Death, Dickinson, and the Demented Life of Frenchie Garcia

by Jenny Torres Sanchez

  He reaches for my hand and holds it in his. “I know, and you’re welcome.” He squeezes my hand. “And you’re going to be okay, Frenchie. I know it,” he says before letting my hand go. He turns and walks toward the cemetery entrance.

  “Colin,” I say again. He turns around. “Really, thank you,” I say. He gives a nod and waves faintly before turning away again. I watch him go, losing him in the shadows of the trees, until I see him scaling the wall. And then I start walking to Andy’s grave.

  There’s an almost full moon tonight that lights up the whole cemetery. I find my way over to where Andy is buried, making out some of the names on the graves I pass. And then I get to Andrew James Cooper.

  “Andy Cooper,” I say. “I bet you didn’t expect me to show up here. Or maybe you did. . . .”

  I inhale slowly. Being here makes me feel exposed, like Andy knows everything. How I’ve always felt about him, and everything that’s happened since he left. And I wonder how pathetic I must seem, after all these months, standing here in the middle of the night.

  “There are some things I should tell you,” I say. But the words don’t magically appear the way I’d hoped they would. And maybe because they don’t, I sit down and suddenly remember something. I take out the plastic bag of pills I got from Sid.

  “Sid says hi,” I tell Andy. I don’t know why I remember this and I wish I could take it back because Sid shouldn’t be mentioned ever again. “Forget I said that,” I tell Andy. I take the pills out of the bag and hold them in my hand. I wonder what it would be like to take them all. To sit here and pop them in my mouth, to have them travel through my body. To have them make my heart go faster and faster, or maybe slower and slower.

  “Did you take them all at once, Andy?” I whisper. “Or one by one.”

  They might kill me. Or make me end up in a hospital in a coma for who knows how long. Maybe he didn’t really think they’d work. It’s easy to forget what they can do when you see them, so small, almost pretty in your hand this way. And if you just take them, if you don’t think about dying, it’s almost easy to swallow them.

  I try to imagine him that night. Did he sit and look at them and think, really think, about what he was doing? Did he take them with every hope they’d work? Or did he just pop them in his mouth, hoping beyond hope that he would live, even as he was trying to die.

  “Was it that bad?” I ask him. I close my eyes and try to imagine what he might say, but all I can picture is his face from that night, his glassy eyes. So I sit here with the same questions I’ve wondered for the past four months. Why did our paths cross that night? Why out of all the people in the world, did Andy run into me that night? Why did he pick that night to go to that club alone? Why didn’t he stay with Zeena instead of getting back into my car?

  I close my eyes for a moment and let my mind wander as it gets lost in all the other ways this could have turned out. All the different versions of that night, of what was and wasn’t and never would be. These are the kinds of thoughts you can only think of in the space between night and morning, between dark and light, between life and death, because they’re too terrible or wonderful or stupid to think when the world is awake.

  Somewhere, that night ends with a kiss. Somewhere, Andy Cooper is kissing me. Somewhere, he’s waiting at my locker on Monday morning and every morning after that. Somewhere, we fall in love and I feel happy.

  But then a muffled voice brings me back down to the ground. Is that Frenchie? Is that girl’s name Frenchie? And the hard ground suddenly gives way and I’m falling deeper and deeper into the earth, so far that maybe nobody will ever find me.

  I clutch the pills, checking if they’re still in my hand. Is this what it would feel like to take them, to put them in my mouth and swallow them? Would it feel like I’m falling? Like I didn’t even exist anymore?

  Except, Andy does exist, I tell myself. He didn’t stop anything. Instead he created more misery. Misery that got dumped on everyone who ever loved or cared or even just knew him. Everyone who would have helped him if he’d just let them.

  Tears burn my eyes.

  After tonight I won’t let myself think of any of this again. I will bury these thoughts as deep as Andy Cooper is now. And I will stop trying to make sense of something that could never make sense.

