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His name? I don’t know his name. Eli mentioned it to me, said he knew him in high school, he graduated a year before us. So.
Where did he go? What did he do? He went to the community art college. What did he major in? I didn’t ask.
But he was riding his bike when the car hit him. It was all over the news for a day. I missed it. One of my co-workers mentioned it to me, and I was sad for him in that mild way that I am always sad for someone I have never met. I used to take each anonymous death as a personal affront by God, but it didn’t bother me so much now. I no longer had the energy to weep for the world. I was looking for an apartment. I had my own problems.
What was he like? He was a nice guy. That was the consensus. What else would people say about a kid who had just died? What was he doing? He was on his bike, of course. He was riding on Sawmill at nighttime. Did he have a car? Where was he going? Why at night? Did he have a girlfriend? I asked these questions.
“He was just riding his bike,” Eli said.
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t believe it, but it was probably true. I liked complications before deaths. I didn’t like them being so simple. That’s a problem, I know. It says more about me, but I’m not sure what it says.
“He knew a lot of people,” Eli said. “Everyone’s pissed. They’re not going to let him get away with it, like—everyone’s involved now, everyone’s looking for this guy.”
That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve heard. What are you going to do? Make a Facebook group? I don’t say this, of course. I think of kids writing “R.I.P” on their Facebook status page. I’ve come to realize these last few months that I dislike most people my own age. I’m nineteen. I hate nineteen year olds. I prefer to speak with twenty-something year olds. Not the ones in college. The ones out of college. I’m not in college. I hate college people. There’s something about them. Most of them. People in their thirties and forties interest me greatly, and I love my co-workers. I don’t tell them this, but I think of them as family. If one of them died, I would cry. I think of one of them on that bike to put me in a somber mood. I think of Heidi on that bike, and my blood boils. If anyone hurt Heidi.
“I hope they find the fucker,” I say.
“Oh, we will,” said Eli. “We’re going to find him.”
Then I remember how fucking stupid his conviction is. We’re driving to Meijer. We’re picking up snacks. It’s dark out, around the same time when he died two days ago, maybe three. I don’t know. All I know is that he was riding his bike at night on Sawmill road when a car came and hit him. The impact was so great that both wheels were torn loose from the bike and his body spiraled, hit somewhere on the pavement, and I don’t know. No one knows the details of the body.
I think of myself on that bike. I’m riding at night and I’m thinking of Heidi, like I have been every night, these last few nights, when walking or riding my bike, and maybe I’m listening to music. Do I die instantly? Or am I airborne and I can see the pavement which I’m about to hit? What’s in my head? Who do I think of? What do I think of? There are lots of things. Which one is the last? I don’t know. And what if it really was instant? Just like that. Riding my bike, listening to a slow jazz, thinking of Heidi, and then I black out as if I had fallen asleep but this time I don’t wake up. All the things I wanted to do and say. I don’t like death being that simple.
He was a year older than us. He’s dead now. His name? I don’t know, but I hear he was a nice guy. We’re going to Meijer and we’re getting snacks. I’m listening to Eli talk and I wish he would be quiet. I wish I was with Heidi.
The End
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