"Death Isn’t Funny"

Jenn Dugan

I once knew a guy named Mark. He was in my 5^th period American history class our senior year of high school, 2001. He was a quiet student who, as far as I could tell, had no friends. He dressed well. He wore collared shirts and sometimes suits to school. I wondered if he was a Jehovah's Witness, but I didn't think so. He looked too evil to be a Jehovah's Witness. During lunch, he went into the library alone and stayed there until the bell for 5th period rang. I once saw him reading a book about World War II. I figured he was smart.

There wasn’t much you could tell about Mark by watching him in class. He sat in the front row, off to the side. He never talked to anyone. He never looked at anyone. All he did was stare straight ahead. Actually, it wasn’t really a stare; it was more of a glare. And his glare was always directed at Mr. Meredith's "Declaration of Self-Esteem" poster, which was posted on the wall in front of Mark’s desk.

I had always wondered what it was about that poster that Mark didn't like. A barage of large-font, bold words that promoted pride and feeling good about oneself, the Declaration of Self-Esteem was framed by the terms "I AM ME" and "I AM OKAY" in gigantic red letters. Though the writer of the Declaration of Self-Esteem had elected to use commas, periods seemed to have eluded him or her, and the writer had chosen to replace them with hyphens. Mr. Meredith, who hates grammatical incorrectness or grammatical creativity, used the Declaration of Self-Esteem to illustrate for us how not to write our papers. I wondered if Mark hated grammatical incorrectness. I wondered if he was creative.

I once wondered what his handwriting was like. At first I imagined his written words were cursive and jagged, elegant. Fanged writing. But, once, I finished writing an in-class essay before he did, and I waited until he deposited his at Mr. Meredith’s desk before I took mine up. I saw his handwriting then. It was chicken scratch, like most guys’ handwriting. So maybe he was an Internet addict and didn’t handwrite much. I wondered what websites he frequented. I wondered if Mark glared at the computer the same way he glared at the Declaration of Self-Esteem.

Maybe, when Mark stared like that, he wasn't seeing the poster at all. Maybe something was eating away at him. What if he’d had a traumatic childhood, and it expressed itself through Mark's staring maniacally at the Declaration of Self-Esteem during history class? Mark had nice eyes. A little evil and maniacal, maybe.  But nice.

"You like him, don’t you?" my friend Nancy asked, laughing. Nancy always laughs. Even if something’s not funny, she’ll laugh. I think it’s a nervous tick she has. I once asked her what she was laughing at, and she looked embarrassed and said she didn’t know. Then she laughed again.

Nancy and I were standing in the Gay/Lesbian section at Barnes & Noble, flipping through The Joy of Gay Sex, and waiting for our parents to pick us up from the mall.

"No," I answered her, "I don’t like him."

"You should talk to him," Nancy said, giggling at the pictures of nude men engaged in various sexual acts. "Elise, it would make Mark’s life if you talked to him. You just know he’s one of those guys who’s going to shoot up the school someday. Maybe your love could stop all that."

"Problem: I don’t like him," I said. "I guess the school is just going to have to suffer. I wonder if he’s gay. I never see him look at girls."

"You never see him look at guys, either." Nancy laughed.

"True. I wonder, if Mark and I ever dated, what he’d say if I asked him to make out with another guy in front of me."

Nancy laughed and said, "Come on, let’s get out of here."

We went to Nancy’s house after that. We watched Requiem for a Dream. Mark kind of looks like the white guy in that movie, at the end when his mother dreams he’s dressed up nice and successful. Only, Mark doesn’t have black hair; he has dark blond hair. And Mark’s eyes are brown, not blue. And Mark’s kind of short. I guess Mark doesn’t really look anything like the white guy in Requiem for a Dream. But he still reminds me of him.

After we watched the movie, we went into Nancy’s bedroom, and she showed me her new criminal analysis book. It was a college-level textbook that Nancy bought "just because." She’s strange. She’s the only person I know who saves her money for textbooks and reads them of her own free will. So we were flipping through Nancy’s new and exciting textbook, and looking at the pictures of raped and mutilated women, ice-picked children, and decapitated men, when Nancy suddenly laughed and said, "Do you think I’d make a good cop?"

"No," I said. Nancy was one of the most athletic girls in school, she was level-headed, and she was good about following rules, most of the time. But I could picture her standing at the front door of some poor woman’s house, telling her that her husband has just died, and suddenly bursting into fits of laughter.

