Find me Something to Believe, a New Life to Lead

We ran away the day after the funeral.
It was November and a clear crisp cold day when my family and I walked away from the grave. We were silent and the only noise to be heard was out slow footsteps and the thud of the earth hitting the top of the coffin, frozen hard in the short amount of time it had been open to the elements.
They had blown up a picture of him and put it at one end of the room during the wake. It wasn’t the one I would have chosen. It was his graduation picture and he had tamed his short curly brown for the occasion, mainly to please our Mother. He had just started work at the bar for his summer job and was preparing to go away for college in the fall. I would have chosen the one of him the day he finished fixing up his car. It was his pride and joy. An old Mustang shell that he saved for and built up with his own hands. He may have been able to use his brain but he was more at home using his hands. In the picture I would have chosen his hair was in disary around his face and his nose was a tiny bit sunburned from being outside with the car all summer and he had a little smudge of oil against his cheakbone. He was posing with our other brother, Ray, and they had never looked more similar.
I stayed quiet for most of the wake. the idea of a life without my eldest brother wasn’t one I was ready to focus on. It didn’t seem possible that he had really died and so I refused to join in any of the conversations that praised his memory. I didn’t need to remember him, he would come back and we could keep making memories. I think part of me did know at that point, no matter how hard I tired to pretend it wasn’t happening. Ray and I were both in black suits for the occasion, but in memory to WIll and against the wishes of our Mother we were wearing Smiths t-shirts underneith, a gig the three of us had gone to less than a month ago.
I continued my silence for most of the day, stubbonly staying out of conversations and heading off to bed as early as I could get away, but I didn’t sleep. I lay awake and looked into my future. I had never been a bad kid, not always perfect but home by curfew most of the time, a little lax with the washing up but not rude toward my parents. We got on at least half of the time. But the day Will died something in me snapped, I realized how little time I could have and thought about what I would want to do with this time. I had nearly finished school. My insides were still warm and my brain a little fuzzed from the wine I had been drinking all day. I went over the times in my life I had been happiest. At the time only one memory seemed strong to me. I was sat in the garden with Ray, Will and some of thier friends. They were close in age, only a year appart but I was younger than Ray by two years and so was not always invited with them. I was 15 at the time and we had a fire going in the BBQ and some stolen beers. It was the first time I had ever taken anything. It’s not that Will was addicted to anything, just that he liked to experiment. I was nervous when I was offered some but went ahead and tried it, Will was there, Ray was there, they wouldn’t let anything happen to me. That night I had felt a seperation from the world without feeling distant from my friends or brothers, I had been happy for no real reason and I had met someone important. It was the first night I met Gerard. As I lay in bed pretending that my eldest brother wasn’t dead and my living brother wasn’t crying for the first time in years, nothing seemed more appealing than the distant, happy feeling I remembered. Nothing seemed better than escaping.
I had stayed in touch with Gerard since that fisrt night, and it wasn’t my only experiment either. We were close, close enough for me to know how unhappy he was living at home, and much he would love to run away.
When I got out of my bed after a few quiet thoughtful hours I first checked that everyone was asleep, then I went back to my room and I packed a bag. I only needed esentials, clothes, photos, money. Then I let myself into Will’s room. I knew where his stash was and using his old school bag I stowed away all of the booze and ‘relief’ that I could find. I also grabbed his car keys.
My bags hit the floor of the garage and I looked at it, Will’s pride and joy, his baby, that he would never drive again. Well now it was mine. I needed it, well I needed him but this was the closest I was ever going to get. I had never expected him to let me in his car but he had taught me how to drive in it, much more fun than being taught by Dad. I dumped my bags in the boot and drove off. It was 4am, by the time my family woke up and realized I was gone, I would be too far away to be found.
Before I hit the highway I had one stop to make, the Way’s. Gerard kept his room dark with only one small window, but he never locked it. I climbed up on a flower pot to reach it and called through to him. Half an hour later he was onside, an hour later he was packed and 20 minutes after that he had said a quick goosbye to his brother and left a note appologising to his parents and we were off. We took turns driving and made it to New York, a city big enough for us to loose ourselves.
We parked along a street outside a dinner and wrapped ourselves in coats. He held my hand as we walked across the street. I sat next to him as we had pancakes and coffee and planned what to do next. We needed money, we needed somewhere to live and we needed each other.


I met het first in the Spring. Small and smiling with her brothers curling hair but her own eyes. She was new to a lot of this I could tell but she handled herself well. She was interrested in the affect that it had on her. We stayed up and talked once it had worn off. The embers of the BBQ bonfire burning out. We got on well, she made me smile in a way I hadn’t since my Grandmother had died. I had been kdue to head off to college but hadn’t made it. Instead I had speant my first year out of school at home on meds trying to put my mind back together. I liked her, she made me happy, but she was Ray’s little sister and I was Ray’s friend. But there was no harm in coffee and conversation, so we met up again in the week.
“Alright there Way?!” she called across the coffee shop slipping off her coat and coming to sit opposite me.
“Not to bad tiny Toro, not too bad.” She had just finished reading Catcher in Rye and was fascinated with the idea of escape, I understood where she was coming from. With her legs pulled up to her chest on the squashy chair in the coffee shop she looked me in the eyes and said
“I think everyone needs to do that at some point, leave everything behind and loose themselves in the world. Just walk away from all expectations and pressures and see who they are without them. See whats left. It’s hard to figure out who you are when your trying to become something.”
“Thats true. I don’t know if I know who I am but I don’t think thats the only way to find out. I mean, the only things I know about myself are the things I have seen through what I’ve created. The character I draw the people I imagane.”
“But I can’t create things like you can Way.” and the conversation had moved on.
So it was no supprise to me that little Danni Toro showed up and my window the night after her brother had died. She had always been close to Ray, the three of them had always been close, but she had idolized Will. I can’t say I blamed her for wanting to go. And I was thrilled that I was the one she had asked to go with her. I could never had said no to her. I wish I had been able to but I wasn’t. I got close to her in the months between meeting her and Will’s car crash. I thought I was in love with her and would have followed her to the end of the earth. The only part that was really hard was leaving Mikey. I told him I would call, would stay in touch. I never did. And so with the sun rising and light filling the world around we escaped. We escaped our grief and all presures and expectations. We left for a city big enough to swallow us whole and spit us back out again. I wish we had thought about what we were about to do.

Notes