Looking For Alaska

THAT SUNDAY, I got up after three hours of sleep and showered for the first time in a long while. I put on my only suit. I almost hadn’t brought it, but my mom insisted that you never know when you’re going to need a suit, and sure enough.

The Colonel did not own a suit, and by virtue of his stature could not borrow one from anyone at the Creek, so he wore black slacks and a gray button-down.

“I don’t suppose I can wear the flamingo tie,” he said as he pulled on black socks.

“It’s a bit festive, given the occasion,” I responded.

“Can’t wear it to the opera,” said the Colonel, almost smiling. “Can’t wear it to a funeral. Can’t use it to hang myself. It’s a bit useless, as ties go.” I gave him a tie.

The school had chartered buses to ferry students north to Alaska’s hometown of Vine Station, but Lara, the Colonel, Takumi, and I drove in Takumi’s SUV, taking the back roads so we didn’t have to drive past the spot on the highway. I stared out the window, watching as the suburban sprawl surrounding Birmingham faded into the slow-sloping hills and fields of northern Alabama.

Up front, Takumi told Lara about the time Alaska got her boob honked over the summer, and Lara laughed. That was the first time I had seen her, and now we were coming to the last. More than anything, I felt the unfairness of it, the inarguable injustice of loving someone who might have loved you back but can’t due to deadness, and then I leaned forward, my forehead against the back of Takumi’s headrest, and I cried, whimpering, and I didn’t even feel sadness so much as pain. It hurt, and that is not a euphemism. It hurt like a beating.

Meriwether Lewis’s last words were, “I am not a coward, but I am so strong. So hard to die.” I don’t doubt that it is, but it cannot be much harder than being left behind. I thought of Lewis as I followed Lara into the A-frame chapel attached to the single-story funeral home in Vine Station, Alabama, a town every bit as depressed and depressing as Alaska had always made it out to be. The place smelled of mildew and disinfectant, and the yellow wallpaper in the foyer was peeling at the corners.

“Are y’all here for Ms. Young?” a guy asked the Colonel, and the Colonel nodded. We were led to a large room with rows of folding chairs populated by only one man. He knelt before a coffin at the front of the chapel. The coffin was closed. Closed. Never going to see her again. Can’t kiss her forehead. Can’t see her one last time. But I needed to, I needed to see her, and much too loud, I asked, “Why is it closed?” and the man, whose potbelly pushed out from his too-tight suit, turned around and walked toward me.

“Her mother,” he said. “Her mother had an open casket, and Alaska told me, ‘Don’t ever let them see me dead, Daddy,’ and so that’s that. Anyway, son, she’s not in there. She’s with the Lord.”

And he put his hands on my shoulders, this man who had grown fat since he’d last had to wear a suit, and I couldn’t believe what I had done to him, his eyes glittering green like Alaska’s but sunk deep into dark sockets, like a green-eyed, still-breathing ghost, and don’t no don’t don’t die, Alaska. Don’t die. And I walked out of his embrace and past Lara and Takumi to her casket and knelt before it and placed my hands on the finished wood, the dark mahogany, the color of her hair. I felt the Colonel’s small hands on my shoulders, and a tear dripped onto my head, and for a few moments, it was just the three of us—the buses of students hadn’t arrived, and Takumi and Lara had faded away, and it was just the three of us—three bodies and two people—the three who knew what had happened and too many layers between all of us, too much keeping us from one another. The Colonel said, “I just want to save her so bad,” and I said, “Chip, she’s gone,” and he said, “I thought I’d feel her looking down on us, but you’re right. She’s just gone,” and I said, “Oh God, Alaska, I love you. I love you,” and the Colonel whispered, “I’m so sorry, Pudge. I know you did,” and I said, “No. Not past tense.” She wasn’t even a person anymore, just flesh rotting, but I loved her present tense. The Colonel knelt down beside me and put his lips to the coffin and whispered, “I am sorry, Alaska. You deserved a better friend.”

Is it so hard to die, Mr. Lewis? Is that labyrinth really worse than this one?