Chapter 12: Light For Forever

"So, ah, what do you do, Evan?" Cythnia asked.

It had moved past his palms, now. He was sweating all over. And why did it feel like a huge lump of something had crammed itself down his throat?

"Uh, I… I write."

"Really? What do you write?"

What an interesting question, Evan thought to himself. Has Mom ever questioned what I've been writing before? Not really. Does that make her a negligent parent? Or am I the one at fault here? Maybe I should just -

"Essays."

"Oh. Ok."

"So you're a nerd," Zoe said, still staring out the window.

"Um… er…" Evan had absolutely no reply to that, and thus Cynthia's ill-advised attempt to lighten up the mood in the car failed.

Eventually, after an excruciating half hour of silence, the car finally pulled up to the Murphy home.

The driveway felt unreasonably long. Obviously, the driveway was very long, because the Murphy family was the rich folk who could afford to have a driveway longer than most, but also it felt somewhat short, because now he was going to be stuck inside of the house of a bunch of people that he really didn't want to talk to during which what was probably going to be the most uncomfortable meal of his life.

Of course, the driveway was an inanimate object that didn't really care about his opinion. Eventually, it ended. Everybody got out, and so Evan robotically followed suit.

Mr. Murphy - Larry, that was his name - was already seated at the table. Despite nonchalantly leaning back in his chair and looking at his phone, Evan could see the stress and the tenseness in him.

Evan settled down directly across from him, and busied himself with studying the bowl of apples on the table. My, was that a good-looking bowl of apples. Round, shiny, vivid. Every apple looked absolutely perfect. Yes, he would continue to admire these perfect, round, shiny apples. That was good.

Everybody else settled in, and looking at the highly uncomfortable expressions of the Murphy parents let Evan know that he was not alone in this horrible feeling of awkwardness.

"Anybody else want more chicken?" Larry's voice cut through the silence.

"I think you're the only one with an appetite," Cynthia replies.

With his wife's go-ahead, he lifted the piece of chicken onto his place and began to dig into it.

"It was very nice of the Harrisons to bring it over," Cynthia said, almost to herself. "Did Connor ever tell you about the Harrisons?"

Evan robotically bobbed his head up and down.

"They're very old friends of ours."

"Mmmmmmm." There. That wasn't techincally word, right? Just continuing with the confirming.

"Our families used to go out skiing together. We had terrific times on the slopes."

Before he could stop himself, Evan opened his mouth. "Connor loved skiing."

"Connor hated skiing," Zoe instantly replied.

Evan gulped, immediately regretting his decision to say anything.

"Er, right. He… he loved talking about how much he hated skiing. Just pure hate was the topic whenever he was talking about skiing."

Zoe's stare felt like it was burning into him.

"So you and Connor hung out a lot?" Cynthia asked.

"Pretty much."

Evan felt pretty proud of himself of that answer. There. He opened his mouth, and things didn't totally go to shit. It wasn't a "yes", per se. It could be interpreted as chosen. "A lot" could mean different things to different people.

"Where?" Zoe asked.

"You mean… where did we hang out?" he asked, stalling. Think, think, think.

"Yes. Where?"

"Well…" He coughed. Alright, here goes. "We'd mostly do the hanging out at my house. I mean, sometimes we hung out at his house, I mean, here, if there was nobody here."

Zoe's gaze seemed to grow in intensity as she opened her mouth again.

Ready to out me on my BS. Quick, come up with something. Anything!

"Er… email!" Evan declared. "We would email a lot, because sometimes, he didn't want to hang out in person."

"We looked through his emails. There aren't any from you."

"That's because… he had a different account. A secret account. Yeah. I probably should have said that before, that must have been very confusing, I'm sorry."

"Why was it secret?"

Evan decided that now was an excellent moment to take a large bite out of the rice on his plate. Just keep stalling, just keep stalling. That was the name of the game.

"It was secret because… he just thought it would be more private that way."

"I told you. He knew you looked through his emails," Cynthia said, turning to look at her husband.

"And I don't regret it." he replied.

"It's just weird." Zoe still isn't done. "The only time I ever saw you and my brother together at school was when he shoved you."

"Connor shoved you?" Cynthia's voice took on a tone of incredulity.

"I… wouldn't call it that. I tripped. That's what actually happened."

"I was there! I saw the whole thing." Zoe just absolutely was not stopping. "He pushed you. Hard."

"Oh! Right. That was… that was the misunderstanding. You see, I was trying to talk to him at school, which was exactly what he didn't want, right? It wasn't really a big deal, it was my fault."

"And why didn't he want to be talking to at school?"

"Because he thought I was kind of a… a…"

"A nerd?"

The words stung as though this was the first time she said them.

"Zoe!" Her father shoots her a look.

"A loser, I was going to say, but that works too."

"That's… a pretty bad thing to do," Cynthia admits.

"Well, Connor was a bad person, so that really isn't much of a surprise,"

"Connor was a complicated person," Cynthia says.

"No, he was a bad person, there's a difference."

The Murphy mother wiped her forehead with her napkin. "You refuse to remember any of the good things. Both of you!"

"Because there were no good things! What were the good things, Mom?"

"There were good things!"

"Yes, you keep saying that. What were they?"

This was awful. This was absolutely awful. At least divorced parents didn't argue over a dinner table.

"I remember a lot of good things about Connor!"

Three heads turned, and it took Evan a few seconds to register that it was he who said those words.

"Like what?" Zoe asked.

Evan looked at their faces. Expectant. Curious. Hopeful, somehow.

He fought the lump in his throat and the sweat now dripping down his entire body, opened his mouth, and spoke.

"Well, I remember this one day. Recently. Connor and I hung out, and it was a good day. I keep remembering that day. That one day."

That wasn't enough. That wasn't nearly enough.

Evan stared at those apples. Those beautiful, shining, perfect apples.

"Apples. We went to the apples… place."

"He took you to the orchard?" Cynthia's tone is surprised.

Using every ounce of self-control to not bolt from the table - where would he even go, after all? - he moved his head up and down.

"I thought that place closed," Larry said. "Years ago."

"Exactly! That's why we went there, there was privacy, there was no one else."

"I can't believe he took you there," Cynthia gushed. "That must have been fun. Some real fun."

"It was. It was." For once, Zoe wasn't snarking and asking questions left and right. Evan didn't need to continue. But he did.

"It around the end of spring, I think. Before either of us were in college, of course."

"What was that name of the ice cream place nearby that we loved?" Cynthia asks, almost gleeful.

"A la mode," Larry responds.

"That's exactly where we went! We'd get ice cream there."

"I'd completely forgotten about that place."

The relief. The state of near-euphoria that these people had put into, just hearing about how their son actually had a friend.

"We used to do that all the time. Just get up, and go somewhere. Talk. Like buddies, like friends. Connor was easy to talk to."

"I remember that one day, in the orchard." Evan really couldn't stop himself now. "We saw this tree. This absolutely enormous, incredibly tall oak tree, bigger than all the others. We ran over and we just started climbing it. We didn't think, we just went and did it."

All three Murphys stared intensely now, hanging on every word.

"We kept climbing, higher and higher, but then… then the branch I was holding gave way. I hit the ground. My arm went numb. And I was just there. Helpless. Waiting."

"And then I see him. I see Connor. He's come to get me. It's - it's going to be all right."

Evan finally stopped talking.

Cynthia got up from her seat, walked over to very-nearly trembling boy, and wrapped her arms around him.

"Thank you, Evan. Thank you."