Ginnifer’s Grave
“Why’d you do it Gin?” I calmly sighed with my beige yellow acoustic guitar in my right hand while sitting beside my best friend in her makeshift grave by the railroad tracks. Gin loved the sound of guitars, she especially loved the way that I played. I never understood why Gin loved the way I played, I was a beginner and I was terrible.
“You’re not terrible, you just play differently than anybody else,” was always what Gin said every time I hit a wrong chord. Gin loved being different, she felt as being different was her purpose in life, “standing out” is what she called it. The way Gin talked was different than anybody else, the way she walked was different, and even her name was spelled differently than any other Jennifer’s that I know. Gin always told me that her parents were probably drunk off gin when she was born and that’s the only thing that was on their minds when they wrote her name on the birth certificate. That always cracked me up.
“Huh, why’d you do it Gin,” I sighed once again, remembering all the nonsense Gin would say while she was with me. I rubbed the crusty dirt that lay beside Gin’s grave.
“I don’t wanna be buried at a graveyard,” Gin always said when she was alive. I questioned her, and her answer was, “cause then I’ll be buried with a bunch of strangers. Those strangers could be perverts, serial killers, and sociopaths. I would have to sleep an eternity with those weirdos. I would rather my soul be laying peacefully by itself than it being harassed by people that I don’t know”.
“Okay” was always my answer. So, when I saw Ginnifer’s blue eyes turn pale white, I knew what I had to do. It was weird though I have never seen a dead body before, even Ginnifer’s death was different than anybody else’s I know.
We sat on her pale pink-covered bed and listened to Nirvana’s songs.
“Goodbye playlist?” I asked while looking at Gin’s phone, “It’s just Nirvana songs,” I pointed out.
“So”, Gin said while snatching the phone, Nirvana has some sad songs”, Gin finished. When me and Gin heard the front door close, we knew that it was the time that I dreaded the most. Gin cleaned her room before she did it
“I want to leave this world without any messes or mistakes”, is what Gin said before touching up her room. I didn’t respond because I was pissed at Gin. Gin was my best friend and I cannot believe that she was so selfish to leave me on this Earth by myself while she, probably, will enjoy Heaven in all its glory. I couldn’t even look at her blue eyes.
“You don’t want to do this”, I said studying Gin’s unconfident face. Gin paused for a moment to process what I said before continuing to fold her socks. I can’t believe that Gin wanted me to be there for that incident.
I call it the “incident” because I hate saying the other word. The word that teachers and parents tell you to talk about before you do it, yet, can barely say it themselves. The incident in which my brother almost committed before getting sent to a therapist. There she was with the hauntingly clear glass of bleach and I couldn’t be more useless.
, “I’m doing this because I think that I deserve more than the scums of Earth”, Ginnifer said as she was pouring the bleach into the wine glass that she stole from her parent’s wine cabinet, “except you”, Gin finished. At that exact moment, Gin put her beautiful glass of bleach down and leaned close to me. I felt tingly, but not the type of tingly you feel when you run a feather down your back, a tingly feeling that was unexplainable. It felt different. Leave it to Ginnifer you make you feel something different. Then our lips touched at that moment Gin made me realize my meaning of life, which was to be free, and at that moment I felt free.
“You know this is the coward’s way out,” I said while recovering from our kiss
“I’m over this world, I’ve seen all that I needed to see and felt all the things that I needed to feel. Kissing you was the only thing that I needed to feel, now I’m over it and I have done the things that needed to be done.” I never what Gin meant by that, but I couldn’t do anything because she was the only person who knew what was right for her.
Gin was paralyzed for a couple of seconds with the empty glass in her right hand. It was like the paralyzed I saw in my brother when I found him hanging in the closet, except this time no one can save Gin as they did my brother. Then just like that Gin’s body fell right into my lap. I didn’t say anything, nor did I feel anything, I was cold. It felt as if I was the one who drank the bleach. I stared at the digital clock and saw that the time was 11:15, Gin’s birthday. The warmth of the single tear that ran down my cheeks is what woke me up from my paralyzed depression. Gin didn’t leave any specific instructions on where to bury her beautifully pale and cold body. Gin and I have been best friends for six years and Gin always never failed to surprise me with her spontaneous interests. Gin loved flowers, but only if they were dead. “There’s something beautiful about death”. I wrote in Gin’s “incident” note that I left on her bed. Gin didn’t want to leave a note because she felt like no one deserved an explanation, except me. I didn’t blame Gin; the world gave Gin a screwed-up life. Do you know how there’s always a thing in life that made life worth living? Gin never had that “thing”. Gin’s father was always out of the country sleeping with different types of red hairs, blondes, brunettes, etc. Gin’s mother was always three bottles deep into anything. Then there’s Gin’s older brother who ran away when Gin was only four.
“I’ll be back,” Gin’s brother started telling his little sister who was in tears, “I just have to do this. Then when I’m rich and famous I’ll come back for you and we both can leave this life behind,” he finished which adjusting his luggage.
“Promise?” A young Gin said through sobbing tears
“Promise,” her brother finished kissing Gin’s forehead which stopped her from crying
“Wait”, Gin said making her brother halt with the doorknob in hand, “How soon?” Gin questioned in an innocent voice.
