Jesus Banuelos, a friend of mine from high school, died recently; his memorial service was this week, and for obvious reasons I cannot be there. He and I hadn’t been hugely close over the years, but I was always fond of him—and thinking of high school makes me think of Grad Nite, that strange tradition where you went to Disneyland at night, overnight, with hundreds of other teenagers from your school and others. I don’t actually remember if Jesus went; at some point, I ended up wandering the park by myself. But it is a strong high school Disney memory, and that is the tribute I can give Jesus. As a warning, this article will be full of names of people I knew then.

We were a local school, relatively speaking; my high school’s about an hour drive from Disneyland. So we all got put onto buses at the school; I don’t remember if people with cars were allowed to drive themselves or not, because I didn’t have a car. (His best friend Polrit did, I remember quite clearly, so Jesus might have ridden with him, if he went and if that was a possibility.) I feel pretty sure we got there early and had to spend ridiculous amounts of time just milling around on the bus, waiting for them to let us in. The feeling was “better early than late,” as anyone who’s ever dealt with LA traffic can be pretty clear on.

It was dark. I know that. Because of course it was; it started at eleven. One of the few things I did in a group that evening was go on the newly-opened Indiana Jones ride. Yet I cannot remember who was in the group I went with, because I know there were eleven of us. I know my friend Steven was in the group, because I was chatting with some guy he had brought that I didn’t know, and I know David Hochenedel was at the front of the group, because he was the one who told the person who asked how many were in our group the answer to that question. I still remember the look on the guy’s face—and the beam on David’s when he answered it. And I remember waving cheerily down at him, to establish that I was the last in the group. I’m pretty sure Polrit was one of us, which means Jesus might well have been.

We got out of the ride as Fantasmic! was going, and we stopped and watched that. And then we went to somewhere my friends could dance, and that’s where I split off from them. I liked dancing well enough—I miss being able to dance, now my joints have prevented it from happening more often—but my feeling at the time was that, if you were at Disneyland, why bother dancing? Why not just go on rides? And so I left Polrit and Steven and probably Pureza and possibly Angie and maybe Jesus and so forth and went off into the dark by myself.

For some reason, I don’t think there was much happening in Fantasyland; I don’t think all the rides were going there. Possibly the idea that teenagers left to their own devices wouldn’t be inclined toward Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride or Snow White’s Scary Adventures. I remember Fantasyland as dark and empty, which is a slightly chilling place to be. There was a ton of light and noise behind me, outside the castle gate, and I think most of Fantasyland had even been blocked off.

The rides that still ran were the ones people thought of as teen-friendly, but it’s about the only time in my life that I don’t remember a line for the Jungle Cruise. The boat I was on was half-empty, and the skipper let a girl steer the boat—yes, it’s on a rail, but we bumped on that rail a lot, I can tell you. Conversely, the line for Space Mountain was very long. No one I knew was around me; I hadn’t seen anyone I knew for hours.

The sun was rising as I got off the ride and walked out into Tomorrowland. I’d just gotten a $50 scholarship from a beloved teacher, I’m pretty sure that same month—she’d died that school year, and they gave me the new scholarship in her name—and I walked into a shop on Main Street looking for something to get to remember her by. (Grad Nite was already strong with memories of the dead for me, strangely.) I found a stuffed Maleficent who’s been in my possession ever since; I took her to college, and while various of my belongings have been in storage over the years, she never has been.

I may have napped on the ride home; I’m sure a lot of us did. And then afterward, we went out to breakfast. It was a school day, and no one expected us to go to class. We’d all been up all night, after all. I remember riding with Steven to the restaurant and talking very seriously of the future. Which makes me think that he’d been required to ride the bus after all; Steven is another friend from those days who had a car, and he was back at school with the rest of us. We were relatively subdued at the restaurant, I think, and it wasn’t just from being very tired.

I suppose the main reason I can’t remember if Jesus was there or not is that I only remember the night in a series of images. It was nearly a quarter-century ago, for one thing, and for another, it is kind of surreal going in. I can only say for sure three of the rides I was on, and that doesn’t feel much, for some six hours in the park. I might have watched Fantasmic! alongside Polrit, or it might have been Jasmeen, or it might have been someone else entirely. Did I go on the Haunted Mansion, or was the fact that my friends didn’t want to part of why I ended up striking out on my own? I cannot now say, and I’m not sure when I last knew.

I will miss Jesus, whether he was there that night or not. I wish I could remember. But I’m quite sure Polrit was, and I know he and Jesus went many places together over the years since then. I wouldn’t be surprised if Disneyland was one of them at other times, even if it wasn’t quite the same as Grad Nite.