Jack and Megan

"I guess I just felt that it was a good opportunity to see some old friends," I said, "And apparently a bunch of my old friends thought the very same thing, because they're all meeting at McLaughlin's tonight."

My dad smiled, though he was pretending to ignore us, and my mom glared at him briefly.

"I only hope Gerald's poor family didn't hear you all making your silly plans. It may be funny to you, but this is a very dark day for his family. Especially after how much he suffered," Mom said.

"Yeah, okay, I agree that planning this at the funeral was in poor taste. I didn't participate in it, if you really want to know. I didn't even find out about it until afterwards," I said.

"Well, have a good time, Jack," my mom said, and then thought for a few moments. Finally, she said, "But just remember that someday you might see someone you love suffer and die just as Gerald did, and I hope that the people who are supposed to be there mourning with you won't secretly be planning a celebration during the funeral. And if they are, I hope you never find out about it, just like I hope Gerald's poor mother and sister never find out what you're all doing tonight."

"All right, Mom," I said, and bent down to give her a kiss on the cheek. "By the way, if we all decide we need a buzzkill to bring us all down, I'm throwing your name out there, okay?"

Mom wasn't amused at all, but my Dad snickered a little and then pretended to cough.

I felt an unusual ray of hope as I drove to McLaughlin's Pub, a bar on Main Street that I remember was a very popular spot when I was growing up. At the time, however, I was too young to legally drink, so I mostly just heard stories. When I arrived, I felt that maybe its popularity had declined over the years, because there weren't many vehicles there yet. I felt a tinge of desperation when the idea occurred to me that Megan might not show up. Then I questioned myself. So what if she shows up? I thought. What then? She's married, and she has two kids. You're married, and you're not good-looking enough to steal her away. Besides, Megan barely spoke to you at the funeral, and barely spoke to you the last several times you saw her. In fact, you haven't had a reasonable conversation with her since January of your senior year. Right around the time of GTO. Right around the time he seduced her, and fucked her. And then threw her away, which crushed her.

For whatever reason, she had had feelings for him throughout most of high school. I remember feeling intense jealousy over that fact, and I felt, for the first time, trapped in my status as Megan's "buddy." When he suddenly seemed to share those same feelings for her, my sweet Megan was walking on clouds. She realized pretty quickly that I disapproved, and it drove a wedge between us. When GTO threw her aside after he had used her, it was like she was afraid to talk to me because she felt I would rub her face in it. I never would have done that. I only wanted her to be happy. But this became a black shadow over us, and because of it our relationship deteriorated quickly. We had had plans to spend a lot of time together on our senior trip, which was in Florida, but I ended up spending much of it alone. I had never had a more miserable week, watching her as she hung around with her other friends, noticing that she wasn't happy, but being unable to even converse with her at this point. She had made it clear that she didn't want to be friends with me anymore, and indeed didn't want to have anything to do with me at all. I had lost the best friend I ever had --our close friendship had lasted from fourth grade onward-- and also the girl I secretly loved throughout high school.

What she never knew was that I had planned for months to tell her how I felt about her at some point on our senior trip. I figured that there would be times when we would be alone, and I would pick the right moment to tell her. Then, hopefully, she would reveal that she had the same feelings for me, repressed beneath her feelings for that fucking jackoff GTO, and Megan and I would finish the trip as a couple, holding hands on the flight home. That was what I fantasized about for months, lying awake at night, writing and re-writing in my head the exact words I wished to tell her.

Then it was gone... the opportunity was forever out of my reach. And Megan became like one of the other girls at my high school that wouldn't talk to me.

Previously-dormant memories were still hitting me as I sat in my car in the parking lot of McLaughlin's, so many that I couldn't catalogue them. They were random, ranging from memories of her coming over to swim in our pool when we were kids, to times we spent together at our church's youth group, which she left around the time she started spending her days and evenings with GTO.

Of the youth group memories, the one that stood out most was the time that she and I had been paired together to go door-to-door in the neighborhood surrounding the church. We were attempting to invite neighborhood people to the church, and also to possibly engage them in a spiritual discussion that might result in their conversions. The idea of talking to people about this frightened me to the point that I had twisted up a stack of flyers in my hands when we were walking on the sidewalk towards the area we had been designated to cover. Megan laughed and pointed when she saw what I had done.

