I reach for the shroud, but before I can touch it, a hand settles on mine. I look to Max, shaggy haired coroner that he is, and think he looks more like a stoner than someone with a legitimate degree.
“Some people get a shock,” he warns, “seeing their first dead body.”
“Good thing it’s not my first time, then, huh? That’d make it messy.”
I pull back the shroud to reveal the face before Max can stop me again, before he can even tell me what I should be preparing myself for or warn me that what I find might be disturbing.
After all, I haven’t even been told yet how my friend died.
Jared lies on the stainless steel slab, his blonde hair like straw atop his head and his skin a waxy mockery of flesh. His eyes are closed, but I can’t even pretend he’s sleeping; the once-naïve part of me doesn’t exist anymore. The young girl who could kid herself into thinking that angels do exist is nowhere to be found in the woman I am now.
That woman, standing over the corpse of someone she used to love, remembers Jared at seventeen, a lanky, troubled boy who shared a room with her in their foster parents’ house. Jared was a year older than me, and people always thought it was strange we shared a room from the moment he was taken in to the day he turned eighteen—when instead of getting a birthday party, he got an eviction notice.
He was what the state likes to call a “problem youth.” Always got into trouble one way or another, didn’t respect authority, had a bit of a crutch for drugs when the going got tough. But he was always sweet to me. Tender. Nothing ever happened between us, but when I was sixteen and lonely and dumb, I thought maybe something could.
As I pull down the shroud lower, or try to, Max stops my hand again. My chest squeezes. I can’t help but wonder if things would’ve gone differently for Jared had we become something more than a pair of wayward orphans brought together in a temporary home.
“What’s the sheet hiding?” I ask Max when he doesn’t let go of my hand. It occurs to me that he still hasn’t told me how Jared died.
“All you have to do is confirm whether or not this is Jared Masters,” he says. Slow. Deliberate. As if he’s trying to convince me not to do this to myself.
I ignore him, lowering the shroud just a little more until the bruises around Jared’s neck show.
Fuck.
My fingers tighten on the sheet as I stare down at the bruises. Ugly purple and black markings that leave the phant
om imprint of a rope behind. Or maybe chorded bedsheets or electric wire—
Fuck. Fuck, fuck.
The black hole in my chest pulses dangerously, as if threatening to explode like a dying star. To spew forth all the emotions I’ve kept locked inside for years.
My hand is shaking, and even though I can see it happening, I can’t get it to stop.
How long until this is me, cold and dead on a coroner’s slab? The thought is invasive, pervasive, and unavoidable as I look down at Jared, seeing in his stead my own corpse—my blue-streaked blonde hair fanned out on the slab, my eyes sunken and closed in an endless sleep, and that waxy, ashen skin replacing all semblance of life.
One of the only people I’ve ever cared about is dead. How much longer until I go that way too?
There isn’t much difference between Jared and me, really. The system that raised us both is the same system that delivered Jared to his demise. And I’m the only person who’s come to identify him. To mourn him.
When it’s me and not Jared on this cold, hard slab, who will be there to pull back my shroud?
Who will mourn me?
“Yes. That’s Jared Masters.” I choke the words out as I cover his face, trying to forget I can still see my own in its place.
When Jared was alive, he loved a good whiskey. Or even a shitty one.
He would sneak from our shared room in the middle of the night to get into our foster father Brody’s stash. We would drink and talk about stupid bullshit, and when we were thoroughly tipsy, when we dared to feel something other than the numbness of alcohol, we sometimes almost kissed.
Going back to that room, even though it’s been a long time since Jared and I shared it, sounds like a bad idea while sober. An even worse idea knowing Brody will be home and would probably be more than willing to try to “comfort” me in my time of grief. His wandering hands and leering eyes sound like too much to deal with right now.
Right now, it’s time for a drink. A final send-off for Jared.
The Silent Hour is a bar about an hour’s walk from the Medical Examiner’s Office. The sun’s nearly down and the streets are getting dark. I could take a cab, but I don’t have a lot of money to burn, and I don’t have anywhere else I need to be.
I’m not in a hurry. I’ve got all goddamn night.