I’m buying my gravestone today, not because I expect to die soon—I’m only twenty-six—but because I could.
I could get in a head-on collision and die instantaneously.
I could contract a terminal illness and die after weeks of fighting.
I could get stabbed in the heart by the end of a somersaulting sun umbrella on a windy day at the beach and die, if not immediately, then soon after.
The point is, I could die at any moment with two living parents who would choose some tacky, pink, heart-shaped granite headstone for my grave and write Beloved Daughter on it with the emblem of a cross or some other religious symbol above my name, and that is not happening.
I scan the lawn of headstones for sale, wondering which one would suit me forever. A classic black rectangular slate? A white marble one in the shape of a book?
I wish you were here. You’d know which one I should choose.
I was shocked when you called me two weeks ago to ask if you could still use my PlayStation 2 whenever you wanted like I’d said you could when we were six. Namely, because we hadn’t spoken in over three years, but also because you knew I’d gotten rid of my PlayStation 2 when we were still in high school.
While you waited on the other end of the line for my response without laughing, I realized that you just needed to hear me say yes. You needed to know we were still friends forever like we’d said on every birthday card from ages six to twenty-three. Like we’d said before falling asleep at every sleepover. Like we’d said at the end of every fight but one.
Of course, I said no, you could not use my PlayStation 2 whenever you wanted. I wanted you to know we were not friends forever. We weren’t even friends.
We would’ve been had you not left our apartment without finding me a new roommate. Had you not left without saying goodbye, without telling me you were leaving as in not coming back. All you did was send me a text saying you were going to your parents’ for a while and you’d be back when you were ready.
I found out you were gone for good when our landlord came over and screamed at me for only paying half the rent two months in a row. I freaked. I thought you were dead. No rent for two months? Without telling me? I barged into your room to prove you were still living there, but everything was gone except Henrietta’s cage. She was inside it, dried up like a piece of leather—two months without food or water. Who cared if your room was empty? Surely you were dead if you hadn’t come back for your lizard.
But you weren’t. You’d posted a photo on Instagram the day before of you hugging a girl we hated in high school captioned, Life is better with true ~~and CRAY CRAY~~ friends!!!
You were too selfish to be dead.
As I stare out across the sea of gravestones, a balding pot-bellied salesman strolls over to me, swinging a bottle of orange Gatorade.
He’ll die soon, I’m sure. Heart attack or lung cancer. He looks like a smoker and a drinker and a processed food consumer.
“Any of these striking your fancy?” He motions to a group of sweatpant-grey stones cut into shapes like children’s swimming trophies, police badges, children’s toys, and chess pieces.
“Um…” I picture someone kneeling in front of a teddy bear with my name on it, crying while staring at a stuffed-animal-shaped slab, the color reminding them of practices with their high school sports team. Definitely not. I point to a white marble book-shaped headstone. “How much for one of those?”
“Great choice, classy and timeless. Marble books go for fifteen hundred apiece.”
My face twists in outrage. “All that for a rock?”
“An eternal rock,” he says, “and the eternal part don’t come cheap.”
“How can you guarantee me this rock will last for all of eternity?”
“Well, no one can guarantee you that, but what I can guarantee you is that I’ll give you the best shot at it.”
I sigh in resignation and point to the plain black slate headstones in the back corner. “I like those too.”
“Who’s it for? Grandma? Grandpa? Mom? Dad?”
“Me.”
He laughs. “A woman who thinks ahead. I like it. I like it. I had a customer once, bought six different gravestones before he died because he couldn’t make up his mind. Cost him a whole lotta green, so we better make sure you get it right the first time.” He looks me up and down. “The perfect gravestone for you…” His eyes jump from one stone to the next as he rubs his chin. “I’d picture you as a…” He walks across the lawn and places his bottle of Gatorade on a granite heart, the kind I imagined my parents would pick for me. “Cute heart-type. Plus they’re on sale for a thousand bucks.”
It annoys me that he assumes I’d want a heart just because I’m a girl. I shake my head. “I’m the one dying, and I want the simple black.”
He puts his hands up as if I’ve pointed a gun at him. “All right, black slate it is.”
We go inside the little trailer next to the lawn, and he rings up the black slate headstone. Eight hundred dollars, a steal in the world of death.
“Want any decoration on that?” he asks. “Jesus, a cross, Star of David, flowers, hearts, an engraving of your face? We can do anything you want, only nothing offensive or dirty.”
Will I want flowers when I’m dead? I have the urge to text you, ask what you think, but of course, I can’t.
I know it hurt when I said you couldn’t use my PlayStation 2 whenever you wanted, but some things don’t last forever. And if you had just apologized instead of moving out of our apartment without telling me all because I said you were the worst best friend in the entire world for kissing Roberto, you never would’ve not been able to play my PlayStation 2 in the first place.
“Flowers,” I say. “I want flowers.”
When we moved into our apartment, you hung dried flowers from the front door to inform visitors we were women with refined taste. They’re still there, you know. And even though I said you couldn’t play my PlayStation 2 anymore, the sentiment of friends forever was there before Roberto, which was beautiful, even if it wasn’t forever.
Three weeks later, the gravestone arrives at what used to be our—but at what is now mine and Brie’s—apartment. The deliverymen place it under the window in the living room.
Brie examines it, frowning. “Is this supposed to be a joke?”
“No.” I step in front of my freshly cut and engraved headstone.
“Well, I hate it. When are you moving it?”
“When I die.”
She laughs, but I’m not kidding.
You would’ve known I was serious, and you never would’ve asked when I was going to move it because you would’ve understood.
What I want to say is, yes, you can still use my PlayStation 2 whenever you want. And I’m sorry I called you the worst best friend in the entire world all because of that moron, Roberto. You weren’t. You were amazing, the best friend anyone could ask for.
Like when we were six, and I was sleeping over at your house for the first time. I cried because I missed my mom, and you let me sleep with your favorite stuffed pig.
And there was the summer I got pneumonia, and you stayed inside with me for two weeks playing Parallel Fortune III.
And in eighth grade, when I got my period and it leaked through my pants, you brought me to the locker room and gave me your gym shorts.
And then, there was that time we were drunk in Jeremy O’Neill’s basement, and he stuck his hand up my shirt even though I didn’t want him to, so you punched him in the neck.
And when I got fired from Dos Gatos and couldn’t pay my half of the rent, you covered for me with the money from your grandmother’s inheritance.
I could go on forever, and I would if I could call and tell you all of this now, but I can’t because you’re dead in the ground with your own gravestone your parents picked for you—heart-shaped with the emblem of a cross above your name.
It’s impossible to imagine you’re under there, but you are, and I miss you.
Mairéad Kiernan is an Irish-American writer born in Boston, Massachusetts. Her stories have appeared in Erotic Review and NewWriting.net. She has an M.A. in Creative Writing: Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia, and she currently lives in New York City. Twitter: @maikiernan Instagram: @maireadkiernan
Photo by Meruyert Gonullu.