"Look! You've ruined them!" she said, giggling, and brushing her bangs out of her brown eyes. "Why did you do that?"

"I'm scared!" I said, turning as red as a tomato.

"Wait, wait," Megan said, stopping me with her hand, "Why are you scared?"

"Aren't you?" I asked, breathing heavily, practically hyperventilating.

"I don't know. Why should I be?" she asked.

"I don't know. I'm just not sure what to say to these people. I'm shy, everybody knows that! Why would they make me do this?"

Megan saw now how distressed I was, and she took my hand. We were still best friends at this point, and we had spent countless hours talking to each other in person and on the phone, yet very rarely had there been any meaningful physical contact between us. The butterflies left my stomach, for the moment at least, but I was still blushing. She just stood there looking into my face, holding my hand.

"Jack, you don't have to say anything if you don't feel comfortable. You can let me do all the talking, okay?"

"You don't have to do that," I said.

"But I'm willing to," Megan said. "And I'd never tell anyone that you didn't say anything, okay?"

We stood there like that for a minute or two, and then I nodded my head and smiled.

"Ready, Jeeb?" she asked, her brown eyes looking more beautiful and sweet than ever beneath her long bangs. She was the only one who ever called me "Jeeb," which was a nickname she had come up with for me when we were in sixth grade.

"O- okay," I said, and she let go of my hand and continued walking.

That afternoon, we stopped at a few dozen houses, and Megan impressed me with how easily she had conversations about spiritual things with complete strangers. Only a few times did I ever say anything, and usually it was brief and my voice cracked. The twisted-up flyers became much more twisted by the end of the afternoon, and there were a few times when Megan pointed at them and giggled again. She was the kind of girl that could make anyone feel at ease, no matter the situation.

We were supposed to be going door-to-door for three hours, from one until four in the afternoon. But by three o'clock, with an hour left, Megan and I had grown tired of walking and decided to sit on the curb on a quiet street. She was wearing a skirt, so she carefully sat down with the fabric covering her knees, keeping her legs together. I sat beside her, aware now of the pleasant but chilly late-autumn breeze that was lifting Megan's bangs from her face. She looked at the ground, then at me, then at the twisted papers in my hand. She smiled. This was during our senior year of high school, just after we'd both turned eighteen. It was only a few months before the incident between her and GTO. Less than six months from the day Megan and I sat on the curb together we would no longer be much more than mere acquaintances who forced a few words of small talk now and then. For the moment, however, we were as close as any couple, only there was nothing more than friendship between us.

"Why are you afraid to talk to people about the church?" she asked softly. There was no tone of demanding in her voice. She simply wanted to know.

"I'm not afraid to talk to people about the church, I'm just afraid to talk to them about God and salvation and stuff like that," I said.

"Oh," Megan said. Her arms were crossed over her knees, and she rested her chin on her arms. She stuck her bottom lip out in one of those sad puppy dog faces.

"Megan!" I said, half giggling. "Don't mock me! This is serious!"

"I know, Jeeb," she said. "I was just trying to make you smile."

I blushed and looked down at the twisted papers in my left hand.

"Does it ever bother you when people ask you to smile more?" she asked.

"Sometimes," I said. "But you don't even have to ask me. You just say something funny or make some silly face, and I can't help it."

Megan giggled and gave me a light punch on the arm.

"Hey, watch it, lady," I said, grinning, "I'll knock your socks off. I don't care if you are a giiiiiirl!"

"I'm not wearing socks, silly," she said.

"Then I'll knock your pant..." I started to say, then caught myself. I was going to say "panties." She looked at me with wide eyes and her mouth was open with surprise.

"Jack!" she cried, grinning, and gave me a harder punch in the arm.

"What! Your pantyhose! That's what I was going to say!" I said in a loud whisper, rubbing my arm where she had punched me.

"I'm not wearing those, either, see?" she said, and without thinking lifted her skirt above her knees, inadvertently showing me her underwear. It was white, flowered. I couldn't hide my shock.

"Uh oh, I just flashed you, didn't I?" she said. Her eyes were wide again.

