by Milda Harris
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Adventures in Funeral Crashing
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Funeral crashing is a little weird, I suppose, for someone my age. I’m sixteen, almost seventeen, and I just started my junior year at Palos High School in Palos, IL. It’s in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. Still, I’m not Harold from Harold and Maude, just to make that clear. I love movies and that one is funny and dark, but I’m not like him. I don’t stage fake suicides or drive a hearse. He was dark and somber and totally weird. I don’t think I’m like that. I like normal things like regular cars. Actually, I’d really love a bright blue convertible. And, I’m not obsessed with death. I just like going to funerals.
I’m kind of young to be a professional mourner, though, right? That’s what they call it if you’re old school. It tends to be in reference to groups of old ladies, who just love to attend funerals. Maybe they’re trying to get ideas for their own funeral. Maybe they want to beat the Joneses’ and get a shinier coffin and better flowers than their neighbor had. Or, maybe they just like funerals, like I do. And, when I say funerals, I’m including the wake and the actual burial. They’re both part of the same process.
I actually once found a website advertising an exciting career as a professional mourner! I’ll admit it - I was googling. It said you could make $500 a day and all you had to do was start calling funeral homes and offer your services. Now that’s an awesome after school job! So, I called, but none of them called me back. I guess it wasn’t a lucrative career after all. It doesn’t matter. I go to them anyway for free.
I know, I know. What more can I say to explain? It’s simple. Super simple. I happen to like funerals and I completely realize that it makes me seem like a totally and utterly bizarre girl. Okay, I’m weird. Yes, I’m a freak. I admit it. Hey, I’m not going to make fun of you for singing along to the latest Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber song or anything. You know you do. Those songs are catchy. Believe me, it wouldn’t be the first time someone told me I was weird. My ex-best friend, Ariel Walker, loves to tell me how strange I am whenever she gets the chance.
“Kait Lenox is a freak!” tends to follow me around everywhere, at least when Ariel is around. I’m usually busy trying to blend into the wall when she walks by now. It makes life easier, much easier, and I’ve actually gotten quite good at it. I doubt most of the student population even knows I exist, unless Ariel points me out to them or something.
Ariel was named after The Little Mermaid. You know, the really cute kids movie? Her mother loved it. Well, my ex-bff Ariel didn’t grow up to be a sweet little singing mermaid, let me tell you. We were best friends until our freshman year of high school and then poof! She was gone with the popular crowd, like we had never even known each other. Well, we don’t know each other unless she stops to tell me how weird I am. Then she’s happy to talk to me. That was the year my mother died too. Can you believe that? See what I mean? Ariel is not a nice and sweet singing mermaid. Her mother should have named her Ursula, after the Sea Witch.
Yes, my mother died a little over a year and a half ago. She had ovarian cancer, but by the time the doctors found it, it had already spread. It was like one minute she was diagnosed and two months later she was gone. I try not to think about it. It still makes me really sad and if I dwell on it, I just get depressed. I start thinking about things like if I ever get married she won’t be there. Not that I remotely have any prospects, but you know, if I ever do.
I miss her. I really miss her. I’d give anything to have her back and wipe away those last two months. The last moments my mother was alive, she was unconscious in our living room, dying. It’s still depressing to walk into the living room. I can almost still see where the hospital bed was, even though my dad has replaced it with a leather couch and a brand new flat screen TV. We all deal with grief in different ways.
The funeral was actually a relief. It was the first funeral I had ever attended. I mean nobody in my family or any family friends or anything had died in the fourteen plus years I had been alive and then the first one to go, is my mom. Sure, I had grandparents die before I was born, but I wasn’t born yet, so I never knew them. Anyway, it was a memorable first funeral. I loved my mom more than anything else and it was comforting having all of the people who loved her all around us, even if most of them were just family. And, you know what? It was a nice funeral for being really depressing and all.
It was really cool hearing all the stories about my mom. Things she had never mentioned to me. Like, I didn’t know she lived in Los Angeles, California for three months when she was twenty-six just to see if she liked it. She slept on her friend’s couch and everything! She was too in love with my dad at the time to stay, but wow, my mom had an adventure! She lived in Hollywood! Where they make movies! I love movies. Maybe one day I’ll go into filmmaking even. But, anyway, my mom was there in LA with the movie stars! How cool is that?