It’s sad, how a person can be so right for a job, but so wrong for it, all because of one tragic flaw. I wondered what Mark’s tragic flaw was.

"Maybe he stutters," I said aloud.

"No, wait," Nancy said. "Why wouldn’t I make a good cop?"

"I dunno…," I said. "You’re really… optimistic. And by that I mean you have a really broad sense of humor. Do you suppose Mark stutters? Maybe that’s why he never talks."

Nancy fell onto her bed and laughed. It was her genuine laugh, the one that possesses her, throws her head back, exposes her throat, and sends her body into spasms. Nancy’s laughter is deep and a little malicious-sounding, when she’s laughing about something that she thinks is actually funny.

Nancy straightened up and said, "God, Elise, you are so self-centered!"

Where the hell did that come from?

"All you ever talk about is this guy you like," Nancy said.

"Okay, first of all, I don’t like him. And second, if I’m talking about Mark all the time, how does that make me self-centered?"

"It isn’t that we talk about Mark; it’s that we talk about what you want to talk about. Always. And, you know, Elise, that’s not so bad because you usually come up with some interesting topics. But lately all you’ve been talking about is Mark, the guy you don’t like but can’t seem to shut up about."

"I don’t like him."

"Fine."

"I just think he’s interesting."

"Fine."

"I think—"

"Don’t you dare say another word about Mark," Nancy said, chuckling. "The next time you talk about that guy, I’m going to tell him that you like him, and I’m going to tell him that he should seriously consider investing in a restraining order, because you, my dear friend, are a little scary when you’re interested in someone."

So I didn’t say anything else about Mark that night. And that disturbed me. Maybe I did like Mark. Why else would I care about Nancy telling him? If I honestly didn’t like him, I wouldn’t care about his opinion of me, and I would have kept chattering away.

"Maybe he has low self-esteem," I said the next day as Nancy and I boarded the bus to school.

"What?" Nancy said.

"Nothing."

We showed the bus driver our passes and found two empty seats next to each other. "Maybe that’s why he’s always glaring at that poster," I said.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Are you talking about Mark?"

"No."

We rode to school in silence. I had nothing to talk about (nothing Nancy wanted to hear about, anyway), and Nancy wasn’t used to instigating conversation. Smart girl, that one; but not very social. But, then, it’s not like she needs to talk. Nancy can ride across town without saying a word to her best friend sitting right beside her, and you can tell she’s completely comfortable with it. I, on the other hand, feel weird not talking.

A little red-headed boy around eight years old sitting in front of me turned around and stared at me. I hate kids. Nancy saw the boy and started laughing. The boy turned to her and smiled. "What’s funny?" he asked her innocently.

Nancy smiled and turned away without answering. The boy turned back to me. He held up a large pad of sketch paper. "Do you want to drawl?" he asked me.

Nancy laughed again.

He turned to her. "What’s funny?" he asked again.

"Nothing, sweetie," Nancy said.

For the rest of the bus ride, the little boy stared at me. Occasionally, he stared at Nancy. But mostly, he stared at me. "What are you staring at?" I finally asked him.

The little boy pointed at me and grinned.

I was so glad when I finally got off that bus.

I wanted to talk. I needed to talk. "Nancy?" I said before I could stop myself. "Do you think Mark’s a Jehovah’s Witness?"

"Oh, I am so telling him about the restraining order!"

"No! Wait! I forgot!"

"No, you had your chance." Nancy sped up to her 1^st period class, and I suffered the rest of the morning. Lunch came around, and when we met to eat together, I begged Nancy not to tell Mark anything. She refused to speak to me, unless it was to say how many more minutes until lunch ended, along with my life.

“Please, Nancy?” I said as I watched her stuff a piece of ham sandwich into her mouth. How could she eat at a time like this? She was about to ruin my entire life! Nancy is a sick individual. And she was ignoring me. “Nancy!”

“If you don’t quit bothering me while I’m trying to eat,” she said, “I’m going to tell Mark that you wondered whether or not he’s gay, in addition to telling him that you like him.”

Most people bite their tongues when they’re trying to keep themselves from talking. (At least, that’s what TV says.) I bite the inside of my cheek when I’m trying to shut myself up. This time, I bit my cheek really hard, and I felt a small sliver of flesh swish around inside my mouth before I instinctively swallowed it. I gagged as I tasted blood seeping onto my tongue.

“Drama isn’t going to work on me,” Nancy said, laughing. “Act like you’re dying all you want, it’s not going to stop me from telling him.”

