Plastic Chairs

Sam didn't exactly know what he was doing here. He was sitting in a damp outdoor chair that had paint peeling on the back and grass stains on the front legs. He could feel the cold from the cool plastic seep into his legs despite the warm April air. Well, he reasoned, it was a chilly evening. Night just barely touching the golden horizon below the trees. Years ago, night was a time when all the best things happened. It was a time when all but the streetlights and headlights were on. It was a time when all the windows came down and all his spirits went up, up, up. 

Nowadays he seemed to be permanently tied to the ground. On his better days, it was just a few loose strings tugging on his sweatshirt or fingers, reminding him to keep his head out of the clouds. On bad days, it was like his feet were nailed to the sidewalk, which really sucked. How vaguely ironic, Sam thought. Staggering across the streets that you once skipped across, the unicorns and rainbows of childhood sparkling around you. 

If Marshall were here, he'd kick him for that unicorns and rainbows nonsense. 

"Don't ever say that around me again, Sam. People can hear you," he'd say. Remington would scoff and shove his shoulder too hard. 

"Leave him alone, Mars. What he really needs to work on is not being so damn dramatic all the time. 'Staggering across the streets you once skipped across'? Really, Sam?" 

Sam missed their banter. How easy it was. He can't believe he has to talk in past tense. He thought he was used to it after his dad and all, but it stung worse than that. He supposed that losing his only friends and motivation in life in a fire stung more than losing a man who drowned himself in beer. Sometimes Sam imagined his dad was stuck inside one, yelling and sputtering drunken pleas while Sam screwed the lid on and dropped the bottle in the recycling. 

Remi would slap the back of his head for being depressing. 

But he was depressed, wasn't he? Sitting in a cheap plastic chair on the ruins of a charred house in a grey hoodie certainly translated to him as depressing. He doesn't quite know what depression is exactly, though that could be because he's never been that low. Or, to flip it on its head, he was so depressed all the time that he was numb to it. 

Mars would tell him he was overthinking things. 

Yeah, Sam would say. I probably am. 

Depression was complicated. Sam didn't like complicated things. He liked simple things. Like brushing your teeth or riding a bike or sitting in a chair.

Which brings him back to the simple, plastic one he was currently slumped in. Another irony, he supposed. Sitting in a plastic chair facing the street he once skipped across while the burnt remains of Mars' house loomed behind him. 

God, he needed a drink. 

And he would buy one if he weren't eighteen. Not that that had ever stopped him before, but losing your friends in a fire puts unnecessary risks in perspective. Which brings him back to all the stupid things they did, the most reckless of which was breaking into Mars' mom's wine cabinet and swiping cigarettes from a drug store. 

That night, they had downed three bottles in the house behind him. 

They had burned through three packs of cigarettes behind the house. 

Sam didn't need a drink. He wasn't even sure he needed his friends back now. He loved Remi and Mars. He did. Didn't he? 

Sam squirms in his plastic chair, wondering how such a nondescript thing could make him ponder the degree of righteousness and morality a couple of teens possessed. But, he was quite comfortable where he sat, so he continued to let himself ponder whether he should allow doubt to slip into his mind. Doubt of his friends. Doubt of what exactly happened in the house behind him. Sam tries to remember what happened, but smoke and alcohol make things very, very fuzzy. And did he really want to remember what happened? Did he really want to think about it? Isn't that why people are depressed in the first place? Because people think and think and think about everything at once which will undoubtedly make you tired and then make you want to sleep and then make you want to not move which then makes you wonder what it would be like if you never moved again, which then makes you compare your current circumstance to the now miraculously appealing notion of never moving. Which then, of course, leads you to not want to breathe. At least that's how Sam thought it happened. But all of that is extremely complicated and as Sam has already expressed, he does not like complicated things. 

Which is why he is grateful for getting wasted on that night so that he doesn't have to remember every traumatic and complicated thing that happened that night. 

It's all fuzzy in his mind. 

Ignorance is bliss. 

Sam scoffs. 

What is he even talking about? He needed to get out of this chair. But getting out of the chair meant facing the house, which meant facing the things in his mind triggered by the house, fragmented as they may be. 

Remi would tell him to get out of the goddamn chair or else someone will see him and call the police for looking like a creep in a hoodie. And because he didn't want to get the cops involved (not because of anything else) he got up from the chair, dusted invisible specks of dirt from his thighs, and turned around. 

Sam inhales sharply. 

What a nightmare. 

He can barely picture what it looked like before it was burned. All that remains is a singed shell of wood beams and cinderblocks and ash. The beams resembled blackened ribs more than wood. The roof was completely and utterly gone, reduced to dust. All the doors and windows are gone too, and glass shards were scattered around like some sort of ward against coming within a 3 feet radius of the house. 

But, like the teenage dirtbag rebel he was or used to be, he stepped over the warded glass. But not before grabbing the blue-handled hammer and smashing his plastic chair to bits in a couple of brutal movements. 

Just adding to the nightmare, he supposed. 

But he did come here for a reason. A funeral ceremony of sorts. Sam had already been to both Remi and Marshall's funerals, suited in a black suit and tie that made him rub his neck at the memory of discomfort. He wanted to do his own funeral for them. With no one else around of course. Because when he was with his friends, no one else was there. 

It was just Sam and Remi and Mars.

Three peas in a pod. 

So he grabbed two of the largest remains of the plastic chair and walked through the ruins of the house. He probably still looked like a creep in a hoodie but hey, he was out of the chair. Remi would be proud of him for that. Mars would clap him on the back. That's what they did. Got him out of stuff. 

Got him out of detention, got him out of bed, got him out of church. 

Got him out of his head, out of all of those beer bottles his dad stuck him into. 

And now, they got him out of the chair. Their missions were complete and now he was sending them off into oblivion. Sam struck the broken floorboards and gravel and shattered it, revealing the dirt beneath. That's where he stuck the pieces of plastic. He fished the sharpies out of his pockets (red for Mars and purple for Remi) and sketched their names on the plastic with his awful, serial killer-looking handwriting. 

Then he stood and took a few steps back and admired his work. 

They looked like graves, which is what he intended. He cocked his head to the side. Something wasn't right. So he went back to the shattered chair and picked another big piece, wrote a name on it. 

When he placed it next to the others and looked back again, he was satisfied. 

"Mars," he said, pointing to the respective gravestone. 

"Remi," he recited tenderly. He always had a soft spot for her. Then he smiled and turned to the last jutting piece of plastic.

"Sam," he said. 

Then he turned and went to find a rope.