"It's all right," I said. My face was tomato-red. Megan bit her lip and thought for a few moments.

"Well, I guess it's okay. You're like a brother to me, anyway, so what does it matter?" she said.

"Yeah," I said in a low voice, and my gaze fell to the street. I didn't want her to see that the "brother" comment had made me feel a little sad. For all of high school, I had been hiding these strong feelings for Megan, and it was at that moment that I felt the most hopeless about my chances of ever being more than just her friend. Well, at least the most hopeless I had felt up until that point.

Megan stared at me for a while. I felt her eyes studying my face, trying to figure out why I was suddenly quiet. Years later, I still wonder whether or not she detected my feelings for her in that moment. If she did, she never let on.

"Are you embarrassed?" she asked, after an eternity.

"No. I'm just thinking," I said.

"About what?"

"I don't know... what I'm going to do after graduation," I lied. I wasn't really thinking about any of that stuff at the moment. But I felt that I couldn't tell her the truth, as much as I wanted to.

"Yeah, I think about that a lot, too," Megan said, her voice now hushed again. "Are you still planning to go to the Bible university?"

"I don't know."

"Why not? I thought you wanted to be a youth pastor."

"I did," I said. "But I've been..." I didn't finish the sentence. What I was going to say was that I had been having doubts about whether or not I even believed in God anymore. She knew better than anyone that I had struggled with the subject of religion and had more or less given up on the whole thing a few times during high school. There were nights when we stayed up talking on the phone until two or three in the morning, Megan trying her best to "bring me around" and encourage me, and me just wanting to go to bed but not wanting to stop talking to her. Looking back on it, these were the preliminary doubts that eventually led to my renouncing my religion, though this didn't happen until after I had a degree from the Bible university.

"Is that why it was hard for you to talk to people today?" she asked. With Megan, I found that I didn't always have to finish my sentences for her to know what I was talking about. We were almost always in tune with each other at this point.

"Yeah," I said.

"I thought maybe that was the reason."

I didn't say anything. I was afraid that she was disappointed in me. I hated the thought of disappointing her. In some ways, she seemed to look up to me as a model of level-headedness, like I really had things together. I was afraid to admit to her that I was just as confused and messed-up as everyone else was. I guess I was flattered by the idea of someone thinking highly of me in any way.

"Wherever you end up going, Jack, can you promise you won't forget about me?" she said quietly.

"What? Why would you even say that?" I said.

"It's just, I'm not as smart as you. I don't know if I'll even be able to get into that college."

"But even if you didn't go to the same college, does that mean we wouldn't be friends anymore?" I said.

"I don't know. You'd meet lots of new people, and you'd make a lot of friends," she said. There was sadness in her voice.

"But they wouldn't be you," I said.

Megan looked up again and smiled at me.

It's hard to believe now that my friendship was so important to her at the time, and yet by spring we were barely on speaking terms anymore. I remember that after a few minutes of silence, we stood up and walked back to the church. She had grown quiet, reserved. The only thing she said to me the whole way back was, "Don't tell anyone I showed you my underwear, okay?"

"I won't. It's not like you did it on purpose," I said. She just smiled at me, an odd smile I couldn't figure out.

Thinking back on these things, I grew sad, sitting in my rusty old car in the McLaughlin's Pub parking lot. I didn't want to sit at a bar all night, I realized then. I just wanted one more walk with Megan, to sit on a curb and talk to her again. Maybe she'd explain why our once-strong friendship crumbled all those years ago. Maybe we'd just sit there, enjoying one last moment together before returning to our "real" lives. No matter how we spent it, the important thing would be that we would be friends again. I hated losing her as a friend. I hated the years of questions, the loose ends in my life she created when she pulled herself from me. The wounds that never really healed.

I sighed and got out of the car. I was suddenly sure this was a bad idea. I didn't belong here. I barely knew any of these people anymore. I figured that maybe I'd have a drink or two and then return to my parents' house. I'd still have another full day in town after this one before sleeping one more night in my old bed and then driving back home. Maybe I'd just spend that last day watching TV. "You drove five hundred miles so that you could sit and watch TV?" my mom would probably say. But she'd still be glad I was there with them.

