Josh
We had our worst season in a really long time. It just sucked. We won that first game against Dominion. Maybe they let us win because they felt sorry for us because of Brandon. I don’t know. But we lost almost every game after that except for the one against Pikesville, and I don’t even think that counts because that town is so small they barely have enough guys to make up a team.
Coach Hendricks was always bringing up Brandon in the locker room. At least in the beginning of the season when we still had a chance. He’d say things like, “Brandon would have wanted us to go and give it our all!” or “Let’s win this one for Brandon!” Whatever. It pissed me off. Because really, Coach Hendricks just wanted us to win. He was upset Brandon was dead because Brandon was the best quarterback Healy had had in a million years. But he wasn’t upset Brandon was dead because of anything else about Brandon. And so it really bugged me the way he kept bringing him up all the time. I figured if Brandon could see what was going on from heaven, it would piss him off, too.
I sort of want to believe in heaven. I think about it whenever Reverend Simmons talks about it at church on Sunday. I want to believe I’ll see Brandon again, and in heaven we can pass footballs all day and drink good beer for free and just chill. I guess for a little while, I had heaven on earth because that’s what Brandon and I did most of the time, just hang out. Drinking, chilling. Whatever. We didn’t even pay for the beer because we stole it from our parents.
But if you want to know the truth, I have this feeling down in my gut that there is no heaven. My gut just tells me it doesn’t make sense. How could there be a heaven for me and not for every little fly I swat or squirrel I’ve accidentally run over? But it makes me feel really weird thinking about death just being it, the end. So whenever the idea of no heaven comes into my head, I just sort of try and push it out of there.
I try not to think about that stuff too much.
And the truth is, even if there is a heaven, I don’t think I’ll get in. Because even more than trying not to think about Brandon and heaven, what I really try not to think about is what actually happened the day of the accident. The day after the Homecoming Game. I’ve never told anyone about it, and it’s a weird feeling to know I never will. Never.
We were drinking beers on Brandon’s roof. Some hair of the dog, I guess, and I was drinking double everything that Brandon was putting down. Brandon had three, maybe four beers if you want to know the truth, so he was pretty buzzed when his mom asked us to run to the store for her to get her some diapers for Brandon’s little sister. That’s why the cops said his blood alcohol was probably the cause of the accident. But I’d seen Brandon drive after drinking way more than that. He drove drunk all the time. It’s just a Healy thing, I guess. It was hot out, and the inside of Brandon’s truck was like a million degrees. Brandon stripped his shirt off when we got inside and cranked open the windows.
“AC’s broke again,” he said.
My head was loopy from the beer. I knew my eyes were looking at Brandon’s chest for too long. I’d seen Brandon’s chest more times than I could count. In the locker room. When he stayed over at my house. Swimming at Healy Pool North. I looked one last time as we were getting in the truck and then I told myself to stop looking.
I was pretty lit and feeling good, and it sounds stupid when I say it now, but as we pulled out of Brandon’s front yard I just thought about us winning the Homecoming Game and everybody loving us and thinking how great we were. It was like I was high on us being us. Me and Brandon. Brandon and me.
“We’re kings of this town, man,” I said as Brandon picked up speed. The trees were blobs of green. The oncoming traffic was flashes of color. Red truck. Blue car. White van. The air coming in the windows was coming in so fast it was like it was cutting into our faces. But it felt good.
“Hell, yeah, we’re kings of this town,” Brandon said, and it was so cool to be just the two of us, alone together. I mean, I was Brandon’s best friend, but people were always trying to get near him. I guess what I mean is that sometimes it was nice when it was just the two of us all by ourselves. Like that moment in the truck. It felt perfect.
But then Brandon took out his phone.
“I think this king needs a queen,” he said. His eyes kept darting between the phone and the road.
“What, dude?” I said, raising my voice so he could hear me over the wind coming in through the windows.
“I need to get laid,” Brandon yelled, laughing. “Now where the hell is Alice Franklin’s number?”
