Reading Between the Lines

And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain,

Don't carry the world upon your shoulders.

- The Beatles, “Hey Jude”

I met Jude nine years ago at an ice cream shop in Staunton. His sister Janie was a friend of mine from high school, a bright-eyed girl who wore itchy sweaters and kept a pack of Marlboros in her purse but never smoked them. Janie and I went to get cones of Rocky Road at Kline’s one summer break and I clumsily dropped mine on the checkered floor, a gory scene. Jude, a teenage charm standing behind the counter, handed me another cone, generously topped with an extra scoop and rainbow sprinkles. I begged Janie in the weeks after to set me up with Jude, and she did. He took me to get a burger in his red truck and kissed me goodbye and walked me to my door. This happened a few times before he told me he felt weird dating his sister’s friend, and I told him he was a mediocre kisser. We decided to remain friends. 

And remain friends, we did. Best friends, in fact. Our lives remained intertwined as Jude, who was a year younger than we were, came to the same college that I did the following fall. I like to joke that he followed me there, but he maintains that it was because of the scholarship he was offered. We both majored in Journalism, dedicated to preserving truths. We spent Saturdays sipping beer and divulging our hopes and dreams. Sundays we spent sprawled out on the campus grass, letting the sun burn our cheeks while we quizzed each other on current events. Our bond transcended drinking in our dorm and writing for our school paper. We ended up living together in a modest studio apartment during graduate school, eventually finding jobs at suburban newspapers. Jude was my best friend. 

* * *

On a Tuesday in February of ‘92, Jude died.

He was found dead in a bathtub in a motel off the interstate. They said it was a suicide. I was surprised – mostly because Jude seemed incredibly happy in his final weeks, but also because he was very adamant in his hatred for clichés. How odd of him to go this way. 

I had always prided myself on my intuition. How did I not hear his cries, his shouts that he was drowning? 

I cried when Janie called to tell me about Jude, but I don’t think I made much noise. My soul screamed and yelled and sank, but I felt it was only right to be silent – the world could not go on without the music. 

I couldn’t eat for a few days. I was a girl again, forking potatoes across my plate, convinced that eventually, if I pushed them hard enough, they’d disappear. Janie said her mother wanted to see me, and so did she. I felt weird talking to Janie about Jude, the brother we shared. She and I never really kept in touch and I felt that she was silently bitter that I’d preferred Jude to her. She was meek and quiet, though, and Jude was just the opposite. He sang karaoke without looking at the lyrics, he spoke loudly but left room to listen patiently. Looking at Jude was like looking into a river – you saw yourself, you just glimmered a bit more.

I didn’t trust myself to drive in such a hysteric state, so I asked the guy I was seeing to take me to Virginia, back to Staunton. Owen and I hadn’t been dating for more than a few months, so the car ride was fairly awkward, but I was the girl whose best friend just died, so he had to do it. I didn’t want to listen to music, but the sound of Owen’s breathing pissed me off, so I played some outlandishly vulgar rap music to fill the silence. It was Jude’s favorite.

 Owen looked at me like I had ten heads, which annoyed me more. I knew Jude would’ve laughed. He would’ve covered his front teeth with his finger and I would’ve asked him why and he would say that he didn’t mean to, but I knew he was self-conscious about the gap. I’d just say, Judey, you’re beautiful! And his hand would retract.

The rest of the ride was silent. Staunton looked like I remembered it, a time-traveler's daydream, colonial buildings uncomfortably close together and the same with the people. Mothers held the hands of their children when they crossed the road, making sure the infrequent cars didn’t rob them of their lives. I wanted to hold Jude’s hand as he traipsed through the crossroads of life,  telling him I could not go on if he was not here. 

I closed my eyes like I was a child again, guessing how close we were by the bumps and the turns. I almost kept my eyes closed so as to be carried inside, like my parents used to do coming back from road trips. I didn’t, though, I just thanked Owen for the ride. I think he expected me to invite him inside, which I wouldn’t do. They say not to mix business with pleasure, but I simply didn’t want to mix annoyance with whatever it was I felt about Jude’s passing.

Jude’s parents lived in a brick home with a crimson door and a gargoyle-like owl perched upon the deck. His mother opened the door before I could even knock. She stood in the doorframe like a startled child told to not open the door for strangers. Her red hair seemed lifeless, devoid of the vibrancy it used to have. Her hands shook as she reached for mine, and I lightly squeezed her delicate hands as if to whisper my condolences. 

She hugged me tightly, as if to absorb the last drops of Jude that were left. To wring out what remained of her weeping son. 

“Alex, he loved you so much,” she told me. I nodded. I knew that he did. It was very rare that platonic friendships remained just that. We were family, eventually. I followed Jude’s mother inside the home, a place reminiscent of a time where I hadn’t known the depths of Jude. A home I went to so Janie and I could do our makeup before prom, a time where I was able to ignore her brother and his heart. 

