PREVIEW OF LOOK BACK
CHAPTER 5 — BENNY
My hand twitches as I glance down at Nikko’s casket. Closed. I always thought caskets were made out of wood, that everybody who died would decompose and live on as soil-food or whatever the pamphlets say to make the mourning feel better, but as I run my fingers across the smooth, glossy exterior where Nikko’s head should be, all I feel is cool steel. It’s metal painted birch brown. A cheap imitation. I guess Plato was right.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Nikko’s portrait. It’s not like I just noticed it— it’s hard to ignore when it’s front and centre and meant to be seen —but I’ve been too scared to look it in the eye, too scared to look him in the eye, so I haven’t. When I first entered the chapel, I didn’t allow myself to even breathe in that direction. It was easy when Izzy walked me in, when Mrs. Fay bombarded me with “you grew up so well” and “you’ve gotten so tall, you’re even taller than Nikko now,” in such present tense that I almost forgot why we’re here.
What did I expect, thinking I could avoid him at his own funeral? He’s the shadow between cereal boxes at the grocery store, the voice across the café that belongs to no one and everyone at once. Like sand between my fingers, the harder I try to hold on, the faster he slips away. Except, now, there’s nowhere to run. For either of us. So, I look.
I see his piercings first. There’s a silver ring on his bottom lip, hooked around the left side of his flesh. My eyes flit over his nose, but there’s nothing, not a flash of silver again until I reach his right eyebrow, two glimmering beads fencing the tail of it in. His ear’s littered with piercings too. Both of them. My eyes drift across the barbell on his left side, until the end of it disappears into his hair, swallowed by the void that stops just shy of his shoulders, shaggy and messy and black. He dyed it. When did he dye it? I run my hand through my own hair, the strands of it rougher than I’d like, but that’s what at-home bleach kits will do to you over the span of four years. We swapped colours. Funny how things work out, I guess. But what bubbles in my chest isn’t laughter.
It’s a slow simmer, the realization that the Nikko in front of me right now is a far call away from the face I picture in my head and yet so familiar, like a word on the tip of my tongue, the letters, the syllables, and the meaning without the glue to put it together. I prepared for this. I swear I did. I dug out my old yearbook last night from the boxes in the basement that I never unpacked, inhaling dust and musty old paper to find his portrait amongst the seventy or so that graduated with us. Memorizing every line from his downturned eyes to the slope of his nose to his near-frown. But it’s not the same picture. When did they take this? Why? When did he get all those piercings? Does he have tattoos too? What did his mom think? His dad? Did Izzy drive him to his appointments? Or did he get his license like he swore he would the second he turned sixteen?
I rip my eyes away. As I glance back at his casket, I feel something crawl up my throat. It sinks its claws into the cavity of my esophagus, frantic and desperate, a house spider scaling a wall even though it knows it’ll die at the hands of something bigger than it could ever comprehend. I keep my mouth shut. Breathing through my nose in ones instead of four-seven-eights like Melody taught me first-year studying for our orgo midterm. Again. And again. And again. I can’t stop. I can’t swallow. I dig my nails into my palms until I break skin, but I can’t feel it. All I can do is stare at the latches of Nikko’s casket as every nerve in my body squawks a litany of denials:
PRY IT OPEN! IT’S NOT HIM! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO WAY! THERE’S NO—
Fuck.
I haven’t heard voices like this since I first came back to life.
I turn tail, ungluing my feet from the marble floors to do what I know best: run. In swift strides, I reach Izzy and their parents on the front pew, sliding into my seat between her and Mrs. Fay. A tight smile. A closed mouth. I keep my eyes forward. They say it takes twenty-one days to break a habit, but it’s been four years since I moved out and I still feel like a monster is in the house when there isn’t. I remember Dad’s absence more than his presence, anyway. It shouldn’t occupy as much space in my nervous system as it does. But it does.
I don’t remember much of the funeral after that. The last thing I recall is the pastor returning to the pulpit, the mic peaking with all his s and p sounds, and then, we pray.
I’m not religious. I stopped talking to God when I was eight and thought about him even less after Death spared me. So when I clasp my hands together, I don’t pray. I just try to convince myself that I’m asleep, that when I open my eyes again I’ll be sprawled out on Nikko’s bedroom floor, sunlight flitting through his translucent curtains like fireflies or the downtown lights past dark. Thirteen and oblivious all over again. I’ll hear his soft breathing, the rustling of his blankets, and without missing a beat, he’d drape himself over the side of his mattress to look at me. Even in my dreams, I get winded by the sight of him— his sharp eyes made soft by the early morning, the corner of his mouth quirked in an indiscernible smile discerned only by me. I’m not sure if that was ever true. But I used to be so confident that it feels like a betrayal if I didn’t still agree.
“What’s the plan?” Nikko would rasp, voice rough from disuse.
And I’d tell him, “Whatever,” not because I didn’t care but because it didn’t matter as long as I was with him.
I open my eyes. Izzy stands up first, extending her hand to me with a smile that strikes me with an open palm. I don’t match her gaze as I take it. She’s always looked so much like Nikko. I wonder if she feels the same when she looks into the mirror.