Riiight. I attempted to take that approach. But it didn’t stick for more than a day. I mean, my best friend, fourteen years old and totally healthy and happy (except for the occasional mood swing or whatever), dies for no good reason, and I’m supposed to Have Faith and believe God Has a Plan and Everything Happens for a Reason?

  It’s horseshit. And eventually, I told them so. All of them: grief counselors, parents, guidance counselors, teachers, boyfriend.

  Until I learned not to tell them so. Because if you do start speaking the truth, guess what? People freak. They get scared you’re going to commit suicide or go on a shooting rampage based upon your theory that everything is random. It’s hard enough to control your own reactions when someone dies. But when you pile on other people’s reactions to your reactions? It all becomes an enormous, unmanageable, intolerable heap of Sucktacular Suckiness.

  Eventually, I turned off CNN. I wandered around aimlessly. My parents’ foreheads wrinkled with worry. (This was before they added frustrated and annoyed to the range of emotions revealed in their expressions.) They gripped the tops of my arms and looked into my eyes. They said things like, “We’re concerned about you. You’re not yourself. We think you should see a counselor.”

  First stop: my guidance counselor. I didn’t get past the first “crisis” meeting with that moron. The man can barely figure out how to transfer me to a different gym class or find the correct honors English schedule, and I’m supposed to relate to him? Moving on.

  Next stop was a social worker. She was nice—frazzled, but nice. She had mugs of hot tea and a big smile; I almost started to trust her. Until! During our third meeting, I kind of broke down and before I could stop myself, I blurted, “If everything that happens is random, doesn’t that make everything meaningless?”

  Well. That did it. She stopped listening to what I was actually saying and started listening for what she was afraid of hearing. But I wasn’t going to hurt myself or anyone else, and I’m still not stockpiling guns or ammo. I just want some honesty.

  So. After the social worker, my parents ratcheted up the stakes, climbed the hourly fee scale, and sent me to a bearded, loafer-wearing psychologist in Binghamton. I got to do a Rorschach test and the MMPI. It was super fun. And it turns out I’m gifted! And slightly depressed! But normal! And not psychopathic! With no evident personality disorders!

  Still, our therapeutic relationship ended up not being, as he put it, simpatico. Mostly because I called him on his pretentious bullshit, and told him I didn’t appreciate him conflating grief, sadness, and honesty with depression. Thank Christ, Mom and Dad kind of petered out on finding me another therapist after that.

  I did try to talk to Stenn. More than once. Use your resources, call on your support network, as the counselors say. Example:

  “Do you think there’s meaning in the way things happen?” I asked him. We were cuddled on the couch in his parents’ basement, post almost-intercourse.

  He got super earnest. “Yes. I believe God has a plan. Jesus guides everything.”

  Holy cats. He sounded like a Cylon. In my head, I was all, Say what, now? God has a plan? And Jesus is in on it, too? Since when was my boyfriend Mr. Religion?

  He must have noticed the not-so-slightly horrified look on my face, because he dialed it back. Hard. “Like in Star Wars,” he said. “Everyone has their destiny—Luke has his, Han and Leia have theirs. Obi Wan, he knew his. Even if it’s sad or scary. Even if you don’t understand it until way later.”

  Points for speaking my language, but still. I gave him an I’m Not Buying It face.

  “Seriously, Sare. Whenever you want to talk, I’m here for you. You know that.”

  It made me feel better. Until it dawned on me that he hadn’t bothered to ask me what I thought, what I believed. Just a slight oversight.

  Truth is, it’s lonely as hell. Because the thing about knowing what I know? It is Not Helpful. It’s not conducive to normal, happy teenager relationships. Observe.

  1. Knowing that life is random makes it damned hard to motivate. All of a sudden, for some strange reason, cute jeans and a tight little ass and perfect hair and looking good and being cool and Facebooking and homework and SAT prep don’t seem terribly important.

  2. You can’t really let yourself be close to your boyfriend, or your dad, or your old friends if you know they could die at any moment.

