Away Message

“Hold on, let me read this email,” Ray said, which was irritating since he had called me and I didn’t particularly feel like talking to him at all.

“Whoa, Nina, remember Scott?” My empty stomach flipped into my chest. Yes, I remembered Scott. I remembered his green-gray eyes, and wavy hair, and cool nonchalance that masked a quiet intensity. I remembered the exact moment he had noticed me at the party, and how quickly and deftly I had dissociated myself from Ray, who had brought me to the party. I remembered how smoothly Scott had mentioning giving him my screenname, and how happy I had been to do it. In fact, I usually would have been chatting with Scott on instant messenger at exactly this time on a Thursday afternoon. Today though his away message was up and he hadn’t responded to the message I sent yesterday evening to make sure the doctor’s appointment he mentioned Tuesday had gone all right.

“He died this morning,” Ray said.

I must have misheard him. “What did you say? That’s not funny Ray, what the hell.”

“No, seriously. Remember him? You guys talked at that first rush party I brought you to in October, it looked like he liked you.” Ray blathered on.

“Ray yes I remember him. What did you say? He died? That’s not possible.” I said, incredulous.

Ray continued, “Yeah, so sad. I just got an email from the rush chair, it says he went to the hospital last night and was diagnosed with leukemia, then died in the ICU this morning. That’s crazy, I just saw him at wings night Monday and he was fine.”

My ribcage suddenly felt too small to allow breathing and my eyes were stinging. I knew I had to get off the phone before I completely lost control. Ray was obviously in shock too, and had much more right to be upset about the death of one of his co-pledges.  I couldn’t possibly tell him that I had stayed in touch with Scott and add jealously and betrayal to what he was already feeling. I blurted, “Ray, I’m so sorry, but I have to go. I’m really sorry about your friend, he seemed like a good guy.”

“Thanks Nina. Talk to you soon.” He replied before hanging up.

I put the phone down gently on my nightstand and sobbed into my pillow, for Scott but more for the future I imagined with him once I graduated and started at University of Chicago in the fall, away from all of the friends who were still hung up on Ray and I ending up together. Of course, it would be awkward for a while that they were in the same pledge class at the same fraternity and I had met Scott through Ray, but surely everyone could get over that. Scott and I hadn’t talked explicitly about this plan but I knew he felt the same electrical current traveling between us that I did. He had even alluded to things being different if he didn’t have “a new pledge brother” complicating his feelings about me. But none of that mattered because he was dead, the powerline connecting us had been severed.

After getting through the school day Friday as a zombie on Friday, the weekend passed in a blur of naps. The only tolerable part of each day was the short interval after I woke up when I didn’t immediately remember Scott was dead. Every other moment was excruciating.  I ate almost nothing, and I told my parents I was sick, despite having no obvious symptoms. My mother didn’t totally believe me and repeatedly tried to ask what I was upset about but I kept pushing her off – I couldn’t start a conversation that might lead to discussing how many times this year I had snuck into the city with Ray to party at college, and then later the two times I went to meet Scott. Nothing had happened between use beyond a quick peck on lips, but somehow that made it more special that he was willing to wait for the right situation between us and wasn’t just trying to get in my pants. I had mentioned Scott to a few of my close female friends and did tell them that he had died and I was devastated. They at least then understood why I had looked so awful in school on Friday and why I didn’t want to socialize all weekend, but they didn’t fully understand. The girls all still thought I was crazy for not wanting to date Ray with his many obvious good qualities – star basketball player, handsome in a Ken-doll way, inexplicably devoted to me – and had never even met Scott, so their sympathy was shallow.

Monday morning I was able to eat a little bit of breakfast and had a few quizzes which at least made the day pass. Track practice was brutal but helped blow off some of the fog of grief that had settled on my brain, and I fell asleep right after dinner. Tuesday the school day dragged. Even with mostly AP classes and generally engaging teachers, senior year felt like a prison sentence to be served before I could escape the boring south suburbs to the bright big city lights of Chicago proper. Track practice was a quick recovery run, and then I was home with a three-hour Scott-shaped empty space to fill. 

