I had a yuck McDonald's burger as a night snack, somehow suddenly convinced I would die from lack of red meat. Or maybe I would die without stale bread. That would have taken care of that too. Sometimes gross is otherworldly. And sometimes otherworldly is only 99 cents, 1.08 with tax. Eternal damnation should be so cheap... Hmm, the McD's ad campaign: Eat it or be damned in hell forever. Those guys should hire me. It's the millennia, and we need old testament consequences to our advertising. Taco Bell: buy a grande combonation meal and get forty days and forty nights of pepsi, free. Gosh.

On December 2 a friend from high school emailed me to say Jana Duncan Cullum had just died. I was sitting in a convention center in Boston in a suit with a lanyard around my neck and my laptop on my knees. The wi-fi was spotty, so as I was replying and we were covering the details, I was getting up and walking around holding the computer up on my palm, hunting for a signal.


Jana and Leslie, on a band trip to East Tennessee, 1989 (age 15)

I knew Jana as Jana Duncan. We had gone to school together, both from the same small town. Although we hadn't spoken in ages, there had been a time when we were good friends. At least I think we were. Memories are notoriously faulty, and after a while you might have trouble distinguishing between actual occurrences and ideas you had. Sticking to the concrete is the only way to be foolproof.

Concrete: in 8th grade Jana and I were voted "Most Intelligent" boy and girl in that unhealthy poll junior high school kids are forced to participate in. Those things are awful. In 12th grade we were voted "Most Likely to Succeed." Why the pair of us, always together? This means both our junior high and high school yearbooks have a picture of us together, under the heading MOST SOMETHING. We thought it was funny. Jana signed my high school yearbook: "I'll never forget you, because you're in all my pictures." I haven't seen those pictures in a long time, but I have them in my head: as 13-year-olds we look like children. At 18 we are essentially grown-ups.


Stacey, Lori, Leslie, and Jana

Friends from high school have died before. Jason Halliburton, a preacher's son whom I used to steal street signs with, was shot and killed when we were 19. Jerry Curtis, a friend who could draw really well, was hit by a car a decade ago. But those were both dramatic, violent deaths. Jana died of cancer, far too young for such a thing to seem fair.

Jana was a good person. So much so that I can't imagine a single person on Earth would disagree with that statement. Me, I'm certainly not the devil incarnate, but I'm also not nearly so good. Yet here I sit on a Monday night, drinking a beer and typing. Life'll kill you, it's true. The cruelest part is who knows when, and for no reason whatsoever.


On the freshman bus

Stories are the best part of life, so I've tried to remember stories. The one that sticks in my head the best was a party at Lori Wiseman's house, maybe when we're all about 14. The garage was full of stuff, like garages tend to be, and we were playing darts in there. My friend Chris and I were singing Anthrax all night. Someone had the idea: let's play the game where you draw names and a guy and a girl have to go in the closet for five minutes together. No one objected, so names were drawn--it was Ronald and Jana.

Oooo, everyone said. Ronald was laughing. Jana kept saying "I don't know what you think's going to happen, Ronald." But the game must go on, because those are the rules. We hadn't secured a closet yet. Through the house, we are searching, what closet can we use?

"What closet can we use? We can't use that one." "I hope you don't think anything is going to happen, Ronald." "Ha ha ha." "How about that one?"

Our plans come to a halt, because Lori's sister--a senior in high school I think--is suddenly there. "What's this about a closet? Why do you all need a closet??" She is furious. The gig is up.

I think little things, details, are important. I wonder what you were thinking then, Jana. How glad were you when Lori's sister busted us? Or, who knows, maybe you weren't happy. The important thing is that you were thinking something. And no one who wonders what it was can ask you anymore. That's the tragedy of life. So many pieces of the story disappear.

4

It turned out she was Spanish. I finally talked to her late one day at work, when everyone was gone but she had stayed after. She was wearing a tee-shirt that said God of the Little People. It was white, with the sleeves rolled up by her shoulders. It made her look young. She said it was the name of a band.
          I knew I could talk about that. I said what came to mind. “A lot of bands I used to have their shirts, but at some point I decided—you know how one day you just decide something?—Like, this opinion didn’t even occur to you before, but then snap and after that you’re obsessed and you have to do it? It just suddenly happens and you’re almost a different person after.”
          “Yes. Yes I know that.”
          “Those things always scare me.”
          She looked concerned. “Why?”
          “God knows what you could accidentally decide like that. What if you decided to kill yourself? It would be horrible.”
          She made a face, like to comfort someone after a setback. “What were you going to tell me about shirts?”
          Sometimes I get off track when I talk to people. I know I do. “I got rid of them all. They seemed childish. But I wish I still had them.”

