No One Here Is Lonely

by Sarah Everett

  I know that Will was an only child, and that his father passed away when we were in middle school.

  I have no idea why she’s inviting me inside, but I hear myself agreeing before I think better of it. I shoot a helpless look in the direction of my car before I follow Will’s mother inside.

  She leads me into the living room, where all the curtains are drawn. The house is muggy, like the windows need to be opened. It’s only the second time I’ve ever been in Will’s house and I feel a pang of guilt. I’m a stranger eavesdropping on his mother’s grief, gawking like it’s on display. I wish more than anything that Lacey had just done this with me. After all, she was the one who took his jacket from Alex.

  “Can I get you anything to drink?” Mrs. Mason asks, and I shake my head, follow her to the edge of a couch where she sits on the end opposite from me.

  “So how do you know Will?”

  “I’m his lab partner. Was. I…” My voice trails off and I wait for her expression to change, for her to call me on being an impostor. To say I didn’t know her son in any way that matters.

  But she keeps looking at me as if waiting for me to add something. I shift in my seat.

  “Were you at the memorial?” she asks. More than half of McKillop High was there.

  Were you at graduation?

  I can’t ask her that, can’t bring up the fact that I just finished high school today. That this whole week has been about the start of the rest of my life, while for her it’s been about learning to live without her son.

  “Yes. It was beautiful,” I say, because that seems like the kind of thing you’re supposed to say. The service was nice, as nice as anything celebrating the end of the life of an eighteen-year-old boy can be. Even though his uncle’s eulogy was peppered with jokes about Will being a rascal, about all the mischievous things he got up to when he was a kid, the air was thick with absurdity, the complete unfairness that Will Mason was really gone.

  My heart pinches at the thought now. He’ll never grin at me in the hallways again, never call me Eve like he used to because he liked to keep it “biblical,” as he said. Before the party he invited me to—before the night he died—we were the kind of friends who hung out at parties and pep rallies, who partnered up whenever we were in the same classes, with the kind of de facto friendship that comes from having known each other since the fifth grade. It was completely uncomplicated.

  “He was wearing this the night of the accident?” she asks, still cradling the jacket in her arms.

  “Yes,” I say. “He forgot it at the party.”

  I don’t mention that I wasn’t the one who found it.

  I can’t gauge the expression on his mother’s face as she appraises me. It’s like she’s reading something on my face.

  I shift on the couch.

  “I should get going,” I say. I almost add that my friend is waiting outside for me, but I don’t.

  She nods and stands with me.

  I feel like I can’t go without saying something more, without letting her know that we were thinking of him today, so I add, “We missed Will today….I missed Will.”

  Her eyes fill with tears, but she blinks them away.

  “Thank you. And thank you for bringing this by, Eden,” she says, but before I go, she stops me again. She goes to a drawer in the kitchen and comes back with a pen and paper. She scribbles something down before handing the paper to me.

  “Here,” she says softly. When I look, she’s simply written Will and a series of numbers. I stare at her, confused.

  “I thought you might like to say goodbye.” Her voice is soft again, meaningful, like she’s telling me more than she’s saying. She’s still holding the jacket and she’s giving me a strange look and it’s then that I finally understand.

  She thinks Will and I were together.

  That that’s why I have his jacket.

  That that’s why my first stop after graduation was his house.

  “I don’t think…I mean, Will and I…” The words don’t come. She’s giving me an unreadable expression, almost sympathetic. I glance at the piece of paper, then back at her. I can’t let her think something was happening between me and Will.

  We were just friends.

  Nothing ever happened between us.

  I don’t need to say goodbye, I start to say.

  But then I realize that none of those things are true.

  Will was more than my friend.

  Something did happen between us.

  I do want to say goodbye.

  Whatever is happening on my face, she’s watching, riveted.

  It’s only a phone number, I realize, looking down at the paper she’s just handed me. It’s not like she’s given me nuclear codes or something.

  “Will was, um, a good friend,” I say at last, because the silence has gone on long enough and because it’s true. Will was a good friend.

  She nods. “Thank you,” she says again, before I go.

  I hurry out of her house, down her driveway and into my car, clutching the number in my palm.

  “What happened?” Lacey asks, turning to watch me as I enter the car.

  I shake my head and give her a quick rundown as I drive toward her house. “And then she gave me this.”

  She takes it from me, stares at the number.

  “I think it’s his phone number.”

  “No, it’s a different area code,” Lacey says, and when I look at the paper, she’s right. It has an area code different from any in Erinville, different from Will’s that I have saved in my phone.

  “Maybe he had another phone,” she says.

  “Or it’s some kind of message bank his mother set up for people to call and give their condolences.”

  “That makes sense,” Lacey says as we reach her house. “See you in a bit?”

  I tell her I’ll be back soon, then I drive home to change out of my graduation clothes and pick up my stuff for tonight.

  As soon as I enter the house, I am accosted by my parents.

  “There she is!” Dad cries. “Our high school graduate.”

