Opening to Deadbook

Every time I signed onto Livespace, my preferred social networking site du jour, the face of a dead friend greeted me. She had succumbed to cancer months before, and her family had left the profile up in memoriam. She smiled at me from the grid of favored friends, her eyes pinched as if avoiding the glare of the flash, her cheeks hollow from the years of battle and the months of patient waiting, her smile just as lovely and lively as it had been twenty years earlier, when we were thirteen and invulnerable.

I thought there was nothing more fucked up than that daily reminder of loss -- until she sent me an IM.

I was mindlessly tilling the soil of a digital farm when a chat box popped up. I saw the first word of the greeting, "Hey!" and thought it was Mandy or Linda, my last two exes, checking up on me, trying to drag me out of the apartment. I was going to simply ignore it and continue tilling my fields -- I had digital oats to sow -- when curiosity and a perverse desire for attention made me consider the chat box a little more carefully. My heart lub-dubbed in my chest, my stomach cramped, and all the muscles in my lower back flared in a cruel jet of adrenaline rush.

The box didn't just say, "Hey!" It said, "Hey! Can I see your watch?"

Those had been Lana's first words to me back in the eighth grade. "Hey! Can I see your watch?"

Middle School hadn't been kind to me. I was forty pounds overweight, was still trying to work out personal hygiene, and by the eighth grade, had alienated almost everyone I considered a close friend, except for one guy who went to the other middle school. I was a big bundle of insecurities, bullied and beaten by peers who saw an easy mark. Bullying works best against those who react the most.

So when this cute girl with a bright smile and a tomboy hair cut came up to me and asked to see my watch, I was a little dubious at first.

"Hey! Can I see your watch?"

The words seared into the bright LCD display.

I typed, "Who is this?"

"It's Lana, fool," she responded, before sticking her digital tongue out at me.

"It can't be," I typed before smacking the enter key hard enough to echo in my lonely apartment.

"But it is! I thought I'd check on you. See how you're doing. I'm a little worried about you, you know."

The screen name in the chat box said that this was, indeed, Lana Rice, and the postage stamp icon was her same, smiling face. "Really, who is this? Who's hacked Lana's account? That's some fucked up shit, man."

"It's really me, Ray. How else would I know about your Super Mario watch?"

It was true. On that day, twenty years ago, I was sitting in class during break, futzing around with my Super Mario Bros game watch. It was a simple LCD affair. The object was to maneuver Mario from one side of the watch to the other, past piranha plants and fireballs. I'd mastered the game, but played for the distraction. It had intrigued Lana.

"But you're dead," I finally typed, hesitating before I hit the enter key. The cursor flashed against the word 'dead,' -- on, off, on, off, on, off -- blinking evermore.

I was about to press enter when the words "So are you" appeared in the chat box.