“It was you, right?”
I stare at her. I don’t say anything. What does she mean it was me? Like it was me that killed him? It was me that didn’t stop him? It was me who should have?
She waits and looks down at her olive green Toms shoes, the shoes that help people around the world. I look down at my own beat-up shoes. They look like hell.
“I’m sorry,” she says and shakes her head like she’s confused. “I thought—”
“It was me,” I blurt out.
She sighs. I don’t know if it means she’s relieved or if that’s the cue for officers to rush in. “Oh, okay. I thought so.” She smiles nervously and I wonder if that’s it. If that’s all Zeena had to say to me because now she’s the one standing there saying nothing. She’s studying the Redbox kiosk next to me. “Those movies suck,” she says. “We watched almost all of them.”
I turn and look at the movies and I know she means Andy when she says “we.”
“He’d come here every night, you know. Rent a movie and we’d watch it at my place because he said . . . he said being alone was sad.” She says the last part so softly I barely catch it. “He always liked the most depressing ones.” Zeena doesn’t look at me when she says this, she just keeps looking at the kiosk. I watch her eyes scanning the titles. “Like ones about the Holocaust, or about some gross social injustice. Movies about things that made you sick or cry over ‘mankind’s capacity and capability for cruelty.’” She doesn’t look at me and it seems like she’s talking to herself. “He was always going on and on about our ability to be cruel, our disgrace. He’d even . . . he’d cry. I never knew what to do, how to handle that, you know?” she asks, like I might have the answer. “I mean, he’d sob and I’d just . . .” She shakes her head. “He could drag you down.”
Zeena stands there, and I don’t know what to say to her. She looks glued to that spot, looking down at the floor, unwilling or unable to move. For a moment, the image of Andy’s mom, the way she sat there unmoving by his grave that night, flashes through my head.
“That last night,” Zeena says, “he said to me, ‘I’m going to be okay.’ Out there.” She looks out of the smudged automatic doors, to the parking lot, to that night. “Can you believe he came by to tell me that? And he looked happy and I thought maybe he was with you.” She looks at me and I realize she must think Andy and I were more than what we were.
“We weren’t—” I explain, but she interrupts.
“I was happy for him. I thought, good, because more than anything, I wanted Andy to be happy, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know what he meant. And it wasn’t my fault,” she says firmly. She watches my face and I can tell she’s checking for my reaction. “I just need you to know that. I don’t know what he told you, but . . .”
“No, I know,” I say. “He never said anything.”
“Not that there was anything to say. I mean it was what it was,” she says. “I’m not even sure I know what it was.” She looks at me again, like I might be able to tell her. I shake my head because I can’t. “He wouldn’t let anyone in,” she says. “Not really. Not ever.”
“I know,” I say, not because I actually do know but just because I’m not sure what else to say. But what I say makes a pained expression flutter across Zeena’s face.
“I mean, not really,” I say. “We never hung out before. Not until that night. I didn’t really know him at all.”
The revelation hangs there in the air with the smell of produce and lingering bleach. This somehow doesn’t help and I suddenly worry that Zeena will interpret this as me and Andy having some kind of one-night stand.
“It wasn’t anything more than just hanging out. I saw him at this show and he said he wanted to go on this”—I say with a shrug—“on this, adventure, and it was . . . I don’t even know what or why we did it.” I tell her trying to explain something I don’t know how to explain.
“Oh,” she says. “I’m sorry.” And I wonder why Zeena is apologizing to me.
“Don’t be,” I say.
“I wish I could say it wasn’t like him,” she says, “but it’s typical Andy.”
Her tone makes it seem like she’s knocking him somehow, which I don’t think is fair since he’s not even here to defend himself.
“Anyway, I just wanted to say that to you. I mean, he was great.” She smiles, remembering. “He could be so great. But he could also get so weighed down with . . . life.” She struggles to find words. “At first, I thought he was, I don’t know, romantically tortured or something? I think that was what drew me to him.” She looks at her hands and continues. “But that kind of person can be exhausting. They can drain you. Especially when he didn’t want to be any other way. I don’t think he liked it when you tried to show him anything different than what he saw or thought. He was just so . . . consumed.” Her voice trails off.
I don’t know what to think of what Zeena is saying to me. Somehow it doesn’t match with the Andy I barely knew and somehow it seems to describe him so perfectly. It makes me more confused. Because this incessant part of me thinks, Me! I could have saved him. I should have saved him.
She rubs her arms like she’s trying to warm them up. She takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Well,” she says. “I don’t know,” and she shrugs.
“Yeah,” I say. I feel like I should say more to her. Because I think I’ve been wanting to talk to Zeena for a while now too, but I didn’t really know it until now. What is there to say though? Thanks? It’s cool we have a dead guy in common? Now have a good life?
She turns and heads back toward the cashier lanes. But I can’t leave. She’s back at her register, leaning back against the counter, and looking out at the empty grocery store. I wonder if after all these nights Zeena has been here, working in an almost empty grocery store, if there’s a part of her that always hopes he will show up with a movie from the Redbox. I walk over to her.
“Does he haunt you?”