  He turns to my mom, who is sitting on the other side of the couch from him, her feet on his lap while he caresses them. “Can you believe we have two high school graduates? One more to go!”

  Dad holds his hand up for a high five, and when Mom’s palm touches his, he clasps his hand around hers.

  “Ugh, don’t make me cry again,” Mom says.

  “Because you never thought this day would come?” I ask, dropping my grad cap on the dining table.

  “No,” Mom says. “Because we’re ancient.”

  Dad throws his head back as he laughs. “Speak for yourself. I personally don’t feel a day over thirty.”

  Mom snorts, but it’s a relief hearing him say those words. It’s been just over two months since Dad’s TIA, since the night my little sister screamed for Mom because Dad was suddenly slurring his words. The doctors called it a ministroke, a precursor to the real thing. A huge number of people who have transient ischemic attacks have severe strokes within a year. We’ve lived in a kind of terror ever since. As soon as we got home from the hospital, my mother spent the rest of the night purging the house of anything remotely unhealthy and, incidentally, of anything remotely edible.

  “Delusion is a powerful thing,” Mom says.

  “Oh, is that an official diagnosis?” Dad asks with a laugh.

  I don’t hear Mom’s response, but while they are busy flirting and arguing over who feels younger, I sneak upstairs.

  Alone in my room, I let my mind drift back to what happened in Mrs. Mason’s house, and I’m feeling conflicted and guilty and confused all over again. Did I give her the wrong impression about how I knew Will?

  It doesn’t matter what she thinks we were, I tell myself.


  I pull out the piece of paper.

  It’s just a phone number. It’s not like she gave me something precious, something that shouldn’t belong to me.

  I thought you might like to say goodbye, she had said.

  And I realize I do.

  I would like to say goodbye to Will. Maybe even more than goodbye.

  I want to tell him everything I wasn’t brave enough to when he was alive.

  I want to tell him about the day I first noticed him, really noticed him. We were playing volleyball in seventh-grade gym class. Thanks to a particularly overzealous setter, I got hit in the face and blood came gushing out of my nose. Mr. Peters sent me off to the infirmary and Lacey wasn’t in that class and suddenly Will put up his hand and asked if he could walk me to the nurse’s office.

  It was the most light-headed, dizzying walk of my life. And not just because I’d taken a volleyball to the face.

  I want to tell him that it mattered to me that he was kind and funny and always in a good mood. That I always noticed.

  It’s stupid and it’s too late for it to mean anything, but once I get the idea, I can’t let go of it.

  So, sitting on my bed, I dial the number Mrs. Mason gave me. As the phone rings, I start to compose my thoughts, figure out the right words to say what he will never hear.

  I’m expecting to hear Will’s voice.

  A please-leave-a-message kind of spiel.

  And I do hear his voice.

  But it’s not a voice-mail message.

  “Hi, and welcome to In Good Company,” his voice says. “I’m Will and you can reach me whenever your heart desires. Press one to register for an account with me.”

  My head is spinning as Will goes through a whole list of options, like some sort of automated machine.

  The whole time he’s talking, my heart does a series of flips in my chest, because it’s him. He’s here.

  His mother didn’t give me some extra phone number of his. And it’s not a message bank for condolences.

  She gave me a way to reach him, even now that he’s gone.

  “HOLY SHIT,” Lacey says later as I hold my phone between our heads. We’re in her room and she’s sitting on her bed with her legs folded. Between us, the recording I heard a few hours ago plays and Will asks us to register to speak to him anytime. I hang up the phone and stick it in my back pocket.

  “Why would his mom give you this?”

  I shrug, and the guilt comes back again. “Maybe she didn’t believe me when I said I found his jacket. Like, she thought I had it for another reason.”

  Lacey leans over me to retrieve her laptop and googles In Good Company. Right away, we’re on a page about the history of In Good Company. So you’ll always have a friend, it says in big, bold letters under the title. We skim-read about how it was founded five years ago, how anyone can call in to receive a Companion.

  “What’s this?” I ask, and Lacey opens up a page about Cognitive Donors.

  A heading precedes the opening paragraph: Never leave your loved ones.

  Lacey and I take turns reading pieces of the information out loud.

  “…a compilation of voice recordings, personality tests and additional information is used to create a database of a Cognitive Donor. In the event of a Donor’s passing, the individual joins our wide range of Companions, and his or her likeness can be reached at any time by family, friends and strangers alike.”

  “So Will signed up to be a Cognitive Donor,” Lacey says, her voice a whisper.

  “Customers are randomly paired with Companions, unless one has the contact number of a specific Companion. Following the death of a Cognitive Donor, his or her contact number is made available only to next of kin.”

  “Holy shit,” Lacey says again. “I mean, I’ve heard of stuff like this, but I’ve never known anyone who has done it.”

  “I can’t believe Will did it.”

  Why would he do something like this?

  When, after a minute, Lacey says, “Well, we’re obviously not signing up,” I deflate. I realize for the first time that I did plan to register. That I want to know more about this thing, this extension of Will that is somehow existing somewhere in the world.

