An old friend of mine passed away yesterday, far too prematurely. I hadn’t spoken to him in many years, but he was and is an indelible part of my memory. I have many recollections of him, and in all of them he distinguishes himself as an exemplary figure, someone to be admired and, when possible, emulated. As he was nearing the end, I sifted through these memories, and remembered that I had fictionalized one of them in a short story I wrote last year. “Fictionalized” might be too fanciful a word for what I did; “transcribed” might be the more accurate one. It’s a four-part story that’s ostensibly about a girl, but looking back at it I see that the first part is, however obliquely, more a tribute to my friend than anything else. I think I knew this even as I was writing it. The past few days have crystallized for me how I use writing to make real all the shrines I’ve built inside my head for the people I’ll never forget. It’s my attempt to give them at least a small version of the immortality they deserve. So here I’m reprinting that section of the story and retitling it in his honor. He was a much better friend to me than I was to him, and his generosity and kind-heartedness will be, for me, his eternal legacy. RIP, old friend.

“Sean”

THE SUN—hovering halfway to the horizon like an exhausted balloon at the end of a birthday party—cast late afternoon light on the pacing figure outside the jewelry store. The little boy had been a conspicuous presence for the last fifteen minutes, ever since school let out. He was seen gliding through the parking lot not long after the final bell and scampering across the street, chased by car horns and what were, if you asked him, overdramatic tire squeals. The store—or, rather, the roof of the store—had been tantalizingly visible during his last class of the day, as it had been all semester, from his seat near the window. His view of the store had been largely obstructed by the small knoll in front of the school—on which perched the flagpole and message board for students and passersby—but even this compromised vantage of what he had for many weeks thought of as his “objective” was enough to inflame the little boy’s impatience in the same way that the last flip of a twelve-month calendar brings Christmas into all but attainable view. Now that the much anticipated day had finally arrived, he had hastened to the store at the earliest opportunity without giving a damn how it looked to others.

Once outside the store, the relief he felt at being so close to realizing his long-gestating goal was quickly replaced by the anxiety of moving on to the next phase of his plan. No amount of advance preparation could calm the urgent rhythm his heart insisted on broadcasting throughout his body. He was a natural conductor of nervous energy; fretting and worrying came easily to him. He had the kind of skittish temperament that presaged a young adulthood that would be absolutely lousy with tics and distasteful habits. He paced, for just one example, with the vigor of someone who would assuredly develop a pack-a-day smoking habit in his early twenties and even insist on a particular brand (which would be widely available, mercifully).

He busied himself criss-crossing the slats of pale sunlight shining through the trees, kicking aside any fair-sized stone or bit of sediment that happened to be in his way until the ground in front of the store’s entrance looked swept. He made the mistake of briefly looking up and caught the proprietor of the store giving him the eye through the window, and from then on he alternated his gaze between the ground and the school.

After an interminable ten minutes, the little boy finally saw his friend, Sean, approach from the direction of the school. Sean waited on the other side of the road as a procession of cars flew by. One of them finally slowed down and stopped for him. When he saw there was nothing coming from the other direction, he took long, purposeful strides across the road. As he approached the front of the idling car, his steps shortened and he searched out the driver’s face for assurance that the car wouldn’t suddenly and tragically lurch forward, turning him into a lurid footnote in the history of West Main Street. This was more for the driver’s benefit than his own. It wasn’t a display of true hesitancy, more a nod to hesitancy—an acknowledgment that it existed in the world, if not something with which he was on intimate terms. Really it was nothing more than a courteous gesture, executed in a self-assured way that embarrassed neither party. Sean had a way of mixing confidence and politeness that seemed beyond his years. It was a characteristic that made him attractive to a fair number of people, the little boy included. It was one of the reasons the little boy had approached Sean for help instead of going to his other friends. On top of his other estimable qualities, Sean also possessed a certain kind of discretion the little boy considered paramount in matters such as this. It wasn’t so much that Sean could keep a secret—a burden no person in history has been able to lug around successfully—rather that he knew under what circumstances a secret should be revealed. His other friends would’ve had no idea how to handle what he was about to divulge to Sean, and it was not hard to imagine the disastrous consequences that would’ve followed had he confided in the wrong person.