3

My brother is twelve years older than me—a lot of my life I can’t remember even thinking of him, because he was usually somewhere else. I’m almost an only child. He’s insane now, likes guns, and believes the government hates him. As if they care.
          On the next block over from our house, growing up, I read magazines from a corner store. Sometimes I bought them, but they were more interesting still in the store. I would sit on the floor and read with the sun coming over rows of daffodils and roses outside on the sidewalk. I could hear the owner slicing with a guillotine, cutting white paper to wrap around flowers. He tolerated me. My brother hated him because he was Chinese.
          The Chinese man, how ugly he was. I stole from his store. I don’t feel bad about that—I needed the feeling of stealing, but soon I stopped. Thievery doesn’t feel good, so I don’t know why people like it. Aaron, my brother, loved that I stole though, because he liked any indignity inflicted on the Chinese owner. He called him a dog, told me I could take anything I wanted. I love my brother, but it’s complicated—I don’t think he’s a very nice person. He’s ill, and always has been. It’s your sympathy I would ask you to give him.

2

Veronica had a good time with me. She gave way like a paper screen. I like girls who are skinny, but she was so much so that the sight of her naked didn’t make me as happy as I thought it would. Her awkward appearance should have been endearing, but instead I only felt distracted. That wasn’t her fault I told myself.
          We sat in an empty diner while it rained outside, with steam on the windows. I did things out of character, like suggesting we just eat dessert that night, with coffee. She asked me about Nirvana, which was her favorite band. Doesn’t that sound European? Who in America would say Nirvana was their favorite. Something more obscure, you could do that with.
          We had our hands all over each other’s legs and arms, on two vinyl stools at the diner counter. The presence of the old Greek man at the register pretending not to watch us gave it a thrill.
          “The third is the best.”
          “My favorite is the second.”
          She was mock-horrified. “No. It is the easy one. Na na na, everything so pop.”
          “It has to do with the feeling. The second came out when it was still nothing. I hate the third, it doesn’t matter what it sounds like.”
          I felt comfortable. It’s easy to talk to people I know. I knew Veronica.
          We didn’t stay together that night, but I walked her home without an umbrella. Her neighborhood was bad, whatever that means, so I never let her walk home alone. She made fun of me for that, saying that before me she had not been able to get home, waiting for someone to walk her. I scolded her for not being careful.
          “I walk home, I don’t worry about it.”
          Ask me whether the perfect girl would worry about walking home alone and I would say of course not.

Veronica and I walked in silence on a night in the spring. Some moments are like a crystal, perfectly flat, flat as the universe, and doomed to shatter. Imagine an elegant wine glass orbiting the Earth. Beautiful sparkling defects, going a thousand miles an hour.
          Half an hour before that, we had been in a restaurant, where she told me she couldn’t handle me anymore. “Why you are never happy. It makes it hard.” She looked away and shut herself down, refusing to look at me. I told her I loved her. I had never said that before. She looked down, then to the side.
          “Of course.” I hadn’t meant to make her look so tired.
          We walked past a performing arts high school, huge and empty, made of glass and light, shining in the puddles on the street. It seemed no one was around. White lights scissored through a skeleton construction truss. It might have been a permanent part of the building.
          Suddenly there were people there. Two men were yelling at each other getting into a car ahead of us. Gunshots, atomic, sharp, went off and blew through the car. They seemed to rain from straight above, falling from orbit, and one guy in the car screamed. Veronica was screaming and holding on to me, her hair in my face, her face on my chest. All I could think of was how it didn’t sound like her. Pinprick drops of rain covered my nose and eyes. It might have been blood that flew on me, but that was unlikely.
          There were stars, like bullets shot through the sky. The man in the car screamed continuously. Screamed and screamed, unashamed and desperate, because he was dying. It wouldn’t stop, and I couldn’t think. Hiding in a doorway, my hands shook while I called the police and Veronica cried.
          The police came, and three of them went into the building next door to the one where we hid. They didn’t hurry. Soon there were more pops, but further away. Those might have just been pops.