Mixtape For The End of the World

Epilogue

Epilogue

Somehow, I made it home, still sobbing as I navigated the DeLorean back through the city I grew up in, without the boy that I had come to the block party with. I was the last person to leave the block party - I couldn't leave Gabe behind. When I walked through the door, my mom gave me a hug. She had already heard about what had happened from Mrs. Saporta. However, when she saw the second-degree burn on my forearm, she insisted that I needed to be taken to the emergency room. I had hardly noticed the burn before. The mental anguish of losing my best friend was far worse than the physical pain from the burn.

Mom drove me to the hospital, but I wasn't there long. There were other people who had been trapped in the shop during the fire that had far worse injuries than I did. Besides, I was sick of the scent of dead skin on a linoleum floor. Before long, I was back in my mom's car with gauze wrapped around my forearm, and she drove me home in the dead of night.

I went to bed, desperate for this black, impossible day to be over. However, I couldn't sleep. The moment when the police officer had told me that Gabe was dead kept playing in my head. His famous last words kept repeating too, and they wouldn't stop. I started crying again, and I eventually cried myself to sleep that night, tormented by the thought of how my best friend was gone forever.

The next day, I was supposed to leave for DePaul, but over breakfast, I asked my parents if I could just stay at home. "We already called the school," Mom said. "They understand that this is an emergency for us, and we have special permission to move you into DePaul after all of this is over."

That was the problem. For me, it would never be over. Gabe would always be dead, and until we were both six feet underground, the pain and heartbreak would never go away. There would never be a point when all of this was over and I could finally move to DePaul. All of my hope was gone.

I lay on the couch for a long time, unable to muster up the motivation to do anything. I almost reached for the phone and dialed Gabe's number out of sheer habit, but then I realized what I was doing and where that path would lead me. He wouldn't be able to hang out at Fall Out Bros. or sit across from me at our favorite table at the smoothie shop anymore. All of those memories were agonizing to think about now.

I was about to dial Brendon's number instead, but the phone rang. "Hello?" I said, without any enthusiasm whatsoever.

"Hey Pete," Brendon said, sounding equally dejected. "I heard the news about Gabe."

"I was there where it happened," I said. "I miss him already."

"Me too," Brendon said. "I almost bought a Strawberry Dream for him while I was at the smoothie shop this morning."

"I almost called him and asked him if he wanted to hang out," I said.

Brendon laughed and said, "We're the worst friends ever, aren't we? We can't even remember that Gabe's dead."

That was when I realized that Brendon didn't quite feel the same way about Gabe's death that I did. He hadn't known Gabe like I had. I still talked to him for a little bit longer, but when I started to think that I might break down and cry again in the middle of the conversation, I hung up.

We all knew that Gabe's death was coming, but it didn't make losing him any easier.

Throughout the day, my parents' friends stopped by to talk about what had happened the night before, which they always referred to as "the accident," "the incident," or "Diego and Jeannette's son passed away, isn't that sad?" My mom made a casserole and delivered it to Mrs. Saporta, even though my parents had never been particularly close with Gabe's parents. It was as if Gabe's death had activated some hidden network of parents in Shermer.