Andy

Andy shared with me some of his own tales. Ones that never, not in a thousand years, would have ended up in his obituary. We just hung out, ignoring the topic of death for a while and just got to know each other.

I did have a small moment of panic, though. My mom checked in on me before she went to sleep, pushed my door open to say goodnight and my heart stopped for a second, but then I realized Andy had made himself only visible to me. My mom smiled, kissed my forehead, and said goodnight, all the while, Andy mocked her and made faces, and I tried not to laugh to seem more off than I already was.

"I almost laughed!" I accused him with a glare.

He snickered, "That was the point... Hey, if you haven't noticed, I'm kind of an asshole." He clarified while shrugging.

Just after eleven, Andy stepped out of my room, saying he'd be right back. I leapt up from my bed and followed him to the door, and peeked out into the hallway where he'd dissappeared to.

"Andy?" I whispered so my parents wouldn't hear. The whole house was dark, and they'd already gone to bed.

He materialized to my right, "Yep?"

"Quit doing that!" I snapped in irratation, and he laughed. "Sorry." He apologized half heartedly, "You're just easy to sneak up on."

I grumbled and slipped back into my room, shutting the door behind me. "What were you doing out there, anyways?"

"Making sure your parents were asleep before we sneak out." He declared, a grin on his face.

"No." I replied firmly, shaking my head. "No, we are not doing that."

"Why?" He whined, following me as I paced away from him.

"Because I don't need to be grounded? Have you not noticed how much my parents check in on me while I sleep? There's no way I'd get away with it."

"There is a 'we' in this, y'know." Andy grumbled. "Anyways, it's not like I can't do it myself, just, digging requires a greater ammount of my physical energy than my other actions do. You don't have to go, I hope you know that, and you probably do. But know, you'll be missing out on an excellent adventure."

He winked as he approached my window and threw it open. A swirl of cold, spring air came into the room, ruffling the papers on my desk beside the window.

"Close that damn thing!" I hissed, concerned that my parents would wake up and decide to check in. "Fine! Fine, hurry up, though. I have to be back within the hour, at least."

He grinned in satisfaction, sensing that he had won. I ignored him as I donned my jacket from my closet, and put on a pair of leather boots, and replaced my simple night shorts with a pair of dark denim jeans.

"Make this fast." I threatened him as I walked past him to the window, climbing out onto the small, angled roof above the wrap around porch below. "I do not need a broken neck tonight..." I muttered in irratation as I lowered myself over the eaves, and hung onto the lattice railing of the porch. I looked down and almost had a heart attack.

Andy was on the ground already, of course. Waving at me like everything was hunky-dory. I glared down at him in the darkness and continued to climb down from the lattice railing.

I dropped onto the ground beside him with a quiet thud, and took a moment to look at the surrounding houses, to make sure none of my neighbors had witnessed things they weren't supposed to.

As we crossed into the front yard, I yanked my Dad's small landscaping shovel out of the soil of the front garden bed, where'd left it days before after planting daisy bulbs. I gripped the handle like a dagger and crossed the lawn, and standing on the sidewalk in front of my house.

"One hour." I warned Andy, and I turned away and began to jog towards the school. He kept up easily, of course, he didn't get winded. He walked the entire way, but still, somehow, he always managed to keep up. I grumbled in irratation under my breath, that no matter how fast I ran, he was always there. Finally, I just slowed to a walk, an annoyed walk, I might add. Andy continued his lazy walk, hands tucked in the front pockets of his studded black leather jacket.

"So tell me about yourself. Clearly, you're a marathon walker." I mumbled in annoyance as we continued down the last block to the school. He laughed, the clear sound echoed off the trees and houses on the streets. I looked around, wondering if anyone had heard him.

"Don't worry," He said, reading my mind, "Unless I want them to hear, they can't. I could scream that your neighbors are assholes while jumping on their chests, and they wouldn't hear a thing. I'm harmless, like a fly."

"A fly with piercings and tattoos..."

He gasped, pretending to be offended. "Ouch." He said with a wounded expression.

Quickly recovering, he matched my pace. "To answer your question, I think we would have been great friends."

I looked to him, where he walked just to my left. He wore a knowning smile, and his clue eyes sparkled, even in the dark. "We seem to be pretty similar, weird as fuck, too."