Needless to say, the funeral was actually the best part of that whole ordeal. I sound intellectual there, don’t I, using the word ordeal? I like to read too – anything and everything. My favorite books range from The Shining by Stephen King (very creepy) to Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell (classic romance) to Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella (funny chic lit). See, I’m not all dark and dreary. A good book is a good book when you like to read as much as I do. I suppose some of my reading affinity comes from my best friend having ditched me, becoming the weird girl, and having no friends at all upon starting high school. Suddenly, you get a lot of time on your hands to do stuff like read.
So, yeah, I’m not a Goth girl, by the way. I don’t wear all black and I haven’t dyed my hair black either. I did put bleach blonde highlights into my hair last year, but they’ve all kind of grown out now and my hair is mostly back to it’s reddish blonde again. It’s kind of rusty really. My mom always said it was strawberry blonde and that it made my green eyes stand out. I think she was just being my mom because my hair looks rusty to me.
Oh, and to be Goth you have to know it inside out and be good at fashion, in a Goth way. It’s not all just wearing black and I’m not good at fashion, by any means. I mostly just wear jeans and T-shirts. To the funerals, I dress up and yes, I do wear black. It’s a funeral, you’re supposed to. You’re respecting and remembering the dead, you know? You should look nice and black is the accepted color for mourning. Besides, the whole point of crashing is to blend into the wake or funeral and fit in, so a black outfit can be key. And, I am there to mourn with them, so it’s good to play the part.
So, basically, I’m not a total freak, like Ariel Walker makes me out to be. I just like funerals, which is why I’m at a wake on Wednesday night, instead of at home watching crappy reality television shows or teen dramas like everyone else. And, okay, we do have TIVO and I can always catch them online later, so it’s not like I’m missing anything.
It’s a wake for Liz O’Reilly. She was only nineteen and died of a drug overdose - a heroin drug overdose to be exact. It made the paper. There have been a lot of overdoses at Laurel Community College in the last two months and it’s not the kind of area you’d think would have a major drug problem. I mean, pot, sure, but heroin? Heroin is a hardcore drug. It’s something you’d expect to see a problem with in the inner city, not here in the squeaky clean suburbs.
I saw the news article before I even read the obituary. The obituary just said she was taken too soon from her loving family. Nobody wants to admit that their kid was a druggie. Things like that are never in the obituary. Her picture is what really got to me. It made my heart constrict and everything, it was so sad. Liz was really pretty from the photo. You’d never even think of her as using drugs, at least not enough to overdose. Pot, maybe. Alcohol, sure, she’s a teenager. Heroin, no way would she be the type to even try it. I guess you can never tell, though. It’s crazy.
Liz looked like your average American girl - dark hair, green eyes, tall, thin, and young. I’d bet an
ything that they used her high school graduation photo for the obituary. It just looked like one of those photos. Liz was smiling and clear eyed, and had her whole life ahead of her. Now, instead, a year later, she was dead and I was attending her funeral. You never knew where life would take you or when it would be taken away from you. Carpe diem, you know?
As a note, you have to be careful when crashing a funeral or a wake. I usually stay toward the back and keep my head down. I like listening to everyone else talk, but I don’t actually want to get in on the conversation. Talking to people is a good way to get caught funeral crashing. I mean, you can talk to people, but you have to be very, very careful what you say. When the only info you have on a person is from an online obituary, it’s very easy to get caught in a lie. Then again, it’s not like the deceased is going to sit up in their coffin and say, “No, I definitely don’t know that girl with the rusty hair.”
You also don’t want to be only one of three people in attendance. Small funerals are a definite no-no. Then you’re really forced to talk about the deceased and if you don’t actually know them, well, people don’t take too kindly to funeral crashers. It’s always better to attend a large funeral, so that people don’t get too nosy about why you’re there. And, like I said, I’ve gotten very good at blending into the wall in high school, so I’m pretty good at it at funerals too.
Although, there was this one time that I didn’t blend so well. Not that I’ve ever gotten caught, exactly, but when I first started funeral crashing I did have a hiccup. It was the only time I’ve almost gotten caught. Instead of just sitting down and casually mingling, I got into a conversation and an old man caught me in a lie about his dead nephew and started screaming at me. That’s when I made my rule about only minimally talking to people. It was a horrific scene. I acted like he’d gone crazy with grief and then I feigned having to go to the restroom really, really badly. I ended up climbing out the window to escape. I never wanted that to happen again. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. I just…wanted to be there.
I figured Liz’s funeral would be big enough, being that she was young and all, that I could blend in with any of the college students that might be there. I was right. There weren’t a thousand, like I would have thought, but they may have been waiting to turn out at the end of the night – the whole fashionably late thing. Still, there were enough of them that I wouldn’t look conspicuous. I had just thought that most of Laurel Community College would show up. I mean, Liz had died so young, but maybe Liz alienated people when she started to use drugs. I know I would have been mad at her for killing herself.
