The O'Shaughnessy Laws are maybe factually untrue. I've decided to reconsider them, in light of new evidence contrariwise. Here are some important points:

1. Sam Mullingar kissed me.

2.      God let Valerie live.

3.      There is beauty in chaos.

The third point is probably the most profound. Maybe the grand secret to life, Valerie's secret, is that you can see the horrifying things and the holy things at the same time. That, within a Church, you can see the doubt and the inconsistencies and the human nonsense, and you can also see the long river of peace flowing above and around you, since people first felt the divine brush their lips. And that is the choice you can make. To see the beauty that still exists in chaos. To see the eternity in transient things. And to believe in beauty and eternity, even when chaos and transience seem to envelop everything.

            Maybe that's what faith is. To see what is wrong, and still hope for what is right.

            But also, Sam Mullingar kissed me.

            And serenaded me with Grandma O'Shaughnessy's favorite song. It was the most beautiful thing ever. I don't know if I can describe what that felt like, especially after everything that's happened in the past month. I guess it felt like how Grandma O'Shaughnessy would make pot roast on my birthday, back when we lived in Boston. I'd come to her quiet little duplex after listening to my parents bicker for a week over whether I wanted purple or blue frosting on my cake, and there would be the roast waiting for me: beef and potatoes and gravy and garlic bread. I'd always fight back tears then, as I'd shovel food into my mouth.

            Or maybe Sam's serenade felt like the dumb jokes Valerie would tell me in the cafeteria, after I'd get out of gym class in seventh grade. That bitch Courtney Logan would falsely accuse me of stuffing my bra in the locker room, and her snot-nosed minions would laugh when I tried to defend myself. I'd get to our lunch table utterly demoralized, and I'd see Val sitting there, and suddenly I was untouchable (and all you need is one cool friend and the bitches back off like betas in a wolf pack). She'd open YouTube on her phone and load some unintentionally-funny music video made in a Soviet-satellite-state, or a bizarre 90s Bollywood dance number and we'd laugh over our Tastykakes.

            Sam's serenade was like putting on pajamas straight out of the dryer, or waking up to a pristine layer of snow on Christmas day. It felt like home. And all I could do was cry.

            I bawled like a stupid baby.

***

            When Valerie parked the Jeep on her driveway, she pressed her face straight into its steering wheel.

            "My poor baby," she caressed the dashboard, "will only be playing EDM shit for the next six months. My dad's such a normie." As soon as she had said this, she sat up and blinked at me like an idea had struck her in the gut. "We have to give her a proper send-off." She jumped over her door and opened up YouTube on her phone. As I got out my side, I heard a bugle wail Taps.

            I turned around. Valerie held her fingers to her forehead in a salute.

            I joined her.

            "You two look ridiculous," Dr. DiPaolo said, as she passed us on her way to her porch. I put my arm down, but Val stood motionless, statue-like.

            "Valerie Marie?" Dr. DiPaolo held open the storm door. "I think we need to chat?"

            "Dead man walking," Valerie slipped her phone into her military jacket's left pocket. She smirked. "You're religious, say a prayer for me."

            Then she turned toward the great beyond.

            "Hey-" I stopped her before she got to the front walk. She tossed back her head. The wind whipped her ginger hair over her neck. She brushed it away from her eyes.

            "Thanks, man." I said. I meant it.

            She shot up a finger gun at me.

***

            That night I knelt on the floor by my bed and did a decade on the rosary. One prayer was for Valerie. One was for my dad. One was for my mom. One was for Grandma O'Shaughnessy.  One was for Sam Mullingar. One was for myself. Two were for the Corrigans and O'Shaughnessys I never got to meet. One was for the children I hoped I'd someday have. And one was for strange Linden Valley, its people and its potholes and its lead-in-the-groundwater and radium-beneath-the-earth. I don't know if I felt a sense of eternity or not. I got too tired to say any more prayers after those twelve. But that was alright, I thought, as climbed under my covers and pulled my blankets up to nose. I didn't think God would begrudge me that.

