by Alexia Lindsley
Everett did everything before me. Because of it, I was competitive to an unhealthy degree. It didn’t matter, though, because I couldn’t beat Everett at anything. Everett had an immediate, effortless talent in whatever he tried. Everett took his first steps before I did. He spoke his first words before I did. He learned to ride a bike before me, and could ride a bajillion miles faster than me, if he wanted. He could run faster than anyone in our class, and was excellent at whatever sport he tried. He was a straight A student. So, of course, in accordance with everything else in our lives, he had to die before me, too.
Death is such a common phenomenon, you would think it loses its shock factor. It would stop being so surprising, stop being so painful. Yet, the pain refused to cease. A dull blade pierced through my thoracic cavity, leaving a hideous, jagged wound that produced mutilation worse than could ever see complete repair. The sensation throbbed, rippling from the outside in, reverberating off every individual vertebrae and rib. With each echo, a knot wound tighter and tighter in my trachea, my breath grew more and more ragged. Right as I became certain my lungs would cease their inflation and consequent deflation due to their delivery of oxygen being cut off, my eyelids would press shut, and the pain would subside. My composure would regain itself. Then, my eyes would reopen. And thus, a ruthless cycle would repeat itself. Over. And over. And over, again.
My foot felt tainted and venomous, making matters worse. It was causing paranoia- I kept waiting for someone to jump out and grab me by the hair, declaring my secret aloud. I quickly looked around the room, but no one in my line of sight conveyed any curiosity concerning my right foot.
Everything about the scenery around me was the polar opposite of Everett’s character. So much so that if my type A common sense relinquished the reins over my thought processing even a little, I could have pretended that the corpse before me wasn’t him. An ill-favored maroon-checkered button down, with an atrocious collar and long sleeves, fit around his lean, muscular frame in an incorrect manner. In all reality, the shirt wasn’t that bad, but it seemed unfamiliar, perhaps inappropriate, compared to the polyester t-shirts he normally wore with big, brand name logos embroidered on them.
Ultramarine veins seemed to pop out from the eerie pale ivory of his eyelids. Under normal circumstances, Everett’s skin was a rich olive color. That detail alone seemed surreal; I couldn’t quite figure out what the reasoning behind this shift in pigmentation was.
His thick ebony curls were the thing that bore the most semblance to his appearance before he… to his appearance as last week. A blanket concealed the lower half of his body. His legs were mangled beyond comprehension, and no longer appeared to be human. Mom couldn’t bear to have a closed casket, so the blanket was a compromise. It was covered in pink peonies, which, quite ironically, Everett was allergic to- not to a severe measure, or anything; it just made his nose stuffy, and his eyes watery. The tone-deaf detail was likely added by my father’s very Catholic family, who planned the whole funeral as my parents were in no state of mind to do so. Because it was planned by them, this event was taking place at a church, even though our household is atheist. When I walked in earlier, and saw the peonies, copper cross on the wall, and a statue of Jesus Christ staring down at Everett’s casket, I almost laughed. Almost. But then, I was brought back into the gravity, and sickening reality of the situation.
Never in a million years could I have imagined that two and a half days ago, Everett would’ve thrown himself off the third story of the building where my dad sold crappy car insurance to young adults who weren’t able to identify the insurance company’s pure crappiness.
Unable to stand staring at my brother’s corpse any longer, I turned to walk away- where I was going, I didn’t know. With a quick glance around the room, I was able to see that every available seat was situated next to an extended family member that I most certainly didn’t want to talk to. So, a stall in the women’s bathroom sounded like my best bet. I escorted myself down the center aisle, cut through an empty pew on the right to get to the bathroom, and opened the door. The stalls were all empty, and after excessive contemplation, I decided to enter the handicap-only stall on the far left. Selfish, I know, but no one that I knew of who was currently at the church was handicapped. So, sue me.
I opened the creaky bathroom door, and locked it behind me. I carefully perched on the toilet seat, and stared at the grimy grout between the pink tiles of the bathroom wall. My foot started to itch. I could feel the piece of paper, folded with caution and pressed between the bottom of my foot and the inside of my strappy, heeled, tan suede sandals.
No one else, as far as I know, received a note. My mom looked for a message of some kind yesterday, for a brief moment of time, but came up with nothing. I found my note, neatly folded in quarters on the top of my dresser at mom’s house yesterday. I didn’t want to open it until I was in the same building as Everett- it only felt right. And there was no way I could do it in front of everyone else. So, this would have to do. Maybe one day I would share the letter with someone, I don’t know. But not now.
I carefully unstrapped my sandal, and pulled out the piece of paper. I expected it to be sweaty, since I thought my feet were sweating earlier, but it was surprisingly dry.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
My eyes started to sting, so I carefully pulled the front of my dress up over the lower half of my face- there was no way I could risk damaging it. I carefully peeled open the paper. I unfolded the paper once, and in his neat handwriting, it said “To Melma.” My childhood nickname. And underneath, he had written his: “From Mt. Everest.”