“Soon,” her brother responded while walking out the door. When Gin turned eight, she wrote him and got nothing in return. No phone calls, memories, just his promise and the word soon. Ten years later Gin and her mother see him on TV advertising his multi-billion-dollar clothing company that works with a billion celebrities. Gin and her single, at the time, mother were happy, that is until they saw that name that he was going by. Gin’s brother was named Joseph Langley the name on the commercial was Greg Regency. Joseph wiped away his name and anything from his past that he didn’t want to haunt him. I guess Gin and her family were one of those things that Joseph wanted to be wiped away. Gin’s mother then went on to tell people, that she knew, that her son was “the billionaire that dressed some of the most prestigious celebrities”. As you can imagine, the people at the bar, including the bartender, would laugh. Gin wasn’t too upset about the betrayal of her brother, she would do the same thing.
“I wouldn’t claim my family either. I mean, who wants to claim an alcoholic mother and a jackass father as their parents? And who wants to admit that they’re from Berkshire, North Carolina? Nobody that’s who”. I really don’t cry much, but what Gin said made me cry. The tears came down warm and filled with pity. Gin never cried, that’s what made us such good friends. I was like a baby grizzly bear, cute, and never understood anything. Never understood feelings, and independence, I was living my life the best way I could, yet I was completely useless. Gin was like the mother grizzly bear because she was more sensible about things and always teaches the child new things. So, when Gin said that, I felt useless because I’d never experienced something like that. The pain, the heartbreak, the betrayal, yet Gin never managed to show any emotion. I didn’t even cry when my brother attempted the incident. Instead of showing emotion Gin would take her anger out by going to the train tracks and destroying any sentiments that reminded her of the pain. At the age of seven, she put one of her barbie dolls on the tracks because she decided that she loved Bratz better. When Gin and her first ex-boyfriend broke up the necklace he gave her became train debris. The picture of Joseph was her next victim.
Gin and I trudged down the dark blue forest. It was easy getting past Gin’s mother. The smell of the chardonnay suffocated our noses before we could even see the sight of the passed-out strawberry blonde woman.
“I think the reason she dyed her hair that ugly blonde color is so that she and I wouldn’t look related anytime we went somewhere together,” Gin used to say this with anger in her voice as if she wanted to be accepted by her mother. There was a very strange color combination in Gin’s appearance. Gin was ginger with blue eyes and brown freckles all over her face. Gin’s freckles looked more like paint splatters rather than freckles because they were all different sizes and it seemed like the freckles created constellations all over her face.
“It’s like God ran out of crayons so he threw the last two colors had to create me”. Gin joked when she looked in the mirror. When Gin and I got to the train tracks, we saw the lust lost in the cold wind. Gin heard the distant train whistle, waited until the wind died down, and placed the picture of Joseph on the tracks. The train swept up the picture and, with the blink of an eye, the picture of Joseph became dust and disappeared. Disappeared into the darkness of the distant past.
“The train moves so fast, yet it seems as if every time I come to the tracks, it puts my life on pause… that pause is the freedom that I longed for”. Gin’s quotes always made me rethink the purest things in this world, and Gin was one of them. Gin’s most compelling thoughts came from the train tracks. As a matter of fact, I swear there was a point in time when Gin wanted live on the train track--- wait.
The air outside seemed different while walking to the tracks. It could be that I’m carrying a hundred and twenty pounds of my best friend. It would be a lot easier to drag her, but Gin deserved more than that. Gin already has enough shit given to her while she was alive, I didn’t want the abuse to carry on her body when she was dead. It was strange walking through the dark forest without the comforting sound of Gin’s voice. I didn’t hear one owl hoot, no leaves were on the trees, even though it was the middle of summer. I didn’t even feel the light summer breeze that usually blows at this time of night. It felt as if when Gin took that first small sip of bleach, the forest died with her. Once I felt the crispy dirt crunch under my feet, I knew that I was beside the train tracks. I set Gin’s body down and started to dig a hole that really suited Ginnifer. It seems that I picked a good spot, the spot wasn’t too far from the tracks. Ginnifer deserved this spot because it had a nice breeze from the train, the breeze that Gin said reminded her of freedom. Gin was finally free at the place where she felt free the most.
Before I put Gin in my makeshift grave, I let the last train of the night pass by. I wasn’t afraid that anyone would see me because it was almost one in the morning and no one visits this part of town this time at night. I placed Gin in the grave with her arms crossed on her chest. I picked some dead flowers for Gin because she loved those the most. I watched as Gin peacefully slept and I was speechless. I didn’t know what to say about Gin because Gin couldn’t be described with words. I was losing my best friend, my sister, my right-hand man, my first good memory, my first kiss, my other half, my first love. I was about to say goodbye then I remembered something Gin said to me, “Never say goodbye because one day we will meet again, just say see you later.”
“See you later”, I said while forcibly wiping the tears from my face. I pushed the sand-like dirt in the hole and took out a picture of Gin. The picture sat perfectly on the tracks waiting for a train to come and sweep it away. That is when Gin will finally be free.
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