Gone Too Soon

Tommy raised the rifle to his shoulder and quickly rounded the corner, taking a knee as he entered the hallway. His finger hovered over the trigger while he peered down the corridor through the gun’s sights, patiently waiting for any sign of movement. Through his peripherals, he counted the rooms. Three total. Two on the right at either end. One on the left in the middle. He would need to zigzag down the hallway to clear them one at a time. All three rooms had their doors shut, and Tommy couldn’t decide if he was grateful or suspicious of their isolation. Moving his feet as softly as possible, he slowly crept along the right side of the hallway until he reached the first door. 

Keeping the gun shouldered with one arm, he reached for the door with the other.

He felt his heartbeat rise as he swiftly twisted the handle and thrust open the door. The light from the hallway broke through the room’s darkness, and his eyes raced to cover every square inch of the half-lit space. He crept along the wall to his right to prevent being a target in the doorway but the room seemed clear. Brushing up against a light switch, he flipped it and looked around once more. 

Tiny towers of cardboard boxes were stacked in one corner of the room, and the bare walls shined with fresh paint. A mattress laid on the floor, its corners ringed with the carpet imprints of a bed frame now disassembled and stacked against the wall. The walk-in closet was bare except for a single coat hanging on the rack. The room was empty. No sign of Andrew. 

Tommy needed to focus on the task at hand, but he found his mind wandering as he turned around and made again for the hallway. Andrew was Tommy’s closest friend, and their bond was more similar to that of brothers. In fact, Tommy couldn’t remember a life without Andrew. Even some of his earliest memories involved him, with one particularly vivid moment occurring in the second grade.

A bully in their class named Adam had been picking on Tommy. His teasing started off innocently enough with nonsensical name calling and the occasional nipple pinch, but, over time, the situation escalated. Adam became more physically aggressive and hostile, and he seemed to seek more opportunities to harass Tommy. Andrew had noticed the confrontations and encouraged Tommy to stand up for himself, but Tommy insisted that he had it under control. As a child, he didn’t like the attention that stemmed from public confrontations so it was easier to let Adam have his moment than to cause a big scene.

Things ultimately came to a head though one Friday afternoon. The school cafeteria was serving their much anticipated end of the week pizza menu, and Tommy was walking to his friends’ table with a couple of slices on his tray. He noticed Adam approaching him but ignored the brute until he stepped directly in front of him, blocking Tommy off and getting within an inch of his face. Adam demanded that Tommy hand over his pizza, but Tommy, finally fed up with the taunting and not willing to sacrifice his Friday pizza, refused Adam’s demands and began to walk past him. Before Tommy could react, Adam forcefully grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him to the ground. Tommy watched as his tray clattered loudly across the floor and his pizza landed limply on the ground beside him. 

Expecting Adam to pounce, Tommy quickly rolled onto his back and protected his face. As he looked up though, he witnessed Andrew sprinting in from Adam’s side and leaping, soaring through the air with his fist raised high above his head. As he glided down in the slow motion of Tommy’s memory, Andrew’s fist connected directly with the bully’s chin, knocking him out cold for several minutes. Andrew and Tommy were both suspended. Adam got off without punishment, but he never messed with Tommy again after that day.

In the doorway, Tommy brought the rifle back to his shoulder and glanced around the corner into the hallway. All clear. He again walked slowly, quietly working his way up and across the hallway to the second room on the other side. As his feet softly stepped along the carpet, Tommy’s mind wandered back to the conversation that started everything. The news hadn’t hit him like he thought it would. He expected to feel a jolt, a panic, a sharp pain in the chest. He expected to feel a sudden attack of sorrow and tears that could not be stopped. Instead, he didn’t feel anything. The world around him had seemed to go gray, and his mind retreated inward, putting his body on autopilot as he processed the information. Andrew was moving. Out of town, out of state. Away from Tommy.

He felt his heart begin to race again as he reached for the handle on the second door. There were only two rooms left to hide in, and Tommy had already searched the first floor. Andrew was close. Taking a deep breath, he twisted the doorknob and quickly entered the room. Moving along the wall, his eyes darted from shadow to shadow as the hallway’s light filled the dark space, revealing a number of nooks to hide within. Any stray movement or flicker could indicate immediate danger. 

