Young Writers Society

Tomorrow marks three very difficult years since I last Saw Dan. When you lose someone in a self-inflicted tragedy, you always wonder. You spend the rest of your life wondering. But when you lose someone in a self-inflicted tragedy and you're there with them when they pass, you spend the rest of your life, not wondering, not asking yourself a thousand questions, but remembering. You can't stop that memory from returning. You spend the rest of your days remembering. You remember their eyes, their mouth, the smell of the room, the last thing they said aloud. For Dan it was, "I won't be far." I remember thinking that he meant that he knew everything was going to be ok. But then I realized that he meant something so much more.

He stared at me all the time, I felt his eyes. But it didn't bother me; Dan Troller's intense, blinkless stare. This was an artist's stare, attentive to detail, taking in the truth without a fixed idea. It was a stare that didn't turn away when I stared back, but was startled to find itself returned. I didn't know him personally but I had seen him around with a few of his friends a couple times. He would stop to watch me, not caring if one of his friends noticed and made fun of him.

The girls called him my boyfriend, but it was just another word, it didn't capture the truth. We were both just too lazy to correct them. Dan Troller was the only person I'd ever met that I could really talk to about anything and he'd understand. The girls said we flirted like lovers but they were wrong. We flirted like the waves flirt with the sand at the beach on a windy day. We flirted like brother and sister; in love but in a different way.

He yelled my name when he grabbed the hat off of my head and replaced it with his own. Said it again softly when he tugged the brim down over my eyes. I would laugh and try to punch him but he was always far too fast for me. Once world peace was restored, we'd watch a movie in his basement, blankets and old pillows covered the floor. We turned the lights out and he pulled me back to lean against him. This became our Saturday night ritual very quickly. If we weren't watching a movie, we were playing a game of some sort or deep in discussion. I learned a lot about Dan this way. I learned how he had problems with his dad, loved Hilary Duff, and despised himself when he was sober.

When I heard he was in the hospital, I didn't understand who was screaming until my father covered my mouth with his hand. That moment it was Dan who I thought I might lose forever and I wouldn't let anyone touch me again until I knew he'd live.

When the paramedics buckled his head to the board, his eyes still looked. He spoke like a boy who had only fallen and hit his head on the hearth. The surgeons explained it to his parents and his parents explained it to me - how the bullet entered between the eyes and ricocheted off the top of the skull. Exited out below the right socket and missed the most precious matter. I can close my eyes and see the gun drop soundlessly on the carpet and then his hand feeling for the back of his head, finding it, shockingly, intact. Let's say it was the sudden desire for breath and light that disoriented him.

I sat in the chair dragged beside Dan's hospital bed when he finally awoke again. My hands on the white blanket. I saw him see again, how his eyes widened with - it wasn't gratitude. Meaning: it might have been disbelief. It might have been terror.

For days, they called it self-inflicted but I needed evidence. I didn't expect to see his eyes travel across the white room, squint under the long tube of fluorescent light and decide heaven.

Dan came back to me for the following summer and then disappeared forever. He had been doing heroin and something went wrong, fatally wrong. We were just getting to know each other again, and now he was gone. I had to get used to that. Everybody left eventually.

Dan did teach me something very important, though, that I will never forget. That people who denied who they were or where they had been were in the greatest danger. They were blind sleepwalkers on tightropes, fingers scoring thin air.

I used to dream that I was skin-diving down a coral wall. Euphoria set in as the nitrogen built up in my bloodstream, and the only direction was down into the darkness and forgetting.

I still remember getting a call from Ron, Dan's father, a week after Dan's passing. He was taking Dan's ashes back to Connecticut and offered to pay for my ticket if I wanted to come with him. I didn't want to see Dan delivered to his family; more people who didn't know him. I couldn't stand around like a stranger through the eulogy.

"You didn't know him at all," I had told Ron.

He didn't want to be cremated. He wanted to be buried with all his old rock records. Ron never knew what his son wanted. He always thought he knew better than anyone else, especially when he was drunk. He knew Dan was suicidal but he didn't care. I was supposed to be the suicide watch. And I think that he was disappointed in me that I couldn't save his son for him.

The shadows moved across my blanket, the wall behind me. People were just like that. We couldn't even see each other, just the shadows moving, pushed by unseen winds. What difference did it make if I was here or somewhere else? I couldn't keep him alive.

Dan, you used to make me smile; do you remember those days? Those days where we made root beer floats even if it was winter and played hooky every once in a while because you missed swinging on the swings with me. To this day, I can still feel close to the sky when I'm on a swing and I can feel you pushing me from behind. I won't keep talking about it because I'm supposed to be angry with you and I can't afford to break; I can't afford to cry.