I stared out the window. Green blobs of trees. Pink blobs of houses. The rev of the engine building and building. I didn’t want Brandon to text Alice Franklin. I didn’t want him to text any girl. I wanted it to be just us. I know it sounds so stupid, but I felt jealous. Like Alice was right there in the cab of the truck with us. Like all the girls who loved Brandon, which was basically every girl in Healy, were in the cab of the truck with us. And for that one moment I just didn’t want them around.
“Poor Alice seems kinda lonely lately, don’t you think?” Brandon said. “Like she might be ripe for a little bit of attention?” His eyes were still jumping between County Road 181 and his cell. “I think it’s because of what people are saying about Elaine’s party. Shit, man, give the poor girl a break, right?” He grinned.
I thought back to that party. To Alice sitting on Brandon’s lap and going upstairs with him and having sex with him. And do you know what I did? I reached over and grabbed Brandon’s phone right out of his hands.
“What the hell?” Brandon said, turning to look at me. And if I’m honest, the very last thing I remember before the crash is the expression on Brandon’s face when I took his phone away. I knew he was pissed off at me, which he never was. I never made him mad. But right then, I did.
I was sitting there, holding his phone in my hands, and it was like Brandon suddenly remembered he was supposed to be driving. He turned back to the road, and then the next thing I heard was the screech of the brakes.
When Mrs. Fitzsimmons came over to see me after Brandon’s funeral, I never thought what I said about Alice would explode like it did. But when Brandon’s mom pushed me and pushed me to tell her every detail about the accident, the idea of blaming Alice popped into my head. It felt like the easiest way to get her off my back. And the truth is, it sort of helped ease the guilt a little at that moment. I mean, Brandon was drunk, and maybe that really is why he crashed the truck. When I’m having an okay day I think to myself, yeah, that’s probably it. It had nothing to do with me. But when I’m having a not-so-okay day, which, honestly, is a lot of the time … well then I think Brandon’s dying was all my fault. If I hadn’t grabbed that phone, maybe he would still be alive. Maybe we’d be sitting around drinking beers on his roof and talking about being state champs our senior year. I don’t know for sure, and what sucks so bad is I’ll never know.
But something I do know for sure is that Alice Franklin never texted Brandon Fitzsimmons. Not even once.
Back in the fall Alice started hanging around with the skinny, smart dude who lives next door to Brandon’s family, Kurt Morelli. Brandon always liked messing with him, but Kurt always took it real good and everything, like he didn’t mind. He was always just kind of his own guy, and I always sort of admired the fact that he didn’t really care if he had friends or not. Like he was all he needed. The funny thing is we all hung out together back in elementary school before we figured out who was popular and who wasn’t. I remember Kurt coming over to Brandon’s house when we were in second or third grade and we all threw water balloons off the roof in front of Brandon’s bedroom window and Brandon’s mom finding out and having a heart attack over it. And Kurt, that dude was so smart, he actually tried to explain to Mrs. Fitzsimmons that the roof was safe by explaining some crap about its structure. Some physics crap, I don’t know.
Anyway, it’s weird to think about that. About the three of us being together. We called it playing back then. Like, do you want to come over and play? Sounds so corny. And then it all stopped. And now Brandon is dead and Kurt is hanging out with Alice Franklin and I don’t talk to either of them. It’s weird. But maybe they’ll be friends. I don’t know. I guess I kind of hope so.
Speaking of friends, I guess Brandon really was my best one because since the accident, I basically feel empty inside. I mean, the guys on the team are okay and everything, and I still go to parties and girls still try to get all over me and everything, and I still get drunk and hang out in the Healy High parking lot most weekends. But it’s just not the same. Nothing is the same without Brandon. I still use his locker. It’s closer to all of my classes, and I knew the combination and the school didn’t assign anyone else to it or anything after he died, so I use it pretty much every day. His mom and dad cleaned it out after the accident, but I remembered to get there beforehand and rip out all the pictures of girls in bikinis and some other crap they maybe wouldn’t want to see. So it’s not like there’s anything of him in there anymore. But I guess I still just like using it. I don’t know. Sometimes I think I can hear him walking up behind me, giving me shit for using his locker. Once I even turned around because I was so sure I was going to see him. Maybe I’m losing it.