Not sensing any movement, Tommy turned on the lights. Like the room before, small castles of cardboard boxes cluttered the walls, and the uniform lines in the carpet revealed the recent touch of a vacuum. A single couch sat in the middle of the room and faced a wide, high resolution TV mounted on the wall. A heavily worn coffee table occupied the space between them.

Tommy approached the coffee table and ran his hand over the mural of stains and scratches. He swore he remembered a few. There was the blue acrylic paint that a seven year old Andrew spilled one day during an arts and crafts experiment. Hardly legible letters were crudely carved into one of the legs. A poor attempt by a young Tommy and Andrew to lay claim to the table as property shared between them. The tabletop edges were stripped completely of their paint from years of lazy legs and shoe soles resting on them.

The numbness and confusion Tommy felt when he first learned that Andrew was moving only seemed to last a few days, but the feelings that returned were dark. He felt hurt and betrayed. His mind kept returning to old memories and reliving what would now become their “glory days”. They had been friends their whole lives, and their entire childhoods were spent growing up and playing within the walls of this very house. Tommy viewed Andrew as indispensable to his life and feared a world where he couldn’t see his friend whenever the time felt right. He had assumed that Andrew felt the same. Yet, Andrew had seemed excited about the move when he broke the news to Tommy. Notwithstanding their entire history together, he was fully willing and even joyful about abandoning their friendship and the times they shared.

After Tommy learned the news, he retreated to his own house for a few days. It was hard to see Andrew and act as though life was normal. How could he laugh at his friend’s jokes without feeling the pain of his immediate departure? How could they hang out and gossip knowing their social circle was soon to be broken? Andrew wasn’t just moving down the street. He was moving six hours away. Processing the information, Tommy had become angry, furious even, particularly at how happy Andrew seemed as his family prepared the logistics for their big move. He began questioning everything in a spiral of hate for himself and for Andrew. Had their friendship meant anything? Was Tommy such a bad friend that Andrew felt it beneficial to move? Why would he leave without him?

One room left. Tommy brought the rifle to his shoulder and made for the hallway. After checking for movement, he quietly crept to the final door, where he stood staring at the doorknob, his breath quickening. The steady stream of memories that he and Andrew had created would be cut short, and Andrew didn’t seem to care. A quick and curt end to what otherwise could have been a lifelong friendship. Grabbing the handle, Tommy took a deep breath and threw open the door.

As the light from the hallway lit up the room, he lifted his weapon and noticed another mattress laying bare on the ground with a few towers of boxes stacked two high next to it. Scanning quickly for the known threat nearby, Tommy stopped. Through his sights, he saw what he thought was the shape of a head peeking out slightly from the top of the cardboard stacks. It was Andrew.

Tommy started stepping in the direction of the boxes, his gun fixed on the head showing above them. His anger and resentment had grown the closer it got to moving day, but he attempted to move on in spite of it. Stray connections and little known acquaintances were peppered with texts and social media comments as he tried to meet new people. Old friends were given a fresh spark as he tried to find a proper substitute for his best friend. He had even tried a “dating app” that was designed just to make new friends. The circumstances forced him to contemplate a life without his friend, and he tried to be social to replace the loss. All of it though, was futile. No matter how hard he tried or how far he branched out, Tommy realized that he would never find another friend like Andrew again.

The head behind the boxes suddenly turned, revealing the pimple speckled face of a teen who looked at him with determination. Tommy noticed him quickly raising his hands and decided that he couldn’t wait any longer. He would miss Andrew, but Tommy had already mourned his loss. 

He squeezed the trigger.

As the weapon fired, Tommy felt the familiar, faint recoil of it in his hands. Holding his aim, he watched as the flurry of foam bullets exited the plastic gun in rapid succession and sailed across the room to their target. The spread of the bullets was abysmal with most smacking the wall or landing noiselessly on the ground a few feet away from their target. A few though were right on mark. Tommy heard a grunt and laughed as several of the plastic tipped projectiles struck Andrew in the forehead and bounced off of his skin with a slight slap. He threw the gun on the mattress, chuckling as he sat down on the floor. Andrew, recovering from the onslaught, threw his gun next to Tommy’s and walked over to join him. He rubbed at the little red welts that were starting to form on his forehead. 

