Welcome to part four of “Memory Lives On,” in which fifteen-year-old me tries to slip in a touch of poignancy. It works about as well as you might expect.

Watching my own memorial service was pretty much the strangest experience of my life up to that point. Even now, when I’ve had more strange experiences than I can shake a stick at, it’s still in the top five.

After writing this sentence, fifteen-year-old me then made coming up with “more strange experiences than (Anja) can shake a stick at” top priority. This explains a lot about the rest of the story.

First of all, they showed the road outside my school being knee deep in flowers and the like. They were playing Everybody Hurts at such a pitch that everybody in the room really did hurt, around the eardrum area.

Like the Pearl Jam thing earlier, R.E.M. reference is there solely to have an R.E.M. reference. At least my taste in music wasn’t bad.

(Also, “flowers and the like”? I can’t think of anything that’s like flowers except, you know, flowers.)

There was a huge photo of me in the middle, probably the only one they could find where I forgot to do my “Calculating woman of mystery” smile and grinned cutely instead. It said Anja Cleary, 198_-200_: Rest in peace all over it, which at least covered up the hideous T-shirt I was wearing in the photo. I’ve really got to learn that yellow isn’t my colour.

Bloody parents, giving the media a picture of their presumed-dead daughter in an unflattering outfit. Fashion should be the top priority for grieving family members.

The voiceover somehow managed to shout over the music. “The nation grieves over the death of Anja Cleary, killed in a freak accident at a tragically young age. Today, Anja’s memorial service took place, and her friends and family expressed their sadness.”

Actually, I’d better tell the truth. It was put together pretty well. In fact, I’ll be doubly honest. If it had been anyone else on the entire planet, I think I might have cried. I don’t usually cry at stuff on the TV, so that’s saying a lot.

Behold the awkward attempt to make Anja look as though she has actual human emotions. It was worth a try.

But as it was, it was about me, and crying over my clearly non-dead self would have been a bit stupid.

Well, that’s enough of that!

Other people were. My parents for a start. Because of this, I didn’t hear all of what they said, but some of it was “Why Anja? She hadn’t done anything!”

She was a smug drunk sociopath, Mr and Mrs Cleary. It’s really all for the best.

It’s Mark that’s done something, the git, I thought. Mind you, it would be against my principles to resent someone just for marrying a woman that a psycho fancied.

“Principles,” she says. That’s a good one.

But he was being a pain in the neck at that point. The music was loud enough, without him singing along. If only he’d known all the words, and hadn’t given up and stalked off halfway through the second verse, I’d have been spared a few other horrors.

This is Anja’s primary concern upon watching footage of her parents grieving over her alleged death. Oh, and apparently their grief counts among the “horrors” that Anja wants to be spared from. You really are better off without her, Mr and Mrs C. Remember the good times, eh?

I don’t think my friend Trixie has ever cried before in her life. She’s usually a front runner for the Miss Cheerful trophy, and when she’s upset (an annual event, pretty much) she tends to spout all the swearwords under the sun rather than spoil her eyeshadow. But I think I’d have cried if she or one of my other friends had died. That didn’t make it any less strange.

I don’t think Anja gives Trixie a second thought throughout the rest of the story.

They didn’t interview her. Instead, they skipped right across to Lydia.

But enough about the people Anja allegedly cares about- let’s give her somebody she can really sneer at!

I think I’ve already mentioned that Lydia thought I was a geek. But there she was, doing her Hypocritical Cow thing for the cameras; her excitement at being on TV barely concealed. “Anja, you can’t hear this but you were really loved by everyone. You’ve been loyal and kind to us, and I’ll never forget you. You’ll always be with me.”

We will learn nothing about Lydia for the remainder of the story, since her only purpose is to be a shallow popular girl for Anja to look down her nose at, so we have no way of knowing whether or not her professed grief is sincere. Maybe she really was shocked at Anja’s supposed death. Maybe it really did force her to re-evaluate their relationship. We’ll never know, because Anja’s certainly not going to tell us.

How do you know that, super-blob? For all you know I’ve been reincarnated as a porcupine. I know it’s heartless and cynical to say…

…but why break the habit of a lifetime?

…but that’s what I always think when they say stuff like that about dead people. Also, if I turn up anywhere near Lydia when I eventually do die, I’ll be supremely put out.

