Entropy
The future is bright because there is no God in it, is what Elijah used to say. And I always thought he was just being a smug asshole, since he knew I went to church every Sunday, and every time he told me the statistics that Americans are slowly losing their religion over time, especially young people like us, and that if I only had half a brain, eventually I’d join them, or at least in a generation or two my kids or their kids would, I’d tell him that’s okay, because it would just mean more room for me in heaven.
Statistics can tell you all kinds of interesting things, like that twenty-three percent of Americans are religiously non-affiliated, or that three percent identify as atheist. Or that the average male life expectancy in the United States is seventy-nine years. Statistics can tell you all kinds of interesting misshapen things.
Now that he’s dead, I think about it more. Like when someone says to you, don’t think about pink elephants, and you can’t possibly think about anything else.
I never thought about God. Even in church I don’t think about God. I just think about the countdown to the Knicks game or what I’m gonna have for lunch once I get out of church, or what I’m gonna say to Jamie when I see her in homeroom. But now it’s in my head and I wonder how I ever used to go around without thinking about it before.
I don’t think I’ve changed my mind about heaven and hell and God and believing, because nothing Elijah ever told me explained things better, but maybe I could’ve at least paid attention.
I try to reconstruct the things he used to say, but at best I can just barely hear his voice, and it’s just a whisper of random words. What I do know is that everyone else talking about him—what a tragedy it all is, deciding how to honor him—they’re getting it all wrong.
All this crap everyone is saying about how beautiful and wonderful he was, how we’re all going to miss him, how his smile would brighten up their day—he didn’t like them. They didn’t like the things he believed in about thinking past what people were preaching. Guilty as charged.
The popular kids are crying on each other’s shoulders and patting themselves on the back for their beautiful tributes in the school newspaper. They’re all so hurt that he’s gone and left us, but at least he’s moved on to a better place. And I hope he has, but I know that’s not what he believed.
He’d tell me he’s rotting in the ground, and the instant his brain stopped getting oxygen, and his neurons stopped firing, he slipped away until he was gone, even with his heart still beating, because he told me there was no soul, and we don’t exist in our hearts—we are in our brains and minds, which are really one and the same, and over time the universe becomes more disordered, and things decay and fall apart and stay that way.
I wish I’d listened to him more, not to change my own beliefs, but just so I could know exactly what he’d want me to say to all these posers coming out to bless his immortal soul and wish him well on his journey and thank him for touching their shallow empty lives. I’m pissed, because every time I hear someone talk about him smiling down from heaven I think, no he’s not, either because he’s not there or because, if he is, he’d be too pissed off that he was wrong all along to be smiling.
But there is one day a year that I know exactly how he would feel and what he would say, because every year in the first week of school our principal holds a Non–9/11 Memorial Pep Rally.
By the time we made it to high school, Principal Parcels had his rally routine pretty much nailed down. I mean, he’d been doing it for about ten years. I thought Elijah really threw him a curveball with that whole dying thing, but I was wrong; he really knew exactly what he was going to do with that. He came right up to the mic, entire school, faculty, students, and staff alike, and opened the same way he did every year: “This pep rally is not about 9/11. This is about togetherness and community, not about the terrible damage done on that bleak and blackest day.”
Another thing Elijah would’ve had fun with—the worst days are always the blackest ones.
“No, this is a day to celebrate how we have come together these past insert number of years here, and how we will continue to overcome. Let me remind you that today may be September The Eleventh”—the “The” is placed for dramatic emphasis, because dates always sound more important that way—“but we are not gathered here to wallow in the dark mire”—dark mire, of course—“of that day, but to rally around each other, as a school, as classmates, teachers, and students, and most importantly as a family. Blood may not bind us, but doubt me not”—this is where he goes all Victorian on us—“that there are ties stronger than blood, and that we are family; we are family, not by blood but by love. This rally is not about 9/11. This is about the spirit of our great nation, of familial bonds, and about coming together. Now say it with me: we are family!”
And that first chant always gets an awkward pause, not because we don’t know the routine by now, but because every goddamn year we have three hundred new freshman who have no idea what the fuck they’ve walked into and we have to chant until they realize we aren’t going home until we get this stupid goddamn chant right.
“We are family! We are family!” over and over. And then the big closer: “It was blank number of years ago today that a group of nineteen men committed these heinous acts of violence on our soil”—when else do you hear the words on our soil strung together if not after a terrorist attack?—“intended to take our freedoms away.
“But here we are, a family, together. I ask you, did they succeed? Did they succeed?” he yells, really belting out that second one.
“No!” we yell.
“No, they did not!” he yells. “No. They. Did. Not. This is not a rally about 9/11,” which is always the last time he says “9/11” in his speech, and was always the time Elijah would turn to me and Robbie and give us his running count of 9/11s, which maxed out at thirty-one times one year.
