Who am I?

I spent most of the next week studying for finals, but I did get the opportunity to go to the last Guyliner Club meeting of the year and I met with Tazanna one more time. It still hurt every time someone brought up Brendon, but it wasn't nearly as painful as it was immediately after it was. It had once been a stabbing wound, but now, thinking of Brendon produced only a dull ache. My heart would never fully heal, but I could live with that.

During the second week of May, I took the final exams for each of my classes. Ancient Philosophy and Morals, Values, and Ethics were both relatively easy, but despite all of my studying, the final exam for Principles of Ecology was nearly impossible. It didn't help that I couldn't focus during the test. The room was completely silent, but I could still hear Brendon's voice in the distance, singing to me. I knew that it was all in my head - what other explanation was there? However, that didn't stop it from being incredibly distracting.

When I talked to Patrick and Andy about the exam at lunch, they both told me that it was an easy test. I wondered if they had gotten a different version of the test than the one that I had. Then again, some things are subjective. Perhaps they simply found the exam to be easier than I thought that it was. I tried not to think too hard about it as I munched on a slice of pizza.

"What's your next exam?" Andy asked us.

"I have statistics next," Patrick said. "I'm a little nervous, but I'm going out with Pete after the test, so I do have something to look forward to."

Patrick smiled, and I couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy. Before his death, Brendon and I had shared a connection, one that was just as deep or even deeper than the one that Pete and Patrick had. However, Brendon was gone, and I couldn't see myself loving anyone else romantically again. How could I love someone who wasn't my soulmate? What would be the point? Why would I want to date someone else when I would always be comparing him to Brendon?

Although I had already decided that I had no desire to have another romantic relationship, I still longed for Brendon while I watched my friends fall in love. There was a part of me that missed the idea of being in a relationship. I realized that I would never go on another date or feel Brendon's lips on mine, but it was painful to think about too much. I would have to accept it eventually, but for now, denial worked just fine.

As Patrick blabbered on about Pete, I simply tuned him out and continued to eat. After lunch, I headed over to the Beiju History Center for my Public Policy exam. I still wasn't great at the subject, but why did it matter if I was majoring in philosophy? Nevertheless, I tried my best not to ask Professor Higgins too many philosophical questions, although I did have to ask her to define "power" in the context of the essay question that she gave me. She just gave me an exasperated look and walked away, so I wrote my essay about the many definitions of power in the context of American society.

As I attempted to figure out whether I was answering the prompt or not, an idea came to me. I wasn't certain that it was a good idea, but when I wrote the final paragraph of my essay, I heard Brendon whispering to me. I couldn't quite hear what he was saying, but it sounded encouraging, so I decided to call Spencer and ask him about it after the exam was over.

I wrote the last sentence of my essay just as Professor Higgins told the class that our time was up. I shoved my pencil back into my backpack and left the building, and when I returned to Flack Hall, I picked up my phone and called Spencer. "Hello?" Spencer said.

"Hi Spencer," I said. "It's Ryan. I just wanted to ask you about something."

"What do you want to ask me?" Spencer asked.

"How would you feel if I sang at the Aubergine?" I asked.

There was a brief pause, and then Spencer replied, "We do need a singer. It won't be the same as having Brendon there, but I suppose we could try it."

"Nothing could ever be the same as having Brendon there," I said. "We could have the best singer in the world come to the Aubergine, and it still wouldn't be the same."

"I agree," Spencer said. "The music just sounds wrong without someone singing though. I do have a feeling that Brendon would want someone to sing, and you'd probably be good at it."

"Thanks Spencer," I said.

"You might want to ask Heidi first, but I think she'd let you do it," Spencer said. "I'll see you tonight, Ryan."

"See you soon," I said.

I turned off my phone, and as the hours ticked by, I became increasingly nervous. What if something went wrong? What if the people at the Aubergine didn't like my voice? What if I was off-key or off-rhythm? Somehow, Brendon managed to sing flawlessly, but I didn't think that I could ever do the same. I wasn't Brendon, and the best that I could do was to honor his memory in this small way. Could I even do that?

I continued to worry all the way to the Aubergine, and I was shaking as I approached Heidi. I explained my idea to her, and to my surprise, she liked it. "I think that Brendon would appreciate having you sing," Heidi said. "I just wish that he was here to hear it."

"Me too," I said. There was nothing that I wanted more than to have Brendon onstage with me to comfort me, but that couldn't happen. The only comforts that I had were the voice in my head and Spencer and Heidi's encouraging words.

