I Was Here

by Gayle Forman

  Joe looks down at the table. “We thought we were doing the best thing at the time.”

  “We got her on antidepressants, of course,” Sue says. “And she improved. So much so that she wanted to go off them after she graduated high school. We tried to talk her out of it. I know depression, and it’s not something that visits once and disappears.”

  Sue’s moods. The house’s smells. Depression. That’s what it’s like?

  “We knew things weren’t right as soon as she got down there,” Joe says. “She was sleeping all the time, missing classes.”

  “We tried to get her help, to get her on track,” Sue says. “We were thinking of making her take a term off. We talked about it—fought about it, more like—all through winter break.”

  “That’s why we couldn’t invite you to join us,” Joe says.

  Winter break. My family is driving me crazy.

  “We had decided to force the issue if she wouldn’t take steps. To bring her home if we needed to, even if it meant losing her scholarship. But then in the New Year, she seemed to get better. Only she wasn’t. She was planning her escape.”

  “I didn’t know,” I say.

  “None of us did,” Sue says, starting to cry now.

  She was my best friend. If I’d been there, for the winter break, or for the school year, I would’ve known. About her depression, how bad she was feeling. It might be different. She might be here.

  “I didn’t know,” I repeat, only this time it comes out as a piercing howl. And then my grief bursts like an aneurysm, the blood everywhere.

  Joe and Sue watch me hemorrhage, and as they do, it’s like they finally understand.

  Joe reaches out to grab my hand as Sue says the words I’ve been yearning to hear: “Oh, baby, no, no, no. Not you. It’s not your fault.”

  “I was going to move to Seattle,” I say between sobs. “We were going to have this great life together, but . . .” I don’t know how to finish. I didn’t have the money. I got scared. I got stuck. So she went. And I stayed.

  “No!” Joe says. “That’s not it. You were the world to her. You were her rock back here.”

  “But that is it. Don’t you see?” I cry. “When she went away, I was mad. At me mostly, but I took it out on her. I wasn’t there for her. If I had been, she would’ve come to me instead of him.”

  “No, Cody,” Sue says. “She wouldn’t have.”

  There’s a devastating finality in Sue’s voice. She wouldn’t have. Meg would’ve kept it a secret, as she always did.

  Joe clears his throat, his way of holding back tears. “I get why you went after this guy, Cody. Because if this Bradford did it, then someone else murdered her. Someone other than her. Then maybe we could grieve her with clean, simple broken hearts.”

  I look up at Joe. Oh, God. I miss her so much. But I am so angry with her. And if I can’t forgive her, how can I forgive myself?

  “But if Meg weren’t sick in the first place, she wouldn’t have been in that man’s crosshairs,” Sue says, looking imploringly at Joe. “He wouldn’t have had any power over her. Look at Cody. She went on those boards, she tangled with that man. We just read the messages.” Sue turns to me now. “And you’re still here.”

  No! They don’t understand. How he burrows into the mind, plays games, hits all your weak spots. He could’ve brought me down too.

  But then I look around. I’m sitting at the dining room table I’ve eaten so many meals around over the years. Meg is gone. The last few months have been hell. But Sue’s right. I’m still here.

  The file is open, the pages splayed. Everything I went through to get this—the rabbit hole I went down with Bradford? I’d thought it was a mark of his strength. But maybe it was a test of mine.

  I’m still here.

  I put the pages back in the folder and slide it over to Joe. “I think I need to stop with this,” I say. “You guys do what you think is best.”

  He takes the file from me. “We’ll show it to the police first thing in the morning.”

  There’s a moment of silence. Then Sue says, “And, Cody,” but it doesn’t scare me like before. “Thank you,” she finishes.

  Then she and Joe are up, out of their seats, holding me so tight, and we are all crying. We stay like that for a long time until Sue says, “You’re a bag of bones. Please, Cody. Let me feed you.”

