Missed Calls
The sweltering air held me to the bed like glue. Even the non-stop ringing and beeping of my phone could not pry me from the comfy spot I had found despite the heat of late summer in the room. My family and I were staying at our lake house for the weekend, about an hour away from home.
I wasn't asleep, but I was barely awake. It was Saturday night, without looking I knew who was calling and why. At 12:30 in the morning it could only be one of the "Waanders Gang", a group of my high school friends who hang out every weekend to drink, smoke and play pool as if nothing has changed in the five years since we graduated.
"Okay, okay. I'll get up," I muttered to myself, more as an instruction than as an answer to my phone.
By now it was almost 2 a.m. I thought it might be something more important than my drunken friends trying to rouse me out of bed to join them, but it wasn't. It was Waanders on the two-way for the third time in less than an hour. I figured it must have been a good party since three different friends had already called me that night, but I didn't answer any of their calls.
Even if I had felt like joining them for a drink I couldn't. My sleeping medications were already in full effect and I was an hour away. At that point nothing short of a natural disaster could have gotten me out of bed. In my groggy and impatient state I turned the phone to vibrate and crawled back in bed without answering it or listening to the messages they had already left.
A few months earlier I completely turned my phone off when they called repeatedly. That was a huge mistake. Afterwards, I woke up to find roughly two-dozen obscene and drunken voicemails from everyone at the party that night. Turning my phone to vibrate was a much better idea.
With my phone safely on vibrate, I could sleep through their sporadic calls and not have to wade through a mailbox full of irate and inebriated messages like, Oh, you turned you phone off? Well, we'll see about that! or Tammy's drunken rendition of "Sweet Home Alabama" after half a dozen Lebowskis at 3 in the morning. Within seconds of hitting the pillow my mind emptied once again and I slipped back into unconsciousness.
In the morning, I decided not to listen to the voicemails yet. Whatever Tammy, Jason, and Waanders had to say could wait until my meds wore off, when I was in a better state to return phone calls. Just as I was finishing breakfast with my family the phone rang again. This time it was Beth.
I knew she wasn't at the party last night so I figured it was safe to answer. Beth had moved away a year ago and since then she rarely hung out with us. My phone doesn't have the best reception inside the house so I had to sit out on the porch steps to get good enough reception to understand what Beth was trying to tell me.
As soon as I heard the sadness in her voice I knew something was terribly wrong. "Sara, did you hear what happened?" Without giving me a chance to answer Beth continued, Nadine is dead. It was a car accident.She died last night. My Mom called to tell me this morning. Can you call someone and see if it's true?"
Sitting on the porch steps covered in dew and droplets from the automatic sprinklers, I shivered violently but only partially from the dampness. My head spun uncontrollably, I couldn't concentrate on Beth or what else she said.
"I'll call you back, Beth," I said with whatever voice I could gather through the tears and hung up.
My mind was racing. Who should I call? What should I do? Could it be true? Before I had a chance to make up my mind the phone rang in my shaking hand. This time it was Tammy. She had called over and over last night so I answered immediately, knowing what she had to tell me. Nadine was her best friend.
"I think I know why you're calling," I said.
She only sobbed in response.
• • • • • • •
A tiny green light flashed incessantly from my cell phone across the room. I didn't need to listen to the messages it announced; I already knew what they would be about. For the last three days it had been one phone call after another, all on the same topic.
Some people seemed to be calling to offer sympathy or late arriving news. Others seemed to be gossiping about the accident like it was a fender bender rather than a fatality. Nadine's service was the next day and it seemed like no one in Allegan had anything better to discuss than my friend's death. Caller ID became my favorite invention. By that time I was tired of rehashing the same conversation, so I only answered calls from my family and close friends, which more or less was limited to the Wannders Gang.
Any conversation that began with, "Did you hear about Nadine?" made me sick. People who didn't get along with her in school or were never my friend or hers tried to act all chummy and distressed by her death. I wanted to strangle them all. The Waanders Gang had really come together though. Nadine was a part of our group. We were real friends, unlike all those suck ups who stopped me on the street.
• • • • • • •
Staying in bed would not preempt the events of the day, no matter how much I wished it would, so I flipped my phone shut and reluctantly crawled out from under the covers to face the difficult day ahead. The shower always seems like an appropriate place to cry anyway.
Half an hour later I sat on my couch, dressed and ready to go, staring at the TV as if it was actually on and of interest to me at that point. I don't know how long I sat there, alone in my own world of grief and disbelief, but by the time I resurfaced Lisa was ready to go and Beth and Jason were at my house.
• • • • • • •
"Another round of drinks?" the bartender asked.
"Yeah, on me this time," I answered without bothering to see if anyone else was ready for another shot of Jager.
Perhaps we seemed immature for going out and getting trashed after the funeral but it didn't matter to us at the time. We all loved Nadine and knew she would have done the same thing if the tables were turned. Celebrating Nadine's life the way she lived it, happily and loudly, seemed fitting so we drank and drank to wash away the pain.
In the process of drowning our sorrows and racking up an impressive bar tab we reminisced about Nadine. We talked about how "Nads" loved to play pirates when we were kids, in Junior High she was obsessed with the Tick cartoon and during High School her favorite band was the Wallflowers.
"Cheers, to Nadine and better days," Tammy announced as she raised her shot of Jager slightly unsteady from previous shots.
"Cheers," I answered before throwing back the shot and wiping a tear from my eye.