The sunlight poured through the stained-glass windows with a cruel kind of elegance, scattering shards of vibrant color across the pews like confetti for a celebration no one had agreed to attend. It painted reds and greens and golds across the dark wood, across black jackets and pale faces, across the still silence of grief masquerading as order. The church was thick with warmth, suffocating in its sweetness—the scent of lilies blooming in vases, the sweat of bodies trying not to tremble, the hush of a hundred people trying not to make a sound.
Alex sat between his parents, a phantom in a stiff black suit that didn't feel like his. It clung to him like paper, too rigid, too tight, like a second skin he hadn't chosen. He was here, technically, his body slotted between the people who'd raised him—but inside, he'd vanished. A watcher from some cold internal balcony, observing everything through a sheet of frosted glass.
The service began.
It passed over him like weather: the low hum of the organ, the soft sniffles rippling through the aisles, the somber cadence of the priest reading carefully composed eulogies. He took in the details without feeling them. His classmates, fidgeting and tear-streaked, squirmed in too-big suits and borrowed dresses. His teachers sat stiff and solemn, their expressions rehearsed. The principal stepped up to speak, voice quivering just enough to pass for sincerity. Leo's relatives in the front pew were sobbing, their cries like distant whale songs—muted, distorted, not quite real.
A screen flickered to life beside the pulpit. The slideshow began.
Leo, grinning, baby teeth gapped and proud, holding a fish nearly the length of his arm. Leo in an oversized jersey on the little league field, cap tilted like it had a personality of its own. Leo blowing out candles, chocolate icing on his nose. A dozen moments preserved in digital amber, looping quietly to remind everyone of what they'd lost.
Then came the photo.
Him and Leo. Middle school. Arms slung around each other, grinning like they'd just won the universe instead of a science fair. Their first-place ribbon dangled between them like a prize for friendship itself. Leo's hair stuck out in all directions. Alex was mid-laugh, caught in a moment of unfiltered joy.
The ache didn't come in the form of tears.
It came as something colder. Sharper.
Guilt.
A hot, slicing guilt that punched straight through the numbness and made his fingers curl tightly into fists against his thighs. The photo—their photo—was a lie now. It showed two boys full of brightness and belonging. But all he could see was the boy Leo became later. The one with slouched shoulders in the cafeteria. The one whose eyes had dimmed. The one he hadn't really seen.
His memory dragged him back, without mercy, to that cafeteria table. Leo's quiet voice. The flimsy excuse.
"I gotta take this."
Alex's own words echoed in his head, jagged and relentless, like glass grinding in an empty room. And now here he was, sitting in a sea of mourners while the priest spoke of Leo's joy and loyalty and wild energy—none of which Alex had known how to reach at the end. He hadn't tried.
The guilt settled into his bones like wet cement.
Everyone around him was mourning who Leo was. The light. The laughter. The memories. But Alex? He was mourning what he hadn't done. The moment he didn't ask a second time. The way he'd traded something vital for something urgent. The version of Leo the world remembered was preserved in sunlight. But the version that haunted Alex was silent, slumped, already half-vanished—and it was that boy he had failed.
He felt the eyes on him.
Classmates glancing over with sympathy. Teachers watching with tender, pitying glances. They thought they understood. They thought he was just another heartbroken friend. They didn't know. They couldn't know.
Because this wasn't shared grief. This was a solitary sentence.
He didn't cry. Couldn't. The tears felt like they belonged to someone else. His face remained motionless, his gaze pinned to the pew in front of him, the wood grain there more familiar than any human expression. He didn't deserve their comfort. He hadn't earned it. The pain in this room had shape and community. His didn't. His was shaped like a door he hadn't opened.
The final prayer was said.
The organ began again, low and mournful, rising like fog around them. One by one, people stood. The rustle of fabric. The shuffle of shoes. The congregation moved as one, slowly filing toward the doors, into the bright, indifferent sunlight that waited outside.
His parents rose. His mother paused, laying a soft hand on his shoulder.
But Alex didn't move.
He remained seated, hands clenched in his lap, spine rigid, eyes still locked forward. A statue cast in shame. He felt the weight of everything he hadn't done pressing down on his chest, each regret heavy as lead. The ghost of Leo stood behind his eyes—quiet, unimposing, but ever-present. It didn't speak. It didn't blame.
And somehow, that silence was worse than anything it could've said.
There was no strategy for this. No step-by-step plan to fix what had already rotted through. The boy he had been—the one who missed the signs—had no answers. No wisdom. Just the unbearable task of living with what he hadn't known until it was too late.
And so he stayed there.
A ghost among the grieving.
Mourning the version of his friend the world had already buried—
and the version Alex had let disappear long before.
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I am back.