  I clutch the pills tighter and tighter. I can hardly feel them anymore. I worry where they’ve gone, but my eyes are too heavy and I’m too tired to look for them. I think maybe I’ve crushed them. Maybe they’ve slipped through my fingers and seeped into the ground.

  I see flashes of Em walking over to me in her white dress. She sits next to me. Her words fill my mind, fill tonight, until I can’t see or hear them anymore. Until they dissolve. Until they become nothing.

  Chapter 34

  The ground under me feels cool and my clothes are damp on my skin. I’m tired and my eyes are too heavy to open, even as I become aware of the grass underneath me. Moments or hours later, a white brightness flickers behind my lids and I know it must be morning. The brightness hurts my eyes, but I open them anyway and sit up. My hands are achy from clutching the pills all night. I look at them and wonder how they ended up in my hand again.

  I don’t know if I was asleep, or if I died, or if I’m a ghost, because when you wake up in a cemetery, all seem likely somehow. But I do know that even as I lie on Andy’s grave, even as his body lies just feet under mine, he seems oddly far away.

  I become aware of the faint sound of cars swishing by on the expressway that sits on the other side of the fence. Slowly, they get louder, and then there’s a jarring blare of a horn.

  I jump up and leave the cemetery, urged by the worry that Mom and Dad will walk into my room any minute and wonder where the hell I am. As I walk, I feel like I’m in a dream. The sun, impossibly, seems brighter than usual as I head home. I’m sure that it’s just fatigue making me feel slightly delirious. And maybe that’s why, instead of climbing back in through my bedroom window, I walk onto the front stoop, unlock the front door, and go inside my house.

  The aroma of coffee and cinnamon raisin toast immediately hits me as I walk into the kitchen. My mother is sitting at the table, my father has stopped midjourney between the counter and table, holding a mug of coffee in his hands. They both stare at me, with a mixture of disbelief and perplexity.

  “Frenchie?” Mom says.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Frenchie . . . ,” Mom says again, looking at my clothes. I can see how she takes them in. “Are you . . . just getting in?”

  “Mom, I know how this seems . . .”

  She’s still looking at me confused. “It seems,” she says slowly, “like you’re just getting in.” She turns to look at Dad.

  “Are you?” he asks. They both stare at me, waiting for an answer.

  I nod. “Yes, but . . .”

  Mom shakes her head and gives me a hard look. “Unbelievable, French.”

  “Just listen, Mom, please.”

  Dad gives her the let’s-be-rational-parents-before-you-tear-into-her look. I think he’s thinking there’s a possibility that maybe I was abducted last night and have escaped and run a hundred miles to safety.

  Mom repositions herself. “You better have one hell of an excuse,” she says, turning her whole body my way and crossing her arms.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’m just getting in because . . . ,” I hesitate. I know there’s no turning back. “Because I spent last night in the cemetery.”

  “What?” Mom asks. “The cemetery? Are you in a cult or something?”

  “No, I’m not in a cult, Mom.”

  “Okay . . . ,” Dad says calmly. “Then, please, explain why exactly you slept in a cemetery.”

  “Because that’s where Andy Cooper was taken when he died. . . .”

  Dad looks at Mom, who looks confused again. She says, “Is that the boy from school? Who died a few months ago?” I nod. “But I thought you didn’t know him.”

  “I did,” I confess.
When Mom received the automated phone call from school informing her that a classmate had passed away and there would be grief counselors available to help students cope, she had stood there with the phone to her ear and said, “Frenchie, did you know a boy named Andy Cooper?”

  She never would have guessed how my heart stopped. How I was sure it was Andy’s mother who had tracked me down and was asking for me. Or the cops asking what I knew about Andy’s last night.

  She never would have guessed how hard it was to look unaffected when I said, “Andy who?”

  “I’d known him since ninth grade, and I didn’t tell you because”—I say while looking at my dirty shoes—“I really liked him. And the night he . . .” I find it hard to say exactly what he did but I force myself to. “The night he killed himself, we had hung out. And we had this great night. Or at least I thought it was great, you know, because we just talked and talked and he was . . . it was so nice. But I didn’t know what he was going to do . . . and I was stupid because I thought he was hanging out with me because he liked me . . . but really, maybe he was just lonely or scared or”—I say with a shrug—“I was just there.”