            Just before I fell asleep, I saw headlights speckle across my ceiling. I heard the front door unlock, open, and shut again. I heard the clicking of shoes being kicked off and I heard footsteps through the foyer and the kitchen. My door was ajar. Through it, I watched my dad flick on the yellow hallway light. He stood in front of his bedroom, and read something on his phone. I heard him belly-laugh.

            And what a sound that was. I wondered when I would hear it again. Might be never, but might also be tomorrow.

            I hoped it be tomorrow.

***

            On Monday morning, I overslept. I hit the snooze button on my phone alarm more times than I can remember. What woke me up and kept me up was the incessant buzz of one text message after another. Each was from Val.

            BAND!

            WAKE UP!

            BAND!

            I heard a car horn, and saw something big and white and blue outside my bedroom window. Gus. It was a mad scramble brushing my teeth and getting dressed. I didn't have time to put my hair up.

***

            "I had to convince my mom not to call Mr. Lang and your dad," Valerie slammed on the break as the traffic light she had planned on speeding through turned red. "She only agreed after I told her how Jesse rejected you. I made you sound real pathetic, more than you actually are."

            "Pathetic?"  I took a bite of my breakfast bar and considered knocking Val in the noggin.

            "You think I should dye my hair black?" She checked her reflection in her visor mirror. "I'm getting sick of bleaching these roots."

            "I think you should shave it all off," I joked. "Wouldn't you love to see Autumn or Christy with a buzz-cut?"

            "No way." The light turned green, and Valerie went hard on the gas pedal. "I'm keeping my hair for as long as I can."

            "You sound like my dad," I snorted, though I knew to what secret tragedy she was referring. Her grin let me know it was alright to laugh. After all, she had taught me that the worst things were also the funniest.

            Valerie turned on her Huey Lewis and the News cassette. I couldn't believe I'd have to listen to eighties soul every day of my senior year. As Val warbled "Hip to be Square" off-key, I leaned back into my seat. I'd missed Gus this past week, I realized then. So many things had changed because of him, and it'd only been a little more than an month since he first came into my life. He wasn't half bad.

[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]

***

By the time we got to school, the only open spot left in the alley was right next to Jesse's Ford Focus. Valerie took it. Strangely enough, I wasn't mad about that. I looked out my passenger window and caught Jesse's eyes as he stepped out of his car. I waited to open my door until he went to grab his backpack from his trunk.

            "Hey," Jesse called, when my Converse hit the blacktop. "Valerie flip her Jeep again?"  He spoke casually, the way your next door neighbor might ask you 'about this bipolar weather.'

"Nah," I leaned against Gus's front hood. "Her parents caught us skipping the game Friday."

The corners of Jesse's lips curled up.

"I thought you got sick?" he slammed his trunk shut and met me on the grass by the sidewalk.

"It was oatmeal," I handed him the folded up doctor's excuse I kept in my hoodie's pocket. "That's Val's handwriting."

"No kidding?" Jesse scanned the note and glanced up at Valerie, walking toward us.

"My days of petty fraud are over," she said. She tucked her hands in her jeans pockets and swung her feet. She looked like a sad orphan in a musical. "Mom confiscated the notepad."

"That's hilarious," Jesse gave me back my excuse. My index finger grazed the back of his thumb. Skin to skin. What I felt then was just static electricity. At least, that's what I told myself.

"You guys wanna walk to band with me?" Jesse pointed his head backwards, past the stadium, to the commons building.

            I could feel Valerie's gaze on my cheeks.

            "Sure," I said. I looked over at her. Her eyes bounced around my face.

"I gotta get my clarinet, hold up," she dashed to Gus's trunk.

Jesse and I were alone. He stared at the purple Toms on his feet.

