Seeing Off the Johns Read Online Free PDF Page B

college and the pros, sports or not, for the rest of his career. He gave a speech with as many sports analogies as he could fit in—he said the boys were running an option each with hands on the ball, each blocking for the other. He said that heaven was the end zone. He said that now they were in the stands cheering the rest of us on.
    Chon listened and clapped along with everyone else. He had arrived early for the service, but already the gym was standing room only. He stood in back and, tall as he was, could not see the front rows of the service, where he assumed Araceli would be.
    Throughout the service, the somber tone of the proceedings was disturbed by the sound of hyena-cackle laughing. People in the back of the gym where Chon was were exchanging confused looks and shaking their heads in disapproval. Single file linesformed on either side of the gym, leading up to where the Robisons and Mejias sat. When Chon got close to the front, he could see that the strange high-pitched sound wasn’t laughter, but Julie Mejia’s wails of grief.
    Chon was glad to see that there were not two closed caskets at the front of the gym when he got there. They had been left at the funeral home. There were only three very large pictures—one of each John’s yearbook photos at either end of the stage and one of them when they had beaten Pleasanton to earn a trip to State their junior year. They each had an arm around the other. With their free hands they held up #1s.
    Arn Robison and Andres Mejia were making an effort to shake the hand of every mourner who—out of respect or macabre curiosity—had taken a place in line to give their condolences. Angie Robison gave nods to people she knew and hugs to people she cared about and ignored the rest. Julie Mejia just cackled, clutching the arm of the son who was still with her. Goyo sat in a black suit and sunglasses, wiping his mother’s tears and caressing her face with his swollen right hand. Patchwork sutures on his fist stuck out ever so slightly, like tiny shoelaces that needed to be tied.
    Chon shook both fathers’ hands, telling them he was so sorry. He had come from audience left, meaning he met Arn Robison first. When he got to Andres Mejia, he saw the Monsevais family sitting behind the Mejias. Henry was with his father, there to comfort his uncle and aunt who acted as though they’d lost one of their own because, really, they had. Conspicuously—and to Chon’s great disappointment—Araceli wasn’t there.
    Sympathetic though he was to the families of the deceased, it was going to take more than a tragedy to quench his obsession. He still wanted to comfort Araceli, to make her feel better. He was removed from the initial shock of the Johns’ death, from the reality of life’s fragility and preciousness and whatever. His mind had wandered to more familiar selfish territory. He wanted to comfort her. He wanted to make her feelbetter. He wanted to save the day, to be her Band-Aid, her hero, to fill the roughly John-sized, boyfriend-sized void left in her heart.
    He was tired from having closed the store the night before and having had to open up at five that morning because Rocha called in sick and Ana didn’t answer her phone when Art called to ask her to cover. There was a bottleneck leaving the student lot. It was only 1:30 in the afternoon though. Chon would have time to go home, shower, and get to work on time. But he wouldn’t get any sleep before going in to work.
    He went to the funeral the next day with his family, even though he’d heard from Henry that Araceli wouldn’t be there either. It was as well-attended as the memorial service. People stood in the wings, vestibule, and stairs leading to the church. The Gonzales family arrived an hour and a half early, affording them a small stretch of the pew in the farthest back corner of the church. They watched two caskets carried into church, an experience