  I lean back in the upholstered chair. I’m not hungry, but I say okay. Sue heads toward the kitchen. Joe stays with me.

  “You should’ve told us,” he says, tapping the file.

  “You should’ve told me, too,” I say.

  He nods.

  “And Scottie. You should tell him. He already knows. I mean, he doesn’t know the specifics, but he suspects someone helped Meg. He’s the one who clued me in.”

  Joe strokes his chin in wonderment. “Nothing gets past kids. No matter how much you try to protect them.” He sighs. “We’ve started talking to families of other suicide victims. Putting it out in the open. It’s the only thing that seems to help.” He grasps my hand so tight, the metal of his wedding band leaves an imprint. “I’ll talk to Scottie,” he promises.

  Sue comes back in from the kitchen. She puts down a heaping plate in front of me, some kind of stew.

  I take a bite.

  “It’s homemade,” Sue tells me. Then she smiles. It may be the weakest smile I’ve ever seen, but it’s there.

  I take another bite. It turns out that I’m hungry after all.

  41

  I fall asleep that night at nine o’clock, still in my clothes, and when I wake up at five the next morning, Tricia is asleep at the kitchen table. I touch her lightly on the wrist.

  “Did you just get home?” I ask.

  She shrugs, all bleary-eyed and fuzzy.

  “Were you waiting up for me?”

  She shrugs again. “Sort of.”

  “You can go to bed now. I’m fine.”

  “You are?” She yawns. “How’d it go with Joe and Sue?”

  “Good. I’ll tell you about it later, when you’re semiconscious.”

  “Semiconscious,” she repeats. But then she gets serious. “But you’re okay?”

  I nod. “I am okay.” I’ve been saying that for a long time, but now I understand that it’s true.

  “We’ll go to breakfast in a few hours. Diner?” she says.

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Tricia trudges to bed. I unpack my bag and put all my filthy stuff in a pile. I’m going to have to take a trip to the Laundromat today, or maybe I can ask Mrs. Chandler if I can do a load at her place when I’m there next. People have been pretty generous when I’ve asked for help. I put on a pot of coffee and go out to the front porch while the coffee brews.

  Dawn is breaking. The hills are pink with the first blushes of morning light, though a layer of mist still covers the ground. There’s almost no one out on the street at this hour, no cars, save for the paperboy’s pickup truck.

  In the distance, I hear another car, the tick of its engine familiar, though it’s not the Garcias’ Explorer, and Tricia’s ancient Camry is parked in the driveway. It blurs down the next block, and I do a double take. No. It’s not possible.

  But then it loops around and comes back down the next block, going slowly, like it’s lost. I stand up from the porch and walk toward the street. The car stops suddenly. Then it just sits there in the middle of the street, engine idling, before reversing up the block and turning onto my street, stopping right next to the curb where I’m standing.

  He looks like hell. A day’s worth of beard on his face and who knows how many months of sleeplessness purpling his eyes. Maybe he got this bad on the trip and I didn’t notice because it happened by degrees, but the Ben who steps out of that car is almost unrecognizable from tha
t pretty, snarling boy I saw onstage a few months ago.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask him.

  “What do you think I’m doing here?” And he sounds so wrecked, it kills me. “Have a good life?”

  “How are you here? It’s, like, a twenty-four-hour drive.” I calculate how long it’s been since I left him in Vegas yesterday: a little more than seventeen hours.

  “It’s twenty-four hours if you stop.”

  That explains it. Driving all night alone can age you a year in a day.

  “How did you know where to find me?”

  He rubs his eyes with the heel of his hands. “Meg told me where she lived. It’s a pretty small town.” He pauses. “I’ve always known where to find you, Cody.”

  “Oh.”

  He looks so exhausted. I want to take him into my house, lay him down on my bed, pull up the sheets, and touch his eyelids before they flutter to sleep.

  “Why’d you run off like that?”

