Today was the funeral (or, rather, is the funeral, because I'm not sure if it's still going on or not) of a police officer who was accidentally shot by another officer in a robbery near my home. I don't know the story too well, but the community seemed deeply affected by it. My friend's sister's friend was the daughter of this officer, and almost everyone has a story similar to that.
I don't even know what his name was.
But today was his funeral, and they completely closed down this busy street by my school for the procession. And, what's more, the teachers made every single student during access be taken outside and made stand in a line solemnly and watch the cars go past.
Pen and I had to come in to Ms. Comma's class near the end of lunch, before the street was closed, because we didn't understand the concept of an essay apparently. About seven or eight other sevies had to go in to make up work and read and stuff, and we were all in there when everyone was taken outside and stood in a line in the parking lot.
Eventually Pen and I understood the whole five paragraph thesis thing, so we just hung out and ate cookies and would think of secrets and tell them. Such as:
"Hey hey Pen! Do you wanna hear a secret??"
"Yeah!!"
"...office supplies make me giddy!"
or:
"Hey hey Shady!! Do you wanna hear a secret??"
"Yeah?"
"...I love you!"
And so forth. Eventually the kids in the room got sick of working and started listening in, and Ms. Comma said we might have to leave if we were a distraction (which we always are). But we knew we weren't going to leave. So then I had to whisper REALLY REALLY LOUDLY:
"HEY PSST MS. COMMA!"
"...YES?"
"DO YOU WANT TO KNOW A SECRET ABOUT ME?"
"...YES?"
".........I SIGN MY NAME IN CAPITAL LETTERS BECAUSE IT MAKES ME SEEM IMPORTANT."
"But you are important."
"Oh really?"
"Yes."
"Well then."
And the bell rang for the end of lunch. The classroom tensed. We looked outside.
The funeral procession had not ended, and huge crowd of students and teachers was standing in the cold. It wasn't a horribly suffering cold, it was just more annoying than anything else, with that gray frost that would blow through the stitches in your jacket and make your nose all red and runny. It was messy. We didn't want to go out there.
Ms. Comma said we should probably stay in the classroom until the rest of the school came inside, which we did. She took out some cards and a couple boys said they wanted to play Go Fish, only they didn't know how to play, so I said I would teach them.
Pen and me and four nerdy seventh grade boys sat in desks in a small awkward circle. "Okay." I said. "We gonn' play Go-Go Fish. You know the rules of Go-Go Fish? ...Anyone?" Ms. Comma looked at me sideways. She was smiling.
Nobody knew how to play.
I shuffled the deck. "Okay people." I said. "We gonn' play da ghetto Go Fish, an' dis one gonn' be a li'l violent, an' somebody might get SHOT so y'all watch out." <---((this is abridged. I don't remember what I actually said, but it was a lot longer and drawn-out and maybe a little less ghetto.))
Seventh grade video game nerd boys generally do not have good experiences with eighth graders.
They. Were. Terrified.
I shuffled and passed out seven cards to each person, and set the rest of the deck on Pen's desk. I told them that they could only look at their cards and COULD NOT under ANY circumstances let their cards be seen by any other living being. Or else they would blow up.
Also, there was no talking allowed. You would start by making eye contact- at this point I looked at one kid by the name of Robert and widened my eyes and turned my head back, and he did the same, and it was wonderfully awkward for a good five seconds before I continued. You would also have to ask the person you have made eye contact with what cards they had by hand gestures: you hold up the number of fingers your card is, and if it's a Jack or a Queen or a King, then you would make that letter with your hands.
When you find a match, you put it on the Pair pile next to the deck.
If you mix up the two piles, you explode.
If you talk, you expode.
If you don't make eye contact with someone for a considerable length of time, you explode.
After some time of learning the rules with a hilarious fear and caution, the boys finally figured out that Go-Go Fish was completely made up. One small boy with green eyes and fluffy short hair and freckles finally figured it out and voiced it aloud when I told them that it was also a mix of Old Maid and Uno, so when the entire deck of cards is used up and the last person who hasn't blown up has the Joker in his hand and screams out "GO-GO!", they win.
Pen did not appreciate the rules of Go-Go Fish, and spent much of the time chatting about Harry Potter and Minecraft and cats with her new best friends, who stood awkwardly beside the preppy-pretty-nice girl and smiled as she would say to the teacher across the room, "Ms. Comma, these people are just so wonderful, they're like my BEST FRIENDS." and Ms. Comma would say "Making new friends is good," or something like that.
Sometimes she would hear me making up new rules and look over from her computer out of the corner of her eye and try very, very hard not to laugh.
The game of Go-Go Fish was not finished when the bell for the beginning of the last period of the day rang. Ms. Comma made me go down to the library to see if there was anybody there.
I felt the emptiness before I saw it. Every single classroom was empty.
Every.
Single.
One.
The library contained nothing but books, and, strangely, Jon Cha typing alone at an open laptop.
"Um. Jon?"I said.
"Yes?" he said.
"Is anybody in here?"
"Nope." he said.
I ran up the stairs and around the seventh grade hallways. The freedom was so tangible you could almost reach out and touch it, and taste it, and hold it in your hand. It was like Narnia, only so much bigger. It was an entire kingdom, abandoned. We were runaways, escaping the Standing Ceremony outside for death, for an improvised game of go fish, celebrating life.
I came into the classroom with a sly look of excitement and glee. Ms. Comma knew that it meant there was no one at all anywhere and we were alone and we weren't supposed to be and we were probably going to get in trouble.
Ms. Comma tries very, very hard not to get in trouble.
She looked out the window, and the other kids all flocked around the glass and smudged it with their face grease. "Please oh please don't make us go out there!" they said. "Just- tell them we were locked in! Tell them we had to stay back to do work, and- that- that we didn't know the ceremony had started! Tell them anything!!"
Ms. Comma was making a decision. She kept whispering shh, almost to herself, in a strange way of clearing her mind, which the children heeded just a little and crept around the classroom waiting to see what would happen. We kept pleeding with her and making up more convincing arguments and excuses and the decision was made when she went up to Gunner, a tall boy with longish hair that really really liked Madi and was the only one who wanted to go outside. "Gunner," she said.
"...Would you like some fruit snacks?"
It was genius. We stayed inside the whole rest of the day, eating fruit snacks and playing cards, and were told that if anyone asks, we were inside working on homework.
Our excuses were extremely convincing.
I was playing speed with Robert, and Pen was sitting watching us, and the kid said
"You know that cop who died?" and there was a smiled stitched onto each end of the question.
"Why would you smile saying that?!" Pen laughed.
It was quiet in the room, so I think the other few kids heard our conversation. We were a little ashamed, you could tell. We kept wandering over to the windows, watching the kids outside coughing and shivering and sometimes singing to pass the time, all very sad and serious. The feeling of death was prevailant in the skies outside, but inside, we were laughing.
"Why is it funny?!" we laughed.
"I don't even know!!" Robert laughed back.
But oh, it felt so good. We knew that what had happened was wrong. We knew death was wrong. We knew that bad things happen and that they shouldn't, and that the community was strong and that sometimes pain was stronger, but...I don't know.
Sometimes it feels good to remember, when your best friend is writing the names of all the Minecraft nerds in the room under the heading "Pen's Best Friends", and when your teacher is playing cards and laughing at your jokes, and the entire building is empty and it feels like you're the only one left living...
...sometimes it feels good to remember... that life feels really good. (:
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