  3. It’s a case of “all dressed up and no place to go.” Because I know this Big True Thing and nobody wants to hear it. Nobody.

  Message received from everyone, loud and clear. Talk to us enough to think you’re okay, but don’t say what you really think. It makes us uncomfortable. And God forbid we should be uncomfortable.

  I can live with it, though. I do live with it. It’s not the worst part.

  The worst part is not being able to talk about it with Jamie. Because she would understand how I feel, and what I think. She would get the theory.

  The second worst part? Not being able to talk about Jamie. Look, if I can’t be with James, at least let me rip on her and laugh about stuff.

  The first few times I waxed Jamie-sophical, and started in on how the girl used to add sugar and Splenda to her lattes, people were fairly sympathetic. But after a month or so, it was like Time’s up! You should be over this by now. When I’d say her name, shoulders started to stiffen, mouths turned down. In Stenn’s case, fingernails were bitten. Apparently people preferred posting to a dead girl’s Facebook timeline, or abandoning her memory entirely, to feeling a modicum of…anything.

  And the longer it goes on, the more it feels like I’m in some parallel dimension where my BFF never existed. Like in the movie Back to the Future. Michael J. Fox goes back in time and keeps checking a photo from his past to make sure the people he knows are still there. To be sure they still exist. But they start fading from the photo, a little at a time.

  Could that happen with Jamie? Could she dissolve from my memories, leaving just a swath of background scenery, with no one standing in front of it?

  The thought makes me sick. So for a couple of hours here in the cemetery, I concentrate on making Jamie’s picture come back. I let myself be comforted by Ruby, and I hold my necklace, and get cold, and miss Jamie.

  And then my dad shows up.

  Dad rips into the cemetery, driving so fast that Ruby doesn’t have time to warn me. Et tu, Dr. Folger?

  So. Dr. Folger hadn’t been showing me kindness earlier when he let me leave school. He was just waiting for me to leave so he could turn around and call my dad.

  Dad pulls up so the Jeep’s passenger side is next to us. He puts the window down; his face is hard and angry. There’s none of the usual softness of worry in his eyes. He looks one thing only: pissed off. Times infinity. He pushes the passenger door open.

  “Sarah. Get in the car. Now.”

  I’m dead. Most of my teachers have overlooked the occasional skipped class—either out of pity, laziness, or not wanting to upset the superintendent. Sure, Dad has had to sign a few detention slips for skipping gym. (Ms. Gliss never lets anything slide.) But this—this is multiple classes; this is being caught off school grounds. This is a big one. I’m in for it.

  What is he going to do? Nix my driving permit? Forbid me from seeing Stenn? Take Ruby away? He wouldn’t really do that, would he?

  “Get in the car,” he repeats.

  “No.” It just comes out.

  “Now, Sarah.”

  “Come on, Rubes,” I say. With pounding heart, I start walking. Where am I going? What the hell is wrong with me?!

  Dad drives beside me, the passenger door still open. To be honest, I’m scared out of my intestines. Not getting in the car is making it worse. My dad looks like he’s going to burst into rage flames. I’ve never, ever seen him this mad.

  Ruby, panting happily, looks from me to Dad’s car and back at me. Then she hops through the open door into the Jeep. It’s her way of saving me from my own stupidity. I’m not about to let her go anywhere without me, so I open the back door (because I’m a stubborn jackass) and slide in. Ruby jumps over the front seat onto my lap.

  Dad reaches over and pulls the door closed. You’d think he’d peel out, lay tracks, the way he’s fuming. But he just continues to drive slow. Really slow. Way too slow. In the kind of silence that can suffocate. I can’t survive it for long. So I say, “Where are you taking me?”

  “Back to school.”

  “I’ll just leave again.”

  He eyes me in the rearview mirror. He stops the car. “Get out.”

  “You just told me to get in!”

  “Now I’m telling you to get out.”

  This time I do what he says. I open the door and gently nudge Ruby out, then get out myself.

