Absent

by Katie Williams

  They bring the students back the following Monday. Most opt for the school bus, and the student parking lot is left two-thirds empty. My classmates are, days later, both sedated and enlivened by the car crash. They talk about it with the exhausted giddiness of kids who have stayed up too late at a slumber party. I wait by the mural sheet, which seems to have been permanently forgotten in the aftermath of Paul Revere High School’s latest tragedy. Forgotten, too, is what the mural memorializes. No one looks at it anymore. No one thinks of me. So this is what it feels like to be forgotten.

  Not forgotten is the shame of Kelsey Pope.

  She arrives late, and I know that walk. She’s spent the entire morning, while getting ready for school, telling herself to be tough. She’ll show them she doesn’t care, even though they still titter and whisper. Which they still do. I follow after, wondering how long she’ll be able to keep it up.

  Turns out, not long.

  The hall is full when Kelsey reaches her locker. No ponies gather around it. No surprise. Kelsey doesn’t glance over to where they are gathered at another pony’s locker. She keeps her eyes on her own locker, spinning the dial and giving it a yank.

  Hundreds of prom tickets spill out at her feet.

  We, all of us in the hall, stare at the pastel slips of paper scattered around Kelsey like confetti. Kelsey stares, too, her eyes surprised at first, until she picks up one slip and then drops it fluttering to the floor.

  Even from a few yards back, I can see that the ticket is professionally printed. The well-rounders, I think. They’re the ones who organize the prom, who print the tickets. It takes less than a second for me to spot Whitney Puryear, her face lit with an anticipation almost like hunger.

  The hallway explodes in sound. It’s not laughter, not all of it, but enough of it is. I watch as Kelsey’s eyes fill with tears.

  This is it. Exactly what I’d engineered, exactly what I’d said I’d wanted. How is vindication supposed to feel? It should feel like the parts snap into place. It should feel like eating a bowl of warm, thick soup on a cold day. It should feel like suddenly you’re solid again.

  I watch the tears tremble in Kelsey’s eyes and feel nothing.

  Suddenly, I find myself stepping through people, directly through their mouths curled in laughter, their hands lifted to shield a whisper, their narrowed, judgmental eyes. I arrive in front of Kelsey.

  “Think of me,” I order. “You dumb pony, think of me.”

  But why would she?

  Maybe because my old best friend steps out into the middle of the hall and shouts, “Shut up!” Usha balls her hands on her hips. “All of you, shut up!”

  Kelsey stares at Usha, tears finally spilling over her cheeks, cutting across the expression of confusion on her face. She opens her mouth, but before she can speak, her voice thinks my name: Paige. It’s enough.

  I turn her around, chin lifted—damn the tears, damn the tickets, damn the laughter—and walk her through the crowd, a queen through the jackals, until the laughter fades away behind us.

  And that’s how it remains for the next week and a half. Every day, I wait until Kelsey thinks of me, then I inhabit her. I take her through her day—classes, lunch, worst are hallways—like the whispers and stares don’t exist. She doesn’t push back at me now, but then again, I don’t do anything she wouldn’t do herself.

  Evan starts to ask where I’ve been. Even with Fisk’s classes, he’s started to notice that I’m not around.

  “I’m here and there,” I say lightly.

  “You’re where and where?” he asks.

  I almost tell him. But I can’t. It’s the same feeling as when I couldn’t tell Usha about my hook-ups with Lucas. I don’t know how to explain why I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing. I just didn’t think revenge would feel like this. Shameful. Petty. Mean. All the things I’ve accused Kelsey of, now it’s me.

  The next Wednesday, two weeks since the car accident, I walk Kelsey out of the cafeteria and see Wes and his burner friends clustered in the hall that leads to art class. Though Kelsey has to sit across the room from Wes in art, I’ve been trying to skirt him elsewhere because, maddeningly, no matter how I try to avoid it, my eyes always somehow land on his. As they do now. Before his friends even see me, Wes’s eyes catch mine. Fortunately, there’s a door a few steps away.

  I duck into Brooke’s bathroom to wait for the burners to disperse, but as I turn the corner to the sinks, I freeze.