I opened the door to McLaughlin's. A few of my old classmates were sitting at the bar. At the moment there were no other patrons. Maybe we'll have the place to ourselves, I thought. One of my old acquaintances, Chris McNeil, yelled, "Jack!" and two of the girls with him said, "Woo!" and smiled at me. They were two more women I vaguely remembered from high school but couldn't remember their names. I hoped that I wouldn't be forced into a situation where I had to admit that I was very bad with remembering the names of my classmates who weren't actually friends with me. I have a good memory, but not with names or faces. I remembered places I'd been, the weather, how any particular event made me feel, but faces and names were often a blur for me. This would undoubtedly get worse after a few drinks. I gritted my teeth and walked over to the group. I planted myself on a stool at the bar, ordered my first drink, and made awkward small talk with Chris for about twenty minutes. At that point, more old faces began to arrive by the carload, and soon there were at least thirty old schoolmates of mine talking and laughing and drinking.

At the first time I checked my watch, roughly 45 minutes after I arrived, there was no sign of Megan. I saw Sarah Cunningham in one of the booths, eating a small plate of chicken wings, but Megan was not with her. Maybe she hadn't taken Sarah up on the invitation, or maybe she hadn't been invited at all. I decided that perhaps I might need the alcohol after all.

To be honest, I had a pretty good time, even without Megan being there. I was finding myself in good spirits again, though every few minutes I would scan the room, hoping that she had arrived but that maybe I hadn't seen her. I looked at my watch, and it was now 10:30 pm, roughly three hours after I had arrived. I resigned myself to the idea that Megan was not going to show up, and found that my mood was growing sour again even though I had a few drinks in me.

At 11:15, I was thinking that maybe I should just go home. Everyone was still enjoying themselves, but I was no longer in the mood. I paid for my drinks, used the filthy bathroom and walked out of the bar without even saying goodbye to Guy or Kayla or anyone.

When I stepped outside, I was surprised to see Megan standing about twenty feet from the door, with her back turned to me. She was talking on her cell phone. She was now wearing a pair of jeans and a blouse, and her short brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. I was wondering why she hadn't made her way into the bar, but as I drew closer to her, I realized that she was having an argument. Or, rather, the deep male voice on the other end --whom I could hear clearly even from several feet away-- was arguing with her, while she spoke a few words here and there in her familiar hushed voice. She didn't know I was behind her yet, and I froze. I didn't want her to think I was listening in on her conversation, but I was worried that I might make too much noise walking away. So I stood about ten feet behind her, trying to look casual by staring at the sky.

"I told you, Steve, I told you a hundred times. I'm driving home the day after tomorrow," she said to the man on the phone. Probably her husband, I thought. Judging by his voice, he sounds like a jerk. Maybe that's what she likes. Maybe that's the kind of guy she feels secure to be around. Maybe I was just too big of a wuss for her. Or not cool enough.

"I'm at the bar... No, a bunch of my classmates from high school are here... I'm just going to have a drink and talk to some old friends... Steve, listen, I'm not cheating on you," she said. I'm ashamed to say that I began listening more closely by this point.

The voice on the other end began yelling, simply letting poor Megan have it. She began to sniffle, and when she spoke again her voice was cracking. "Steve, I'm not doing anything wrong. Why do you talk to me like that?... I'm sorry... I'm sorry... No, I'm sorry, but I'm hanging up now."

With that, she hit a button on her phone and slammed the cover shut. She sighed, still facing away from me, and immediately the phone rang again. She opened the cover, looked at the number, and then pulled the battery out of the phone, placing the phone and battery separately into her purse.

Megan turned around and noticed me standing there, and she sniffled and wiped her eyes. She opened her mouth as if she were going to say something to me, but then closed it. Tears were welling up in her eyes again. I walked towards her. She looked like she was about to lose it. I held out my arms and put them around her, and pulled her close to me. Megan began sobbing into my shoulder. She seemed to be letting loose a flood of emotion, judging by the amount of tears and how long she just sobbed and sobbed. My shirt was now soaking wet with her tears, but I simply held her close to me. She was finally letting down a decade's worth of defenses, finally letting me in on just how much she was hurting.