I laughed at that. "I've never really thought about how weird I was, or wasn't. It just happened. Though I have to say, between the two of us, I know who the messed up one is."

He threw his head back in laughter, "Oh, you're cruel."

"I try." I smirked.

"Anways, if you must know, I used to play baseball in highschool. That's when a lot of my problems came along, too. I started to be bullied for some shit I did or didn't do, and it was just unavoidable. Once, I tried cutting. I didn't like it at first, it made me really nervous, so I vowed not to do it again." His tone had turned dark. I waited for him to elaborate.

"But..." His voice hitched for a moment, "Then there was this one day... I had learned not to care what they thought, but this one day, was just so damn bad... I went home, and I cut away. I didn't realize how bad it was getting because it was numb. I didn't realize how much blood there was until my Dad walked in on me doing it, and called 911. I didn't even fight them... I was actually fighting for awareness. I'd lost so much blood I was going under. I did die... For a little while, and the afterlife was nothing to work towards." He shook his head sadly.

"It's not as great as they say. Fortunately, I came back. Was out of the hospital a few days later, and my parents fought the doctors on rehab. They didn't want me to go, didn't want to have to tell their friends their kid was in rehab for self harm, I guess. They wanted to help me themselves, so I let them try... But that was impossible. It became a temptation, though I never cut again. I did turn to something far darker... Heroin. I did all the worst shit, if I could get my hands on it, I was doing it." He chuckled darkly. Since it was all behind him now, he could laugh.

"That's when the worst of it started at school. I only had a few months left there. And if a rumor could be made of my life, it was. I was teased continuously about my suicide attempt. Poked and prodded, people laughed and asked if my life was really so bad, and would compare it to those starving in Africa. It made me feel guilty about feeling bad for myself. So I strived, and did my drugs, and carried on, until I ended up in the hospital again. This time for a drug overrdose."

He took a deep breath and looked up from the ground. The school was less than two blocks away now.

"After that... I don't know. I just had a change of heart. I started taking my school classes over the internet, and I didn't interact with anyone else. At that time, in my isolation, I started to get into angry, dark music, which in the end, helped me more than the therapy sessions my mom shipped me to. I finished out school, had my diploma shipped to me, packed up my truck and I moved out to Cali. I needed a change of scenery by that point. Needed to see other things,feel other things."

"So how was California?" I wondered. I'd never been outside of Utah before.

"It was great," He replied with a nod and a smile, "Right off the bat, I was able to score an apartment and a part time job in a mechanics shop. I felt like I was finally getting somewhere, finally treading water instead of drowning in it. I was able to surround myself with different people. People who actually wanted to do something with themselves, and weren't itching to put you down about everything."

I nodded and thought about that as we walked.

"How old are you?" I wondered. I had never really asked.

"As of death, twenty-five years old." He said matter-of-factly with a slow, thoughtful nod. "You said you were sixteen, right?"

I nodded, "I turn seventeen in October."

"My birthday is in December, the day right after Christmas."

"I know." I laughed, and he gave me a puzzled look. "Huh?"

"I read your obituary this afternoon." I sighed, a chuckle escaping as I did so. "I don't think whoever wrote it knew you all that well."

He looked joyful that I'd taken the time to read it at all. He looked flattered. "You really read it?" He grinned in disbelief.

"Yeah? Why is this so surprising?" I laughed, looking at him warily.

"Because, well, no one ever did anything like that for me before. Back when I was in school, I had a shit time with writing class, because no one ever actually wanted to read what I wrote, nor did they want to read it if it was about me. So... That's different." He was still beaming as he spoke, not seeming bothered by his own statement, because he was so happy with his current thoughts.

I looked at his huge grin, and happy attitude, and wondered how someone like him could ever be depressed. But then again, there is that quote, the people who smile the biggest have the most damaged hearts. They encourage happiness on everyone else but themselves, because they never want anyone to feel like them.

"Seriously," He said through a grin, "That's one of the greatest things anyone has ever said to me."

"I only told you that I read your death statement, and you're happy about that. Yep, you're the most messed up person I know." I punched his arm playfully and smiled.

He laughed, and sprinted towards the school, and I ran after him into the night, the shadows of the trees hanging over the sidewalks hid me as I ran, towards the forest area behind the school grounds.

Notes