            "Hey," I said. I don't know how I summoned my voice. "About what happened." Jesse glanced back up at me. His eyes weren't so steady anymore. "We should be friends."

            "Yeah?" he asked, and massaged his left shoulder blade. "Cool. Awesome. I'd like that."

            Our eyes met again. And this time, he kept them on me.

For a moment, those moss-colored eyes made my chest ache. It occurred to me, then, that a little part of me would always ache for him, but that was alright. It didn't matter. I was happy he existed. That his mother had one dependable son. That Velociraptor had a talented drummer. That the Secret Art Space had an actually good high school band grace its fruit-carton stage. That his patients, so many years in the future, would have a compassionate doctor. And that I had, for the short time that I did, his steady eyes fixed on me. Because after six months, I'd probably never see him again. I thought then that the friends you meet in high school must be like the sort you make in fox holes. There's a whole life you spend together, in compressed time, and then? If your paths ever cross again, would you recognize each other? Would you want to?  I didn't have an answer to that.

            Valerie slammed the trunk shut, caught up to us, and we started walking. I wanted to believe she'd always be around, but one day soon, she'd be at Penn State, or MIT, or UCLA and I'd be at pharmacology school. Things will be different. But then again, Valerie wasn't a high school friend. I'd known her half my life- since before Grandma O'Shaughnessy died, before my parents split up, before I knew even who I was. She was continuity and nostalgia and tomorrow's best plans all rolled up in one. There's no way I am going to lose her, I stubbornly decided. There's too much at stake for that.

            Valerie noticed me staring.

            "I'd yank your topknot," she whispered, "but your hair's down. What am I supposed to do?"

            "Nothing," I puckered out my lips. "I'll make that face till I die. I am who I am."

            "Confidence," Valerie grinned, "I like it." Her gaze wandered over the stadium and past the baseball diamond, to the cars on Linden Street beyond. "Hey, I've been meaning to ask you guys something."

            "Shoot," Jesse said.

            "If I invested some capital, wrote out a proposal, the whole enchilada," she gyrated her hands around, "would you sell candy out of my van?"

            "No." I said flatly.

            "I dunno, Steve," Jesse looked at me, sideways, from beneath his lashes. "Hear her out."

            "Your uniform could be dirty wife-beaters and moustaches," Valerie added. "Steve would have to slap on a fake one, but-"

            "Oh, I'm definitely in," Jesse stroked his upper lip, "I've been looking for an excuse to grow out my facial hair."

            "You want to grow a moustache?" I blinked, "with your real hair."

            "Moustaches say: Hello, I'm friendly," Jesse spread out his fingers, "like a dad in the 1990s."

            "Or, Hello, I just moved in across the street and am required by law to tell you-"

            "Stevie!" Valerie punched my arm. "He's cool with my aesthetic here, don't ruin this for me. We're gonna be the next big thing in food trucks-"

            There was no way any of that was going to happen, but I let them talk. I slung my trombone case over my shoulder, watched the climbing sun cast shadows on the sidewalk before us, and wondered what the day would bring. It could really be anything.

            I was down.

THE END

A/N: Thank you very much for reading, voting, and commenting throughout the past few months! If I didn't get the feedback from you, I probably wouldn't even be writing. So thank you!

I've got a few more ideas for more stories in the brain queue, but school/real life obviously makes it difficult to get things done. If I were to get, let say, an author Twitter/Instagram/ something, would anyone be interested in following? Since the next thing I've been working on is my weird AF Buzzfeed story, I was thinking about possibly creating custom Buzzfeed quizzes for you guys- like "Pick Your Favorite Harrison Ford And Get A Quick Short Story"- in which you could get some more content (flash fiction, probably involving characters from my Wattpad stories- EE, TVP, BBMTSU) . I'd then probably tweet out the links to the Buzzfeed quizzes for you guys. If this is something you'd be interested in, let me know. If it gets enough interest, I'll give it my best shot to start rolling these out.