  I don’t know what to tell him. I got happy. I got scared. I got overwhelmed. I put my hands over my heart, hoping that explains it.

  We stand there for a moment. “I saw Meg’s parents,” I say at last. “I told them about Bradford. Apparently, the police had already told them about Meg’s involvement with the Final Solution people.”

  Ben’s drooping eyes widen in surprise.

  “They also told me that Meg was depressed. She’d had a bad episode in tenth grade that I didn’t recognize even though I was right there and even though I was her best friend. And she had another after she moved to Tacoma. Before she met you.” I look at him. His eyes, like the skin under them, seem bruised. “So, apparently, it’s not your fault. Or mine.” I try to say this last part flippantly, but my voice hitches.

  “I never thought it was your fault,” Ben says softly. “But I figured out that it wasn’t mine, either.”

  “But you said that her death was on your conscience.”

  “It is. It always will be. But I don’t think I ranked enough to have caused it. And besides . . .” he trails off.

  “What?”

  “I keep thinking, if it were my fault, it wouldn’t have brought you into my life.”

  My eyes fill with tears.

  “I’m in love with you, Cody. And I know that this is all complicated and confused in a wholly fucked-up way. Meg’s death was a tragedy and the worst kind of waste, but I don’t want to lose you because of the fucked-up way I found you.”

  And now I’m weeping. “Fucking Ben McCallister. You make me cry more than almost any person I’ve ever met,” I say. But I step toward him.

  “I shed a few tears myself last night.” He steps toward me.

  “I’ll bet. A thousand miles is a long way with no iPod.”

  “Yeah. The music was what was missing.” He takes another step toward me. “I shouldn’t have let you go. I should’ve said something yesterday, but it was intense for me, too, and you scared me, Cody. You scare me a lot.”

  “That’s because you’re a city dick,” I reply. “City dicks are always scared.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Well, you scare me, too,” I say.

  I open my arms for him. And as it always is when I let myself be with Ben McCallister, scared is the opposite of what I feel.

  We stand there, holding each other in the waking morning. He brushes a lock of hair out of my eyes, kisses me on the temple.

  “I’m pretty fragile right now,” I warn him. “Everything’s sort of coming down all at once.”

  He nods. For him, too.

  “And this could be tricky. ‘Complicated and confused in a wholly fucked-up way,’ as you put it.”

  “I know,” he says. “We’ll just have to ride it out, cowgirl.”

  “Ride it out,” I repeat. I lean my head against him. His whole body heaves.

  “Do you want to come inside?” I ask. “Sleep for a while?”

  He shakes his head. “Maybe later.”

  The sun is up, and the early morning mist has burned off. I reach for his hand. “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “For a walk. I want to show you around. There’s a crazy rocket ship at the park where the view goes on forever.”

  I interlace my fingers with his, and we take off walking. Toward my past. Into my future.

  Epilogue

  The year after Meg died, we laid her to rest.

  We have one more service. There are no candles at this one, no “Amazing Grace,” not even a religious officiate. But there will be Meg. Joe and Sue had her cremated, and now her ashes will be scattered in the various places she loved. They struck a deal with the Catholic cemetery to give her a grave there, so long as there wasn’t a body.

  Today we’re going to let some of her go in the hills of Pioneer Park. Her friends from town will be here, along with several of the Seattle people, and, of course, the friends from Cascades.

  Alice picked me up in the dorm and drove up with me last night, and Tricia welcomed me home as if I’d been gone two years rather than two months. Since I’ve been at school, she’s texted me practically every day. (Raymond is history, but his texting legacy remains.) But she seems glad I did it, took the leap and applied for (begged for) mid-term admission at the University of Washington. “I won’t be eligible for any scholarships, and probably not even many grants. I’ll have to take out loans,” I told her.