  Dad gets out, too. He stands there staring at me and Ruby. “Just what…just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Well, I heard there was the big party here in the cemetery,” replies my snark box. “It was supposedly a three kegger, and I just—”

  “Enough! Enough with the sarcasm, Sarah. I have had it up to here with you.” He puts his hand to his forehead like some sort of salute. “Jesus. What am I supposed to do?”

  I have no idea. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I just need you to be… I don’t even know what I need you to be! Patient? Understanding? Persistent? But none of those words come out, because that’s never what comes out SJD. Instead, the snark box strikes again: “You’re just upset because it looks bad. The superintendent’s daughter cutting school—”

  “Oh, cut the crap! You have got to be kidding me. You think I give a… You honestly think that’s why I’m upset?”

  No. “Isn’t it?”

  He starts laughing. It’s a crazy, bitter laugh. He sits down on the ground. And then, somehow, he’s weeping. “Where have you gone? Where is the Sarah I knew?” He puts his head in his hands. “I just want her back.”

  To see your dad cry like that. Because of you. Not just because of something you’ve done, but because of Who You Are, because the person you’ve become is so profoundly messed up and unreachable… It’s beyond sad. And it’s an entire marathon past guilt.

  Shame. That’s what I feel. Ashamed. Not ashamed of him—although it is embarrassing to see him this destroyed. But no, I’m ashamed of myself. This strong, smart, capable man—my dad, for God’s sake—is blubbering on the ground because of me. Because I don’t know how to get rid of my snark box. I literally do not know how.

  And so I stand there like a stupid idiot. And after a while, Ruby and I get back in the car.

  Eventually, Dad stands up, gets back in the car, and starts driving, even more slowly this time. “I’m taking you back to school. And don’t think this is over. Not by a long shot. You understand me?”

  Pretty sure it’s a rhetorical question, so I don’t bother answering. I just stare out the window at the rows of graves. Dad turns, following the twisty cemetery lane, and we pass a white van parked on the grass. Dad’s going so slow that it seems like I could be pulling the van toward me on a rope.

  Past the van, a man is kneeling at one of those double graves, the kind with one headstone for two people. His head is bowed like he’s praying or deep in thought. As Dad curves the Jeep around the path, the man looks up. Dead on, straight at me, like he knew I was looking at him. He has gray hair, he’s wearing coveralls, and there is a small gray thing—a possum—curled up nearby.

  It’s the man from the gym.

  My stomach flips, my scalp prickles like birds are pecking at it. Captain Possum from the gym is here. Sure. Makes perfect sense. I live in a small town and I’ve seen him exactly never before in my life, so why wouldn’t I see him two times, back to back, first where Jamie died and then near where she’s buried?

  He watches me pass, and there is no doubt that he recognizes me. He remembers me from this morning just as surely as I remember him.

  The whooshing sound comes, like seashells clamped over my ears, and then the tidal wave. It’s happened before and I. Do. Not. Like. It. The sound is the Harbinger of Doom, along with the aluminum foil saliva taste in my mouth. And then the rush of memory—and the panic, the fear, the anxiety. No. I don’t want this. But inexorably, the light goes funny and the worn seat smell of Dad’s Jeep turns rancid. I try to fight it, squeezing my eyes shut and hugging Ruby close to my face. The seashell noise, this feeling, it means remembering. I will not think about it. Don’t think about it.

  But it comes anyway.

  That day.

  Jamie and I had ducked into the gym after school. It was empty—away games, teams had left early—and she was panicked. She’d lost her locket. Maybe the necklace had broken during gym class?

  First, we searched the locker room.

  “It’s not here,” she’d said. “Let’s check the gym.”

  It was crazy to think we’d find it. Needle, meet haystack. I would have given up after the first ten minutes, but Jamie had started to cry, and her drippy, bear-cub eyes were un-ignorable. So I kept looking.

  Something caught my eye. “James! Come here!”

  She ran over. I pointed to a thin gold chain pooling out from under the folded gym partition. The collapsible wall was pushed to one side of the gym, its large sections folded tight. I knelt down and tugged the necklace, but it wouldn’t budge. “It’s stuck.”