As Sean walked up to him, the little boy held out his hand without thinking. After a short but perceptible moment, Sean took it, an amused grin on his face as he nimbly embraced this sudden spirit of formality.

“So,” he said.

“Thanks for doing this,” said the little boy as he took his hand back. He was a little startled by how firm Sean’s handshake had been, but it also set him at ease as he now fully believed he had chosen the right person to confide in.

“Sure. No problem. Let’s do this.”

A small bell chimed when they opened the door, and again when the door closed behind them. It was a small building, and all the wares were packed into one room about half the size of a classroom. Glass display cases encaged the room, lining the three walls not connected to the door. The cashier, a middle-aged lady whose name graced the store’s sign (she was also the owner), looked up and regarded them with the cautious—not to say skeptical—aspect all storeowners give customers whose youthful age calls their purchasing power into question.

“Hi,” Sean called out. The lady nodded.

The two boys stood in the middle of the room, shifting their weight from foot to foot on the lacquered hardwood as they looked around with exaggeratedly casual interest.

“So,” Sean prompted. “Have you decided what you’re going with?”

“What do you mean?” asked the little boy.

“Well, like a bracelet or a necklace or earrings or what?”

“I think a necklace,” the little boy said. “But I might be open to something else.”

“Well. Let’s take a look.”

He nudged the little boy toward one of the displays, and the little boy approached it with the trepidation of someone walking across a frozen lake on an unseasonably warm day. They looked down at the glittering array of jewelry in the case before them, heaps of gold, silver, and other precious matter, attractively displayed.

To the little boy it was the sort of thing that he had only known in fantasy books, the kind of treasure that dragons hoard and men die trying to procure. The thought that some of this lucre, however small, would soon be in his possession—if only momentarily, long enough to admire before giving it to its rightful owner—gave him a thrill that was new to him.

“You start on that psych paper yet?” Sean said.

“No,” said the little boy.

“I should start it. I should really do it this weekend, actually. When Monday rolls around, I know I’ll wish I had started it.”

“Yeah. Me too. I mean, I should start it too.”

“So,” Sean said. “Are you married to the idea of a necklace? Sure you don’t want to do a bracelet or ring or earrings or something?”

Sean picked a hefty silver bracelet off a display on the counter and held it up to the light. The little boy hesitated for the briefest moment before replying, “No, I think I want to do a necklace.”

He had no real idea why it had to be a necklace. It was the first thing he had thought of when the plan materialized in his mind, and since this whole endeavor was propelled largely on a mix of impulse and intuition, he had decided not to question this initial inclination all that much.

The sound of a clearing throat diverted their attention across the store. The cashier was giving them a look that, while pointed, was softening as she saw they weren’t just hanging out, completely devoid of purpose. “The necklaces are over here. In this case,” she said primly.

Sean put the bracelet down and strolled over to where the cashier had indicated. The little boy followed. Sean’s gaze quickly passed over the necklaces in the display and he looked up at the cashier, his head slightly cocked.

“Thanks,” he said pleasantly.

The cashier nodded.

He turned to the little boy and expansively fanned his arm over the display. The little boy missed the humor in his friend’s gesture, so entranced was he by the sights before him. Necklace after necklace, arrangements of precious chains, each more perfect than the last. The tiny linkages constituting each one seemed to him as elegant in construction and design as anything he had ever seen in his life. It was difficult, in the moment, to believe that they were man-made—made by and for people. They seemed instead to have appeared out of nowhere, flawless and mystical and wondrous. The way the little boy saw it, they were ideals that imperfect people should have to conform to, perfect objects that would be complemented by whoever wore them instead of the other way around.

To his credit, Sean was similarly awed, albeit in his characteristically understated way. “Some of these look nice,” he admitted. “I might come back and get one for Amy.”