  “We’ll both take out loans,” she said. “There’re worse things to have hanging over you than debt.”

  x x x

  Alice fusses over what to wear, regretting now that she didn’t bring anything black, no matter how much I reassure her that it’s not that kind of service. We’ve all worn enough black. Even Tricia scored a new dress off a sale rack; it’s turquoise.

  “What are you wearing?” she asks me.

  “Probably jeans.”

  “You can’t wear jeans!”

  “Why not?”

  Alice has no answer for that. “When is everyone else getting here?”

  “Richard got in last night. Ben left early this morning. He’s meeting us at the park. He said Harry’s catching a ride with him.”

  “I never see Harry anymore. He has an internship with Microsoft so he’s never on campus.”

  “I know. We talked last week.” Harry had called to tell me that amid all the scrutiny, the Final Solution boards shut down. That was the one concrete thing I managed to accomplish from all this. The police had questioned Bradford Smith, subpoenaed his computer, even. I liked to picture his look of indignation, crumbling into fear, when the cops knocked on his door, when they walked away with his files. He must’ve known that it was me behind this, the sunless planet who turned out to have some light left in her after all.

  But there were no charges filed. Bradford had been too careful, hadn’t broken any laws. He’d used other people’s words, links to anonymous websites. Not enough tracked back to him.

  Before the boards got shut down, I occasionally went on them and checked for All_BS, but I didn’t find him. He could’ve changed his username, or changed to a different group, but somehow I don’t think so. For now, at least, I believe I’ve silenced him.

  Joe and Sue met with attorneys who said that I might have gathered enough evidence for a civil suit. They’re discussing it, but Sue says she doesn’t have the stomach for the fight. It won’t bring Meg back, and right now, she says, we need not vengeance but forgiveness. I’ve thought a lot about Jerry’s sermon lately. I think Sue may be right. Though Bradford Smith isn’t the one any of us needs to forgive.

  Tricia comes to my door, all dolled up in the new dress that she’ll freeze in and in heels that will get muddy on the trails. She looks pretty. She glances at Alice, she looks at me, sh
e looks at the picture of Meg, the one of her and me as kids at the rodeo that I’ve left up on my wall. “Let’s do this thing,” she says.

  x x x

  We climb the trails of Pioneer Park into the small clearing in the woods. In the distance, I hear Samson barking. Rounding the corner, I spot Joe and Sue talking to people they’ve met in their suicide survivor group. The Seattle musicians are tuning their instruments. Scottie is playing Hacky Sack with Richard and Harry. Sharon Devonne and some other people Meg knew from school are talking to Mrs. Banks and her husband. Alexis and her fiancé, Ryan, now back from Afghanistan, each hold a hand of their little girl, Felicity. I’m a little surprised to see Tammy Henthoff here, standing alone. She catches my eye and we nod.

  Ben is off to the side, looking down the hill. I follow his gaze to the rocket ship, and at the same time, we turn to look at each other. I don’t quite know how so much gets communicated in one look, but it does. Complicated and confused in a wholly fucked-up way is a good way to describe it. But maybe that’s just how love is.

  Ready? he mouths.

  I nod. I am ready. Soon the musicians will gather and play the Bishop Allen song about fireflies and forgiveness and I will eulogize my friend and we will scatter a bit of her to the wind. And then we will go down the hill, past the rocket ship, to the cemetery, to her grave, where a marker will say:

  Megan Luisa Garcia

  I WAS HERE

  Author’s Note

  Many years ago I wrote an article about suicide in which I interviewed friends and family members of young women who had taken their lives. That was when I “met��� Suzy Gonzales, though I didn’t really meet her because she had already been dead for a few years. Listening to friends and relatives talk about Suzy, I kept forgetting I was reporting a piece on suicide. The portrait they painted was of a bright, creative, charismatic, nonconformist nineteen-year-old—the kind of girl I might have interviewed because she was publishing her debut novel, or releasing her first album, or directing a cool indie movie. On the surface, she didn’t strike me—or the people I interviewed—as someone who would kill herself.