by Donna Cooner
Blair and Mia are waiting around the corner as instructed. I cup my hands around my mouth and call out softly. “All clear.”
I said I would check it out and make sure no one was around, but the truth is I still have some conscience and didn’t want them knowing how to get in anytime they wanted.
“Wow,” Blair says. Her eyes gleam, and in that second I don’t regret bringing them here. I have Blair’s approval. All is as it should be.
“Welcome,” I say, then let out a spooky laugh like we’re in some geeky horror film.
“How cool is this?” Mia whispers, gazing around. “Nobody’s going to believe we came here.”
I want to say that they really shouldn’t tell anyone, but I hold my tongue.
At the top of the stairs is a reception area full of couches and comfortable chairs, dimly lit with recessed lighting. An old-fashioned chandelier hangs unlit from the ceiling and chocolate-colored velvet curtains are drawn across the big picture windows. There is a series of doors leading off the larger room. Mia pushes open one door to reveal a chapel-like room with rows of pews. For funeral services.
Don’t think about Miranda. Don’t think about Miranda.
Mia closes the door and it slides shut without a sound. Nothing makes noise here — not even our footsteps on the thick carpet. I don’t know what’s worse — the silence, or the idea there might be some kind of horrible creaking or thud. If I listen hard enough, the quiet actually has a sort of humming sound of its own. It’s not familiar and I don’t like it.
“Where do you think they keep the dead people?” Mia whispers, and Blair giggles.
This was a mistake. We shouldn’t be here. But before I can say anything, Blair is moving away from me, pushing through a set of doors and leading the way down a side hallway. Mia follows her, their made-up skeleton faces eerily floating through the dimness. My heart is pounding and I keep looking behind me just in case someone is there.
“You guys,” I call out, following after them. “We should go.”
Blair is opening doors and turning lights on and off. It’s going to attract attention from anyone passing by in a car. Then she stops suddenly and I practically run into her back.
“Oh. My. God. Look at this.” She holds a large metal door open and we all stand in the doorway. Inside it looks sort of like an operating room. Lots of gleaming silver and trays of instruments. Three large metal tables are in the middle of the room. Big showerheads hang from the ceiling over each one.
“It’s to wash off the blood,” Blair says.
Mia squeals and Blair hisses for her to be quiet. “Go inside,” Blair says.
“Not me. You go inside.”
“I’ll do it,” I say, and I do. I walk to the middle of the room and stand between the two metal tables. I turn around slowly with my arms outstretched. My heart is pounding. Trying my best to sound calm, I say, “No big deal. See? Now can we go?”
Blair puts her hands on her hips and smiles just the tiniest bit.
I realize then that I no longer care. “I want to go back to the party,” I tell Blair. It feels good to say something so unpopular. “You guys go wherever you want.”
Then the lights go out.
“Sorry this lighting is so bad,” Mia says in the dark, and she laughs.
I hear the click of the door.
“Wait,” Blair says, her voice muffled by the door.
“Come on.” I can hear Mia’s voice outside. “Leave her.”
“We can’t do that,” Blair says, but then she laughs. “Okay. Go. Go.”
I run forward. It’s so dark, I can’t even see my hands grasping at the hard closed door in front of me. I make myself blink a few times, seeking some shades in the darkness, but the total pitch black remains.
In the far-off distance, I hear laughter and the sound of a car honking, then silence.
They left me.
The realization slams into my brain.
Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
I close my eyes and try to calm my breathing, but the darkness is like dirt pouring in from the ceiling over my body and into my hair. It covers my face, filling up my nose. I open my mouth, but instead of air I suck in clumps of sand and dirt. I can’t breathe. My eyes fly open, but there is no difference. The grinning skeletons surround me, their bony fingers stretch out to touch me at any moment. I feel them getting closer in the blackness.
There is nothing to do but give in. I sink down onto the cold concrete floor and start to cry, my sobs coming out in ragged raw sounds that don’t even sound human.
Luis probably hates me. I hate me. There’s nothing I could say that will make it right between us. There is no excuse for how I’ve treated him, or Raylene, or anyone else for that matter. I’m a shallow, bad person who deserves to be shut up in the dark. No wonder Zoe betrayed me. Mia and Blair are just like her. And, once again, I was so stupid I couldn’t see what was coming.
I don’t know how long I sit there crying, but finally the sobs stop, and then, gradually, the tears stop, too. No skeletons. No ghosts. Nothing but darkness. I brush away the wetness from my face with my hands, taking deep, steadying breaths. The contours of my cheekbones under my fingertips suddenly remind me of the sugar skulls, but here in the dark there are no flowers or glitter. There is only what lies below the surface of my skin. Unseen and unviewed. Hidden out of frame and focus.
In the absence of all noise comes the memory of sounds. Just the other day at the 7-Eleven I heard this little girl laugh. It sounded so much like Miranda, I had to put my cherry Slurpee down and walk to the back of the store just to make sure it wasn’t her. It wasn’t. But I realized I still remembered what Miranda’s laugh sounded like — I hadn’t forgotten. I try to remember more. In the dark, a lifetime of sounds suddenly crawls into my mind on endless playback. It is the language of sisters.