But mostly I just go through every day and I do what people expect of me. I go to class. I get Cs. I eat in the cafeteria. I laugh at the stupid gross jokes the other guys make. I go home. I talk to my parents about basic stuff. I go to church. I ask God to forgive me and take care of things and keep everybody safe.
But life just isn’t the same without Brandon. It’s not as much fun. I mean, look, I’m not crazy smart, but I’m not so dumb that I don’t realize that Brandon could be kind of a dick sometimes. He could be. He pretty much could afford to be a dick and nobody questioned him or anything. So he could make fun of kids like Kurt Morelli and teachers didn’t call him on it. He could screw Alice Franklin and then get Tommy Cray to screw her, too, on the very same night, and nobody would say anything bad about him. They’d only talk bad about Alice. Don’t think that I thought that crap was cool. I know it wasn’t.
But Brandon Fitzsimmons could be really funny. He could be really great. He really was my friend. He was always really nice to my brother whenever he hung out at my house, like playing video games with him and letting my brother beat him just because. He never made me feel bad about anything. Not even about not sleeping with lots of girls, and not about not being that quick to get things. He didn’t even give me a hard time sophomore year when I missed his pass and I lost us the game against Clayton.
It was our first year on varsity and the older guys had been pissed that two tenth graders were quarterback and wide receiver—even if we had been good enough to deserve it and they knew it. I still think about that game. We were down by three and there were ten seconds on the clock. Brandon had to throw long and he looked me right in the eyes in the huddle. It was our one chance. He knew I knew what he was thinking.
We’d practiced throws so many times. I could catch any of his throws with my eyes closed. Literally. Sometimes I would dream about catching his throws. Swish, thump. Swish, thump.
That night, right before the big play, there was no sound in my ears. Just like there never is during a big moment in a game. There was just me, and the smell of the grassy field, and the thud in my chest as I got ready to run.
It was a perfect spiral. It was a perfect Brandon throw. It was like every throw we practiced in my yard or his yard or after practice on the field. Like I said, it was perfect.
And I missed it.
I don’t know how. Not even today could I tell you how or why I missed it. But I did. I crashed into the end zone and the ball landed next to me. I still grabbed it. Like somehow that would make everything okay. I still grabbed the ball like a moron.
Man, people gave me shit over that for weeks. I was benched for the next game. I mean, my own dad was all over me for it.
But not Brandon. Not even once.
“Dude, it happens to everybody,” Brandon had said that night in the locker room after some of the seniors had given me grief and Coach Hendricks had acted like I didn’t even exist.
“It doesn’t happen to me,” I answered. “Not when you throw like you throw. That was a perfect ball and I missed it. Damn it!” I punched my locker with my fist and it didn’t even hurt I was so mad.
Brandon put his hand on my shoulder. My pads were off and I was naked from the waist up. My body ached like it always does after a game, but I can still remember now how good it felt to have Brandon’s grip on my shoulder. Like a steady weight. Like a small hug.
“Look, man, it isn’t anything. Don’t let this mess with you, man,” he whispered, right into my ear. “You and me, we’re gonna take this team to state by senior year. I’m not kidding around, man. We’re gonna do it and you know it. Now shake this off, buddy.”
Of course, we never got the chance to. Take the team to state, I mean. But that’s the moment I try to think about when I think about Brandon Fitzsimmons. Not those last, stupid, crazy moments in the truck or my lies about him and Alice. I try to think about his whisper in my ear. He could be a jerk sometimes, I admit it. But he could also be a real friend. He was my best friend, and I’m so sorry he’s gone. I wish like hell that he was still around.