  My mom and dad look at each other and then back at me. Mom has uncrossed her arms and sits forward in her chair with one hand over her mouth. Dad just continues to look at me. I can’t read his face, but the look on it makes it necessary for me to direct my attention back to my shoes.

  “Honey,” Mom says.

  “And then the next morning he was. . .”

  “Frenchie,” Mom says.

  I wipe away tears. “So last night I went looking for something from that night, or maybe . . . him,” I say. “And then I finally just ended up at the cemetery. And when I woke up this morning I was still there.”

  They look horrified and a little like they’ve already telepathically decided I need to see a shrink.

  “Oh my god, French,” Mom says, pulling her eyes away from Dad’s.

  “I know how it sounds. But I think I’m fine. I’ve just felt so . . . bad, and it just made sense, but I think I’m okay now. And I just wanted you to know.”

  I don’t tell them about Sid or the pills that are now back in my pocket. I leave out Colin, the tattoo, and anything more because they’re already looking at me like they need to start dialing numbers to therapists.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. But Mom gets up and hugs me.

  “Stop,” she says, shaking her head as she lets go of me. “Everything will be fine,” she says. “You’ll be fine. I promise.” Then she lets out a deep breath and looks at my dad.

  Chapter 35

  After talking to Mom and Dad, I go lock myself in the bathroom and check out my tattoo that has been throbbing like crazy. It looks really red and I hope it’s not infected. I remember Kaz’s care instructions and resolve to do everything he said from this point on. But for now, I study it in the mirror and wonder if it can ever mean something different to me than it did last night. Maybe someday it will.

  I reach into my pockets and pull out the bag of pills. I dump them in the toilet and watch them float around. I remember thinking last night how easy it would be to just swallow them all and I’m suddenly afraid of them. I flush them away, relieved to be rid of them.

  I take a shower, careful to avoid my shoulder, and spend the rest of the morning sleeping. Mom comes in several times to check on me. She brings me cinnamon raisin toast and tea, as if I’m sick. I tell her I’m fine. But she hovers and then I catch her standing at the doorway, staring at me like I’m some kind of tragic case, so I decide to get up and get ready. For what, I’m not sure, but I don’t want to lie around the house all day having Mom and Dad worry about me. I look at my phone and figure I’ll call Colin. But I’m certain he woke up this morning absolutely convinced that I’m a freak. So I don’t.

  I consider calling Joel because I want to talk to someone. But things between us are so screwed up and I don’t know how to fix them anymore.

  So I dial Robyn. Even though I managed to piss her off last night too, she’s the most forgiving. The phone rings in my ear and I wait, hoping she’ll pick up.

  “So,” she answers. “I guess you’re done having a meltdown.”

  I groan. I know I deserved that. “Robyn, I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Whatever. We’re cool. But I must say, you were at your finest last night. Couldn’t have done it better myself.”

  I cringe picturing last night. “I guess it was pretty bad.”

  “Like watching a train wreck,” she says.

  A sickening feeling washes over me as I remember all the things I said to Joel.

  “But I get it,” Robyn continues, “I mean, it’s not like Joel has been the best of friends lately. But he’s in love, French. Of course he’s going to ditch us and act like an idiot.”

  I sigh, feeling defeated. “I know.”

  “And it’s not like love is a bad thing.”

  “I know,” I repeat.

  “I don’t think you do,” she says.

  “I do,” I say. “Or I think I do. I don’t know. It’s confusing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, because I don’t. And I don’t know how or why I think of Colin when Robyn talks about being like that with someone.

  “Frenchie,” Robyn says like she’s talking to a child. “What are you thinking?”

  I sigh because I know Robyn is going to make more out of this than it really is, but I tell her about hanging out with Colin last night. Not all of it, just that we hung out and talked after the blowup with Joel.

