingers through the damp grass and pulled some up, and as I let it trickle through my fingers, I finally lost it.

I'm not a big crier, but sometimes there are moments where you just can't keep it in.

That was the worst one of my life.

I sat there in the mud with grass stains covering my skirt and sobs wracking my chest, crying and swearing and wondering why it wasn't helping me feel better this time. Maybe it was because he wasn't there to cry with me, to make jokes and sit next to me, to draw a stupid smiley on my hand and tell me everything was going to get better.

He. Wasn't. There.

"Fuck you, Connor," I choked out, my eyes puffy and my throat aching, but Myth Busters was wrong.

It didn't help. Not one bit.