  Lucas stands in the same exact spot where he stood on the afternoon when he guarded the flooding sinks. I hadn’t seen him since we’d sat together in Principal Bosworth’s office, though I knew he must have been back from his suspension. It surprises me that I’d forgotten about him, the boy I used to look for at every ring of the bell. The girl with him is young, maybe only a freshman, though she’s trying hard to look older, with a mouth dark as poisoned fruit and clunky boots that must make each step heavy. She floats up from the boots as if they’re the only thing holding her to the ground, her head tilted back, her painted lips the highest point of her body. Lucas’s mouth presses down on hers.

  I step back into the shadow of the entranceway, watching them. The kiss stretches on for minutes that must in reality be only seconds, and I can do nothing but stare. It looks different from the way he’d kissed me, as if her lips actually are a fruit he’s downing in bites, no regard for stem or seeds. It’s the girl who finally pulls free; the lower half of Lucas’s face is ripe with her dark lipstick.

  “Do you want to know where it was?” Lucas asks.

  She nods, her eyes wide.

  Lucas points to the place on the floor by the sinks: Brooke’s death spot. Then, he cocks his head and says, “You should lie down on it.”

  “Lie down?” she repeats uncertainly. “Like, on the floor?”

  “Come on,” Lucas says.

  “I don’t know.”

  “But if I wanted you to?”

  With a smile that might be a grimace, she does. And when he bends down to kiss her there on the floor, I finally regain the ability to move.

  Maybe we should be trying to forget.

  Harriet’s safety glass tears.

  Kelsey’s real tears.

  The sketch of the girl under the tree.

  She’s just some girl who died.

  It’s too much.

  I don’t care about them.

  Any of them.

  I don’t care.

  I don’t care.

  These tears mean I don’t care.

  I run past Wes and the burner boys, their faces blurring through the scrim of my tears. I run past Usha, nearly knocking her from her ladder. The late bell rings, but I don’t turn back. I slam the doors out to the parking lot and race across the soccer fields behind the school, their grass sucked gray and dry from the winter that just passed. I find a stretch of brick wall and slide to the ground. Here they are, tears I couldn’t cry before, wet on my cheeks and hands.

  “Hey,” a voice says between half-caught breaths. “Hey, there.”

  I look up, and he’s standing there, all shaggy hair and tattered coat. He wavers as the tears rise to my eyes, then clears as they fall.

  “What are you doing here, Wes Nolan?”

  “I followed you,” he says, adding, “barely. You run fast.”

  “This isn’t what it looks like,” I tell him.

  “What does it look like?”

  “Like I’m upset.”

  He cocks his head. “You’re not upset?”

  “Don’t look at me. I’m all tears and snot.”

  “Okay. I won’t look.” He turns away gamely. “So things have been pretty rough, huh?”

  “No kidding,” I say, then I realize what he must mean: that things have been rough for Kelsey because he turned her down. “I’m not upset over you, you know.”

  He raises his eyebrows, and I wonder if that sounded insulting. I wonder, after that, why I even care if it did.

  “I saw Lucas Hayes in th
e bathroom,” I explain. “He was making out with some burner.”

  “A burner?” Wes asks. “Like on a stove?”

  “No. A burner like a girl who burns things—cigarettes, pot—who smokes things.”

  “Oh. Like me,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say uncomfortably. “I guess, yeah.”

  “A burner,” he tries out the word, smiles at it. “I like that.”

  “It’s supposed to be an insult.”

  “Okay.” He smiles wider. “I still like it.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “You used to go out with Lucas Hayes, right?”

  “Last year.”

  “So you still like him, huh?”

  I bite Kelsey’s lip and look across the field at the burners’ circle where I used to wait, listening for the soft crush of pine needles that would mark Lucas’s step, my heart beating at the possibility of that sound, my ears echoing with the absence of it, my mind protesting that I didn’t care one way or the other. “Well, I did,” I admit. “I liked him. I liked Lucas Hayes.” And I laugh because I did. I really did like him. Prince Basketball. Mr. Gleam Tooth. High Testo himself. Lucas Hayes.

  Wes nods. “Most girls seem to.”