Janie sat on the couch, picking at a spot of already peeling leather. A tear danced down my face when I saw her, her plump cheeks and honeyed hair looked a lot like Jude’s. Baby photos of the two adorned the walls. Poor children, you didn’t know, you couldn’t have. Janie didn’t speak much, she just grabbed my hand and led me to the back of the house where Jude’s room was.

I felt uneasy being in Jude’s childhood room, an artifact of the person I knew before I knew him.  Books filled the walls, and it warmed my heart that he’d always been in love with words and stories. I laughed when I saw his calendar. 

February 3rd 1984 – calculus homework DUE. 

“Alex,” Janie said, interrupting my snooping. “I’m not mad, you know.”

“Mad at what?” I asked, careful not to disrupt the dent in the mattress that Jude’s body had left, but too weak to continue standing. 

“You guys, you know, being close and all. Closer, I guess.” I couldn’t tell if she meant closer than she and I, or closer than her and Jude. Either way, I felt bad. 

“You were his sister, Janie,” was the only thing I could sputter out. 

“So were you, Alex.” She handed me a brown leather-bound book. “I haven’t read it yet, but it was in his car.” 

I ran my finger across the spine. 

“Is this…?” I had trouble believing Jude was depressed and I didn’t know. He had called me the week prior and told me about the groundbreaking story he was working on and the interviews he had scheduled the next week. He had told me about the apple pie he got at the farmer’s market and how it made him think of home. 

“I don’t know. I want you to have it.”

I think Janie, too, couldn’t wrap her head around Jude’s death. She suggested that many men suffer in silence, but we both knew Jude wasn’t a sufferer. He was emotional, yes, but he was open. He would’ve said something, anything. I nodded and started skimming the pages, but I realized quickly that Janie didn’t want to be involved in retracing the steps of her brother in his final act. So I put the book in my bag, hugged Janie, and went to play Monopoly with Jude’s uncles until Jack Daniel’s lulled them to sleep. 

It may have been selfish, but after the weekend, I took the train back to the city. I sat in a middle seat with a man and a woman on either side of me. One was reading the paper, the other listening to music. I always thought the world would stop once Jude wasn’t in it. I wanted to grab the paper out of the man’s hand and tell him that I had lost my best friend, that was the real tragedy. But I didn’t. I stared at the seat in front of me until the conductor announced that we had reached Mamaroneck and I got off.

I knew that if I didn’t go back to work, Jude’s death would consume me. I wanted to prove to myself that our friendship taught me something. I couldn’t control the moon and the stars, but I could wake up and control my path.

No one prepares you for the mornings – your eyelids flutter and sun sneaks through your window and you feel lucky to be alive, until you remember. Until you remember that they’re gone. And that your life, unfortunately, must resume. 

“Whaddya got for me today, Reed?”  Melissa, my editor, kicked her feet up on the round wooden table and adjusted her thick-rimmed glasses. Her casualty felt forced, as did her enthusiasm for trivial news pitches that got as exciting as a local pothole being patched up. She didn’t know that I was grieving Jude’s death, but I didn’t want to tell her. 

“Poppy’s is closing down,” I tried to match her enthusiasm. “No more tomato soup!” I said sarcastically. The collective gasps of my fellow journalists made me ashamed as to what the field had come to. I thought I’d be in Afghanistan, ducked behind an army tank, reporting on war and foreign policy. Instead, I had a rock stuck in my rainboot and a dead best friend. 

“Before you all leave…” Melissa sang, “I have a story I want one of you to cover. Hit and run in town last week. They still don’t have the guy.”

Finally something that wasn’t bullshit. 

“I got it,” I said. She seemed surprised but impressed at my sudden dedication.

“Alright, Alex, it’s all yours.” 

I left the meeting and cried in the bathroom. It was a single stall, so I was safe. I pulled Jude’s notebook out of my bag, searching for some sort of closure or wisdom from this man. All I wanted to do was shake him and ask him why.

June 4 1991

The thunder claps and it startles me. But I danced today. All around the kitchen. I sang and I sang. The bluebirds joined in, later on. If it were a competition, I’d say I won. I might be biased, though. Rainy days always make me think. As mother nature sobs and screams, we hide. Why can’t we just let her douse us with her tears? For this is a baptism: the sacred acceptance of uneasiness. 

July 23 1991

What a joy it is to be loved.  To be stripped down to your barest parts and for someone to sit there, mouth agape, admiring what’s left of you. How lucky I am to love, too. I have enough inside of me to go around. So I sprinkle some love on everyone I meet. To the grocer I give a clementine, the bus driver I sit beside and ask about his daughter’s graduation. To Alex, my sister, my work, I give myself.

