I sat there on my laptop, two o’clock in the morning, talking with whoever I could find. I’d regularly check Xanga entries and Facebook statuses of those close and those of whom I’d never spoken to in a very long time. I’d talk with Yves for the entire night like others, trying to laugh about the funniest situations and increase our intellect. Sometimes I’d stop the conversation to talk to someone else quickly, while also secretly wishing distant people who never come online would somehow randomly pop up just to talk, which has happened on some occasions, mainly on Facebook chat, and I can’t get enough of. I’d love talking to these people who pop out of nowhere just to talk.

            Suddenly I would start to see statuses of disbelief, fear, R.I.P. insignias, and thought to myself whether if such a moment has come again. I went to his Facebook, only to see comments of worry and the constant speculation of chaos, worry, and the frantic shock surrounding a lot of people I knew started to come true. I became worried and called whoever I could think of first. He would pick up the phone and I asked if he was okay and if everything wasn’t the way it was truly being presented, as I chose to never receive its face value.

“I probably shouldn’t be saying this…”

I waited for the pause to end for three seconds only to hear,

“…but he really is gone.”

            The conversation brief, all else I would hear was the smooth sound of a car engine through a freeway of lights, seeming as if he was trying to find some kind of accord. I imagined him in that light as he spoke to me on the phone. I was shocked out of my innocence. I would be so shocked that someone so close in all of my social interactions would disappear again. I didn’t cry. I never did. Back when Danielle passed away, I took everyone else’s sadness to excel in my own way. This time I was in such shock I was unable to sleep. I would talk to others and ask if they wanted company over. I was getting ready to leave the house at four o’clock in the morning for support and my own sudden insomniac ability.

I would wake one of my parents up about the situation and would instead just move about to just cancelling leaving the house at all. I sat there shocked instead, surfing the net like a forty-year-old otaku trying to make sense of the magnitude of what had occurred three to five hours ago. I would eventually sleep peacefully, but not without thinking about the multitude of other people going through their own situations as a result of a death, as I sat there in my room with others online in my own isolated incident. I would continue onto my own source of mental attempt to grasp the situation. Suddenly, I got sleepy enough to be able to go to bed. I looked from the center at the ever-changing landscape of my room in solitude from my taken-down posters to more worldly settings. I would look at my bookshelf and everything else in between for my own fascination. I knew this wasn’t going to end, this story in particular, I mean. And that I would have more to learn in the future. I closed my eyes and went to sleep, hoping to eventually get a cup of hot chocolate at Starbucks in my suit and tie during my eventual morning drive.