  “Crap.” She sat down next to me. “Mr. D and Ms. Gliss had the wall open—wait, closed? Whatever. You know what I mean. To separate us from the boys. Because they’re so dangerous to our virtue.” She rolled her eyes. “My necklace must have caught while I was sitting against the wall.”

  I thought a minute. “We could break the chain. Maybe the locket will slide off.”

  “Nokay!”

  “James. How else are we going to get it?”

  She looked at me, pained, but she knew I was right.

  I jerked the chain. It broke and more of it came out from under the wall, but it was still stuck. The locket didn’t appear. “Shoot. What is this made of? Titanium?”

  Next to me, Jamie hugged her knees. “What if we open the door? The wall, I mean?”

  “The controls are locked.”

  She got a wide grin and pointed to the other side of the gym. Mr. D’s keys were hanging from the control box, next to the red power button.

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s important. We’ll just get my locket and fold it back up. Mr. D won’t mind.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that.

  James jogged across the gym.

  “Wait,” I called, catching up. “I’ll do it.” Perks of being the superintendent’s daughter: I always got in less trouble than other kids.

  She was grateful. We bumped hips. “Ninja bitches!”

  She went back to the folded wall. “I’ll tell you when I’ve got it, and you close it back up quick.”

  “10–4.” I studied the control box. It looked simple enough: there was a slot with the key in it, and one big red button. “Ready?”

  “Affirmative!”

  I pressed the button.

  Nothing happened. “It’s like the hyperdrive on the Millenium Falcon,” I said.

  James threw me one of her looks. “Don’t nerd out on me. Try it again.”

  I fiddled with the key and pressed the button.

  The motor whirred and the wall started spreading out along its track, opening like an accordion. As the wall sections pulled away from each other, Jamie stepped in and disappeared between two of them.

  “Got it! Back her up!” She sounded happy.

  I turned the key and pressed the button again. The motor made a grinding, ratchety sound, and the wall shuddered and reversed direction.

  “That didn’t sound good!” I laughed, walking toward Jamie. She was still hidden between sections.

  “Oh shit!” She was laughing, too. “I’m stuck!”

  “You are high-larious.”

  She was quiet a moment. The motor kept humming. “Not funny! My sweater’s caught in the hinge.” She sounded a little nervous. But not terrified. Yet. “Abort! Abort!”

  I jogged back to the control box. “There!” I shouted as I twisted the key and pressed the button again. “I think I got it.”

  But the sound of the motor didn’t change. The wall kept folding.

  “Sarah!” Jamie shouted.

  She sounded really scared now.

  I pounded the red button and worked the key back and forth furiously. “It won’t stop!” I screamed. “Jamie! Get out of there!”

  “I can’t!”

  “Take your sweater off!”

  “I’m stuck! Sarah! Help!”

  I slammed the button again.

  The wall kept collapsing.

  This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.

  I ran toward Jamie. There must be a safety override. The wall would sense that it was blocked—

  The motor made a sick, groaning sound.

  Jamie screamed. Screamed. And then fell silent.

  I stopped running.

  I didn’t know what to do. What should I do?

  I sleepwalked.

  A rivulet of blood appeared under the folded wall.

  I threw up.

  You’d think I would have sprinted, run for help, but I couldn’t. I could barely balance.

  I walked to the office.

  It was all I could think to do.

  But at what cost?

  Jamie. My best friend.

  Was she dead when I left? Or did she hear me walk away from her?

  Did she die alone?

  Jesus Christ. I still don’t know how it happened. I don’t know why I couldn’t make the door stop. I don’t know how it could be heavy enough to crush a person.

  I’m so sorry, Jamie.

  Please tell me you don’t blame me. Please tell me you know I tried to help you.

  Please tell me you didn’t hear me walk away from you.

  Please tell me you’re happy now. That you’re not lonely. That you are one with the universe, part of the Force or something.

  Please tell me you’re not hanging around, hovering over your grave, waiting for some sort of resolution.

 

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