• "Holy crap", I muttered to myself. It was all I could manage. I would have liked to have run from the room, run from the house, run from the world, screaming until there was no one to hear me. I would have liked to have sobbed into the shoulder of a friend until we simply forgot the tragedy, forgot the world. I would have liked to have torn off my own scalp, just to make some of the searing pain be physical, bearable. But all I could do was sit in a chair, muttering over and over to myself "no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no…" I don't know how long I sat there, stupefied by the news. The news that James Bowen was dead.
    He died as I think we all would have guess he would die, if any of us had ever dreamt of James dying. He was hanging out with his cousin and his friend, just like always, when they took one of a thousand drives down Fire Tower road. As far as the investigators could tell, they hit a tree at eighty miles an hour, flipped, and hit another tree. None of the boys were wearing seatbelts. We can only hope that they died instantly. He died, suddenly, violently, tragically, wrenched from his future and his family by one fatal error on the steering wheel.
    Everyone loved James. Everyone. James and I had always been rivals, had always been mean to each other, and still I felt the pain of his loss just as much as anyone. James was of that rare breed of people who are charming, benevolent, and can make people smile without fail. None of us could imagine a Carrboro without James any more than we could imagine a Carrboro without an S&T's or the courthouse. He united us, defined us, a solid in a sea of shift and change.
    I don’t think I felt like I, personally, had lost anything as much as I felt that my community, people I loved and cherished, had lost one of their most vital branches. And I felt overwhelmingly robbed. Not personally, but I don’t think I felt anything personally at that point. When I could finally move, I went straight up to my bedroom. I wanted to lie down in my bed, to pull the covers over my eyes, to ignore time, and grieve, just simply and only to grieve. I ran into my mom on the stairs. She asked me “what’s wrong?”. It didn’t take me long to reply; it was the only phrase my mind could produce. “James died”
    I don’t remember eating dinner that night. I don’t remember falling asleep, or waking up, or eating breakfast.
    At school on Monday, I ran into my good friend BJ just before school started.
    “James.” I croaked simply. I expected it to be enough. It wasn’t.
    He could tell from the look on my face that it was bad news, but none of us had anticipated the worst. “What happened to him?”
    “BJ, he…” The words caught in my throat, and we stood in silence for a while. “BJ, he died.”
    Homeroom is usually the noisiest class of the day. Not that day, though. Many of James’s best friends were in that homeroom; James himself was missing from Ms. Alison’s homeroom. Some of us came in with stone expressions, some of us crying, none of us talking. We cried on our friends’ shoulders, into our own arms. Some of us yelled or screamed, not with words but only with anguish, unable to find any other sounds competent of expressing our pain. But not a soul said anything. I think we all knew that nothing anyone could say would comfort us. Nobody in the room, or indeed in the world, had anything to say.
    In the back of my mind, I felt guilty for not crying. I wondered what could be wrong with me, that my grief was so obviously not strong, that my pain was not nearly as intense as it should have been.
    Mr. Jenkins, our principal, knew James well. James was the kind of boy who paid lots of visits to the principal. Mr. Jenkins was kind enough not to make his small speech on the intercom, but in our classrooms, in order to connect to all of his grieving students. I remember little of what exactly he said, except that classes would go on as usual and there would be a grief counselor if we needed him. I think I remember phrases like “he was someone we all loved” and “it’s going to be very hard for all of us.” I wondered why he was holding back so much, why he was trying to be so strong, so stiff. I’m sure James would have hated it, but I think I might have been the only one who noticed.
    None of the teachers talked about him. They were all crying, too. I think it was the best any of them, or indeed any of us, could do to sit down and cry together.
    The next day, James made first page. More importantly, his death was covered on the news. It made us all angry.
    The reporter was just mindlessly doing her job, not knowing or caring who had been lost in what she blandly called “this tragic accident.” Her trained voice was decidedly devoid of any emotion, of any passion. She described James in a tone most normal people would use to describe grammar. The only mention of James as a person was the fact that he had recently tried out for the basketball team. In fact, he had many layers, tons of friends, enormous potential, and a real and consuming life that he was ripped away from. I was furious at the reporter, at the bland voice, the dulled eyes, and the indifferent neutrality that was used to portray the tragic death of a beloved youth.
    It’s almost impossible for me to remember the next few days. None of us could function properly without him, and none of us tried.
    Over the next week or so, pictures of James appeared in lockers, on T-shirts, on binders, on walls, and on computer backgrounds. I’m ashamed to say not on mine.
    They had the funeral on Thursday the week after he died, at the local high school. It was a joint funeral for all three boys. I decided not to go. I wanted to remember him alive; I wanted to remember him as the bad boy he was. I didn’t want to see him dead, or to hear the preacher romanticize him.
    I was told that they buried him in a tux. I’m glad I didn’t see him in a tux. Knowing James, he died in pants buckled at his knees, a t-shirt that covered the belt, neck chains, and a do-rag. They fixed his neck, too, so it looked natural. They even put some makeup on him to cover the scratches. They told me he looked almost peaceful in the casket, that you could almost believe he wasn’t meant to be on this earth any longer. Not quite, though.
    It’s ok with me now that I didn’t cry. In all honesty, I wasn’t sad for myself. James was never nice to me, nor I to him. And in all honesty, I would have thought that it would never matter to me if he died. Yeah, I was wrong. James may not have been my friend, but he was a vital part of my life in more ways than I can count, even today. I miss him, and I can miss him any way that I need to. And that doesn’t have to include crying.
    We don’t talk about James much. Sometimes, but not much. It’s not that it’s painful, particularly; it’s just that we don’t have anything to say. We can and do bring him up in anecdotes, and even though some of us cry, we let them talk. We still leave seats open for him, in case he should want to show up, and, you know, hang out. And we have a little memorial in the back that we visit every now and then.
    He should still be with us. He should still be laughing with us, talking with us, joking with us. He should have made that basketball team and that track team too. He should have been able to get a drivers’ license and maybe one day a car. He should have been able to be there when his little brother needs him, when his best friend needs him. He should have been able to go to the social and the prom. He should have been able to graduate high school, and get a job. He should have been able to explore those possibilities, to both succeed and to fail in his life. But he won’t be.
    He’ll never get to change that image of the little troublemaker who gets D’s and breaks the dress code, who spends more time in ISS than out, who knows the principal’s schedule by heart. But you know what? I think James would have wanted to stay a seventh grader. This way he always gets to stay in his youth, in his prime. He never has to grow up. It’s a fitting end. James Bowen will be a seventh grader at our middle school forever, and it suits him just fine.