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Thirty
In a daze, I walk back into the service. Nick’s still onstage, or whatever it’s called, holding his gaze to the ceiling. “Well, Jeremiah, I wish I had the chance to meet you. I know that wherever you are you’re driving one helluvan F-150 with a license plate that says PUMPIN’ Forever.” The room swells with heartfelt laughter. And by the response, Nick actually killed at a funeral.
I want to join in with the others but I feel like I’m in mourning. In the same way Jeremiah’s death changed the lives of his family and friends in an instant, Imani’s news changes mine. The Olivia Vincent Plan was supposed to be simple. Easy even. Road tour hiccups made it hard. But now it’s like my plan’s dead in the water.
I guess sometimes you’re the firework and sometimes you’re the idiot it kills.
Nick takes his seat next to me. “Hey, where’d you go?”
“I had to take a phone call,” I say, keeping my eyes focused on the large wooden crucifix hovering behind Jeremiah’s casket. Dear Lord, have mercy on my soul!
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” I force a smile. “Everything’s fine.” Except everything is not fine.
Jeremiah’s brother, Jordan, takes the mic and begins his eulogy. His words bring me back to the day I took the mic at my dad’s funeral. I’d been onstage many times at comedy clubs but nothing quite compared to speaking that day. I’m not the kind of person who cries or falls apart. And if I do, it’s in private (like doors bolted shut, soundproof walls kinda private)—not in front of a room of people.
I still have it somewhere, my scribbly eulogy on a folded legal sheet. It was short. Just a single page, but I must’ve written it over and over again until every word was perfect. Exactly like a good joke. I hardly remember being up there. But I do remember telling myself—Just read the next sentence. Don’t think about it. Just read. And that’s what I did. Because if I thought for a second that my dad was really gone, I would’ve lost it there in a roomful of people. The way Jeremiah’s brother is starting to lose it now.
This might be a stranger’s funeral somewhere in Mississippi but it feels just like that dusty day in May. Only worse because now Imani’s leaving me too. How am I going to do this on my own? And this time, I really am all alone. The shock and sadness of it all swirls in my chest, bubbling up my throat. I swallow it back but then my eyes begin to burn and flood.
Uh-oh, I can’t stop it. I open my mouth thinking I’ll take a quick breath but nothing goes in. It only comes out.
All of it.
At once.
“Waah!” I wail, throwing my head back, bawling more than everyone at the funeral combined. Sobs spill out as tears flow down my cheeks like a torrential downpour on an April afternoon in the city. The one day you don’t bring an umbrella.
“Oh my god, what?” Nick whispers, grabbing ahold of my shoulders. “What are you doing?”
But I can’t make words, it’s just a jumbled mess—like my life.
“Get it together, Olivia. Everyone’s staring at us,” Nick mutters.
“Waah! Aah, aah, aah!”
“Okay, crybaby, let’s go.” Nick helps me up to my feet and ushers me out of the room, apologizing to everyone on our way out.
Outside, beneath the awning’s shade, I struggle to breathe and swipe my hands across my wet cheeks. Nick stares at me, as clueless as a new dad with a dirty diaper. “What’s the matter with you?”
“My life is a disaster!” I cry out.
“What are you talking about?”
“Imani just called. She’s moving to Germany in a week. A week! And now I have no steady income to pay the rent for our apartment. If I don’t get this audition, or even if I do, I’ll have to go back to a job I hate. And—and I have no one left. Like no one. I’m alone. I’m gonna die alone,” I manage to say through sobs of grief and frustration.
“You’re not alone. What about your dad? Your family in Texas?” Nick’s assuming things. I never actually told him I have people in Texas.
“He’s de-e-ead.” I blubber the truth. The pain.
“Wait, your dad died?”
“Ye-e-e-e-es! He died and left me alone. All I have left is student debt, which will follow me to my grave!”
You know when a child is having a total meltdown at the checkout in the grocery store because his mother refuses to buy him a candy bar and his nap time should’ve started twenty minutes ago? That’s what I sound like. I might as well plop down on the ground kicking and screaming.
“Okay, okay.” Nick makes his voice soft and soothing. “Calm down. It’s gonna be okay.”
