Shades of Adrian Gray - 1. Chapter 1

This is how the story ends.

A room with a view, three walls coated with tacky beige wallpaper and a fourth with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the bay. Hardwood floors that clatter against your soles when you walk, enforcing solemnity with echoes that bounce amongst the rafters overhead. The steady hum of fans keeping the air circulating, brisk and chill and making everyone shiver. Not that I think anybody really minds. It keeps the corpse in the coffin from smelling so bad.

It ends with an audience. Fifty or so vaguely related guests stuffed into crisply pressed suits and skirts and a room so small and cramped even sardines would dial up their union reps. Uncomfortably shifting to get warmer, noses sniffling into Kleenex, chairs creaking louder than their joints, because I swear I gotta be the only non-family member there who’s not also a member of the Geriatrics Society. I thought Adrian had more friends than just this, but apparently their contracts all came with a til death clause.

Mostly, it ends without anybody really noticing. Sure, all eyes are on the coffin up on the dais, dark mahogany or some fancy shit like that. Only the best for the Grays’ little prince. Gotta send him off to the afterlife in style. Closed casket though. Even they couldn’t afford to have him fixed up after the mangling the wreck did to his face. So instead there’s a big ass picture of him set up on an easel right next to the coffin. The priest stands in front of it, droning on and on about some dead kid who from the sound of things is a good candidate for sainthood. Doesn’t sound much like Adrian to me. Probably why I’m not paying too much attention. It’s either that or the ADD.

All in all, it’s a far cry from some fairy tale happily ever after bullshit. It’s not like I figured a house in the suburbs, white picket fence and 2.5 kids and a dog were ever really in the cards. Two closeted and gay high school teenagers do not the epic romance of our time make, with or without a drunk driver pretty much decapitating one of the protagonists early into Act One. But hey, we beat Romeo and Juliet. I’m still around. As far as consolation prizes go, that’s gotta at least rank up there with the free Whopper Jr.’s they hand out to every millionth customer to eat at Burger King.

My ass is getting numb and I fidget in my seat, exhaling a little louder than is proper judging from the frigid death glare the old bat sitting next to me nails me with. Bitch could reverse global warming with that. I roll my eyes back in my head and my head back on my neck, going back to counting the fan rotations. One merry-go-round, two merry-go-round, three…I was at a hundred and forty six the last time I lost track. I’m at a hundred eighty eight when Adrian’s mom gets up to replace the priest in front of the casket. I martial my attention briefly, to see if anything interesting is going down. But nah, she just starts talking in this high quivery nasal voice about the same Not Adrian the priest was going on about. Apparently, the poor fucker was a robot.

The funeral is nothing like I expected. I mean, I don’t know what I expected, seeing as I’ve never been to one before, unless you count us burying my cousin’s cat in the backyard after it got hit by an ice cream truck. Which I don’t. It was a fucking cat. According to Hollywood, funerals are traditionally accompanied by a torrential downpour, everyone all dressed in black and huddled under umbrellas, massed together for warmth and comfort. In reality, I can just barely make out goose bumps on my skin from the fans, the sea of senior citizens around me is sporting more charcoal gray than black, and the scenic vista outside the window is of vivid blue skies and a brightly shining sun, not a cloud in sight. Apparently Mother Nature doesn’t break out the waterworks for the gays.

I look around at Adrian’s extended family and friends of the family, all either stone faced or sobbing delicately into their hands, and wonder how many of them would still be crying if they knew it was for a homo. My righteous teenage judgment fixes on Adrian’s mom still standing up front. I can feel my lips tightening into a smirk at the thought. Hear that, bitch? Your son sucked my cock. And I sucked his. Whaddaya think about that?

As though my vindictiveness has mysteriously hit upon the right telepathic wavelength, she starts tripping over her words and finally just breaks down into full on tears. Her husband gets up and puts his arms around her and she buries her head into his chest, letting him lead her back to their seats next to Adrian’s older sister Kelsey, aka the Ice Queen of San Diego. The priest gets back up front to replace them, and I am officially the World’s Biggest Tool.

I snort and slump back in my chair. Evil Bat Lady sniffs loudly and pointedly beside me. I in turn hope her hordes of cats turn on her and eat her. And then suddenly, miraculously the heavens release me from my torment and its over. Uncomfortable stillness gives way to commotion as the cramped and aching mourners all stand as one, making for the aisles with a haste that fails miserably as far as subtlety goes. And somehow I’m the rude one? Hah. I shake my legs out and wait for the aisles to clear up a little so I don’t accidentally break someone’s hip. Small groups congregate here and there, murmuring in low voices about how sad it is, and how fucking tragic, and he was so goddamned young, and with superhuman effort I resist the urge to shout ‘No fucking shit!’ and shove my way through the front of the crowd.

There’s a damn mob surrounding Mrs. Gray, practically smothering her with pity/comfort/old lady shawls or some combination thereof. I bypass them and find myself standing in front of the coffin and easel, and I have no fucking clue why. It really is a shitty picture.