  “Yeah. Most girls,” I scoff. But in this case, most girls was me. “But I don’t anymore.” And as I say it, I know that it’s true. I don’t. I couldn’t like someone who said that, who said I was some girl who died. “I think that maybe I liked the idea of him more than the actual him: Lucas Hayes.”

  “Lucas Hayes,” Wes repeats.

  “It’s embarrassing, but . . .”

  “If it’s embarrassing, you have to tell.”

  “No, if it’s embarrassing, I don’t have to tell.”

  “Come on. You can make up for insulting me.”

  I smacked his arm. “You liked the insult.”

  “I like lots of things,” he says.

  “Fine. Here it is. It’s embarrassing because I thought it made me special, because Lucas Hayes was special, and he’d chosen me. Turns out, I could have been anyone.”

  “You?” Wes says softly. “But you’re Kelsey Pope, remember?”

  I look up to see if he’s mocking me, and he is, but in the nicest way possible.

  “Can I tell you what really happened? In the bathroom?”

  He nods.

  I comb the grass next to me, all in one direction, then all in the other. “It wasn’t that they were kissing.” I shake my head, still not understanding what I’d seen, only understanding what it made me feel, sick and scared. “They were, then they stopped. And then he asked her to lie down on the spot where Brooke Lee, where she . . .”

  “Died?” Wes asks incredulously.

  “It was . . .” I shiver. “I don’t know. He wasn’t like that before. With me. He was nice. He was actually really nice and normal.”

  “Was he nice? Really? Because—” He stops, but I already know what he’s going to say. I can hear it in his thoughts. “Can you keep a secret?”

  I nod.

  “Paige Wheeler and Lucas Hayes were together.”

  “They were?” I try to sound surprised.

  “I saw them in those trees by the soccer field a couple of times. Kissing. They didn’t see me.” His lip curls.

  “You look like you disapproved.”

  “Yeah, I did, sorta.”

  I shake my head. “Why did you even care?”

  “I got the feeling that he’d talked her into keeping it a secret and . . .” He looks away. “I don’t know. No way to treat a pretty girl.”

  “Pretty?” I say, my surprise becoming real.

  His eyes narrow. “There’s more types of pretty than yours, you know.”

  “Oh, no, that’s not . . . I didn’t mean it the way you think I meant it.” Kelsey, I remind myself. He thinks I’m Kelsey.

  He thinks I’m pretty, my mind counters, unbidden.

  We walk back in silence across the field. I’m aware of his shoulder next to mine, his swinging arm, the rise and fall of his walk. I’m aware of the amount of space between us, mere inches. Just before we reach the school building, I stop. He stops, too.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey,” he replies. He looks at me, squinting. “You’re different.”

  “Different how?”

  “From how I thought you’d be.”

  You are, too, I think, but instead I blurt out, “Would you go to prom with me?”

  He blinks. “Didn’t you already ask me that?”

  “No,” I say. “That wasn’t me.”

  “An imposter, then?”

  “Yes,” I agree. “An imposter. But this is me right now. Asking you. To prom.”

  For a long moment, Wes doesn’t say anything. Then, inch by inch, one side of his mouth lifts into a grin.

  19: SECRET GIRLFRIEND

  I STAY IN KELSEY FOR THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON. WES AND I arrive late in the art room to stunned silence from our classmates. No whispers, though, no laughs. I almost smile in gratitude. We sit at our usual opposite tables, not looking at each other, but after class, he falls in step with me again, walking me all the way to physics, the halls around us holding their breath.

  He doesn’t mention the prom until just before we part ways, when he runs a hand through his shaggy hair and says, “I seem to remember you saying that I don’t have to get a corsage.”

  “No corsage necessary. And,” I think quickly, “you don’t have to pick me up. We can meet here at school. In the hall by that sheet for the mural.”

  “No meeting parents either?” He grins. “I didn’t realize I was going to get lucky.” The grin disappears as he hears his own words. “Oh. I mean . . . I didn’t mean—”

  I laugh until the embarrassment on his face becomes laughter, too.

  “So, prom?” he says.

