Noggin

by John Corey Whaley

  YOU ARE A SIGN OF THE END TIMES. REPENT!

  I picked another letter.

  Dear Travis,

  You are my hero. Do you have any information on the Saranson Center? I have been diagnosed with a fatal illness and would love to undergo the same procedure as you. Does it hurt? How do you like your new body?

  And then I stopped reading. I dropped the letter, put the lid on the box, and crawled back into bed. How was I supposed to respond to any of that? I didn’t have answers for these people. Not the crazy ones or the ones who thought I’d made the right choice. I was just some dumb kid with a hell of a lot of good luck. It was hard for me to imagine a day when I’d be ready for that—when I’d be able to sit down and listen to all the things these strangers expected of me.

  • • •

  Exactly three weeks after my failed marriage proposal to Cate, Kyle and Hatton showed up at my door holding a Ziploc bag full of cremated cat remains.

  “Travis, say hello to Binky.” Hatton held the bag up to my face.

  “Oh no.”

  “Oh yes, Travis,” Kyle said. “Step aside, there’s work to be done.”

  Once they were in the house, Kyle and Hatton started looking around. Keep in mind that Hatton was still holding a liter-size plastic bag full of Binky’s ashes. They were definitely Binky’s, by the way, because it was written in black Sharpie ink on the side.

  “Your mom home?” Kyle asked.

  “She’s at work. We really don’t need to do this now, guys.”

  “But we do, Travis. We’ve got to bury the past. Or spread it or whatever,” Kyle said.

  “Or it’s not too late to get those tattoos we discussed,” Hatton added.

  “So where are they, then?” Kyle asked.

  “I’ll go get them. Hang on.”

  I found the green tin cookie jar right where I’d left it, in the back corner of the guest room closet, and I brought it out to them. Kyle grabbed it from me and headed toward the kitchen. He set it in the sink and took the lid off.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked.

  “We can’t risk spilling any on the floor. Hatton, bring me the cat.”

  Hatton walked over with Binky’s remains and opened up the bag like it had potato chips inside. He handed it to Kyle, who immediately got this confused expression and looked up at us.

  “We need like a . . . mixing bowl, maybe.”

  “What?” I was going back and forth between frustrated and disgusted.

  “Well, we need to get you out of the jar and Binky into the jar and then you into the bag. So we need an in-between container.” It scared me how serious Kyle was.

  I opened the cabinet by the sink and handed him a shiny metal mixing bowl and then stepped back in horror. He slowly and carefully poured the contents of the cookie jar into the bowl, and then Hatton walked over and started pouring Binky into the empty jar. Then Hatton held the bag open as Kyle poured me into the now-empty bag. The whole thing took less than five minutes, but I would be scarred for life.

  “There. Perfect. Hatton, this was a grand idea.” Kyle patted him on the back.

  Hatton held up the bag, which now had all that was left of my body inside, and gave me this dead-serious stare.

  “Travis, what do you feel?”

  “Nothing. Well, a little nauseous.”

  “No,” Hatton said. “Focus on Binky’s Plastic Bag of Raw Emotion and just let it happen, man. Let it all out.”

  I returned the cookie jar to its hiding place, and when I walked back into the kitchen, Kyle was scrubbing the mixing bowl in the sink. He was whistling. And Hatton? Hatton was sitting at the counter eating a baby carrot.

  “What now, weirdos?”

  “Now, Travis, now we lay you to rest once and for all.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “When’s the last time you talked to Cate?” Hatton asked, still chewing a carrot.

  “Are you serious right now? That’s what you want to talk about?”

  “It’s important.”

  “Three weeks ago. In the coffee shop.”

  “She says she’s tried to call you a million times,” Kyle added. He was using a hand towel to dry the bowl.

  “I can’t yet. Maybe eventually but not yet.”

  “But can you see her?” Kyle asked.

  “Why do you even ask that? If I can’t talk to her, then I don’t want to see her either.”