It doesn’t look anything like Adrian, for starters. Oh sure, whatever, his eyes are still green, his hair’s still brown and with that gay ass little flip curl thing he always did at the front, and he’s still got that little scar criss-crossing his left eyebrow from when his dumbass sister let him play with scissors when he was five. But still, whoever thought this was a good picture of him to put up as a memorial didn’t know the first thing about him. For example, his toothy smile wasn’t so much photogenic as it was his patented ‘You can’t tell, but I’m flipping you off and thinking you’re a giant ass hat right now’ grin. He should be smirking, because Adrian was always happiest when he was up to no good.

He was wearing an obnoxious orange dress shirt under his suit jacket in the photo, which meant it’d been taken on a Saturday. He picked the color of his outfits according to what day of the week it was, OCD even in his mischief and general fuck you‘s to an oblivious world. ROY G BIV. Sundays he wore red, and went down the line from there. He dressed like a fucking rainbow all fifty two weeks of the year and nobody had a clue. He’d been doing it for years before we met and it’d even taken me weeks before I got the joke. I only finally figured it out when he switched the order so he wore orange on Saturdays instead of Mondays. Saturdays were our days, and I hated orange, and Adrian wasn’t Adrian if he wasn’t pushing buttons. Somewhere along the line though orange became my favorite color, and I’m still not sure if that means the joke was on him or if it was still on me. I swallow thickly and turn away. Point is, that’s not Adrian in the photo anymore than the preppy momma’s boy described in the eulogy earlier. I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry at how little his family knew him, and so I settle for very pointedly avoiding looking at the coffin. That’s not Adrian either. Adrian Gray is dead, and I don’t belong here.

I jump when someone clears their throat, and look over to see Mr. Gray standing right next to me. He’s studying the picture along with me, and being pretty damn obvious about studying me out of the corner of his eye too. It’s damn creepy, and I wanna just leave, but I feel like I have to say something first.

“I’m sorry for your – “

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your – “

Problem is, he feels the same way. I flush and wait for him to speak first, but he just nods at me. “I’m uh, Evan. Evan Foster.”

I wonder if I should offer to shake his hand, but decide against it. I’m sweating like a pig, or some analogy that actually makes sense. He looks at me curiously, and then recognition dawns in his eyes.

“You’re on the basketball team, right? We saw you in the game against East Lake High.” He pauses, and frowns. “I didn’t realize you were friends with Adrian.”

“We weren’t,” I blurt out hastily. Two seconds later I realize how that must sound. “I mean, uh, I didn’t really know him that well. H-he just always seemed like a nice guy, you know?”

I shove my hands in my pockets and hunch over, suddenly self conscious in my khaki cargo pants and borrowed, two sizes too small sports coat. Mr. Gray just nods and turns back to studying Adrian’s portrait, satisfied with my answer.

“He was,” he says, a far off look in his eyes. “Everyone loved him.”

“Yeah,” I agree softly. The irony flies over his head like a steroid-fueled Barry Bonds home run. He stands like a man hypnotized, like he’s forgotten I’m even there. I back away and leave him alone for as long as his guests will let him.

I stand near the back of the room and watch everyone mill around, trying to fake normalcy in a scene I can’t be the only one to find bizarre. My cell phone rings and I scoop it out of my pocket and jab it silent as heads start to turn, cursing myself for forgetting to turn it off, or at least set it to vibrate. I look at the display. It’s my friend Neil, probably wondering where I am.

“Yo,” I answer anyways. Static hisses briefly from the other end of the line, along with some bass and a rushing sound that makes me think he’s driving with his windows rolled down.

“Evan, dude!” Neil bellows happily. “I’ve been calling your house all morning, man. Where the fuck are you?”

I hesitate. “Adrian Gray’s funeral,” I answer finally, trying to keep my voice down.

“Oh.” There’s silence for a minute, as Neil’s desire to not sound like an ass wars with his attempt to remember if there’s any particular reason I’d show up to some random classmate’s funeral, when the memorial service they held at school had apparently released everyone else in our class from any obligation or desire to show up today. As usual, his attempts to not be an ass come to nothing. “Uh….why?”

I choke on a Howling Man-esque snarl and shrug my shoulders instead, even though he can’t see me. I sigh. “I dunno. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“I’ll call you later,” I add, flipping the phone off and back in my pocket. I spin around and catch Adrian’s sister Kelsey staring at me from across the room with a puzzled query in her eyes and bile races up from the pits of my stomach. The white hot anger I’ve kept simmering there all day evaporates into ash that coats my throat and makes me choke. It’s the knowledge that I’m not even unwanted here, that as far as everyone else is concerned there’s just no reason for me to be here in the first place that finally socks me in the gut and demands I either break something or break down. Instead I circle Option C on the multiple choice exam that is my non-standardized life and opting for denial I suddenly I just need to be somewhere, anywhere else. I shove through the room’s big oaken double doors with louder force than someone trying to stay low profile should use, and hurry down the carpeted halls of the mortuary. Mostly I don’t give a shit by this point.

I emerge outside into blinding sunlight and a thousand different kinds of allergens attacking my nose. My eyes water. I hurry to my car, with the breeze from the bay hitting me full on in the face. Even with that it’s too warm outside for my coat, but by the time I get it off I’m already inside my battered Toyota with air conditioner blasting away. Outside my window it continues to be a beautiful spring morning.