So in the event of my untimely death, this is what I need all you fuckers to hear.
If you’re reading this to a crowd of people dressed in their funeral finest, then I’ve achieved a longevity I never thought I would reach. I’ve made it to the ripe old age of twenty six and it’s been one hell of a fucking ride.
By now, I’m dead and will soon be rotting in the fucking ground, being eaten by worms and other random bugs and shit. But don’t worry about me because I died a happy fucking man. Looking back, I never thought I would live a life where the word happy could be a fitting word so describe it, but I did And it was all because when I was eleven years old, this big fucking brute of a man-child rescued me from a bully who shall not be named, and then he became my friend. Oh fuck that, the bully’s name was Tyler Nightingale and the pussy still lives with his fucking mom and works the night shift at the Stop-N-Go. Fucking twat. Go egg his fucking car on the way home.
Anyways, I motherfucking digress.
The man-child became more than my friend. He became the best fucking friend anyone could ever ask for. He became my only family. Our childhoods were complete shit, but because of him, we were able to live our lives by our own set of rules. He didn’t have to befriend a skinny kid with bruises all over his body and a foul fucking mouth. He could have looked the other way. He could have ignored me when I pestered him to no end. There are a lot of things he could have done. But he chose me to be his family, and I chose him to be mine.
Although there were bumps in the road, a little juvie, a little jail, and whole lotta shit I can’t talk about here. I don’t look back at those things as poor choices. I see them as part of the highlight reel of the most epic fucking journey of my life. A journey I never thought I would see. Shit, I never thought I would live past the age of 14, and if it wasn’t for my best friend, and him saving my ass one night, I wouldn’t have.
I want to send a shout out to Bear. Big-ups to you, you big fucking animal. Go travel. Go do you. Go do all the shit you want to do before that club of yours swallows you whole and you can’t see where your ideas start and their ideas end.
No shit. At first, I thought you were just an annoying hanger-on, but it turns out that I was capable of having more than one friend after all, and I’m fucking glad it was you, man.
Bear, you need to look out for King and Doe. Lord fucking knows those two will need all the help they can get. I mean, they fucking love each other, but both are too fucking stupid to see past their own crap long enough to keep their shit together.
I see major fuck ups in their future. Be there for them. Help them see past their ridiculous issues and preach to the about the joys of honesty and anal sex.
Continuing on.
I’ve done shit I’m not proud of. Thanks to all of you for not judging me. Thanks to all of you for being my friends in spite of it. Thanks for giving me a life that was worth dying for. I would do it all over again if I fucking could. So don’t fucking cry for me, be happy for me. Be happy that I had friends like all of you who I loved more than fucking family, who I loved more than myself, and we all know how crazy I am about me. Be happy that I was happy and that all you fuckers were a part of that.
Doe, if King doesn’t get his head out of his ass and marry you and impregnate you with millions of his little man-children, he is a dumb fuck and I promise I will rise from the grave to take his place. It may take me a while to figure out how, but if anyone can do it, it’s gonna be me.
King, my brother, thanks for taking a chance on a skinny geek all those years ago. Thanks for fucking saving my ass, but you did more than that. You saved my life. You gave me a life.
I love you, man.
Be happy kids.
I gotta go be dead now. No after funeral bullshit. I fucking hate that shit.
Go get laid. That will make me happy.
Fuck. Party. Make merry. And know that I fucking loved all of you.
-Prep
PS-I have also written my own obituary which I would like published in all the local papers. I’m serious about this. I will haunt you if this doesn’t happen.
“Ummm, I don’t know if I should read this next part out loud.”
“Do it!” Bear cheered me on. Even from the other side of the tent, I could see the tears in his eyes, but now there was a smile on his face. “Let’s fucking hear it!”
The crowd joined in, and I was left with no choice.
“Oh, fine,” I said, taking a deep breath and speed reading through Preppy’s autobiographical obituary.
Samuel Clearwater
26 years old
Badass MoFo
Went out like a boss
Leaves behind the family he chose: King, Doe, Bear, and the GG bitches.
