James is eighteen when he wonders if people can drown in rain. He knows that movies portray drowning as a dramatic, desperate flailing. There are loud cries for help and you sink because you just can’t fight the waves. But James knows better. Drowning is quiet. It’s got a beautiful subtlety to it. Drowning isn’t being pushed under blue waves with no escape. It’s artful suffocation. It’s losing oxygen so slowly that you don’t even know it's leaving you until it’s gone. It’s exhaustion that’s forced upon you, so much so, that you just want to let go. In fact, James knew you didn’t even need water to drown. 

It was raining outside– pouring. Maybe that’s why James was so concerned with the rain. Or maybe he was concerned because he was unknowingly sinking - suffocating. 

James stared at himself in the mirror. He tended to that a lot recently. Sometimes he’d just zone out thinking of how he would look if life was a little different, a little happier. But inevitably, he would be pulled back into reality and be reminded that life is what it is. It isn’t different. It isn’t happier. It’s a storm of dark greys and thunderous noises and rain that just never stops pouring. 

He didn’t have any time to waste today though. He quickly tied his tie. James made sure it was that blue one Charlie made fun of. 

Charlie would often look at the tie and laugh. “You wearing that for the ladies? It bring your ocean eyes out?”

James would always laugh as he loosely tied the tie around his neck. “Of course not. You know I wear this tie just for you.” 

They’d make kissy faces to each other before they shoved one another and ran to see who could get through the door frame first. It was a tradition that came with the tie. So today, for purely ironic reasons, James would wear that tie, unequivocally for him. 

He put his blazer on before stepping back. He ran his hand through his messy hair. Mom told him he needed to comb that today. But James had vehemently refused. 

Charlie used to brush his teeth in the dorm room while looking for socks. Every morning, when he went to wake James up he’d say, “You finally gonna brush out that bird’s nest?”

James would stick his tongue out before stopping in the mirror with a comb. He’d spend a couple minutes trying to brush the mess out before Charlie would shout, saying “Oh leave it already! You’d look much worse without the nest. You just wouldn’t be James.”

Charlie would duck under James’ punch before laughing. He’d even stop to mess up James’ hair even more, before they’d go downstairs to get breakfast. 

So as James stood in front of that mirror, he ran his hand through his bird's nest. If the nest was what Charlie wanted, then that was fine with James. 

He stood in front of the mirror. He looked… put together. There was no evidence of the panic attack he’d had earlier this morning. There was no evidence of the wall he had punched last week. There was no evidence that he’d snuck out 3 nights ago and showed up 4 hours later with a new tattoo because James was craving permanence – something he just didn’t have. 

As James went downstairs, he grabbed the crumpled up speech and placed it in the right pocket of his blazer. 

It turned out that they were the first people there, which was rather ironic considering Charlie and James were historically late to nearly every class. So much so that they attended numerous detentions because their tardiness was an unmanageable problem. 

James stood next to the coffin waiting for everyone. And slowly they came by. They were dressed in all black, without a single splash of color. As if his grey day needed any more rain. They all took their seats in the white plastic chairs that were laid in rows. But not James. James stood in front of the casket. 

Someone in the back broke out in loud sobs. They were the kind of sobs that spoke of sadness, but not despair. No, these tears, the ones in front of him, they were sad tears. They were “I’m sorry” tears. They were “we miss you” tears. But they weren’t tears of desperation. 

Where were these tears when he was alive and needed a reason to keep going? Where was this camaraderie when he had felt so isolated, so alone?  They weren’t the sobs he constantly felt rack his body. No James’s sobs held pain –  pure anguish. They held the raw screams of someone desperate for a reason to keep going. 

James snapped. He looked at the vast sea of black in front of him. He moved and stood behind the coffin. The blacks started to blend together. He wasn’t looking at people anymore. It was just an endless storm. They didn’t feel what James had felt. They didn’t understand what he had lost. 

He felt his right hand shake as he reached into the pocket to pull the eulogy out. He looked at the words. He didn’t remember writing these. They were fake, like all of the people here. James looked back up to the crowd of black. He hated black. It was a terrible color. Absolutely devoid of emotion. In a world already so dark, why would anyone choose to willingly dress in it? All of them were wearing black. James had worn his bright blue tie. And Charlie was dressed in his favorite floral suit. So why were they all wearing black? He hated black. 

He looked back down at the speech he didn't remember writing. He took deep breaths to steady himself. He tried reading it out loud. He really did. But when he looked up at the sea of black, the sea of black that was crying fake tears. The sea of black that didn’t even know his favorite color; all that came out was “Did any of you even love me?”

The reverberating silence was deafening. 

James glanced down at the casket. And it wasn’t Charlie that was lying there. It was him. It was him in his bright blue tie and the bird's nest that made him so James. It was him with that tattoo that he had gotten three days ago. It was him, except he had drowned in the pouring rain. He glanced up and saw Charlie. Charlie, who had cried out all his tears, who wore his favorite floral suit just for him, was defiantly gazing out into the crowd. “Well? Did any of you even love him?”

James had drowned. He had artfully suffocated. The pouring rain had devoured him whole. 

And finally, the thunder stopped. The grey that dampened his world relinquished its hold on him. The red, hot anger he had been carrying around in his chest melted. For the first time, in a long time, the rain stopped pouring.