“Supremely put out.”  Put out in the manner of Diana Ross, no less.

Fortunately, Lydia’s face was soon replaced by that of my cousin Svetlana. If I was going to make a list of how much I liked each of my relatives, Svetlana would be top. I think at the time of my “death” she thought of me as a bit of an annoying little kid…

Svetlana is now my favourite character.

…but since she was fairly mature and fulfilled for an eighteen-year-old I’ll let her off. She had a two-year-old son, Ben, but she’d found a job in a nightclub that paid better than jobs in nightclubs usually do, so she didn’t have many financial problems. I think in a previous life Svetlana must have been one of those mountain people with really tough lives, because she gave off an air of being tough and determined enough to cope with anything. I was a bit put out to see that my supposed death was listed under “anything.”

“Come on, Svetlana, I tuned in to see tears! Where are the tears?”

“It was really shocking,” she was saying, “I mean, you don’t expect that kind of thing to happen to your cousin, do you? Anja was, like, really spirited and energetic, and I guess you don’t really expect that kind of person to just die on you. You expect it to happen to little quiet people who you don’t notice much.”

Geez, don’t sound too emotional, Svetlana. Anyone would think that you were pleased to be rid of your smug, drunk, sociopathic cousin.

Just then, three really strange things happened.

Strange Thing number one- there was something not quite right in Svetlana’s face. She’d decided on a look for the memorial service. She was trying hard to be someone bravely coping with the loss of a young cousin, in order to hide something. But what was she hiding?

The fact that she’d had “Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead” stuck in her head since the vicar started speaking.

She didn’t have anything to do with what had happened on the bus, did she?

Now that would have been a good twist. But no, she doesn’t.

The screen changed before I could work out what Svetlana was hiding. But then we got propelled straight onto Strange Thing number two. To be honest, this wasn’t as strange or as significant as numbers one and three. But it was a first for the TV coverage of the bus “accident” that they actually remembered I wasn’t the only person who’d died a tragic death.

“How dare they take a break from stroking my ego?”

I was jolted out of my suspicions about Svetlana by the voiceover saying “Gary Wolf, aged seventeen, was killed in the same accident as Anja.” Gary’s immense blue eyes grew even wider at this. If his lids had been any further apart, his eyeballs might have dropped out.

I mentioned that Gary was based on Elijah Wood, right?

“Shell!” he gasped as he slammed his sketchpad shut.

An auburn-haired girl who looked a bit like a giraffe in a padded bra was speaking angrily. The subtitle read Michelle Glass, Gary’s friend. “I don’t think Gary should take second place just because there was someone younger and cuter than him on the bus. I mean, Anja Cleary sounds like a lovely person, and of course it’s a tragedy that she died…

Even complaints about the ego-stroking turn into more ego-stroking! It’s like a black hole of self-congratulation!

(Also, “a giraffe in a padded bra”? Classy, Anja.)

…but the only difference between her and Gary was that he was two years older. Gary was an unsung hero.

We will later find out that Gary did absolutely nothing heroic in the entire time he knew Michelle.

He was the sweetest guy I’ve ever met in my life, and I’m not just saying that because he’s dead…”

I stopped listening.

“Pah! This isn’t about me!”

Michelle, like Svetlana, was hiding something, and I had enough time to work out that it was the same thing.

They didn’t want anyone to know that they were in mortal dread. Gary had seen it too, and, what’s more, he knew why Michelle was feeling it.

I now know that he was feeling it for the same reason.

We never find out exactly how Anja knows any of this. Psychic powers?

I’d never shared a room with two boys before, but then I’d never made a habit of sleeping on a mattress on the floor before. Mark and Estelle only had one spare bed, and Mr Daly had claimed it because of some bizarre health problem, which I’m 99% certain he made up.

Anja’s a doctor now!

When Estelle told him that she thought this too, he replied, “How dare you, Mrs Freeman! I’m aware that you are a great deal younger than me, but that’s no excuse to treat me like a second-class citizen.”

“OK, I’m sorry,” Estelle defended, “But I think Anja’s got more right to the spare room. Teenage girls need a lot more privacy than… than…” I could tell that she was trying to find a polite way of referring to Mr Daly, but apparently he couldn’t.

