Chapter 1

"Garnet?! Slow down!!"
"Huh?...oh..."
I barely heard Agatha as she yelled at me to ease up on my lead foot. My body was on autopilot, but my mind took off in several different directions as I sped east on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Glancing at the speedometer, I knew I was going too fast for the wintry road conditions outside, but my mind was elsewhere.
It was New Year's Eve and I was so thankful to be rid of 2004 in less than 24 hours. It was a terrible year for me, at least toward the end, so Ag and myself decided to head to Philadelphia to ring in the new year with my favorite band, Green With Envy. They had a show tomorrow at a place called McKool's and we abused our press credentials and convinced the band's tour manager to allow us access to the photo pit, like we've done at least a dozen times before when we wanted to be up close and personal with one of our favs. It was only a matter of time, I guessed, before we would be caught red-handed and left in a boatload of trouble.
2004 started off good, actually. It was almost exactly a year ago when I saw Evan at that show at Club Castle. I remember scanning the crowd for Ag when his familiar face caught my eye. He was a friend of mine in high school. More of an acquaintance really. A hockey player. A friend of some of the neighborhood guys and an ex-boyfriend of my good friend, Marlyn. He was a year younger than me and two grades behind, so we didn't have classes together, but we talked enough for me to know that I truly liked him.
He had a way about him. He was fun-loving and charming in a way that instantly attracted people to him and he possessed a smile that could light up a room, as cliched as that sounds. He radiated joy and happiness. Always.
When I saw him at the concert that night, I could tell from all the way across the room it was him just by his smile. He didn't look all that different, actually. He still wore the same cab-driver looking hat he always wore back then and his notable black "chops" were still carved perfectly on the sides of his face. He wore a black The Clash t-shirt and green camo shorts that were obviously cut from pants as noted by the frays.
I fought my way over to him through a sea of girls with multi-colored hair and guys wearing studded black leather jackets, all dancing to the quasi-Irish band on stage. I intended just to say hi and continue looking for Ag, but that didn't happen. I guess I was a fool to believe getting away from Evan would be that easy, but I didn't mind. We made our way to the bar area and talked for the rest of the show about life in general since high school. He told me about a girl that recently broke his heart and about a job he was taking out in Vegas–in two days.
After the show, he invited me out to a going away party some of his friends were throwing for him, but I declined because I had to work early the next day. We ended up departing with promises to keep in touch through exchanged phone numbers, email addresses and AIM screen names.
It was only maybe a week before the square text box popped up on my computer screen one night.
"How's it going?," it said.
Even though the screen name was a vague mixture of numbers and letters, I knew it was Evan. We chatted quite a while that night. He was so easy to talk to—like a friend I've known my whole life.
Over the course of the next few months we talked more and more and I found myself looking forward to our chats. Despite the three-hour time difference, we always made time for each other.
We talked about everything and nothing at all. He was my shoulder to cry on when I had a rough day and I was a friend unconditionally as well as his connection to home. He loved his job, but was homesick. He didn't know many people in the city and expressed his loneliness often.
"When are you going to come see me?," he'd always ask.
A few weeks before his birthday in November he came back to Pittsburgh to visit his family and friends. His old bandmate was playing at a bar on the South Side one of the evenings he was here, so I tagged along to keep him company.
When he dropped me back off that night, he kissed me. It caught me so off guard that I quickly muttered goodnight and took off out of the car and into my house like a bolt of lightening.
I knew how I felt about him, but I also knew long-distance relationships just do not work.
After that, our talks online became less and less frequent and I guess it was my fault, even though I missed him a lot. I took a picture of the two of us at the bar when he was in town and I found myself looking at it often.
It would be the last picture I would ever get to take with Evan.
I got the call on a Sunday afternoon.
"Hello?," I asked into the receiver at Marlyn. I already knew it was her from the caller ID.
"I...have...to tell...you something..." she sobbed into the phone.
"Evan's...dead," she finally managed to get out.
I stood in silence as she told me he was in a car accident on his way home from a night out with friends the evening before. He was ejected through the windshield of the vehicle from the back seat and died on impact. He was the only one in the car who didn't survive.
After hanging up with Marlyn, I collapsed in overwhelming grief. I felt so cheated and so alone...
Not Evan.
A loud honk from a Buick whizzing down the left lane snapped me back into reality. I had to fight back tears as they stung the back of my eyeballs, trying to squeeze their way out.
"Garnet!!," Ag exclaimed.
"Are you trying to get us killed?!"
"Ah, no...I'm, I'm sorry," I stammered.
She gave me a dirty look as she lifted her headphones back to her dirty blonde hair then slowly closed her eyes and adjusted the passenger seat to a reclining position, tapping her fingertips on her other arm to the rhythm of whatever she had playing on her iPod at the moment.
I spent the remaining two hours trying as best as I could to concentrate on the increasingly snow-covered road.
Not on Evan.