“This is about us. It’s about you, and me, and what we intend to do with these precious freedoms that those men tried and failed miserably at excising from the firm grasp of our nation. I ask you students, what will you make of yourselves this year? What will you do with your hard-won freedom that so many brave men and women sacrificed their lives for on that day and in the ensuing weeks? How will we keep our fearless heroes in our minds today, and for another year?”
I’ll be honest with you—back when I was a freshman, right around that part, it really got me. I thought, damn, that’s some real shit. I mean he was right, what did D’Shaun’s big brother die pulling people out of the rubble for? So I could fuck around another year with B-plus grades and nothing to show? Just because it’d been ten years, did that give me a free pass to wipe the memory of Prateek’s uncle, or Dominick’s cousin, or Mrs. Leventhal’s husband?
Parcels hit me hard with that shit. But then I didn’t feel it so hard, because the next thing he said, and the next thing he’d say for three more years of high school, was this:
“Tomorrow, we face a new day, and a new challenge. Tomorrow is September twelfth, a day that will not be found in the history textbooks, because on that day insert number of years ago, we all woke up, and we fought, and we lived, and we endured, because we had not lost, and we would not lose.
“So I ask you, the future of this great nation, when the dawn comes, and the burning red sun rises up over the ashes as it did all those years ago, will you concede? Will you give in to those immovable forces and people who seek to destroy you and your way of life? Will you falter in fear of the great losses of yesterday, or will you stand strong, united, as a family, as a community, as a nation, and lead your people to victory? What will you do tomorrow?” he shouts, the climax of the speech.
“What will we do tomorrow afternoon, at four p.m., when we face off against Hendricks High? Will we lose?”
And the force of a thousand voices, students and teachers and staff, blast back in unison, “NO!”
“Will we concede?”
“NO!”
“Will we falter?”
“NO!”
“What will we do?”
“WIN!”
“WHAT WILL WE DO?”
“WIN!”
“AGAIN!”
“WIN!”
“AGAIN!”
“WIN!”
“NOW TELL ME THREE TIMES, WHAT WILL WE DO TOMORROW WHEN WE STEP ON THAT FIELD?”
“WIN! WIN! WIN!”
“Now let’s go kill those bastaaaaaaaaaards!”
That last part is actually what Elijah yelled, since no one could hear him over all the screaming, which wasn’t a bad way to close a shitty pep rally if you ask me.
So how did Parcels throw Elijah’s death into the mix this year? The only difference was that he swapped half the “9/11s” for “the tragic loss of one our best and brightest,” and at the end he implored us to overcome, not for ourselves, but for the fallen, for America, and for Elijah. And then no one screamed for us to go kill those bastards.
Robbie and I sat quietly in the bleachers, no 9/11 counting and no snarky crap about the not-so-subtle racism of color imagery, just silently listening to the class president, the head cheerleader, the football captain, the step team captain, and every other captain, corporal, and asshole in between tell us about Elijah’s departed soul and the love he had for us all, and to send our thoughts and prayers to his family.
And then Parcels finished with a moment of silence, and I remembered something. Finally, something came back that Elijah said to me, and his voice came rushing back into my head, and I just started laughing, because I had him with me for a little bit. And you know what it was? He told me that moments of silence are just stealth prayers.
When he first told me that, I laughed because it got me thinking of a priest who was like a top secret spy, like the James Bond of priests who would sneak into a top secret building and throw crucifixes at bad guys like ninja stars and then he’d get to the big vault with the secret files and say ten Hail Marys and it would open and then he’d take a private jet back to the Vatican and have a martini.
I told him that and he called me an idiot and said that it’s just a way to allow school and publicly sanctioned prayers without being unconstitutional because it isn’t technically prayer.
I called bullshit because everyone just stands quietly and awkwardly waits during moments of silence, and no one is forcing them to pray.
He told me to pay closer attention next time.
And I finally remembered, so I looked around, and it was dead quiet, and everyone was just standing there like I expected.
But then I looked closer, and most people had their eyes closed and even though they weren’t speaking, half of them were moving their lips, and now that I was listening I could actually hear a few people here and there whispering prayers, and I looked down, and Parcels was mumbling to himself with his eyes closed and then he crossed himself and looked to the sky.
I mean, I wasn’t wrong, most people were still silent at least, but Elijah wasn’t wrong either. Foiled again by John Paul the Double-O-Seventh, Stealth Prayer Spy extraordinaire.
I started laughing again—I don’t know why it made me laugh to hear Elijah’s voice like that, but it was like he was telling me how much of a dumbass I was for never listening to him. It just made me really goddamn happy to hear his voice again. I couldn’t stop laughing. And then I heard Robbie sitting next to me say, “Fuck this noise,” and get up and walk out.