May God rest his soul…and his ten-inch cock.
The entire group of mourners burst out laughing. Not just a few chuckles, but knee-slapping, belly laughter. As I put the note away and took my seat next to King, I realized what Preppy had done. He was the kind of guy who couldn’t bear the thought of us crying over him, so he did what Preppy always did.
He made us laugh.
I looked over to King, who wasn’t smiling at all. I tugged on his hand, but instead of getting his attention, he stood up.
Before the preacher said his final words, King was already long gone.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
King
My girl had been raped, and it had been a week since we put my best friend into the ground. In that time, I didn’t know where to place my anger at the person I hated most in the world.
No, not Isaac. I killed that motherfucker. Splattered his head wide open with a bullet at close range.
The person I hated most in the world was me.
After everything Doe had done for me, after everything we’d been through, she deserved better than to live a life in fear of being raped or shot. As much as I wanted out of the life, it wasn’t something I could just jump out of in an instant. I needed to do something for her, but no matter what came to mind, it wasn’t big enough to make this huge wrong, right again.
Then, it came to me.
There was one thing I could do for her.
One fucking reverse GOOGLE image search. That’s all it took to find out who Doe really was. I’d uploaded a photo of her I took from my phone the first night she’d slept in my bed and pressed search and there she was, staring into the camera like she was looking right into my eyes. I wished I’d never done the search. I wished I’d never known who she really was.
I’d used the fact that I knew who she was and what that could do for me as an excuse to bring her back to me. Even though it was her I wanted since the very first moment I saw her.
I’d planned to keep her forever, and her secret even longer if need be.
Until now.
Seventeen year old Ramie Elizabeth Price.
Either the police were really shitty at their jobs, or they never really tried to find out who she was to begin with, because for the second time after searching her image, less than a second after pressing search, I was staring at multiple images of the girl I’d fallen in love with on my laptop.
There were no articles about her going missing, just pictures of her from various events. Balls, galas, fundraisers. It was her in the pictures, but it wasn’t. The gowns, the makeup, the fake smile, if there was any smile at all.
The last picture of her I found was taken almost a year ago. She had a blank look on her face. Her eyes were vacant.
I knew that look. I’d regrettably put it on her face myself. It was a look that broke my fucking heart.
Indifference.
She was holding the hand of a boy who looked a little older than her, who was smiling from ear to ear.
I wanted to reach through the computer and break his fucking hand and then break every single one of his pearly white teeth.
Senator Westmore Bigelow Price, with daughter Ramie Elizabeth and long-time beau Tanner Preston Redmond at the Heart Ball Gala to raise money for pediatric cancer.
Even though it was my second time scanning the pictures, my blood boiled. I don’t know what made me madder. The boy who was touching my girl. Or the man they listed as her father.
A senator running for president. A man who would want to avoid scandal at all cost. That’s probably why they didn’t even try to find their missing daughter.
Fucking asshole.
I stood from the kitchen table and threw the laptop across the room. It smashed against a cabinet and fell to the floor in a million pieces.
Bear came storming into the kitchen. “What the fuck?” he asked, looked over at the broken laptop. “You on the rag man?”
“We have to take a trip,” I said, staring down at the now broken laptop as though the image of Doe or Ramie, or whatever the fuck her name was and her boyfriend were still up on the broken screen that was flashing from blue to black over and over again.
“Where we going?”
“Tell me something, Bear, and be honest. What are the chances of us getting the kind of money we need for the payoff to the senator for Max?”
My eyes met his for the first time since he came into the kitchen.
“Slim to fucking none, man” he answered honestly.
“Then, get the fucking truck. I’ll drive.”
“But you still haven’t said why I’m getting the truck.”
“Because, my friend, there is a deal with the devil that needs to be made.” I looked down the hall at the closed door of my bedroom, where the girl I’d fallen in love with slept peacefully in my bed. She was mine, and I would always think of her that way. But she deserved a better life than the one I could give her, which seemed to only hurt her at every turn.