Free Giving Up the Ghost by Eric Nuzum

bus would finally show up and save me from this. It seemed like it was never coming. Jason just kept clicking and I kept changing: Mork from Ork, then a damsel crying over a fallen lover, then Fred Astaire dancing and singing in the rain.
    “Hey, man, see if it has a Pause button,” one kid shouted.
    “Sure it does,” Jason said. “Right here.”
    He pantomimed one final button press—and I froze.
    And stayed frozen.
    The kids started laughing.
    I could hear the bus pulling up behind me. The kids lost interest in me and started to line up. I stayed frozen.
    After all the other kids got on the bus, the driver looked down at me and squinted.
    “Hey, quit jerking around and get on,” he called out.
    I stood frozen. I was in pause.
    Even though I could feel everyone staring at me and hear them giggle and laugh, being frozen felt good. It felt like there was a barrier between me and them. It was like I had a protective shell between my feelings and the things that hurt them.
    I guess the right thing to do would have been to listen to the driver and get on the bus, but being frozen felt so peaceful. I knew I’d never hear the end of it, but I just kept standing there.
    “If you don’t get on this bus this minute, I’m going to leave you here, I swear,” the bus driver yelled. The kids on the bus grew silent.
    I just stood there.
    “Fine, I’m sure they’ll send Mr. Barnes down here for you when they hear about this.”
    With that, he drove away.
    I continued to stand frozen for some time after the bus left. I knew the school would never send Mr. Barnes out for me. They had a schoolful of other things to worry about. After a few cars drove by and asked me if I needed any help—then quickly drove away when I didn’t move—I got tired of being there and started walking home. I eventually called my mom at work and told her I threw up on the way to the bus stop and needed to stay home sick. I spent the day sitting in my room, periodically picking up an invisible remote control, pointing it at myself, and going into pause for a while.
    It was around this time that my grandmother died; I was just past my thirteenth birthday. We always called my mother’s mother Bobalu. She was the anchor of our family. Despite a sometimes difficult life, she was a happy person. She could have a conversation with just about anyone. She also smoked like a chimney, suffering through a few heart attacks and lung cancer before she died at sixty-two.
    I’d never experienced anyone dying before. When we first got word that she’d passed away, I wasn’t immediately sad or in shock or even that upset. I was curious. The rituals of death and funerals and mourning were foreign to me, and fascinating. Everyone in my family, which was normally so happy together, was suddenly sad and crying. I asked tons of questionsand wanted to know everything. What would her coffin be made of? Where were they keeping her body? Would she look different dead than she did when she was alive?
    When the day of her calling hours arrived, I walked into the funeral parlor, took one look at Bobalu’s casket, and completely lost it. The casket was closed, so it wasn’t like I saw her remains. I saw a box. On the inside of that box was my grandmother’s body. Her death suddenly stopped being a curiosity and smacked me right in the gut.
    In the following days and weeks, I became obsessed with thinking about what happened to Bobalu when she died. I came to believe that she went to heaven because she was such a good person. When she got there, God answered all her questions about her life. As a result, Bobalu no longer knew me as the bright, near-flawless grandson with unlimited potential. She saw me as I really was. She now knew the frustrations and disappointments. She also knew about my growing disconnection from the world. In death, Bobalu knew everything. She knew the truth.
    One night a few months after the funeral, I was sitting in my bedroom when I heard one of