I get the front seat.
She started it.
Leave me alone.
Can you help me?
I’m going to tell.
She touched me!
Be that way.
I’m scared.
The voices twist and weave through the dark, then disappear. Once again I am alone and the silence presses in hard against my ears. I stand up, swaying a little, and stagger over, arms outstretched and waving wildly in front of me, to find the closed door. The cold surface is finally in front of me against my spread fingers, unyielding. I beat against it frantically, first with open slaps and then with clenched fists.
“Let me out!” I scream. I wait with my ear pressed against the door to listen for a response. There is nothing. I do it again. Still nothing.
Sliding my hands down the hard surface, I find the doorknob. One twist and it turns easily in my shaking hands.
I was never trapped inside. It was within my power to get out all along.
All I had to do was open the door.
I walk out of the funeral home and down the driveway in a daze. Blair and Mia are nowhere in sight, and I’m glad about that. There’s a flash of light in the distance and it takes a minute to realize it’s lightning. There’s another and then another. The lightning is still too far away to hear the thunder, but coming closer. It doesn’t matter. A storm could be raging all around me and I wouldn’t even care. I’m not feeling much of anything. I’m just walking the blocks back to my house.
It takes a while, but the closer I get, the more sure I am of what I need to do next.
Music is still coming from Raylene’s house, but it looks like the party crowd is dwindling. Through the open windows, I see her slow dancing with Ross, a huge smile on her face. Good for her. I’m glad someone is happy tonight. I don’t see Luis, but I don’t look long.
I slip into my dark house and down the hall to my bedroom, trying not to make any noise. My parents’ door is closed and hopefully they are already asleep. I’m careful, closing my bedroom door softly and then turning on the light. I quickly change out of my rumpled party dress and into jeans and a
T-shirt. I pull a hoodie out of the drawer just in case the weather turns, like everyone’s been talking about. Grabbing the yellow marigolds out of a vase on my dresser, I wrap them up carefully in some tissues.
The clock says 11:00 p.m. One hour until midnight and the angelitos are released from heaven. I have just enough time.
“I just want to be real.” —Torrey Grey, Beautystarz15
Every noise seems exaggerated in the still night. The sound of the car door slamming. The thump of the trunk after I pull out the backpack full of Miranda’s things. The crunch of my shoes on the gravel road. The squeak of the half-open iron gate leading into the cemetery. In front of me the faint white rows of stones are visible behind the fence. There is supposed to be a full moon tonight. When it comes up it should give me plenty of light. As long as the thunderstorm stays to the north. I glance up. The pine trees stretch up into darkness and then branch out in Christmas tree tops, leaving only small visible patches of starry night.
I make my feet move forward in the darkness. I’m suddenly conscious of so many bodies lying there under my footsteps. My heart beats faster. Once they each had a heart that beat, too, and a chest that rose and fell with breath. Now they outnumber me in their complete stillness. Tonight, I’m the only one breathing.
I glance around again, nervously. There is no sign of a moon yet, but there is a rumbling — low and long — in the distance. Thunder. The storm is closer and I’m grateful for the flashlight I tucked inside the sleeping bag. I look up at the still clear sky and almost immediately hear the thunder again. Louder. A little closer.
The lightning bolt comes out of the sky like a rocket and hits a pine tree at the back of the cemetery with a crash that shakes the ground. I can feel the electricity in the tips of my hair. I smell the burned wood just before the top of the tree tumbles into the underbrush, leaving behind a smoldering stump. Every particle of air is supercharged and vibrating and the reality of the situation hits me. I’m alone in a graveyard with a thunderstorm looming.
My hands shake something awful as I stretch out the tarp and tie it to the trees the way I learned on a Girl Scouts camping trip when I was ten. I unroll my sleeping bag and then sit back against the roughness of the tree trunk, the tarp my only protection overhead. Ready. There is a rustle of branches in the dark and I glance up. It’s just the wind, but it whips wildly at the tarp. I hope my knots hold.
Every few minutes, the lightning illuminates everything, the surrounding gravestones stark white against the deeper dark. Then the cemetery crashes back into darkness, leaving behind only the clatter of thunder echoes. Each time, I count under my breath the space between to try to judge how close the thunder is. Each time it grows shorter. Above me, the tree trunks now reach up into a black, angry-looking sky.
I pull the hood of my hoodie up over my head, and the sides of my sleeping bag up around my legs. There is a rushing sound in the leaves overhead. The rain is definitely coming. I hear it smacking into the treetops first. In only a few minutes the drenching downpour reaches the top of the tarp, then pours over the side in hundreds of tiny rivers. But the tarp holds and I stay dry underneath it.
The deluge lasts only a short time, and then the rain hushes into a rustling shower on the canvas above me. The thunder quiets into dull rumbles, the lightning moves off into distant flashes. I sit and watch the last of the shower dripping off the leaves and trickling down stone monuments. Even in my current surroundings, the sound of the water is calming, and I remember.
We took Miranda to the ocean for the first time when she was four. Sand castles and seaweed. Hot dogs and hermit crabs. Those tiny angel wings that sparkle like purple jewels in the sand, and the glorious sound of the sea. It was all new to her.