That’s how he is now. He can’t put up with shit like he used to. You’d think he was Elijah’s brother, but in some ways, I can see how it’s been harder for him than it has been for Elijah’s family. I mean, at least they all believe in that thoughts and prayers stuff. They get consolation: at least Elijah is in a better place. Not for Rob.
The two of us saw the school counselor together—we had a math test that we didn’t feel like taking. We didn’t say much, and once the second the bell rang we were out.
Afterward I asked him if he wanted to skip the history exam tomorrow and he just brushed past me.
He didn’t say anything the rest of the school day, but we walked home together, and out of nowhere he just goes, “You know, it must be so fucking hard for all these people, dealing with their feelings and shit. It must be so goddamn hard for the glee club, waking up tomorrow and being able to go to school and feel sad that some kid they walked past in the hallway once is dead. I mean that must feel real shitty. I can’t even imagine their pain. What a goddamn burden, to be alive, to have your freedom to do whatever the fuck you want while that kid down the block is finally truly free. I’m just so glad we can have these open and honest conversations together, you know, as a community, as a family—it must be a real comfort to Elijah knowing that he is in our thoughts and prayers. I hope his goddamn coffin isn’t soundproof.”
I was gonna tell him we probably didn’t have a glee club, but I didn’t think he was in the mood.
Long-term, I’m not worried about Elijah’s cousins, or even his parents. They have safety nets, hope that things will be okay, and I think I still have it, at least a little.
Like I said, it’s easy to believe in something that you never have to face. It was easier then. But Robbie doesn’t have a drop of that, and I can see him slipping. He cuts class when he used to just mail it in for an A-minus. In gym class he doesn’t go hard like he used to, and I think he got cut from baseball, but he won’t say.
I’m not sure if it’s my job to rope him in or not, but it might not matter since I don’t think I could if I tried. Yeah, we still hang out and play video games after school, probably a lot more than we used to, actually, but I can’t remember the last time we talked, about anything.
Everyone else is giving him slack, because what are you gonna do, get on the kid’s case for not taking out the trash, or come down on him for missing some homework? His best friend is fucking dead. If I didn’t at least still hope that maybe I’d see Elijah again someday, fuck, I’d skip class too. “Hey man, I know that you’re bummed that your buddy is rotting in the ground never to appear in any shape or spiritual form again, but maybe you should finish up your math homework.” That what I’m supposed to say?
The day we saw the school counselor, she told him that there’s no shame in being sad.
He said, “Sad is for kids whose hamster died, or for people who think their best friend lives forever in heaven. I’m not sad. I’m nothing.”
The thing for me is, everything else is exactly the same. Eight school periods a day, after-school practice, chores, video games, Scout meetings, weekend service projects, church, and youth group, but none of it feels the same.
Yeah, people pat me on the back more, and once in a while ask me how I’m doing, but the people and clubs and things haven’t changed, they just don’t hit me the same way. Everything that used to make me happy and sane and feel important, doesn’t. The more I think about things, the less I understand them. Why bother? I see Robbie and every time I think maybe he’s the only one who really gets it and everyone else is just fooling themselves with their grades and papers and words and thoughts and prayers and football games.
I think it’s weird that the more I think about Elijah being gone, the less sad I am, and the less I feel like I ever really knew him, and the harder and harder it is to hear his voice.
More and more I’m becoming less and less sad, and end up thoughtlessly playing Call of Duty, and more and more we’re skipping class and not giving a shit when teachers slowly decide that they’ve given us enough time to feel sad and start the lectures about responsibility and maturity and say things like, “You boys used to be such good kids,” with that patronizing phony soft I know I’m not your parent but I’m here for you tone. As if getting good grades or taking notes had anything to do with being a good person, or understanding anything about the whole goddamn world.
I don’t know how things will turn out, and I don’t know how I’ll ever snap out of this—it feels like I have a whole new brain with a whole new set of senses and thoughts, and my inner voice only happens to sound the same.
I don’t even know if there is such a thing as snapping out. Maybe this is just who I am now. But more than getting myself out of this funk, I hope that Robbie does. I hope he can get past feeling shitty and wondering what’s the point of anything, and get back to just being. I hope he can start doing shit without always wondering why, what’s the use, because I’m starting to think that I never will, and it fucking sucks.
I always assumed that God put us here, and now shit’s just happening. And when it’s over, you go up or you go down. It’s easy to follow assumptions when you never have to face them, like that your best friend would live long enough to graduate high school. Yeah, just like Elijah said, the future is real bright. What a smug asshole all the way.
JONATHAN GREEN
Jonathan Green was a research assistant in a biomedical engineering lab at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a Wilderness Explorer at Walt Disney World. He doesn’t know what mapping the audio-spatial fields of marmosets and teaching children about environmental conservation have to do with writing, but he hopes it sounds interesting.