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “Because it’s creepy. Jesus, Eden,” she says, like she can’t believe she even has to point that out. She shakes her head. “God, and Mrs. Mason seemed so normal to me. Like, at the memorial.”

  “Kind of harsh, Lace,” I say.

  “What, you think it’s normal to talk to your dead son? To go around inviting people to talk to him too?”

  “If this Cognitive Donor thing is true, though, then Will chose to do this. He had to have signed up for it when he was alive.”

  When he was alive sticks to my skin like moisture.

  I can’t believe we’re talking about Will in the past tense.

  I can’t believe we heard his voice.

  “Still creepy,” Lacey says, getting off her bed. She yawns as she stretches. “Let’s figure out what we’re wearing tonight.”

  And just like that, the conversation is dismissed, the idea of Will out of her mind. I know the lack of movement in my relationship with Will has always frustrated Lacey, but I’m surprised at her nonchalance.

  “I kissed him,” I blurt out now, and she freezes.

  “What?”

  “The night he died, the night of the party,” I say, and it’s two weeks too late. I should have told her the same night. I would have told her the same night, but four hours after, Will was dead.

  “Oh my God,” Lacey says, whispering, and she opens her mouth to say something else but it doesn’t come out.

  I laugh at her speechlessness.

  “Is it that much of a shock to you? Am I that much of a lost cause?”

  “Yes,” she says, still looking flustered. “Yes. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  “I couldn’t,” I say, and she nods like she understands. Pretty much since he died, Lacey and I haven’t been able to even talk about Will without breaking down, which means we haven’t really talked about him at all.

  “So…what…how?” she asks, collapsing on her bed. I flop down beside her and give her the short version.

  Sitting on the sidewalk outside Brendan Colbert’s house, music spilling out to reach us, our legs touching under the umbrella of the streetlights.

  Will leaning in.

  Me freezing. Afraid. Always afraid.

  “And then I just went for it. I kissed him.”

  “Holy shit cakes,” Lacey says. “So what does that mean? Does that make you his…?”

  “Girlfriend? Oh God, no,” I say. “It was one kiss. It might not have meant anything.”

  Lacey is staring at me, still, with something I can’t read in her eyes. Something like awe.

  “What?” I shriek, covering my face with my hands.

  “Just,” she says after a moment, “I mean…look at you!”

  I start laughing at her reaction and she keeps staring at me, gobsmacked, frozen, until my laughter dissolves into hiccups, which turn into tears. And then I’m laughing and I’m crying, because I loved a boy for five years and the night something finally happened, he died.

  “Tell me I’m not cursed,” I say.

  Lacey is silent for a minute, probably shocked at my display, but then she’s in motion, folding me into her arms and rocking me. “You’re not cursed,” she says, but her voice is breaking. I’m not sure she believes what she’s saying.

  We stay like that for a few minutes, then Lacey stands up and forbids any more talk of curses and death and Will tonight.

  “We’re going to have a good night. No buts about it,” she says, cutting me off before I can even start.

  “We still have our—”

&nbs
p; “Zeeep!” she says, using her fingers to clasp my lips together.

  “Buhht ahh—” I mumble, trying to force out sound.

  Lacey simply shakes her head. “Not happening.”

  I’ve brought a bunch of application forms for the camp we’re both planning to work at this summer, the camp we grew up going to, and if I can’t talk about Will, I’d rather we filled those out instead. But Lacey isn’t in the mood to think about work or anything other than tonight’s party.

  I join her in rifling through her closet and looking for something to wear to the bonfire. As we do so, she complains about her brother, the fact that he’s decided to come with us to the party. I make appropriately sympathetic sounds, but mostly my mind is still stuck on In Good Company.

  Lacey settles on a pair of barely-there denim shorts and a sleeveless black shirt with the name of some band I will pretend to recognize for her benefit. I go with a short summer dress that belongs to Lacey, rendered even shorter by the fact that I have a good two inches on her.

  “Stop yanking at it,” she says, swatting my hand. “All you’re doing is telling everyone you’re uncomfortable.”

  “I’d rather tell them that than what color underwear I’m wearing,” I say, and she laughs. Lace goes downstairs and returns with leftover pad thai. We scarf it down while putting the finishing touches on our makeup.

  It’s just after eight when we arrive at the Erinville river bottom, where the bonfire without fire is happening. Because of Will’s accident, we are on thin ice, and any signs of a party would be asking for cops. Still, there is no way we wouldn’t do something to celebrate graduating.

  The air is cool tonight and the sun is just starting to dim in the sky. It’s the perfect night to celebrate the start of summer.

  My eyes roam across the splattering of McKillop kids forming clusters on the riverbank. I don’t even know I’m doing it—looking for Will—until Lacey gently nudges me.

  I know, her eyes say.

  Will never missed a party. It was an unspoken routine of ours to enter any gathering and immediately scout out his whereabouts. His signature ’fro, big and thick, noticeable from anywhere: like a beacon of light, guiding you to wherever he was.