  “Just hear us out,” Kyle began.

  “What’d you do?”

  “We invited her to go with us,” Hatton said.

  “To go with us where? What the hell are you guys talking about? Where are we going?”

  “Oh. Yeah. We should tell him. Should we tell him yet?” Hatton had a very excited, almost sinister look in his eyes.

  “Travis,” Kyle said. “Maybe sit down for a second, okay?”

  “Okay.” I sat down.

  “Travis, we found Jeremy Pratt.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  JEREMY PRATT

  Before he died, Jeremy Pratt and his parents signed a waiver stating that the Saranson Center for Life Preservation could transport his corpse from a hospital in Quincy, Illinois, to Denver, Colorado. This was done using an ambulance so a series of machines could keep his heart beating and his lungs pumping air. In Denver he was carefully decapitated and, after the fifty-six-hour surgery to attach his body to my neck was completed, Jeremy Pratt’s cremated remains were shipped home to his family and buried in the Pleasant Grove Cemetery on Locust Street.

  Which brings us to an unseasonably warm day in February. I was sitting in the backseat of Kyle’s truck, and he and Hatton were trying to convince me that everything happens for a reason. They were having a hard time with this. Audrey Hagler was sitting beside me with an enthused expression on her face. I still wasn’t sure why she was there with us, but I knew Hatton had something to do with it.

  Then we pulled into a driveway I didn’t recognize, and as I leaned up to ask where we were, I saw her. Cate was walking toward us with hesitation, no doubt considering turning back and running away. But she opened the door and took a seat on the other side of Audrey. I looked over at her and she half waved, giving me that sad expression of hers. If you’re ever dying, which I hope you’re not, this is a look you’ll get used to. People will try to smile at you and talk to you without thinking about what’s happening, but there’s always this slight change in their lips and eyes. It’ll bother you the first few times, make you feel like no one will ever be sincere with you again, but it’s not like that, really. They aren’t doing it on purpose. When one of us is dying, they say a part of all of us is. I think that’s why it hurts. We go our whole lives losing little chunks until we can’t lose any more of them.

  “This is so . . . exciting,” Audrey said.

  Hatton turned around from the front seat and looked at her. It seemed like he wanted to say something but was making sure it came out right. She made him nervous, which was kind of sweet and also pretty obvious to everyone.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said. “I needed you. No, I mean, we needed you.”

  She laughed at his fumble, along with Kyle, and I looked over to Cate to see that she was smiling pretty big.

  “How much longer?” Hatton asked.

  “About two hours,” Kyle said. “Are you gonna ask every five minutes?”

  “Maybe.”

  We stopped at a convenience store outside of Brookfield. Kyle was pumping gas, and Hatton and Audrey were inside using the restroom and getting some snacks. I was just standing beside the truck stretching my arms above my head as Cate walked up to me.

  “How’s your hand?” she asked playfully.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “It was definitely surprising.”

  “I can’t believe he didn’t hit me back.”

  “I don’t think Turner’s ever been in a fight. He cried on the way to the ER.”

  “The ER?”

  “You broke his nose.”
r />   “Oh my God.”

  “He’ll be fine,” she said. “I think I’m angrier than he is.”

  “He can’t be that nice, can he?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “He kind of is.”

  “Look, thanks for coming. I’m not sure why they’re making a big deal out of all this.”

  “Because it is a big deal. I think so, anyway.”

  “It’ll probably just be a letdown to everyone. Sprinkle some ashes, say a few words, then drive home. Done and done.”

  “You know, for someone who got brought back to life, you sure are pessimistic.”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “You should work on that.”

  Back on the road no one was really talking, just listening to the barely audible music on the radio. Of the string of weird days that had made up my recent life, this one was shaping up to be the longest and most bizarre. Within a couple of hours we would illegally pour my ashes onto the grave of a stranger whose body happens to be holding up my head.

