Andy

"Okay, it's here."

Andy nudged at the ground with the toe of his scuffed up plaid converse. I looked down at the patch of soil, directly beneath an old spruce tree a hundred yards straight from the back doors of the high school. I crouched and plunged the landscaping shovel into the soft soil and began to scoop away handfuls of dirt.

"I remember burying this here with my friend on my last day here, before I moved onto internet classes. He was one of the few people I considered my friend in this shit town, he understood what I was going through, because he was going through it, too..."

I nodded, and glanced up from digging, and caught the flash of sadness behind his eyes. He crouched in front of me, and watched me sling the soil to my right as I dug deeper into the ground.

"What's wrong?" I finally asked when he failed to elaborate on what he was feeling.

He heaved a heavy, saddened sigh, and held it for a few seconds. I certainly wasn't expecting his next words.

"It's my fault..." He whispered, and his eyes squinted at the dirt in pain. "If I hadn't run away, I could've been here for him."

I stopped digging to look at him. Afraid to ask what had happened, afraid he'd lash out and say it was none of my damn business, and it wasn't.

"The day I left school was the hardest for him... We always banned together, stuck it out through the worst of days. Y'know, just the days when we got shit thrown at us and got called faggots, we leaned on each other... But when I dropped out for homeschool, he was there on his own. I remember getting a text from him one night, at three in the morning. I was half awake, couldn't process it right... I didn't realize it was a goodbye letter until the next morning when we got a call that they fished him out of Goldtwin river a few hours later. Maybe if I'd been there..."

He shook his head, and a silver tear welled up in his left eye and ran down his face, taking a track of his dark makeup with it.

My lip quivered with the lump building up in my throat. I looked at him, and couldn't bring myself to smile or laugh, or say anything lighthearted.

"I'm sorry." I murmured. I had never lost anyone like that, I had lost family and friends, but it was always natural causes, and it was okay, because no one was forcing their hand, and they weren't forcing their own.

His pale lips pressed into a firm line to avoid a mixed up mess of agonized words from tearing from him like a pain written song.

"Come on... I need to show you this." He said, wiping at his face with the back of his leather glove clad hands. I looked at him for a few more moments before digging down the last six inches, and pulling up an old, rusted metal lunch tote, and laying it on the dew misted midnight grass.

"That's it?" I asked, looking at it in the pale moonlight. I could make out the yellow and black Batman emblem among the rough patches of red rust.

"Yeah..." Andy breathed, he looked like he was pacing himself, preparing himself in every possible way for what was in the box. I scooted away, and gave him his space while he reached for the box, taking his time undoing the latches.

He sat there for a few moments, the box in his lap, unlatched, just waiting for him to lift the lid off. With a quick, now-or-never breath, he lifted the lid.

I couldn't see what was inside, hidden by the shadow cast by the open lid. Andy seemed to be well acquainted with the objects inside, and reached for a photo that was on top first. He held it up close to his face so he could see it better in the dim light. I watched him tear up, and fight with himself internally for several minutes before clearing his throat and taking a deep breath.

"This was him... This is Ashley. Ashley Purdy."

He handed me the worn, weathered photo, and I accepted it carefully. Careful not to ruin his treasure.

I looked at it the same way Andy had, and sighed, taking in the two boyish figures, covered in so much war paint you couldn't recognize them. They both wore huge grins, and Motely Crue t-shirts, their hands forming the international symbol for rock on. Elbows interlocked, grins ecstatic.

"We went to a Motley Crue concert on my eighteenth birthday, just a few months before-" He stopped himself and looked down, seeming to be at war with himself.

I looked at it, and a small, sympathetic smile formed on my lips. I looked up at Andy as I handed him back the picture.

"You know I'm a dreamer," I sang, and I noticed the spark of excitement behind his dull eyes. They lit up blue again, and he smiled a tiny bit.

"But my heart's of gold,"

"I had to run away high," I scooted up from the tree and sat cross legged, facing him.

"So I wouldn't come home low." He finished. His peculiar, deep voice matched that of Vince Neil quite well.

"Just when things went right, it doesn't mean they were always wrong, just take this song and you'll never feel left all alone." I sang back to him, and his smile was slowly growing.

"Take me to your heart, feel me in your bones, just one more night, and I'm comin' off this-"

"Long and winding road. I'm on my way, I'm on my way, home sweet home. Tonight, tonight, I'm on my way, I'm on my way, home sweet home." We sang the chorus together, and by that time, we were laughing too much to actually be taken seriously.

"You know that I've seen, too many romantic dreams, up in lights, fallin' off the silver screen!" Andy wailed the next verse in a high pitched, out of tune tone that clearly wasn't his own. I rolled back on the grass laughing.

"You sound-" I snorted on my laughter, "You sound like a clown!" I laughed hysterically, and he joined in, grinning.

"My heart's like an open book, for the whole world to read, sometimes nothing keeps me together at the seams." He continued to sing in his fake clown tone. My laughter evolved into the rage of snorting and giggling that no one should ever have to hear, and that only made Andy laugh even harder.

"Oh man," He said as he finally came down from his laughing high, he took a moment to wipe a tear of joy from the corner of his eye. "That's the most fun I've had in years!" He clapped his thighs, and got up from the ground to wipe the pine needles off his backside, turning to offer me his hand.

I grabbed it, noticing once again, it's peculiar feeling of ice, and pulled myself up beside him. I clapped his shoulder playfully, "You're such a dork."

He grinned as he turned and scooped up his Batman box and the photo of Ashley off the ground, and kicked the dirt back into the hole with his converse clad feet. "I accept that as a compliment." He said, his deep voice vibrating with a chuckle. I stuck my tongue out at him as we began walking, and he blew a gust of air into my face, which felt more like a cold breeze than an actual breath. I swatted him away all the same.

"I appreciate you coming out here with me." He said on the walk back. "It's been a little over an hour, though. I hope your parents don't mind that you've been abducted."

"I'm sure they won't mind." I added on sarcastically with a grin.

Notes