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I met you one Friday night at the beginning of our freshman year in college, when you and Kevin came to take Melanie out on the town.
We were all gathered in Melanie and Kasey's dorm room. We were giving Melanie, fretting as usual, conflicting advice about what to wear when you and Kevin arrived. I'd never met Kevin before, but I recognized you instantly from the high school pictures Melanie had tacked up on her wall. The long shape of your face had made me think you were taller than you were in person. There was still no mistaking that wide, overwhelming smile.
You grabbed Melanie in a great bear hug and invited us all to join you. We immediately liked you more than Kevin, who blustered through introductions and tried to hurry everyone out the door. Kevin was the one Melanie wanted to date and after you left, we lamented the fact that you lived too far to become a better romantic prospect for her. (Or, we teased each other — only half in jest — for any of us.)
It was less than six months later when we crowded around the dorm floor TV, nervously joking that Melanie had to be exaggerating, as usual. Then the newscast began and your picture appeared: a photograph from graduation, with that same wide smile.
It had started with a baseball game — the Giants or the A's, I can't recall now — that you'd attended with a friend. The two of you separated afterwards, going in different directions. Your car broke down on the way and a tow truck arrived. The driver only took you so far — a gas station somewhere, someplace remote. He couldn't have taken you farther? Did he drop you off at this station because you didn't have enough money?
They talk about a moment of clarity, or acceptance, that people often face in times of crisis, but I wonder if that's as comforting a thought as we want it to be.
I also can't remember now if we saw this newscast during the three days you were missing, or after your body was found in the shrubbery behind the station. It seems to all bleed into that one night, huddled in the TV room, taking turns to hug Melanie.
The words repeatedly played on television and quoted in the paper as the investigation continued are not words I want to remember: the 911-phone call, the yelling and swearing at whoever was assaulting your car, the abrupt disconnection. The last words recorded in your voice. The last few moments before two other guys let their rage overpower the situation. What was going through your mind when they came after you? Was there a single moment when you saw what was going through theirs?
But I do remember becoming aware, somewhere in the middle of that newscast, that I'd been misled.
Things like this only happen to someone's best friend's cousin back East, to that enigmatic "friend of a friend," because we all know those people don't really exist. Those people exist to create a distance legitimate enough to not disbelieve, or to make a half-truth out of a sort-of-falsehood, or simply to tell a pretty good story. Finding out otherwise was a shock.
Ten years later, my memory fails me of many details. I remember those guys were found guilty of something or other (murder two or manslaughter, protesting it was your fault since you'd fought back) and they've been put someplace or other for their crime. The 911-operator that disregarded the urgency of your call was penalized somehow or other. By now, they have doubtless all made proper legal amends for their actions.
I haven't checked; I don't want to know for certain, though, since it will undoubtedly not seem enough.
Your family and friends (only one of whom I knew, and with whom I lost touch long ago) will always treasure your life and mourn your loss. I don't dare hope that they ever found peace, but perhaps time has allowed for some scarring of the wound. I do believe that at some point, they had to stop running, stop chasing, stop screaming and acknowledge that the next step is simply to take the next step. Despite our best efforts to the contrary, life moves on.
Personally, I've found it continues even when I'm not looking, and so I've decided that it's best to keep my eyes open.
But sometimes, when paging through my memory, I come across those two distinct nights: the night we all met, and the night we all lost you. These two scenes exist back-to-back because they are all I know of you. But there was a life before and in between those scenes, a life worth something more than I'll ever know. So I close my eyes after all, just for a moment, and for the ten minutes that we met, I remember everything I knew about you. I allow myself to become acutely aware that you really were here. That helps me remember that, but for the grace of God or whatever deity we choose to envision, we all are.
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