Still, it was a big funeral. It looked like mostly relatives and family friends. There were barely any seats in the viewing room, people were just milling around, and it was still early. You could tell that all of her relatives were there. The woman in the corner surrounded by people looked like it could be Liz’s mom. It was profoundly sad. My heart just wanted to reach out to her. I knew how she felt, except the other way around, since I had lost my mom. I mean, I was not going to go up to her and tell her that I had felt the same way because then I’d get asked the worst question you could possibly get asked when you crash a funeral – “How do you know Liz?”
You have to be careful how you answer that, if someone asks you. I mean – a long lost cousin? Well, there tends to be a family historian in every bunch and you can easily get caught if you say you’re related. That’s what happened that time I almost got caught by the old man. He was the family historian and knew everyone’s name back until they landed on the Americas. Seriously. Anyway, it can work sometimes, but not always, as I found out. So, it’s risky.
An old, long lost friend? Yeah, well, that doesn’t quite work if the deceased is forty-five and you’re sixteen. They tend to think something weird is going on then. Nineteen and sixteen? That could work for me. Liz and I probably looked around the same age. I could pass for a young nineteen. I mean, who can tell these days anyway. There are people in my class who look thirty-five.
Would I ever just admit to funeral crashing? I’m sure there would be a situation where you could say that, nicer of course, but I wouldn’t. People might get out their pitchforks and burn you at the stake. It’s not a hobby that people take kindly to, even though I’m just here to mourn along with the rest of them. I mean, who says you have to know someone in order to celebrate their life and feel sad about them dying? You know? I think it’s a nice thing, what I’m doing. I care about people. Still, when you go around telling people that you crash funerals, they don’t feel that way about it, no matter how I’ve intended it.
So, before I ever show up to a funeral or a wake, I make sure to read the obituary and do some Google research. If I can find anything about the deceased and their family, it always leaves me more prepared. And, I always, always, always try to think of a cover, just in case I get asked how I know the deceased. This one was easy. I had a class with Liz at Laurel Community College. If they pressed me on which class, I was going with a normal one like English. She might not be taking English, so I wasn’t going to offer, but it was a good bet that she may have taken it in the last year. And, if they kept pressing, my plan was to simply just say that I didn’t know her that well, but I thought it was really sad what happened and all, so I decided to come to the funeral and pay my respects.
It was too bad then that I got all tongue-tied and freaked out when Ethan Ripley, the most popular and gorgeous guy at Palos High School, walked up to me and said, “How do you know Liz?”
I had totally had an answer prepared. I swear. It’s just that he’s so freaking hot that I totally forgot all about it.
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About the Author
Milda Harris is a Chicago girl who ran off to Hollywood to pursue a screenwriting dream. She likes silly sports like dodgeball and kickball and loves John Hughes teen movies. She's worked in production on television shows like Austin & Ally, Hannah Montana, and That's So Raven. Now she writes young adult and new adult novels in between chasing after her identical twin toddlers and her super cute dog Licorice.
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This book came out of my love for Hollywood, romantic mysteries, and all things sweet (especially cupcakes)!
The Celebrity Cupcakes Cozy Mysteries include:
#1 - Killer Cupcakes
#2 - Murderous Muffins
#3 - Death by Chocolate
The Funeral Crashing Mysteries include:
#1 - Adventures in Funeral Crashing
#2 - Adventures of a Graveyard Girl
#3 - Adventures in Murder Chasing
#3.5 - Adventures of a New Year's Kiss
#3.6 - Adventures of a New Year's Date
#4 - Adventures in Homicide and Heartbreak
Make sure to also check out the Ethan Tells All short stories. The first is Adventures in Double Dating: Ethan Tells the Adventures in Funeral Crashing Double Date Scene. There will soon be one for each full length Funeral Crashing mystery, so keep a lookout for them!
Be sure to check out Milda's other books:
The New Girl Who Found A Dead Body
Doppelganger
Doppelganger 2: On the Run
Connected (A Paranormal Romance)
Crashing Prom
Multi-Author Collections Milda has a chapter in:
Love Firsts (A FREE sampler of YA contemporary romances)
Connect with Me Online:
Website: https://www.mildaharris.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MildaHarris
Facebook Fan Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Milda-Harris-Fans/197576350278408
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4965095.Milda_Harris
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