Blue

Troubled Waters

When Friday rolled in, almost all of the emotions Adam had been struggling with for weeks seemed to drain out of him. He sat woodenly on the end of his bed, hunched over and tying the laces of his black dress shoes. They were shiny and uncomfortable. Grandmother had taken him to get them yesterday and they were not yet broken in. His suit was slightly large on him, as it had been his fathers, and the combination of the too-new shoes and too-old suit was stirring up feelings of queasiness in his otherwise empty body.

He rose up from his bed to look at his face in the mirror, to make sure he didn't have dark circles under his eyes. He hadn't slept the past two nights and it showed. He looked like someone had ripped out the veins from under his eyes, blended them up, left them in the sun for a while, and then, when they were purple and rotting, shoved them back underneath the thin skin of his eyes. He dragged his fingers roughly across the bags.

"You know, Darling, rubbing them like that is only going to make them red, not turn them back to the way they were," his Grandmother said softly from his doorway. He jumped a foot in the air, cursing, and his finger stabbed into his right eye.

"Ow! God da-Grandmother! I didn't see you there. Ouch that hurts." His Grandmother came into his room and fretted over him for a little bit as he attempted to shoo her away with claims that he was fine.

"Is it time to go?" he finally asked in a last ditch attempt to stop her from worrying over the damage he hadn't really done to his face. His Grandmother nodded solemnly. Her hand drifted from his eye to rest on his cheek.

"Tell me, my dear, do you really feel up to this? Speaking at her funeral is... It could be stressful for you. I'm just nervous... Aaliyah shouldn't have asked you to speak after what happened on Monday. Are you sure? Do you feel like you can do this?"

He leaned briefly into her hand. It was warm, an ember of safety that he could briefly hold onto. He wished that he was four years old, that the owner of this suit was here, that he wouldn't have to think about anything except whatever four year olds were concerned with. It felt like an eternity since he'd had to think about silly things instead of whether he was really up to speaking at the funeral of one of his best friends.

"I don't know," he whispered, "I don't know. But I have to try. Mrs. Rossini was right. Blue would have wanted me to. I know she would have."

"If you insist, I can't stop you. Here."

His Grandmother removed her hand from his cheek to press something into his hand, taking that ember of warmth away from his face and leaving his cheek cold again. It was some kind of talisman. Polished crystals and sea glass tied into the approximate shape of a person with a waxy, shiny twine. The scent of salt and sea rose off of it, so strong that Adam wondered how she had even managed to make it smell like that. It smelled exactly like the ocean. The little polished rock head stared back at him, faceless and blue. He had the sudden urge to hurl the little talisman across the room.

"Your pocket," his Grandmother said. He stuffed the talisman into his suit pocket.

"Alright, then. Nothing more to be done. Let's go," his Grandmother sighed. They set off towards the funeral, the syncopated beat of their footsteps against the concrete the only sound they offered to the world as they crossed through the streets and paths that led to the cemetery. It was at the heart of the town, where it had always been since their town was founded, and many of the graves were hundred of years old. A portion of the graves were marked with the same small empty circle engraved at the top that indicated there was nothing beneath the headstones but an empty box. Blue's headstone would have that insignia. A shiver inched up Adam's spine, getting stronger and stronger the more circle insignias they passed. He realized that his fingers had somehow crept into his pocket the deeper they got into the cemetery and they were wrapped tightly around the little talisman in his pocket.