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” I said. No one responded.

  I must’ve fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, we were driving really slowly and Hatton was hanging halfway out the window looking at rows of headstones.

  “Keep going,” he said. “These are all pretty old.”

  “We should get out and walk,” Audrey suggested. “Split up and try to find it.”

  “Teams. We should go in teams.” Hatton looked to Audrey, who rolled her eyes but also smiled.

  “There’s no directory or anything?” I asked, yawning.

  “I don’t think so,” Kyle said.

  So we got out of the truck and split up to search the huge cemetery, hoping we could find the one grave with Jeremy Pratt’s name on it. Hatton followed Audrey, and Kyle walked off by himself, leaving Cate and me. We walked slowly down a row of headstones, looking at each one as we passed.

  “This is going to take forever,” she said.

  I nodded my head and kept looking. I was pretty warm in my sweater, so I started rolling up the sleeves haphazardly. Cate stopped in her tracks and watched me.

  “Here,” she said.

  She stepped closer and folded each of my sleeves up the way she always used to.

  “So they won’t keep falling down. Drives me crazy.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re brave, you know that?” she asked. We continued grave hunting.

  “Why’s that?”

  “You want something, you go after it. It’s a little misguided, maybe. But brave.”

  “Immature, you mean.”

  “A little. Yeah.”

  “I’m really sorry. I thought maybe you felt the same way.” I didn’t look at her, just kept my head hung low.

  “It’s not all your fault, Travis. It’s not.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “You know, when you died, my mom told me something really important. She said it’s too easy to get hung up on people the way we do. I mean, that we all get one person to be ours and that’s it. We should look at it differently. We all get lots of people. And maybe we don’t always get to have them the exact way we want them, but if we can figure out a way to compromise, you know, then we can keep them all.”

  “I love you so much,” I said, stopping in my tracks and turning her way. “I don’t know how to let that go.”

  “We’re soul mates,” she said. “I know that. And so are Turner and me. And you and Hatton and Kyle. We all get people that help us make sense of the world, right? We just have to figure out how to keep them however we can. You and me, we worked. But you had to leave and I had to let other people in or I’d die too. I knew you didn’t want that. Did you?”

  “No. Never.”

  “So let me go, Travis. You’re the best friend I ever had, and that’s what I need from you now. Let me be your best friend.”

  “Over here!” Kyle shouted from across the way.

  I had to squint in the sunlight to see him, and he was waving us over with both arms. Audrey and Hatton were walking quickly toward him from the far-west side of the cemetery. Cate started walking over to him and I followed after her. She let the tips of her fingers lightly graze the tops of tombstones as we passed.

  Kyle, Hatton, and Audrey were standing around the grave forming a broken circle when we walked up to help them complete it. Hatton was holding the plastic bag full of my ashes. It still said “Binky” on the side.

  “So how do we do this?” I asked.

  “Up to you,” Kyle said. “But we were thinking maybe we could all help.”

  “That would be nice,” I said.

  I looked down at the inscription etched into the shiny, deep purple–stained concrete headstone. Jeremy Lee Pratt: Beloved son and brother.

  “Audrey,” Hatton said. “Would you maybe say a few words?”

  I didn’t close my eyes, but I watched Cate as she held hers tightly shut. She was mouthing something as Audrey prayed. Cate said “Amen” with the rest of us, and she looked right at me when we were done. She held her hands clasped, one cupped over the other.

  “Who wants to go first?” Kyle asked.

  “I’ll go,” Hatton said.

  Hatton held out the bag and looked around at us. He was moving his eyes like he was searching for something appropriate to say. As he let the ash start to trickle out of the top corner of the bag, he just sort of grinned and stared at me. The ashes floated a little in the air as they fell, but there was no wind, so they found the ground and couldn’t be seen anymore. Then he passed the bag over to Audrey.