I bookmarked the page and closed it before my tears ruined the ink. He was always a beautiful writer, intentional and profound. 

Determined to get some answers on something that I could get closure on, I went to the police station and asked them what they had on the hit-and-run. 

“Little boy. Tragic story,” the detective told me. He handed me a manilla folder with the case information. No traffic camera footage. They hadn’t gotten anywhere, all they knew was a boy on a bike was hit and killed in the middle of the day, and the guy sped off. What an asshole. 

I went to the home of the parents of the child. They didn’t want to talk. I stood on their porch, and I understood. The mother was likely sprawled across the bathroom floor, howling at God for taking her baby. The father’s brave face probably fell as he lay in his son’s twin sized bed that he’d now never grow out of. My stomach, too, churned with the weight of grief. 

To consume myself with the death of the boy and the mysteries that lied there was a better way to pass my time than to mourn my Jude. I went home and tried to do more work on the case. I researched past hit and runs in the area. I requested bank’s ATM footage. No one caught anything out of the ordinary. I didn’t know how to proceed, but I knew Jude would.

December 30 1991

I’m about to crack this case wide open. I have an interview with Mr. Willoby next week. He’s the main source, he knows what Braun has been hiding. And with that, Happy New Year. 1 wish for the most prosperous year, let ‘92 be the best year the world has ever seen! My resolution: eat more cake. 
January 10 1992

There’s a tree outside my window, its branches now barren in the winter frost. But it stands, still, and it sure is beautiful. It’s still as beautiful as it will be in the spring if it sprouts cherry blossoms. When summer comes, it may don lemons and it will be beautiful, too. 

I still couldn’t shake the thought that he hadn’t killed himself. He couldn’t have, it didn’t make sense. His family was willing to accept that, but I wasn’t. Something must’ve happened. I flipped a few pages, hopeful he had a recent entry before his death. His handwriting was barely legible come February, but I read what I could. 

February 3rd 1992

He was just a little boy riding his bike. Probably his first one without training wheels. I didn’t see him, I didn’t see him, I didn’t see him. I am a coward. Forgive me lord, for I have sinned.

I had to re-read the entry a few times before it hit me. I became lightheaded, trying to come up with another explanation of what Jude was saying. Jude could never do such a thing.

I pulled the case file out of my bag, its dogeared pages getting hooked on the zipper. Never before had a folder felt like stone. 

It all matched. February 3rd. 

I slammed the book shut. I called Melissa and told her to drop the story, my best friend had died and I wouldn’t be going into work that week. 

Fuck you, Jude. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. 

He was the driver. That was why he did it. He couldn’t face himself. I tore the page out of the journal and ripped it into pieces and threw it in the trash.

* * *

In March of ‘92, Jude was cremated. Janie, his mother, and I sprinkled his ashes in the ocean. A wave came and took him far from shore, away from it all. I could hear him singing, still, as he became one with the sea and the sky. 

At his funeral, people stood in the back of the room, for there were no more empty seats. Everyone showed up for you, Judey, for you were so loved. And you loved so hard.

I sat in the front row with his family. His mother’s cheeks had sunken in, and his father, who I didn’t know very well, cried hard and loud. Janie spoke first and her voice shook but she told everyone about Jude as a child and I wept. He was just a boy. 

I spoke next. I didn’t have notes, or anything. It felt like my native tongue to speak about Jude and who he was. Why he was gone was another story. I was a good storyteller, though. 

“I’m Alex Reed, and Jude was my best friend. He was kind and he was wise. A soul whose brilliance was carried out by his profound humanity. Each of us carry fragments of the shattered mosaic of complexity and beauty that Jude was. He was a storyteller, a believer in the power of words to change the world. But beyond that, Jude was one of us—flawed, searching, yearning for understanding in a world that often feels too vast and indifferent.

Jude carried within him a silent struggle, a testament to the fact that even the brightest among us can find themselves lost in the dark. It is a cruel irony that a man who dedicated his life to uncovering truths was enveloped by thoughts he felt he could not share, a burden too heavy to bear alone.

Let’s not cry, today. Let’s celebrate Jude and promise to him and to each other to carry his compassion with us on a daily basis. Let us not remember him for the circumstances of his final days but for the mark he left on our hearts and the world. 

Jude’s life was one of laughter, love, and a relentless pursuit of truth that will continue to resonate within us, urging us to live with courage, to love without reservation, and to lend a hand to those around us.

To Jude, a son, brother, friend, and a light—may you find the peace that eluded you in this life. Your memory will forever guide us toward a future where no one has to walk the plank alone. We will miss you, dear friend.” 

I never told anyone what I had found in Jude’s journal. The case has since been closed. Your secret is safe with me, Jude. May you be remembered as the light that you were.