High pitched giggles silenced as I hit the mute button and walked over to the door to answer the knocking. Before opened all the way, Andrea announced, "Corbin is dead."

She said it smugly with a half smile of anticipation, like a wolf leaning in for the kill. She said it like it was a reward for all of the petty rivalries she had lost to me over the years; she said it like she was announcing joyfully, "The sun is shining;" or "What a wonderful day."

My heart froze. Like concrete that had just set, every muscle in my body clenched on itself; I would have hit her if I weren't a statue frozen by the news.

I stood with the door in my hand. I thought, I won't let that bitch see me cry, and the front window shuddered with the impact of the stained brown metal door closing of its own accord. I stared at the fake lines my mother painted to make it seem like wood. New Year's Eve he walked out that door after kidnapping my mother's plant- holding it hostage outside for the cost of a kiss. Our first kiss rescued my mother's African Violets from frost bite, and I returned to the house glowing and warm; flowers in hand...

The flesh of his stomach was always so warm when I'd let my hands wander across the silky skin. Looking up, I'd worry at how his brown eyes said nothing, but he'd move down to bury his face in my hair and whisper he loved me.

I moved to the couch where we used to sit and watched the voiceless mouths... I realize why I'm in a funk. Why every year for nine springs I remember a knock on the door, how I went to the funeral with my best friend; riding in silence for an hour to the funeral home. The year I was 17 when I willed my heart to stay stone so I would not cry as I walked up to his casket and stared.

It looked like a mannequin of Corbin and I couldn't make myself reach out and touch his doughy, cold skin because all I could think of was how it must have hurt when he ran into the back of the stopped semi at 88 mph. I wondered if he screamed when the steering wheel crushed his ribs and sternum or how scared he was alone waiting for someone to help as he died with no one to hold his hand. No one to let him go on to the next world knowing for sure he was loved.

The minister said something at the funeral about walking through the valley of the shadow of death. He raced past the shadow straight into death as the steering column moved through to the other side and no one was with him; I hoped that God is better at fulfilling advertised promises about heaven than She is about the valley. Palm of God's hand, that is where he should be, not being cold, dead or extinguished.

Finally, as I sneak out of my bedroom and into the hall so A. won't wake up- finally, nine years later I cry.

-Moire