The little boy was amused at his friend’s understatement, though he was slightly annoyed that Sean seemed for a moment to forget why they were there. He turned his attention to the gold chains, bypassing the silver and platinum ones. Gold had been another non-negotiable part of the plan; it was inconceivable that he would choose another foundational material—again, for reasons he couldn’t fully articulate. All he knew is that he needed the message he intended to convey with the necklace to be as clear as possible, and gold seemed to have exactly the unambiguous significance he was looking for.

“I can take out anything you want to see,” the cashier said helpfully.

“Sure,” the little boy said automatically. While he was pretty sure his decision could be made just by looking at them, her offer seemed to him one that any respectable and conscientious consumer would accept. “I’d like to see that one,” he said, choosing almost at random.

The cashier unlocked the case with a satisfying click and carefully reached in and took out the chain. She handed it to the little boy, who took it from her gingerly. He was taken aback by how delicate it was. It barely touched his skin, a weightless golden rivulet flowing down his hand, purling over his palm and down his wrist. He couldn’t quite overcome the feeling that there was nothing there to hold at all. It worried the little boy, to be honest. Up close, the necklace, while lovely, didn’t have the substantiality that matched the magnitude of his intentions, he felt.

“Does it, like, come with a jewel or something,” the little boy said, his throat a trifle dry.

“You can buy them separately,” the cashier patiently explained. “We have a wide selection in this case here.”

The little boy carefully handed back the chain and turned his attention to the case, looking intently at the pendants as he waited for his embarrassment to subside. It was something he should’ve known, the two-part nature of this transaction. He had done as much research as he could before this moment, of course, but scavenging the daily junk mail for catalogs and collecting free circulars around town hadn’t provided as much information as he had hoped. (He hadn’t even considered entering the store before today and making inquiries.) There was still a lot about these things that remained mysterious to him.

But this was to be expected, he had to remind himself. He was, after all, taking the first step across some invisible threshold, one that he knew—or hoped—would open up whole new areas of knowledge and experience.

The little boy’s eyes scanned row after row of pendants. Multi-colored gems set in prongs of gold and silver, every facet catching and throwing back the light in very deliberate ways. Here was chaos bounded, tamed. It was through these prisms that the little boy felt his somewhat scattered feelings could be refracted and honed into a message both clear in purpose and beautiful in expression. He just needed to find the exact one that would express what he was feeling inside, things he could not yet verbalize. He quickly apprehended how important this decision was, and it both thrilled and frightened him.

“Can I see that one,” the little boy said, pointing to an emerald pendant he was almost sure was not the right one.

The cashier obligingly got it out of the case and handed it to him. He looked it over, turning it around in the palm of his hand, and showed it to Sean. “What do you think?”

“It’s nice. What color are her eyes?”

“Her eyes?”

“Yeah, your aunt’s. What color are they?”

“Uh . . . I’m not sure. Why?”

“Well, you’ll want something that’ll go with her eyes, probably. Something that complements them or sets them off or something.” Sean shrugged, giving the impression that he didn’t much care whether his suggestion was taken or not. But it was enough to paralyze the little boy for a good ten seconds.

“I think they’re brown,” he finally said. He silently berated himself for not knowing for sure. “I’ll have to pay attention the next time I see her. What goes with brown eyes?”

Sean shrugged again. “Anything?” he said.

The cashier sighed, softly but audibly. The little boy went back to scanning the rows of pendants. Of course, what he was really looking at were the prices, which were handwritten on little tags attached to each one, the number followed by a definitive-looking dash that seemed to say “This is the final price, take it or leave it.” He had noted the cost of the necklace chains and even if he bought the least expensive one, it left him with only fifty dollars or so to spend on a pendant.

Taking a quick inventory of what was in his price range, he zeroed in on one that caught his eye. “Can I see that one,” he said, pointing.

The cashier opened the case and retrieved a pendant whose gem was deep crimson in color. He held it up with his thumb and forefinger and turned it over, inspecting it from all angles.

“Is this real gold?” he asked the cashier.

“It’s a 14k setting, yes,” the cashier said.

He showed it to Sean, who nodded in approval. “Looks good to me,” he said. The little boy could tell Sean was getting restless, and any endorsement he bestowed at this point would come easily and mean little. But it didn’t matter because the little boy had already made up his mind.

