I was twelve when my best friend Henry died.
I remember our last day together; it was Friday after school let out, and Henry and I had made plans for a sleepover at my house. We stayed up late playing our favorite games, watching our favorite movies, and eating our favorite snacks. It was the definition of a perfect night that can only be experienced in the company of your best friend.
And to be perfectly honest, even if I had known it would be Henry's last day, I probably couldn't have planned a better send off.
I woke up the next morning to see an ambulance leaving the house, my mom was crying on the phone and my dad had his look. A lot of parents have a look when something really terrible happens, but the look on my dad's face that morning was something I'll never forget. It was a twisted mess of grief, anguish, and absolute misery. It was, by leagues worse than the face he had when his own dad, my grandpa, had passed away. This was the face of a man who had to tell his twelve year-old son that his best friend had died during the night.
Henry had a disease - well more of a disorder, probably best called a biological glitch. I was young at the time and had no idea what a lot of the medical terms meant, just that apparently Henry would sometimes just stop breathing in his sleep. Most of the time he'd cough or gasp and be perfectly fine, but for whatever reason last night he just... shut off.
I spent most of the following years alone after that, save for the interchangeable therapists that all insisted, no matter what I was doing at the time I started therapy with one of them, that I wasn't properly dealing with my emotions. However I was reacting to my best friend's death, according to Dr. Whoever, it wasn't the healthy way. After a while, I just stopped going to therapy, it just seemed pointless.
I can't say any time after that was spent in a healthy way; when your best friend dies you just break inside. Any time you think about a fond memory or see something you used to do together, it brews a cocktail of emotions that usually aren't socially acceptable to express in public, so for the rest of my life I mostly kept to myself. I sure as hell didn't intend on making any new friends, lest I go through all of that mess again.
Years after my parents passed away I was living in their old house, telecommuting to an accounting firm and living my life in self-imposed isolation. For a while it was the best I thought I could manage, but when my own health started to fail, I started to fear every day could be my last. As days went on, I could swear my vision was starting to go, every so often I would just lose picture in the center of my field of vision. It wasn't white or blurry like a cataract, it was darker. Kind of like a void in my vision, but not all black; it also seemed to be speckled with white spots. I had no idea what it was, and neither did any doctor.
In my final days I felt myself feeling more tired more often. I was going soon, that much was clear. I wasn't too scared though, I was tired of being scared, tired of this terrifying cruel world filled with people that can just disappear overnight. I spent my last day, I think when the time comes we all know it's our last day, sitting on the couch. It was a relatively new couch, but all I could remember was the old couch Henry and I spent his last day on. As a rerun of his favorite movie began to play on the television, I felt a hot tear stream down my cheek as my eyelids suddenly felt too heavy to lift anymore.
I opened my eyes to the sound of someone calling my name.
"Jim? Jimmy, is that you?"
I looked around, confused. Nobody'd called me Jimmy since...
"Hey Jimmy! Come on, don't tell me you don't remember me..."
That voice was so familiar, like an adult version of- no, no it was impossible...
"He-... Henry?" I asked cautiously.
"There he is! I was wondering how long you'd keep me waiting. Just over..." I heard the voice give an impressed whistle, " sixty years! Six decades I've been waiting for you to get here, you're lucky I don't have anywhere to be." I heard him laugh, it was his laugh, he was here, wherever here was.
"How- where are we?" I asked, my vision was blurry but starting to focus.
"Well that's easy enough to explain" he said. "We're dead. As disco. I guess you could call 'here' heaven, or the afterlife, the other side, whatever you wanna call it."
It was easier to accept this news than you'd think. As my vision finally came back into focus I saw Henry, only it wasn't really Henry, more like his shape filled with a field of black, speckled with white and smeared with a tiny bit of color. I looked down at my hands and saw I was in a similar state, no more skin, no body, just this... space... stuff.
"What, what are we? Ghosts?" I asked, honestly not knowing the answer.
"Honestly I have no idea" he said, "I think it's sort of a one-with-the-universe kind of thing. We're all a part of it, and it's a part of us. Star stuff."
"And you waited all this time? For me?" I asked.
"Well I'm not about to leave my best friend behind twice." The star-filled outline of Henry stretched out a hand to me, I took it without a second thought. "Now that you're here, we can go."
"Go? Where?"
"Anywhere we want, I've been waiting in this spot for you to get here so we can explore together, and there's probably a lot to see."
I nodded and smiled, "I missed you, Henry" I said like it had only been days since we talked.
"I missed you too, Jimmy." Henry replied, just the same way.
"I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long."
"It's alright" he said. "You're here now, and I'm not going anywhere."
We smiled and held each other's shoulders as we walked into the infinite light.