“Than fifty-year-old has-beens?” Mr Daly looked as if he was about to explode, which would have been more interesting to watch than him in the usual state. Estelle regarded him with her eyes, which are cool in every sense of the word.

“Estelle regarded him with her eyes.” As opposed to regarding him with her nostrils.

Oh, and it’s worth noting that Mr Daly is apparently only fifty, because the rest of the story insists on treating him as though he’s about two hundred.

“No, Mr Daly. Unlike some people I could mention, I don’t like to pick petty fights.”

Very mature, Estelle.

Neither of them looked as though they were going to back down, so I cut in and said that I didn’t mind sleeping on the floor. I did this partly to stop the argument, but mostly to save Joe and Gary from sharing a room with Mr Daly. Creepy though Joe was, he didn’t deserve anything as horrible as that.

Very noble, Anja.

And anyway, I could always get changed in the bathroom.

The night after the memorial service, I was sort of hovering between sleep and consciousness when I heard something. At first I just thought one of the boys must be asthmatic or something, but then I realised it was a bit too loud and squeaky for… Oh man, someone was crying.

It’s about bloody time. 

And despite the fact that my eyes couldn’t be bothered to open, it didn’t take long for me to work out that it was Gary.

I knew that I should comfort Gary or something…

“Or something.”

but considering that I couldn’t even wrench my eyelids apart it was probably a good thing that Joe got there first. It was hard to believe it was him talking. All the slime had gone from his voice, and he started talking to Gary like he was five. “Hey… Don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying,” sniffed Gary (in the face of all the evidence), “I’m just worried about Anja.”

“I’m pretty sure she’s a demon from hell! Please don’t let her consume my soul!”

Huh? Wasn’t Anja my name?

Nope. Your name is Mary Sue.

At least Gary could be bothered to pronounce it right, unlike Mark. But why would he be crying over me?

“I saw her memorial service earlier today,” he continued, “Her family looked as if they wanted to die. Anja just looked horrified. I thought, I’ve done that to her. Joe, I’ve wrecked her life!”

“Horrified.” Right. I could really see the horror in her comments about coming back as a porcupine.

“Sh,” Joe consoled. Then he realised what Gary had actually said. “Why you?”

Gary wasn’t listening. “Jordan was right! I shouldn’t exist!”

“Who’s Jordan?”

Gary remembered that Joe was still in the room, and replied, “Someone who was right, that’s all. I shouldn’t be here, I just wreck lives like I did Anja’s…”

“Gary, I don’t know who this Jordan person is, but if he told you all that, he was wrong, alright? You’re… you’re an OK person.

“I’m not sure what I’m basing this on, since this is our first actual conversation, but trust me!”

The bus disaster wasn’t your fault. It was the fault of whoever made those lights explode. And also indirectly Mark and my Great-Aunt Jean, I guess. And I don’t know about my aunt, but Mark isn’t crying about wrecking people’s lives, is he?”

“No… He’s a bit creepy in general, isn’t he?”

Gary sniffed. “That’s because all he did was marry Estelle. He didn’t do anything really bad.”

Even though my eyes were still welded together, I could see Joe’s slimy grin in my head. “I dunno. Some people would say that stealing such a stunning girl from the other 3 billion men on the planet was a crime against humanity.”

“Stunning girl.” Because that’s how teenage boys talk about women they fancy.

“Not seriously, though. All Mark did was marry a woman he loved. And she agreed, so it wasn’t as if it was really stealing, was it? If someone else liked Estelle…”

“Not just someone,” Joe corrected, “I’d say every guy she’s ever met fancied her.”

“You’re not taking me seriously.”

“That’s because you’re being dim. Look, you haven’t wrecked Anja’s life, OK? She’s been in a better mood than anyone else for the past few days. Well, except possibly Mark. She told Estelle yesterday that this is the first exciting thing that’s ever happened to her.

This should really make Joe and Gary wonder a bit about her. But no, Gary proceeds to fall in love with her anyway. Glutton for punishment, that Gary.

So stop worrying and go to sleep!”

Gary took Joe’s advice, and I copied him.

And so should we all. Next time, we’ll learn a thing or two about Gary’s tragic backstory, and Joe’s murderous family.