“I think I’ll take this one,” he told the cashier.

“Excellent choice,” she said.

“I just need one of these necklaces now,” he said, looking them over again.

“What kind of stone is that?” Sean asked, willing to be a little more loquacious as he sensed the end of the transaction was near.

“It’s a garnet,” the cashier told him.

The little boy was pretending to inspect the necklaces, though the price of the garnet pendant cut down his options severely—down to one, in fact: a 14-inch chain that cost a little less than the pendant.

He pointed to it and asked, “Is that real gold?”

The cashier nodded. “That one is 14k also.”

The little boy gave her a short nod. He had no idea what that meant, “14k,” but it sounded official to his ears. “I’ll take it,” he said.

The cashier fished the chain out of the case, took the pendant from the little boy, and put them both in an elegantly minimalist box. They walked over to the register and the cashier rang him up.

“That’ll be one hundred dollars even,” she said. “Will that be cash or credit today?”

“Cash,” the little boy said, pulling out a wad of bills. He carefully counted out six ten-dollar bills, four fives, and twenty ones—the entire stack. He breathed a sigh of relief and handed over every cent he had on him.

The cashier re-counted the money and put it in the register. “Thank you boys very much,” she said, handing him the receipt.

“Thank you,” said the little boy.

“Thanks,” Sean said.

They walked out of the store and crossed the street, heading back toward the school. The little boy was in a daze. It took him a mere sixty seconds after handing over his money for doubt to start setting in.

“I hope the necklace isn’t too small,” he mused aloud. “Fourteen inches. . . . Do you think it’s too small?”

“Naw,” Sean said.

“I don’t know, now I’m worried that it’s too small.”

“Why? Does she have a fat neck?”

“No!” the little boy protested.

“Then you have nothing to worry about.”

As they approached the school, the little boy knew that Sean was about to say he had to go to his meeting now, and that he’d see him tomorrow. He had put off telling Sean the whole truth of the matter—perhaps longer than he should have—and the time had come to reveal everything. It was his last chance.

“So hey,” the little boy said. He stopped walking. “I have something, I have to tell you something.”

Sean looked back at him. “Yeah?”

“This necklace. It’s not for my aunt.” He swallowed.

“Ok . . . who’s it for?”

He swallowed again. “It’s for Sarah.”

Sean looked at him blankly. “Sarah who?”

The little boy told him and Sean’s eyes went wide. He repeated her full name, giving her last name such incredulous spin that the whole thing toppled over as soon as it left his mouth.

“Quiet,” the little boy hissed, suddenly afraid that the person in question could suddenly be conjured up solely by giving voice to her name. Or, somewhat more likely, that she would materialize from around the corner, sitcom-like, and catch them in the midst of their conspiring, and, in so doing, know the unvarnished truth at the absolute worst possible moment.

Sean, meanwhile, was scrambling to fit what he had been told into a configuration of the world that made some sort of sense to him. “So wait, you like her?” he said.

“Well . . . yeah,” said the little boy.

“Since when?”

“I don’t know. Six months or so?” The little boy gave him a wry smile.

“Does she know you like her?” he said. “I mean, does she know?”

“No,” the little boy said. “I mean, not yet.” He lifted up the box containing the necklace.

“That’s how you’re going to tell her?” Sean looked as if someone he trusted implicitly had just told him he had been eating the wrong way his entire life, that you were supposed to put the food in your ears instead of your mouth.

“I . . . yeah. I just, you know,” the little boy said, struggling to explain himself. It wasn’t helping that Sean was looking at him like that. “I thought this would be the best way,” he finally said.

“Let’s see it again,” Sean said, motioning to the box.

The little boy opened it and they both looked at the necklace, tastefully arranged in the white box.

“You should’ve told me before,” Sean said. “I thought we were getting this for your aunt.”

The little boy was overcome by a sinking feeling in his stomach. “Wait, this isn’t like a necklace for old people, is it?” he said. “Like the style or whatever isn’t for an old person, right?”

“No no,” Sean said. “I could see Sarah wearing it. I just wish I knew what it was we were doing in there, is all.”