“I didn’t think you were ever going to find me. I was waiting up here forever.”

“I’d say you’re improving then,” Tommy said with a laugh, “When we were kids, I used to find you in seconds.”

The two teens sat in the packed up, soon to be abandoned room and reminisced.  They reenacted several of the most athletic and clumsy moments from their many Nerf battles, and long settled arguments over who won which war resurfaced. They remembered their classmates as children, and the time that Andrew knocked out Adam in the second grade. Neither knew what he was up to nowadays. They continued talking, a consistent echo chasing their words in the bare walled room. Minutes turned into hours as the boys reveled in their shared childhood. 

Tommy yawned as he realized it was getting late. “What time are you heading out tomorrow?”

Andrew leaned his head back and groaned. “Eight in the morning. My mom says the movers are getting here at six and shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. After they’re wrapped up, we’ll hit the road.”

An early start for a long drive away, thought Tommy. He had experienced the mind-numbing confusion and anger that came with knowing his best friend would be leaving him. As he learned more about the situation though, he realized that, while sadness was inevitable, his anger was selfish. Andrew had explained to Tommy that his father was laid off and couldn’t seem to find work locally. After expanding his search, his dad did eventually find employment, a much better job in fact, but it came at the expense of location. The new position required the family to move out of state.  

Tommy was ashamed that he felt angry about the move. He completely understood the circumstances, and, because he was so close to Andrew’s family, he wanted nothing but the best for them. If a move meant a better life for them then they deserved to move. He was happy for Andrew too. Of course Andrew had been excited when he broke the news of the move to Tommy. He was about to embark on a new experience, an opportunity to travel outside of the town they lived in their entire lives, a chance to meet people outside of their normal social circles.

They had talked countless times about uprooting from their ramshackle hometown and making a life for themselves in a new city. Their hometown was nothing more than a speck of hilly farmland, and both of them hated it. As kids, Tommy and Andrew were forced to create their own games because there was simply nothing to do. They slept at night dreaming of massive arcades and video game conventions but spent every Saturday playing Nerf wars and climbing what trees they could find in the woods outside. 

Tommy realized in the weeks after learning the news that he wasn’t angry at Andrew for moving, he was envious. They had made plans to leave together but now Andrew was leaving alone, and leaving Tommy behind. He knew though that Andrew had no choice in the matter. His friend deserved to be excited at this spontaneous chance of escape, and he didn’t deserve to be punished by Tommy’s own feelings of insecurity. He knew that he needed to cherish every moment that the pair had left together. Anything left unresolved after Andrew left was between Tommy and his own thoughts. There would be time to process it all later.

He checked the time on his phone.

“Well, I better get out of here. I know you have an early start tomorrow.”

Andrew rolled his eyes. “It’s only a six hour drive. I don’t understand why we need to be up at the crack of dawn.”

The boys laughed and headed downstairs. On the first floor, Tommy noticed the rest of Andrew’s family in the living room watching a movie. Holding back tears and trying not to let his voice crack, Tommy announced that he was heading home. One by one, he hugged his second family - his mom, his dad, and his sister. They had all been as much of an influence on his life as his own family, and he was already excited for the next opportunity to see them. Giving everyone one final wave, Tommy headed for the front door with Andrew and stepped outside. 

As they walked down the driveway, Tommy was surprised at how comfortable he felt. He knew that he would be lonely for a while. He knew that he would be sad, and occasionally jealous. But, he knew that this was an opportunity for him as well. An opportunity to meet new people and socialize beyond the confines of Andrew’s house. An opportunity to adventure solo and learn more about himself as an individual outside of his normal pairing. And, in a few years when he left for college, he too would be able to leave this place and find a new home. Stopping at the street, Tommy turned to his friend and gave him a hug. He knew this wasn’t the end, they had already planned out when Tommy would come for his first visit in the new home, but he didn’t know how else to say goodbye.

As they separated, Andrew took a few steps backwards towards the house.

“Well, it’s been a good run,” he said, sniffling through a runny nose.

Tommy laughed and wiped a tear from his eye. “It sure has been. I’ll miss you, man.”

“I’ll miss you too.”