The Pallbearers Club

by Paul Tremblay

I had always been the skinniest, most slight kid in my class,

Okay Bella Hadid

The rapid height gain exacerbated my scoliosis.

Scoliosis mention!

The 2007 me is still salty about it.]

I don’t think people were using “salty” as slang in 2007?

A click, flash, and whir. Mercy snapped a photo of Mr. Jones’s body.

Excuse me?

“I liked Albert Finney in Wolfen,” Mercy said.

She’s so cool and quirky and not like other gals

I might have said that to you at some point, but not at the end of the ceremony. You make me sound like an uncaring asshole.

Did she not snap a picture of a dead body?

“I’m Art-sy.” “I’m sure you are.” “No, I mean that I’m—” “Art. You don’t have to explain bad jokes.”

But his real name isn’t Art? So did he just completely make up this conversation?

The quoted conversations especially. If you’re quoting in a memoir, aren’t you implying those exact words were said? Maybe I’m being too literal.

Mercy is so me coded right here

I assume you started writing this in 2007. Then, later, your 2012-voice and 2017-voice interjections are quite different tonally. The present-day 2017-you commentary is concerning.

Ohhhhh, so the slang does sort of make sense if he’s rewriting in 2017. She’s so right here though because I was v confused

Not sure why the last paragraph is about you being tired after our time hanging out. I’d cut it.

This is suspicious of you Mercy

I don’t know how much of this Mercy is me and how much is you.

He’s manic pixie dream girlifying her

I roasted in my own juices.

Gross

(I groaned inwardly, and outwardly too.)

So you didn’t groan inwardly dumbass

He won’t use ketchup— MERCY: Ketchup, wow. MOM: Mayo, mustard, relish—

Feeling a little attacked right now

No pickles. Doesn’t like the flavor of coffee.

…am I a picky eater?

would wake and be woefully, perilously, self-loathingly, odiously, heuristically, irrevocably unprepared for the new and banal terrors that awaited.

Me when I’m trying to meet a word count

[For holy-fuck-you-were-skin-and-bones reference, at the writing and editing of this book, I am six-four and roughly two hundred pounds.]

He’s so insecure and whiny

But right now, Art, man. Not good. And you need to do something about it.”

The absolute gall to admit you’ve been squatting in someone’s basement and then tell them they look like shit

Please tell me you won’t float along with everyone else through the drunk and stupid numbing bliss of college and then zombie into a middle- or upper-class job you won’t care about because you need to pay student loans and then pay all the other loans to come.

…okay bitch

There’s no way your mom knew she was punning with “artsy,” because your real name isn’t Art. Do you think of yourself as Art now? Is this Artception?

I don’t care if she’s evil or not, she is speaking my mind

I don’t know how it took you that long to find me in your house, not that you actually found me. I got sick of waiting to be discovered so I stomped around, and when that didn’t work, I knocked on the basement door and called out to you.

Yeah so,,, this is insane

They never flat-out said I wouldn’t be able to continue and graduate, but it was heavily implied,

Could they not have stuck it out ONE more year to help him??

When I put the rock-star photo inside your snazzy leather jacket, I found a prescription bottle.

It’s unfair to have two different narrators because I’m way more inclined to believe a woman over a man

I was more than a little busy and preoccupied with my dying mother while the show aired. I add, “Sorry I couldn’t join in the pop-cultural rubbernecking.”

Boohoo