I forgot the pain in my mouth and swallowed the blood. “You can’t tell him!”

Nancy ignored me.

Finally, the bell ending lunch rang, and we gathered our books and started that long trek to our history class, my heart racing. "Please, Nancy? Please don’t tell him! You’re not going to tell him what I said about him being gay, are you?" I whispered desperately to her as we walked on. She ignored me.

As we approached our history class, I started to feel sick. Blood from where I’d bitten my cheek drizzled down my throat and into my empty stomach. I couldn’t go to class. I couldn’t do it. I’d throw up if I went in there. As though she’d read my thoughts, Nancy grabbed my hand and squeezed it. And it was strange— even though, at that moment, I hated Nancy, I felt better.  I felt comforted.

We entered history class together, and, to my utter relief, Mark wasn’t there.

“Yes!” I screamed, throwing my books onto my desk, and jumping around like a dork, grinning. Everyone was staring at me, but I didn’t care. Mark wasn’t there! “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Someone said something about an Herbal Essences commercial, and I heard Nancy laughingly mutter, "Lucky.”

Nancy and I sat down.  The late bell rang, but Mr. Meredith hadn’t shown up yet, so I turned around and started talking to Nancy. “I hate you, you know that?”

“I know,” she said with a grin.

“Were you really going to tell him?” I whispered

Nancy nodded. “I wasn’t going to say anything about the gay thing, though. But I was going to tell him you like him. You do, don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and it was the truth. “I guess do, or else I wouldn’t care, right? I wonder… I wonder if he would like me.”

Nancy shrugged. “I guess we’ll see tomorrow,” she said, smiling evilly.

By now, a few more minutes had passed, Mr. Meredith still hadn’t arrived, and the class had started their own discussion: How many minutes can a teacher be late before the class is allowed to leave?

"If the teacher’s fifteen minutes late," someone in the back said, "then we can leave. That’s the rule."

“No, I think it’s ten minutes,” someone else said.

Mr. Meredith and Mrs. Gregor, one of the counselors, walked in just then, and the class grew silent. Mr. Meredith stood near the door of the classroom and stared at the floor. Mrs. Gregor seemed distraught, though not as much as Mr. Meredith. "Guys," Mrs. Gregor said, "I have some bad news."  The class grew very still. Mrs. Gregor continued, "One of your classmates, Mark Hasle, passed away early this morning."

"Why?" I said. I felt numb and sick. "How?"

Mrs. Gregor paused. Then she said, “He swallowed too many pills.” Mrs. Gregor continued to speak, but I didn’t hear anything else. I looked at Mr. Meredith, who had turned his back to the class. He took his glasses off and bowed his head to wipe his eyes. A few students shifted in their seats. I turned to look at Nancy who sat behind me, and, out of habit, I glanced at Mark’s desk. Empty.

I looked at Nancy. She looked very solemn, and she looked straight ahead. I didn’t occur to me until many months later that she hadn’t laughed.

The day it occurred to me was the last day of school. We had just received our yearbooks, and I was flipping through mine when I came across a page consumed by a familiar face that stung my eyes and still had the power to make me wonder. Mark’s senior picture stared up at me from a page that had been dedicated entirely to him.

It was a strange picture. His hair was glossier than it had been in real life, and there was a light aura around him. Mark’s picture was like most senior pictures: a lie. Yeah, it looked good, but it wasn’t real. Where was his maniacal glare? Mark looked so happy in this picture.

No one knew why Mark committed suicide. There were rumors that he’d been abused. Rumors that he had never had any friends. Rumors that he was a Nazi in league with an underground cult connected to the shootings at Columbine. But no one really knew, and after a month or so, no one really seemed to care.

I read the short paragraph written below Mark’s picture, hoping to find some clue, some missing puzzle piece. 

In this first sentence, I discovered his birthday: November 2, 1983. That meant he was a Scorpio, the dangerous and evil Sign of the zodiac. I continued reading. According to the writer of the paragraph, Mark enjoyed writing poetry about nature and God.

“Huh,” I said.

I read on. Mark also spent several of his weekends volunteering at a local hospital for handicapped children.

I quit reading. I closed my yearbook and set it aside. All of a sudden, I started laughing. Then I cried. Then I wondered: Why didn’t Nancy laugh the day they announced Mark had died.

I asked her later that day. She just looked at me like I was crazy, and said, “Death isn’t funny.”