When the clock struck nine, I sat down on the piano bench and began to play. At first, everything was perfectly normal, but after a few bars, I knew that it was my turn to sing. I took a deep breath, but when I opened my mouth, no sound would come out. I panicked as the audience looked at me expectantly. What was I supposed to do?

"Come on, Ryan," Spencer said. "You can do this."

Spencer was right. I had to push through my worries and self-doubt. I tried again, and this time, the song came to me easily. My voice didn't sound nearly as beautiful as Brendon's, but it didn't seem to matter. Everyone in the crowd cheered anyways, and I swore that I could see Brendon standing in the back of the room with a peach and lime daiquiri in his hand, smiling and singing along. Maybe Brendon was a ghost now, or maybe he was just a figment of my imagination, but knowing that Brendon was there did make me feel a little bit better.

I began to relax as the night went on as I became used to the sound of my own voice replacing Brendon's. The songs still sounded a little bit off without him, but there was no way to fix that. There would always be a hole in our little band without Brendon. This was the closest that Spencer and I could get to truly having him there.

The show finally ended, and everyone at the Aubergine applauded. It was more than just the polite applause that we had received every other night. This time, I could tell that the Aubergine patrons genuinely loved our performance. Spencer and I hadn't sounded this good since Brendon's death, and even though I would never hear him sing again, we could still move on.

After the show, I stayed at the Aubergine for a little while. "Ryan, that sounded wonderful," Patrick told me.

"It was really good," Frank said as he sipped on his drink. "I still wish that Brendon was here, but I think that you might be the next best singer that we have."

"Nobody could ever be as beautiful of a singer as Brendon," I said. "I could never get sick of hearing him sing."

"Me neither," Frank said.

"Patrick's a pretty good singer too," Pete said. "Did you know that he has a soul voice?"

"Pete, you know that I don't like to show off..." Patrick said.

"Come on, Patrick," Pete said. "Your voice is incredible."

Patrick sighed and sang a few bars, and as it turned out, both Brendon and Pete were right. Patrick did have a soul voice.

"Oh my God, that sounds like soul!" Gerard exclaimed.

All of us laughed, and Patrick awkwardly said, "I'm really not that great of a singer. I personally think that I'm a better on the drums than I am on vocals."

"I didn't know that you played the drums either," I said.

"Patrick's full of surprises, isn't he?" Pete said as he kissed Patrick's cheek.

At that moment, I realized just how important my friends were. I had underestimated the value of all of the friends that I had made at Kale. In high school, I hadn't had friends like Patrick, Pete, Frank, or Gerard, and I knew that they were the key to making it through the chaotic, unpredictable mess that my life had become. Even if I had turned my back on romantic love, I still had people that I cared about. I was never truly alone in life.

On my way out of the Aubergine, I ran into Spencer. "You did such a great job tonight, Ryan," he said.

"So did you," I said with a smile.

"Are you going to sing every night now?" Spencer asked.

"I think so," I said. "It was kind of fun, and everyone seemed to like it."

"That sounds like a good idea," Spencer said. "I'll see you tomorrow, Ryan."

"See you tomorrow, Spencer," I said.

As I walked back to Flack Hall, I thought about the many roles that I had in life. I knew that I was lucky, because I knew exactly who I was. I rarely thought about my identity, because I had better questions running through my mind, such as what made a crowd turn away from a tune. I knew that I was a freshman at Kale University. I was a student, a dreamer, a loyal employee at the Aubergine Dream, and a friend. I still thought of myself as Brendon's boyfriend, which was possibly the real reason why I had such a hard time moving on after his death.

Most of all, I was Ryan Ross, a philosopher who was no longer afraid to keep on living, or at least that's what I told myself.

My heart was still broken, but it was beginning to heal. Singing at the Aubergine would certainly help me, and so would my therapy sessions with Tazanna. My heart would probably never fully recover, and I would never go back to being the same person that I was, but how could I recover? Was it possible to ever be the same person when something so tragic and momentous had happened to me? Perhaps the core tenants of my being were still there, but everything else that I thought that I was had been wiped away over the course of the school year. I never would have dreamed that all of this could have happened to me - that I could have fallen in love with my soulmate and then lost him within a single year - yet it had happened. It was only proof that life was nothing more than chaos. However, that didn't scare me so much anymore.

I was awake and unafraid as I entered Flack Hall and climbed upstairs. Thoughts of Brendon still plagued me, but I wasn't so scared of being lonely anymore. What else could the world throw at me that was worse than Brendon dying? If I could survive that, I knew that I could survive anything.