For me, at age eight, it was delightfully familiar. First out of the car, I ran to the water’s edge and stood, arms outstretched like the wind-stilled birds above me. I couldn’t hear anything but the wonderful roar of the sea. I didn’t want to hear anything else. Sometimes I could almost hear a mother calling to her child, or a man to his dog, or the seagulls, but it didn’t matter. The sound of the ocean covered it all.
Mesmerized by the splash of the sparkling water, Miranda ran in and out of the crashing waves on her chubby little legs, squealing for me to join her. I wasn’t going to stay in the shallows though. I wanted to be out in the action. The trick was to figure out exactly where the wave would break, but if I hit it just right I could ride the top almost to shore. It was an incredible feeling — the water churning and roaring beneath me as it carried me in to the shore. Then it passed over me and I was left sputtering for air while the wave crashed on toward Miranda, waving her hands wildly for me to come in and build a sandcastle.
I should have listened to her, but there were a lot of things I should have done. I should have played with her. I should have laughed with her more.
The trip to the beach was forgotten until now, but tonight is not about forgetting. I’m not fighting it anymore. I want to remember. El Día de los Muertos. The Day of the Dead. The time to remember.
My hands clench, pressed tight against my forehead, and I am suddenly intensely aware of the breath going in and out of my body. But I know there is a moment when the breath stops. I saw it that night at the hospital, squeezed between my grief-stricken parents, as we waited for the inevitable. One minute the chest rises. Air goes in. Then air goes out. But then it doesn’t happen again. One moment there is life. The next there is only a shell.
When is that moment that the breath stops? How is that decided? What happens?
I can’t stand it anymore. The questions pour out into the dark and the tears come down my face. One after another, I ask them aloud, my voice cracking with emotion.
“Where are you, Miranda? Is it dark? Are you afraid?”
Picking up the backpack from the ground in front of me, I step out from under the tarp. The rain has stopped, but the air is cooler. The moon is now visible at times through the trees. I don’t know if it’s full, but it’s definitely big enough to light up the graveyard with a bluish light. The flashlight is dim in comparison. I turn it off and place it back under the tarp on the sleeping bag.
I wonder if there is a right way to do this. According to what I learned from Luis, I’m supposed to decorate and clean the grave. I bend over and brush away some leaves and sticks off the top of Miranda’s tombstone. I can’t help looking over my shoulder every few minutes. The moonlight casts rows of tombstone shadows on the dark, wet ground. Every piece of stone stands, no matter how old, a mute tribute to left-behind survivors just like me.
Whatever made the dead happy in life, they are to have again.
I take a deep breath and sink down to my knees, immediately feeling the damp seep into my jeans. Slowly, I open the backpack and reach inside. First I pull out the marigolds, hoping their scent is indeed an ancient path for Miranda’s spirit to follow back to the living world. The bright gold color is a stark contrast to the dirt on the top of the grave.
I reach inside again and take out the first item — a blue baby blanket with a big yellow duck on the front. My hands don’t shake as I carefully place it on the dirt in front of me, talking out loud in the dark. “You were always full of life and curiosity. You could have been a scientist and discovered the cure for cancer.”
I take out the drawing of Sensational Sister next and unfold it carefully, laying it beside the blanket. “You were creative and artistic. Your favorite color was blue. You could have grown up to paint masterpieces that people would have lined up to see. Or invented a whole new superhero for girls everywhere.”
Am I doing it right?
The softball shirt is next. “You were brave and would face any challenge put before you with determination and courage. You could have been the firefighter who rushed into a building to save the lives of many. Or a great athlete, playing a sport she loved.”
At first it’s weird talking out loud, but I start to get used to it.
Fina
lly, I place the socks with socks out on the dirt. “You were funny and your laughter will forever be missed. You could have written stories and songs to entertain the future.”
I’m soaked now and starting to shiver, but I have one more thing to do.
At first my voice is soft. “When the moon shines bright.”
I pause for a moment to swallow, clearing my throat, and then continue. “Your fears will be few.”
I close my eyes and then slide my hand deep into my jeans pocket for the last remaining item.
One moonstone bracelet.
I carefully place it at the bottom of the tombstone, right underneath the date when my world went crazy.
“And only sweet dreams will come to you,” I whisper aloud.
I wrap the dry sleeping bag around my legs and sit back down under the tarp. The full moon rises into the clearing of trees above me, and I wait for the time when the living and the dead are supposed to reunite.
But no ghosts emerge. There is only the sound of my ragged breathing in the darkness. I lie down, facing the grave, watching the tiny shimmer of the moonlight reflect off the bracelet onto the granite.
Love you to the moon, Miranda.
I sleep eventually, and she comes to me in my dream. This time it’s different. There are no skeletons. Miranda is dancing. Surrounded by moonlight.
And she’s wearing the moonstone bracelet.
“Allow your true beauty to shine through.” —Torrey Grey, Beautystarz15
I wake to the soft, hazy light of dawn. The moon is now a ghost of an image in the sky, and will quickly disappear as the sun grows brighter. I sit up slowly, stiff from sleeping on the hard ground. But I did sleep. All night.