We were walking up the cracked driveway that led through the blackened gates of the city cemetery when I turned to Randy and asked, “What do you even eat anymore?”

      Our footsteps were soundless—drowned out by the steady hiss of the traffic on Fulton Avenue. The elevated cemetery walls loomed over us.

      Without looking at me Randy answered, “Zach’s mom gives him some money to buy me food, but he always winds up spending it on beer for himself.” He spat on the ground. “He gets good beer, too.”

      The sky was silver and rippled with thin clouds. Late at night, when we first started walking, the rain had been falling in misty sheets. Now, in the early hours of the morning, with our knees swollen, our backs sore, and our toes numb, we were being drenched by hard, compact raindrops.

      Randy stopped walking. I walked a few steps ahead of him—keeping my back to him. I imagined his skin turning yellow—tight against the contours of his skull. I imagined his eyes rolling up in their sockets. I took a deep breath and turned around.

      His skin was still the same olive color it had always been. His hair, jet-black, was still rooted to his head. Beneath his soaked T-shirt I could see the cut of his muscular chest and shoulders.

      “Come on,” I said, “Let’s keep walking.”

      “Okay,” he said, still not looking at me. He sniffled a bit and continued, “But I need to sit down soon.”

      I wanted to say something comforting. But all I could come up with was, “Wipe your nose. Your snot’s running down your face.” And it just slipped out; I said, “You need to clean yourself up.”

      He said nothing but I could hear him grinding his teeth.

      As we got to the top of the driveway and entered the cemetery walls, I reflected on what had happened the night before. It all started out innocently enough; a few beers amongst a dozen friends, heartfelt goodbyes to those who were lucky enough to be leaving Grand Rapids behind for college. But then Randy’s mother called. She wanted to talk to Zach’s mother about how much longer her son planned to stay there, about whether or not he was still doing the drugs that had got him kicked out of her house in the first place. I remember the way the entire room had gone silent when Zach’s mom called down the stairs, “Randy, your mom is on the phone.” She paused for a second and then added, “I really think you ought to take this.”

      We left the footpath and wandered into the scattershot graves. In this section of the cemetery, there were mostly monuments. Tall, sculpted pieces of marble in the shape of angels and crucifixes rose from the ground.

      The grass of the graveyard was soft and wet.

      Randy stopped before a massive chunk of granite that rose about knee-high. He sat on it and took a soggy pack of Parliaments out of his pocket. He took out a book of matches and tore one loose. Cupping his fingers around the cigarette, he managed to get it lit. He offered it to me and I took it.

      “Thanks,” I said as he lit another one for himself.

      Randy put his elbows on his knees and leaned forwards. Then he laughed.

      “What’s so funny?” I asked him.

      He took a drag on his cigarette and smiled. “Just being here is funny,” he said. “The last time I was here I think I was nine-years-old.” He took another drag. “We were here for art class—doing grave rubbings, you know? Putting pieces of wax paper over the etchings on the grave and rubbing over them with red crayons. I went around and tried to find the graves that had the shortest life-spans on them. Like, ‘So-and-so was buried here, born 1932, died 1937.’ Those graves seemed so much more interesting to me—knowing that a kid was lying there under all that ground.”

      I listened to him and smoked my cigarette. I let the rain pelt me for all it was worth.

      “It wasn’t until I got home with my rubbing that I realized how scary that was,” Randy said. “I mean, I got home and took it out of my pocket and really looked at it. It was the scariest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. And maybe that’s what my mom sees in me.”

      Randy looked up at me and I looked back at him.

      “When are you gonna go home?” I asked him.

      The smile that crept over his face was sad, unknowing.

      I repeated myself. “When are you gonna go home?”

About the author:

David Peak is an MFA candidate in Columbia College Chicago's Creative Writing program. Most recently, his work has appeared in the anthology Abaculus 2007 and in No Touching Magazine. In the fall, he has a story appearing in Doorways Magazine.