For some reason we loved “The Crow” in high school. We were obsessed with the flick, and rented it often on our lonesome Saturday nights with a tube of chocolate chip cookie dough. Our metabolisms were much better then, and for some reason we could all stomach the treat – the roll was finished by the final gun shot, by the final closing credit.
There was something beautifully tragic about the lead actor dying during the making of the film. He gave his life to his art, and we were all inspired. More so by his hanging dark locks, black lips, and deep eyes – but inspired just the same. The guns, the violence, the passion - it was a cruel world and we all wanted to be his muse.
One year out of high school, and the cruel world caught up with us. A bullet changed it all with no reasons, no final note. I called to pick her up for a party, and her mother answered in sobs. I remember hearing “Candace is dead.” She stated it as fact – as a verb tense that was incapable of change. I heard it as fiction, unable to grasp the reality of her choice.
She asked why Candace would do this to herself, and then repeated “why” over and over and over again. I didn’t understand. Nothing made sense. All I could tell her was “I don’t know.”
I spread the word to the Crow crew and we skipped the cookie dough. We ate Pizza Hut cheese sticks and Chinese food instead. For some reason that’s what we wanted and on a day like that day my mom was at our beckon call. She couldn’t really help with the agony, so instead we received comfort food.
I remember laughing at her funeral when her ex-boyfriend sat on a tack. Her mother joked that Candace was getting back at him, and we all chuckled. I think we just needed to, knowing that the next few days and months (and, it turns out, years), would be a few laughs short.
I sometimes wonder if she were alive today if we would still be friends; or if she would even care now that a boy named John broke her heart so many years ago. It doesn’t matter. Candace is forever frozen as my friend who wore high socks, short skirts, and loved to roll her eyes at the attention she received from men. She was left behind with me as all of our other friends went off to college, and we spent many a night kissing drunken fraternity boys in dirty houses on the Southside of Birmingham. She would sit for hours looking for four-leaf clovers, but refused to believe that her life was capable of hope or change.
I remember drinking too much and crying too much and wanting to find an answer, but none ever came. There was no reason – at least none that would justify or explain.
Looking back, I sometimes find purpose in her tragedy. No matter how bad it got for any of us who knew her, that was never an option. None of us could or would go out like that – not after Candace. Sure – scars fade after time; but wounds like that never really heal.