And she doesn’t even look confused. She doesn’t even hesitate. She stares at me with her gray eyes and says, “All the time.”
Chapter 27
THAT NIGHT
“Where are we going?” I ask Andy once we leave the Wal-Mart.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“I can drop you off at your house,” I tell him.
He turns to look out the window. “That’s it? Our night of adventure is done?”
I’m not sure what more he wants me to do. “I guess so,” I say.
“But we haven’t even had our ice cream,” he says, as if he just suddenly remembered. He taps the pint of vanilla fudge swirl.
Mom’s voice rings in my ear.
“I know,” I say, and I’m not sure how to read Andy. I mean, here I was buying ice cream while he talked to his ex-girlfriend, but now he doesn’t want our night to end. And honestly, I’m not sure I want it to end either. My mind races with a solution.
“Well, okay, listen,” I say. “I was supposed to be home half an hour ago. But . . . let’s stop by my house, I’ll let my parents know I’m back, and then sneak back out.”
He smiles. “Really?”
“Really,” I say.
He sits back and almost seems relieved. “Cool,” he says. And while my plan sounds valid and simple enough to me, I’ve never snuck out of my house before and I have no clue if I can pull it off.
Five minutes later, I’ve parked in front of my house with instructions for Andy to meet me down the street. I quietly enter my house and go into my parents’ bedroom to let Mom know I’m back.
“That was fast,” she says over my dad’s snoring. I remember how I’d told her I had to drop everyone off.
“Joel and his girlfriend got a ride home with someone else,” I whisper. “I just dropped off Robyn on the way.”
“Oh,” she says, “Well, go to bed. I just want to get some sleep already.”
“Okay. Goodnight, Mom,” I say, “and sorry.”
“Fine, fine,” she mumbles as she
turns over and settles in.
I head down the hall that leads to our kitchen, grab a couple of spoons, and put them in my pocket. Then I go to my bedroom and purposely close the door loudly so Mom knows I’m in my room. I slowly open my window and climb back outside. My stomach flip-flops as both my feet hit the grass and I slowly close the window. I stand there for a minute, waiting for the light in my bedroom to flick on and my mom to open my window and ask me what the fuck I think I’m doing. But nothing happens. A minute later, I’m heading down to the street to meet Andy.
Chapter 28
TONIGHT
“The cemetery?” Colin asks as I tell him where we are going next. We’re already on my street when I tell him to drive past my house and keep going to Greenwood. He parks and I get out. The gates are closed, so we have to climb over the brick wall to get in.
“Holy shit,” Colin mutters. I know he’s thinking this is insane because that’s what any normal person would think. But he scales the wall anyway, and pretty soon we’re walking toward Em’s grave.
“You’re not part of a cult or something, are you?” he calls behind me. “This isn’t like some kind of ploy for a human sacrifice, is it?”
After his little singing stunt, I’m kind of enjoying his irrationality, so I don’t say anything.
“Frenchie?” he says. “Holy shit! What the hell was that?” And I know his foot has probably sunk a little into the soft earth. I don’t know why the ground on this side of the cemetery is soft and mushy and I don’t think I want to know. But if you don’t know about it, it feels like you’re sinking, and it’s easy to imagine that the earth is going to crumble and the dead are going to rise up like zombies all around you.
“I just want to show you something is all,” I say. And then we’re at Em’s grave and I point to her headstone.
“Emily Dickinson,” he reads. “Wait, that isn’t the real Emily Dickinson, is it?” he asks.
“No,” I say, “This is a different one.”
“Oh,” he says, “that’s pretty cool, I guess. And weird.”
I plop down and eat some of my ice cream.
“I hang out here. A lot,” I tell him through bites. “With her.” I cock my head toward her grave.
“Well,” he says, as he starts in on his Cherry Garcia. “Again, kind of weird,” he shrugs. “You a big fan or something?”
“I guess. It’s just that . . . I feel like she gets it, you know? Like I think things that sometimes might be weird to think, but then I read one of her poems and it’s like she already understands.”
“Like a song,” he says. “One you connect with and you think the lyrics are genius but it’s really just because it captures exactly how you think or feel.”
“Yes, exactly,” I say. “Like there’s this one poem about a flower, right, but it’s not. It’s about death. And how some people see a flower and that’s it. They just see a flower. But others see a flower and realize that while it’s pretty and all, its head will soon be chopped off by the morning frost and the little flower is going to be dead.”
“I’m guessing you fall into the latter group of people.”
“I guess. You?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I know the flower is going to die. But”—he says and starts stirring his ice cream—“I don’t know.” He shrugs. He takes a sip of his now ice cream soup.
I set mine aside.
“My dad,” Colin says suddenly, “he almost died in front of me.”
I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything. But it doesn’t seem to matter. Colin continues.
“I think it was his pure will and stubbornness that bought him an extra week. He just refused to die in front of me. We were watching The Three Stooges one morning. My mom had an appointment, so it was just us. He started laughing when Mo’s hair flew off his head. But then his laughter turned to coughing, and more coughing, and then his face started getting red as the coughing became more violent.” He pours the rest of his ice cream on the ground. I wait, wondering if he’s going to go on or if I should change the subject.