“I haven’t told anyone,” the little boy said, closing the box. “You’re the only one who knows.”

Sean nodded and it was hard to tell how he felt about being in possession of this privileged information. “Everyone is going to find out though,” he warned.

“Maybe,” the little boy said ambiguously.

“When are you going to give it to her?”

“Well, I’m not. That is, I’m not going to actually hand it to her.” Sean looked at him quizzically and he took a deep breath. “I’m going to leave it in her locker.”

Sean processed this for a second. “Ok. . . .” he said. “How are you going to get in her locker?”

“She doesn’t lock it. I checked.”

“Ok. So . . . what, you’re going to leave it with a note or something?”

“No, no note. Just the necklace.”

“Well how is she going to know it was from you?”

“I’ll talk to her tomorrow. But I was thinking it’d be this nice surprise, that she doesn’t know who it’s from, at least initally.”

Sean’s skeptical expression said all that needed to be said about what he thought of this plan.

“It’s like a grand romantic gesture sort of thing,” the little boy insisted. “Like something out of a movie or something.”

Sean remained unconvinced. “You’re not even going to put a little note with your name on it or something?”

“I don’t know, should I?” the little boy waffled.

“Hey, however you want to do it. This is all you.”

The little boy thought for a moment. “No, I don’t want to leave a note or anything,” he said.

“Your decision.” Sean looked at the little boy and chuckled. “Well, I guess good luck with everything.”

“Thanks, but wait there’s something else.” The little boy bit his lip and dragged his foot on the ground in front of him.

“What?”

“I was wondering if. . . .” The little boy looked up. The day suddenly seemed late. Their stretched shadows were creeping slowing toward a nearby copse of pines. “I was wondering if maybe you could put it in her locker for me.”

“You want me to?” Sean said. “Why?”

“Just so there’s no chance anyone will see me do it. I mean, there’s no chance anyone would see you do it, either. But . . . I don’t know. Could you?”

“Really? I mean it’s just as easy for you to do it. Why do you want me to?”

“Could you please? I just think it’d be better if you did it, like you’d be better at making sure no one was around and stuff. Plus, if anyone happened to see you they wouldn't think anything of it because you have that meeting and all, whereas if they saw me, they might think something was up.” He looked at Sean. “The truth is I’m too nervous to, ok? There, I said it. Can you just help me out here?”

Sean shook his head and looked away. After a moment he said, “Ok, fine. Give it to me.”

The little boy handed him the box. “Thank you, thank you for this,” he effused, appearing grateful but also knowing there was never any real danger of Sean refusing his request.

“What’s her locker number,” Sean said.

The little boy told him and he nodded. They stood there as the moment distended. They were both smiling, but to themselves, not at each other. It really was a beautiful day, the little boy noticed.

“Ok, I gotta go to my meeting, I’m already late,” Sean said. “Last chance, are you sure you want to do this?”

“Of course, yes, definitely,” the little boy said. “Go. I’ll call you tonight to make sure it went ok and to maybe explain myself better. And thank you again.”

Sean nodded and walked toward the school. The little boy watched him go, marveling at his friend’s casual stride. It was the stride of someone not particularly hungry walking across the room to retrieve an apple out of a bowl of fruit.

Sean disappeared into the school. The little boy’s gaze lingered on the building. The bricks were a color he had never noticed before, and it preoccupied him for a moment.

When at last he turned around and walked away, he was again overwhelmed with a feeling he had never experienced before. It was an all-enveloping and nourishing sensation, something that suffused his entire being. It didn’t seem as ephemeral as excitement or even happiness. It felt more significant, and it was something he hoped would largely define him from then on.

But he would soon discover that, like all sentiments, it would pass, and he would feel this way only a handful of times in his life. The next time it came over him would be a little over a year later when, hanging out with friends, he bought a paperback upon which the movie they were about to see was based and, at the restaurant they went to, left his waitress—a plain-looking fledgling at least six years his senior who he imagined to be just out of college and starting her life—a tip of eight dollars on a fifteen-dollar check.

“Sean” is an excerpt from a story in The Funeral Girl.