  “So wait, are you saying you like him?”

  “I’m saying we hung out. And it was nice,” I answer.

  There’s a long silence before she says simply and calmly, “Okay.”

  “Just okay? I thought you’d be screaming in my ear.”

  “Yep, just okay. Because I know if I tell you how happy this makes me and how I’m seriously going to stop being your friend if you don’t act on it, you’ll end up sabotaging everything.” But her voice has gotten higher with each word, and I know it’s taking some effort for her to contain herself.

  I laugh. “Good,” I say.

  “Very good,” she gushes.

  “And thanks for, you know, not staying mad at me. You’re an awesome friend. I love you, you know that?”

  Robyn cracks up. “Oh, French! You’re so cute sometimes. Listen, if it weren’t for Bobby, I’d be all over you too, but alas. . . .”

  “I’m not in love with you, dumbass.”

  “You are! You want me! You dream about me every night!”

  I laugh. “I’m hanging up, now.”

  “Okay, okay. Just remember to cut Joel some slack. And be nice to Colin! Leave out your death fun facts when talking to him. And don’t be so intense.”

  “Hanging up now!”

  “And French, love you too, freak!” she yells as I hang up.

  I hate to admit it, but talking with Robyn about Colin makes my stomach twinge with nervous excitement. It surprises me.

  I go to the living room where my parents are pretending to watch a movie, even as we all know they’re just keeping a close eye on me.

  I sit down next to them, both as still as statues when I enter the room. I guess I’ve kind of freaked them out a little, and as they hold their breath and stare at me from the corners of their eyes, I wonder if there was any other way to go about it.

  I feel bad for laying this on them like that. I’m guessing they didn’t exactly have dreams of a daughter who would spend the night in cemeteries. Or a daughter who they believe can do something wonderful, but has no idea what the hell to do with her life.

  Chapter 36

  The only guy who’s ever come over to my house is Joel. And one wonderful night, briefly, Andy Cooper stood in front of my house and I hoped he would kiss me. So you can imagine my surprise when, while I still sit with my parents watching some horrible infomercial that we’ve all gotten sucked into, a ca
r stops in front of our house that I immediately recognize.

  “Who’s that?” Mom asks as she looks out the window and sees Colin getting out of his car.

  “That? Oh, uh, just a friend,” I say, getting up and stumbling over the ottoman.

  “Joel?” Dad asks looking over at Mom. Mom shakes her head quickly.

  “Let him in,” Mom says.

  “No, Mom,” I say, “he’s just . . .”

  “A friend,” she finishes. I notice the slightest hint of a smile in the corners of her mouth.

  “Yes,” I say. “And I’m not letting him in. He already thinks I’m enough of a freak without meeting you guys.”

  The doorbell rings, and I open the door.

  Colin is in a fresh white T-shirt and jeans. His hair has been slicked back anew.

  “What’s up?” I say, stepping outside and closing the door behind me. “What are you doing here?”

  “Now there’s gratitude for you. You drag me around town all night long and not even a hello?”

  I cringe a little at having my social disgraces pointed out this way. “Sorry. You’re right. Hello,” I say.

  “Hello,” he says. He’s holding something behind his back. He brings his arm forward and casually reveals a red flower.

  “For you,” he says.

  A rose. This is when a girl should graciously take the flower and coyly sniff it. Robyn’s voice rings in my ears, and I try to be these things, but I’m not.

  And so I just stand there, looking at it, and say nothing.

  He shakes his head and laughs. Before I can say anything, he lets the flower fall to the ground and crushes it with his black sneaker.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be like that,” I say.

  “Relax,” he says, smiling wickedly. “I thought it’d be fun to see how you’d react.”

  “And?” I say.

  “And you behaved quite Frenchie-esque. That is to say, horribly and exactly as I predicted.”

  “Well, thanks for that,” I say as I salvage the few petals from the ground that didn’t get crushed, and hold them in my hand. “I’m a jerk,” I say.