  “So, prom,” I agree, the words—no less who I am, no less the person I’m speaking them to—surreal.

  I sit through physics in a daze. But beneath the disbelief is a little green sprout of happiness, like the ivy in the crevice of the roof ledge. But with it comes another feeling: regret as wide and deep as those first days after my death. What if I hadn’t wasted my time—myself—on a guy who was only around for kisses in the trees? Would I have noticed the crooked-smiled burner who wanted to know me better? What if I hadn’t pushed him away with my nicknames and judgments? Who would he have turned out to be? Who would I have been?

  It’s the memory of Lucas and the burner girl that finally pierces my fog. When the last bell rings, I walk Kelsey out to the road and then descend from my death spot to Mr. Fisk’s classroom, where I stutter through the strange story of Lucas and the burner girl in the bathroom to the increasingly appalled expression on Evan’s face.

  “We have to tell Brooke,” Evan says. “Where do you think she is? Maybe the gym? The soccer field?”

  “I don’t think we should say anything,” I protest, well aware of all the other secrets I’ve been keeping from Evan, too. “Brooke already hates Lucas. This will just make it worse.”

  “But what if he does it again? What if she walks in on it? If he’s doing it on her death spot, it’s only a matter of time before she does.”

  And he’s right, I know, but just when I gather the words to argue some more anyway, a voice behind us says, “Save your ethical debate.”

  The two of us turn to find Brooke in the doorway.

  “I already walked in on him,” she says.

  “You saw? You mean, Lucas and—”

  “His latest disposable girl?” She makes an angry, ugly scoffing sound. “Yeah, I saw.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Don’t you apologize for Lucas Hayes. And”—she pauses as if deciding something—“don’t be angry at me.” Her mouth twists. “Or, on second thought, be angry at me. I would.”

  I shake my head. “Why would I be angry at you?”

  “Because.” Brooke’s gaze is so level and still, it’s almost
like she’s forcing herself to meet my eyes. “Because I should have told you a long time ago.”

  “Told me what?”

  She bites her lip. Unbites. “About Lucas Hayes and me.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say.

  But this is a lie. I do understand. I’ve understood since I saw Lucas with the burner girl. I’ve understood from the moment he pointed to Brooke’s death spot and asked her to lie down. Maybe part of me understood before that. The meeting with Heath. The flooding of Brooke’s bathroom. Don’t say that, Lucas had said to me in the burners’ circle when I’d told him he’d practically saved a girl’s life. Because I didn’t save her, he’d said.

  “You were together,” I say slowly.

  Brooke nods, her face coldly pretty, the way sharp things are, glittering, daring you to touch them. “We met up. Like you. We hooked up. Like you. If anyone else was around, he would ignore me. Like you.”

  Like you, her words whisper in my mind. Like you. “How long?” I say, and my voice sounds like an echo in my ears.

  “From the end of junior year until the day I died. He didn’t want anyone to know, though, and so no one did. I can keep a secret.” Her mouth quirks. “Like you.”

  “And that day? The day you died?” Evan asks.

  “It was Lucas, wasn’t it?” I say, thinking of the conversation I overheard between him and Heath in the bathroom. “He was the one who bought the cocaine. Who wanted to use it.”

  “Did he get you to try it, too?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “I’m surprised. But it was probably just a matter of time. He has a real nose for it, you know?” She wraps her ponytail around and around her hand, then unwraps it. Wraps it and unwraps it, like a boxer wrapping his fists. “I’ll be honest. He didn’t have to convince me much. I wanted to try it. We did it a couple of times together, after school, one weekend. That afternoon, we were supposed to go to his house because his mom was at work. But then Bosworth was monitoring the parking lot, so we couldn’t get out, and who cares anyway, right? We’d just do it there in the bathroom and find our way off campus once Bosworth left.” She pulls her ponytail across her face, hiding the crumple of her mouth and chin. “He handed it to me, you know that? Said, You first. And maybe something was wrong with it. Maybe something was wrong with me. I don’t know, but it started to burn. My whole brain was burning. My eyes.” She closes her eyes and exhales a shuddering breath. “And he watched it happen. He stood there staring while I died.”