  Audrey did the same—only she closed her eyes and let her ashes fall out more slowly. She passed the bag to Kyle, and her now-free hand swung back to rest right against Hatton’s. His eyes widened.

  “Ashes to ashes?” Kyle said as he let the gray cloud form in front of him.

  “My turn?” Cate asked, reaching for the bag. “Okay.”

  She held the ashes out and didn’t take her eyes off me the whole time. She tilted the bag slowly and gently as we all watched until there was only about a handful left inside.

  “Thanks for this, guys,” I said.

  I stepped forward and took the dusty, mostly empty bag from Cate. It was hard not to laugh, but the solemn looks on their faces kept me from it.

  “If it weren’t for Jeremy Pratt, I guess I wouldn’t be here right now,” I said. “And I guess that’s something to be grateful for.”

  I started tipping Binky’s bag toward the ground.

  “I don’t really know much about Jeremy. I know he liked to skateboard. And I know he lived here in Quincy, which seems nice enough.”

  “And he couldn’t play video games for shit,” Kyle said.

  “And he was deceptively strong,” Cate added.

  “Yeah. All those things. I know he had to leave his family and friends behind, and I think that’s probably what we have most in common.”

  I paused for a second. I let every memory of the last day of my life flood in, and I imagined Jeremy’s last day too. I pictured his mother and father crying and his girlfriend kissing him good-bye.

  “You okay?” Cate whispered.

  “I’m fine.”

  I finished pouring the ash out, holding the upside-down bag by both its bottom corners. When it was all gone, I folded it up and stuck it in my pocket.

  “So, Jeremy. You gave me your body. Now we give you mine. It’s not a very good one, but I—”

  “What are you doing?”

  We all turned around at the same time to see a middle-aged woman and a young girl standing behind us. The girl was wearing a light blue bow in her hair, and she couldn’t have been any older than five or six. The woman looked confused and almost angry. Maybe she’d been crying because her eyes were bloodshot. None of us knew what to say.

  “I asked you what you’re doing,” she said.

  “Ma’am, we’re sorry,” Audrey began. “This is gonna sound crazy, but we were just—”
/>   “You’re Travis Coates. Oh my God.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She paused and looked down at the ground. Her mouth was open a little bit like she had something to say but not enough air to say it.

  “This is my son’s grave.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “No way,” Hatton said slowly, his mouth hanging open.

  “This is how we all go to jail,” Kyle added under his breath.

  “We just thought . . . ,” I said. “We found out he was here and it felt like we needed to—”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to say anything.”

  “Hi,” the little girl blurted out, looking right at me.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “What’s your name?” Cate asked her.

  “Julia,” she answered, smiling.

  Cate walked over and kneeled down beside the little girl, telling her she liked her bow and asking where she got it. Cate was like that with kids, always had been.

  “Jeremy gave it to me,” Julia said.

  “She wears it every time we come see him,” her mom said.

  “We can go. We should get out of your way.” I looked over at my friends.

  “Can I see it?” Jeremy’s mom asked, stepping closer. “Your neck, can I see it?”

  She walked up to me, and her eyes were so red that I was sure she hadn’t stopped crying since October, since she lost him. She stood to my side a bit and very carefully leaned in to see the scar. She took one quick deep breath like something had scared her. Everyone was just watching us. Cate was talking to Julia in the grass, but even she had her eyes pointed in our direction.

  “You’re doing well?” she asked. “You’re healthy?”

  “Yeah. Uhh . . . yes, ma’am.”

  “My son never said ‘Yes, ma’am’ one day of his life.” She laughed a little.

  “Missouri, I guess,” I said to her.

  “Can you do something for me?” she asked quietly. She wasn’t crying, but I think that’s only because she was all tapped out of tears.

  “Sure.”

  “Jeremy, he used to be so protective of his sister. No matter where we went, he was always on guard like something would happen to her. Shopping malls, supermarkets. He always had to be holding her hand. Can you just . . .”