Scott had a work study job in the library on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, which I found adorably nerdy. Every week for months, between the time I got home from practice and 7pm exactly when my family ate dinner, Scott and I would talk on instant messenger. It had never been discussed between us but simply established as an infallible routine. Although we usually talked about routine school/work/sports topics, we got to know each other so much better through these chats, which became the unquestionable highlight of my otherwise boring suburban high school life.  At times he mentioned his family, and his worries about his younger sister home with his alcoholic father without him as a buffer between them. I talked about the stress of college applications, and the pressure from my parents to choose an Ivy League school over University of Chicago. Because he was outside the social circle of my high school, and a year older, his perspective was more valuable in my mind, and his advice more genuine than anyone else’s. I was able to be myself in ways I couldn’t with the friends and family who had known me for years.

The first Tuesday without him, I logged onto instant messenger without thinking. Scott’s roommate must have logged him off, or maybe his laptop battery died, because he was gone from my list of online but inactive friends. I wished I had written down which Dostoevsky quote he had as his away message. While I was trying to remember, one of the other seniors on my team messaged me about which warm up t-shirts we were wearing to the meet on Saturday, and a friend messaged me about whether the AP Chemistry test was this week or next week, and I dealt with those inquiries politely then immediately logged off. What had I been thinking, going online knowing the only person I wanted to talk to wouldn’t be there? It was so cruel that he would have been the person I sought out for support if one of my friends had died, except I couldn’t, because the friend was him. 

Thursday was no better. Dreading the gap of time between practice and dinner, I lingered at practice, stretching extra then offering a few of the freshman girls a ride home.  I still ended up lying on my back staring at the ceiling trying not to cry for an hour and a half. 

The school, track practice, and hanging out at the same places monotony continued as the frigid weeks with early nightfall dragged on. I got to the point where I didn’t think about Scott every moment of every day, but I was still blindsided by the power of my grief a few times per week. My parents knew something was wrong but gave me space since I snapped at them every time they tried to pry. My friends were generally sympathetic, but just didn’t understand the depth of my feelings for Scott because I had intentionally hidden him from everyone, even my close girlfriends from whom I didn’t usually keep secrets. 

Tuesday and Thursday afternoons were the worst. The three hours between practice and dinner were a void of grief. I took as long as I could at practice and giving underclassman rides. I tried distracting myself at home talking on the phone with my friends about the same nonsense we talked about all day at school, or reading novels, or even studying for quizzes and tests I didn’t really need to study for, but nothing filled the time. A few times I circled back to the snowy park behind the school parking lot and smoked a joint with the junior guys who could reliably be found there. We had enough mutual friends that they didn’t hassle me, beyond a little light teasing about how much it would help my track times, but being high made me anxious in addition to sad which was profoundly unpleasant.

Finally, an opportunity arose. I have to give my mother credit for leaving the classified section of the newspaper open on the kitchen table, where my eye caught a listing for a Tuesday and Thursday afternoon volunteer position at the Ronald McDonald house. I did a little bit of online research and learned that the Ronald McDonald is like a free hotel for families of children who were being treated at the Children’s Hospital of Chicago, mostly for cancer but for other illnesses as well. They needed a volunteer to babysit the healthy siblings, and occasionally help with record-keeping.

Surprisingly, my parents argued against it, wondering if I wasn’t over-extending myself with a volunteer position in addition to track and school, but I convinced them it would help me decide if I wanted to be premed in college. After a quick phone interview, I stopped by on a Saturday to fill out the paperwork. I was a little bit nervous about being around families dealing with such difficult issues, but felt that maybe in some way losing Scott would enable me to connect with them, in addition to helping me heal. One Tuesday afternoon in, I knew I had made the right decision, and for the first time in months looked forward to the end of practice two days a week again.