“Then this white foam started spilling from his mouth,” Colin says after a moment. “So I started crying and screaming as loud as I could. I don’t know who I expected to hear me. I don’t know who I expected to come and help us. But it was all I could do.”
“Wow,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “He died a week later, in his sleep. It was a massive coronary. My mom told me later that he’d told her it was my screams that kept him from dying that day. Sometimes . . .” He stops and just shakes his head.
“Sometimes what?” I ask.
“Sometimes I think I should’ve been there the night he did die. I should’ve been there screaming.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
“I think about that. A lot. More than I want to,” he says. “But when I think about my dad, I try really hard for that not to be the only thing I think about. Because”—he says with a sigh—“I can’t let that be the only thing I remember about him.”
Chapter 29
THAT NIGHT
“You live down the street from the cemetery,” Andy tells me. He’s waiting just a couple of houses down when I come around from the side of my house and meet up with him.
“Yeah, I kind of noticed that already,” I say.
“Is it weird? I mean, you must see a lot of funerals.”
“Yeah, but I’m kind of used to it. It’s not really that weird anymore,” I say. “I like visiting strangers’ graves though. I don’t know them, so it doesn’t hurt.” I pause. “You must think I’m a freak,” I say, suddenly self-conscious of how I’m coming across to Andy.
“Not at all,” he says. “Let’s go down there.”
“What? Right now? That’s kind of creepy,” I say.
“Says the girl who visits strangers’ graves.” He’s already walking down the street without me, so I follow him.
Even though I hang out here more than I should, I’ve never been to the cemetery at night. But I ignore the fear that’s starting to crawl on my skin like a thousand baby spiders.
I follow Andy over the wall and into the cemetery.
“This is really creepy,” he says, and I’m glad that he at least feels the same way. “But kind of cool in a weird way.”
“Why did you want to come here?” I ask as we continue walking.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’ve never been to a cemetery.”
“Never?” I ask.
“Nope, never,” he says.
“Well, I guess you’re pretty lucky then,” I say.
“Yeah, you could say that.” Without realizing, I’ve led Andy over to my usual spot near Em’s grave.
We sit down and Andy notices the marker. “Hey”—he says, pointing to it—“Emily Dickinson is buried here?”
“This Emily Dickinson is. But the famous one is in Amherst,” I explain.
“Huh,” he says. “Hey, remember that poem we read by her in Carter’s class?” Mr. Carter was our junior-year English teacher. “The one about the fly buzzing when the person dies?”
I nod. I did remember the poem, especially the first stanza and what is in my opinion the best first line of a poem ever:
I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air—
Between the Heaves of Storm—
“So you think that’s what it’s like?” Andy asks. “Like you’re waiting for death to be this majestic wonderful thing, but then it’s just like a fly? And even though you might expect all this white light or to see the face of God, or whatever, all you hear is a buzz?”
I think for a minute. “I don’t know. Maybe. But that just . . . sucks. Maybe it’s more like this moment of clarity, you know. I mean, we’re here right? On earth, living. But obviously we don’t know the reason we’re here. And we don’t understand the things that happen. But maybe when we die, that thing that blocks our und
erstanding is removed and we finally understand everything, even the nonsensical stuff. Maybe for once, you get to see everything for what it really is.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Just somewhere, I guess. Somewhere better.”
I look down to our empty cartons of ice cream and check the time.
“I forgot, I still have to drive you home, or is your car downtown? Do you want me to drive you there?”
“No, don’t worry about it,” Andy says, getting up. “I’ll just walk.”
“You’re going to walk home at three o’clock in the morning?”
“Yeah, it’s no big deal.”
“It’s no problem taking you,” I say as we start to make our way past the graves to the entrance of the cemetery.
“I’d rather walk.”
“Oh, thanks,” I say.
“No, what I mean is, I like walking at night.” We scale the brick wall and start walking to my house.
“Thanks, Frenchie,” he says when we get to my house.
“For what?” I ask.
“For a really cool night.”
I suddenly get a weird feeling, and for a second I wonder if Andy Cooper is going to kiss me.
“Andy, I can honestly say this was the strangest, coolest night I’ve ever had.”
He nods and kind of smiles. “Me too.” Then he looks down and says, “It sucks to be alone, even when you want to be.” It seems so random, but I feel like I understand what he’s saying. And I think I could talk to Andy forever, but he just smiles again and says, “Anyway, thanks again.”
“Yeah, of course,” I say.
He leans in, hugs me, and says, “You’re a badass, Frenchie Garcia,” so softly into my ear that I feel his warm breath. It smells like liquor but I love everything about it, about this moment, and I wish he would just stay.
But most of all, I wish I had the nerve to say something more than “Rock on, Andy Cooper,” but I don’t. That’s all I say.
He lets go of me and walks in the opposite direction of the cemetery. I watch him go and have the craziest desire to run after him and kiss him and tell him that this has actually been the best night of my whole life.
Death, Dickinson, and the Demented Life of Frenchie Garcia Page 13